(no subject)

[sideways]

 • On nyctanthes recommendation I watched the animated film I Lost My Body on Netflix, and it's a recommendation I am delighted to wholeheartedly pass on. A French, adult film about a severed hand and the person it was once attached to, it's a little surreal and a lot emotional and I enjoyed it very much. Perhaps be cautious if you have a weak stomach, though, just because... well, there's a severed hand functioning as a viewpoint character.

• Finished Transistor. An undeniably beautiful game visually, and the worldbuilding is unique enough to carry the narrative with ease, but the gameplay wasn't much my thing. It might have made more of an impression on me if I wasn't already familiar with most of the main story points.

• Started Detroit: Beyond Human! Another one of my PS+ "freebies" (though I ought to find some online game to play with regularity again or that's not really going to be so free when you add it all up). I suspect I'm somewhere around the two-thirds to three-quarters mark, and I'll probably make a proper review post once I'm done because it's certainly leaving me with many Thoughts, not all of them kind. It's been an interesting game overall, and I'm quite fond of the main characters.

• May have impulsively restarted yet another Dragon Age: Inquisition playthrough on the side. Help me.

• I finally acquired Killjoys season five - the grand finale. Like Orphan Black, I found myself generally happy with where all the characters ended up and there were plenty of the gleefully, outrageously fun and/or heart-wrenching character moments that made this show such a good ride, but the plot was much weaker compared to other seasons and the struggle against the antagonist was underwhelming considering all the lead-up. Which, I mean, - hey, it was fine and I've certainly watched worse endings (Person of Intereeeeest), I just wish they'd managed to retain a wee bit more of that high-tension strapped-to-a-rocket punchiness that was Killjoys at its best.

• Since JB Hi-fi was having a 2-for-1 sale and didn't have season one of Mr Robot, I have also acquired season one of Dark Matter, so that'll be the next thing I throw on when the need for dinner TV strikes c:

• Re-read the Books of the Raksura. O to be a buff lizard-bee person in a giant family community, hanging out in a treehouse and obsessing over drainage.

Comments

[sideways]

Finished it last night, so a sheepish confession: I managed to live with my choices until the very last chapter and then cracked and fled to the security of walkthrough, because my blind play had me halfway through the chapter with Kara and Alice in a concentration camp and Markus shot to death on the battlefield and I COULD NOT. HANDLE. THE STRESS. (Insert red LED flashing here.) The endings I received were therefore 'good', but not entirely earned. I may yet go back and see what continuing from my massive flubs would have left me with.

An overall summary would still be: determinist / aggressive Markus, deviant Connor, Kara is just doing her best okay (rest in peace Luther, you will be mourned; fewer regrets about you, Todd).

The depth and detail of the choices was definitely one of the game's most impressive features! It was quite intimidating sometimes, but always fascinating. Markus in particular is my champion of unexpected turnouts - I fully intended to play a peace-seeker but got off on the wrong footing almost immediately by killing Leo (or at least, so I thought). Then, on his very first mission with the Jericho team, I looked down at a text on my phone at the wrong moment, punched the wrong button, and knifed a guard.

Welp.

After that point I decided to just see where life would take me if I embraced Markus' accidental bloodlust, and I appreciate that it was still a... semi-nuanced take? Markus wasn't just stupidly, blindly ruthless, and in fact this route actually left me with all of the Jericho inner circle by the final chapter, plus a close relationship with North (nice). It's still possible to achieve peace if you don't completely fail to understand how the combat in that chapter is supposed to work (I'm sorry, guys! I tried!), even if it's a wary, fragile one. Your dad doesn't hate you, even though he should probably be just a little disappointed by the amount of murder you've partaken in. Etc etc.

What kind of story did you pull together? c: I hope it was a smidgen less horrifying than mine.

[wheatear]

Haha, oh no! Yeah, it sounds like you were definitely on track to get a bad ending there. Interesting that you went for an aggressive Markus and yeah, you can still get Jericho's support and have all of his allies alive playing that way.

I never did a blind playthrough myself because I watched a bunch of Let's Plays to see the different outcomes. I do like the best peaceful ending, but I've gotta say that I love machine Connor as much as deviant Connor, they're both great.

[sideways]

I looked up some of the more hard-edged Connor endings, and I appreciate they're played very straight. I don't know if I have it in me to go there, though. It'd made Sumo sad.