Middling Saturday

Like, it wasn't horrible -- I didn't have to clean, I got a chocolate chip pancake for breakfast because Mom had leftover batter from making Dad a pancake, and I got at least a few things done from my makeshift to-do list -- but it also wasn't fantastic either -- I didn't get as much sleep as I wanted from staying up too late last night, Dad had kind of a tough day due to the chemo, and the big news of the day was us learning that we're currently under a BLIZZARD WARNING for tomorrow night into Monday. *grimacing* Soooo, yeah. And I'm rapidly approaching "staying up too late" again tonight, so let's get the write-up sorted and then head to bed already:

Tumblr: Well, there was nothing going on over on Valice Multiverse, and I didn’t get anything done with my drafts on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – but I did at least manage to catch up on some of the blogs I follow and straight-up reblog a few things I’ve been meaning to get to –

A) A poll by strangeandrandompolls where you had to spin a wheel full of randomized animals, then vote on how you’d feel if you were suddenly turned into that animal (love it, like it, indifferent, dislike it, hate it). I got turned into a narwhal and voted “like it” because I felt like I could live with that. Narwhals don’t have to worry about all the shit going on with US politics, after all! Though, being a female narwhal, I wouldn’t get the cool iconic horn-tooth-thing, sadly. Meeh.

B) A thread about an iconic story from Weird Fantasy #18 from 1950, “Judgment Day!” where an astronaut, Tarlton, travels to a planet colonized by robots to see if they’re ready to join the Galactic Republic. Unfortunately, while the robots are reasonably advanced technologically and claim to have a fully-democratic society where everyone is allowed to pursue whatever job they wish, it turns out they reinvented racism in the form of all the orange robots oppressing the blue robots. Tarlton – who, note, is in a full spacesuit with a face-obscuring helmet during almost the entire comic – makes his orange guide take him to “Blue Town” and shows him that the blue robots are identical to him in all ways except color, and that they’re being restricted unfairly, then tells him that the robots are not ready to join the Republic. He does assure the bot before he leaves that there’s hope for their society yet, since humans once had this same problem, but eventually overcame it –

And if you guessed that the final panel reveals that Tarlton just so happens to be a Black man, you understand the point writer Al Feldstein, illustrator Joe Orlando, and editor Bill Gaines were trying to make. Which is more than the higher-ups at Weird Fantasy did, as they tried to insist that Tarlton not be Black, despite Al going “That’s the entire point of the story.” Fortunately Bill Gaines ended up telling them to fuck off, and the story ran with Tarlton Black as intended. You can see the thread, which starts with the iconic last panel in black and white posted by velvetvexations and eventually contains the entire full-color comic thanks to about-faces, here – I reblogged it both because it’s Black History Month and thus felt appropriate, and because while I’d seen another thread in the past with that iconic last panel, I hadn’t seen one that had the full comic before, and it’s a very good comic! Not subtle, but you couldn’t mess around with subtle back in 1950. (You can barely mess around with it NOW, let’s be honest.)

C) And another poll, this one by userfish, asking if you’ve ever felt an earthquake or not, as they were talking to their wife and apparently she never has – I voted “yes” and elaborated in the tags that I’ve felt two! Because while Rhode Island is not know for seismic events, we do get our share of tremors, and two of them were strong enough for me to notice. Though both of them were some years ago at this point – hell, the first one I felt was back when we lived closer to the beach! (The other one was more recent and happened while I was at work.) Of course, now that I’ve said that, I’m wondering if a third one is going to strike anytime soon...I hope not, we’re getting enough Bullshit just from the weather (as, again, BLIZZARD WARNING in effect...).

Fallout: New Vegas: Poor Courier Victor had a bit of a painful day in the Mojave today, not gonna lie – but he also managed to kill a bunch of geckos and an asshole who tried to get him killed AND pick up a new achievement, so it wasn’t all bad. Let me take you through it:

A) I picked up where I left off last time, with Victor standing right outside the general store, having just sold a bunch of stuff to Chet (and bought some ammo and a whetstone, to be fair). I had him quickly check out the two workbenches by the side of the store to see if there was anything particularly interesting he could make on them (there wasn’t), then sent him back inside the Prospector Saloon to check in with Sunny Smiles. She greeted him with a satisfied “That'll teach the Powder Gangs to avoid Goodsprings in the future” (depends on if a bug that lets you repeat “Ghost Town Gunfight” pops up, Sunny), and he asked if they could talk about the areas around Goodsprings. Sunny was amendable and asked what he wanted to know, and Victor inquired what other towns were nearby to start. Sunny informed him that Primm was to the southeast – impossible to miss given the giant rollercoaster smack-dab in the center of town, and currently home to an NCR outpost – while to the north was Sloan and Quarry Junction: “They mine rocks or something, but I heard they got troubles lately. I wouldn't head that direction if I were you, though. Got critters up there that don't take kindly to getting shot.” Victor, who needed to get on the road soon, was naturally curious to ask about these critters –

But, well, she’d mentioned the NCR, and he was also curious to get her opinion on them too. He thus went “NCR?” and she took the bait, clarifying “The New California Republic. Bunch of settlers and soldiers coming in from the West, fixing on making Nevada their own. They can be right pushy, but the roads are safer 'cause of them, so I tend to let it go. Not that I got a choice.” Victor asked what the NCR kept everyone safe from – Sunny told him, “Well, the wildlife for one thing. Rowdy locals for another. They're protecting their own. Just happens to help us.” before adding “They've been holding off this other group from the East, too.” Victor was pretty sure he knew who this other group was, but asked Sunny what she knew about them just in case –

And sure enough, she said that they were called Caesar’s Legion (which she considered a funny name), though she admitted she’d never seen them around Goodsprings, so she didn’t know much about them: “I hear rumors, that's about it. Supposedly they keep slaves and they got some real nasty ways of killing folks. But maybe that's just something folks in the NCR cooked up to make themselves seem more useful here. Less uninvited.” A fair enough suspicion, I suppose, given the NCR isn’t exactly popular in the area for all they make the roads safe – but trust me, Sunny, on this point the NCR IS NOT LYING. Wish you could go back to areas like Goodsprings and fill them in on what’s happening in the rest of the world later in the game – I’d love to see Sunny’s reaction to “yeah, the NCR are telling the truth about the Legion, you should see what they did to Nipton.” Ah well – 18 months of game development does not allow for such things!

( The Usual Cut To Save Reading Pages )

FreeTube: Well, I was hoping to watch more stuff from my Subs tonight, but Dad was having a rough evening (struggling to eat and dealing with pain), meaning Mom was having a rough evening (trying to support him while getting annoyed at him for constantly insisting he’s “all right”), and – yeah. Ended up being less time for videos than I thought. But I did fit in one that I’ve been meaning to watch for a while: “I Guess I'll Talk About Resident Evil Requiem” – Jane “interviewing” Andy about getting to play four hours of Resident Evil Requiem back at the end of January! (Why he was given the chance to play the game for four hours was not specified, but presumably it was so OXBox would then make a video promoting it.) Fortunately for everyone involved, Andy had a very positive first impression of the game, and was only too happy to talk about how awesome it was, and how he’d much rather be playing it than talking about it. XD The main takeaways from the video for me were as follows:

A) While Grace Ashcroft is ostensibly the main character (and indeed, three hours of the four-hour teaser Andy played focused on her), one of the classic RE heroes does return for this one – Leon Kennedy! Which I guess makes sense, because the Ethan Winters games both featured Chris in a small role, so it was Leon’s turn to appear again. Leon is fifty-something in this game as it’s set in the modern day or thereabouts (roughly 25 years after the events of RE2, at least), but he is still a fine hunk of man meat with perfect hair (Andy made it clear he was certain the female employees of Capcom were responsible for him being so sexy XD), and he is still perfectly capable of smashing a zombie’s head in with a well-placed kick. Also, the first of the little “Leon” sections Andy played had him facing off against a zombie wielding a giant chainsaw again – but this time, he got to pick up and use the chainsaw himself. Andy was very pleased.

B) While the game is being marketed as “Leon’s sections are the over-the-top third-person actiony stuff you loved from Resident Evil 4 and Grace’s sections are the creepy first-person horror-focused stuff you enjoyed from Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil Village,” Andy thinks the split is not as sharp as that. Sure, in the version he played, Leon’s default mode was third-person and he did his usual kicks and whatnot, and Grace’s default mode was first-person and contained more puzzles and sneaking, but he emphasized that Grace’s background is as an FBI agent, so she already knows more about firing a gun than Ethan did at the start of HIS games, and is much better at holding her own in a fight. Yes, she starts out with a handgun (Leon’s ridiculously big one, in fact) with a single bullet, forcing her to sneak around and throw bottles to cause distractions and whatnot, but she eventually finds a proper gun of her own, and can find and craft ammo for it, and does her fair share of zombie shooting. Basically, Andy thinks that it would be perfectly viable to play her as a run-and-gun protagonist, just like Leon.

C) There’s a new, very weird crafting mechanic where you gather infected blood from zombies or buckets of viscera around the chronic care center (made out of a giant mansion, as this is a Resident Evil game and they take the “resident” part seriously) and then use that to craft everything from healing syringes to ammo. Jane was visibly “wha?” about that, and Andy admitted it was bizarre, but in that charming RE way, you know? XD Personally I think this is going to be Plot Relevant, given that you normally DON’T want infected blood anywhere NEAR you in an RE game, so the fact that it’s now a crafting component...hmmm.

D) The zombies in this one are a little like the ones in RE4 – that is, they tend to be fast and do things like use weapons if they’ve got ‘em – but they also have more interesting quirks to them. For example, one zombie might be obsessed with keeping the lights off, allowing you to draw him to specific places by turning on light switches. Another might be a former opera singer and thus have a sonic attack that can stagger poor Grace or Leon. The bigger “stalker” style enemies include a chef that likes to chop up bodies, and some sort of weird mutated baby-person who is TECHNICALLY too big for the halls you find him in, but who gets around that by smashing everything that’s in his way. And who apparently swears, if Andy is to be believed. XD Basically the zombies are a little more than just “shambling moaning humans” this time around, and that makes them much more fun. Oh, and if you don’t put them down properly, they CAN resurrect as faster zombies with huge bulgy heads, but Andy assured us this only starts happening once you get the shotgun, so… :p

E) And this game, or at least the section that Andy played, feels like it’s going back to the roots of RE games – we’re back to evil viruses over killer mold monsters (with the main bad guy going on about something called “Elphis,” which Andy and Jane gleefully named the P-Virus, ha ha), the main action takes place in a big ornate mansion, and one of the draws of the game is that we’re back in Raccoon City – or, at least on the outskirts of it, as the main city does remain kind of nuked. Andy said that one of the reasons he loved it so much was because it felt like it hit all the beats of a proper old RE game – especially the mansion stuff, because those are always his favorite parts of any RE game. Yes, probably the game will move to new locations (the trailer shows the old RE2 police station, so they’re basically Contractually Obligated to have Leon at least visit it at some point) later on, and there’s definitely some influence from the Ethan games with the ability to play in first person and whatnot, but it still felt to Andy like a return to what made the old games excellent, and he’s eager to play the rest of it.

So yeah – pretty good review, I think we can all agree! I am certainly looking forward to the inevitable Let’s Play the gang will do once the game officially comes out at the end of next week. :)

*nods* Not bad, I suppose -- I definitely had fun with my Courier Victor playsession. :) But now it is definitely time to head to bed. Tomorrow, plans include doing my taxes (unpleasant, but gotta be done), playing some Portal 2 or Baldur's Gate III (we'll see what I think is the better game under the circumstances), editing and queuing up Brynlee Marie's gift fic (very necessary), and getting in a workout (HOPEFULLY to the next episode of Jon's F:NV YOLO Remastered series). We'll see how that all pans out -- night all!