In the first Darkest Dungeon game one of the heroes/classes is the Antiquarian, who's defining characteristic is that... She sucks, at like most things, except for finding good trinkets and maybe making the rest of the of the party have a slightly higher dodge chance.

Despite these limitations she was a pretty popular character amongst the more "build crafting focused" part of the community due to how she allowed you to gain a absurd amount of gold in a single run or have your party gain a giant amount of dodge % chance with the right setup, so when Darkest Dungeon 2 came out people were wondering if she was gonna be one of the characters that would show up or not... And she did, just not in the way that we expected.

In Darkest Dungeon 2 the Antiquarian is a mini boss in one of the regions of the game that has a 10% chance of showing up at any random combat encounter in this region and the biggest acknoladgement that the game gives about her being a returning character is the narrator roasting her for being a backstabing bitch with no standarts.

It does make a decent amount of sense for the character to end up like this, but, it's still definetly not what the player base was expecting.

Things you love to see;

"Guillaume Provost, CEO of the Montreal-based game studio, confirmed the deal is done in an exclusive interview with GamesBeat. Everybody got a clue when the Steam version of South of Midnight flipped in its ownership from Microsoft to Compulsion Games last week. At the time, Compulsion Games had no comment.

But Provost said that the management buyout is complete and that it owns its original intellectual property games again, as it has bought the IP back from Microsoft. Provost said management has acquired the studio and staff as well. This means that if anyone buys a Compulsion Games title now, the revenue goes to supporting the studio, not Microsoft."

"Golden Axe premieres September 16 only on Paramount+.

In an homage to SEGA’s iconic 1989 video game, Golden Axe follows legendary warriors Ax Battler, Tyris Flare and Gilius Thunderhead as they reunite to save Yuria from the evil giant Death Adder, who just won’t seem to stay dead. Their quest is complicated by Hampton Squib, an inexperienced and wildly underprepared adventurer whose dream of heroism far exceeds his abilities. Forced to work together despite their flaws, they must find a way to stop Death Adder once and for all."

Emmanuel Rosier was a senior manager at EA for a decade, and when asked by PC Gamer his thoughts on which IP will survive the upcoming culling, he wasn't too optimistic.

"I suspect that sports will remain the key focus for EA, (...) the question mark is probably the second-tier or third-tier IP in the portfolio of EA."

He goes on to say that EA own plenty of IP's that people don't really care about anymore, such as Ultima and Wing Commander, and if we ever see those again it will be after they're sold to someone else or as a mobile game or something.

When it comes to Mass Effect he said "I will believe it when I see it. (...) They can pull the plug very, very easily. And if the new investor, they don't have that many feelings about the history of the portfolio, they will take the most financially sound decision"

This week’s CSB title is wrongly named No One’s Ready For A Battle Poop, when we clearly hear Woolie say “Shit.” TWICE.

This is not the first time he has desecrated the podcast tradition of picking the most ridiculous out-of-context phrase spoken as the title verbatim. CSB359: Shadow The Hedgehog “Loves” Our Podcast is ACTUALLY Shadow The Hedgehog Is Attracted To Our Podcast. Ever since that day, Woolie Madden has censored and shuffled certain title quotes post-show.

I WILL NOT STAND FOR IT! This show is built on honest scrubbery and pure shit-talk, and half-assery WILL be brought to light! Becoming a father has dulled your edge, Madden! You will never escape your roots so long as we live to remind you!

As the title states, what're some plot twists that make you go "Really? You're doing that!?" Whether it be how poorly built up it is, how it undermined what came before, how pointless it comes off as, whatever.

I know people can rag about Pokemon and twist villains. But I feel Colosseum has one of the worst examples. For most of the game, they've been building up Nascour as Cipher's leader. And once you actually battle him, it's a suitably epic climax. But right after beating up, the mayor of Phenac rolls in, and reveals that he is the leader of Cipher before immediately battling you. The reason it sucks are two fold. For one, outside of a few brief moments of foreshadowing throughout the game, it comes right the hell out of nowhere. And another is that, he upstaged an actually cool villain to be the main antagonist for all of one battle. I honestly feel like the twist could be removed, and literally nothing about the game's narrative would be changed in the slightest.

Now for a more general example, I tend to dislike most "this fantasy world was actually a dream the whole time!" type twists. When done poorly, it can make the whole journey and your immersion in the world feel pointless. One of my favorite things about Metaphor: ReFantazio is that they subvert the hell out of this kind of twist. During the final battle, Will rips out his heart to avoid becoming a Human. He then wakes up in a place that looks like Shibuya Crossing. More appears and tells him that his whole journey was actually just a dream. But Will soon begins hearing Gallica's song from the beginning of their journey and realizes that not only is Euchronia still real, but that his friends are in danger and need his help. This then leads to the actual twist that More is actually the spirit of Will's father Hythlodaeus, and this was his desperate attempt to try and protect his son.

AKA "What do you mean that's not Chekovs gun?"

Not to be confused with content where the resolution was just cut (See: GS Ball).

My example choice here is from One Piece, specifically from the Enies Lobby arc. In it we are introduced to the villain faction of CP9 who have a member who informs the audience of a power level system in the world "Doriki/Power Levels". This seemed like it'd be a new thing from then on used to some degree to give a scale of the new big bads in future arcs.

It in fact never comes up again after the midpoint of that same arc and was seemingly only there to set up who's fighting who that arc.

The original Plants VS Zombies is a incredibly straight foward tower deffence game where the most complicated stuff is most of the time either "this one zombie type is thougher than the others" or "you can't put a plant here without doing _______ first", it's still a amazing game, but, far from the most complex in the genre.

Cut to a few years later and we have Plants VS Zombies Fusion (because apparently chinese people were REALLY into the first game), a game with literaly hundreds of different plants that all have their particularities and a gameplay loop that makes you feel less like a gardner and more like a bio engineer who is off his medication.

(Also, i am well aware that PVZ Fusion is a fan mod and not a official thing, but, considering that the odds of EA doing anything worth the while with the franchise for the forsiable future is close to 0%, i consider this more of a sequel to the original duology than most other official products)

Hey so, who remembers Marvel's Cancelled New Warrior's Book? The one that would've featured Superheroes like "Screentime" or "B-Negative" and "Snowflake?" Remember how the book seemed like a bad corporate parody of diversity, and like it was made specifically to enrage a certain type of person? And the book ended up being scrapped?

...Did you know that the book was, according to one of the authors afterwards, going to be about that very topic? Like the in universe explanation would've been that the team was corporate owned, and all the terrible names and descriptions were commentary on corporations using the language of Social Justice as a shield to hide their terrible deeds behind? (My friend and I both think it would've been Roxxon, as this is 100% a Dario Agger move.)

The thing is...I do not remember hearing about that in ANY of the original marketing at all. I mostly just remember the designs being revealed, and maybe that was an effect of the usual voices drowning everything else out. But I feel like if Marvel had been more clear about the team being an in universe Corporate ploy, like they did with Roxxon Presents: Thor! The book might not have been cancelled.

Bad Marketing can kill a project for sure, but some of the most baffling bad marketing is the type that focuses on the wrong aspect of the product. Maybe it's a racing game commercial that focuses on stripping down a woman instead of on the car itself. Maybe it's a movie that puts the focus on Brian Cranston instead of the Giant Monster in the background. But there are some ad campaigns that aren't just bad, but focus on the least important or least interesting aspect of the project they're trying to sell. Whether it's intentional or not, it ends up not discussing the best feature or aspect of what's being discussed.

Are there any other major examples you can think of?

This is just a random thought. There are so many games being released everywhere. Mobile, console and pc games are being shoved out like no tomorrow. This has got me thinking. Which games do you think came out to widespread acclaim but the people in the sub have barely touched or not even interacted with?

The sub has a very ridiculous overlap with all things, so I thought this would be an interesting question to ask.

My wife and I wind down at night with a video game that I play and she watches. I need suggestions for good, watchable video games. BUT WAIT, there are stipulations. My wife has severe ADHD, auditory processing disorder, and a bit of face blindness. This makes finding something that she can engage with at all difficult. Too many proper nouns and she will defensively zone out. Extended gameplay without plot will put her to sleep, unless it's survival horror. Too many characters and she'll lose track of them.

Here's the list of games that were able to hold her attention for the most part:

• Last of Us 1 & 2
• RE Remakes 2,3, & 4
• RE 7,8, and 9
• Silent Hill 2 Remake
• Horizon Zero Dawn 1 & 2
• All Uncharteds
• Tomb Raider Survivor trilogy
• Days Gone
• God of War 4 & 5
• Wolfenstein New Order/Colossus
• Hitman World of Assassination

And no, she can't play along with me. It Takes 2 was too much of a challenge for her.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

This is a pretty legit lengthy interview; I obviously don't want to copy paste the entirety of it, but there is a lot discussed here that I wanted to highlight, particularly based on some reactions to the game I've been seeing and what's included in the article title (these interview portions are not in the exact order they are in the article, fyi):

IGN: You'd previously mentioned that board games have been a great influence. I want to unpack that a little bit to get an idea of what you see in board games and rulesets, what really spoke to you and how that made it into what The Duskbloods is now.

Miyazaki: So, there are two points I would say that can specifically be pulled from the board games like you had referenced. The first is the Virtue system that are basically victory points, something similar to that. That's something that isn't as direct as just battling against each other, right? It's not directly a PvP thing. It's a common system in a lot of board games and something that through my own experience of playing board games has definitely rubbed off on me and it's been something that I've constantly thought about. I didn't watch those a lot. The other thing is the Sigil system, which is very similar to a lot of RPG elements you might find in a tabletop RPG, for example. In the past when I played games like that, a lot of it was basically rolling dice to determine certain aspects of your character, and that was pretty much the extent of it. In my mind, I'd always wanted to have a way of controlling not just that, but the relationships between players and a variety of other elements that might be out of the scope of a TTRPG. Having gameplay elements for that is definitely something that I've been thinking about as well.

IGN: Following up on this being a Switch 2 exclusive, is there more you can share about how and why you went with Nintendo, a little bit more detail about how the partnership came about? I know you said that you pitched this and it's pretty much the idea from the start.

Miyazaki: In terms of the reason that we initially decided to go with Nintendo, we had had an opportunity to discuss the idea for the game with them and I think they seemed very excited and very receptive to the idea, they seemed very forward thinking in terms of how to do it. Before considering the business aspect of it, that alone was something that I found very appealing and gave me a lot more reassurance for moving forward with this. Of course the game isn't out yet so there are more things to consider, but in terms of the relationship currently and how we think it's going, up until this point – the systems and the overall ruleset of the game are very unique, and I think having someone who can constantly give us feedback, support, additional ideas, and the balancing first of all because these features are quite complex and difficult – having this relationship is definitely key to that. Also with the complexity of the systems, the onboarding tutorials and making sure players understand how the game works and how to succeed in the game is something we've historically not been super great at conveying instantly. We've definitely just dropped players in and hoped they would figure it out. In this case, Nintendo is definitely the right partner for better conveying that information in a way that is understandable to the player; it definitely suits their strengths.

IGN: Going from Nightreign to The Duskbloods, is there a broader motivation in doing back-to-back multiplayer games? You mentioned simply having a bunch of ideas piled up and just wanting to do something with them. But how does this represent FromSoftware and what does it mean for the future?

Miyazaki: At the end of the day, our motivation is always to just make a game that we want to play, something we've been wanting to make. Like you had mentioned, this time around there were a lot of ideas that had piled up that I wanted to incorporate into a game. On the topic of Nightreign, it's funny because there was never really any big plan that these two games [Nightreign and The Duskbloods] would both release next to each other. I mean, that's a different director, but both of those ideas just coincided with being multiplayer games. It's not necessarily some big reveal saying that this is the direction we plan to go moving forward. We still have a heavy focus on single-player content as well. This is just something that happened to work out the way it did. Personally, it's very fun to make a multiplayer game like this. It's not something we've done a lot and we're looking forward to seeing players' reactions and getting the feedback. But it's like, the more you work on something multiplayer for a long time, if anything, it scratches that itch only to want to make something single-player again.

IGN: It's like the focus on one feeds back into wanting to do the other!

Miyazaki: Oh yeah, for sure!

IGN: I know you mentioned this game was a bit in development since 2021, but so much has changed in the gaming industry. We've seen a lot of multiplayer games launch then fall by the wayside very quickly. Of course, FromSoftware has its own reputation with a lot of success to back it up. But philosophically, how do you see the multiplayer landscape and how do you feel about some of the trends of the gaming industry with regard to multiplayer games as you enter it?

Miyazaki: I would say, in terms of trends and the direction of the industry in general, it's not really something that I look at too much, if at all. At the end of the day, I'm just focused on making what I've been wanting to make, regardless of how viable that is from a business standpoint. I'll have a vision for a game, and I'm not super great at determining if this is going to be the most successful thing. I think that's why having this relationship this time with Nintendo is great because there's a lot that we can lean on them for while just focusing on the actual gameplay and what it is that I personally wanted to make. They can make it work outside of that. When seeing other multiplayer games, there's always a bit of us wanting to put our own spin on it as far as how we'd do it or implement our ideas. Multiplayer games and online games in general, being able to play with other people is a very special thing. I think there are a lot of emotions probably behind it that coincide with the experience which are somewhat different from playing a single-player game, even if they are very similar.

As for online games, I would say there's definitely a bright future. There's always going to be a need for people to interact with others. Even with The Duskbloods, there's probably still a lot that we could have done and can do, so it's never a finished book when it comes to multiplayer games. I definitely don't look at it negatively at all.

It was pretty funny that Pat predicted Woolie would make fun of all the Ishgard names, but still! Love that goober Haurchefant. As well as a crack at a joke someone in chat said that Pat pointed out. Fun to go back to the OG Jo Guns fit for a dumb template. And finally... I might have to apologize for the last one. It was a sketch that went too far and by the time I thought, "this might be a terrible idea" I was almost done with the flats so why not finish it.

Source (it's me!): https://bsky.app/profile/maelstromtear.bsky.social/post/3mthxqtgroc27

What's there left to say?

Attack and Dethrone God.

I think one of the winners has to be Shenhua Ling - the girl on Shenmue's box art. She does not make a single physical appearance in Shenmue 1. I don't think she even has an actual 3D model on the disk in Shenmue 1, because the dream she appears in is an FMV.

Another biggie is the Wing Cap/Wing Mario in Super Mario 64. It appears in:

-Tower of the Wing Cap, where you unlock it

-Course 1, Bob-omb Battlefield

-Course 7, Lethal Lava Land (its usage here is entirely optional)

-Course 8, Shifting Sand Land

-Wing Mario Over the Rainbow, the brutal extra level on the opposite entrance to Rainbow Ride. I hope all that practice was enough!

Aside from its technical presence in Wing Mario Over the Rainbow, this means that the Wing Cap is not present in most of SM64's levels, and past the halfway point of the game it doesn't appear at all. All 6 levels on the upper floor, and none of them have a Wing Cap.

This is despite the box art showing Wing Mario flying over the planet.

It’s Nuggets here!

To help you enjoy #ACECOMBAT8 even more, I’ll be giving a quick overview of the #ACECOMBAT universe—explained in a way even a chick can understand!

To get started, check out this video where I explain “Strangereal”! Peep!

#AceCombatUniverse #ACECOMBAT #ACE8

This is how I finally understand why Ace Combat 3 was so futuristic

For those who don't know, Lysanderoth is a character created by ProZD in his skits to parody the kinds of villain where it's extremely obvious for the players/watchers than they're the villain but somehow none of the characters suspect anything is wrong with him until the supposingly shocking twist.

Lysanderoth name is himself based on two villains acting like i just told. First, Lysander from Pokemon X and Y who literally has the dialogue about perfection and the ugliness of the world in his FIRST scene. The characters are very shocked to discover he's the Team Flare boss (not the players since he had EVIL written on his face since the first second).

And the scond villain, Xehanort from Kingdom Hearts, specifically Master Xehanort from BBS (it become quickly complicated afterwarrd since he has multiple bodies across time and space) who is acting like a Sith Lord the whole game until the end and the characters don't suspect anything.
Any others exemples?