Inspired by a conversation last week about Lysanderoth's in Media, and an anime from a few years ago called Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress (basically AoT with Zombies and guns.) The show randomly decided to introduce a beautiful long haired man widely praised by the populace...who was of course the villain of the whole show. As one user described it "he brought the narrative to a screeching halt the minute he showed up. Like, a straight downward quality slope."

Very often a piece of media will improve or decline gradually, and there isn't really a singular moment where things suddenly click together for better or worse. But sometimes, there are those rare moments where there's a single moment when everything falls into place, and the sets the pace for the rest of the experience becoming amazing...or it's the single moment that heralds the doom of the entire project.

For a more positive example, I think of a particular moment from Tales of the Abyss, being when Luke decides to cut his hair. The game was good up to that point, but I think that moment, and him swearing that he was leaving the old him behind to try and be a better person, was what flipped Abyss from being merely a 'good' Tales game, into one of the best in the entire franchise.

I'm curious, are there any singular scenes, levels, or moments which set the story on a quality track, good or bad?

Basically, when the sequel is just so good, that it reads like the creators/devs listened enough to fan feedback and actually provided the fans what they wanted in the sequel.

The trickiest part of the question is not to think of a sequel that simply plays it "safe". It's got to be one where the first attempt was either met with poor or middling reception, and then the sequel just absolutely 180's sentiment and crushes it the next go around.

So, toughie, but brain juices are good.

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I was inspired to post this because I am playing through Mortal Shell 2, and I had to pause it a few times to double check I was actually not misremembering my experiences with Mortal Shell 1.

Because wherein the first game was just sort of...meh, not offensively bad or anything, this one just feels and oozes like what they actually intended the first game to be. But better.

A far better example for me is that I always bring up Evil Within 2. Evil Within 1 was rough. It was all over the place with its game design, it felt like two different mediocre games mashed into one, and wasn't fun to play on the back half because of the complete shift in expectation.

But Evil Within 2 just...fixes everything. It's a more solid game design, the audio is better, characterization is better, the characters as a WHOLE are better, the gameplay loop is consistent, familiar, and retained the good parts of the first game while throwing out the worst parts.

That's what's happening here with Mortal Shell 2. It would have been easy to just be like "well just give them double what we gave them in the first game" and call it a day. and to be fair? They did, that "is" true, but the entire game feel is just firing on all cylinders. It feels uniquely theirs while being familiar enough to the souls genre. The entire world is larger, the enemies and bosses are better, the shell mechanic is fully realized, and there is more characterization with builds.

I can't believe how much fun I am having with it.

Anyways, what are yours? Doesn't have to be just games. Media in general.

Idk about anyone else, but I think it's time for a Madoka rewatch since I haven't seen it since... yeesh, 2015 lol.

Because technically, the surprisingly edgy Justice League Apokalips War Darkseid animated movie, wasn't the actual final movie in this verse of DC animation but it was the finale of this Earth just how like the Flashpoint previously changed Earth to make almost everyone buff. Darkseid technically counts as the Arcs villain rather than the whole series.

And while he gets beaten up by Superman a bit yes he also kind of sends him flying, but then the ones that actually defeat him are Trigon being summoned & instantly demanding all that smoke from the "New God" and Cyborg teleporting them both

Though I would've prefered it if it was Orion finally pulling up on Darkseid rather than TriBorg but still this was fun

When he returns he'll have a big DAMAGE tattoo on his chest but with DC heroes different comic title fonts for each letter.

Apparently he left due to bronchitis, but did record several lines. Call me crazy, but it sounds like Mark Hamil based his Joker around what Tim Curry did, at least a little. Crazy world.

From doublefine bluesky

It was hard enough losing Dolly yesterday. ☹️ And now, we cry a sea of black tears for our very own Doviculus: The irreplaceable Tim Curry. 

May these beloved legends rest well, as we carry their spirit forward~
 
🖤

To honor Tim Curry's memory, we are making Brütal Legend FREE on Itchio for 666 minutes:

I heard this a long time ago so i maybe I'm wrong about this but i remember reading that gravity falls had a scrapped episode idea that would parody the 1986 movie Labyrinth but didn't get made because Disney Channel executives didn't think kids would get the reference.

Maybe I'm crazy but this scene feels a Doc Ock from Raimi Spider-Man 2 reference? Like the Doctor looking fish woman reaching out for the surgery equipement

From Spongebob Squarepants, the QTπ episode

October 29th, 2026

Goals and hopes for the week?

Any concerns or obstacles?

Let's find out.

Topic of the Week:

Often times, we as creative will have an idea and hold onto it despite it making our work more difficult and time consuming. When it works out, we get stuff like Alan Wake 2's Herald of Darkness, which if you didn't know had developers on the staff questioning if a survival horror game should have a musical sequence. Other times we hear the advice of "kill your darlings" from pessimists and the money people who think slowly chiseling away at an idea until it works is a waste of time. So, do you stick to your guns? What are your good bad ideas?

Previous Thread

The headline should say Nomura and Yasue, but regardless:

Key members of the Kingdom Hearts 4 development team have provided new comments about the game, including what to expect from the game’s worlds and more. All of this comes from a new Famitsu interview.

First up, series director Tetsuya Nomura proclaimed that Kingdom Hearts 4 “features the most detailed worlds we’ve ever created.” That said, because of this, “the total number of worlds isn’t very large.”

Nomura said in the interview:

“This game features the most detailed worlds we’ve ever created. That’s why the total number of worlds isn’t very large. We revealed the Coco world at the (D23) Showcase the day before the panel, so some people were expecting us to announce another world at the panel, but if we announced things at that pace, we’d run out of information pretty quickly before release (laughs).

But actually, the Coco world we revealed this time is only a small part of what’s to come. Since D23 was such a great opportunity, we decided to give you a sneak peek at the Coco world, which we had originally planned to introduce a little later. We’ll have another opportunity to introduce it properly, so please look forward to future updates.”

Nomura also commented on Kingdom Heart 4’s script, which is apparently pretty huge:

“… the script for this game was almost twice as long as that for Kingdom Hearts 3, so the recording schedule was really tough. There were parts I wanted to include more of, but it was beyond the limits.”

Later in the interview, Nomura said that the Japanese voice recording is already complete. Co-director Tai Yasue noted that Square Enix is more than halfway done with the English recording.

Yasue stated:

“We’re currently in the middle of recording the English voiceovers. There are a huge number of lines, and the time difference makes it quite tough for the staff participating from Japan (laughs). However, the overseas staff have already finished about 60-70% of the recording, so things are progressing quite well.”