CoderKat

The screenshot shows comments somehow being nested multiple levels without an intermediate parent. That's a bug, right? Nesting should only be increasing by one level at a time.

I've observed this happening a ton across many different threads. There's also some weird cases where the top level comment is just a link to "show parent" and... It's not actually top level??

I grew up with the Harry Potter series and loved it as a kid, but I can't pretend it's actually good writing. It's full of all kinds of plot holes, the wizarding universe doesn't make a lot of sense, there's thinly veiled bigotry (particularly prominent in the naming of characters), and Rowling as a person is all sorts of problematic that I can't endorse giving money to.

But Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, or HPMOR for short, is a really unique and fascinating full length fan work for any fan of Harry Potter (and also anyone who read Harry Potter and just didn't get the fuss). Though you don't actually need to have read Harry Potter to enjoy HPMOR, as it mostly reuses characters and settings but is otherwise entirely original.

The premise is simple: what if Harry was actually smart? In fact, not just smart, but a child genius. The wizarding universe as a setting with all its flaws isn't changed, but Harry recognizes those flaws and takes advantage of them. You can think of this book like someone very smart nitpicked over the Harry Potter universe trying to identify everything that doesn't make sense or would be "overpowered". It admittedly does often have "I am very smart" vibes that can sometimes get a little cringeworthy, but it's overall extremely entertaining and a one of a kind work that I wish I could reexperience for the first time.

It's also not just Harry being smart, because that would be boring if it was just him. Voldemort is also recharacterized to be much more competent and intelligent. This sets up interesting conflicts that I won't elaborate on to avoid spoilers, but I can say that the way Voldemort is characterized is brilliant and far better than the actual Harry Potter books.

Overall, it's one of the most entertaining books I've ever read and a fascinating critique of sorts of the original Harry Potter series that many of us grew up with.

Basically what the title says. My profile has only ever said that I've never made any posts, despite having made several in different servers (including this, my local one). They're not new posts either and I've made them across many days.

Even more than this, I actually seem to struggle to even find my posts by other means. I tried the search system, filtering to me in the "creator" field and all communities, searching for a key word that I know is in a post I made. And I know that post is visible because I got several replies in it and was able to reply to those comments. But I can't even find my own comments I made in that thread! The only results are from different threads.

Fortunately, I can find the post via my browser's history. Here's the post I was trying to find, which I cannot find through any means within Lemmy itself. https://lemm.ee/post/930728

It's not just this post, BTW. I can't find any of my posts via search or profile.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/930728

Full spoilers for the entirety of the game follows.

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

So, I beat the game and couldn't find any recent discussions about it here, so thought I'd make one. I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on the game (or on my thoughts). In no particular order:

1. The combat system was very cool! I wasn't sure about it at first and I still admittedly miss controlling a party rather than an individual, but it sure is a fast paced and varied system. I switched my eikons up a few times, with the final set I found most useful being phoenix (ignition / flames of rebirth), bahamut (wicked wheel, gigaflare), and shiva (windup, diamond dust).

   • I found that phoenix's "o" ability was the most useful most of the time but mostly used it for reaching flyers. I usually didn't otherwise find I had time for o abilities.
   • I found that most normal enemies were extremely easy, so it was best to build largely around staggering + heavy hitting the toughest enemies.

2. The ending was really sad. Though also a little confusing. It seems like Clive tried to heal Joshua, couldn't, and sacrificed himself to... I think completely destroy magic for good? Sounds like the blight would still be there, though presumably wouldn't progress anymore?

   • I like that the game used the red star again. I felt so bad when Jill realized Clive was gone.
   • TBH, "confusing" was kinda a recurring theme in the game for me. But at least some of that was surely intentional (Ultima's monologues).

3. The game sure had a lot of really badass, dramatic fights! Ifrit really helped to make some fights feel massive in scope without having much "ludonarrative dissonance" (since early game, you couldn't control Ifrit and it was supposed to be extremely taxing to fully prime). The Titan and Bahamut fights are perhaps some of the most epic Final Fantasy battles I've ever done (and I've played almost all of them)!

4. I thought it was a bit weird that the bulk of the game is based in a Fallen airship, yet you never actually restore the airship, even when you need to fly! When Origin rose, I was like "aha, time to finally restore the airship!", but nope. Felt like a tease.

   • I also really wish the game had more lore on the Fallen. They're such a prominent centerpiece of many maps, and yet the game barely delves into them at all. I kept expecting they were saving it for some big bombshell later, but nope, nothing.

5. One thing that confused me is that Ultima talked a lot about Clive needing to absorb the other Eikons, yet no Leviathan? I noticed early on that the game said there is one Eikon for each element and listed 8 elements, yet only 7 Eikons (plus Ifrit) were ever mentioned. "Leviathan the lost" even gets named dropped by Joshua and yet Ultima doesn't even seem to notice the missing Eikon. Wonder if they're saving this for DLC? Either way, it feels poorly executed considering how central Clive absorbing Eikons is to the plot.

6. Oof, Waloed was depressing. I was so hyped to see Ash, after going so long without ever even seeing this whole 'nother continent. Only for it to be a graveyard of dead and Akashic.

7. Fuck Annabella (Clive's mom). She was such a piece of shit. I kinda wonder if Ultima was influencing her from the start, or if it was only later? I suspect she betrayed Rosaria out of her own free will, considering how terribly she treats Clive from the start.

8. The treatment of Bearers was sickening. At first I was noticing parallels to American chattel slavery, but it quickly became more of a Nazi Germany kinda thing. It was a great design choice to make Clive a "bearer" so that you'd experience the bigotry firsthand. I wanted to outright murder most NPCs I met because they were so horrible.

   • It's especially sad when you later find out why Bearers are treated bad. They were originally freaking blessed and people in power were just jealous/afraid, so had to scapegoat Bearers.
   • I also felt so bad for L'ubor. He was the centerpiece of his village and yet the people who loved him turned on him so fast the instant they learned he was a Bearer. And they acted like it was some big betrayal, as if they couldn't understand why a Bearer would want to not be a Bearer.

9. The map design is very meh. The game is pretty, but aside from the mothercrystals and Fallen ruins, everything feels so grounded that it may as well be our world during medieval ages. I want a fantasy world that feels fantastic! And aesthetics aside, most maps are fairly linear. They often have some branches (many used only for specific side quests), but felt like they didn't give enough reasons to explore. The movable parts of the map feel narrow and restrictive.

   • For whatever bizarre reason, you can often find larger enemies off the beaten path, but they're rarely worth the time. The XP/AP/gil they give is hilariously bad compared to just a pack of normal enemies that you might be able to beat in a single AoE spell.

10. Early game side quests are terrible, but they get great later in the game. It's really weird. IDK why they made the early game quests so bad. It set me up to expect side quests to suck. And the game has a lot of side quests, so they probably could have trimmed a few to make the early game side quests suck less. In particular, the early game quests within the hideaway feel very forced and awkward.

11. Ultima was a decent villain. Very creepy (those eyes!). I'm not entirely sure I understand where he and his "collective" came from, but am thinking from another planet, since his final form fights in a cosmic setting and Origin is described as a ship, but looks far more like a spaceship than anything else.

    • Barnabas was also great. Super intimidating in ever scene. The battle you're supposed to lose was well executed, as you've seen a few of those "press the attack" moments by then, but it's the first one that can't be finished fast enough (I kinda wonder what happens if you cheated?).

12. I liked the twist that the crystals and magic were bad for the environment. Kinda wonder why no academics or something at least noticed that before, though. Isn't the pattern of the blight's movement kinda obvious to its cause? Kinda feels like they missed an opportunity to draw analogies to climate change, where we know what's causing it and simply refuse to do anything about it.

13. The contextual codex was a neat idea, but the execution felt lacking. It only seems to work for the main quest, despite the fact that side quests populate a huge number of codex entries. I also found that despite regularly checking it, I often would not see the new codex entries I expected to see (until I went to visit Harpocrates). New pages of existing entries were also written as if you'd only read the newest page, with lots of repetition for minimal (if any) new information. I love lore, so codexes are super appealing to me. It was sometimes disappointing for new entries to not actually say anything new.

    • It generally didn't do a good enough job at explaining new things (e.g., at the very beginning of the game, characters are talking about how they're on a mission to kill a dominant and for so long I'm like "WTF is a dominant"). And it took a little while to understand the high level global politics because the game is slow to explain them.

14. Damn, the game is long. Took me about 60 hours, doing basically everything except the cronoliths (I tried those a couple of times and gave up -- too hard and not fun to me).

15. The game does fantastic at updating NPC dialogue. I noticed so many changes to dialogue throughout the events of the game, including side quests. Lots of games barely update dialogue and it's sad cause I want to know how characters are reacting to some big event.

    • The hideaway really needed to be more compact. You spend soooo much time walking around to visit quest givers and hear updated dialogue.
    • For whatever weird reason, some major NPC dialogue (shop keepers and such) isn't fully voiced. I don't get why. It felt incomplete. I mean, I'm glad that dialogue didn't get outright cut, but would have preferred it being fully voiced.

Overall, it was a very fulfilling and fun story driven game with action packed combat. I'd give it a 9/10 (though I am a Final Fantasy fangirl, so am biased).

Full spoilers for the entirety of the game follows.

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

So, I beat the game and couldn't find any recent discussions about it here, so thought I'd make one. I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on the game (or on my thoughts). In no particular order:

1. The combat system was very cool! I wasn't sure about it at first and I still admittedly miss controlling a party rather than an individual, but it sure is a fast paced and varied system. I switched my eikons up a few times, with the final set I found most useful being phoenix (ignition / flames of rebirth), bahamut (wicked wheel, gigaflare), and shiva (windup, diamond dust).

   • I found that phoenix's "o" ability was the most useful most of the time but mostly used it for reaching flyers. I usually didn't otherwise find I had time for o abilities.
   • I found that most normal enemies were extremely easy, so it was best to build largely around staggering + heavy hitting the toughest enemies.

2. The ending was really sad. Though also a little confusing. It seems like Clive tried to heal Joshua, couldn't, and sacrificed himself to... I think completely destroy magic for good? Sounds like the blight would still be there, though presumably wouldn't progress anymore?

   • I like that the game used the red star again. I felt so bad when Jill realized Clive was gone.
   • TBH, "confusing" was kinda a recurring theme in the game for me. But at least some of that was surely intentional (Ultima's monologues).

3. The game sure had a lot of really badass, dramatic fights! Ifrit really helped to make some fights feel massive in scope without having much "ludonarrative dissonance" (since early game, you couldn't control Ifrit and it was supposed to be extremely taxing to fully prime). The Titan and Bahamut fights are perhaps some of the most epic Final Fantasy battles I've ever done (and I've played almost all of them)!

4. I thought it was a bit weird that the bulk of the game is based in a Fallen airship, yet you never actually restore the airship, even when you need to fly! When Origin rose, I was like "aha, time to finally restore the airship!", but nope. Felt like a tease.

   • I also really wish the game had more lore on the Fallen. They're such a prominent centerpiece of many maps, and yet the game barely delves into them at all. I kept expecting they were saving it for some big bombshell later, but nope, nothing.

5. One thing that confused me is that Ultima talked a lot about Clive needing to absorb the other Eikons, yet no Leviathan? I noticed early on that the game said there is one Eikon for each element and listed 8 elements, yet only 7 Eikons (plus Ifrit) were ever mentioned. "Leviathan the lost" even gets named dropped by Joshua and yet Ultima doesn't even seem to notice the missing Eikon. Wonder if they're saving this for DLC? Either way, it feels poorly executed considering how central Clive absorbing Eikons is to the plot.

6. Oof, Waloed was depressing. I was so hyped to see Ash, after going so long without ever even seeing this whole 'nother continent. Only for it to be a graveyard of dead and Akashic.

7. Fuck Annabella (Clive's mom). She was such a piece of shit. I kinda wonder if Ultima was influencing her from the start, or if it was only later? I suspect she betrayed Rosaria out of her own free will, considering how terribly she treats Clive from the start.

8. The treatment of Bearers was sickening. At first I was noticing parallels to American chattel slavery, but it quickly became more of a Nazi Germany kinda thing. It was a great design choice to make Clive a "bearer" so that you'd experience the bigotry firsthand. I wanted to outright murder most NPCs I met because they were so horrible.

   • It's especially sad when you later find out why Bearers are treated bad. They were originally freaking blessed and people in power were just jealous/afraid, so had to scapegoat Bearers.
   • I also felt so bad for L'ubor. He was the centerpiece of his village and yet the people who loved him turned on him so fast the instant they learned he was a Bearer. And they acted like it was some big betrayal, as if they couldn't understand why a Bearer would want to not be a Bearer.

9. The map design is very meh. The game is pretty, but aside from the mothercrystals and Fallen ruins, everything feels so grounded that it may as well be our world during medieval ages. I want a fantasy world that feels fantastic! And aesthetics aside, most maps are fairly linear. They often have some branches (many used only for specific side quests), but felt like they didn't give enough reasons to explore. The movable parts of the map feel narrow and restrictive.

   • For whatever bizarre reason, you can often find larger enemies off the beaten path, but they're rarely worth the time. The XP/AP/gil they give is hilariously bad compared to just a pack of normal enemies that you might be able to beat in a single AoE spell.

10. Early game side quests are terrible, but they get great later in the game. It's really weird. IDK why they made the early game quests so bad. It set me up to expect side quests to suck. And the game has a lot of side quests, so they probably could have trimmed a few to make the early game side quests suck less. In particular, the early game quests within the hideaway feel very forced and awkward.

11. Ultima was a decent villain. Very creepy (those eyes!). I'm not entirely sure I understand where he and his "collective" came from, but am thinking from another planet, since his final form fights in a cosmic setting and Origin is described as a ship, but looks far more like a spaceship than anything else.

    • Barnabas was also great. Super intimidating in ever scene. The battle you're supposed to lose was well executed, as you've seen a few of those "press the attack" moments by then, but it's the first one that can't be finished fast enough (I kinda wonder what happens if you cheated?).

12. I liked the twist that the crystals and magic were bad for the environment. Kinda wonder why no academics or something at least noticed that before, though. Isn't the pattern of the blight's movement kinda obvious to its cause? Kinda feels like they missed an opportunity to draw analogies to climate change, where we know what's causing it and simply refuse to do anything about it.

13. The contextual codex was a neat idea, but the execution felt lacking. It only seems to work for the main quest, despite the fact that side quests populate a huge number of codex entries. I also found that despite regularly checking it, I often would not see the new codex entries I expected to see (until I went to visit Harpocrates). New pages of existing entries were also written as if you'd only read the newest page, with lots of repetition for minimal (if any) new information. I love lore, so codexes are super appealing to me. It was sometimes disappointing for new entries to not actually say anything new.

    • It generally didn't do a good enough job at explaining new things (e.g., at the very beginning of the game, characters are talking about how they're on a mission to kill a dominant and for so long I'm like "WTF is a dominant"). And it took a little while to understand the high level global politics because the game is slow to explain them.

14. Damn, the game is long. Took me about 60 hours, doing basically everything except the cronoliths (I tried those a couple of times and gave up -- too hard and not fun to me).

15. The game does fantastic at updating NPC dialogue. I noticed so many changes to dialogue throughout the events of the game, including side quests. Lots of games barely update dialogue and it's sad cause I want to know how characters are reacting to some big event.

    • The hideaway really needed to be more compact. You spend soooo much time walking around to visit quest givers and hear updated dialogue.
    • For whatever weird reason, some major NPC dialogue (shop keepers and such) isn't fully voiced. I don't get why. It felt incomplete. I mean, I'm glad that dialogue didn't get outright cut, but would have preferred it being fully voiced.

Overall, it was a very fulfilling and fun story driven game with action packed combat. I'd give it a 9/10 (though I am a Final Fantasy fangirl, so am biased).

I've come to really appreciate when games aren't merely graphically pretty, but that they also take great care with their use of camera angles and animation in general. I speak particularly of cutscenes and dialogue, but frankly this question applies to the entire game.

I find there's a lot of games that do take cinematography in mind for cutscenes, but nothing else. Or at least the rest of the game is considerably less impressive than cutscenes. e.g., rather than animate something, some games will just have a text box say what happened. And dialogue in many games is very basic back and forth (often with very lackluster quality lip syncing).

RDR2 is perhaps the best game I've played so far in this regard. It felt like it animated everything carefully, even had a cinematic mode for horseback riding that I found very pleasing to use, and cutscenes often felt movie quality.

What other games (of any kind) put a lot of effort into cinematography?

I just finished Horizon Burning Shores (I know, a bit late) and wanted to discuss it! I posted this elsewhere on a different community (and account), but didn't get any discussion, so trying again here (also, this community appears empty and I wanna fix that).

FULL SPOILERS FOR THE DLC

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

So, random thoughts in no particular order:

1. The Horus fight was fantastic and a long time coming. I think we were all waiting for a chance to finally fight a Horus and it didn't disappoint. The initial sneaking past the invincible and very hard hitting tentacles set things up great. Seeing the whole thing rise up had me giddy! And then it just goes on and on and really makes us work for it (I would have been disappointed if a Horus -- even an ancient and rusty one -- was too easy).

2. I liked Seyka and also liked that there was a romance option (but it also made it clear that saving the world is the priority). It's just nice for Aloy to have someone she can relate to in that way.

3. I wish there were more machines. It kinda felt like the bilegut was the only new machine. The waterwing feels nearly identical to the Sunwing. The stingspawn don't feel like standalone enemies (more like a part of the bilegut). The Horus is great, but it's only a one off boss enemy. I was hoping for some fresh new enemies to make exploration more interesting.

4. Exploration sometimes felt a little disappointing. I enjoyed how absolutely gorgeous the game is. It is fantastic world building. But so much of the map just doesn't have anything actually there. It looks pretty, but besides machines and generic items, there is nothing to collect. I feel like a few more side quests were needed and for a several more buildings to actually have some kinda lore to them. As an aside, I don't understand why datapoints are so hard to find. I scoured every inch of the map and found fewer than half of the world datapoints

5. Overall I liked the villain. It was good to have a single villain to focus on so that he could be built up more. I felt a bit bad for him when I learned his wife cheated with his best friend and that was the start of his rampant paranoia. But then I learned he was literally brainwashing people (plus the whole radiation space ship thing) and it was back to "yup, he's gotta die".

6. I'm really glad this DLC takes place after the base game and takes advantage of this. Waaaay too many games these days are seemingly afraid to make DLC require beating the game. I guess they want to make the DLC more accessible? Putting the DLC after the story let it utilize the threat of Nemesis as well as carefully incorporate flying.

7. I do kinda wish there were more returning character interactions. It was nice to chat with Sylens for a bit, though.

8. I really liked Pangea World! It was a fantastic setting. Full of interesting old world sights, lots of potential for stealth, it was compact and had lots of depth, and I always like theme park levels in general.

9. I kinda think Nova, Walter's AI, was a bit underused. A thousand year old AI from off world? I would have soooo many questions. But instead she almost immediately asks you to kill her and you do. Wish we could have sent her to live freely with Gaia so that she could lore dump us in the third game. And a bit more lore dumping in this DLC, for that matter.

10. The Heaven¢ sanctuary was really neat. Stepping into that place and seeing all the gigantic posters of Walter's face was quite a moment. It was when we really started to learn what Walter was like. I felt bad for those Quen. To them, the ancestors are like gods. But they seem to know the ancestors are dead. Finding out an ancestor is alive and witnessing their god-like technology has to be seriously convincing. And those Quen thought they had a chance at a better life. A world where they wouldn't be constantly fighting against horrifying machines to survive. Only to find out it's a sham. Oof.

11. Some of the new abilities are neat. Though a bunch are so forgettable that I don't remember what most of them are. I loved the grapple critical strike and used that a ton. I also found the valor ability that berserks all nearby enemies to be very fun for dealing with large groups.

12. I like that we got a smidge of progress against Nemesis, in the form of Walter's notes where he lists 21st century arms companies that may be useful against Nemesis. I was kinda expecting the DLC to dance around Nemesis, leaving it entirely for the third game. Was good to get some teases. Similar for Walter's notes giving the first person perspective of just how Nemesis killed some of the Zeniths and how terrified he is.

13. Perhaps I'm too used to other games where anything that looks interesting probably contains something. But this DLC is just chock full of buildings that look interesting but in fact have nothing. Can't be entered, nothing on top (I checked a bunch), nothing around them. In a way, this is probably just a sign of how great their world design is such that downtown LA is actually full of unique towers, but does feel a bit oddly disappointing when most of them are just for looks.

Overall I'd give the DLC an 8/10. I enjoyed the story and setting a lot, but it felt empty at times and I really wish there was another machine type or two.

This is a poster series in a retro style. They look fantastic in large prints. The space telescope series is also on the page. I personally adore the JWST poster and have a large print of it in canvas form: https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/resources/2294/james-webb-space-telescope-poster/?layout=magic_shell&travel_bureau=true&cid=4,travel_bureau_missions

I've been using this as my phone wallpaper for a while. Had to reverse image search to recall where it was from. It's found on this page: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/station-science-101/astrophysics/