Video gaming stuff
Jun. 19th, 2021 11:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
estiroseSo, a few things I discovered yesterday evening. Two are formal announcements, one is just a bit of rambly discovery.
1) I was checking out the site and blog for Spry Fox (the studio that makes Cozy Grove) for blog posts on the next update. When I got there I discovered that they were also responsible for Triple Town, an earlier mobile game I was familiar with. One of their staff, before he split off to form his own game studio, was Brent "Meowza" Kobayashi, who was responsible for a lot of the art from the defunct (and for me much-beloved) non-violent MMO Glitch! (Brent is thanked in the credits for Cozy Grove, probably because the NPC bears of that game share the same general rectangular shape as the bears he worked on for their previous game Alphabear. Different art style, though.)
They are hiring people for a new project, a non-violent MMO, I am so excited! Even if Brent is not onboard.
There are some attempts to revive Glitch going on, incidentally (with the blessing of the owner of the IP); I'm participating in the beta for one of them, Odd Giants.
2) Rune Factory 4 Special is no longer going to be a Switch-only game! Bonus, it's apparently coming to Steam (for PC)! I have the original on my 2DS and apart from one little bit of dialogue in the beginning that makes me twitch (and the fact that there are only het romances for plot reasons, and one of the available romance options is a loli) it is a fantastic game. It's vaguely in the genre of Stardew Valley, except less farming and more combat, and has this lovely storyline. I am buying it! (I will at some point buy a Switch, but most of the games I want for it are either available for PC, or in this case, 3DS/2DS and I am not really currently in a situation where I travel or even commute much right now).
(If you do buy this, the one piece of advice I have is: befriend Vishnal and have him in your party a lot. Trust me on this.)
3) Fatal Frame is for the first time in over a decade going to be on something that's not a Nintendo console! Woot! Unfortunately, it's Maiden of Black Water. Bleh. (Why Maiden of Black Water and not the well-beloved Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly? AFAIK Nintendo has the rights for Crimson Butterfly because of the Wii remaster a few years back....) It is also going to be for PC. This has me conflicted because a) it's the only Fatal Frame main series game that I don't own, and b) buying it might help get Fatal Frame 6 happen or the earlier games available on something other than the PlayStation 2/Playstation 3 defunct online store. (Deep) Crimson Butterfly, at the very least is something that Nintendo might be able to port, and I'd love to have an official export/translation of Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, even just subtitled.
I will say that I have no issue with two of the protagonists' storylines, I do like the graphics and setting, and as a bonus, word of creator is that one of the major secondary characters (Rui) is non-binary (or genderfluid, it's not clear which). (It never comes up in game and we don't know what Rui's personal pronouns are in English - I'd have to check which "I" she uses in Japanese. I believe that all the other characters use "she" for Rui - at least in English - as Rui appears female.)
Miu. Oh, goodness, Miu. She's the first character you meet in Maiden of Dark Water, and she's a Hinasaki, one of the recurring families in the franchise.
Trouble is, Miu is the result of brother-sister incest. Incest is not a new element in the Fatal Frame games. There is some implied same-sex sibling incest in an earlier game and a boss encounter in Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is the child of the main antagonist and her brother. Neither case bothers me because it's only heavily implied in the former and is treated in the latter as a bad thing. Miu, on the other hand is a main protagonist and her origin story heavily messes up a major theme of Fatal Frame III.
So, to explain, in Fatal Frame I's canon ending, Miku Hinsaki (the protagonist of that game) loses her brother Mafuyu (the protagonist of the first chapter). Mostly because he's an idiot, but I've ranted about that before and it's not relevant to the rest of this. In Fatal Frame III, Miku comes back as one of that game's three protagonists. The're all suffering from Survivor's Guilt or are closely related to someone who is. The good - and canon! - ending is that they are all starting to heal (including NPC Mio, the protagonist of Crimson Butterfly, the 2nd game). Then Maiden of Dark Water messes Miku's storyline up by having her become pregnant by Mafuyu's ghost during the end part of Fatal Frame III and has her desperately marry him via Ghost Marriage in Maiden of Dark Water because she cannot bear to be without him. Most of this is thankfully Word of Creator but Mafuyu's ghost appears in the marriage cutscene in Maiden of Dark Water. Up until then, the Fatal Frame fandom presumed the ghost of Mafuyu that appeared in Fatal Frame III was not the real ghost of Mafuyu. Apparently it was! But yeah, I was not alone in the Fatal Frame community being ticked off by the change in Miku's characterization, especially the incest.
1) I was checking out the site and blog for Spry Fox (the studio that makes Cozy Grove) for blog posts on the next update. When I got there I discovered that they were also responsible for Triple Town, an earlier mobile game I was familiar with. One of their staff, before he split off to form his own game studio, was Brent "Meowza" Kobayashi, who was responsible for a lot of the art from the defunct (and for me much-beloved) non-violent MMO Glitch! (Brent is thanked in the credits for Cozy Grove, probably because the NPC bears of that game share the same general rectangular shape as the bears he worked on for their previous game Alphabear. Different art style, though.)
They are hiring people for a new project, a non-violent MMO, I am so excited! Even if Brent is not onboard.
There are some attempts to revive Glitch going on, incidentally (with the blessing of the owner of the IP); I'm participating in the beta for one of them, Odd Giants.
2) Rune Factory 4 Special is no longer going to be a Switch-only game! Bonus, it's apparently coming to Steam (for PC)! I have the original on my 2DS and apart from one little bit of dialogue in the beginning that makes me twitch (and the fact that there are only het romances for plot reasons, and one of the available romance options is a loli) it is a fantastic game. It's vaguely in the genre of Stardew Valley, except less farming and more combat, and has this lovely storyline. I am buying it! (I will at some point buy a Switch, but most of the games I want for it are either available for PC, or in this case, 3DS/2DS and I am not really currently in a situation where I travel or even commute much right now).
(If you do buy this, the one piece of advice I have is: befriend Vishnal and have him in your party a lot. Trust me on this.)
3) Fatal Frame is for the first time in over a decade going to be on something that's not a Nintendo console! Woot! Unfortunately, it's Maiden of Black Water. Bleh. (Why Maiden of Black Water and not the well-beloved Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly? AFAIK Nintendo has the rights for Crimson Butterfly because of the Wii remaster a few years back....) It is also going to be for PC. This has me conflicted because a) it's the only Fatal Frame main series game that I don't own, and b) buying it might help get Fatal Frame 6 happen or the earlier games available on something other than the PlayStation 2/Playstation 3 defunct online store. (Deep) Crimson Butterfly, at the very least is something that Nintendo might be able to port, and I'd love to have an official export/translation of Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, even just subtitled.
I will say that I have no issue with two of the protagonists' storylines, I do like the graphics and setting, and as a bonus, word of creator is that one of the major secondary characters (Rui) is non-binary (or genderfluid, it's not clear which). (It never comes up in game and we don't know what Rui's personal pronouns are in English - I'd have to check which "I" she uses in Japanese. I believe that all the other characters use "she" for Rui - at least in English - as Rui appears female.)
Miu. Oh, goodness, Miu. She's the first character you meet in Maiden of Dark Water, and she's a Hinasaki, one of the recurring families in the franchise.
Trouble is, Miu is the result of brother-sister incest. Incest is not a new element in the Fatal Frame games. There is some implied same-sex sibling incest in an earlier game and a boss encounter in Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is the child of the main antagonist and her brother. Neither case bothers me because it's only heavily implied in the former and is treated in the latter as a bad thing. Miu, on the other hand is a main protagonist and her origin story heavily messes up a major theme of Fatal Frame III.
So, to explain, in Fatal Frame I's canon ending, Miku Hinsaki (the protagonist of that game) loses her brother Mafuyu (the protagonist of the first chapter). Mostly because he's an idiot, but I've ranted about that before and it's not relevant to the rest of this. In Fatal Frame III, Miku comes back as one of that game's three protagonists. The're all suffering from Survivor's Guilt or are closely related to someone who is. The good - and canon! - ending is that they are all starting to heal (including NPC Mio, the protagonist of Crimson Butterfly, the 2nd game). Then Maiden of Dark Water messes Miku's storyline up by having her become pregnant by Mafuyu's ghost during the end part of Fatal Frame III and has her desperately marry him via Ghost Marriage in Maiden of Dark Water because she cannot bear to be without him. Most of this is thankfully Word of Creator but Mafuyu's ghost appears in the marriage cutscene in Maiden of Dark Water. Up until then, the Fatal Frame fandom presumed the ghost of Mafuyu that appeared in Fatal Frame III was not the real ghost of Mafuyu. Apparently it was! But yeah, I was not alone in the Fatal Frame community being ticked off by the change in Miku's characterization, especially the incest.
