Julius

Fantastic trailer – gah, the music! The summons (again)! The hype! Roll on June I say

Hey N-E, This is something I've been going back and forth in my head over for a few months now, and while I'll get into it more below, the short and long of it is that I'm going to be taking a break from posting on and visiting the forums for a while due to my mental health. I'm not sure if it'll be a month, or two, or six, or longer. This didn't really feel like it belonged in the good, or bad, or neutral stuff threads, and the main reason I wanted to say something about taking a break is because I feel like I post regularly enough that just stopping out of the blue might be cause for concern, and I didn't want anyone worrying for my wellbeing, just based on some comments I've made in the past on here about my mental health not exactly being up to snuff. The reason that I've decided to take that step now is because I've been off work for the last month - one week of that as planned annual leave, though I spent the entirety of that week stuck in bed - initially due to episodes of vertigo, extreme levels of fatigue, and a few other symptoms. I do a lot of self-reflection and introspection, but looking back at the last few months as I've been able to with no distractions due to being cooped up in bed the last few weeks, I've realised that, deep down, I'm quite plainly not happy - I normally get down while I'm sick due to the sheer fact that I am sick, and it annoys me because I'm at a stage where I hate being sick with a passion, just because of what I've gone through over the last few years with being sick pretty incessantly. There's been a lot of middle-of-the-night outbursts of crying while I just stare out of the window, or sit up on my bed in a dark room. In hindsight, for the last six months or so I think I've had every tell-tale sign of stress, or burnout, or however you want to label it, ranging from a burning scalp and shedding way more hair than usual (no family history of balding) to an eczema breakout basically looking like it has aged the skin on one of my fingers by some 50 years, to eating unhealthily and binge-eating to not eating at all and putting on a load of weight in a pretty small period of time (overweight for the first time in my life and a bunch of stretch marks can attest to the fact that my body wasn't built for this weight, though I can make peace with stretch marks as I still have a bunch from when I started working out in high school), to nearly collapsing a few times due to sheer exhaustion, to brain fog, to struggling to sleep and struggling to wake up, and so on. I think I've got out less this year than I did in 2020. On top of all this, my work life simply sucks these days - and that's all I'll say about that part of my life I think. And financially, while coping, out two-person apartment energy bills have gone from £60 to nearly £300 per month and apparently I'm £1000 in debt (yeah...I'm not going to be taking that lying down) due to some botched job at my energy provider. I have blood tests tomorrow and an eye test on Sunday to confirm that everything is as it should be, but reflecting on the last 5 or 6 years of my life and all of my previous illnesses, I think while maybe I could turn up deficient somewhere (because of eating inconsistently/binge-eating), I'm not remotely scared that it's something more serious, in terms of being a life-threatening X or Y (mental health is, of course, very serious). I'd kind of love for it to be, just because then I'd have answers, but I don't think that will be the case. I think it's most likely going to be mental. Yesterday I placed a phone call that I've been putting off the last couple of years, which was to get the ball rolling on therapy. It was long overdue. And it was kind of heartbreaking, even just for an initial assessment, to explain some of the stuff I went through as a kid, whether it was with my family, or a particular friend in high school, or a bunch of other events, to a complete stranger over the phone. It got even more heartbreaking when, even after all of my introspection and reflection, a bunch of questions basically asking how often I find myself feeling down turned into "yeah, that's how I feel pretty much all the time...and I have done for years. I can't remember the last time I didn't feel like that." Again, to reiterate: I don't self-harm, I won't start to; I haven't planned to do anything stupid and will continue not to, and I have my own personal reasons for having such a strong stance on this. I went through something with someone growing up which gave me a deep resolve that I could never seriously consider suicide as an option. I could never even remotely consider putting someone through what I went through at that age. I'm not looking forward to tackling all of that with someone, to be honest - but I know I need to. I was referred to see a clinical psychologist, and today I've started reaching out to some of their recommended practitioners in my local area. I'm scared, to be honest, but I feel like I'm already on my way to getting to the root of my issues from years of reflection on a lot of these events and my thoughts on them - but I need direction to dig deeper, ask harder questions, and learn how to manage things from here. I think it's going to be a struggle, but I've got to try to wrestle back some level of control over my life. Which brings me onto taking a break from N-E: to be honest, I've struggled more and more as the year has gone on to post here, and when I have, looking back, I think it's mostly come from a place of trying to distract myself from everything that's been going on around me; same goes for how I've been treating games and other forms of escapism. I don't think I've even posted in this year's Gaming Diary thread, which is crazy, because it's a thread I normally love to write longer pieces for. The last couple of months I've been trying my best to step back and not rush to post something first - a habit I have definitely found myself getting into; this obviously isn't a fault of N-E's, but rather just shows what my relationship with this place has become, and it doesn't feel healthy to me deep down when I scramble to put up a thread. For the same reason, I'm even trying to delay gratification wherever I can elsewhere - even though I'm signed off from work I still haven't watched Andor, and probably won't until the weekend. It's going to be a bunch of small steps. While I'm definitely going to miss talking about games and everything else I talk about on here with you all, I think the best step for me right now is to focus as much as I can on my own path, and just putting one foot in front of the other until it becomes normal again. I have weight to lose, my mental health to improve, and just generally need to find a way to at least be more content, if not a bit happier, with my life. And I simply have no idea how long that's going to take. So, until next time, whenever that is, N-E - it's been a pleasure, and take care of yourselves while I'm gone!

Was watching Dunkey's Nintendo Direct vs Sony Direct video, got to Bayonetta 3, and he played Riders of the Light... ...and now I need to play Bayonetta. I already knew SEGA's Sound Team generally went hard, but damn, that's one hell of a track!

In a shocking turn of events that no-one could have predicted, RADWIMPS will be in charge of the soundtrack for Makoto Shinkai's next film, Suzuke no Tojimari. In other news, water is wet

Just imagine

The trend of job listing announcements and underwhelming blog entries for huge projects continues. From EA's news section: Such an interesting time for the industry when it's a constant toss of the (three-sided?) coin on whether a game is announced closer to launch, gets a CGI trailer years out, or is shuffled onto a blog down some back alley. I'm definitely surprised in this case, just considering the property involved, and maybe even more so considering D23 was just a couple of weeks ago! See you in 2025 or 2026

As is tradition: GameXplain's mega-analysis for Tears of the Kingdom comes in at nearly 50 minutes long! Takes me back to the simpler times of watching their old BOTW (Zelda for NX!) trailer and gameplay breakdowns Short answer: no Longer answer:

Not related to the eShop, but related to the winding down of services for both consoles: Image Share will be discontinued as of 25th October 2022.

Yeah, I think you're right about that. Also, with the detachable disc drive either being bundled in or sold separately, I think that in light of the recent pricing changes for both the Digital and Disc Editions of the PS5 as a result of the current economic climate, this is a great opportunity to give people the push to buy the console at a Digital Edition price of £389.99 rather than the Disc Edition at £479.99, and then at some time down the road, leave it up to them to pick up the detachable disc drive. And if they never pick up the detachable disc drive? Well then, PlayStation get the even greater benefit of more digital sales! Got to imagine Xbox are considering it for the Series S, I swear there were rumours dating back to the all-digital Xbox One S that they were planning on something like this.

According to Tom Henderson, the PS5 is set to get a new model next year...with a detachable disc drive. This model is reportedly set to replace the current models.

Yeah, apparently the guy leaking everything attempted to blackmail Rockstar...which seemingly didn't go as planned. Looks like Rockstar are trying to file takedowns on YouTube, but once it's out there, well...it's out there Apparently he's also threatening to leak the source code for GTA V and GTA VI, too. So, unfortunately, it looks like it could still get worse for Rockstar if there's any truth to what he's saying

So, maybe one of the biggest leaks in the history of the industry went down earlier today. Bunch of clips posted of a very early, in-development GTA VI, with code and low poly models all over the shop, but might give an idea of some of the ideas they're trying to implement (such as more ways to interact with NPC's). And it's been confirmed to be real by Jason Schreier: Honestly...this sucks. The announcement was very lackluster (but hey, that's seemingly the industry standard these days, that or a CGI trailer), but Rockstar seemed to be heading in the right direction in terms of representation, treatment of staff, trying to avoid crunch and some of their previous pitfalls, etc. And then a dev build, which is super rough and likely includes some prototype ideas, leaks like this.

Somewhat surprisingly considering their plans to show the game at last year's TGS, this game skipped it this year, at least in terms of showing up in a big way. Still, we got a couple of tidbits, like this wonderful promo art, reaffirming that Summer 2023 release window: Yoshi-P also turned up at the TGS Japan Game Awards and revealed that he expects the next trailer for the game to come out around next month, and that in the next info drop after that, they plan to share the game's release date.

A Collector's Edition was also announced for Switch, PS4, and PS5: Seems to only be available at the moment from the Square Enix Store, priced at £169.99. Looks good, but it was always to struggle to live up to the first game's pop-up:

It's either that or the Ignore list

Zeltik's videos are great, great share! Can I just say though, it's killing me that so many people are saying the weirdly faced shaman-type dude on the wall is reminiscent of the Lord of the Mountain, when said weirdly faced shaman-type dude on the wall's face is, I feel, still clearly taking some cues from the design of the Spirit of the Forest from Princess Mononoke, even more so than the Lord of the Mountain (which, well, also was clearly taking cues from it!). A lot of deer-like features going on with that face (or mask?)... Shaman dude Lord of the Mountain Spirit of the Forest (Princess Mononoke) The wide eyes, the "ears", the general face shape and it's nose/brow ridge...yeah, I can't unsee it. To push it further, though, on the Shaman Dude™...is that hair, cloth, or...tendrils? Because you know... This builds into my next bit of speculation a bit... I think this game's title can be seen as a mirror to Breath of the Wild, and together they are talking about the cycle of life and death, but also the cycle of man and nature. I mean, think about it. In almost any way you cut it, you can see a relationship between a Breath and Tears, whether it be a similarity or difference, but there's so much joining them. Both are ways of expelling waste/toxins from the body, and with that in mind both I think could be defined as being a cyclical process of renewal (breathing in and out to continue the process of, well, living, compared with shedding tears to shed or process emotions). Similarly, breathing is, 99% of the time (until I say this and you're conscious of it for a moment ), an involuntary action, whereas, while emotions can overcome you and make you cry tears, it is something we have much more control over. I think also from a meditation perspective, there's something to be said for focusing on breathing and observing your emotions, whereas crying/tears often imply emotion and being overwhelmed by them. And so on and so forth. It's loose, and it's a bit silly, but I guess the most succinct argument I have for it it that Breath is associated with life and being present, whereas I would argue that Tears (crying, obviously there'll be exceptions! I had a botched eye op as a kid so I cry from one eye when it's cold!) are kind of associated with the struggles of life, including death, such as through mourning those we've lost, emotion, and altogether, honestly, not being truly present. There's also the relationship between mankind and nature, which is what Wild and Kingdom kind of get at. One flourishing, more often than not, comes at the cost of the other, which is especially true and noteworthy today in 2022, what with climate change and more and more natural disasters occuring. I think there's also just an implied mirroring between an untamed Wild and a tamed, well, Kingdom. Anyways, that's what I'm taking from the titles: it's about the relationships between life and death, and nature and mankind. Breath of the Wild Tears of the Kingdom Goes along with the Zonai ouroborus too! EDIT: another one; BotW, while fully 3D, was arguably us mainly exploring a horizontal plane, across the land of Hyrule. Breaths are, well, inhaled and exhaled, typically, perpendicular to the position of the body, but horizontally when upright. Tears flow down vertically, and we're seeing a lot more to the verticality of this world in TotK (places to explore on the sky and underground). It's definitely growing on me, that's for sure! I think there's also more there, though. If this kingdom in the sky was indeed an ancient kingdom and is the kingdom the title alludes to, the "wild" could also be referring to the untamed force of nature that is/was Calamity Ganon, and the "Kingdom" could be referring to his opposite – this shaman-type on the murals. I also can't help but wonder if there's some balance there between good and evil, and so there's that cycle which could come into effect: with Calamity Ganon gone as if the end of Breath of the Wild, does his opposite (this shaman-type guy?) step into the fold? I kind of think of it like the balance of the Force in Star Wars, and how there's a relationship between the Dark Side and the Light. I'm really curious to see where this game goes, regardless. There's a bunch in Princess Mononoke which has clearly inspired the series in the past, or Breath of the Wild in 2017 (hell, that true ending is basically the same ending as Princess Mononoke's!), and so I imagine we'll see more tiny nods here and there which might help gain a better understanding of what's going on ahead of release. Can't help but also talk about an ancient kingdom in the sky and that massive twister without thinking of Laputa...but I'll stop there for now Thanks for fixing the thread titl–

Looks down at ailing body

To quote the GOAT Ben Moore: FINALLY, THE WORLD WILL UNDERSTAND! Chills just watching the trailers, I nearly teared up watching the one for II. Y'all better be buying this or face the wrath of being added to my Ignore list Played both of these last year and they were a blast. Top tier soundtracks, really fun and snappy - and very easy to break - battle system (honestly I'll take the option to speed it up, but it's not totally necessary!), best in class pixel art and animations (man, those 90s JRPG vibes just can't be beat), and some of the best written characters, story beats, and fleshed out worldbuilding I've experienced in a JRPG. And again, GOAT soundtracks. Both of them. Personally, the biggest problem I have with the genre - as much as I love it - is like a shonen anime, power levels almost always creep until the end of the game where you typically face a God or some metaphor for a collective conscious, your true self, or what have you. Now it's not a problem, even if it is a bit silly, but Suikoden does such a grand job of keeping things to scale (each game basically takes place across a single country as you figure out the kinks of its current political structure) that I think it's a huge strength of the game. Now this is obviously a reaction to the great support Eiyuden Chronicle has seen on Kickstarter and the backing it's had elsewhere, but you know what Konami, if that's what it takes, then so be it. I'm not too sure how I feel about some of the changes, if I'm being honest, for example I think the original portraits have a bit more character than their HD counterparts, and some of the backgrounds definitely look better than others. Actually, I find it really curious that the new additions fails to mention anything about updating the UI/menus from the original game to modern standards (spoiler: they sucked), and while II improves on I in a lot of ways, the inventory management leaves a lot to be desired (limited space, rotating parties means someone can leave with a key item, etc.), so hopefully that's something they'll talk about moving forwards. One of the main changes I wanted to see with Eiyuden is something I also want to see here: for the true (and, frankly, best) endings in these games, you need to recruit a whole lot of people (the 108 Stars of Destiny), and you need to use a guide because many are missable (and even then, some guides are weirdly ordered, as I found out last year), so I really hope there's something built into the game's design which makes it easier to track everyone down and not miss anyone. I've still got my notes in the Suikoden thread on the guides I used last year and the niggles they had, but ideally, I don't think you should need a guide to get so much out of these games. Man, I'm actually also really curious to see if they've fixed some of the glitches and bugs in the game. Some were helpful (like free use of the inn by backing out of paying in II), but I remember coming across a fair few audio and visual bugs when I played through last year, especially in II (which felt like it was really pushing what a 2D game could do at the time). I really just hope these can be definitive versions of these games, but I won't lie, I am a little bit nervous. I'm in for these Day 1, regardless of whether or not I actually want to play through it again at that time, I just want to support this series. Hell, I'll buy it twice if it also gets a physical release. I also still just want V to be available digitally so I don't need to drag out my PS2, so Konami, get to it more seriously though, I wonder what there plans are for future games – could the Suikogaiden games, visual novels which bridge the gap between II and III, potentially be officially translated to English and released in the West for the first time? I certainly hope so! Lastly, I'm curious what, if anything, this means for the series moving forwards. I've read from an interview today that a few folks at Konami are still keen to revive the series more than this by the sound of things, and Murayama (who created the Suikoden series and is heading the Eiyuden projects) has said in the past that he'd be open to return to work on a new entry, so maybe there's a chance?

Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard has pulled a move which absolutely belongs in this thread: the company's profits will now be going towards climate action. Absolute legend. First time hearing of the guy, but time to look him up and do some reading on him, think he's earned a slither of my time doing something like this, that's for sure. A little bit of hope to spark some optimism is always welcome let's hope we continue to see more of this!

Watched the State of Play and some reactions last night while feeling worse for wear, and I thought it was pretty solid...just short. Really short, with some really weird cuts. Like, let the 10/10 Ragnarok trailer linger for just a sec, where are you off in a rush to guys? Seriously! But pleasantly, seemingly TGS-focused with the number of Japanese developed games shown off, so a few games I'll be interested in. Like A Dragon: Ishin - I'm never catching up on these games, huh? Well...I can't complain, inject them all into my veins obviously we've had the bunch of RGG announcements today too which has cemented 'Like A Dragon' as the branding in the West moving forwards for these games over Yakuza, but for this particular game I think it just made sense from a branding perspective to help clearly separate searches for this remake and the original Ishin (EDIT: apparently also been a licensing issue for SEGA for a while having the 'Yakuza' branding? Which makes sense, I mean that'd be like calling a western gangster game series Mafi–...oh. Plus I suppose it makes sense if the games are centred less around the Yakuza these days. Kinda.). Looks spectacular, can't wait for more dumb and dramatic RGG fun, especially seeing as at the surface this looks even sillier than normal. Which is really saying something. PlayStation Stars - okay not a game I'm interested in but I need to comment on it: groan. There was something special about looking at these trophy-like items in Astro's Playroom, but here...urgh. They didn't even really explain it and it's rolling out in Asia by the end of the month? Probably be binned in a couple of years Stellar Blade - looked like NiER drenched deep in anime BS before, continues to look like NiER drenched deep in anime BS now. I have half an eye on it. Also, kudos to them for toning it down on the ass shots this time around, as the initial reveal of the game was very in-your-face. Rise of the Ronin - the Samuraissance continues. I'm in. But 2024?! Probably help tide me over to the Ghost of Tsushima sequel I guess! God of War Ragnarok - inject it into my veins yesterday, what a trailer! Hell, even the controller is growing on me the more I look at it. Must...resist... The gutting thing for me was not getting to see Ben Moore's reactions to this or the Nintendo Direct, or anything going on at TGS. Dude was probably freaking out 8/10. Wish it was a Showcase proper, though.

I played Judgment back in May after burning out on it last summer in its third chapter, and I think it's up there with 0 and Kiwami 2 in terms of being one of the stronger stories from RGG. It's another great cast, another great protagonist (is Yagami close to the greatness of Kiryu? No, but for a first new protag for them in forever, a solid first attempt), another solid story, plenty of hilarious substories; it's definitely up to the RGG standard. Combat is a little lacking, but well, guess they wanted to strip everything back as much as they could with a new protag. Unfortunately, I also think if you like to really dive in with these games, it's one of the easiest to burnout on. Since Yakuza 5 I've been treating these games like a JRPG and doing as much as I can as soon as it becomes available, especially when it comes to substories and the like, but Judgment simply had too much to offer in this respect – if I'm remembering right, there were 50 Side Cases (basically substories) and 50 Friendship Missions (basically the lighter substories), which compared to the 70 - 80 in bigger games like Yakuza 5, when this is definitely a shorter game by comparison? It meant you had the kitchen sink of side missions thrown at you by the end of the third chapter, at which point I think I'd spent substantially more time on side content than I had on the main story, which wasn't really true for the other games. Made for super weird pacing. Definitely has a better payoff than the other games I'd played before it, though, when it comes to the last few of those, so Also, I've got to say, for a detective story, it was a pretty big letdown in the twists department. In all the Yakuza games I've played, while you might have a general idea of what's going on, there's always some crazy twist out of nowhere which makes it feel more like a soap opera than a balanced story. In Judgment? I wrote down what I thought had happened about a third in and was pretty much spot on. Really looking forward to getting around to Lost Judgment at some point and seeing if they've tightened things up a bit, with a bit more focus I think it should be a great time. Plus, the skateboard would have been a huge help in traversing Judgment, so that's a welcome addition I'm looking forward to

Well at least it'll be easier to find this thread once the title's updated now Yep, lovely artwork, though doesn't quite translate to the box art as well I feel? Also can't help but wonder if we'll see different regional artwork for the box art like we did with the first game. If they make this a trilogy though, having the first game have Link centred (earth) and the second having him off in a top corner (sky), they've got to bring it home and position him at the bottom of the box art – assuming we're getting more than the tease we got a while back of an Underworld in this game, I'm imagining a scuba-diving Link underwater. Anyways, other than the release date and title reveal...honestly, not a great trailer, probably the weakest one it's had so far. I'm sure we'll see more in the coming months, there's still plenty of time (May 12th is close but so, so far!), and good marketing is always a difficult balance to find, but going the Ragnarök route of "we ain't showing you anything, sorry" just seems like a bit of a poor idea when it comes to marketing an open world game. It could work on their favour and blow us away when the game releases with all of the changes which might be present in the world, but I imagine until we got a solid chunk of gameplay, we're going to see a lot of people concerned about not knowing just how different it's going to be. The logo design and opening of the trailer looks like they're delivering on the Zonai stuff from BotW - which is cool, I know this game came about from expanding on DLC ideas, but I was half-convinced they weren't going to touch that stuff - and I've got to say, the title grows on me the more I read it; I know there's been some time travel speculation about the game, but with the title too, it would be pretty cool to see an ancient civilisation torn apart, definitely gives an ominous, almost Pompeii-like vibe to the game. Would be even cooler if there's time travel involved with the present day and puzzles hinting at things, but not seeing how it all plays out until the very end, maybe the destruction of an ancient kingdom either giving rise to, or empowering, present-day Hyrule? Would make it very melancholic! Still very excited for this game, it's safe to say!

A short bit of combat from Game Informer's cover story: Odd to get our first look at a short bit of continuous gameplay like this, but oh well, they know what they're doing looks like GI will be sharing more on Tuesday