The Difference Between Video Games and Passive Entertainment.

I have talked about anime before on this blog. With all of this time on your hands you probably have enough time to watch some anime with me. I already talked in length about one of my favorite shows Overlord so if you want my thoughts on that show go read my post with it in it. This post will have some minor spoilers so if you want to go in blind these are the shows that I will talk about witch would be Darling and the Franxx, Aldnoah.Zero, and Demon Lord Retry.

When I watched this show I was weirded out by the main premise of the show but I grew into it and now it is one of my favorite shows ever. This show opens with Parasite number 16 aka Hiro narrating about a Jian a bird only possessing one wing and unless it finds a partner it cannot fly. He then hears a noise and follows a trail of blood and finds a bird at a lake and he meets number 2 aka Zero Two. Now to pilot a Franxx one must have a partner of the opposite sex and synchronize with them. Hiro had been not able to synchronize with his old partner Naomi and was considered a failure as a pilot. He goes to send off his old partner as Parasites (witch are what pilots are called) are let go if they don’t serve Papa. Then as her transport is rolling off it is attacked by a klaxosaur and Hiro sees Strelitzia in its stampede mode and Zero Two throws out her old partner as he is dead and accepts Hiro as her partner aka “Darling”. They fight and Hiro passes out. That is a synopsis of the first episode so if you find Mechs and a teenage love story in the same show then check it out.

If you sense a familiarity between this show and the last you will find that I love Mechs. This show starts with one of the main characters Slaine Troyard teaching the princess of Mars or as the people who live on it call it Vers Princess Asseylum Vers Allusia. Then it cuts to are second main character Inaho Kaizuka in Japan as the princess’s goodwill visit is only three days away. You find out that Earth and Mars or Teara and Verse have rising tensions and the princess wants peace. You learn that in this world history was about the same up until Apollo 17 mission where a thing called a Hyper Gate was discovered on the moon and that is how humanity got to Mars. Also in 1999 Vers Empire declares war against United Earth because they want to be recognised as their own empire. As the fighting went on the moon’s Hyper gate was destroyed and the moon was shattered. This cut off the empires forces called Orbital Knights and they reside in their ships orbiting over Earth. This event would be called Heavens Fall. As Inaho is going to school you learn that it is now custom for high schoolers to go through basic military training. They are taught to pilot Kataphrakts witch are big mechs that are used to fight the Vers empire as they have an accent martin tech called aldnoah witch let them make their own Kataphrakts that run on Aldnoah. The tensions are risson when the princess is assassinated on Earth. War starts automatically and the Orbital Knights start attacking. Watch the show from there to find out more.

This show is more like Overlord that the other two, but I love this show and I want to talk about it. This show start as the main character Akira Oono is shutting down his MMORPG called Infinity Game and he is summoned into a world as his character the Demon Lord Hakuto Kunai. He is come upon by a young girl called Aku running from the demon king Greol in witch he dispatches with ease. The girl was a sacrifice for Greol and Hakuto cleans her up and he asks her to take him to a wishing shrine where he finds out that a wish summoned him to this world. He asks Aku if there is a capital where he can go and Aku asks if she can come with him as she has no home to go to anymore. That is where Hakuto’s adventure starts.

These three shows might not get you through quarantine, but they are my recommendations if you have time to kill between Tiger King and your work. So go have fun and watch to your harts content.

I have had a whole lot of time during this time of quarantine and I have been getting back into the Fate/Extra series of games. How I got into the Fate/ series is that one day I was scrolling through Netflix and I came across a show that was called Fate/Extra Last Encore and I love the show. I googled the name and found out that it was part of a game series that is a sub series of the Fate franchise. Fate is a big japanese property that has multiple mediums that include, video games, manga, light novels, and anime. There are other Fate/ series like Fate/Zero, Fate/Grand Order, and Fate/Apocrypha. I will be focusing on the Fate/Extra branch of this series and talk about the games and the anime that I have watched.

This is the game that started this line of Fate. Fate/Extra is a JRPG Dungeon Crawler that uses a system of combat where your enemy has a pattern of 3 choices and you need to pick which one is the opposite of that one. It is about the third Holy Grail War in which the winner get their wish granted. This game is definitely not for everyone as the gameplay can be boring at times. The game story revolves around you as the Master facing off with other Masters and Servants. Now I am going to boil down what these two things are so don’t take this as a in-depth explanation of Masters and Servants. A Master is a human who has uploaded there consciousness to the SE.RA.PH witch is a computer system on the moon. A Servant is a reincarnation of a major historical figures or mythological figures. Servants are not just programs though they are real people with a consciousness and thoughts of their own. The player has three choices of servants at the beginning, Saber, Archer, and Caster (I will talk about the other two later). I picked Saber because she was the one that I knew from the show. You go through the game knowing your servant as Saber until she you have her trust to give you her true name. Names for servants are very powerful because it unlocks their Noble Phantasm witch is their ultimate move. Saber is Nero Claudius the emperor of Rome. By the end of the game’s squeal you win the third holy grail war and get your wish witch leads into the talk about Fate/Extra: Last Encore.

Fate/Extra: Last Encore is not the cannon? ending to Fate/Extra (this series is confusing with its lore so please be understanding of me being confused). This show follows the exploits of Nero and her new master HAKUNO Kishinami the male form of the playable character of Fate/Extra because the old master Hakuno Kishinami the female version of the character died. Because of her death and multiple other Master’s death to this certan Master created HAKUNO. I recommend this show and that is all I will go into it so that you watch it.

One fun fact I love about this game is that they had to change the ending of Fate/Extra CCC so that they can make this game. I just got this game so I have not finished it but I am going to because I accidently played the sequel first. Now the premise of the game is that Caster and Saber are fighting over the lands of SE.RA.PH and the Master. The funny part of this is that this insinuates that both were present with the main character of Fate/Extra but in the game you can only pick one servant. You as the main character are the last master in the SE.RA.PH and you after getting your wish from the Moon Cell, you are split into three with your mind, your soul, and your body . Your mind is with Saber aka Nero, your soul is with Caster aka Tamamo No Mae, and your body is imprisoned by Altera, aka Attila the Hun . Now this is how far I know for this game but I have finished its sequel Fate/Extella Link.

This game picks up after the campaign of the first game with the main character walking Rome which is Nero’s domain. You are attacked by SE.RA.PH’s attack programs and you try and call upon one of the two main servants that are the main characters from the last game, but you are met with a new face. A male Saber class Servant that give you his True Name right on the spot. His name is Charlemagne. You fight with him and take him back to the main room in Rome where he tells the group of Servants that they are in danger and need to help him to save SE.RA.PH. A big bad is trying to brainwash the other servants and purge the system of everyone but Servants. I don’t want to spoil the game more so I will stop there with the story. Fate/Extella and Link gameplay wise are like the Dynasty Warriors series and are light JRPGs too. I enjoy both and there are differences between the two games too. I recommend playing and watching the media I have told you about in the order that I have introduced them to you. I didn’t go over the direct sequel for Fate/Extra, Fate/Extra CCC so play that where you want to.

Fate is a gigantic series and I think that you can find media that you would like under the banner. Look hard and find something you enjoy. I just wanted to give you my favorite Fate encarnacion. I love the Fate/Extra line and the story and the characters. What is your Fate to love. Only you can find that out on your own. Find your Fate and get into this great and gigantic series. Good luck out there Master!

Fortnight is a very popular game at the moment and makes its publisher, Epic Games, a lot of money. It uses a system of montazation it calls a “battle pass”. It is something you can buy with your in game currency (that you can also buy with real money) and play the game to rank up. It sounds not that bad once you hear it, but I think that it is bad for the player. It has also be wiggling its way into other AAA games and I think that it should stop. Why is the this monetization system getting into game so fast. One answer I can give is… money. Money is what drives this popularization and I will explain the ways it has also impacted my favorite game.

The image above is from the last DLC for one of what use to be one of my favorite game to come back too, Destiny 2. Destiny 2 is the sequel to Destiny and it is a FPS MMORPG. I was an avid player of Destiny 2 for about a year until Shadowkeep dropped and I did everything to do for it. Destiny 2 switched to a “battle pass” season system for the future. This has changed a story driven experce to a gameplay grind for a “special” sub-name under your screen name. It makes the game a daily grind-fest that some people who don’t have either the time or the drive to grind out the pass. It costs about $20 in in game currency to get the pass and you only have about three months to finishes the pass. Then at about 2 weeks until the the pass ends, you can buy the levels by paying real money. This really infuriates me to an unbelievable extent.

I have spent over $100 on Destiny 2 now because I have payed for all of the DLCs and the passes so far. I love the Forsaken and Shadowkeep DLCs for the story they tell and the interesting plot in my opinion. I have played though all of the DLCs content that I can and have enjoyed most of my experiences. I also think the game was flawed before this whole thing has happened. I love the game and take its flaws with stride, but this whole battle pass system has lost my interest because it doesn’t add anything new. Now the first two seasons had some story as the season of the Undying had shadowkeep come with it and season of Dawning had the reintroduction of Saint 14 which is a popular character of the original Destiny. This new season however, adds almost nothing new to the game.

The new season is called season of the Worthy. It starts with something that I think would be better experience that the entire seasons gameplay. Once you open Destiny 2 you will get a cutscene with Zavala and Ana Bray infiltrating the Almighty, the ship of the cabal empire that they are going to crash into earth. Now the season is about the Guardians stopping the almighty by getting Rasputent (a computer built by Ana Bray’s father to save humanity from danger) to shoot it down. Now I personally think that it would’ve been better if we were told that we would infiltrate the Almighty to stop it and not have a grind fest of season where the main focus is harder lost sectors. They could of also made a better concept because this has no urgency. There is no consequences if the guardians fail to do anything. They would not destroy the city and the world because it would devalue the entire story mode where we rebuild the last city. This season only reminds me of this meme:

SEASON OF THE BASKETBALL from DestinyMemes

I know that this post was manly me ranting about Destiny 2 but that game is the one that the battle pass has ruined for me personally. I know that there are other games that also suffer from publishers putting this crappy monetary system into the games. I just want to explain my frustration with this business model specifically in this one game. I know why it is there but it still frustrates me. So remember, to keep your eyes up Guardian.

Fire Emblem you might know from all the characters that is has in super smash bros, or you may also be a fan of the series. Anyway, I believe that Fire Emblem is one of if not the best JRPGs series of all time. With the recent release of the DLC for Fire Emblem: Three Houses I have gotten re-invigorated with the series and I want to talk about it. Specifically, Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade and Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

I want to preface this first, I have not finished the game. I only plan on talking about the first section of the game. I want to talk about the history of the game, Fire Emblem was a game series in Japan for a time before it was localised for America. The game’s full title is Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, but in America it is just known as Fire Emblem. The game is canonically the seventh game in the series. The game is split into Four parts parts, Lyn’s tale, Eliwood/Hector’s tale, To the Shrine of Seals, and the Conclusion. before I get into Lyn’s tale (my favorite part) I want to explain why I got into the Fire Emblem series. I was getting into GBA emulation because physical copies are majorly expensive. I was looking for games to get when I stumbled on Fire Emblem and I downloaded it. I started playing and I was enamored by the first part. After this part there will be spoilers so be warned. You start as a traveling strategist looking for work when you get knocked out and a recently orphaned girl named Lyndis aka Lyn. She helps you and then you get attacked by bandits. She tells you that she will take care of it but then you tell her that you are a strategist and she asks for your help. You start traveling together and meet a whole bunch of people on the way. You find out that Lyn is the granddaughter of the marquess of Caelin. They also find out that the marquess is getting poisoned by his brother and Lyn’s granduncle Lundgren. Your goal in the first part is to get Lyn to her grandfather. The story is not as good as the rest of the game but I love the first part all the same.

The start of the game is just an elongated tutorial but the characters are my favorite by far. Lyn is my favorite character in the whole Fire Emblem series. She is caring and loving for all of her friends, but can be feisty when her beliefs come into question. The game gets you to know and love all of the characters. When she comes up in the rest of the story I got excited to see her again. That is why I love that part and love the next game I have in the series.

I got Three Houses about half a year ago but the DLC for the game just came out and I bought it so I am back in the game now. Let me preface this too, I have not finished my first playthrough of Three Houses yet. I still want to talk about my experience with the game. There will be spoilers for Three Houses so be warned again. You as the player start as a mercenary who is working with Jeralt and having a dream of a great war between Seiros and Nemesis. Then you are woken up by an attack by bandits (familiar much) that are attacking three school students. You save them and then figure out that they are enrolled at the Officers Academy. Their names are Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude and they are all children of the leaders of their respective countries. They ask you what country you would join, the Empire, the Kingdom, or the Alliance. Then you are ordered to go back to the with the students to their school because you find out that Jeralt was a Knight of Serios. You are told by the high priestess that you will become a professor at the school and you will need to pick a house to represent. You go around meeting all the student and they expect you to be enrolling as a student but no you are a professor to their surprise. You go around teaching the students while other stuff happens. You grow bonds with your students and you teach them to protect themselves. You go though the game with a voice inside you named Sothis and you find out that she is the goddess herself and meld with her for a gigantic battle. Then there is a 5 year timeskip and you fight a war dependent on what house you pick. The characters are well rounded and likable and that is what I like in a game

The two things both games have in common are characters that I love. The gameplay is great and I love the strategy but the writing makes the characters likable and like real people. This is the best type of writing in my opinion and anyone who agrees with me should try the Fire Emblem games. Let me leave you with my favorite line from Byleth the player characters in Three Houses, “Let me give you something to believe in!”

My favorite game ever is Fallout: New Vegas. I love the open world and the story telling of the game, but why is it the stand out total of all 3D Fallout games? Fallout 3 had a pretty good reaction, and Fallout 4 was received well, but has the worst received story in the Fallout Franchise. New Vegas however is still widely and critically acclaimed. This story has its ups and downs and I want to try and explain why.

Fallout: New Vegas is the story about an unfortunate courier that gets shot in the head and survives. They want to hunt down the man who shot them and get their revenge. How is this the most interesting story in the Fallout franchise? We have to go into the story a lot so this is your spoiler warning now. After Victor digs you up from your shallow grave and Doc Mitchell patches you up, you are off into the world with one task: find whoever shot you and get your revenge. Right out of the gate you are hit with a mess you can clean up or make bigger. A gang of prisoners who took over the prison they were held are threatening the town that helped you. You have a choice of helping the good people of Goodsprings or help Joe Cobb and the Powder Gangers take over the small town. This is one of may choses you can have by playing the game.

When you finally get Benny and take your revenge your next main quest is to resolve the ordeal of the Hoover Dam. The New California Republic and Caesar’s Legion fought over the Hoover Dam 5 years before and the NCR took control over the dam. New Vegas run by Mr. House has a agreement with the NCR to have some of the power roughted to New Vegas. The tensions between the NCR and Caesar’s Legion are rising even more and the NCR is running thin in the Mojave. You have three factions that are looking for help. The corrupt and inefficient NCR, the slave trading Caesar’s Legion, or the autocrat Mr. House and his army of robots. Then when you dispose of Benny you will meet Yes Man and he is a reprogramed securitron who always have to say yes to any request. He has the tech and knowledge to make you, the courier, the ruler per say of New Vegas. Each option has its strengths and weaknesses and make you question if you picked the right choice for the people of the Mojave. This game gives you the choices and consequences and makes you decide which is better in your opinion. The choices you are presented with make for an engaging and entertaining story.

The DLC for New Vegas are intertwined with the main story and in my opinion are an essential part of the game. Assied from Gun Runners’ Arsenal and Courier’s Stash all of the DLC contain a story that links all of them and then also have their own contained stories too. In Primm you run across Johnson Nash an employee for the courier company you worked for before getting shot in the head. He tells you that you were carrying a weird package that the courier before you insisted that you take the package. The exact quote from him is, “Yeah, got this look when he saw you next down on the Courier list. His expression turned right around, asked me if your name was for real. I said, sure as lack of rain, you were still kicking. Then he turned down the job, just like that. I asked if he was sure, it was good money. No, let “Courier Six” carry the package, that’s what he said – like the Mojave’d sort you out or something. Then he just up and walked out” That is the first time you are meat with the idea of a person who knows who you are and where you come from. You will start all of the DLCs and you will come across another courier who has already been to the places you adventure to. In Old World Blues you come across his camps and some of his holotapes. In Dead Money you meet someone who talked to him. At the end of every DLC you are brought with a slideshow to show where all of the characters are in there life. All of the main characters are said to forget you until they hear about the war of the two couriers which is the events of Lonesome Road. Where you and Ulysses meet for the first time. The way the developers integrated the stories of all of the DLCs is fantastic and I love the ideas of it.

I love Fallout: New Vegas with all of my heart and I would want anyone at all interested in RPGs to play it. The way it weaves stories into some complicated design is one of the main attractions and will be forever. And remember, Truth is, the game was rigged from the start.

As an avid anime fan, I will always question if I should watch a show in dub or sub. In the anime community (for lack of a better term) there is always a divide in the shows fandom if the dub or sub is better. When I talk about the dub or the sub that means when a show is either re-recorded with english voice actors or watched in japanese with subtitles. There are the die-hards who are a vocal minority who will always tell you that the sub is better, because it is the closest to what you would experience if you were fluent in japanese. Then there are people like me who would rather watch the show in our native language. I don’t care what you want to do, but this is my two cents on this subject.

I want to get this out of the way first. The one and major problem that I have with dubs in general is that there are so little voice actors for the rolls. I cannot count how many times I would listen to a show and find out that one of the most memorable voices in the show is someone who I can only associated with the first roll that I have listened to them in. Best example that I can think of is one that you will not get if you haven’t seen the shows, but one of the minor villains in Black Clover is voiced by the actor that played the main character in Overlord. When you hear a certain voice as an eight foot tall skeleton man who can end anyone’s life in a blink of an eye be turned into a low rank magic caster in a terrorist group can be really jaring. This is the one issue that I can think of that is not just a bad dub in one show.

With the mention of Black Clover in the last paragraph I think it best to start with this show first. Black Clover is a fantasy show in which magic is everything, and the main character Asta is born without the use of magic. He wants to become the wizard king in which he needs to join the magic knights. He gains a 5 leaf clover grimoire and sets off to become the wizard king. Now there is one thing that I find interesting from the sub to the dub. To preface, I watch the dub while my friend is watching the sub and that is how I get my info for this curiosity. Also I will get into some minor spoilers for Black Clover so be warned. Now when Asta get into the Black Bulls, a magic knight squad that is full of outsiders and misfits, he is called by different names by different people. As in the sub he is called “Bakasta” witch translated to english means “Stupidsta” and that doesn’t really roll off the tongue very well. Now they got a little creative in the dub as they changed the nickname to “Dorksta” witch in my opinion sounds a lot better than Stupidsta.

This is one of the best shows in my opinion to bring up in a discussion between subs and dubs because I think the show’s characters change a little bit. My Hero Academia (I will use My Hero for short) is a show about Deku a boy born without a quirk in a quirk filled world. Quirks are basically super powers that most people have and some are picked to become hero. Deku wants to be the number one hero like his personal hero All-Might. Now I will go into minor spoilers in this too so be warned again. Deku in the English is more determined in his goal and he doesn’t think it to be a pipe dream. The best of this I think is that when he gets his hero name “Deku”. In the sub the reason that Deku takes something that was a name that his bully gave him was because his friend Ochaco Uraraka says it sounds like the japanese word for “do your best” while in the english that doesn’t happen. He takes it because Uraraka likes the sound of it. Now that changes how the name is taken. In japanese he changed the meaning of the insult of Katsuki Bakugo to something he likes it to mean, while in english he takes the name with the baggage and turns it into something he is proud of.

Here are the videos that I drew inspiration from by Explanation Point.

I still think that the choice to watch the dub or the sub is completely personal thing to decide. The point of this post was to show that the changes in the show can affect something as little as a name to a big as a whole character. Now make the choice for yourself and go Plus-Ultra!!

Anime is a rising trend of the west and this is showing more and more. The introduction of anime in the west with arguably the most popular show in the west being Dragon Ball Z. Now this give the showdown of east vs west storytelling. What it comes down to is that the storytelling is so much different to the east then the west. Topics that come up in anime will never come up in western media. Also let me be frank when I say east, I mean mostly Japanese.

For the east I will use my personal favorite anime, Overlord. This show is about a gamer who is forced out of MMO after the server shuts down, he wakes up to find himself in a different world where non-player characters can eat, sleep, talk, and have personally. He finds that his whole mindset is changed as he is changed from alive to undead. He has become the true overlord. This is a story that would of never been told as from the western perspective or not as unique as I think this did. Now this is a very suggestive subject but this bears discussing. Now I think that anime will make different stories work because they are accepted in the east. The eastern stories in my opinion are more non-conventional as in the stories are more unique in the premise of the story. As in my example of a story the main character is nigh untouchable unless provoked by people that are loyal to him. I also think that there is another show that will also support my theory.

This show is the definition of out there. This show revolves around the premise of the teacher is a bioengineered weapon that has destroyed 75% of the moon, and plans to destroy the earth in March, but he wants to teach before he does that so the world governments tell him that he can. Then they give him a class that is a bunch of regrets and give the class one goal, assassinate the teacher. Now as the show goes on the teacher shows that he is a great educator and a great guy in general. So the show is about how the students try and kill the teacher and how they grow from him. Now if this is the most interesting premise to me. This is what I am talking about with better storytelling. When you take a premise like this and make a good show out of it that is good storytelling. The storytelling has comedy, drama, and fourth wall breaking while having an underlying uplifting message of never give up and always play to your strengths and help your weaknesses. This is the kind of creativity comes from the east. When you have most outlandish stories with good writing a storytelling you have a winner in tv in my opinion.

The two shows that I have given are one of many of the un-orthodox stories that the east. This is the why I think that they are better storytellers. They come up with the most interesting and intriguing stories that will be hard to make interesting. This is why I think the east is more creative then the west.

I watch more animated shows than live action ones now, and there is a reason to why I think that animation can get more across than an actor. I will use Avatar: The Last Airbender to show you my point. I use this because as most people know there is a live action adaptation of the beloved show and it was not handed well. Let me be clear, this is not a post about how horribly the movie was as an adaptation. This will be a look at why I think as a style how animations can portray more than live actors.

This movie is an abomination as a movie and as an adaptation but like I said that is not what this is about. This film was M. Night Shyamalan’s take at the beloved franchise. Now I think that this movie get all the hate it deserves. This takes the whole first season of the show and condenses it into one movie. This movie’s first mistake is that it was not animated. If it was, I think that a lot of the problems would of been solved on their own.

Now what I mean is that the animated style suited the story. One of the main problems with the movie is that it was striped of emotion that the show once carred. The actors showed little to no enthusiasm and one charchcer was striped of his humer entierly. This would of been fixed with animation in my opinion. Animation has more emotion inherently because looking at a emotionless drawing is as interesting as looking at a white screen. This makes animators put more emotion in their characters because of the limitation of the characters have to be interesting. Animation can also exaggerate the emotion of the characters. In Avatar, Aang can be verr over animated and that gave him more character because he is a kid trying to live through his childhood. This gives him more reasons to empathise with him. This makes him better character in my eyes.

There is also one more thing I think that animations can do better than an live action performance and that is special effects. Now another criticism that the live action movie of Avatar is the bending of elements. Bending is what Avatar is known for and it was horrible. The special effects toned down the bending and even changed some to fit the special effects. Specifically the earth bending was toned down significantly. Now animation can do more with SFX because since it can fully incorporate with the art of the show and make it seamless. This makes the SFX more in tune with the show rather than when the having to tone them down to fit in real life setting. The blending of SFX and setting can make or break action in my book.

Now there are more things that I could talk about with the difference between live action vs animated but these reasons are the two biggest that I also think that are the biggest reasons why. This is why I think animated is better than live action.