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so i got both hades (the first one) and FF12 on the switch! long overdue for new games, especially with Nier:A being a bust. (Almost got star wars: republic commando and battlefront as well but want to finish the first two first lol). think i'm gonna tackle FF12 first. high hopes for this one, for a number of reasons:

- hot armored old gilf minor villain i'm 100% going to catcall when we fight him. incidentally, he - and this gifset- is the reason i'm starting the game lol.

- originally released in 2006. to me, peak Gaming™ was from 2003-2013 (gamecube/ps2/ps3 era). just enough polygons to be able to show whatever the devs wanted, but not too many to distract the player visually, and also very lean storytelling wise.... no fucking fluff with badly implemented online play / sidequests / open worlds / etc. e3 was still cool to watch and game hype legitimately enjoyable (man i remember watching the wii's e3 announcement T_T).

- all of the (spoiler free) mentions have been 'don't think of who you play as the main character, the story just happens to them' (AWESOME, i'm sick of protagonist-centric games). they've also said it's the FF that's most focused on nations and politics, which also - groovy, sounds like the radiant dawn of FF's. didn't need to sell me on this game any more. :D

- there's a sky pirate that some of my favorite creators love to ship with a super bisexual looking rabbit lady??? they're both pretty.

starting after work sometime this week ~

edit, now i'm curious how this will rank on my list of FF's played....

( short thoughts on the (not so final) fantasies )

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link roundup, STEAM edition?

- there's a digital art museum online called Obelisk. technically it's a series of articles but the presentation of Art History (that can be organized by artists/themes/timelines/movements) is so well done it feels intuitively like walking through an art museum intellectually. there's enough images and history you can click around for hours. it is really hard to show an emotionally truthful snapshot of a ton of artists in a constrained environment, but it does it somehow?

- google also has something similar called google arts & culture that's just as much fun to click on; i'm on a random photo-journalist article about hong kong's neon lights. grudgingly giving google this one lol

- got completely suckered into reading this iranian gamedev/art director's medium articles after stumbling on some of his works on sketchfab ... he has some really well written articles like this intro to color theory post which is genuinely a college-level course posted for free, his reading list of 2023, and proceedurally generated chinese landscapes in blender that look like a spitting image of Okami's art direction. some of the posts can get really technical really quickly if you're not somewhat into 3D rendering, but his articles were surprisingly approachable.

- didn't think those silly uquizes could get close to an actual art form, but what color is your lightsaber is so deceptively well written that it feels like a really good twine/multiple choice adventure game. genuinely gave me chills in the "story" / sensory cocktail approach, and didn't feel fandom-y... if you like the more abstractly evocative KOTOR2 / star wars legends stuff, you'll like this (I got violet).

- interesting interview of Taaki, who's a type of old school hacker / cyberpunk-y figure that feels like an endangered species today. in addition to open source favorites, he has a few interesting paragraphs of talking about how he went more of your "college styled anarchist" to recognizing the nuances of bureaucracy/hierarchy in power especially after being in a warzone for a few years. fair warning it can get a little dude-bro-y at times but i thought it was fun.

- i've had 'a survival guide for Unix' in my bookmarks tabs forever; another old school hacker's guide on linux-y systems. kind of wish i had this in advance of getting my first linux as it's that perfect mix of simple for a true beginner but gets advanced quickly enough. so many guides have tons of level of theoretical cruft or assume way too much of a beginner but this mix was fun.

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you know every now and then i kind of want to make a medium (30-ish?) paged groady comic story about regeneration as body horror, tie in a lot of Survivor Feelings i feel like aren't accurately captured unless they're abstract pictures a la rothko, inhuman mercenary plus her decidedly more human mercenary partner

because nobody, and i mean nobody (except like three people) would be able to guess it's origins

aka my fucking fire emblem self insert nested-doll-AU lmao

(idk maybe after the gunter doujin + Tellius Year next year?)