monster hunter world
AggroChat #251 – Release the Melon-Snake
Featuring: Â Ammo, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
After a week off you can effectively blame Belghast for filling the Trello full of partial topics, and the rest of the show for not replacing them with something meaningful.  As a result we have a fairly fragmented show. In importance news however Ammo is joining the team permanently. The most important thing discussed however is the fact that Tam gave us a new term…  that of the noble Melon-Snake.
Here is a quick rundown of the varied topics discussed: Â Final Fantasy 7 Remake Trailer, Xur coming to Fallout 76, Monster Hunter World Iceborne and Bloodstained Ritual of the Night release dates, Unplayable Magic Decks, The madness of Arcade emulation, The sad state of Anthem.
Topics Discussed:
- Neph’s Wedding
- Final Fantasy 7 Remake Trailer
- Bloodstained Ritual of the Night
- Fallout 76 Purveyor NPC
- Monster Hunter World Iceborne
- Capcom Hates PC Gamers
- Magic the Gathering Arena
- Kodra has Teferi Problems
- Madness and Arcade Emulation
- The joys of finding full mamesets
- Triggering a bandwidth usage warning
- Abandoning GameEx Evolution
- Moving to RetroArch
- TitanQuest Releasing Expansions 13 Years after its launch
- Anthem Removing Cosmetic Caches
- Spaghetti Code Problems
- Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers
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Iceborne Frustration
Yesterday we were treated to the very awesome gameplay reveal trailer for Monster Hunter World: Iceborne which will serve as both a DLC to the base Monster Hunter World Game and a stand alone game that gives you all of the content contained in both. This is probably a really good call given that Capcom is used to releasing brand new full games anytime they update the Monster Hunter content, and it would have been sorta sad to start over from scratch were that the option. However for anyone who was not hooked the first time around it gives them an easy vehicle for catching up and getting everything. Monster Hunter is a franchise that became near and dear to my heart thanks to World and I have gone back and spent time playing the older titles since finally getting indoctrinated into the flow of the game.
Unfortunately this awesome trailer came with a heap of disappointment in the form of an announcement that while the game would be released on September 6th for console players… that there was no definite date for the second class citizens of the Monster Hunter universe… us PC players. This has been a constant point of frustration during my experience with Monster Hunter World in the fact that the PC release trailed the console release by some seven months. As a result every bit of post release content has been similarly delayed by several months on the PC making us the bastard children of Capcom… never quite having all of the nice things our console brethren had. It was my hope that when Iceborne released that all of this would be a bad memory. That finally a brand new DLC would set straight the records and allow us both to be up to date with the most current content. Instead I find out that Iceborne for Steam doesn’t have a release date but instead a very vague “Winter”… which is similar to the very vague “Spring” the wound up being August for the initial release of the game.
So now I am left with a decision of… do I give in and play the game on consoles initially and then later pick it up for my platform of choice… or do I miss out on all of the fun when it is fresh and bitterly wait to get our turn. I initially played Monster Hunter World on the PS4 but ultimately found the PC experience to be far superior for my specific brand of tastes. There is never going to be a point where I prefer a console over the PC… because console gaming just rarely fits my specific lifestyle. With PC gaming I can play upstairs or downstairs or even remote in via Parsec from my chrome book at work and have a reasonable gaming experience. With PS4 I am stuck to playing upstairs in my office as I generally do not have control of the television in the livingroom… or get to use the cludgy PS4 remote play app which lags constantly unlike my beloved Parsec. Essentially the console experience is never a comfortable one for me and it also forces me to go back to using a controller when I have gotten so comfortable with the keyboard and mouse gameplay.
I am super excited about this expansion but now… all of that excitement is tinged with a bitter aftertaste. For the initial release of Monster Hunter World I swallowed the frustration of the PC release happening so late and chocked it up to this team not being used to releasing on that platform. However it feels inexcusable for that same thing to keep happening as we enter the long tailed life of this product. There is no reason why they should be leaving one of their platforms out of the release… especially when they are still releasing on Xbox which had the smallest user base and absolutely no Japanese presence. In the same announcement they credit their financial success in part to the PC release and it expanding their users… but now they are completely leaving them out of the fun. This feels really bad Capcom.
Part of me knows I will not have the resolve to keep from playing it when it launches on console, in part because very few of my friends followed me when I made the leap to PC. My daydream would be for them to offer interoperability between the console and PC players… but it is still sad that it is a dream that will never happen. I was deeply looking forward to this release, but the entire time I kept thinking in the back of my head “please don’t fuck me Capcom”… and unfortunately they did. I am saddened by the news greatly, but… it still really is an awesome trailer.
Monster Hunter Belghast and Kenzie
This morning we are going to mostly talk about this amazing comissions that I just got back from my good friend Ammo. For the uninitiated she effectively is the unofficial artist of this blog, and what I mean by that is if given the chance I spend a lot of time paying her to do artwork for me of my various versions of “Belghast”. For reference here are some of the other “Belghasts” she has done for me in the past.
- Seventh Anniversary Collage featuring WoW, TSW, Destiny, Rift, ESO and FFXIV Belghast avatars.
- Commission Tam did featuring various folks from the AggroChat extended community that keeps growing over time.
- Avatar she created for me of my Destiny Guardian with my actual Real World Head on it.
- Lalfell Warrior Belghast from Final Fantasy XIV that is in the site’s masthead.
- Destiny 2 Shield Charge Belghast also in the Masthead.
- Assorted AggroChat portraits making up that site’s Masthead.
- Moogle’s that she did for me, that I never wound up doing anything with and should really share with the Moogle’s Pom community as a whole.
- Elder Scrolls Online Bel…Â as the look has changed significantly since that first Seventh Anniversary Collage.
Basically… she has drawn a lot of my characters over the years and I knew at some point I wanted her to do a version of the character that I mostly run around as in Monster Hunter World. Basically I operate in two modes with Ammo… either I give her months of lead time… or I beg her to rush something out the door. She has been super gracious in both cases, but the MHW Bel was something I had wanted for awhile but our schedules finally lined up to where we could give enough attention to both at the same time. I prepared several gigs worth of reference photos of both my character and my trusty Palico Kenzie… which is named after my very attention hogging middle cat.
I technically have an art degree but I just never really sketch anything these days. However occasionally I am able to sketch something together quickly that denotes the sort of feeling I had in mind for the piece. I did this with the Elder Scrolls Online commission as well and in both cases it worked out perfectly. However the posing with the Monster Hunter World piece is phenomenal and perfectly illustrated what I had in my minds eye. For reference the above screenshot is one of the ones I sent over to Ammo to work from. She nailed the feel of Extermination’s Edge the Rarity 8 Nergigante Longsword that I spend most of my time wielding. Additionally she got the feel of my usual outfit which involves a Dober Chest, Teostra Arms, the Eyepatch and a bunch of other gear obscured by the Samurai cosmetic waist and legs. This is more or less my signature look unless I am going for a specific set designed for a specific encounter.
One of the best parts about this commission is that it allowed me to correct something that I simply could not do within Monster Hunter World. This is Kenzie, who as you can see is an adorable butt and also a tortoise shell calico or “tortie” for short. The Palico creation system is just not complicated enough to do that sort of a design, so as a result I am stuck with a weird version of a dark calico to try and do my best to represent her in game. Ammo was of course not constrained by those limitations and when she asked me for reference photos for Palico Kenzie… I sent her a bunch of my girl here instead. I think she nailed the feel of Kenzie’s orange nose blaze perfectly.
Ultimately I have plans for this image that won’t quite come to fruition until a little closer to the actual anniversary of the blog which occurs April 17th. I am not exactly sure when it will happen, mostly whenever I get time to mess around with things. I feel like it is time for this blog to have a bit of a face lift so in theory one weekend there will be a rapid sequence of changes one day. Firstly I wanted to make today’s post to really dive into how the commission process has worked for me personally in the past, and how Ammo and I tend to coordinate on the various artwork that adorns my corner of the world. I also want to do a shameless plug given that she does such an amazing job and has done artwork for so many people that I know. She did an amazing holiday card that Chestnut sent out this year… that I don’t think I have actually seen a digital copy of that I can share here. Essentially… she does great work and you should totally use her skills for your artwork needs.
Here is a Giant Dump of How to See Ammo’s Amazing Artwork and Even Purchase Some of It!
- Ammosart.com
- General Tumblr Blog
- Art Only Tumblr Blog
- YouTube
- Society 6
- Red Bubble
- Tee Public – Has the 7th Anniversary Aggronaut Shirt!
- Ko-Fi
I know she keeps pretty busy with commissions so you would have to check with her directly to see if she has any bandwidth. On the 7th Anniversary Aggronaut shirt I didn’t want any cash from that, but did want one for my own personal use so I asked her to throw it up on one of her storefronts. Just to make sure this is out there… we have no financial relationship at all other than the fact that I spend money getting her to make cool artwork for me. I am just one of those people that will rabidly promote the things that I am into… and Ammo is the best. There are a lot of artists in what I would call the “Warcraft” style, and they are all quality without a doubt… but Ammo being roughly my age comes from a different genre… namely Comic Books and as a result I love the more comic style she has developed over the years.