Featuring: Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Folks! We are down Ash and Ammo but carry on with what we originally thought would be a short show. The curse of saying that means that without a doubt we end up going over. We start off talking about Tam’s new toy, the PlayDate Console, and some of the interesting design choices it presents. From there Bel talks about the Diablo 4 reveal trailer and the weak reception. This leads to a larger discussion about issues with Blizzard as a whole and how everything somewhat feels like short-sighted decision-making. Bel and Tam talk about Trinity Fusion a game that feels like a halfway point between Deadcells and Hades that Bel stumbled upon through Mastodon. We dive into a large topic about how games end up shackled by specific traditions and how they have limited various designs. Then we get into a few shorter topics like Gamepad.Club is a lovely community if you are looking for a place to land on Mastodon. Then we all give you a plea to watch Nimona. We are likely going to talk about that movie in a full spoiler sense next week.
Featuring: Ammosart, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Folks! This week we are down an Ash but have the triumphant return of Kodra from Origins. This week we talk about the self-DDoS of Twitter and Kodra chimes in on the return of P-Speed to a new Super Mario Game. From there we talk a bit about the newly announced Guild Wars 2 expansion Secrets of the Obscure. Kodra gives us a bit of a run down on his experiences at Origins and how he has finally played in the most ubiquitous LARP Vampire the Masquerade. We are somewhat incredulous as for several of us… that is the ONLY LARP we have ever participated in. Grace gets bit by the Honkai Star Rail bug finally and talks a bit about their experiences. Nimona is out and we talk a bit about the steps it took to get to this point as well as a bit about the mixed bag that is The Little Mermaid live-action film. Finally, we wrap things up with a quick topic about Microprose actually still existing in some form and gobbling up former properties like getting back the license to Falcon.
Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Folks! We started with what I thought was a pretty short show, but as we continued on… new topics kept showing up in the dock. We start off with some talk about the most recent Nintendo Direct, then fade into some initial impressions of Final Fantasy XVI. Bel talks about a problem with the Diablo VI community where new players not already engaged with ARPG communities are deeply confused by how seasons work. From there we talk a bit about the ever-increasing prize bounty around the MTG One Ring. Tam shares some of his experiences with the new Warhammer 40k 10th Edition and the shocking return of Lion El’Jonson. Thalen talks a bit about the new Fallout 76 season and we dive into a discussion about Steam Next Fest and how large it has become. Bel revisits the topic of Last Epoch and Spriggan builds since Grace is back this week, and they share some of their thoughts about Genshin Impact.
So yesterday my good friend Ammo decided to take up residence on Gamepad.Club with so many of us that have moved there. This is particularly relevant to me because I have so many different profiles spread throughout so many different platforms that I have given her credit for the Avatar that I use most often. The thing is over the course of the last decade, Ammo has crafted for me a plethora of hand-drawn versions of “Belghast” from different games. There are so many of these that we have finally come to the point where I am retiring one. Above is the “Destiny Bel” that she crafted in 2017, prior to the launch of the game officially. It was assembled out of a set of armor that was at my time the favorite from what was available in the alpha and beta tests. Given that I mostly played a Bubble Titan in Destiny 1… I assumed that I would spend all of my time playing the sexy new Captain-America-style shield-throwing Void Titan. So I had her create a version of that with a simulacrum of my head… charging in motion.
Issue number one… I never spent any significant amount of time playing Void Titan. Mostly I never really liked the way the grenade options felt and the super was really bad for burn phases. Given that I never really did much in the way of proper group play in Destiny 2 apart from being carried through exactly one raid… I didn’t have much reason to run Void for Weapons of Light. Sunbreaker had both my favorite grenade and favorite super… so I largely spent most of my time playing that subclass. Then there was also the problem that after they started sunsetting content… and removing some of my favorite places from the game… I stopped playing Destiny altogether. It has felt weird to me that the character occupied such a prominent place in my blog banner, while I had zero plans to return to Destiny at any point in the future. Now watch that actually TALKING about it… will manifest a desire to start playing it again.
The thing is… I really still liked the motion of that character and how it rounded out the end of my string of characters. So it got me thinking about what I could use to replace it. For anyone who has not been around for all of the commissions, what you see in my masthead is my Lalafell from Final Fantasy XIV, my Hunter from Monster Hunter, and more importantly my Palico that is based on Kenzie… a cat that is sadly no longer with us but will always remain close to my heart. Then you have a version of my character from New World wearing the level 40-ish set of faction armor followed by my Necromancer in Reaper form from Guild Wars 2. Next up you have the only commission that I did not make… a version of my World of Warcraft warrior meets Twitter persona that my friend Tam Commissioned, with my PSO2 RaCAST looming behind. Lastly, before you get to Destiny, you have my Elder Scroll Online Imperial character wearing the armor set I almost always have on transmog. Then there are moogles sprinkled in throughout who stole my stuff.
It was around this time that I realized two things. Firstly… none of the characters that Ammo has drawn represent my constant addition to the ARPG genre. That part of my love for games is completely missing from my banner. Part of this is due to the fact that MOST ARPGs don’t exactly have a robust character creation system. A Diablo III Barbarian for example… looks like an old man with a diaper or a young woman with a diaper, and not much past that. Path of Exile while not giving you any control over your character model, does offer a bunch of cosmetic options that allow you to decorate them how you like. In that game, I also have a “zoomy” character in the form of my Righteous Fire Juggernaut I have now played for the last two leagues as my main. I spend most of my time ignited and shield charging through packs of mobs, and quite honestly… I feel like I love that design so much that I will probably create a version of it in every league from this point forward.
So I did what I always do and gathered up a bunch of screenshots and thrust them in Ammo’s direction and said “Here make this!”. This was a weird case because so much of this appearance is tied to one specific microtransaction pack in Path of Exile. Thankfully there is still a video showing off this pack in detail that I was able to supply to her as well. As she always does… she takes my inane ramblings and turns them into something functional. Over the last few weeks, she has been supplying me with sketches and updates… but honestly, she was on the right track with this one from the start. The only regret I have is that the scaled-down version that now resides as part of the masthead of the website does not necessarily do justice to all of the detail she put into this one.
So last night officially, I replaced “Destiny Bel” with “RF Bel” in the masthead. I think the placement works nicely. The only thing I wish I had now were some more small characters like the Moogles to patch over the transition of the left foot. At some point, I know for certain that I want her to draw me a Choya Pinata on a similar scale to the Moogles and maybe a Quaggan… but more specifically the one with a Turtle Shell for a hat. Huge thanks to Ammo for continuing to translate my madness into picture form. I think what I dig so much is that while there are stylistic differences throughout the years, they all feel like they belong together because they were all crafted by the same person. While I absolutely love my new Molten Lad, I do sorta think that the best of these will always be Necro Bel from GW2. It is the feathers that really go above and beyond with that one. I absolutely have the best-looking blog on the internet that very few people actually care about.
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