I think what’s interesting about the Fromsoft RPGs is that even those that aren’t in the same franchise are still essentially sequels to eachother.
Dark Souls is obviously a spiritual successor to Demon’s Souls, and Elden Ring is a Dark Souls sequel in all but name, but even Bloodborne and Sekiro “feel” like important steps in Fromsoft’s design journey. Every time Fromsoft does a standalone, they take what they learned back into their main Souls franchise. The design elements from Bloodborne made Dark Souls 3 a lot more fastpaced than the first two, and the movement and open ended exploration in Elden Ring feels very Sekiro to me.
It’s fun when you can trace a studio’s path like this.
To continue on to this, this didn’t start with the souls games. Demon Souls took steps from Armored Core, such as equipment capacity, management, and setting. Post apocalypse has been the setting for their games for over two decades now. Not to mention Patches and the Moonlight blade, which have been in nearly every setting in some form or another.
From feels so special because its catalog speaks to the iterative nature of making video games in a way that we generally don’t get to see in the mainstream or over such a long period of time.
We usually see short-lived bursts of a developer’s identity evolving with consecutive entries, but the amount of money tied up in gamedev + design by capital rather than by designers usually cuts off real dynasties of development before they can mature:
Valve set the tone for much of what we enjoy about first person experiences in the 2000s, but Steam started printing money, so it doesn’t “need” to make games anymore. Skyrim launched within months of Dark Souls, but Bethesda makes unlimited money just being a parasite publisher, so why should it do anything but continue to reskin the same open world fetch quest collectathon with combat systems that were obsolete 10 years ago? Bioware’s continued existence is (likely, bc we all know EA) riding on the success of DA4 because its publisher forced it to make a game that catered to an artificial “play it forever, pay for it forever” trend that was set up to fail. Pokemon.
From is a glance at what big games would look like if they were treated a little more like art (which they are) and a little less like products.
Just came across an episode of the 60′s Addams Family TV show where the Addamses take in a greaser motorcycle punk and, as you would expect, are absolutely delighted to have him as a houseguest.
And, like, the normal episode formula for this show so far has been “Some new normie meets the Addams family with some sort of ulterior motive, gets freaked out, and eventually abandons their schemes out of fear.” But while the episode began in that direction, the greaser actually starts to like the family because, you know, they accept him for who he is.
It turns out his dad is trying to track him down and make him conform to societal standards, and the Addamses, not knowing this, invite the dad over for a birthday party they’re throwing for the kid. And though the dad is also initially put off by the Adams family, he sees how his son loves them because they loved him unconditionally, and is shamed into opening his mind towards his son.
And fuck, man, it got me because I did not expect something that earnest from a 60′s sitcom, especially one as gleefully irreverent as this one. The tumblr posts are right, the Addamses would accept you for who you are.
scientists in the 1990s, putting a Get More Purple gene attached to a harmless plant virus into an already purple petunia: please get more purple
the petunia, sensing an apparent honest to god Get More Purple Disease, using the previously undiscovered RNAi antiviral ability to shut down all other purple genes along with it just in case: you put VIRUS in petunia? you infect her with the More Purple?? oh! oh! her children shall bloom white! jail for mother, jail for mother for One Thousand Years!!!!
All I’ve learned from this post is that the loophole to exploit to monetize your fanfiction is to record yourself explaining it on YouTube and call it criticism.
I am Silver Tongue, I am an artist. I have many characters and you can check out my art in the art tag. I occasionally practice witchcraft though I don't do anything too complicated. I am girl 2 and don't know what else to put here.
