The Grouch's Trash Pile [Baldur's Gate 3]

I need to stop looking at Twitter for a while. This is the second day in a row I've worked myself into an anger headache that's threatening to go migraine.

 

Luna doing the thing with the "just put it on bitch I dare you" is the absolute highlight of the movie honestly. I wish we got more of that Luna, and also more of her KG outfits. Her jumping out of the airship on pure faith was ALSO stone fucking cold.

(And now you see why half of the fandom ignores canon to ship her with Nyx because there's 500% more chemistry there, also.)

 

RIGHT YEAH that was. Such a power move. She's not a person to waste time with endless wheedling and persuading.

GOD she could have been such a cool character. ; ;

It helps immensely she gets to be onscreen with him at the same time, and not just in flashback :')

She very much has an older sister vibe with Noctis, too. She looks a lot older than him in flashback, which... wait a minute, I've been meaning to check her age--

Oh that explains it. She's four years older! MAN that has got to be weird for her, especially considering she's got a protector vibe toward Noctis and he's got an awed and worshipful vibe toward her. Makes Prompto teasing him about her seem even more tone-deaf, but Prompto is just kind of like that in general, bless his heart.

 

I just compared a render of game!Ravus to a screenshot of movie!Ravus and what the hell happened there?? He doesn't just have bad hair, he looks like a completely different person. Maybe for motion capture purposes? Not that I know how mocap really works...

 

Yeah, we're pretty sure it's the mocap, and also possibly a separation of things during the actual animation phases - Kingsglaive came out before the game by a significant enough margin that it's entirely possible things were finalized differently by the two different teams. Ardyn's look is a bit inconsistent as well (particularly around his nose and brow, imo) but Ravus definitely got the worst of it.

 

Kingsglaive was obligated to retain some resemblance between the actors and the characters for mocap reasons, which is one of the things that bothered me about it on a stylistic level -- everyone's models were kind of trying to be more in line with the game's models, but they used the hyperdetailed mocap animations, and the effect was just... vaguely offputting to me the entire time. Some of the movie characters come back in the FF15 multiplayer and frankly look tons better in-engine.

 

It was vaguely offputting to me, too. Hyperrealism is just kind of meh for me in general, there's always something distinctly off about it.

 

I will say, Libertus as a physical character makes me upset in a happy way, because he's my overall body type and specifically has my facial structure a Lot, and it's... I've literally never seen a fictional character or actor with my facial structure before him, and I love him very much.

 

I thought Libertus's handling was bullshit (just like, really ham-handed writing about the refugee thing and they made him sound kind of stupid sometimes for no good reason) but he was a neat character despite that. Like, the big guy being the one with the ability to ninja around, and not the little skinny guy? That was awesome!

In other news, I finished chapter 9. It's definitely showing the "oh shit gotta rush to finish this story" strain around the seams now. Luna's death was pretty weak narratively -- I know Ardyn pops out of nowhere regularly but that was especially out of nowhere and just kind of ??? about him stabbing her. They conveyed the why on that bit really poorly, as they did on what happened to the ring.

Now we're on a train and even though I love Gladio dearly I wanted to push him right out of it myself for telling Noctis to 'get over it' re: Luna dying. Get over it? GET OVER IT??? You dumb motherfucker! (It makes sense he's being weird and mean about it, though. Poor Iggy. Whatever they went through was bad.)

 

he comes back in the Comrades multiplayer expansion and he's just. really good even if his writing is just like, on par for FFXV. He never stops believing that Nyx is going to come back and meet him and it's heartbreaking.

 

Oh NO ;_;

 

YEAH so Comrades starts narratively at about the point you're at, back in Lucis. And the whole period between, Libertus is waiting for Nyx in their homeland of Galahd; he only returns to Lucis as things start to get bad (because the daemons get more powerful as the nights are getting longer).

 

klsdjkjsf FUCK this quarry. Having to wait for party members that get stuck on every single bit of not-totally-flat world geometry in a map full of elevation changes is not compelling gameplay, SQUARE ENIX.

 

sO mUCh fOr STiCkiNg ToGeThER bitches the man who didn't manage to get unstuck from behind a tiny rock for so long he had to be warped in by the game for a cutscene, GLADIO. Meanwhile, Ignis is managing fine. :p

 

I AM EXTREMELY ???????????? ABOUT THAT FLASHBACK WITH RAVUS AND LUNAFREYA

She was physically frail? Somehow?? Was this brought up before????? And if he wanted to give Noctis his father's sword back so badly, why didn't he do that back when he kicked Gladio's ass?

 

lmao wow these flashback cutscene with Luna are really hamfistedly wedged in here, aren't they

 

LOOK NOCTIS, LUNA'S ENTIRE LIFE REVOLVED AROUND YOOOOOU, ISN'T THAT ROMANTIC?!

Tabata get out of the fucking dark ages, you're less than a decade older than me, this is ridiculous. It's not romantic in the least and those cutscenes were SO hamfisted it's clear you didn't really care about her either.

 

aren't you glad I made you watch kingsglaive, in which lunafreya is a character instead of a plot coupon -

 

*gets to the end of Chapter 13*

... I feel like Radiant Historia did this whole secret identities/jilted former royalty trying to destroy the world thing a lot better.

 

Jesse Singal shut the fuck up challenge