Gun Knight? (Source is official character art from Sankta Miksaparato from the Mobile game Arknights)

I really do think it's a combo of the Manifesting nonsense paired up with an insane circular logic of, "well, if we can get them to do what we want with no incentives then clearly we're big strong alpha males, and since we're already definitely that . . ."

That is part of what drives me absolutely nuts as just a layman with the slightest understanding: it hallucinates and will always hallucinate as long as it is allowed to generate its own text because delineating between real and fake information requires UNDERSTANDING that information.

Yeah, just watching someone do the Coral Tower alone let me know the game is simply not for me. Amazing in a lot of other ways, but definitely a thing I will only ever be able to watch other people play.

I suspect some of it is also anime's influence. So much of shonen is predicted on setting up a rules structure for the world and devotes a lot of words to doing so. Even there, though, the formula almost always goes, "and here's the main character who breaks those rules."

Not to mention the ample exit polling from this election where people literally said, "yeah, since nobody put him in jail or prevented him from running I assumed all the talk about Insurrection and crimes was just empty political posturing and meant nothing."

Not surprised, honestly, I already watched the video three times by myself and once each with two of my friends. Truly amazing work.

"The NOexistenceN of you AND me"

Trippy, 4th wall breaking visual novel by the quick scan I did of the summary before I noticed the AI disclosure.

Honestly just today Steam suggested a game to me that disclosed they used AI to make the final boss fight music. And I'm just like . . . why wouldn't you just commission someone to do it? Why paint the entire game scarlet just to save a miniscule amount of time and money?

This is why I do appreciate XIV's approach to "temporary community events." Because it is still sad to find out that Mor Dhona had a whole thing where the community built it up over time and you can't experience that, but that's a far cry from Heavensward just no longer being playable at all.

Pretty much, regardless of your perspective reaching that point was a failure of storytelling. For me my creative sympathies mostly meant I was just sad that it came to that, especially once the backlash to the initial endings started.

This one has always kind of baffled me because I immediately recognized the kid, in his ridiculousness, as a direct author intrusion. "Hey, sorry we went too hard on saying you can never get one up on the Reapers, this is us telling you; the player; that this time it will work."