Maybe I'm just in the mood for a combination of macabre beauty + depression 🤷‍♂️

It's absolutely *astonishing* to look at, obviously, but beyond the most immediately obvious appeal of a dark and twisted claymation-looking world, it's also got a bit of a "slightly messed up fantasy" kinda like Labyrinth. And it's somber as hell.

I could not get my old job back. Riot had forced me into unemployment in what we now know to be the worst job market in industry history.

I finally found Riot’s Head of People on LinkedIn and sent her a 2000-word message explaining in detail how badly they had fucked me and asked them to explain.

They did not tell me why or what happened. My recruiter’s boss simply had a video call with me where he told me the position was no longer available and they would “try” to find me something else. No one from his team would ever contact me again, even after multiple followups on my part.

Hell, why not make it play when you *activate* either of the two sites of grace, rather than require the player rest at them?

Point is, there are ways to design around player unpredictability that aren't simply yelling in their ear/face about it. Yeah it's tougher, but it's also better.

The issue was that the *necessary cutscene* that you have to view in order to unlock the ability to level-up is (was? no idea if they patched it) tied to one of only TWO sites of grace.

Yeah the game could've tried to lead me by the nose but it would be way better to just PLAY THE SCENE WHEREVER.

This also makes me want to circle back to a thing I wrote for SlashGear 3+ years ago, calling out the poorly-planned way Elden Ring handles the introduction of its leveling system.