MarkWahlberg

It's a legitimate point that needs addressing, yeah. It's also one not strictly belonging to games - watching The West Wing, you might think that it really only took a dozen people to solve the nation's problems, and the Marvel comics universe is crippled with this issue, to the point of everything being sucked into their weird supermilitary-industrial complex. Mass Effect is still totally the worst at it, tbf.

With games specifically, though, that power narrative underlying the whole thing gets twisted by that kind of thinking. Leveling up and becoming greatest hero in the land means you would normally be able to expand - go from Batman to the Bat Family to Batman Inc., essentially. Which kind of happens in, say Mount & Blade, but that's the rare exception. And in a way that doesn't actually solve the underlying issue - you still being the only one who can solve the world's problems - but it does at least have a more logical progression. Personally I think the 'power fantasy' label is a bit misleading, with a lot of it coming down to a simple desire for agency. The player is able to do a thing that has an effect on the world. Doesn't have to be big. Just has to happen. Sending out minions can have the same net effect on the player, so long as they still feel like they were the one who caused it to happen. Designers are less likely to see the problem simply because "What's the point of making #content if the player can't #engage with it?" There are some games where you're simply not going to access all the content in a single playthrough, either because of choices or time limits or whatever, but that's not quite the same thing, I think. Having a quest where the 'best/true ending' is to just stay out of it would be kind of funny, though.

Totally forgot about this and then worried it had already started. So, umm... Should we just proceed as is?

So some of you may be watching the CW for your Arrows, or your Flashes, or whatever. But there's this other show called The 100 that you probably haven't been watching. Maybe you saw the first couple episodes and were like, 'oh, this is just dumb teen survivalist drama nonsense, a Lost/Hunger Games knockoff that I don't need to waste my time on.' And that wouldn't be an inaccurate initial assessment. Suffice to say, it improves considerably. If you wanted to like The Walking Dead, but wish it wasn't so insufferably boring, this is the show for you.

Bla bla bla, go watch it, then come back here so we can talk about it. Talk about it BECAUSE (Big Dang Spoilers drumroll please):

This is basically Fallout 3: The TV Show. At first you just have general things like the Grounders = Raiders and two-headed animals, or the Capital Wasteland via TV-friendly Vancouver standing in for Loudoun County. Or Isaiah Washington's character being the Overseer to the Ark's Vault 101. But then!Then you have the Mt. Weather arc being a combination of Tenpenny Tower and that Arefu(?) vampire cult from the beginning of the game(which goes even deeper, because Bellamy's inside man shenanigans were reminiscent of Shadow Complex, but since they're basically vampires that technically makes it more a straight Castlevania riff, I guess?)And then, the season 2 finale revealed the City of Light to actually be a combo of Point Lookout and President John Henry Eden, right down to the 'use this to access the DLC' boat.

I'm not saying this as a bad thing, necessarily. I love the show, it's fun even when it's being kinda stupid, but I've never seen a show crib this heavily from games in general, let alone just the one. Admittedly, a post-nuclear apocalypse show will cover a lot of similar territory, but it's even the more general stuff, like how the darker aspects in season 2 are reminiscent of the bad karma decisions. Maybe some of it could be considered standard sci-fi tropes, but still. Has anyone else been watching? Do you see what I'm talking about?

Actual kissing would have shifted the emotional focus, for the worse IMO. It's not about them 'getting together', it's about them being together. What makes that scene great is true regardless of the supposed ambiguity. Something that could be dismissed as 'ew, smooches' wouldn't have been nearly as effective.

"The wondrous, and at times inexplicable bond..."

The way I saw it was, this is going to be the next 10,000 years of Avatars, so the cycle is starting anew in every sense. Sad that they're gone, but it leaves room for the new guys.

I think it's like the end of season 1 when she almost committed suicide: you might not realize that's what happened at first, but there's really no other explanation for it. There've been a few scenes earlier in the season that people argue hinted at it - which honestly I thought they were reading way too much into, but in conjunction with that scene it's pretty unmistakeable what their intent was. Which, again, the whole thing was wonderfully done, much more so than I really expected.

I hope this doesn't become what people focus entirely on from this episode, though, because obviously the highlight was Tahno bustin' loose on that trombone.

Goddam. That was beautiful.