iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 4h

Ooooh, Leofard and Cait Sith are an INSPIRED pick for the All Saints' event art.

Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 4h

If anything I feel like 'did not play the game' would HELP an Astarion book appeal to its fans, because most BG3 fans didn't finish it anyway.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 7h

Aqua just bet wrong on what the boss of that world was going to be.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 7h

Personally I just think it's really funny that Terra's story is 'Turn to The Dark Side Any% Speedrun', especially compared to Aqua being a generally normal human put through Kingdom Hearts Nonsense and Ventus' story of meeting every single comic relief side character of the Disney Golden Age.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 11h

Oh yeah, I'm sure it hasn't aged well, especially as the 'immersive sim' genre grew VERY fast after it. But I'm willing to give it the at-the-time credit. (Boss fights still suck though)

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 11h

Also, Deus Ex has a weird pattern where you have two studios making two games each, and with both of them the FIRST one is solid as hell and then the second one drops every ball they can reach.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 13h

Every Trek has a rough first season or two, but I think DS9 has the strongest first season, because it still basically has everything you want from DS9. It's just not all in the right balance yet.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Ooof, yep, that's full tourist. This is the take of someone who doesn't understand Magic, or Final Fantasy, several times both ways.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

As an asexual all I know about romantic attraction is that I want it and it hurts when I don't have it, but that every time I try to get it I'm stopped by everyone wanting sex on top of that. It's like turning up to a card game with half a deck. And the half I DID bring ain't winning shit.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Honestly, I don't believe him. I go to plenty of LGSes, and they have plenty of stock of both in and out of universe cards. This is only true if you try to get packs from, like, Seven Eleven. And even then I think my local has Reality Fracture packs in store.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Someone recently did a 'challenge run' of Morrowind where he only used and did things the game specifically directed him to, to see what a game so thoroughly broken by community knowledge plays like if you go in knowing literally nothing. It turns out Morrowind is REALLY well tutorialized!

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I remember a mystery 'lost' sidequest in FFIX was found by someone who found it in that famously awful strategy guide, and who got help proving it existed from someone whose hobby was trying to trigger every single textbox in the game. So somewhere out there, SOMEONE is playing 'the most' FFIX.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

So did I, ever since like 2021 I've been having a rolling realization of all the Char Clones in media I like that never occurred to me. Like Proto Man. God damnit his operator in Battle Network is named Chaud it's SO OBVIOUS

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

He's one of, like... at least three in the game. (Valens Varro doesn't count, though, he's a Paptimus Scirocco with a Double Down)

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Meanwhile I'm in the opposite range and think a Metroidvania's platforming should be kinda easy, because it's mainly there to give you a Y axis to get lost and confused on. I'm the weirdo that hates shinespark puzzles, though, so I might be in the wrong part of the fanbase.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

It doesn't make them LESS dangerous, they've still got a lot of guns and a lot of willingness to use them, they've just got understandable shortfalls as a society that makes them plausibly beatable by 'lesser tech'.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Which in fairness is because the goa'uld KINDA suck. Which itself is a neat thing to see from a sci-fi alien empire: that they're basically technological scavengers thst have stagnated because they're bad at coming up with stuff themselves.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I keep turning over the idea of 'vampire doctor that's been practicing since the 1800s' as an idea to explore, like, 'vampires as institution'. A vampire as a human form of those societal systems that were there before you were born, and stand long after you're dead.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I do genuinely believe her about this, but I also think it's to the story's benefit that we get no evidence either way. Was Zoraal Ja always like this, or did something happen? It's not for us to know.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

It, and its sequel! Both on sale right now, in fact.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I'm not sure I would say this is THE reason Axiom Verge is one of the best indie Metroidvanias, but it's certainly an element of why.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Ace Combat is a universe where only one person is playing a musou.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Incidentally, Ocarina of Time has brought an entirely new frustration for video editing. It goes letterbox mode during cutscenes, so when I'm using footage I have to either respect '4:3 faking 16:9 in a 16:9 video' and just have A LOT of black space, or zoom in WAY too close to fill the frame.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The Wind Waker ReDeads did get more cartoony in a way that took a lot of the edge off, but oooooh yeah, that scream's full terrifying.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Sometimes I really try to work out the design intentions behind parts of seminal video games. My best idea for how they made the ReDeads from Ocarina of Time is still 'we want to give children nervous breakdowns and nightmares'. Because they had to KNOW that's what they were doing, right?

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

NT was a great example of a no-win netcode scenario. 3v3's too big for peer-to-peer to make sense, but also too small for dedicated servers to make sense. I don't know exacrly what they landed on, but nothing would've worked. (And no, rollback wouldn't have helped.)

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

several DMC games actively punish you for 'using all the tools in front of you' because so many of the guns especially just tank your style rating. Which is a shame, I think grenade launchers are VERY stylish.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

The only good rank system I've seen is, weirdly, Astral Chain, where there's no base 'score' and it's all bonuses. So your rank is entirely based on how many individual things you do in a fight. It wouldn't work for every game, but it was a lot more fun than any 'style point' system I've seen.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

You also saw this with FF16 and it was... extremely weird. Parts of the Titan fight people lauded had less button inputs than a turn-based FF.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

When you realize that Lightning is chuuni Paul Blart then all of FFXIII gets MUCH better.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

A bunch of people's data isn't on FFLogs consensually in the first place, so I'm kinda unsurprised that this is happening.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Dallas is a modern social deduction game time-warped forty or fifty years ago. Blood on the Clocktower is therefore OSR.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Making it a mission to write an uncanny horror piece that deliberately uses the wrong words of these for creatures and seeing how badly it breaks people.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Some people lament the death of The Mall. Some people lament The Mall becoming the entire planet.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

It's not even the writing that's the problem here, I just need B-roll. And Minfilia is done EXTREMELY dirty by basically only being in scenes with really flat lighting and blocking.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Sure, someone like Varis has way less to work with, but at least all three and a half of his scenes are well-lit and have good shots in them. I kinda dread every time I have to talk about a character like Minfilia who just has NO visually interesting scenes.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

FFXIV Video Essay Problems: When I have to talk about Minfilia, and then decide which of the poorly-lit, flat cutscenes that showcase her poorly but are also basically the only footage there IS of her works for this particular bit.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

This also just describes Teal'c SG-1. None of Teal'c's relationships. Just Teal'c himself.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Also Gundam. Any time you see an evil empire in a piece of Japanese media there is a decent chance that it's at least 20% Gundam by weight.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I would more accurately say that Garlemald is only partially based on Nazi Germany. Garlemald is a mixture of them, Imperial japan, the Roman Empire, later on bits of Eastern Europe, at different levels and focuses depending on the exact story you're looking at.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

This IS the gimmick of the funniest job in Bravely Second, so I approve.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Mankar Camoran is the only person in Oblivion who's actually played an Elder Scrolls game before and he is utterly insufferable about it

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It might not be in that order, but the last one's absolutely going to be riff on some sort of Big Comic Book Event, and I think that's the sequence that helps them escalate appropriately.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I've thought this one out EXTENSIVELY. There have to be four more sets planned, for the Infinity Stones. Given the absences in Super Heroes, I'm reasonably confident that they are: -Midnight Suns (and other magic stuff) -X-Men -Guardians of the Galaxy (and other cosmic-level stuff) -Secret Wars

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

SMT3 is etched into my brain as maybe the single coolest-looking thing in the world. I don't even like the game that much compared to other Atlus games, but visually? This is it, there's nothing better.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

According to the video games themselves, Dunmer fire resistance is always a percentage thing, so ALL fire will still harm, it's just that it hurts them a lot less. If you've got health regeneration then there's definitely a point where you heal more than it hurts, though.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I genuinely think that my greatest strengths in media analysis and criticism come from being a Doctor Who fan. Being a Doctor Who fan requires knowing that most of the show is, truly, terrible. We're here to see camp, high-concept nonsense; the fact the show is occasionally good is a side benefit.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Admittedly no, but if we're going for 'King Solomon' then it'd be weird if he wasn't.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Baba's the best kind of Deadlock character, that fits a mythological/fantasy figure into its distinctly 'gaslight New York' vibe. Baba Yaga as an old lady feeding the birds is fantastic. The mythical King Solomon as an old Jewish man playing chess in the park is also genius.

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Cleretic, FFXIV Lore Dork 🏳️‍⚧️ @cleretic.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I walk past four Chinese places on my way to the place I play Magic on Fridays.

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