August 19th - Welcome Bugs ArchKnights Shoutout to the new bug catchers August 21st - MindBreaker WyvernRider Set Exclusive set now on sale for $$$ August 21st - Return to the Nightmare Realm MindBreaker class no longer exclusive + weekend event
Aion North America August 18th - August Store Update Cash shop update - transformation items August 19th - Class Master Event Massive 24hour buff based on day/class and new event currency August 19th - Patch Notes: Shadows Over Balaurea Update Class balancing and other minor changes Aion Europe August 19th - UPDATE 7.6: NOW LIVE! 2 new ultimate transformations August 21st - WHEEL OF DESTINY Lootbox has returned August 21st - WEEKEND SPECIALS Minionite random box available
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August 17th - Harvest Fan Art Competition Runners-Up Runner up submissions for art contest August 18th - Patch 3.11.1f Deployment and Full Patch Notes Patch notes August 19th - Harvest Statistics: Unique Items, Maps and the Most Deadly Areas Statistics..idk I don’t play PoE August 20th - Path of Exile Is Coming to macOS in September! PoE coming to macOS August 21st - Racing Gauntlet Community Event This Weekend - Huge Sale on Footprints, Portals and Character Effects Community event + cash shop sale
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August 19th - Patch Notes 1.0.2.0 - Ancient Ruins & more Ancient ruins area August 21st - Realm of the Mad God Exalt End of flash client support on September
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August 18th - Weekly Bonus Event: Arena Skirmishes PvP arena event August 19th - Follow the Tides of Music From Battle for Azeroth Listen to the BFA OST August 19th - Shadowlands Preview: A New Look for the WoW Companion App Preview of changes to the companion app August 19th - Arena World Championship Circuit Viewer's Guide Watch the pvp world championship starting aug 22nd August 20th - Engineer’s Workshop: Recreating the Ahn’Qiraj War Effort Development insights August 22nd - Engineer’s Workshop: Enabling Ray-Traced Shadows in Shadowlands Development insights August 22nd - Cataclysm: Mounts, Pets, and More How to get stuff from Cataclysm August 22nd - Hotfixes: August 21, 2020 Bug fixes
My lockdown review of Hit and Run: I now have the Krusty Seal of approval, so 2020 isn't a total loss.
Lockdown boredom got me to replay this, I dug out my old PS2, bought a Scart to HDMI adaptor, and had to spend £20 buying a new copy because my parents ditched my old games. I won't lie the nostalgia was strong, I found my old saves from 15 years ago when I was 9, and that alone was a rush. I started from the beginning and got 100%. My overall review is this game is phenomenal. I was obsessed with the Simpsons as a kid so i'm not sure how far you'll enjoy it if you weren't, but this is one of the few licensed games from the era that's actually a love letter to the original property and not just a cheap shovel ware cash grab (looking at you Simpsons road rage.) I'm not an avid gamer, I dabble in and out, but honestly I think there's something to be said for games that have a 15-30 hour completion time. Every level is in my opinion a near perfect size. There are no loading screens except when entering buildings allowing you to roam freely across the map, hopping in and out of cars exploring at your own leisure. Likewise the number of collectables seems balanced. There's enough that it's a satisfying challenge, but not so many it becomes a chore. Furthermore every collectable leads you to a new gag, a new interesting part of the map, a clever reference, which makes it a very engaging and enjoyable search. A far cry from Ubisoft's collect 1000x feathers from random corners of the map. The only criticism I have is that collecting money becomes a grind. Personally I kept reloading level 7 mission 3 over and over, climbing up the power plant and kicking every box twice. It only took 30 minutes but it was tedious. Otherwise it was a genuine pleasure to explore every inch of the game and see the dedication the writers and designers had put in. I made a point of never looking at the wiki, which i'm glad for because I got a real sense of accomplishment after. (lockdown life is sad okay, get off my back). Although apparently I missed half the special cars, which is a shame. The gameplay I found extremely fun. The cars move with a decent amount of weight, handling, power, and speed. It is quite fun when you get good enough to slip through the traffic without hitting anything while going 5 times the speed. Likewise it's also very fun to climb in the Snow Plow and hit things very hard. Smashy Smashy. Most of the missions are very similar, either collect items, race, time trial, collect stuff on foot, or destroy a rival car. But I think between rotating out the different missions, the flavour of the story, and breaking for collectable searches helped keep things from getting stale. Difficulty. Throughout the whole game all I could think is "I beat this age 9, I should be able to beat it today". All I can say is 9 year old me had patience and thumbs that aren't rusty screws. Most of the levels took me at least two or three replays, but there were a good number that took more. Certain levels passed tricky, challenging, and testing and became utterly rage inducing. Apu's "Never trust a snake", and Homer's "Alien Autopsy part 3" had me struggling, but after an hour or so on each i'd walk away, come back fresh the next day and nail it with muscle memory and a fresh head. However Bart's "Set to Kill" had me on the edge of hurling the controller at the TV every time. Maybe I suck, but it seemed like you needed to memorise the course like the back of your hand, have a perfect run, and then be lucky. "What's that, armoured truck right in front of the laser stand you need". Restart. "Oncoming traffic outside the burns casino?" Restart. "Traffic at the intersection?". Restart. I'm in lockdown and bored out my mind, but usually i'd have better things to do with four hours of my time. (No exaggeration, I suck). Soundtrack. Shout out to the track "Legitimate business man" for teleporting me back a decade and a half with 2 seconds of jazzy tunes. Who knew going through a car wash video game could be so emotional? Overall I found there was enough voice tracks and soundtrack songs that they didn't become overly repetitive unless I had to replay the level a dozen times. Random culture notes: obviously the game is two decades old, which makes it prime fodder that "yikes I don't remember that cheap women/gay/trans joke" era. LBGT+ wise I didn't see anything bad, or anything at all really. But i'll take no representation over bad representation any day, so yaaaaay?? Apu get's a whole level to himself. It does bring back the whitewashing and racist jokes, no way to sugar coat it really. Stereotypes galore. But also I found it just kinda weird generally that he of all the characters in the Simpsons he got own level, I remember him being prominent in the show but not on a par with the main family. Genderwise Homer and Bart get two levels a piece, Apu one, Lisa and Marge one. I feel the overwhelming disproportion of male/female characters and their prominence is baggage carried over from the show. I suppose the entire show was supposed to be a satire of 80s middle class America. I'm still pretty depressed when I think Marge is rarely if ever shown to have a life outside of the family. Which is reflected in the game since almost all her missions are just running household chores. Overall the nostalgia was strong, but also the gameplay is fun, the references and gags are funny, the level design is tight, and it was actually enormous fun to 100%. The plot and characters are also engaging and very funny at times. For me it was a game that reaffirmed what gaming can be, and i've resolved to get back into video gaming as a whole. Also I got that Krusty seal of approval, so 2020 isn't a total waste.
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Part 6: Amazing In Depth Essay About Sopranos Symbolism and Subtext (credit: FlyOnMelfisWall source: thechaselounge.net)
Kennedy and Heidi: Vicarious Patricide as Tony’s Decompensation
At the risk of needless redundancy, I think it’s helpful to summarize Tony’s state of mind going into the episode Kennedy and Heidi. His consciousness is teeming with ancient but recently-agitated memories showcasing his father’s violence and toxic influence, like Johnny shooting a hole through Livia’s hairdo and baptizing him in the act of murder. He’s unable to shake stories of parental neglect leading to tragic outcomes for children. He’s painfully aware of Christopher’s hatred of him and desire for murderous revenge, feelings ultimately rooted in the fact that Tony guided him into the same corrupt existence into which he himself had been led by Johnny, Junior, and company, suggesting a reciprocal, if unconscious, rage by Tony towards those men. His subconscious mind is under constant assault from hats and movie posters and coffee mugs bearing the image of a bloody meat cleaver, an emblem of his own lost childhood innocence and inculcation by his father into his brutal, ugly vocation. He is racked with acute but intense guilt over the role he thinks his life’s example has played in shaping his son’s values and poor sense of self-worth. And he is still repressing a mountain of hurt over the fact that his uncle and second father tried not once but twice to kill him, a repression Melfi warned would someday result in a total collapse of his defense mechanisms, that is, a collapse of his paternal hero-worship and related quest for the macho validation that has prevented him from critically examining his father, uncle, and the men upon whom he modeled his life. Now consider the circumstances immediately before the crash. Tony and Chris are on a routine drive back from business in Christopher’s new black Cadillac SUV (the first Cadillac Chris has ever owned, incidentally.) The conversation turns to life priorities. Chris, conspicuously clad in a Cleaver hat, specifically mentions how Kaitlyn has changed his priorities, and Tony mentions the “shit with Junior”. So the context is immediately pregnant with the fact that Junior shot and nearly killed Tony within the past year and with the fact that Chris is in a new place of responsibility, a position where he is, for the first time, truly the custodian and trustee for another life. In a perfectly-timed illustration of just how ill-equipped Chris is to live up to those responsibilities, he nervously and repeatedly fiddles with the car stereo, fidgets, and widens his eyes, telegraphing to Tony that he is high as a kite on drugs. “Comfortably Numb” swells on the sound system as Tony stares at him, the lyrics underscoring that, in that moment, he does not see Chris as a youngster, as the “adorable kid” he once road around in the basket of his bicycle, but as a grown man: When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpseOut of the corner of my eyeI turned to look but it was goneI cannot put my finger on it nowThe child is grown, the dream is gone Chris swerves, and the crash happens seconds later.
Tony as the Child in the Carseat
It’s critical to note that Tony initially manifests every intention of helping Chris, even as he’s fighting his own injuries. “I’m comin’,” he says as Chris asks for help. His expression and demeanor only change when he realizes what Chris means by “help”. “I’ll never pass a drug test,” Chris moans. “What?” Tony asks incredulously as Chris is inhaling his own blood. Almost simultaneously, Tony turns towards the back and sees that a tree limb has penetrated the passenger compartment, lodging in Kaitlyn’s car seat like a spear. While Tony would somewhat exaggerate the size of the branch in later narrations of the event, there’s no question that it was large enough to have impaled or seriously injured an infant. Even after this warning shot over the bow, Tony apparently intends to help Chris, coming over to the driver’s side and breaking the window when he couldn’t get the door open. He draws his cell phone to call for help but stops when Chris again mentions being doped up, which suggests that Chris is more concerned about the legal consequences of his intoxication than about the fact that he is drowning in his own blood, completely belying his claim to a life newly ordered around the lofty priority of fatherhood. That’s the moment when Tony forms a genuine murderous intent, an intent that has little to do with Christopher’s animosity towards him or the danger that he might flip. Those are conscious, background motives that help Tony rationalize and make sense of his actions later. But the factor impelling him to end Christopher’s life is his own, fundamental identification with the child who might just as easily have been killed or seriously harmed in that carseat. To objectify this point, there is a slow pan of the limb sticking through the seat as Tony performs the suffocation, clearly not a shot representing Tony’s vision or gaze at that moment but objectively corroborating the earlier angle when Tony glances back and we see the seat from his point of view. The juxtaposition of these shots – subjective and objective – tells me the carseat is not just a convenient excuse for Tony. This is what he’s really feeling. In this moment, he is the phantom child in that carseat, a child whose safety and well-being come second to his father’s corrupt values and reckless self-indulgence, a child whose soul and humanity are metaphorically impaled by riding in and being taught to drive his father’s black Cadillac. The exclamation point on the symbolism is provided by Christopher’s hat. Incredibly, it remains on his head throughout the crash and suffocation, its bloody cleaver logo pointing towards Tony when the car comes to rest. As Tony acts consciously on behalf of an innocent child, the symbol of his own lost childhood innocence is directly before him. And, for good measure, the cap and logo stare back at him in the hospital from the gurney laden with Christopher’s bloody clothing and the black bag containing his dead body. (The logo antagonizes Tony a final time from his coffee mug the next morning before he angrily tosses the mug into his backyard woods.) Several points about the suffocation itself are remarkable. First was the look of absolute depravity on Tony’s face as he watched Christopher struggle to breathe. This look was unlike any ever seen on Tony’s face at any other moment in the series. Even when committing other personal and deadly acts of violence, his face and demeanor had always betrayed a commensurate level of animus, an active, passionate intent. In contrast, he reached through the window and pinched Christopher’s nose – and maintained that hold – with remarkable calm. His face and eyes throughout the suffocation were paradoxically both incredibly intense and completely devoid of human emotion, a look far more disturbing than any look of mere rage he’d ever worn before. Second, although this act was, in my judgment, clearly about the release of Tony’s pent up rage towards his father figures, the method of killing evokes Livia. Besides her conspiracy with Junior to kill Tony (which she rationalized was for his own good) and general obsession with stories of child deaths, she had once threatened to “smother [her children] with a pillow” to save them from a fate she deemed even worse. Tony grabbed a pillow intending to smother her in the season one finale before nursing home personnel intervened. In Members Only, Tony spoke of being smothered with a pillow as a suitable form of euthanasia. Its functional equivalent at the scene of the crash had a definite vibe of putting Chris out of his own – and everyone’s – misery. So, in killing his “father”, Tony was also paradoxically suffocating his “son”, thereby channeling Livia’s filicidal urges and concept of mercy killing. The most spine-tingling resonance with the scene comes from two season four episodes where Tony’s deep identification with “innocents” – be they children or animals – once again comes to the fore, as does his appreciation for the consequences of Chris continuing to use drugs. In Whoever Did This, Tony warns Christopher that he “can’t be high on heroine and raise kids.” And in The Strong, Silent Type, after learning that a doped-up Chris accidentally smothered and suffocated Adriana’s dog, Tony ominously snaps, “You suffocated little Cossette? I oughta suffocate you, you prick!” It’s such perfect foreshadowing that the earlier episodes seem to have been written with the outcome of Kennedy and Heidi in mind.
Righteous Retribution as the Explanation for Tony’s Lack of Sorrow
As previously noted, the most troubling aspect of the episode from the standpoint of character consistency and plausibility was not the fact that Tony murdered Chris. It was his vacuous expression during the killing and the fact that he never betrayed a moment’s genuine sorrow or regret afterwards. He remained, in fact, defiantly happy and unconflicted about it, especially to Melfi, and was sincerely troubled that neither she nor anyone else could see how Christopher’s death rescued Kaitlyn from a lifetime of risks and harm that she would naturally suffer as the daughter of a drug addict (and mob captain). In his therapy scenes with Melfi, real and dream, Tony even makes the very contrast I raise, noting that he’s never felt this way after murdering any other person close to him. He alludes to his sorrow over Pussy and specifically allows that murdering Tony B left him “prostate [sic] with grief.” In effect, Tony himself is revealing that this killing feels righteous and justified to him on an instinctive level and is therefore not one about which he can feel guilt or sorrow. That sentiment makes no sense if his dominant motives were those he talked about in therapy: Christopher’s animosity and resentment towards him after the Adriana hit and his drug-use and consequent risk to flip. Whatever weight those factors carry in justifying murder in the corrupt “ethics” of the mob (which, in any case, is less than the weight of the transgressions by Pussy and Tony B), they carry absolutely no legitimate moral weight outside it and could not sustain in Tony the sense of just triumph that he felt in response to Christopher’s death. What could inspire that sense of triumph is the perceived liberation of a child from a dangerous and toxic father, experienced subconsciously as vicarious retribution for the abuse and harm he himself suffered at the hands of his own father and uncle.
Significance of the Names “Kennedy” and “Heidi”
“Kennedy” and “Heidi” are the names of the young passenger and driver, respectively, in the car that sideswipes Christopher’s SUV before the fateful crash. The girls are barely onscreen a few seconds, just long enough to (somewhat artificially) learn their names in the following exchange: Kennedy: Maybe we should go back, Heidi! Heidi: Kennedy, I’m on my learner’s permit after dark! Much forum debate after the first airing of the episode centered around the significance, if any, of these names. I propose a related but even more basic question: why are the girls present in the scene at all? Tony’s windfall opportunity to murder Chris and pass it off as death from accidental injury was entirely dependent upon being unobserved by others after the crash. Given Christopher’s intoxicated state and inattention to the curvy road while he fiddled with radio controls, a mere swerve and over-correction or swerve to avoid an animal (Tony’s crash with Adriana, anyone?) would have easily sufficed to trigger the accident but without the problematic involvement of another car, the driver of which would have to be made to flee the scene illegally and in contravention of the ethics and instincts of at least 95% of the motorists on the road. So the very fact that another car is involved, complicating both the story and the filming, suggests some symbolic or subtextual design to the involvement related specifically to the momentous event occurring right after the crash. One aspect of that design is revealed and amplified when a grieving Kelly shows up at Christopher’s wake with dark hair framing her face and large, dark sunglasses covering her eyes. A member of the crew remarks, “Look at her. Like a movie star.” An odd look immediately crosses Tony’s face as he spontaneously responds, “Jackie Kennedy”, noting Kelly’s resemblance to the widow of John F. Kennedy. In my mind, this striking moment in the episode can have only one purpose, and that’s to evoke Johnny Boy in relation to Christopher via a kind of symbolic math. If Kelly = Jackie Kennedy, then Chris = JFK = Johnny Boy since JFK was the explicit parallel figure for Johnny in In Camelot, the first episode of the series depicting cracks in the foundation of Tony’s paternal hero worship. When that foundation completely crumbles inside Tony’s subconscious a season and a half later, it’s entirely fitting that the JFK/Johnny parallel is renewed. As for the name “Heidi”, most folks around these parts felt it was meant to evoke the idea of “orphan” because of the famous Swiss orphan tale of the same name and because Kaitlyn (and Paulie) both lost parents in the episode. That’s an entirely plausible analysis that requires no expansion, although I’m inclined to think there’s more to it than that, starting with the analogy of Tony himself to “Heidi”. No, Tony was never technically orphaned, though he arguably suffered more as the son of Johnny and Livia than if he had been. He was certainly deprived of real parental love and guidance, on both sides, and that roughly equates to the definition of “orphan”. Before discussing this episode for the first time, I never knew that Heidi was the story of an orphan, only that it was some kind of tale for children. And I knew that only because of the epic 1968 football game between Joe Namath’s Jets and the Oakland Raiders, the climactic ending of which (an improbable comeback by the Raiders) was cut off abruptly for television viewers at the end of its scheduled broadcast slot so that a movie version of Heidi could begin airing on time. I was only four at the time of this debacle but recall my parents talking about it – and the considerable chaos it caused at NBC and at telephone switchboards around the country – for years afterwards. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidi_Game It wouldn’t become clear until the end of Made In America, but there’s an obvious parallel to the Heidi phenomenon in the wind-up of The Sopranos. Consider that, like the Heidi Game broadcast, Made in America featured an abrupt, unexpected termination of excruciatingly tense action at a penultimate moment, pre-empting audience experience of what appeared to be an imminent and momentous climax. The Sopranos ending may not have disabled an entire telephone network, but it certainly generated an enormous amount of controversy that, for better or worse, persists to this day. Beyond that, there were enough other football references in the final Sopranos episodes, and especially Jets references, to warrant further consideration of this football connotation for “Heidi”. In Remember When, Tony’s betting losses on Jets football games prompt his call to Hesh for a bridge loan. Later that same episode, Paulie annoys Tony and company with yet another old tale, this one relating how, after witnessing Joe Namath stagger drunk into a bar the night before a game, he bet a load of cash the following day on the Jets’ opponent. In Chasing It, Tony gets inside information on a Jets football game and is irate when Carmela refuses to bet money on it. The episode features a closeup of a large newspaper headline, “Jets Bomb Chargers”. In Blue Comet, then-current coach of the Jets, Eric Mangini, makes a cameo appearance in Vesuvio, with Artie informing a suitably-impressed Tony so the two can go over and shake hands. News articles at the time clarified that the cameo wasn’t Mangini’s idea but the idea of Sopranos producers, who contacted him months in advance and made accommodations in the shooting schedule around his availability. So this seemed more than a casual desire to have some generic celebrity show up. That especially seems true considering Mangini was given no dialog and that his meeting with Tony and Artie was only depicted in the silent background of a conversation between Charmaine and Carmela. Mangini’s only purpose on set was apparently to show his face briefly and to have the fact of his identity (Tony has to tell a bewildered Carm that Mangini is the head coach of the Jets) permeate the minds of the audience and the subtext of the scene, which is ultimately about chickens coming home to roost on Tony and Carmela because of the lives they chose. As alter egos for Tony and Carmela throughout the series, folks who took the proverbial “other path” in life, Artie and (especially) Charmaine engage in subtle gloating in the scene. Football coaching was firmly established as Tony’s “road not taken” in Test Dream, so having an actual football coach present in the episode where the unsavory and downright deadly consequences of his chosen vocation are crashing in all around him provides dramatic ballast. All the better to have the coach in the scene be the coach of the team involved in the Heidi game in view of the ending planned for the following episode. And speaking again of that ending, the wall behind Tony in Holsten’s is consumed with four large murals specifically brought in by the production crew for the shoot. The largest and most centered depicts a huge, light-colored building with lots of windows, somewhat reminiscent of the Inn at the Oaks in Tony’s coma dream. It’s apparently a high school, however, as it is flanked on either side by images of football players in full uniform with what appear to be names and year of graduation engraved at the bottom. To the side and extreme left is a mural of a tiger and the caption “Class of 1973” at the bottom. The tiger is presumably the mascot for the team and school represented in the other murals. So there is a strong symbolic presence of “football” in the last scene of the series, particularly of high school football from roughly the era when Tony would have entered high school. Finally, though it may be completely insignificant, when Tony tells Carm about the accident from his hospital stretcher in Kennedy and Heidi, he mentions that he re-injured his knee, “the one from high school.” That certainly sounds like a reference to an old high school football injury. If these loose strands from multiple episodes are indeed intended to connote football in relation to the name “Heidi”, what does that actually mean in the context of the episode Kennedy and Heidi? What does football have to do with Tony killing Chris or, more precisely, with him killing his father in the guise of Chris? The linchpin in that symbolism, it seems to me, is Tony’s old high school football coach, the guy who would have been his coach when he originally injured his knee, the guy Tony dreamt repeatedly of trying to silence or kill, the guy whose puzzling duality in Test Dream suddenly makes sense when he’s viewed as a classic, Freudian composite of opposites, specifically a composite of Tony’s opposing father figures with Johnny dressed in the physiognomy of Coach Molinaro by Tony’s subconscious in order to render acceptable imagery of his latent, patricidal feelings. If you further allow, as I do, that the Johnny look-alike shooting at Tony with a scoped rifle (ala Oswald/”Kennedy”) in that same dream is yet another Freudian “reversal into the opposite” by Tony’s subconscious to disguise his repressed paternal rage, then the Kennedy/Heidi connection is pretty clear. The names are presented proximate to the crash to connote that, in killing Chris, Tony has finally acted out the Test Dream imagery that haunted him for years: he has (symbolically) killed his father, the “Kennedy” and “Heidi” of his dream.
“He’s Dead”
In my judgment, this explains Tony’s otherwise puzzling, peyote-induced insight when he proclaims, “He’s dead,” after winning at roulette on 3 successive spins, prompting him to fall to the floor in spectacular and uncontrollable laughter. What other, real death could have inspired such a euphoric and epiphanic reaction? What real death could Tony only have appreciated while in a drug-induced, altered state of consciousness? Many felt the line referred to Christopher because he’d just died, obviously, and because Tony’s gambling luck suddenly changed afterward. That analysis never made sense to me. First, Tony plays roulette at the casino while sober when he first arrives in Vegas and loses every round. Chris was already dead at that time, as Tony well knew and accepted. Indeed, Tony was never in any state of denial about Christopher’s death (or about having killed him.) He embraced it, both consciously and in his dream therapy session with Melfi after the crash. The “he’s dead” insight occurs only after Tony takes peyote and notices a sudden and complete about-face in gambling luck. Why would he need psychedelic drugs to suddenly realize what he already knew and accepted about Chris? And why would Christopher’s death be tied in his mind to his own gambling luck anyway? No prior connection between those two things had ever been suggested. On the other hand, Tony’s sudden escalation in gambling, which coincided with the agitation and intensification of his latent rage towards his father(s), could easily be seen as a subconscious rebellion against the stern, anti-gambling lecture Johnny imparted the night Tony witnessed the cleaver incident. To the extent that the rebellion results in huge financial losses and self destruction, it obviously fails. His father retains ultimate power and authority. To the extent the rebellion results in huge winnings, it succeeds, and Tony vanquishes his father. That conquest was the ineffable and elusive “high” that Tony was subconsciously pursuing in Chasing It but which he could not articulate to Melfi. Thus the sudden change in gambling fortune on his Vegas trip is easily tied in Tony’s drug-altered psyche to a euphoric realization that he has conquered or symbolically killed his father, none of which Tony could appreciate without a vastly altered state of consciousness. And that leads to why he went to Vegas in the first place. He asks that question out loud to the Vegas prostitute, Sonia, immediately before admitting that Christopher once mentioned taking peyote with her. Tony then confesses to having always wanted to try the drug. Clearly, then, he didn’t just happen to pick Vegas and didn’t just happen to make contact with this girl. His subconscious was pushing him to that venue because he craved the enlightenment of a peyote experience. So while Tony’s real motives for the murder, and for his otherwise inexplicable jubilance afterward, were completely closed off to his conscious mind, somehow he sensed their existence and yearned to unlock and understand them. However his peyote revelations didn’t stop with simply understanding why he killed Chris.
“I Get It. I Get It!”
Tony’s desert epiphany is a bookend to his near-death coma experience and, I believe, can only be fully understood in relation to it. Yet exploring that relationship is a journey all unto itself, calling not only for consideration of the coma episodes and Kennedy and Heidi but the meaning of the cut to black that ends the series. While exploring the religious and spiritual underpinnings of those episodes is of even more weight and interest to me personally than the issue of Tony’s motives in killing Christopher, it deserves and demands its own, dedicated discussion. For now, I’d simply like to posit what I strongly believe Tony’s epiphany to have been with only minimal argumentation as to why I hold that belief. The epiphany is presaged when Tony enters the casino on his peyote trip and notes that the roulette wheel is built on the same principle as the solar system. The ball spins round and round the center or “sun” of the wheel because of two delicately-balanced but largely opposing phenomena: the momentum of the ball (which, without the wheel, would carry the ball away in a straight line) and the centripetal force of the wheel (applied by the rim, which continuously pulls the ball towards the center even as the ball’s momentum continuously pulls it on a path perpendicular to the centripetal force.) The antagonism (or cooperation, if you prefer) of the forces gives rise to a unified system: an orbit. If this sounds a bit like the Bell Labs scientist’s explanation of how two tornadoes are in fact just facets of one, unified system of wind, it’s likely no mere coincidence. As Hal Holbrook’s character argued, separateness is a mirage. The universe, and everything in it, is one big soup of molecules interacting in cause/effect fashion according to laws, making it one whole, not a bunch of discrete parts. “Everything is everything,” as the black rapper reduced it. That was the philosophy that really made an impression on Tony in the days and weeks following his coma. The principles of quantum physics articulated by Holbrook’s character are likely as close as you can get to a scientific codification of Bhuddism and therefore reinforced much of what the Bhuddist monks conveyed to Tony in his coma. The monks laughed when Tony claimed he wasn’t Finnerty and explained that there really is no “you” and “me, that death would bring an obliteration of individuality. Separate consciousness – and the consciousness of separateness – is an illusion of the living. So all this laid the philosophical groundwork for Tony’s Las Vegas trip. In that trip, Tony seeks out a girl with whom Chris had slept, then sleeps with her himself. He mentions having refrained from a longstanding desire to try peyote because he always felt the weight of his responsibilities, an implied contrast to Christopher, who always indulged in drugs despite his responsibilities. The idea that Tony was seeking to almost live life in Christopher’s skin in the Las Vegas portion of the episode was something several posters mentioned in first discussions after Kennedy and Heidi aired. Even the girl, Sonia, remarks how similar Tony and Chris are, a somewhat dubious observation that somehow offends Tony but which also helps define his impending epiphany. That epiphany is spurred when the rising sun flares at him over the desert mountain vista. This recalls Tony’s earlier comparison of the roulette wheel to the solar system. It also resonates completely with the fact that Kevin Finnerty was a solar heating salesman from Kingman, Arizona, a town which, not coincidentally, lies 95 miles southeast of Las Vegas and shares the same desert landscape. Also not coincidental, IMO, is the fact that in the prior episode, Christopher spoke of the perks of joining witness protection and of “living large” in Arizona. So I believe that, in that desert sunrise on the cusp of Arizona, in fulfillment of his identity as Kevin Finnerty, solar heating salesman, Tony saw his “son” – Christopher – “rise” and realized that, in murdering him days before, he (Tony) was really “rising” as a “son” against Johnny Boy. And in that linkage, he suddenly realized that “everything is [indeed] everything.” He is both Chris and Johnny Boy, both abused and misguided son and abusing, misguiding father. He is murdering uncle and would-be murdered nephew. He is both the mother that sees suffocation as mercy killing and the son who is suffocated. Christopher is both his son and his father. Johnny Boy is Coach Molinaro. “Kennedy” is “Heidi”. Opposites are really two sides of the same coin. In that fleeting moment of insight, Tony was truly feeling “one” with the universe.
The Second Coming
The episode following Kennedy and Heidi is titled The Second Coming after the Yeats poem that grips AJ in the English lit class he’s auditing. While the poem speaks to the bleakness of his depression and outlook on life at that particular time, there’s little doubt that – like everything of substantial weight in the Sopranos universe – it ultimately relates, first and foremost, to Tony. First referenced in the Cold Cuts therapy session dealing with pent-up rage where Tony’s deep shame from the cleaver incident is finally revealed, the poem seems the veritable inspiration for the storyline (as interpreted in this article) that culminates in Christopher’s murder: The Second ComingBy William Butler Yeats Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand;Surely the Second Coming is at hand.The Second Coming! Hardly are those words outWhen a vast image out of Spiritus MundiTroubles my sight; somewhere in sands of the desertA shape with lion body and the head of a man,A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,Is moving its slow thighs, while all about itReel shadows of indignant desert birds.The darkness drops again; but now I knowThat twenty centuries of stony sleepWere vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? The widening gyre, the orbit that breaks down when the center can no longer hold, is clearly a parallel to the decompensation of which Melfi warned, the point at which Tony’s defenses after Junior’s second murder attempt could no longer hold and the underlying pathological rage at his fathers would take over. True to the poem, a “blood-dimmed tide was loosed”, inspired by a perverse compassion for the “innocent”. While “the best” all mourned Christopher and thought his death a tragedy, Tony, “the worst”, was full of passionate intensity and could not understand why no one else saw the greater good in Christopher’s death. The “revelation” occurs in a “waste of desert sand”, imagery easily compatible with Tony’s “I get it” moment in the Nevada/Arizona desert. The uniquely depraved look on his face as he suffocated Christopher is evoked by the line describing a “gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun”. “Twenty years of stony sleep” refers to the decades of denial Tony maintained, the defense mechanisms that kept him all his life from confronting and admitting that, in some very real ways, he hated his father. It’s a figurative sleep that was suggested literally in the noted fact that so many episodes in season 6B started with Tony in a deep sleep. Somnolence was suggested even in the choice of the song “Comfortably Numb” as soundtrack in the moments immediately preceding the crash, the moments right before the hour of the “rough beast” finally arrived. Even the incidentals are perfect allusions, as with the image of “stony sleep” being turned into a nightmare by a “rocking cradle”, or, in this case, by a car seat with a branch sticking through it. I’m intrigued by the line describing the emerging beast as having “lion body”. It may mean absolutely nothing. But among the story points worth considering in relation to it are the tiger on the wall in Holsten’s and the enigmatic cat in Made In America. More obscure is the fact that in Remember When, the single episode most explicitly dealing with the violent release of stifled paternal rage, Carter Chong described his grandfather as a “lion” and noted that his father owned “Grumman” stock. (Grumman manufactured a number of high-profile fighter military aircraft, most of them named for some kind of cat, e.g., Panther, Jaguar, Tomcat, Tigercat.) Carter was reviewing these facts to himself in the scene immediately preceding his vicious attack on Junior, suggesting that, in acting out on his stifled paternal hatred, he was adopting the predatory, aggressive characteristics of a wild cat. Notably, when Junior, the paternal surrogate who modeled this kind of aggressive behavior to Carter, was seen at the end of that episode bruised and literally defanged, his sunken mouth void of false teeth, he was stroking a harmless little housecat on his lap. Once a lion, the former mob boss was a lion no more.
Asbestos Dumping as a Metaphor for Tony’s Toxic Spill of Rage
Kennedy and Heidi opens with a controversy between Tony and Phil Leotardo over asbestos disposal. One of Tony’s contractors was removing asbestos from old buildings, while following none of the strict (and expensive) asbestos-handling laws regulating worker and public safety, and was seeking to dump completely uncontained truck-fulls at waste stations controlled by Phil. Phil’s guys were denying the trucks the right to dump. As a consequence, huge, openly-smoking asbestos mounds were building up at job sites. After Christopher’s death, Tony was doing little to find a solution, skipping town to gamble, get laid, and get high and leaving the contractor high and dry. Finally, near the very end of the episode, the contractor dumps heaps of asbestos at dawn in an open marsh area resembling the New Jersey Meadowlands. Asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral that gained widespread use in the 19th and 20th centuries as an ingredient in various building industry materials – including wall compounds, insulation, and roofing materials – primarily because of its extreme insulative properties and resistance to heat and fire. In the last 40 years, it’s become better-known for its cancer-causing and toxic effects on those mining and working with it in manufacturing, demolition/remodeling, or other “raw” environments. Both the heat resistance and toxicity of asbestos make the shoddy removal/dumping storyline a compelling metaphor for Tony’s equally shoddy “dumping” in Kennedy and Heidi. The smoldering heat and flames from his hatred towards his father and uncle were contained beneath his consciousness by an insulating firewall of denial and repression. In essence, this denial and repression was Tony’s psychological asbestos, and it (more or less) contained the heat and fire within him for 47 years. But it finally broke down, allowing the flames to rage and do damage and necessitating a messy disposal. Unfortunately the breakdown didn’t happen where it should have, in his therapist’s office as the result of honest introspection and dialog about little things like his uncle trying to kill him twice and his father indoctrinating him to murder at 22. That would have been the equivalent of careful, legally-compliant asbestos removal. Instead the breakdown occurred in a roadside ravine and the resulting “waste [in the] desert sand” was every bit as toxic as the smoking piles illegally dumped in the Meadowlands immediately before the desert epiphany and which we saw reprised in the very first shot of the following episode. Think about that for a moment. Tony’s “I get it” moment was literally sandwiched between shots of noxious mounds of asbestos blowing in the New Jersey wind, a significant clue that some other kind of perversely cathartic disposal was in the middle of that sandwich.
The Orbit of the ‘Blue Comet’: Long Journey to Nowhere
It’s fair to ask: if the broad strokes of my interpretation are valid, what impact did the epiphany have on Tony going forward? After the drugs wore off, did he actually retain any specific understanding of his subconscious motives for killing Chris? Was he left only with the impression that he had enjoyed a very brief moment of enlightenment but without intellectual distillation of the enlightenment itself? Because the insight was founded upon the secret that he had murdered Chris, even if Tony had retained it, he couldn’t overtly share it with anyone. Still, I lean toward the interpretation that the specifics (at least the ones I proffered) were lost to him when the altered state of consciousness ceased. When he tried to describe the magic of what he experienced in the desert to his crew, he could only come up with the most mundane, inadequate words: “The sun . . . came up.” They all looked at him like he was half retarded. He was slightly more specific with Melfi, offering that he saw “for pretty certain” that this reality is not all there is. He couldn’t define the alternative but was still convinced there was “something else”. He did speak in therapy of appreciating a balance and unity in opposites that he hadn’t appreciated before, a “ying” [sic] and “yang”. And he offered that “mothers are like buses . . . the vehicle that gets us here,” but that, once here, we are all on our own, individual journeys (mothers included.) So, to the extent his epiphany comported with what he revealed in therapy, it seems to have had little to do with fathers and with Christopher’s murder and more to do with letting go (finally) of some of his issues with his mother. But perhaps the best clue to his residual state of understanding came when he indicated that some of what he thought he had grasped in the desert now eluded him. “You think you know, you think you learn something . . . like when I got shot,” he begins. Then, speaking specifically about the peyote experience, he reports that the insight gained is “kinda hard to describe. . . . You know, you have these thoughts, and you almost grab it . . . and then . . . ftt.” He flicks his fingers away from his chin as if to indicate “nothing”. So, to paraphrase Edna St. Vincent Millay, a fragment of what he knew remains, but, apparently, the best is lost. It wouldn’t take long for all of it to be lost. By the time Tony sits with AJ’s female therapist in Made In America, “going about in pity” for himself because of who his mother was, he has come full circle, essentially back to where he was to start the series. Like a “blue comet”, his orbit was highly elliptical, if not erratic, and carried with it the potential of veering off into deep space or crashing into the sun. But despite killing his own nephew, having a near-death experience himself, and saving his son from an act of suicide, the orbit held. The sober breakthrough never came. The repudiation of his father and of his way of life never took hold in his consciousness. And so, by series’ end, we, like Tony, were exhausted from a long journey that ultimately took us nowhere. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5
A Comprehensive List of Changes in Persona 5 Royal (Prologue to 5/2)
Introduction
Purpose
I wanted to create a comprehensive list of every last change I could find between the old game and the new game both to help players discover things that they may have missed, and to give people making walkthroughs or optimal daily guides an outline that will save them some time when writing up their own material.
Methodology and notes about this list
This list is intended to document changes on a semi-specific level. I am simply listing things that I notice while playing through the game. I am being pretty meticulous with my documentation, but this list is not designed to document every single minor detail (such as individual stat changes to weapons and items or arcana-type changes to personas, for example). I am noting whatever I can as I go along and looking things up to verify that they have been changed if I can find a video or wiki article on the old game. I also intend for this guide to be as spoiler-free as possible in regards to the story, so even though I am writing down all the new things I notice, I will leave information about cutscenes and story elements as vague as I can so as not to ruin the experience for anyone. To keep things maintainable, I have broken up the list up into logical date spans from the last deadline of the previous palace to the deadline for the next palace; the first list covers the prologue to the deadline for Kamoshida's palace, the second from the day after Kamoshida's deadline to Madarame's deadline, and so on and so forth.
About the author
I played Persona 5 and am currently playing through P5R on a PS4 Pro but have not tried the PS3 version of the game. I completed my first run and New Game+ back-to-back on 11/11/2019 and 1/12/2020 respectively, so the game is still fairly fresh on my mind. I spent ~250 hours on the base game, a good chunk of which was devoted to optimizing a perfect roster of personas for Joker in NG+. I have gotten the Platinum Trophy for Persona 5.
Changes (Prologue to 5/2)
Technical
Graphics & Performance
Most if not all of the textures and models in the game appear to have been updated, and look a lot cleaner now that the game is not limited to the PS3's comparatively low texture cache size.
Less aliasing (read: "jagged edges") on in-game models and geometry (not sure if this is due to the PS4 Pro's 4k upscaling or an anti-aliasing post processing effect.)
Far fewer loading screens/reduced loading times.
Saves and PSN
There is an autosave feature to save progress towards Thieves Den rewards; it does not create a new save for you to return to. This progress is retained across playthroughs.
There is no longer a separate blue "network save" slot.
You can now take screenshots and video clips up to late December (I haven't tested this yet myself as I haven't gotten that far), after which they are blocked.
Most (but not all) of the achievements have been updated, and they generally seem to be much less completionistic than the previous game. There are no achievements for ranking up all confidants, getting all vending machine items, clearing all mementos requests, etc. You could probably complete all the achievements in a single playthrough as long as you're paying attention to getting them; I haven't seen any that require a NG+ run.
Sound Effects & Music
There seem to be quite a few more ambient sound effects that weren't in the base game (like clanking chains/cages in Kamoshida's palace), but I'm mostly playing with headphones now, so I could just be noticing them more.
There are 20-30 new songs that have been added to the soundtrack.
Gameplay
Story & Cutscenes
A number of characters that show up later in the game make brief cameos and show up in various places around Tokyo much earlier than they did in the base game.
Kamoshida can now be seen walking around the school after 4/18 and can be talked to for some more verbal abuse.
The prologue also has a new in-engine cutscene that introduces Kasumi Yoshizawa.
On 4/12, there is a new interactive cutscene that introduces the protagonist to Kasumi for the first time during a subway ride to school.
On 4/18, there is another interactive cutscene with Kasumi and Kawakami.
Daily Life
There are quite a few new side conversations with NPC's that hint at the new activities and areas added to Tokyo in P5R.
All of the classroom questions seem to have been changed.
Bad weather will improve the knowledge gained by studying in the library.
The tutorial for studying in the library also mentions that you may overhear students talking about you, which will reduce knowledge gained but increase guts. In P5, the description indicated that studying despite the noise would raise guts, I do not know how this has actually been adjusted, if at all.
"Speed Reader" is a new book available in the library that can reduce the number of times you need to read a book to finish it. It is checked out initially, but will be available on 7/1 near the deadline to Kaneshiro's palace.
Triple Seven (the convenience store) now pays ¥3500+ instead of ¥2800+, making it now pay more than the flower shop (¥3200+) per shift.
Rafflesia (the flower shop) now only offers afternoon shifts. Previously you could work there in the afternoons or evenings.
Working at Triple Seven now also improves your Charm stat.
Triple Seven now offers a rewards point program that gives extra points on any day of the month with a 7 in it. On these days, more customers will come to the shop, allowing you to earn more Charm points and money than usual.
There is a new Sports Store in the underground mall that sells some new consumables, accessories, and (presumably) confidant gifts for Ryuji. This store replaces the record label shop.
A few of the shops in the underground mall now sell male confidant gifts.
The Shibuya Diner on central street has been renamed to "Bikkuri Boy" and is closed until May.
The batting cages now offer different activities based on the time of day. At night, you can swing as much as you want, but there are no prizes. Hitting three home runs at night earns you a coupon for a free daytime session.
Some books now have a prerequisite Knowledge level in order to read them.
Studying at one of the booths in LeBlanc during bad weather will now increase the amount of knowledge points gained.
You can use the cleaning tools in the restroom of LeBlanc to improve your Kindness stat during the evenings, and also gain points towards Sojiro's social link.
You can now sit and reflect on the toilet in LeBlanc, which will give you hints as to how close you are to improving each of your social stats.
Cleaning up the bookshelf in your room on 4/18 or later will reward you with a few new books to read.
Cleaning out the rest of your room on 4/18 or later will also give you a CRT TV, although it does not include a tuner so you cannot receive TV blurbs from your room.
The CRT TV is now replaced with a DVD player at the secondhand shop.
Scarlet (the DVD rental shop) now requires you to pay a ¥4800 annual membership fee that allows you to rent any DVD you want for an unlimited period of time at no cost. You are only able to have one DVD rented out at a time.
I believe this was in the previous game, but there is now a tutorial that points out that you can solve crossword puzzles at the far table (near the restroom) at LeBlanc on certain days without causing time to progress.
You can now explore Yongen-Jaya at night on 4/21 instead of 4/22.
After exploring the Metaverse, you can now perform activities within LeBlanc and your room, even without Kawakami's confidant bonuses.
You will now get text messages from part-time jobs on busy days, where you can potentially earn more social points and money.
On busy days, the convenience store will have a performance challenge much like the Beef Bowl Shop, where you will need to remember barcode locations and then recall them when scanning items.
Palaces
The prologue sequence at Sae Nijima's casino now has a tutorial sequence that shows the player how to use the grappling hook.
Individual party members will now occasionally have things to say when in a safe room.
Morgana gives you a few starter items and infiltration tools when officially infiltrating Kamoshida's palace for the first time after 4/18.
You can now loot nearby treasure chests and breakable objects while in cover.
Shadows have new lines of dialog that they will occasionally say when wandering around.
Treasure chests now make a glittery sound effect to let you know that one is nearby.
There are new visual and audio effects on safe room doors that make them more obvious.
Many of the puzzles have been modified and some new ones have been added.
The grappling hook will now allow you to access new areas in palaces where hidden pathways or treasure might be found.
Will Seeds are new collectables that can be found in each palace. Finding one will restore a little bit of SP to the party, and finding all three of a palaces Will Seeds will reward the player with a unique accessory.
With the inclusion of the Will Seeds and grappling hook, a number of areas in each palace have been changed or added.
Boss fights have a few new sequences and attack animations, but are fairly similar to their counterparts in Persona 5.
Combat
Guns now replenish all ammo after each fight, the rationale (according to Morgana) is that Shadows will be expecting you to come at them fully loaded. The gun tutorial fight in Kamoshida's palace now has a second encounter to show off this new change.
Take Over now plays during ambush attacks instead of Last Surprise. Last Surprise will still play during normal encounters and enemy ambushes.
Baton passes are no longer linked to confidant ranks and can be used as soon as 4/18.
Performing a baton pass four times in a row will now allow the final party member to use a skill without consuming any SP or HP.
Enemies in each encounter seem to be much less homogenous than in the base game, possibly to encourage the player to take advantage of baton passes.
Savage enemies are a new variation of regular enemies that have to be damaged somewhat before the player can perform a Hold Up.
Disaster Shadows are a new type of enemy that will only counterattack if attacked by the player first. They can also occasionally perform follow-up attacks. Upon death, they will drop an item and explode, damaging any other shadows. The amount of collateral damage that they do is based on the amount of "overflow" damage that is done to them by the player when they die. If they die due to reflected damage or Despair, they will not explode or drop any items.
Asking a shadow to join you when you already have one of them in your stock now grants extra experience to the persona in your stock.
Asking a shadow you already have in your stock will usually yeild better rewards. Shadows in your compendium but not in your stock will ask to join you first before giving you money or items.
Items gained through negotiation vary from enemy to enemy; they have fixed common and rare drops (common being something like a Life Stone, while rare might net you a Balm of Life). These can also be stolen using Joker's Pickpocket ability from Magician Rank 5.
Items & Equipment
The stats and prices for most (if not all) equipment has been altered at Untouchable. In general, gun accuracy and damage seems to have gone down while prices have gone up (presumably due to the ammo replenishment change). The accessories that are initially available are completely different than in P5.
Crafting infiltration tools during bad weather will now allow you to make an additional tool.
The "Stealthanol" infiltration tool has been replaced by "Calming Aroma" which seems to have the same effect (lowers security level).
The "Element Set" infiltration tool has been broken down into it's four component items (Moltov Cocktail, Freeze Spray, Stun Gun, and Air Cannon)
Some accessories now have bonus skills attached to them, which can be used by any persona that the player has equipped.
If you find an item in a chest that is stronger than the one currently equipped on Joker or a party member, they will prompt you to let them equip it automatically.
The home shopping channel on Sundays now offers bundles of a variety of items, rather than a single item. You will now have to choose between different options. Keep in mind that you can only purchase one and will miss out on the other, so choose carefully!
All gear that can be washed at the laundromat now is described as "sooty".
There are quite a few new types of gear, and old gear has been rebalanced as well.
Personas & The Velvet Room
There is a unique appearance for the Velvet Room loading screens.
There are quite a few new personas that have been added.
Some personas have had their arcana changed, and there are now a few new arcana as well.
After you have officially infiltrated Kamoshida's palace for the first time, you will be able to access Challenge Battles in the Velvet Room by speaking to Justine.
Challenge battles allow you to earn rewards through battles that focus on specific mechanics like Baton Passes or Technical damage, battles that test your endurance, or battles with persona users from previous games.
Confidants
Tae Takemi's voice actress has been changed from Kirsten Potter to Abby Trott (who also voices Annette in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, one of my favorite VA's in the game)
Some of the confidant cutscenes have either had new dialog added, or have been overhauled completely.
Most of the confidant cutscenes now give more conversation opportunities to gain points towards the next rank-up.
Some confidant abilities have been altered, replaced, or shuffled around to unlock at different ranks than before.
Tae Takemi's confidant now has a Guts prerequisite after level 1.
Dialog & UI
Party members now cycle through three portrait angles (instead of just one in P5) with 2-3 expressions each. The general pattern is head down (sad, angry) head tilted up and back (surprised, happy) and then all of the normal portraits from P5. There don't seem to be any new portraits for non-party confidants or named characters (like Shiho)
Some of the NPC's are now voiced, like the parcel deliveryman that directs you to Cafe Leblanc when you are attempting to find Sojiro Sakurai's house.
There are a significant amount of localization fixes for both voice and text dialog as well.
The dialog indicators (i.e. "whisper whisper" "chatter" etc.) over NPC's that you can listen to or talk to will be grayed-out after interacting with them to let you know that you've already interacted with them.
Many interactions with confidants that were previously text-only are now voiced.
Phone conversations now show the portrait of the person you're talking to next to the text box.
The chat app on Joker's phone now has an animated background effect. (Falling flower petals right now, not sure if it changes as the seasons/weather changes yet)
Shadows and other entities now have special effects on their dialog boxes when speaking.
Transition animations when moving between areas have changed due to the reduced loading times. Some of them (like the subway animation) will also change depending on the time of day/weather.
The glyphs for the Playstation button controls in the tutorial prompts are now colored and shaped like the actual button used instead of being a more generic red-colored character.
Tutorial pop-ups now allow you to go back-and-forth between sections using the left and right buttons on the d-pad.
There is now a new "Order Obtained" tab under the inventory interface that sorts items from newest to oldest.
There is no longer an "Urgent" category of infiltration tools (as of 4/17). These have been grouped into the "Palace" category of tools.
In addition to sorting by Aracana and Level, you can now sort the Persona Compendium alphabetically.
The Persona compendium now has a mask icon next to any personas that you already have in your stock.
There is now a "I need to speak with Igor" option if you accidentally back out of the persona fusion/itemization menu.
Pressing the touch pad now does more than just showing what other players have done on the same day as you (though that is still an option). It can bring up Assist Commands, which allow you to view recommendations on which confidant you should spend time with, view suggestions for which activities to do, and quickly travel to the hideout with a single button press.
There are now minimap icons for confidants.
Confidant abilities that carry over from the previous game now have more descriptive text. (i.e. Ryuji's "Punk Talk" ability now specifies that it only works on upbeat-type shadows.)
Pressing R2 on a piece of equipment that has a passive ability or modifier will show a more detailed description of said effect.
There is now a new effect that indicates when a party member has been powered-up by a baton pass. It will change color from red->yellow->blue for each successive pass.
During combat, there are new status indicators by a shadow's name that show all of their current buffs and debuffs.
Instead of just auto-healing the group, pressing square while in a palace now gives the player the option to quickly use some common infiltration tools like smokescreens, Goho-M's, and Calming Aromas.
You can now target specific enemies and points of cover by using the d-pad while hiding.
Map scrolling speed has been increased significantly.
Palace maps now have an indicator that keeps track of what Will Seeds you have collected so far.
The battle summary screen animations have been sped up significantly.
The animation that plays when going to the next day will be different when sending a calling card.
Miscellaneous QoL
Aside from the infamous first walk to school, most interactions that involve going somewhere new or following another character will be more guided, preventing the player from getting lost (like when Ryuji shows you the way to the airsoft shop for the first time)
Disclaimer
I have tried to document all of the changes that I have noticed from the base game, but there is a good chance that I have overlooked things and/or have noticed something "new" that was actually in the base game. Feel free to point out any errors in this post or contribute via the Github link, as this is intended to be a living document with frequent updates.
Due to Reddit's character limitations on posts, I am going to break these change lists up into separate posts, with the deadline for each palace being the delimiting factor. This first one covers all changes found between the prologue and 5/2, which is the deadline for the first palace. Thank you so much for reading, and a huge thanks to everyone who has helped out so far!
Red v. Blue: Color Symbolism & Americana in Twin Peaks
Note: I'm writing this as someone who has watched the entire original series, Fire Walk With Me, The Missing Pieces, and The Return, as well as other features from Lynch's filmography (Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Eraserhead); marked for spoilers now, do not proceed if you haven't seen them all. This is a longpost for Twin Peaks-obsessed nuts like me. One of the things that remains a statement of the original incarnation (and thus, a statement by being substituted with HD digital cameras in The Return) is Twin Peaks's absolute mastery of the highly saturated 4:3 box TV aesthetic. I've heard Lynch was adamant the color palette not be corrected to a grittier, desaturated version when execs received the tapes. It's part of what's made so many iconic sequences and shots from the original run hallmarks of Tumblr and Instagram accounts aplenty. Twin Peaks came (and could be argued, ushered) on the precipice of a major shift in the television format. We would see the contemporary form of television media developed further with shows like The Sopranos in the HBO prime cable era, or The X-Files (no wonder Chris Carter plundered Twin Peaks's cast for his own attempt). As a marker for the end of the 80s and its preceding decades though, in many ways Twin Peaks to spoke to a form of TV largely since faded: soap operas and sitcoms and serials. It's part of why I loved the metatextual inclusion of the soap opera Invitation to Love, allowing the show to reference its own stylized dramaturgy. Jade & Emerald... Jade give two rides, hm? Very specifically, I find the series loves to riddle blue and red, like one oni to another. Fire and water. Hot-cold (like the shivery feeling Audrey gets when she holds an ice cube on her bare skin for a long time). The red and blue on Mike's TP varsity letterman jacket could be the most striking and concise marriage of this dynamic pairing. Donna & Maddie dive into this in the season 2 opener, scheming at the Double R (docked points for the silly jailhouse seduction routine by Donna, though). Subtler in palette but more obvious in Americana, Major Briggs's omnipresent blue uniform incorporates red in his breast patch (and Don S. Davis's ruddy-warm complexion, imo) speaking to his inherent patriotism as part of the Air Force. On more than one occasion Big Ed is spotted with a red & blue flannel. Much to be said about the pairing of Bobby & Mike, comparing to BOB & MIKE; MIKE saw the face of God, but Bobby is the one who saw the light in this duo. The flashing lights of a cop car. Dr. Jacoby's iconic 3D glasses-flavored shades (note that Jacoby and Ben both hailed from the Robert Wise-directed 1961 film adaptation of West Side Story, the famous 50s musical depicting rival gangs experiencing a Romeo & Juliet plot amidst culture clash in NYC). Lil the Dancer, communicating through expressive dance a coded message in FWWM. A barbershop quartet in the background behind Coop & Albert in "Coma". I believe it's The Secret History of Twin Peaks book that is paired with red and blue filter lenses, so you can view certain hidden information? Either way, Lynch likes his 50s/60s Americana; reminds me of Castle Horror gimmicks. The blue flower was a central Romanticism symbol; as blue roses don't occur in nature, they hold an air of mystery and fantastic possibility. Tennessee Williams used the blue rose to symbolize the fragile & unique character Laura(!!) in The Glass Menagerie. The sign outside One-Eye Jack's. Red pairs often with green or black in gambling/casino situations; from the card deck motif for the sex workers to the mix-match patches of a roulette wheel. The malfunctioning lift for Leo in "The Orchid's Curse." The stage behind Julee Cruise during Roadhouse performances, especially "Lonely Souls." Even though the Red Room is known for its red, we see eventually that the Lodge holds strobing blue lights and the milky cataracts of doppelgangers. In a more peaceful sense, blue light washes over Laura as she smiles in the Lodge at the end of FWWM, reunited finally with her angel. You can practically hear the buzz of the neon zapping into life from here. Knowing how important electricity is to Twin Peaks, these little details really stand out. Ben and Jerry, at various times, switch between the two to complement each other much like the Miser Brothers. We also see it in Ben's interactions with Catherine; their affair in "Traces to Nowhere" finds Catherine clad in a powdery blue blanket, Ben's fiery tie, Catherine's ruby toenails (sidenote: not a fan of the Tarantino interaction). We see more of this Ben-Catherine color scheme in "Cooper's Dreams" during the Iceland convention with Leland's impromptu dancefloor breakdown. Ben, as central locus for Twin Peaks's criminal element, seems to be a lightning pole for these color dynamics. Notable is his integral need as a character to keep his publicly clean image and seedy underworld dealings separate, the perfect human symbol for Lynch's sequence in Blue Velvet's intro depicting the rotting & squirming insects buried beneath the idyllic Levittown surface of Lumberton. And Ben, even beyond his perennial cigar, enjoys many scenes by the fire of a hearth. Ben floats through the two by himself on a regular basis, which I think ties into his role as the uber 80s corporate & cold American businessman, espousing social niceties & charm but hiding his sinister and impulsive skeletons in the closet. It's almost like he should be Lodge, but he's only run parallel to it as a human being. Likewise, when it comes to the Lodge, BOB and the Man from Another Place/The Arm make a perfect red-blue pair. I noticed this especially in FWWM during the chaotic convenience store sequence. Given that during the night the sky can range from black as a cup of Coop's coffee to a Prussian shade, by following a Goethe color theory mindset, we can admit "Blue is a darkness weakened by light." BOB never comes off weak, but as a possessing spirit, for the viewer, his sudden appearances/reveals herald a (at times literal) spotlight into the black oil that is his essence (follow this link for a Youtube vid that informed some of my own theories). Goethe characterizes blue as common (think of country folk and bikers and truckers), as well as cold and melancholy, powerful. Red is much easier for The Arm; in addition to evoking the Christian iconography of a devilish imp figure, he is pure fire, the kind that truly walks with you (Goethe considers red as beautiful, dignified, closer to the essence of light; perhaps this echoes the Neoclassical Venus statue found often with Red Room curtains, or the red lipstick of the various beautiful women commonly prey to Twin Peaks). BOB's always clad in blue denim to match The Arm's impish red suit. Noticeable since they remain the two most active agents as Lodge creatures, continuing the BOB/MIKE dualism that existed pre-show. Given the only color left to throw in is white (HMM,, White Lodge? Sarah's pale horse? Leland's hair? The stuffed arctic fox in Ben's office? That weird long-faced elk thing at the Packard-Martell house? Pete and Coop enjoying/trying to order a mug of milk? The Tremond/Chalfont boy's white mask?) and you have the Star-Spangled Banner itself (the mini-flag at Twin Peaks Sheriff's office that flanks Coop while he's sitting across the table from Dr. Jacoby, as well as Coop's fixation on the full-sized incarnation while he's in the Bros. Fusco's office during his Dougie stint in The Return, are just two instances). Notable as a tri-color national aesthetic, red white & blue sometimes finds its way back in altered forms: straightforward visual representation with the Icelandic investors, as well as more tonally & artistically-derived influence from Lynch's favorite country (we'll forget the agonizing French hookup leaving scene from The Return and think more of Monica Bellucci's dream sequence, or Ben & Jerry orgasming over fresh baguettes with brie). Great shot from Tim Hunter here. Part 9, \"This is the chair.\" I remember this sequence being a spark of sorts, tantalizing to see Coop stir somewhat from his Dougie stupor. While it should come as no surprise an American show would have many American-specific themes, I'm often convinced that Lynch is using the visual shorthand to simultaneously sing, criticize, celebrate, and reflect on what it means to be America. It is not coincidence that Dale Bartholomew Cooper's name reflects the notorious Pacific Northwest hijacker D.B. Cooper, or Harry Truman with the 33rd President (who, mind you, ordered the atomic bombs dropped in WWII). Or Franklin "Frank" Truman with the 32nd, for that matter. Coop openly ponders the Kennedy assassination (itself rife for conspiracy theories and speculation, much like TP) in a log to Diane, as well as Marilyn Monroe's involvement with the family; who else is Laura Palmer but a hometown Monroe? Much like D.B. Cooper, Coop took a historic leap. I would love to dig down deep and really review all of his work to understand more about Lynch's fixation on Lincoln (a portrait is in the Donna/James classroom when Laura's death is announced; a dramatic shot in Blue Velvet fixates on Lincoln Street which divides the town's good/bad parts & has an antagonist by the name of Booth; the "Gotta light?" Woodsman in The Return). Now if someone could explain this connection... Dick says this right before the fire alarms go off and swamp Leland with water while BOB rams Leland's head in to break his last vessel and escape from justice. Why Lincoln? I refer to it as The House Divided. Lincoln is one of the most recognizable presidents, partially due to his assassination (Kennedy echo), partially due to his role in the Civil War and how America resolved its most divisive internal conflict. He's emblematic of the Old America and the New America, slavery and post-slavery, secession and preservation. Somewhat like Republicans & Democrats, red v. blue. We know the toy Lincoln Logs, we hear the term Lincoln Lawyer, he's even one of the faces on Mt. Rushmore (referenced explicitly in The Return -"There they are Albert, faces of stone"- as well as compositionally in "Cooper's Dreams"); given the existence of both a Black Lodge and White Lodge in mythos, I think it's safe to draw at least some broad comparison to black America and white America (as well as Windom Earle's fetish for chess). Even as a goofier entry during Season 2's decaying period, Ben's mental lapse into General Robert E. Lee and fixation on the Civil War (mirroring Johnny Horne's fixation with the indigenous headdress and colonist America) gives some meat to this motif. Although it's never quite outright verbalized in show, one gets the sense that America is inherently built on some original sins. The water in the well was poisoned before the Trinity test Notable too for the context of having Hawk (Nez Perce) included in this recreation. Mt. Rushmore was originally a sacred place for the Lakota Sioux; its present condition is considered desecration to their culture. America in its current incarnation was founded on the genocide and forced relocation of its indigenous peoples; Twin Peaks is loaded with Native American patterns and imagery, i.e. The Great Northern. Note as well that red, by itself, can easily be tied to Twin Peaks's lifeforce, and by extension Lynch's entire repertoire. Fire. Red velvet curtains. Lipstick and nail polish. Blood. Pete's fisherman flannel. Audrey's heels, and her cherry trick. Norma's cherry pie. Log Lady's frames. "Let's rock" on Agent Desmond's car in FWWM. The women at One-Eye Jack's. The blooming roses peaking through white picket fences in Blue Velvet. The vast majority of neon signage (The Roadhouse especially). The traffic light at Sparkwood & 21. Leo's ostentatious Corvette. The lifeline zigzags on the high school walls. MIKE, in Philip Gerard, is fond of red tops, connecting him directly with The Arm. Much is made of Twin Peaks's proximity to Canada in the original series; the corrupt Mountie during the internal investigation arc stands out. The balloons at Dougie's corporate plaza. The Scarlet Letter. Lancelot Court, red door. Laura Palmer's Secret Diary. Night time, my time. Red can be a carnal color, igniting passion, but also a warning to stop, turn back. Often we find it in the company of characters who have experienced a lot in Lynch's world, and not too much good. And blue too. Blue is much more sparing in Twin Peaks, to greater mystical effect. Blue Rose. Laura's cold lips in the Pilot. Blue Velvet. Isabella Rossellini's dramatic eyeshadow as Dorothy Vallens. The waitress outfits at the Double R Diner. Leo's button-down when Shelly shoots him. The light in the morgue as Hawk tails Philip Gerard. The lifeline zigzags on hospital monitors (how they spike with Ronette, how they fall flat when Leland strangles Jacques). Ronette is swaddled in soft blue blankets during the S2 opener, her tilted head recalls Marian imagery (interesting from a Madonna-Whore complex standpoint); two episodes later her IV drip is tainted with blue dye, a visit from BOB. Maddie Ferguson's nightgown during her carpet-stain vision. Coop's iconic jammies. Rita's blue key & Betty's blue box in Mulholland Drive. The woman's hair at Club Silencio. Whenever television sets or camera footage shows up onscreen in Twin Peaks, there's a noticeable cool blue tint: think of that first tape, Laura & Donna dancing in the woods; the static showcased in the opening credits to FWWM; the footage of Coop gambling, obsessed over by Jean Renault. Gordon & Albert speaking together after meeting with Mr. C and watching Tammy walk away. Flashes of lightning. The sign at the Luna Lounge, where Fred Madison plays his discordant sax solo in Lost Highway. Two dead girls wash up in the water. Calhoun Memorial's morgue stays bathed in blue light. Louise Bourgeois claimed it as hallmark, stating blue left behind \"the drabness of day-to-day reality\" for \"a world of freedom\", inner truths. BOB is certainly free. Beyond red and blue, the colors I tend to notice in Twin Peaks are pink and green (notable for following a warm/cool polarization as well), which do not concern themselves to the same extent with Americana, if at all. Pink is much more sparse in its application, typically feminine: Nadine's prom dress during her suicide attempt in the S1 finale; Naido/Diane's bathrobe in The Return; the drapes behind the new One-Eyed Jack's girl Ben sleeps with in "Zen" (purposefully designed to evoke a vagina, in my opinion); fudging into purple, but we can count the Mauve Zone and Coop's run-in with Naido to an extent; Gersten Hayward's princess outfit during her piano performance for the Palmers; the trio of Candie, Mandie & Sandie; the gut-churning Pink Room sequence from FWWM with Laura & Donna. Candie was a surprising standout for The Return. I felt these girls were a commentary on One-Eyed Jack's in the way the Mitchum Bros. were commentary on Ben & Jerry; where Ben & Jerry enjoyed public acceptance but indulged in dark secrets and ran through vulnerable sex workers, Bradley & Rodney have a dark reputation/entrance but ultimately possess hearts of gold, rescuing at-risk women like these three. Green is more expansively utilized, and supernatural in tone: the billowing leaves of those Douglas firs in an ominous breeze; the iconic Twin Peaks font's outline; the guiding light we see through Dougie's eyes (which I assume has always been a part of Coop's psyche and intuition); Dougie's iconic oversized jacket; the infamous Owl Cave ring; the vintage lampshade adorning Ben's desk; the childhood bike Ben fondly recalls in The Return; the framed picture of the tall pine in the Sheriff's Department lobby; the tiny fir stuffed by the partition in the Palmer household; Jade & Emerald, even. Ben says to Leo, conspiring to burn the mill in "The One-Armed Man" - "Three nights, Leo. Green light." Something about it reminds me of Jay Gatsby's over-analyzed yearning green light from the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic; the idea of the American Dream with wanton capitalism, and how it's impossible to achieve (am I crazy for thinking there's a connection between Big Ed's Gas Farm's neon egg sign and the West Egg/East Egg class divide?). Of course, the owls are watching. Much like the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg. Ed's business harkens to how convenience stores (early-to-mid-century modernist American consumerism) were both the pumping blood and desiccated bone of our culture, as well as the Woodsmen womb. It also reminds me of old-style egg timers, and what is Twin Peaks but a show obsessed with the manipulation and perception of time? Was it the chicken or the egg that came first? Is it future or is it past? By the time of The Return, we have lost these overly saturated tones, but the direct symbolic use of color is still integral to a Peaks viewing. I find it even more interesting that The Return made extensive use of black & white footage. Eraserhead and The Elephant Man alike (I've found both hold the spores for concepts and aesthetics fully developed in Lynch's later filmography, like the chevron Lodge floor pattern we all dearly love) were filmed in this manner; I feel Lynch chose this as nod to this earlier work, as well as the old formats of pre-color TV and film, like WWII newsreels. I find it relevant as well that older generations dream in black & white, a vanishing phenomenon which is directly related to the media of their era. B&W film informed the visual rhetoric of their unconscious minds; we, as younger Americans, dream in Technicolor. This is the first shot we see of The Elephant Man. Notice how this is specifically his left arm, hand floating over the flame. Later in the film during a particularly moving sequence, Merrick first proves he is capable of speech for the first time by reciting the 23rd Psalm in a louder and louder tone, mirroring Annie Blackburn's prayers while Windom Earle led her bound into the Lodge. The black & white sequences occur within the Lodge, relate directly to the Lodge - may Part 8 live forever in its atomic power - or otherwise involve unexplained phenomena (Cole's Monica Bellucci dream). By the time of The Return, a disconnect with the past and nostalgia is a core theme. The colors have faded. Coop, a half-baked shadow of himself, only gets restored by the chance mention of Gordon Cole's name in Sunset Blvd. Note Billy Wilder's 1950 film revolves around an aging actress lost in the reverie of her long-gone prime. (Also note her insistence, when William Holden's character asks her about the Salome film script, she's not conducting a "comeback" but a *return*; this, I feel, ties in as well to Major Briggs's underappreciated vision scene, emphasizing the idea of a return.) Although not shot in black & white, Pete, assisting Catherine as she tears apart their library, pauses for a moment during "The Last Evening" to linger on his high school yearbook. He's lost in the old pre-color photos, in the memory of Midge Jones, a man we never know. He's returned to a place in his youth, much like Garland's return to the gleaming, radiant marble of the fantastic palazzo in his S2 vision. These two live in a retro-futurist Art Deco fever dream, accompanied the very appropriate Slow 30s Room soundtrack piece. Everything about the Fireman & Senorita Dido tells me of an America past its prime. I'm also convinced this was what Lynch envisioned for Briggs's palazzo; if only Don S. Davis was alive for The Return. There's a plethora more I could get into, definitely for another thread: the preoccupation with trinities, animals, rings, technology, fine art references, and sonic elements are on my mind as well. I need to rewatch The Return again soon so more connections and thoughts are present. Let me know if you guys enjoyed this rambling mess!
US State & Territory Nicknames/Slogans (Which are your favorite? / least favorite?)
From these two wikipedia articles State + Territory nicknames and tourism slogans (some of the following are meant to disparage the place it refers to): Alabama
Camellia State
Cotton State
Cotton Plantation State
Lizard State
Heart of Dixie (used on license plates)
'''Yellowhammer State'''
Sweet Home Alabama
Alaska
Great Land
Land of the Midnight Sun
Land of the Noonday Moon
'''The Last Frontier''' (used on license plates)
49th State
North Star State
Up Over
Seward's Ice Box
Seward's Folly
Icebergia
Polaria
Walrussia
Johnson's Polar Bear Garden
American Samoa
Motu O Fiafiaga ("Islands of Paradise") (used on license plates)
Football Islands
Arizona
Apache State
Aztec State
Baby State
Copper State
'''Grand Canyon State'''
Sand Hill State
Sunset State
Sweetheart State
Valentine State
Arkansas
Bear State
Bowie State
Hot Springs State
Land of Opportunity (former official nickname, formerly used on license plates)
'''Natural State''' (current official nickname, currently used on license plates)
Razorback Crystal State
Toothpick State
Wonder State
California
El Dorado State
'''Golden State'''
Golden West
The Beach State
Grape State
Land of Milk and Honey
Sunshine State
Colorado
Buffalo Plains State
'''Centennial State'''
Colorful Colorado
Columbine State
Highest State
Lead State
Last Frontier
Last Old West State
Mile High State
Mountain State
Mother of Rivers
Rocky Mountain State
Rocky Mountain Empire
Silver State
Ski Country USA
Switzerland of America
Connecticut
Arsenal of the Nation
'''Constitution State'''
Land of Steady Habits
Nutmeg State
Provisions State
Blue Law State
Freestone State
Delaware
Chemical Capital of the World
Corporate Capital
Blue Hen State
Peach State
Spud state
Diamond State
'''First State'''
Land of Tax-Free Shopping
Small Wonder
District of Columbia
Nation's Capital
DMV
Inside the Beltway
The Federal City
The District
Chocolate City
DC
Washington
Florida
Everglade State
Orange State
'''Sunshine State'''
Alligator State
Flower State
Gulf State
Peninsula State
God's Waiting Room
Georgia
Empire State of the South
'''Peach State'''
Cracker State
Goober State
State of Adventure
Guam
Tano y Chamorro ("Land of the Chamorro")
Hub of the Pacific
Gateway to Micronesia
Hawaii
'''Aloha State'''
Pineapple State
Rainbow State
Paradise of the Pacific
Youngest State
808 State
Idaho
The Potato State (Home of the Potatoes)
'''Gem State'''
Gem of the Mountains
Little Ida
Illinois
Land of Lincoln (used on license plates)
'''Prairie State'''
Corn State
Garden of the West
Inland Empire
Rainy State
Indiana
Crossroads of America
'''Hoosier State'''
Hospitality State
Iowa
'''Hawkeye State'''
Kansas
America's Heartland
Central State
Dorothy's Home
There's no place like Kansas
Midway USA
Bleeding Kansas
Jayhawk State
'''Sunflower State'''
Wheat State
Kentucky
'''Bluegrass State'''
Corn-cracker State
Dark and Bloody Ground State
Hemp State
Tobacco State
Unbridled Spirit
Louisiana
Bayou State
Child of the Mississippi
Creole State
'''Pelican State'''
Sportsman's Paradise
Sugar State
Maine
'''Pine Tree State'''
Vacationland
Lumber State
Maryland
Chesapeake State
Cockade State
Free State
Monumental State
'''Old Line State'''
Oyster State
Queen State
Terrapin State
America in Miniature
Massachussetts
Baked Bean State
Codfish State
'''Bay State'''
Colony State
Old Colony State
Pilgrim State
Taxachusetts
The People's Republic of Massachusetts
The Spirit of America
Michigan
'''Great Lakes State'''
Mitten State
Winter Wonderland
Water Wonderland
Wolverine State
Pure Michigan
Minnesota
Gopher State
Land of 10,000 Lakes
'''North Star State'''
State of Hockey
New England of the West
Minne-snow-ta
Bread and Butter State
Mississippi
Hospitality State
'''Magnolia State'''
Mudcat State
Birthplace of America's Music
The Bayou State
Missouri
Bullion State
Cave State
Gateway State
Gateway to the West
Lead State
Ozark State
'''Show Me State'''
Montana
Big Sky Country
The Last Best Place
'''Treasure State'''
Nebraska
Beef State
'''Cornhusker State'''
Antelope State
Bugeating State
Blackwater State
The Good Life
Tree Planters State
Nevada
Battle-Born State
Sagebrush State
'''Silver State'''
Casino State
New Hampshire
'''Granite State'''
Mother of Rivers
White Mountain State
Live Free
Live Free or Die
New Jersey
'''Garden State'''
Crossroads of the Revolution
Garbage State
New Mexico
The Colorful State
'''The Land of Enchantment'''
Land of Sunshine
New York
'''Empire State'''
Excelsior
North Carolina
Old North State
'''Tar Heel State'''
Turpentine State
Variety Vacationland
First In Flight
First in Freedom
Flair Country
North Dakota
Flickertail State
'''Peace Garden State'''
Rough Rider State
Sioux State
Northern Mariana Islands
Håfa Adai ("Hello")
America's Best Kept Secret
Ohio
'''Buckeye State'''
Mother of Modern Presidents
Birthplace of Aviation
Birthplace of Aviation Pioneers
Birthplace of Astronauts
The Heart of it All
Oklahoma
Land of the Red Man
Cowboy Country
'''Sooner State'''
Native America
Oregon
'''Beaver State'''
Union State
Pacific Wonderland
Webfoot State
Pennsylvania
Independence State
'''Keystone State'''
Quaker State
Coal State
Railroad State
Puerto Rico
Isla del Encanto ("Island of Enchantment")
Boriquen
Rhode Island
Little Rhody
'''Ocean State'''
Rogues Island
The Licentious Republic
Plantation State
Fun Sized - Never Boring
Smallest State
South Carolina
'''Palmetto State'''
Iodine Products State
South Dakota
Coyote State
Land of Infinite Variety
'''Mount Rushmore State'''
Great Faces, Great Places
Sunshine State
Artesian State
Blizzard State
Tennessee
Butternut State
'''Volunteer State'''
Big Bend State
Hog and Hominy State
Mother of Southwestern Statesmen
The Soundtrack of America
Texas
'''Lone Star State'''
Friendship State
Bipolar Weather State
US Virgin Islands
America's Caribbean
America's Paradise
Utah
'''Beehive State'''
Mormon State
Friendly State
Life Elevated
Deseret
Vermont
'''Green Mountain State'''
Virginia
Mother of Presidents
'''Old Dominion'''
Mother of States
Horse Country
Virginia is for Lovers
Washington
'''Evergreen State'''
State of Love and Trust
Washington, The State
Experience WA
West Virginia
'''Mountain State'''
Panhandle State
Almost Heaven
Wisconsin
America's Dairyland
'''Badger State'''
Cheese State
The Mitten State
The Copper State
The Dairy State
Wyoming
Cowboy State
'''Equality State''' (first in the nation to allow women to vote)
It took 11 months and frequent all nighters, but my biggest mod for Mass Effect 3 is done. Project Variety is a significant overhaul for the games; modifying over 290 files. It basically contains everything I could add to the game over the last year ( Which is a lot). Below is the list of changes. Sorry for the wall of text. Imgur Album Link: https://imgur.com/a/ngo4hCj Nexus Link: https://www.nexusmods.com/masseffect3/mods/691 In addition, I owe u/Mgamerz an enourmous debt for his ME3explorer fork. Without it, this mod would have not been possible. It saved me a lot of time in development. u/LavaCreeper is also thanked for discussing ideas with me during development. Citadel The Citadel has received the most significant change in this mod. In the vanilla game, the Citadel was dominated by humans. It took the combined number of Asari, Turians, and Salarians to equal the amount of humans. This makes no sense seeing as humanity is still the new kid on the block. Other races have been on the station for millenia and it would be more immersive for them to have a bigger population on the Citadel. For example, species like the Hanar, Elcor, and Volus have had their population drastically increased. Turian Females make an appearance as well and can be seen as C-Sec officers and civilians. The complete set of changes for the Citadel is listed below. Salarians have been added to Docking Bay D24 Salarian C-Sec officers have been added Salarians in Purgatory no longer wear armor and instead wear civilian clothes Salarians in the Refugee camp no longer wear armor and instead wear civilian clothes More Asari have been added to Docking Bay D24 Asari C-Sec officers have been added Asari no longer wear Alliance uniforms or armor in Purgatory Asari soldiers now wear their military uniforms instead of armor on the Citadel Female Turian Civilians have been added Female Turian C-Sec Officers have been added Male Turians now wear casual clothes at the hospital Human soldiers now wear their uniforms instead of armor on the citadel. Vorcha Refugees have been added Some human civilians now wear casual clothes instead of armor in places like Purgatory and the hospital. C-Sec now uses the Argus instead of the Avenger across the Citadel Elcor have been added across multiple floors Hanar have been added across multiple floors Krogan have been added across multiple floors. They mostly are in Purgatory or the refugee docks, but diplomats start showing up at the embassy after the genophage is cured. Quarian civilians have been added. Before anyone asks, I know that they were recalled to the flotilla before the war with the geth. The Quarians I added could be interpreted as being exiled or not wanting any part of the war. The embassy has unique photo frames now. Bailey and Udina have different pictures on their desks. The awkward camera animation when Shepard talks to the Ismar Frontier Prototype doctor has been fixed. Shepard can now take the side of the person arguing with the receptionist about President Huerta. Dialogue has been restored to accommodate this. Khalisah Al Jilani has a new outfit. The pictures on the wall of the missing are now unique. Picture that were cleary Kirrahe, Thane, and the Turian councilor have been replaced with more unique pictures. The shuttle that the councilors evacuate to during the coup is now a C-Sec shuttle instead of an Alliance one. Purgatory gets a new 20 minute soundtrack instead of a 2 minute one. 7 new songs have been added. Citadel Missions The human bodyguard for Zymandis has been replaced with a drell. Hanar officials are provided Drell bodyguards in accordance with the Compact. Kasumi’s face can now be seen. It is no longer covered by shadows The leaders of the Blood pack are now Krogan. Menae Menae has received a significant overhaul to immersion. Female Turian soldiers have been added to the level The turian soldiers now use Phaestons instead of Avengers. The bug where Shepard’s equipped weapon was combined with an Avenger after first talking with General Corinthus has been fixed. Sur'kesh Sur'kesh has received a significant enhancement The STG now uses lore accurate weapons instead of N7 Weapons, Mattocks, and Phalanxes. This primarily means Venom shotguns. No more Eclipse armored Salarians in the base. Wrex no longer magically switches between a Claymore and a Katana. Kirrahe no longer magically switches between a Scorpion and a Mattock Cerberus soldiers will no longer switch between using a Locust in the cutscenes to using a Hornet in combat. A Cerberus Centurion in one of the cutscenes no longer uses a submachine gun but instead uses a Mattock. Krogan Arc The missions during the Krogan arc have received enhancements as well. Turians on Tuchanka now use Phaestons Krogan on Uttuku now use Claymores instead of Avengers Grunt no longer has an Eviscerator and instead uses a Claymore in the final cutscene. Grunt now wears a more armored version of his loyalty armor Krogan during Priority Tuchanka now use Claymores instead of Eviscerators. Grissom Academy The changes to Grissom Academy include fixing bugs, making Jack look like her role as teacher, and more. Cerberus Troopers now use accurate weapons during the cutscenes. Pressly no longer just stands there doing nothing while Jack and Shepard rescue Rodriguez Jack no longer punches Shepard if he/she decide to destroy the Collector base. She only punches Shepard if she was romanced or if the Collector Base was saved. Jack now wears outfits more appropriate for a teacher. It was ridiculous that she would wear such a revealing outfit in front of teenage students. She now wears a leather jacket on Grissom and on the Normandy if you use Expanded Galaxy Mod. She changes clothes once Shepard meets her at Purgatory and wears armor during the holo call on Earth. From Ashes DLC Eden Prime now has unique paintings The soldiers guarding Javik now wear armor Javik now has a new casual outfit and wears it during non combat situations Gellix Gellix has received many changes, primarily aimed at making the scientists look like they are actually in hiding from Cerberus. All Cerberus logos have been removed. The scientists now wear clothing that is not the cerberus uniform. This can range from anything from the scientist outfit to the refugee clothing. Jacob now wears recolored Inferno Armor during the mission. The Scientists’ shuttles are no longer Cerberus branded. In one of the cutscenes, the Cerberus trooper no longer switches between a Locust and a Hornet Accurate Cerberus units are now present during the the opening cutscene. A Guardian is actually using the shield now. In addition, the troopers are now using Hornets instead of Mattocks. Ardat Yakshi Monastery Samara now wears armor during the mission. It made no sense why she would go into a potential war zone waring such skimpy clothing. She wears a more appropriate uniform while on the Citadel. Rannoch Arc The Rannoch Arc contains numerous changes as well. The geth heavy weapons are now actually of geth design rather than human designed heavy weapons. The Quarians who crash landed on Rannoch now use weapons unique to the Flotilla like the Arc Pistol. Admiral Gerrel no longer does that weird neck turn when talking with Shepard after the geth dreadnought. Quarians in the Geth Consensus mission now use Quarian weapons instead of Vindicators. Thessia An Asari soldier now uses a Disciple instead of a Katana. Shepard no longer gets an email from Kai Leng following the mission. Instead, he gets an email from Asari High Command. The Marauders no longer use Revenants during one of the cutscenes. they use Phasteons like everywhere else. The fight with Kai Leng on Thessia is now skippable (Optional File) Horizon Changes on Horizon are primarily focused on the Lawson Sisters Miranda now wears her aap armor during the mission. It made no sense why she would try to go to Horizon in her normal clothing. The textures for the armor are high res. Unlike the other Miranda armor mod, this one skips over the scene with the unchangeable bik file. This means immersion is not broken. Miranda also ties her hair up as women with long hair typically tie their hair before combat situations. Oriana Lawson’s face has been changed to make her actually look like a twin of Miranda. Henry Lawson now used a Talon instead of a Paladin Tertiary Codex A, new, third codex has been added. It replaces the rather useless manual. The primary purpose of the tertiary codex is to bring in EU and relatively obscure lore into the game. My stance on EU lore is that as long as it does not conflict with in game lore, then it is valid. For that reason, things like the events of Mass Effect: Deception will not be included. Things that do not conflict with lore like the Cerberus Daily News Network have been added. That being said, the writing in the codex is not exactly the best it can be and much of it is borrowed from the Mass Effect Wiki. If anyone with writing experience wishes to help, feel free to contact me. Immersive Loading Screens The original gameplay based loading screens have been replaced with loading screens that contain current events and facts about the lore. The Fate of Decian Chellick The lore about the Executor in Mass Effect 3 is completely messed up. Fore one thing, in Mass Effect 2, a news report by Emily Wong says that Chellick is executor; not Pallin. There is also cut dialogue that references Chellick as executor that can be heard if you play with Mass Effect 2 recalibrated. Finally, Bailey contradicts himself in his dialogue. In one instance he says that he is unaware why he was promoted to commander. In another, he says it was because he killed Executor Pallin; who should not be Executor anyway according to Mass Effect 2 content. The EU regarding Bailey and Palin follows this dialogue chain which creates even more of an immersion break. With that being said, this is how Project Variety handles the situation of the Executor. Chellick now has an entry in the Tertiary Codex mentioned above Bailey no longer talks about Pallin in one of his early conversations The human executor during the coup has been replaced with Chellick The secondary codex regarding the coup, that mentions Pallin, has been edited. Accurate Cutscene Weapons Anyone who has played Mass Effect 3 knows about the cutscene weapons. Having an Avenger and Predator replace Shepard’s and company’s weapons during the cutscenes is one of the most annoying and immersion breaking part of the game. In Project Variety, this has been fixed for the most part. Shepard and his/her squad will now use accurate weapons during the cutscenes in the base game and the DLC. Bye Bye Avenger and Predator. There are some caveats however. Some cutscenes could not be fixed due to compatibility issues with other mods and because of technical reasons. These are listed here. The confrontation with the Virmire Survivor during the coup The scene after Brooks and CAT6 are defeated during the Citadel DLC Some scenes during Rannoch: Geth Fighter Squadrons There is another caveat. If you do not have the right weapon equipped during some of the cutscenes, it will look very weird. To mitigate this issue, I have provided a list with cutscenes where you have to have a certain weapon equipped. This list is called Project Variety Gun Cutscene.pdf Spectre Weapons The Harrier, Black Widow, Paladin, and Wraith are now listed as Spectre weapons. Their descriptions have been edited accordingly. The Harrier and Black Widow also have new textures to correspond with their new Spectre affiliation. Leviathan DLC The Leviathan DLC has received multiple changes. The paintings in Bryson’s office are now unique from the rest of the game Ann Bryson now changes outfits as the storyline progresses The Leviathan no longer states that all Reapers are designed after Harbinger’s image. This is immersion breaking because in Mass Effect 2, it was clearly shown that there were different designed Reapers. Edi also mentions that Reaper ships are unique post Priority: Tuchanka The two NPCs, besides Ann Bryson, that show up in Shepard’s Leviathan induced Hallucination have been replaced by Anderson and The Illusive Man. Omega DLC The Omega DLC has received some changes as well Aria now wears armor for the duration of the DLC. There is no reason for why she went into a warzone wearing civilian clothing. Aria’s entire army is now armored as well The infamous buggy Aria speech at Talon headquarters has been fixed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs7oDLijPXI&t=3s More unique weapons at Aria’s bunker. Accurate cutscene weapons for Cerberus soldiers during the DLC. No more Cerberus logos on the turrets guarding Aria’s bunker. Talon soldiers at their headquarters no longer use N7 weapons. Shepard’s weapons no longer disappear while he is leaving Omega. Citadel DLC Citadel DLC has received many changes to increase its uniqueness and fix annoying issues. The apartment now has unique paintings The apartment now has unique picture frames. This means that each picture frame has a unique photo. The apartment now has brand now Statues and shelf decor designed to replace clearly reused assets. The casino now has unique paintings There are now NPCs who wear shorter dresses during the casino infiltration mission. Female Turians are present on the Silversun Strip Javik no longer brings his guns to the casino infiltration mission. Kasumi now wears a dress and shows her face while she attempts to rob the casino. Her previous outfit was too suspicious. Kasumi’s henchmen now wear casual clothing instead of armor Jack gets a new casual outfit, for the duration of the DLC, which is based off of Grissom academy. Jacob gets a new casual outfit for the duration of the DLC. Zaeed gets a new casual outfit for the duration of the DLC. Traynor gets casual outfit for the duration of the DLC. Joker gets casual outfit for the duration of the DLC. Cortez gets casual outfit for the duration of the DLC. Samara gets casual outfit for the duration of the DLC. Ashley and Brooks no longer wear fugly dresses during the casino mission. They are no longer twinningor matching Shepard as well. Cortez now wears armor during the beginning of the Archive mission. There is no way he could transition into armor that quickly. Miranda, Jacob, Samara, and Jack wear armor while in the Arena. The salarians in Javik’s meetup no longer wear armor. Quarians have been added to the Silversun Strip The low quality models for squadmates that Shepard did not pick during the Archive mission have been upgraded to have better models and textures. If you have ALOT, some of them will be improved further. Miscellaneous Changes Shepard and company can now max out all their skills at level 60 Shepard now loots the Cerberus Ciphers off a Cerberus Engineer. This was done to match his dialogue with the CSEC officer on the Citadel DLC. Bilal Osoba’s body can now be found on Benning, next to his dog tags. Press F12 to toggle Flycam Press F1 to toggle freezing the game Press F2 to toggle the HUD. Press NumPad 7 to get more credits Press F3 to take screenshots. This will ignore reshades such as the Gravis Reshade. Screenshots are stored in Documents\BioWare\Mass Effect 3\BIOGame\Screenshots. Screenshots are in the bmp or bitmap file format. Press NumPad 8 to instantly level up to level 60. Skip the security scan on the Normandy Andromeda References Several references to Mass Effect Andromeda have been scattered through the mod.
Make sure to use spoiler tags if you're posting anything about a game's plot that might significantly hurt the experience of others that haven't played the game yet (no matter how old or new the game is).
YOU SHOULD TRY (YST) / FEB - Puzzles
#1 - Stacking / PC, PS3, X360
Official Steam Description: From Tim Schafer’s Double Fine Productions, explore a vintage world inhabited by living Russian stacking dolls as you jump into more than 100 unique dolls and use their special abilities to solve a wide variety of puzzles & challenges. u/shieara's opinion: "I don't hear Stacking mentioned much, but I had an absolute blast playing it. The puzzles all have multiple solutions and there are plenty of hints if you get stuck. It has a unique visual style and the humor is really good also. The only con I found was a slightly janky camera, which I was able to work with."
#2 - LOGistICal / PC
Official Steam Description: LOGistICAL is a large open-world, strategy, puzzle game where you transport different cargoes to complete all the towns throughout the country. The whole game is a huge puzzle while each town is its own little piece of puzzling. There are over 1,000 towns to complete. u/OdaNova's opinion: "If you're looking for a puzzle game that takes 100+ hours, look no further than LOGistICal. This is a puzzle game dressed up as a transportation/infrastructure company, where the aim is to 'complete' towns, infrastructure and businesses by transporting via trucks the prerequisite items. Small towns at first, but then massive cities. There are quarantine restrictions as you go to new areas, or tighter restrictions on tonnage etc. The base game covers the country of Australia but there are individual modules for many countries in Europe and a few states in America if you wanted to focus on a specific nation. They all share the same launcher and all connect to each other as you purchase individual models, so if you really enjoy the series you could easily end up with a puzzle game featuring almost the entire world. Good luck!"
#3 - Mini Metro / PC, Switch, Android, iOS
Official Steam Description: Mini Metro is a strategy simulation game about designing a subway map for a growing city. Draw lines between stations and start your trains running. As new stations open, redraw your lines to keep them efficient. Decide where to use your limited resources. How long can you keep the city moving? u/OdaNova's opinion: "If you're after a casual puzzle game, Mini-Metro is an excellent mobile port that is simple, clean casual fun. The aim is to create a metro (subway) system using lines that connect different shaped stations. The game is lost when a station overcrowds due to lack of service. It starts out easily enough with three stations but by the end you can be rushing to try and figure out how to keep things ticking over. Excellent game for short sessions as it has a variety of missions to tackle." u/itsTourched's opinion: "The only challenge in this game is to keep your subway operation going. There are randomly generated subway stations that you need to connect together in an efficient way. It's like a mix between a puzzle and management game. The visuals are simple but satisfying."
#4 - The Sexy Brutale / PC, PS4, X1, Switch
Official Steam Description: The Sexy Brutale — a never-ending masked ball featuring intrigue, murder and the (quite possibly) occult! Relive the same mysterious day where the guests at the casino mansion are being murdered by the staff over and over again. u/itsTourched's opinion: "This game has great visuals and soundtrack. The story keeps you interested and is the strong part of the game. The puzzles aren't all that hard, but the time rewind mechanic makes solving them and exploring the mansion a unique experience."
#5 - Portal 1/2 / PC, PS3, X360
Official Steam Description: Players must solve physical puzzles and challenges by opening portals to maneuvering objects, and themselves, through space. u/itsTourched's opinion: "The setting, dialogue, and story are all strong reasons to play these games. The best part though is the portal physics and figuring out the puzzles. These games are classics that even non-puzzle fans would like. Play these in order as the story carries over to the 2nd game. Plus there is co-op."
#6 - Professor Layton and The Unwound Future / NDS
Wiki Page: As with previous Professor Layton games, Unwound Future is an adventure game where the player solves puzzles offered by local citizens to progress the story forward, through dialogue and around 32 minutes of full motion video. u/Ferrumn's opinion: "In my opinion this game has the best story out of all the Layton games. It has great twists and a really touching ending. I would recommend the Professor Layton games to anyone who enjoys puzzle games, but also wants a good story." // This is a new idea for the Monthly Genre Discussion and is something we would love to involve our community in. A lot of us have many games in our backlog and yet have no idea which game to play. Is this game any good?, is what we constantly ask ourselves. In order to help with deciding, each month we will highlight a few games of a month's specific genre. Would you like to make a YST-suggestion for March/Strategy games? Just send the mod team a PM with the game title and your opinion. We will try to include your suggestion for the specific months Genre Discussion Thread, depending on the participation we'll have. We're looking forward to your suggestions!
Make sure to use spoiler tags if you're posting anything about a game's plot that might significantly hurt the experience of others that haven't played the game yet (no matter how old or new the game is).
YOU SHOULD TRY (YST) / FEB - Puzzles
#1 - Stacking / PC, PS3, X360
Official Steam Description: From Tim Schafer’s Double Fine Productions, explore a vintage world inhabited by living Russian stacking dolls as you jump into more than 100 unique dolls and use their special abilities to solve a wide variety of puzzles & challenges. u/shieara's opinion: "I don't hear Stacking mentioned much, but I had an absolute blast playing it. The puzzles all have multiple solutions and there are plenty of hints if you get stuck. It has a unique visual style and the humor is really good also. The only con I found was a slightly janky camera, which I was able to work with."
#2 - LOGistICal / PC
Official Steam Description: LOGistICAL is a large open-world, strategy, puzzle game where you transport different cargoes to complete all the towns throughout the country. The whole game is a huge puzzle while each town is its own little piece of puzzling. There are over 1,000 towns to complete. u/OdaNova's opinion: "If you're looking for a puzzle game that takes 100+ hours, look no further than LOGistICal. This is a puzzle game dressed up as a transportation/infrastructure company, where the aim is to 'complete' towns, infrastructure and businesses by transporting via trucks the prerequisite items. Small towns at first, but then massive cities. There are quarantine restrictions as you go to new areas, or tighter restrictions on tonnage etc. The base game covers the country of Australia but there are individual modules for many countries in Europe and a few states in America if you wanted to focus on a specific nation. They all share the same launcher and all connect to each other as you purchase individual models, so if you really enjoy the series you could easily end up with a puzzle game featuring almost the entire world. Good luck!"
#3 - Mini Metro / PC, Switch, Android, iOS
Official Steam Description: Mini Metro is a strategy simulation game about designing a subway map for a growing city. Draw lines between stations and start your trains running. As new stations open, redraw your lines to keep them efficient. Decide where to use your limited resources. How long can you keep the city moving? u/OdaNova's opinion: "If you're after a casual puzzle game, Mini-Metro is an excellent mobile port that is simple, clean casual fun. The aim is to create a metro (subway) system using lines that connect different shaped stations. The game is lost when a station overcrowds due to lack of service. It starts out easily enough with three stations but by the end you can be rushing to try and figure out how to keep things ticking over. Excellent game for short sessions as it has a variety of missions to tackle." u/itsTourched's opinion: "The only challenge in this game is to keep your subway operation going. There are randomly generated subway stations that you need to connect together in an efficient way. It's like a mix between a puzzle and management game. The visuals are simple but satisfying."
#4 - The Sexy Brutale / PC, PS4, X1, Switch
Official Steam Description: The Sexy Brutale — a never-ending masked ball featuring intrigue, murder and the (quite possibly) occult! Relive the same mysterious day where the guests at the casino mansion are being murdered by the staff over and over again. u/itsTourched's opinion: "This game has great visuals and soundtrack. The story keeps you interested and is the strong part of the game. The puzzles aren't all that hard, but the time rewind mechanic makes solving them and exploring the mansion a unique experience."
#5 - Portal 1/2 / PC, PS3, X360
Official Steam Description: Players must solve physical puzzles and challenges by opening portals to maneuvering objects, and themselves, through space. u/itsTourched's opinion: "The setting, dialogue, and story are all strong reasons to play these games. The best part though is the portal physics and figuring out the puzzles. These games are classics that even non-puzzle fans would like. Play these in order as the story carries over to the 2nd game. Plus there is co-op."
#6 - Professor Layton and The Unwound Future / NDS
Wiki Page: As with previous Professor Layton games, Unwound Future is an adventure game where the player solves puzzles offered by local citizens to progress the story forward, through dialogue and around 32 minutes of full motion video. u/Ferrumn's opinion: "In my opinion this game has the best story out of all the Layton games. It has great twists and a really touching ending. I would recommend the Professor Layton games to anyone who enjoys puzzle games, but also wants a good story." // This is a new idea for the Monthly Genre Discussion and is something we would love to involve our community in. A lot of us have many games in our backlog and yet have no idea which game to play. Is this game any good?, is what we constantly ask ourselves. In order to help with deciding, each month we will highlight a few games of a month's specific genre. Would you like to make a YST-suggestion for March/Strategy games? Just send the mod team a PM with the game title and your opinion. We will try to include your suggestion for the specific months Genre Discussion Thread, depending on the participation we'll have. We're looking forward to your suggestions!
No deposit cash bonuses, free spins, or no deposit free spins Casino Royale Soundtrack Session Players with time: name Casino Royale Soundtrack Session Players it and we have it for you here. And even better, you get to play them at the best Casino Royale Soundtrack Session Players online casinos around. Browse through our website to find the juiciest and most exciting no deposit bonus codes Burt Bacharach appropriately comes up with a rambunctious soundtrack for the 1967 James Bond spoof, Casino Royale. Things get underway with Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass' performance of the fast-paced main title, which features the usual Bacharach mix of pop phrasing and complex arrangements; this theme is subsequently augmented with a lush string arrangement and marching band rhythms on Casino Forest (カジノフォレスト, Kajinoforesuto?) is the thirteenth stage in Sonic Forces, and the fourth stage in the game to be played as Classic Sonic. Located in the Mystic Jungle, this previously unspoiled wilderness sporting the remnants of an ancient civilization is now having its ruins converted into a casino by Dr. Eggman.1 During the events of the game, Miles "Tails" Prower Casino Royale: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack was a soundtrack composed by David Arnold for the 2006 James Bond film, Casino Royale, with Nicholas Dodd orchestrating and conducting the score. It was released by Sony Classical on 14th November 2006. "African Rundown" (6:52) "Nothing Sinister... R2DA uses a large library of different songs. Many are for specific purposes, such as a seasonal boss fight like Lord Pumpkin Jr. Below are many of the soundtracks found in R2DA. Reminder: We don't know who actually composes these soundtracks. PlaceRebuilder has bought the use of these soundtracks for use in R2DA. Many of these tracks are copyrighted. Credit has been give to those who we know Casino Royale Soundtrack. 17 November 2006; 39 songs; Follow. Songs and music featured in Casino Royale Soundtrack. Sort. Order. Name. Artist. African Rundown. David Arnold, Nicholas Dodd. Bond chases Mollaka through the construction site and embassy. Download on Amazon - African Rundown Play on Apple Music - African Rundown Download on iTunes - African Rundown Play on Spotify - African Casino Royale is Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel, published in 1953. The story entails James Bond, Agent 007 of the "Secret Service", travelling to the casino at Royale-les-Eaux in order to bankrupt a fifth-columnist, Le Chiffre, the treasurer of a French union and a member of the Russian secret service. Bond is supported in his endeavours by Vesper Lynd, a member of his own service, as Casino Royale (2006) SoundTracks on IMDb: Memorable quotes and exchanges from movies, TV series and more... Not to be confused with Audio, a page detailing all non-soundtrack audio in the game.This page lists all music heard in Notoriety, past and present. 1 Current music 1.1 General 1.1.1 Main menu 1.1.2 Preplanning 1.1.3 Infamy 1.1.4 Completing a heist successfully 1.2 Heists 1.2.1 Jewelry Shop 1.2.2 R&B Bank 1.2.3 Gift Factory 1.2.4 Four Stores 1.2.5 Diamond Store 1.2.6 Art Gallery 1.2.7 Trick Or The soundtrack to Martin Scorsese's '70s mob epic Casino is as over-sized as the movie. Assembled by Robbie Robertson, the album runs the gamut from schmaltzy pop to blues and rock & roll, featuring a great assortment of classic tracks and performers.
Midnight Cowboy - Soundtrack - Full Album (1969) - YouTube
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