(Played up to Volume 4 Chapter 2 with Volume 5 on the horizon)

Mid gameplay. Really dislike how much it heats my phone up. The app feels like it's about to break the moment i take my eyes off of it and makes interacting with it a bigger chore than it needs to be. Got that? good.

Blue archive is concerned about our youth from the perspective of someone who's out of it but still hasn't gotten pounded out by the world. It presents a generally idyllic world of cute girls and guns and cool clothes and fun times and contrasts it with the seriousness it takes itself when those elements are taken away from the characters. The player takes on the role of someone who respects the agency of the girls as people and contrasts it with a world that seeks to take away their carefreeness through different elements: debt, security managment, politics, ideology and grief all threaten the daily lives of the students of Kivotos and the game explores the ways these ideas are entrusted to these kids and who's liable for what.

What i found most interesting in this aspect is how the main player character, Sensei, plays into this. As the only human adult in Kivotos, they've been entrusted with the role of an advisor to these girls. Not someone who can manage their lives, but someone they can rely on when the need arises. Sensei is explicitely someone who's against the removal of agency from the characters in the story, someone who's there to help guide the girls into finding and protecting what they personally want but can't bring themselves to admit they want to do. So you get this back and forward with a lot of characters who find their resolve by themselves without needing to be saved by Main Character Man who can save everyone. In a lot of chapters it's very easy to forget they're even in the story as the girls take center stage and do stuff for themselves. It finds this really interesting balance between semi self-insertness and giving them a voice that i found really compelling after years of playing gacha games with no real character to their name.

And this all culminates in Volume Final: a four chapter-long story about Sensei's role in the stories of these characters and how they respond to crises. It's an extremely satisfying end to this part of the story that ties up a lot of loose ends thematically and opens the way for the more mystic elements of the setting to take place in the future.

The real joy of blue archive is set within that framework. It's always bright and poppy and idealistic and always willing to stand up for the kids who don't deserve any of the horrors of the world; and in a real world where it's hard to see that happening to people all over, it feels...reassuring, i'd say, to see someone believe with their whole heart and soul that no, a better world is possible, and it's up to the adults of the world to pave it for the next generation.

(Played up to Volume 4 Chapter 2 with Volume 5 on the horizon)

Mid gameplay. Really dislike how much it heats my phone up. The app feels like it's about to break the moment i take my eyes off of it and makes interacting with it a bigger chore than it needs to be. Got that? good.

Blue archive is concerned about our youth from the perspective of someone who's out of it but still hasn't gotten pounded out by the world. It presents a generally idyllic world of cute girls and guns and cool clothes and fun times and contrasts it with the seriousness it takes itself when those elements are taken away from the characters. The player takes on the role of someone who respects the agency of the girls as people and contrasts it with a world that seeks to take away their carefreeness through different elements: debt, security managment, politics, ideology and grief all threaten the daily lives of the students of Kivotos and the game explores the ways these ideas are entrusted to these kids and who's liable for what.

What i found most interesting in this aspect is how the main player character, Sensei, plays into this. As the only human adult in Kivotos, they've been entrusted with the role of an advisor to these girls. Not someone who can manage their lives, but someone they can rely on when the need arises. Sensei is explicitely someone who's against the removal of agency from the characters in the story, someone who's there to help guide the girls into finding and protecting what they personally want but can't bring themselves to admit they want to do. So you get this back and forward with a lot of characters who find their resolve by themselves without needing to be saved by Main Character Man who can save everyone. In a lot of chapters it's very easy to forget they're even in the story as the girls take center stage and do stuff for themselves. It finds this really interesting balance between semi self-insertness and giving them a voice that i found really compelling after years of playing gacha games with no real character to their name.

And this all culminates in Volume Final: a four chapter-long story about Sensei's role in the stories of these characters and how they respond to crises. It's an extremely satisfying end to this part of the story that ties up a lot of loose ends thematically and opens the way for the more mystic elements of the setting to take place in the future.

The real joy of blue archive is set within that framework. It's always bright and poppy and idealistic and always willing to stand up for the kids who don't deserve any of the horrors of the world; and in a real world where it's hard to see that happening to people all over, it feels...reassuring, i'd say, to see someone believe with their whole heart and soul that no, a better world is possible, and it's up to the adults of the world to pave it for the next generation.

I think the main theme that stretches through the insomniac spider-man trilogy is insecurity. Not insecurity in the sense that the characters go through it as a thematic throughline but the writing itself.

There's this bizarre sense of fear throughout the three games. A fear of trying to do anything but the expected, of trying to live up to the living legacy of the brand, the fans' expectations and Playstation Prestige Videogames. I felt it as i went through my ninth puzzle room where Miles spells out the answer after 3 minutes of looking around,. In the bizarre way the characters would talk to themselves about what to do next. In the truly, incredibly dire way characters would just Say their feelings with no pathos and how truly awful those segments were written and acted (the entire fight between peter and MJ was fucking cringe-inducing.)

Nothing about spider-man 2 feels human. The smear of corporate-approved brand synergy is the only thing that ties the game together. There's no friction in its writing, no pull in its combat, no hook in its traversal; you spend the whole game swinging and flying and doing Content and you're done with it after 25 hours of nothing except seeing insomniac's tech team show off their shit with the SSD, admittedly an actually cool part that's mildly impressive during the Sandman fight and is never cool again.

If this is the future of the superhero game genre then i'd rather go back to 2007