Katsura Hashino is my mortal enemy and I would put myself in unimaginable debt if it just meant I could get into a cage match with him. Fair warning that I'm not gonna bother getting into the gameplay aspects because that, at least, is something the bulk of players seem to agree on.

P5 espouses a solid overarching message; take control of your life! Stand up to The Man! Foster community with your fellow freaks to find meaning in a world designed to put you down! However, it's written by a middle-aged with ass-backwards views on women, queerness, and society. It's one thing to tout the ideals that P5 is allegedly all about, and a whole other entirely to actually follow through on any of it. But the game has Japanese Bernie Sanders in it, so it's Progressive, or something.

I truly cannot comprehend the layers of cognitive dissonance it takes to tell people to fight The Man, then double-fist perpetuating homophobia AND sexism in the same breath. I think constantly about the creepy power imbalance relationships like letting a teenage boy date his teacher but how that's supposed to be chill, yet the mere idea of anyone being gay is completely unthinkable. I try not to take a hard anti-player stance for specific tastes but I do for this game; if you think Futaba makes sense as a dating option to this day, we are mortal enemies and I will see you in the pit.

None of this is even remotely surprising, but I'm continually stunned by how tone deaf players are about the content. Hashino has been writing hollow lip service to progressive ideals and actively bashing them since day one, so we all know what expect from him. But as a player, going from one Persona game to the next, it boggles my mind that so many people uncritically love this game and seem shocked to hear I very critically hate it.

P5 is the epitome of style over substance and I would invite people to fight me on it, but I don't trust anyone on the internet to know how to talk to another human being anymore.

For such a visually distinct and lore-rich game, Horizon Forbidden West is most memorable to me for its bland, overwritten main plot and profoundly annoying over-explanation of every single puzzle you find in the game. And the game is huge. With a lot of puzzles. If I never hear a AAA protagonist tell me I need to pull the lever, Kronk, to open the door approx. 5 seconds before I'm even aware there's a lever and door to be opened at all, it will be too soon.

I don't know how I played through the entirety of the first game because I also don't remember a single thing that happened besides the reveal of Aloy's ~true origins~ and Lance Reddick's character being evil, or something? If nothing else, Forbidden West is admirably consistent with the first game in that way; forgettable characters and stiff or awkward voice acting makes it hard to buy into what's happening, much less follow any of it. I came back to this game a total of three times and got about 12 hours in before deciding there were much better uses of my time, not to mention much more respectful ones. I'm not entirely sure how the game creation process works step-by-step, especially regarding the melding of writing and gameplay, but Forbidden West follows the trend of telling a grave story of Evil That Must Be Stopped Yesterday in a game that directly bucks against the immediacy of the plot. Aloy needs to make her way west ASAP to stop the end of the world? That's crazy. Let me finish my side quests, inspect these lore sites, get this sick-ass armor, and fully upgrade my weapons first. Also if we have time can I take a detour and go scan that Tall Neck to fill out my map? It'll only take me an entire in-game day. Maybe three. The best thing about open world RPGs like Elden Ring and Witcher 3 is that the game compliments the pacing; there are certain points of no return but by and large, the entire game is not trying to cajole you into believing the end is nigh while also firmly nudging you to explore every nook and cranny.

I will say that the mo-cap is at first arresting in how good it is. Technology sure has come a long way and whatever. However, because characters can talk for minutes and minutes without saying a single thing, you get more than enough time to stare at their faces and wonder why something about it just isn't sitting right. It strikes an uncanny valley chord where you start to notice the nuances, and it becomes more of a performance of those deeply unsettling faux-skin wearing robots that are supposed to replicate human behavior and expression than anything.
Sticking to the subject of technology coming a long way, I'm continually stunned at the sheer amount of money AAA companies sink into graphical fidelity over gameplay feel. I don't personally think open world games should work to emulate "realistic" movement because it interferes with how the exploration should feel. Climbing and grappling especially feel awkward, and sometimes you're tricked into thinking you needed to press the jump button to make a jump when instead, you absolute buffoon, you veritable mayor of Clown Town, you should have simply tilted the left stick in the correct radial direction.

I could really go on forever about how much of a wet fart this game is, and I haven't even addressed the time-honored Only Savages Live In These Uncolonized Lands trope this game predictably perpetuates as Aloy finally crosses borders and is told, and shown, that these new faces and cultures respond and deal predominantly in violence. It's the usual anti-indigenous, white colonizer bullshit we've all been fed before. It's backwards and unimaginative, same as always. There's not much more to say about it.

I'll probably spend the rest of my life wondering at what place it's supposed to occupy in the pantheon of incredibly mid AAA games. I don't know anyone who really loves this series, I don't know who out there is absolutely begging for more of it, and yet we keep moving forward in this baffling direction of Marvel-style writing (derogatory) and throwing players into their gamer diapers. Western developers don't seem to trust that any of us have working brain cells, or that any of us would want even a little bit of tangible substance to the media we consume. But hey; cool robot dinosaurs.

i had to add this one for all the obvious reasons.

you ever play a game that changes your brain chemistry and how you think about and consume media for the rest of your life? lemme be clear, i played demons' souls first. i also MAD cheated in it with the item duplicating glitch. i also only played it because a friend guilt-tripped me into it. but dark souls is the one that changed the game (ahyuk).

i think about stories differently. i think about how a game feels to play, the intention behind it. i think about accessibility more. i think harder about whether the difficulty of anything is meaningful or not, and if it's really worth all the trouble of those first fifty-seven times that smough ends your bloodline with the sheer weight of his fucking ass.

there's not much else to say that you haven't already heard. i don't know if there are more video essays about anything than there are for dark souls, except video essays about majora's mask being a metaphor for the stages of grief. it's just a weird fucking game that changed the landscape of games forever, and i should like to grab lunch with miyazaki sometime right after i give him a bear hug and ask if he's good.

barring the painful heteronormativity of trying to convince everyone that cal and merrin had any amount of romantic feelings for each other, this game absolutely whipped. all the shit people say about the gameplay being tight as hell is correct and i always love a range of appearance customization options. the story is neat, although i personally still don't care for jedi/force-sensitive characters being the only real options for heroes in such a vast, interesting universe where it's been established a billion times that anyone, regardless of space magic, can be a hero.

also, not sure why people keep giving stormtroopers personality if they're just gonna keep making us murder them.