myrrhman
24 Reviews liked by myrrhman
Let him cook (longer)
Do the graphics suck? Yes.
Does it run like shit? Yes.
Do the load times suck? Yes.
Are all the assets reused? Yes.
Is this one of the most unique, creative and fun games in the franchise? Absolutely.
Lightning Returns's unique structure, combat and customization make it a total joy to experience. The key is how well all aspects of the game work with each other.
You want to do sidequests because aside from getting their cool little subplots you earn stats, equipment and extra in-game days with more quests, rewards and things to do. You're on a timer, so you want to get good at the combat because defeating hard enemies means being able to stop time for longer periods.
How do you get good at the combat? By playing the game! Experiment with the garbs, accessories and commands to find the most efficient way at defeating every enemy type. You'll not only get a lot of drops to complete sidequests and improve your commands but you'll also eventually make the monster extinct and earn a new (and usually very good) accessory or weapon along with materials to upgrade your commands to the next tier.
In sum: we have a really fun combat system that's extremely rewarding in every way which complements the extremely rewarding sidequest system which again furthers your combat options and capabilities.
The flow of the game feels very organic, I wanted to do things because they were fun and by doing fun things I unlocked even more fun things while also being handsomely rewarded in the process and understanding how I should play the game more efficiently bit by bit. Earning 100% feels more like a side effect rather than a goal, which to me is great design. I really loved this game and everyone should give it a fair shot, you might love it too.
Does it run like shit? Yes.
Do the load times suck? Yes.
Are all the assets reused? Yes.
Is this one of the most unique, creative and fun games in the franchise? Absolutely.
Lightning Returns's unique structure, combat and customization make it a total joy to experience. The key is how well all aspects of the game work with each other.
You want to do sidequests because aside from getting their cool little subplots you earn stats, equipment and extra in-game days with more quests, rewards and things to do. You're on a timer, so you want to get good at the combat because defeating hard enemies means being able to stop time for longer periods.
How do you get good at the combat? By playing the game! Experiment with the garbs, accessories and commands to find the most efficient way at defeating every enemy type. You'll not only get a lot of drops to complete sidequests and improve your commands but you'll also eventually make the monster extinct and earn a new (and usually very good) accessory or weapon along with materials to upgrade your commands to the next tier.
In sum: we have a really fun combat system that's extremely rewarding in every way which complements the extremely rewarding sidequest system which again furthers your combat options and capabilities.
The flow of the game feels very organic, I wanted to do things because they were fun and by doing fun things I unlocked even more fun things while also being handsomely rewarded in the process and understanding how I should play the game more efficiently bit by bit. Earning 100% feels more like a side effect rather than a goal, which to me is great design. I really loved this game and everyone should give it a fair shot, you might love it too.
Pentiment
2022
Pentiment reminds us that reading is an act of necromancy.
THE LETTERS MOVE! Even as you read the text in this game, it shifts and rearranges itself underneath your eyes. It is text as a living, breathing entity, and I am positively shocked in retrospect that no other game has done anything like this. Great innovations, I think, rearrange the world around them. They seem like the obvious solution in retrospect because they are so overwhelmingly right that it seems a travesty for any other solution to be used in their place.
Pentiment loves writing. It loves text, it adores the written word, and it is obsessed with the act of reading and being read. It makes every single other text-heavy game look worse by merely existing with such passion for this medium. How am I supposed to read a VN, play a CRPG, wander a walking sim, when the entire time I am now acutely aware of just how dead those texts are? They are cold and unfeeling, just a tool used to get across words to the player, and nothing more.
The text in this game has mechanical depth! I don't just mean the writing, which is a strong contender for the best prose in the entire medium, but the text itself -- the ink bleeds to life in front of you, filling in the outlines of the words as they appear. Several handcrafted typefaces populate the dialogue of this game, each of them accompanied by the scratching of a pen on paper or the satisfying clunk of a printing press, like the voice beeps of a visual novel on steroids -- it turns the act of reading into an awareness of the act of writing, intimately coupling the consumption of the text with the creation of the text in a way that somehow makes the characters in this game feel even more real and human than if they were fully voiced.
Each typeface refuses to just have one variant of each letter, but instead several varying versions of letters are used depending on where they are contextually located, causing the text to bleed and run into itself in a satisfying and natural way. The letters change as you read, but not in a lazy and random way, instead carefully handcrafted for effect. The speed of the changes is just so that, for those within an average range of reading speed, you won't so much notice the exact changes of the letters as they happen, but instead you will always be right on the tail of the rearranged characters, noting their presence in the corner of your eye and by the stains left beneath the newly written text. This is, of course, the titular effect, and it says everything about the historical and cultural themes explored in this game -- but that is for another review to discuss. For our part, we are here solely for the text!
In far more obvious ways, the way that characters write their dialogue reflects who we understand them to be, whether it's in the choice of typeface, the frequency of spelling mistakes, or the ways in which alternate colors of text are used. Some characters wield red text as if we are reading a Red Letter Bible, and other characters hold completely different things to be significant and holy, and thus represent that with red text instead. When characters are impassioned, or tired, or terrified, their text is filled with errors and rapidly changing letters. We get a sense of who they are without even reading the words that they have to say!
Pentiment is all about uncovering the vibrant life in that which we view as dead, permanently separated from us, and hidden by layers of dirt and centuries of distance. It argues that even the very words in which history resides are alive -- and if the text is alive, how can its contents not be? In a world of digital text and mass alienation, is all too easy to conceptualize of a relationship between us, the author, and the text that looks something like author --> text --> reader. The author creates a text, its own standalone object, and we consume it. Pentiment rejects this entirely, and reminds us that the relationship has always been that of a conversation! The act of reading cannot be separated from the act of writing. When we engage with a text, we are fundamentally engaging with its author as well, and by doing so reaching across continents, across millennia, connecting two living persons even if it means that we are resurrecting the dead to do so!
I did not think text could be something that I would find this beautiful. This is what the medium of gaming deserves, this is what it's always been capable of, and it is a joy to finally see the medium's potential fulfilled in such a loving and thoughtfully crafted manner.
Play this motherfucking game!
THE LETTERS MOVE! Even as you read the text in this game, it shifts and rearranges itself underneath your eyes. It is text as a living, breathing entity, and I am positively shocked in retrospect that no other game has done anything like this. Great innovations, I think, rearrange the world around them. They seem like the obvious solution in retrospect because they are so overwhelmingly right that it seems a travesty for any other solution to be used in their place.
Pentiment loves writing. It loves text, it adores the written word, and it is obsessed with the act of reading and being read. It makes every single other text-heavy game look worse by merely existing with such passion for this medium. How am I supposed to read a VN, play a CRPG, wander a walking sim, when the entire time I am now acutely aware of just how dead those texts are? They are cold and unfeeling, just a tool used to get across words to the player, and nothing more.
The text in this game has mechanical depth! I don't just mean the writing, which is a strong contender for the best prose in the entire medium, but the text itself -- the ink bleeds to life in front of you, filling in the outlines of the words as they appear. Several handcrafted typefaces populate the dialogue of this game, each of them accompanied by the scratching of a pen on paper or the satisfying clunk of a printing press, like the voice beeps of a visual novel on steroids -- it turns the act of reading into an awareness of the act of writing, intimately coupling the consumption of the text with the creation of the text in a way that somehow makes the characters in this game feel even more real and human than if they were fully voiced.
Each typeface refuses to just have one variant of each letter, but instead several varying versions of letters are used depending on where they are contextually located, causing the text to bleed and run into itself in a satisfying and natural way. The letters change as you read, but not in a lazy and random way, instead carefully handcrafted for effect. The speed of the changes is just so that, for those within an average range of reading speed, you won't so much notice the exact changes of the letters as they happen, but instead you will always be right on the tail of the rearranged characters, noting their presence in the corner of your eye and by the stains left beneath the newly written text. This is, of course, the titular effect, and it says everything about the historical and cultural themes explored in this game -- but that is for another review to discuss. For our part, we are here solely for the text!
In far more obvious ways, the way that characters write their dialogue reflects who we understand them to be, whether it's in the choice of typeface, the frequency of spelling mistakes, or the ways in which alternate colors of text are used. Some characters wield red text as if we are reading a Red Letter Bible, and other characters hold completely different things to be significant and holy, and thus represent that with red text instead. When characters are impassioned, or tired, or terrified, their text is filled with errors and rapidly changing letters. We get a sense of who they are without even reading the words that they have to say!
Pentiment is all about uncovering the vibrant life in that which we view as dead, permanently separated from us, and hidden by layers of dirt and centuries of distance. It argues that even the very words in which history resides are alive -- and if the text is alive, how can its contents not be? In a world of digital text and mass alienation, is all too easy to conceptualize of a relationship between us, the author, and the text that looks something like author --> text --> reader. The author creates a text, its own standalone object, and we consume it. Pentiment rejects this entirely, and reminds us that the relationship has always been that of a conversation! The act of reading cannot be separated from the act of writing. When we engage with a text, we are fundamentally engaging with its author as well, and by doing so reaching across continents, across millennia, connecting two living persons even if it means that we are resurrecting the dead to do so!
I did not think text could be something that I would find this beautiful. This is what the medium of gaming deserves, this is what it's always been capable of, and it is a joy to finally see the medium's potential fulfilled in such a loving and thoughtfully crafted manner.
Play this motherfucking game!
Breakdown
2004
I played this game when I was like 7 or 8 after I picked it up from a Hollywood Video barging bin, and I think the countless hours of punching half-naked hairless buff men made me gay.
Thank you, based Namco.
Thank you, based Namco.
Elden Ring
2022
This review contains spoilers
"You have died, and the Nexus has trapped your soul."
"You cannot escape the Nexus."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CW: Brief discussion on the game's use of rape
In Elden Ring, you can never discover anything once. That was the thought that entered my head early in the experience and never quite left it. One of the most evocative parts of the game's genuinely stunning art direction is the walking cathedral, a strange and arresting colossus that stumbles across the Weeping Peninsula, each step ringing the bell that hangs beneath its torso. It was a sight of strange, beautiful magic, the kind of which these games have been good at in the past.
Except, to describe this creature in the singular would be inaccurate. Because Walking Cathedrals appear all over the world of Elden Ring, each one identical in appearance, each one performing an identical, express mechanical function for the player. This cannot be left alone as a strange, unique beast, it has to be reduced to a Type of Content a player can engage with over and over again for a characterless transaction of pure mechanics. It is the excitement of coming across something esoteric that the Souls games have made a core part of their identity, utterly commodified and made into the exact same arc that applied to Assassin's Creed the moment climbing a tower to survey the environment and taking a leap of faith into a haystack below shifted from an exciting and evocative moment into a rote and tiresome mechanical interaction.
Because, that's right everyone, Dark Souls Is Now Open World. Not an open world in the same way that Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, or Dark Souls II were, where you could freely venture down different paths to different bosses and take things in an order outside of the game's expected leveling curve. No, this is an Open World as we understand it today: an enormous ocean of discrete repeated Activities dotted with islands of meaningful bespoke design. There's plenty of stuff to do in this world, but it's all of a specific type - in a catacomb you will navigate stone gargoyles and chalice dungeon designs to a lever that will open a door near the entrance that will contain a boss that you've likely found elsewhere in the world, and will be filled with stone gargoyles. Mines will be filled with mining rock-people and upgrade materials. Towers will have you find three spectral creatures around them in order to open them up and obtain a new Memory Slot. Camps will contain a patrolling enemy type and some loot. Even genuinely enchanting vistas and environments get their space to be repeated in slight variations. Boss battles too will be repeated endlessly, time and time again, with delightful designs like the Watchdog tragically becoming something I sighed and was annoyed to see crop up half-a-dozen times over the course of the adventure, and I was truly, deeply annoyed at fighting no less than about ten or twelve Erdtree Avatars and Dragons, with whom the moves never change and the fight plays out the exact same way every single time.
The first time I discovered these things, I was surprised, delighted even, but by even the second time, the truth that these are copied-and-pasted across the entirety of the Lands Between in order to pad it out became readily apparent, and eventually worn away even the enthusiasm of that first encounter. When I look back on my genuine enjoyment of the first battle with the Erdtree Avatar, I can only feel like an idiot for not realizing that this fight would be repeated verbatim over and over and become less fun every single time. When you've seen one, you've really seen all of them, and this means that by the time you leave Limgrave, you've already seen everything the Open World has to offer.
This is, of course, to be expected. Open world games simply have to do this. They are an enormous effort to bring into life, and the realities of game production mean that unless you're willing to spend decades on one game, you're going to have to be thrifty with how you produce content. I expect this, I understand this. Fallout: New Vegas is probably my favorite Open World game, but its world is also filled with this template design. But what's to be gained from this in a Dark Souls game? Unlike contemporaries like Breath of the Wild, your verbs of interaction in these games are frighteningly limited, with almost all of the experience boiling down to fighting enemies, and without a variety of interactions, the lack of variety in the huge amounts of content stands out all the more. Does fighting the same boss over and over and traversing the same cave over and over make Souls better? Even if you choose to just ignore all of these parts of the Open World (which is far easier said than done, as due to a very harsh leveling curve and the scarcity of crucial weapon upgrade materials outside of The Mines, the game's design absolutely pushes towards you engaging in these repetitious activities), the Legacy Dungeons that comprise the game's bespoke content are functionally completely separate from the Open World, with not even your Horse permitted to enter. This is no Burnout: Paradise or Xenoblade Chronicles X, which retooled the core gameplay loop to one where the open world was absolutely core to the design: this is a series of middling Dark Souls levels scattered among an open world no different from games like Far Cry or Horizon: Zero Dawn that many Souls fans have historically looked down on, and the game is only worse for it.
NPC storylines in particular suffer massively, as the chances of you stumbling upon these characters, already often quite annoying in past games, are so low as to practically require a wiki if you want to see the end of multiple questlines. However, that assumes that you will want to see the end of these stories and that you are invested in this world, and I decidedly Was Not. Souls games have always had suspect things in them that have gone largely uninterrogated but Elden Ring really brings that ugliness to the surface, with rape being an annoyingly present aspect of the backstories of many characters, and even having multiple characters threaten to rape you, none of which is deployed in a way that is meaningful and is just insufferable edgelord fantasy writing, and the same could be said of the grimdark incest-laden backstory, the deeply suspect trans panic writing surrounding one of the characters, and the enthusiastic use of Fantasy Racism tropes in the form of the Demi-Humans. I remain convinced that George RR Martin's involvement in this game was little more than a cynical publicity stunt, but certainly the game's writing indulges in many of that man's worst excesses, whilst having almost none of his strengths.
None of this is to say that Elden Ring is devoid of enjoyment. While the fact that it did hit just in time for a manic-depressive mood that made me perfectly suited to play a game I could just mindlessly play for a couple of weeks, I did see it through to the end in that time, even if I did rush to the end after a certain point. From Software's artists remain some of the best in the industry, with some incredible environments and boss designs that deserve Olympic gold medals for how much heavy-lifting they're doing to keep the experience afloat. I loved being kidnapped by chests into other parts of the world, and I wish it happened more than a couple of front-loaded times. But the enjoyment I had in it never felt like stemmed from the open world, and even its highest points don't hang with the best bits of the prior installments. Stormveil is probably the level design highlight of the game but it already fades from my mind in comparison to the likes of Central Yharnam or the Undead Burg or the Dragon Shrine. Indeed, the fact that they exist as islands in an ocean of vacuous space between them precludes the so-called "Legacy Dungeons" of this game from having the satisfying loops and interconnections that are often the design highlights of prior entries. The bosses are a seriously uneven mixed bag as well; even setting aside the repetition, as the nasty trend of overturned bosses that started in Dark Souls III rears its unfortunate head again. The superboss Melania is an interesting design utterly ruined by her obscene damage output, and my personal highlight of the game, Starscourge Radagon, who is the only boss fight that felt like it played to the things that Elden Ring brought to the table, and is a moment among the series that the game can truly claim as it's very own...but the tuning of the fight prevented it from being the triumphant coming-together moment that it is clearly attempting for many of my friends, who left the fight feeling that it was just annoying and tedious. Modern From Software could never make a fight like Maiden Astrea again because they'd insist on making her really hard in a way that actively detracts from the emotional experience in the fight. Boss fights can be about more than just providing a challenge, and I think From has forgotten that.
Taken as a series of its legacy dungeons, of its finest moments, I think Elden Ring would only be a middling one of these games. The additions to the formula feel anemic and unbalanced, the multiplayer implementation is honestly a quite considerable step back from prior games (the decision to have the majority of invasions only occur during co-operation feels like an attempt to weed out trolls picking on weaker players but in reality what it does is make equal fights are next-to-impossible and put Seal-Clubbers in a place where they are the only players who can effectively invade, a completely baffling decision), but it's really the open world I keep coming back to as the reason this game doesn't work. Not only does it add nothing that wasn't already present in better ways in prior games, but it actively detracts from the experience. The promise of the Open World is one of discovery, of setting off in uncharted directions and finding something new, but do Open Worlds actually facilitate this any better than more linear games? I don't know if they do. I felt a sense of discovery and finding something in so many of these games, even the most linear ones, and felt it stronger because the game was able to use careful, meticulous level design to bring out those emotions. Walking out of a cave and seeing Irithyll of the Boreal Valley, or Dead Man's Wharf stretch out before me, were moments of genuine discovery, and they would not be improved if I found six more Dead Man's Wharfs throughout the game. Contrary to their promise, in my experience, the open world, rather than create a sense of discovery, undermine it due to the compromises necessary to create these worlds. All the openness does for your discoveries is let you approach them from a slightly different angle as everyone else.
That is, if you can even claim to have discovered anything in the first place. To call Elden Ring derivative of prior games in this milieu would be a gross understatement. I am far from the first person to note that the game's much-hyped worldbuilding is largely content to regurgitate Souls Tropes with the Proper Nouns replaced with much worse ones, but it goes beyond that - entire questlines, plot beats, character arcs, dungeon designs, enemies, and bosses are lifted wholesale from prior games practically verbatim. More often than not Elden Ring feels closer to a Greatest Hits album than a coherent piece in and of itself, a soulless and cynical repackaging of prior Souls Classics, irrevocably damaged by being torn from the original context from which they belonged. I'm not a fan of Dark Souls III, in part because it too is also a game that leans on repetition of prior games, but at the very least the game was about those repetitions, where yes, old areas and characters would be repeated, but at least it was thematically resonant with what the game was doing. Elden Ring can't even claim that. Whatever this shallow mess of a narrative, easily the worst of the franchise thus far by my reckoning, is going for, it is done no favors by being this stitched-together Frankenstein of Souls.
I was particularly shocked by the sheer ferocity with which the game steals from the fan-favorite Bloodborne. Quick, tell me if you've heard this one before: you encounter a hunched, bestial foe, who fights you with their fists, but once you get their health halfway down, the battle stops, a cutscene plays, where they speak coherently, summon a blade from their past, and stand with their former dignity restored, the music changes, and their name is revealed to be "X the Y Blade". Or what about a hub area, separated in its own liminal space from the rest of the map, that can be discovered in its True Form in the material world? What about when that hub area is wreathed in spectral flame and begins to burn as the final hours of the game is nigh? These are far from the only examples, as there are multiple enemies and ideas throughout the game that are shamelessly lifted from my personal favorite From Software effort, but these stand out as the most noxious of all, as they simply repeat beats that were effective in the game they originated from because the game was able to build to them and have them resonate with the rest of the experience. You cannot just graft things whole cloth from prior work onto a new one and expect it to work as a coherent piece, the very prospect is ridiculous.
When Elden Ring did all this, my jaw about hit the floor from the sheer unmitigated gall. When it chose to conclude itself with a straight-faced Moon Presence reference, complete with an arena that directly evokes the Hunter's Dream, I just had to laugh. The final statement the game made on itself, the bullet point it chose to put on the experience, was "Remember Bloodborne? That was good, wasn't it?" Because in many ways, that really was a perfect conclusion to this game.
While it would be a mistake to claim, as people seem increasingly eager to, that Souls emerged entirely out of the magical ocean that is Hidetaka Miyazaki's unparalleled genius or whatever, as these games have always drawn heavy inspiration from properties like Berserk, Book of the New Sun, and The Legend of Zelda, and were built on top of a framework clearly established by past Fromsoft series King's Field, the reason I think that myself and many others were initially enthralled by the promise of Demon's Souls or Dark Souls was because they were decidedly different. Their esoterica, willingness to buck modern design conventions and hugely evocative online elements were why these games set imaginations alight so strongly, and proved enormously influential for the past decade of game design.
Demon's Souls felt like something new. And while successive games in this series have felt far less fresh, none of them have felt as utterly exhausted as Elden Ring: a final statement from the designers and writers at From Software that they have officially Ran Out of Ideas, that the well has long gone dry, that all they can do is to hastily staple on the modern design trends they once rejected onto a formula that does not gel with them, and that they are wandering without life through a never-ending cycle of their own creation, branded by the Darksign. Perhaps it's no surprise that their least inventive, least consistent, and least creative game since Demon's Souls is also by far their most successful. Once From Software defied conventions and trends, and now, they are consumed by them.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You have died, and the Nexus has trapped your soul."
"You cannot escape the Nexus."
"You cannot escape the Nexus."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CW: Brief discussion on the game's use of rape
In Elden Ring, you can never discover anything once. That was the thought that entered my head early in the experience and never quite left it. One of the most evocative parts of the game's genuinely stunning art direction is the walking cathedral, a strange and arresting colossus that stumbles across the Weeping Peninsula, each step ringing the bell that hangs beneath its torso. It was a sight of strange, beautiful magic, the kind of which these games have been good at in the past.
Except, to describe this creature in the singular would be inaccurate. Because Walking Cathedrals appear all over the world of Elden Ring, each one identical in appearance, each one performing an identical, express mechanical function for the player. This cannot be left alone as a strange, unique beast, it has to be reduced to a Type of Content a player can engage with over and over again for a characterless transaction of pure mechanics. It is the excitement of coming across something esoteric that the Souls games have made a core part of their identity, utterly commodified and made into the exact same arc that applied to Assassin's Creed the moment climbing a tower to survey the environment and taking a leap of faith into a haystack below shifted from an exciting and evocative moment into a rote and tiresome mechanical interaction.
Because, that's right everyone, Dark Souls Is Now Open World. Not an open world in the same way that Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, or Dark Souls II were, where you could freely venture down different paths to different bosses and take things in an order outside of the game's expected leveling curve. No, this is an Open World as we understand it today: an enormous ocean of discrete repeated Activities dotted with islands of meaningful bespoke design. There's plenty of stuff to do in this world, but it's all of a specific type - in a catacomb you will navigate stone gargoyles and chalice dungeon designs to a lever that will open a door near the entrance that will contain a boss that you've likely found elsewhere in the world, and will be filled with stone gargoyles. Mines will be filled with mining rock-people and upgrade materials. Towers will have you find three spectral creatures around them in order to open them up and obtain a new Memory Slot. Camps will contain a patrolling enemy type and some loot. Even genuinely enchanting vistas and environments get their space to be repeated in slight variations. Boss battles too will be repeated endlessly, time and time again, with delightful designs like the Watchdog tragically becoming something I sighed and was annoyed to see crop up half-a-dozen times over the course of the adventure, and I was truly, deeply annoyed at fighting no less than about ten or twelve Erdtree Avatars and Dragons, with whom the moves never change and the fight plays out the exact same way every single time.
The first time I discovered these things, I was surprised, delighted even, but by even the second time, the truth that these are copied-and-pasted across the entirety of the Lands Between in order to pad it out became readily apparent, and eventually worn away even the enthusiasm of that first encounter. When I look back on my genuine enjoyment of the first battle with the Erdtree Avatar, I can only feel like an idiot for not realizing that this fight would be repeated verbatim over and over and become less fun every single time. When you've seen one, you've really seen all of them, and this means that by the time you leave Limgrave, you've already seen everything the Open World has to offer.
This is, of course, to be expected. Open world games simply have to do this. They are an enormous effort to bring into life, and the realities of game production mean that unless you're willing to spend decades on one game, you're going to have to be thrifty with how you produce content. I expect this, I understand this. Fallout: New Vegas is probably my favorite Open World game, but its world is also filled with this template design. But what's to be gained from this in a Dark Souls game? Unlike contemporaries like Breath of the Wild, your verbs of interaction in these games are frighteningly limited, with almost all of the experience boiling down to fighting enemies, and without a variety of interactions, the lack of variety in the huge amounts of content stands out all the more. Does fighting the same boss over and over and traversing the same cave over and over make Souls better? Even if you choose to just ignore all of these parts of the Open World (which is far easier said than done, as due to a very harsh leveling curve and the scarcity of crucial weapon upgrade materials outside of The Mines, the game's design absolutely pushes towards you engaging in these repetitious activities), the Legacy Dungeons that comprise the game's bespoke content are functionally completely separate from the Open World, with not even your Horse permitted to enter. This is no Burnout: Paradise or Xenoblade Chronicles X, which retooled the core gameplay loop to one where the open world was absolutely core to the design: this is a series of middling Dark Souls levels scattered among an open world no different from games like Far Cry or Horizon: Zero Dawn that many Souls fans have historically looked down on, and the game is only worse for it.
NPC storylines in particular suffer massively, as the chances of you stumbling upon these characters, already often quite annoying in past games, are so low as to practically require a wiki if you want to see the end of multiple questlines. However, that assumes that you will want to see the end of these stories and that you are invested in this world, and I decidedly Was Not. Souls games have always had suspect things in them that have gone largely uninterrogated but Elden Ring really brings that ugliness to the surface, with rape being an annoyingly present aspect of the backstories of many characters, and even having multiple characters threaten to rape you, none of which is deployed in a way that is meaningful and is just insufferable edgelord fantasy writing, and the same could be said of the grimdark incest-laden backstory, the deeply suspect trans panic writing surrounding one of the characters, and the enthusiastic use of Fantasy Racism tropes in the form of the Demi-Humans. I remain convinced that George RR Martin's involvement in this game was little more than a cynical publicity stunt, but certainly the game's writing indulges in many of that man's worst excesses, whilst having almost none of his strengths.
None of this is to say that Elden Ring is devoid of enjoyment. While the fact that it did hit just in time for a manic-depressive mood that made me perfectly suited to play a game I could just mindlessly play for a couple of weeks, I did see it through to the end in that time, even if I did rush to the end after a certain point. From Software's artists remain some of the best in the industry, with some incredible environments and boss designs that deserve Olympic gold medals for how much heavy-lifting they're doing to keep the experience afloat. I loved being kidnapped by chests into other parts of the world, and I wish it happened more than a couple of front-loaded times. But the enjoyment I had in it never felt like stemmed from the open world, and even its highest points don't hang with the best bits of the prior installments. Stormveil is probably the level design highlight of the game but it already fades from my mind in comparison to the likes of Central Yharnam or the Undead Burg or the Dragon Shrine. Indeed, the fact that they exist as islands in an ocean of vacuous space between them precludes the so-called "Legacy Dungeons" of this game from having the satisfying loops and interconnections that are often the design highlights of prior entries. The bosses are a seriously uneven mixed bag as well; even setting aside the repetition, as the nasty trend of overturned bosses that started in Dark Souls III rears its unfortunate head again. The superboss Melania is an interesting design utterly ruined by her obscene damage output, and my personal highlight of the game, Starscourge Radagon, who is the only boss fight that felt like it played to the things that Elden Ring brought to the table, and is a moment among the series that the game can truly claim as it's very own...but the tuning of the fight prevented it from being the triumphant coming-together moment that it is clearly attempting for many of my friends, who left the fight feeling that it was just annoying and tedious. Modern From Software could never make a fight like Maiden Astrea again because they'd insist on making her really hard in a way that actively detracts from the emotional experience in the fight. Boss fights can be about more than just providing a challenge, and I think From has forgotten that.
Taken as a series of its legacy dungeons, of its finest moments, I think Elden Ring would only be a middling one of these games. The additions to the formula feel anemic and unbalanced, the multiplayer implementation is honestly a quite considerable step back from prior games (the decision to have the majority of invasions only occur during co-operation feels like an attempt to weed out trolls picking on weaker players but in reality what it does is make equal fights are next-to-impossible and put Seal-Clubbers in a place where they are the only players who can effectively invade, a completely baffling decision), but it's really the open world I keep coming back to as the reason this game doesn't work. Not only does it add nothing that wasn't already present in better ways in prior games, but it actively detracts from the experience. The promise of the Open World is one of discovery, of setting off in uncharted directions and finding something new, but do Open Worlds actually facilitate this any better than more linear games? I don't know if they do. I felt a sense of discovery and finding something in so many of these games, even the most linear ones, and felt it stronger because the game was able to use careful, meticulous level design to bring out those emotions. Walking out of a cave and seeing Irithyll of the Boreal Valley, or Dead Man's Wharf stretch out before me, were moments of genuine discovery, and they would not be improved if I found six more Dead Man's Wharfs throughout the game. Contrary to their promise, in my experience, the open world, rather than create a sense of discovery, undermine it due to the compromises necessary to create these worlds. All the openness does for your discoveries is let you approach them from a slightly different angle as everyone else.
That is, if you can even claim to have discovered anything in the first place. To call Elden Ring derivative of prior games in this milieu would be a gross understatement. I am far from the first person to note that the game's much-hyped worldbuilding is largely content to regurgitate Souls Tropes with the Proper Nouns replaced with much worse ones, but it goes beyond that - entire questlines, plot beats, character arcs, dungeon designs, enemies, and bosses are lifted wholesale from prior games practically verbatim. More often than not Elden Ring feels closer to a Greatest Hits album than a coherent piece in and of itself, a soulless and cynical repackaging of prior Souls Classics, irrevocably damaged by being torn from the original context from which they belonged. I'm not a fan of Dark Souls III, in part because it too is also a game that leans on repetition of prior games, but at the very least the game was about those repetitions, where yes, old areas and characters would be repeated, but at least it was thematically resonant with what the game was doing. Elden Ring can't even claim that. Whatever this shallow mess of a narrative, easily the worst of the franchise thus far by my reckoning, is going for, it is done no favors by being this stitched-together Frankenstein of Souls.
I was particularly shocked by the sheer ferocity with which the game steals from the fan-favorite Bloodborne. Quick, tell me if you've heard this one before: you encounter a hunched, bestial foe, who fights you with their fists, but once you get their health halfway down, the battle stops, a cutscene plays, where they speak coherently, summon a blade from their past, and stand with their former dignity restored, the music changes, and their name is revealed to be "X the Y Blade". Or what about a hub area, separated in its own liminal space from the rest of the map, that can be discovered in its True Form in the material world? What about when that hub area is wreathed in spectral flame and begins to burn as the final hours of the game is nigh? These are far from the only examples, as there are multiple enemies and ideas throughout the game that are shamelessly lifted from my personal favorite From Software effort, but these stand out as the most noxious of all, as they simply repeat beats that were effective in the game they originated from because the game was able to build to them and have them resonate with the rest of the experience. You cannot just graft things whole cloth from prior work onto a new one and expect it to work as a coherent piece, the very prospect is ridiculous.
When Elden Ring did all this, my jaw about hit the floor from the sheer unmitigated gall. When it chose to conclude itself with a straight-faced Moon Presence reference, complete with an arena that directly evokes the Hunter's Dream, I just had to laugh. The final statement the game made on itself, the bullet point it chose to put on the experience, was "Remember Bloodborne? That was good, wasn't it?" Because in many ways, that really was a perfect conclusion to this game.
While it would be a mistake to claim, as people seem increasingly eager to, that Souls emerged entirely out of the magical ocean that is Hidetaka Miyazaki's unparalleled genius or whatever, as these games have always drawn heavy inspiration from properties like Berserk, Book of the New Sun, and The Legend of Zelda, and were built on top of a framework clearly established by past Fromsoft series King's Field, the reason I think that myself and many others were initially enthralled by the promise of Demon's Souls or Dark Souls was because they were decidedly different. Their esoterica, willingness to buck modern design conventions and hugely evocative online elements were why these games set imaginations alight so strongly, and proved enormously influential for the past decade of game design.
Demon's Souls felt like something new. And while successive games in this series have felt far less fresh, none of them have felt as utterly exhausted as Elden Ring: a final statement from the designers and writers at From Software that they have officially Ran Out of Ideas, that the well has long gone dry, that all they can do is to hastily staple on the modern design trends they once rejected onto a formula that does not gel with them, and that they are wandering without life through a never-ending cycle of their own creation, branded by the Darksign. Perhaps it's no surprise that their least inventive, least consistent, and least creative game since Demon's Souls is also by far their most successful. Once From Software defied conventions and trends, and now, they are consumed by them.
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"You have died, and the Nexus has trapped your soul."
"You cannot escape the Nexus."
Tender Frog House
2020
Posting isn't praxis, and people who have just discovered leftism need to work the notion that it is out of their system in less embarrassing ways than this.
It's way, way, way, way too many words to make the incredibly brave claim that capitalism is bad and influences the art that we make. No fucking shit. Literally any understanding of material reality would dictate that. The only way that you could believe this to be in any way a shocking, revelatory statement is if you are so simultaneously self-important and clueless that you think nobody else has caught on yet. Unfortunately for us, the developer of Tender Frog House fits neatly into both categories.
I always feel a little bad shitting on the people behind the game rather than the final piece itself, but this has earned the ire. What a complete waste of time. Why say in this many bland, empty, boring words what so many other, better pieces of art already have? Do you really, truly believe "comfy" games to be such a damnable, corrupting plague that you need to crusade against them? Are they honestly the true progenitors and perpetrators of the worst aspects of late capitalism, or are you just making broad gestures towards an easy target? Considering how Molochian the gaming space already is at corporate levels, with the constant, unresolved, evidenced accusations of sexual, mental, physical, and fiscal abuse, why make frog games the subject that needs to be tackled? I think most of what you'll see at any of those Comfy Game Showcases seem creatively bankrupt and boring, but to say that they're the agents of Mammon on par with the rest of the industry is silly. Go outside.
Anyway, the only actual proof provided for any of the claims in this game is when Sister Cow says that the only interesting thing about her is the fact that she's mentally ill, and then she immediately pulls a quote from Capitalist Realism.
It's way, way, way, way too many words to make the incredibly brave claim that capitalism is bad and influences the art that we make. No fucking shit. Literally any understanding of material reality would dictate that. The only way that you could believe this to be in any way a shocking, revelatory statement is if you are so simultaneously self-important and clueless that you think nobody else has caught on yet. Unfortunately for us, the developer of Tender Frog House fits neatly into both categories.
I always feel a little bad shitting on the people behind the game rather than the final piece itself, but this has earned the ire. What a complete waste of time. Why say in this many bland, empty, boring words what so many other, better pieces of art already have? Do you really, truly believe "comfy" games to be such a damnable, corrupting plague that you need to crusade against them? Are they honestly the true progenitors and perpetrators of the worst aspects of late capitalism, or are you just making broad gestures towards an easy target? Considering how Molochian the gaming space already is at corporate levels, with the constant, unresolved, evidenced accusations of sexual, mental, physical, and fiscal abuse, why make frog games the subject that needs to be tackled? I think most of what you'll see at any of those Comfy Game Showcases seem creatively bankrupt and boring, but to say that they're the agents of Mammon on par with the rest of the industry is silly. Go outside.
Anyway, the only actual proof provided for any of the claims in this game is when Sister Cow says that the only interesting thing about her is the fact that she's mentally ill, and then she immediately pulls a quote from Capitalist Realism.
Cookie Clicker
2013
if you immerse yourself into this game -- and i mean total submersion, an unwavering commitment to efficient, effective cookie clicking -- you will come face-to-face with one of the primordial elements of Game. contained herein is the purest distillation of the Skinner box, that most animalistic, Pavlovian instinct buried inside each of us that lights up our synapses every time the number gets bigger. your eyes will reach superhuman attenuation to the slow pseudorandom fade-in of each precious Golden Cookie. you will turn the wiki upside down in a ravenous hunt for the power of cookie knowledge. you will experience billions of years of hunter-killer evolution bearing down on your left mouse button when you encounter your first Click Frenzy x Fever with its utterly broken, overpowered 5,439x cookie multiplier. in time, you will process all of this with the cool demeanor of a professional, unperturbed and unwavering in the quest for exponentiation.
yes, this is a profoundly stupid game, but it is no more absurd than any other game; it is simply honest in its embrace of numeric pornography
yes, this is a profoundly stupid game, but it is no more absurd than any other game; it is simply honest in its embrace of numeric pornography
One of the most baffling games I've ever played, from top to bottom.
A friend of mine has let me know that he doesn't enjoy anything as much as he enjoys watching me play through shitty games. This has resulted in me getting a sugar daddy who buys me free video games (good) which all suck complete ass and usually end with me annoyed (bad). Of the games I play and stream to my friends, however, none of them ever manage to get their hooks in all of us as well as the ones by David Cage. Blowing through titles like Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls was quick, and David Cage is a man with a pretty limited catalog. Bad interactive fiction is a dime a dozen — the runaway success of Telltale Games lead to a lot of copycats who couldn't even match their general mediocrity — but rarely do they have the right blend of absurdity that really makes titles from the Cageverse shine. Where could we go to find shitty movie-likes that could rival David Cage's worst work?
It turns out that the folly of the great man theory applies to auteur video game creators, too. David Cage, for as outspoken of a voice as he is, somehow seems to have less input on the narrative direction of his own games than his ego would imply. Titles like As Dusk Falls have shown that Cage radiates a toxic aura that seems to infect anyone who remains in his presence for the time it takes to complete a single Quantic Dream development cycle. He's like a living Lovecraftian artifact that makes you lose more of your mind the longer you're exposed to him.
One more entry into the David Cage Extended Universe (DCEU) that absolutely nobody played is Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier, as brought to us by one of the co-directors of Heavy Rain. If you also didn't know that Heavy Rain had a co-director, then congratulations. We're all learning, today. His name is Steve Kniebihly, and he's every bit a hack as David Cage. He doesn't put as much virulent bigotry into his games, at least, so he's got that going for him.
Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier is a confused game. It exists as an interquel between the middle two movies of a rebooted quadrilogy of a fifty-year-old franchise with at least five continuities. You'd think a series about what would happen if monkeys learned how to shoot reclaimed Heckler & Koch MP5s wouldn't be that complicated, but that would mean you aren't thinking like a cash-hungry film studio during the late-1960s. It's from this gray, soupy mire of plot threads and ambiguous constancy that Last Frontier attempts to develop a plot, and it's already stumbling before the starting gun has fired.
Since this game exists predominantly as a marketing tool for the film War for the Planet of the Apes, it can't do anything of consequence. Both the humans and the apes here have virtually nothing to do with any of the characters in the actual film series; there's an off-hand mention of Koba and Caesar at one point that never comes up again, the setting of the game is hundreds of miles away from those of the film, and all three of the endings and their many variations have zero impact on anything before or since. The game is so immediately dated less than five years after its release that it still advertises that it has Mixer integration. Your Mixer viewers can tune in to your Mixer stream and vote on what actions they want you to take through the Mixer chat box. They could, if Mixer still existed, but it doesn't, and the game just makes useless API calls that phone a dead address if you give it firewall permissions.
If it seems like I'm trying to avoid talking about the actual game in favor of focusing on the circumstances around it, you'd be right. This is because Last Frontier is barely a game. This is intentional; the design philosophy behind this was to make a TV movie and sell it to gamers for a $19.99 entry fee, because their standards are lower than the average Syfy viewer. That last part is paraphrasing on my part, but it's not wrong. Even then, they overestimated their writing acumen. This game bombed. Even among the people who willingly bought and played a Planet of the Apes movie tie-in game, this was seen as being a complete mess. Your only means of interacting with the game are pressing left or right to make a binary choice that can be negated within seconds by choosing the immediate opposite position right after, and an action button for timed scenes. Left, right, action button, that's all. This game has fewer controls than Pac-Man.
There's a relationship system between your player character (Jess for the humans, Bryn for the apes) and the other members of their species. It is completely arbitrary and operates on no human logic. At one point, while playing as Bryn, I went out of my way to side with my ape wife at all costs. I ended the chapter, and our relationship was listed as OKAY. The next chapter, I intentionally alternated between arguing with her and agreeing with her every other dialog option, and our relationship improved to GOOD. I don't know how this happened. Maybe she has Stepford wife syndrome.
This is an extreme budget title, and it feels like it. The game doesn't work on Windows 10, immediately crashing to desktop with the message "UE4-Apes.exe has stopped working". Plot threads come and go without any consistency. One scene gives Jess the option to toss aside her bolt-action rifle and take up an M4A1 as her everyday carry of choice. I picked this — "you gotta empty the clip if you want to kill an ape", as one of the game's two professional ape-hunters advises — and never saw it again. The developers either forgot to set the flag that would give it to me, or they ran out of money trying to render Jess in later scenes with one of two different guns and forgot to remove the option to take the M4.
These mistakes barely get noticed against the absurdity of what happens. I'm putting in line breaks here to really highlight this shit.
Clarence, the sole orangutan in the tribe of apes, gets captured and held as a POW by the humans. The ape-hunters bind him with chains, hang him by his wrists in a barn, and decide to torture him for information.
They torture an orangutan for information.
One of them menacingly leans down to Clarence and warns him that it won't end well for the apes if he doesn't start talking. He punctuates this point by beating the orangutan with a lead pipe. If Clarence doesn't tell him everything he knows about the ape tribe, the ape-hunter threatens, the humans are going to keep torturing him until he dies.
Clarence cannot speak English. They then publicly lynch him by hanging him from the neck.
It's at this point that I've started laughing so hard that I'm seeing stars. Tears are rolling down my cheeks. I am losing my goddamn mind. It's 1:30 in the morning and I am causing a disturbance. I've never felt my sides burn like this. I can't catch my breath for so long that I end up hurting myself. I don't know what they were even trying to do here. There's a later scene where apes start getting loaded onto a freight train to be shipped off to an open-air ape prison that I think is supposed to be evoking Holocaust imagery, but I can't say for certain. I don't know what's happening anymore.
The apes can win, or the humans can win, and none of it matters. Who gives a shit. This might be one of the funniest games ever made.
A friend of mine has let me know that he doesn't enjoy anything as much as he enjoys watching me play through shitty games. This has resulted in me getting a sugar daddy who buys me free video games (good) which all suck complete ass and usually end with me annoyed (bad). Of the games I play and stream to my friends, however, none of them ever manage to get their hooks in all of us as well as the ones by David Cage. Blowing through titles like Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls was quick, and David Cage is a man with a pretty limited catalog. Bad interactive fiction is a dime a dozen — the runaway success of Telltale Games lead to a lot of copycats who couldn't even match their general mediocrity — but rarely do they have the right blend of absurdity that really makes titles from the Cageverse shine. Where could we go to find shitty movie-likes that could rival David Cage's worst work?
It turns out that the folly of the great man theory applies to auteur video game creators, too. David Cage, for as outspoken of a voice as he is, somehow seems to have less input on the narrative direction of his own games than his ego would imply. Titles like As Dusk Falls have shown that Cage radiates a toxic aura that seems to infect anyone who remains in his presence for the time it takes to complete a single Quantic Dream development cycle. He's like a living Lovecraftian artifact that makes you lose more of your mind the longer you're exposed to him.
One more entry into the David Cage Extended Universe (DCEU) that absolutely nobody played is Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier, as brought to us by one of the co-directors of Heavy Rain. If you also didn't know that Heavy Rain had a co-director, then congratulations. We're all learning, today. His name is Steve Kniebihly, and he's every bit a hack as David Cage. He doesn't put as much virulent bigotry into his games, at least, so he's got that going for him.
Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier is a confused game. It exists as an interquel between the middle two movies of a rebooted quadrilogy of a fifty-year-old franchise with at least five continuities. You'd think a series about what would happen if monkeys learned how to shoot reclaimed Heckler & Koch MP5s wouldn't be that complicated, but that would mean you aren't thinking like a cash-hungry film studio during the late-1960s. It's from this gray, soupy mire of plot threads and ambiguous constancy that Last Frontier attempts to develop a plot, and it's already stumbling before the starting gun has fired.
Since this game exists predominantly as a marketing tool for the film War for the Planet of the Apes, it can't do anything of consequence. Both the humans and the apes here have virtually nothing to do with any of the characters in the actual film series; there's an off-hand mention of Koba and Caesar at one point that never comes up again, the setting of the game is hundreds of miles away from those of the film, and all three of the endings and their many variations have zero impact on anything before or since. The game is so immediately dated less than five years after its release that it still advertises that it has Mixer integration. Your Mixer viewers can tune in to your Mixer stream and vote on what actions they want you to take through the Mixer chat box. They could, if Mixer still existed, but it doesn't, and the game just makes useless API calls that phone a dead address if you give it firewall permissions.
If it seems like I'm trying to avoid talking about the actual game in favor of focusing on the circumstances around it, you'd be right. This is because Last Frontier is barely a game. This is intentional; the design philosophy behind this was to make a TV movie and sell it to gamers for a $19.99 entry fee, because their standards are lower than the average Syfy viewer. That last part is paraphrasing on my part, but it's not wrong. Even then, they overestimated their writing acumen. This game bombed. Even among the people who willingly bought and played a Planet of the Apes movie tie-in game, this was seen as being a complete mess. Your only means of interacting with the game are pressing left or right to make a binary choice that can be negated within seconds by choosing the immediate opposite position right after, and an action button for timed scenes. Left, right, action button, that's all. This game has fewer controls than Pac-Man.
There's a relationship system between your player character (Jess for the humans, Bryn for the apes) and the other members of their species. It is completely arbitrary and operates on no human logic. At one point, while playing as Bryn, I went out of my way to side with my ape wife at all costs. I ended the chapter, and our relationship was listed as OKAY. The next chapter, I intentionally alternated between arguing with her and agreeing with her every other dialog option, and our relationship improved to GOOD. I don't know how this happened. Maybe she has Stepford wife syndrome.
This is an extreme budget title, and it feels like it. The game doesn't work on Windows 10, immediately crashing to desktop with the message "UE4-Apes.exe has stopped working". Plot threads come and go without any consistency. One scene gives Jess the option to toss aside her bolt-action rifle and take up an M4A1 as her everyday carry of choice. I picked this — "you gotta empty the clip if you want to kill an ape", as one of the game's two professional ape-hunters advises — and never saw it again. The developers either forgot to set the flag that would give it to me, or they ran out of money trying to render Jess in later scenes with one of two different guns and forgot to remove the option to take the M4.
These mistakes barely get noticed against the absurdity of what happens. I'm putting in line breaks here to really highlight this shit.
Clarence, the sole orangutan in the tribe of apes, gets captured and held as a POW by the humans. The ape-hunters bind him with chains, hang him by his wrists in a barn, and decide to torture him for information.
They torture an orangutan for information.
One of them menacingly leans down to Clarence and warns him that it won't end well for the apes if he doesn't start talking. He punctuates this point by beating the orangutan with a lead pipe. If Clarence doesn't tell him everything he knows about the ape tribe, the ape-hunter threatens, the humans are going to keep torturing him until he dies.
Clarence cannot speak English. They then publicly lynch him by hanging him from the neck.
It's at this point that I've started laughing so hard that I'm seeing stars. Tears are rolling down my cheeks. I am losing my goddamn mind. It's 1:30 in the morning and I am causing a disturbance. I've never felt my sides burn like this. I can't catch my breath for so long that I end up hurting myself. I don't know what they were even trying to do here. There's a later scene where apes start getting loaded onto a freight train to be shipped off to an open-air ape prison that I think is supposed to be evoking Holocaust imagery, but I can't say for certain. I don't know what's happening anymore.
The apes can win, or the humans can win, and none of it matters. Who gives a shit. This might be one of the funniest games ever made.
Shenmue
1999
they aint never made a game to top this since ever
Trek to Yomi
2022
they saw ghosts of tsushima and thought nah we can make it worse
Neon White
2022
some dude who's favorite game is a JRPG with a 20 minute skit about accidentally groping a girl: "the writing is pretty cringe"
Lunistice
2022
Cute animal platformers are dead. Long live cute animal platformers.
Mascot platformers — the term, not the games themselves — used to be something you couldn't get away from circa ten or fifteen years ago. Nobody could shut up about "mascot platformers". It was mostly a reaction to studios who used to make platform games gradually shifting their focus away from stuff directed at general audiences and more towards teenagers and adults; Naughty Dog gave up on Crash Bandicoot and moved to titles like Uncharted and The Last of Us, Sucker Punch gave up on Sly Cooper and moved to Infamous and Ghost of Tsushima, and the studios behind titles like Rayman and Bubsy either died out or were put on life support. All of this is to say that platformers were starting to be seen by a lot of people as something of a dying genre, and it was hardly a secret that third-person shooters and open-world action-adventure games were replacing platformers as the default genre of AAA titles. "Mascot platformer" inevitably became a term on par with "WoW Killer" or "Halo Killer" as a dated relic that almost nothing made in the past five years would even think to market itself as.
The passage of time proved that the indie space is really one of the only places left that plays host to pure platformers. Mario is still Mario, obviously, but even Sonic has mostly started featuring platforming as an incidental inclusion alongside action-adventure combat and puzzle solving. I couldn't give a single sweet fuck about Sonic either way, but a game that's just a platformer and nothing else may as well not exist outside of small-scale, low-budget titles.
Lunistice is a platformer, and nothing more. It also isn't a splatformer, as many indie titles following in the wake of Super Meat Boy and Celeste usually are. It's a game with an identity that isn't all that strong, and is over in a single breezy sitting. But these elements together make for something that stirred an odd sense of nostalgia in me. The fact that the game has a setting that makes everything low-poly and crusty and it's enabled by default gives away the fact that this is meant to evoke The Good Old Days of platformers. In that, Lunistice succeeds. It's a perfectly competent game. This shit would have torn up the Blockbuster rentals back in 1999. It's something that I'll imagine most players will think fondly of after they finish it, rather than highly.
It's definitely a game that nobody would be able to call a mascot platformer and be correct in saying so. Hana is barely a character. Her design is messy and she has no personality to speak of. This is fine, because almost all of the focus here is being put exclusively on the act of platforming, rather than getting to know the player character. Again, this is something I feel I don't see very often, and certainly not in anything that's this polished; it seems like more and more games are fixated on the notions of having deep lore and fleshed-out characters, which isn't a bad thing, but it means that a game that lays most of what it is on the table without much ambiguity stands out.
In what I'm certain is no surprise, a game this short (likely no more than two hours if you're going for 100%) ends up being defined mostly by its gimmicks. It feels strange to call these "gimmicks" — even if it applies — because of how quickly they're over, and how there's not much else to find here besides them. The game as a whole feels more like a series of platforming microgames, and it's not until the very final level that they're brought together into a more cohesive gauntlet to be run through. I expected this to be a speed game, but it isn't really that. Lunistice is focused a lot more on developing a sense of flow, provided you aren't trying to collect all the paper cranes. If you do that, then it's a lot slower paced. The true ending is locked behind getting all of them, but the extra level you get is pretty bland and not all that fun, so it's completely fine to skip over it unless you're really hungering for extra content.
Lunistice is a charming title, and it does feel like something that could have been a late entry into the Sega Saturn's catalog. It isn't much beyond a small, fun game, and that's really all it needed to be.
Mascot platformers — the term, not the games themselves — used to be something you couldn't get away from circa ten or fifteen years ago. Nobody could shut up about "mascot platformers". It was mostly a reaction to studios who used to make platform games gradually shifting their focus away from stuff directed at general audiences and more towards teenagers and adults; Naughty Dog gave up on Crash Bandicoot and moved to titles like Uncharted and The Last of Us, Sucker Punch gave up on Sly Cooper and moved to Infamous and Ghost of Tsushima, and the studios behind titles like Rayman and Bubsy either died out or were put on life support. All of this is to say that platformers were starting to be seen by a lot of people as something of a dying genre, and it was hardly a secret that third-person shooters and open-world action-adventure games were replacing platformers as the default genre of AAA titles. "Mascot platformer" inevitably became a term on par with "WoW Killer" or "Halo Killer" as a dated relic that almost nothing made in the past five years would even think to market itself as.
The passage of time proved that the indie space is really one of the only places left that plays host to pure platformers. Mario is still Mario, obviously, but even Sonic has mostly started featuring platforming as an incidental inclusion alongside action-adventure combat and puzzle solving. I couldn't give a single sweet fuck about Sonic either way, but a game that's just a platformer and nothing else may as well not exist outside of small-scale, low-budget titles.
Lunistice is a platformer, and nothing more. It also isn't a splatformer, as many indie titles following in the wake of Super Meat Boy and Celeste usually are. It's a game with an identity that isn't all that strong, and is over in a single breezy sitting. But these elements together make for something that stirred an odd sense of nostalgia in me. The fact that the game has a setting that makes everything low-poly and crusty and it's enabled by default gives away the fact that this is meant to evoke The Good Old Days of platformers. In that, Lunistice succeeds. It's a perfectly competent game. This shit would have torn up the Blockbuster rentals back in 1999. It's something that I'll imagine most players will think fondly of after they finish it, rather than highly.
It's definitely a game that nobody would be able to call a mascot platformer and be correct in saying so. Hana is barely a character. Her design is messy and she has no personality to speak of. This is fine, because almost all of the focus here is being put exclusively on the act of platforming, rather than getting to know the player character. Again, this is something I feel I don't see very often, and certainly not in anything that's this polished; it seems like more and more games are fixated on the notions of having deep lore and fleshed-out characters, which isn't a bad thing, but it means that a game that lays most of what it is on the table without much ambiguity stands out.
In what I'm certain is no surprise, a game this short (likely no more than two hours if you're going for 100%) ends up being defined mostly by its gimmicks. It feels strange to call these "gimmicks" — even if it applies — because of how quickly they're over, and how there's not much else to find here besides them. The game as a whole feels more like a series of platforming microgames, and it's not until the very final level that they're brought together into a more cohesive gauntlet to be run through. I expected this to be a speed game, but it isn't really that. Lunistice is focused a lot more on developing a sense of flow, provided you aren't trying to collect all the paper cranes. If you do that, then it's a lot slower paced. The true ending is locked behind getting all of them, but the extra level you get is pretty bland and not all that fun, so it's completely fine to skip over it unless you're really hungering for extra content.
Lunistice is a charming title, and it does feel like something that could have been a late entry into the Sega Saturn's catalog. It isn't much beyond a small, fun game, and that's really all it needed to be.
Pentiment
2022
Thank God they finally let rope kid out of the Pillars of Eternity mines so he could make this.
It is exceptionally easy to get caught up in the idea that the past wasn't just a different time, but a different world. It's a truism, and one that's so obvious that it can muddy the simple fact that people haven't changed all that much. We're a social species who cope with both reality's bounties and hardships in much of the same ways, though the exact specifics continue to change throughout the years. The medieval peasantry were in no way fundamentally different to ourselves. The struggles of the poor and prosperities of the aristocracy under feudalism mirror those of the poor and the wealthy today. They're different, but they aren't that different, and showcasing that is what really makes Pentiment shine.
1500s-era Tassing, Upper Bavaria (a fictional mish-mash of locations throughout present southern Germany) is a tiny, impoverished mud pit with a population of about fifty people, and they're all written like actual human beings. Everyone has their own struggles and their own secrets, and there's so much to dig into that nobody will ever feasibly discover everything by themselves. This is a story to be discussed and dissected; rarely can a narrative stand up to a scrutinous analysis, and I imagine that Pentiment is going to join a very, very small list of stories that actually can. Every game with a story released since 2019 has been inevitably and unfavorably compared to Disco Elysium, but this feels like one of the only games that manages to be in its weight class. It's hard to overstate how good it is.
There's a massive amount of care put into portraying this world accurately, evidenced by the almost hundred texts referenced in the credits. Josh Sawyer's narrative direction is immaculate, but it would do a disservice both to the rest of the team and to the player to lump all praise onto him. Narratively, graphically, and sonically, everything here is near perfect. The art style and sound design can lead to some truly beautiful moments, and the game is a delight to take in. It feels like a spa trip. It's refreshing and good for the soul. Let this shit seep into my pores.
God, I love Pentiment.
It is exceptionally easy to get caught up in the idea that the past wasn't just a different time, but a different world. It's a truism, and one that's so obvious that it can muddy the simple fact that people haven't changed all that much. We're a social species who cope with both reality's bounties and hardships in much of the same ways, though the exact specifics continue to change throughout the years. The medieval peasantry were in no way fundamentally different to ourselves. The struggles of the poor and prosperities of the aristocracy under feudalism mirror those of the poor and the wealthy today. They're different, but they aren't that different, and showcasing that is what really makes Pentiment shine.
1500s-era Tassing, Upper Bavaria (a fictional mish-mash of locations throughout present southern Germany) is a tiny, impoverished mud pit with a population of about fifty people, and they're all written like actual human beings. Everyone has their own struggles and their own secrets, and there's so much to dig into that nobody will ever feasibly discover everything by themselves. This is a story to be discussed and dissected; rarely can a narrative stand up to a scrutinous analysis, and I imagine that Pentiment is going to join a very, very small list of stories that actually can. Every game with a story released since 2019 has been inevitably and unfavorably compared to Disco Elysium, but this feels like one of the only games that manages to be in its weight class. It's hard to overstate how good it is.
There's a massive amount of care put into portraying this world accurately, evidenced by the almost hundred texts referenced in the credits. Josh Sawyer's narrative direction is immaculate, but it would do a disservice both to the rest of the team and to the player to lump all praise onto him. Narratively, graphically, and sonically, everything here is near perfect. The art style and sound design can lead to some truly beautiful moments, and the game is a delight to take in. It feels like a spa trip. It's refreshing and good for the soul. Let this shit seep into my pores.
God, I love Pentiment.
Pentiment
2022
It’s important that you treat Pentiment with the same scrutiny and scepticism that you (hopefully) do with any other historical source. Most media, not just videogames, are, politely put, atrocious at dealing in good faith with the settings and themes that Pentiment tackles, to the point where it’s probably reasonable to call it one of the most authentic games ever made in this regard. The flip side of this is that it makes the things Pentiment gets wrong feel more conspicuous than they would be otherwise.
If that last part has your guard up, you can safely lower it, because Pentiment’s small handful of inaccuracies are pretty minor in that they don't affect the plot overmuch. I won’t say what they are specifically, because this is the type of game where any and all details ought to be discovered yourself, but among other things, they include at least two cultural events which are unambiguously Christian being misattributed to Alpine paganism of some description, as well as one figure who was (to my knowledge) neither pre-Christian nor worshipped as a goddess being described as a pre-Christian goddess.
There are a couple of reasons why these don’t overly strain Pentiment’s believability and for which it deserves to be given the benefit of the doubt. For starters, relative to the vast majority of media set during the early modern period and (in this case, just after the) Middle Ages, Pentiment’s immensely tactful to the point where I'm (almost but not quite) inclined to think these kinds of mistakes were intentionally included, on the part of its characters rather than its writers; that it avoids the common error of misattributing the origins of Christian saints to pagan figures further suggests this. More broadly, it’s unreasonable to expect anything to be perfect in terms of accuracy and – on exceedingly rare occasions, in exceptionally talented hands – inaccuracies can be advantageous. Excalibur’s a more visually distinctive and symbolic film for featuring armour which is about 1000 years too advanced for the 5th/6th century AD. Shadow of Rome’s a more memorable game for making you fight a ~15ft tall Germanic barbarian whose weapon of choice is a marble pillar. Likewise, in a meta sort of way, Pentiment’s central idea of historiographical truth being difficult to pinpoint is arguably strengthened by its own shortcomings in this respect. Ideally, this’ll encourage players to be more wary of any historically-themed media they engage with, including Pentiment itself.
Any such grievances are further obscured by the mostly impressive weight Pentiment lends to your decisions. I had the fortune of playing through Pentiment concurrently with my brother, and when we’d walk in on each other playing it, we’d do mutual double takes as one of us was in the middle of story events that the other didn’t even consider would be possible. Speech checks being affected by past dialogue choices encourages you to constantly, properly pay attention to and think about what you’re saying in a way I personally haven’t seen done since the isometric Fallouts or Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines. Although its time limits (while appreciated) aren’t implemented as organically as Fallout 1’s, an advantage Pentiment has over even those titans is that it also autosaves after every single action you take, lending everything a degree of permanence that few other RPGs can offer. If you were feeling particularly cheeky, you could go as far as to say that Pentiment can be counted alongside the campaign of Black Ops 2 in the pantheon of games which actually are what everyone pretends New Vegas is.
I call it only mostly impressive because Pentiment’s key weakness is the linearity of its third and final act, which even if you’re being charitable can only really be called overbearing. Not to bang on the choices-don’t-matter drum too hard, because nobody can ever seem to agree what choices mattering in a game really looks like, but you’re much more likely to wish you were able to say or do something other than the options you’re given in the last act than in the preceding two. Potential twists and turns you might hope to direct this chapter’s plot towards are often snuffed out by blurted out variations of “actually, I was only pretending to want to do that” that you rarely have any control over. This isn’t to suggest that Pentiment ends on a sour note – the ending itself’s quite lovely – but from a decision making standpoint, the whole last stretch’s noticeably more limiting.
However close it comes, this is never enough to distract from Pentiment’s visual splendour. Jan van Eyck paintings and The Tragedy of Man are the only other media I can think of which incorporate so many different historical art styles into one cohesive package and so skilfully. Sebhat being drawn in the style of Ethiopian Coptic Orthodox art’s a particularly inspired touch, but in general it’s no wonder that the art director and animators are the first names to pop up on the opening credits, because it’s like a playable manuscript. Rarely do you come across a game where you can legitimately say that the visuals are a selling point in and of themselves.
There should be more games like Pentiment. It represents two things we need more of – big developers putting out more niche, experimental titles, and historical media which isn’t riddled with self-congratulatory 21st century arrogance that spits on the memory of everyone who happened to be born before an arbitrary point in time, in which characters actually believe what they say and aren’t one-dimensional caricatures of the past. Be thankful it exists, whatever its issues.
If that last part has your guard up, you can safely lower it, because Pentiment’s small handful of inaccuracies are pretty minor in that they don't affect the plot overmuch. I won’t say what they are specifically, because this is the type of game where any and all details ought to be discovered yourself, but among other things, they include at least two cultural events which are unambiguously Christian being misattributed to Alpine paganism of some description, as well as one figure who was (to my knowledge) neither pre-Christian nor worshipped as a goddess being described as a pre-Christian goddess.
There are a couple of reasons why these don’t overly strain Pentiment’s believability and for which it deserves to be given the benefit of the doubt. For starters, relative to the vast majority of media set during the early modern period and (in this case, just after the) Middle Ages, Pentiment’s immensely tactful to the point where I'm (almost but not quite) inclined to think these kinds of mistakes were intentionally included, on the part of its characters rather than its writers; that it avoids the common error of misattributing the origins of Christian saints to pagan figures further suggests this. More broadly, it’s unreasonable to expect anything to be perfect in terms of accuracy and – on exceedingly rare occasions, in exceptionally talented hands – inaccuracies can be advantageous. Excalibur’s a more visually distinctive and symbolic film for featuring armour which is about 1000 years too advanced for the 5th/6th century AD. Shadow of Rome’s a more memorable game for making you fight a ~15ft tall Germanic barbarian whose weapon of choice is a marble pillar. Likewise, in a meta sort of way, Pentiment’s central idea of historiographical truth being difficult to pinpoint is arguably strengthened by its own shortcomings in this respect. Ideally, this’ll encourage players to be more wary of any historically-themed media they engage with, including Pentiment itself.
Any such grievances are further obscured by the mostly impressive weight Pentiment lends to your decisions. I had the fortune of playing through Pentiment concurrently with my brother, and when we’d walk in on each other playing it, we’d do mutual double takes as one of us was in the middle of story events that the other didn’t even consider would be possible. Speech checks being affected by past dialogue choices encourages you to constantly, properly pay attention to and think about what you’re saying in a way I personally haven’t seen done since the isometric Fallouts or Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines. Although its time limits (while appreciated) aren’t implemented as organically as Fallout 1’s, an advantage Pentiment has over even those titans is that it also autosaves after every single action you take, lending everything a degree of permanence that few other RPGs can offer. If you were feeling particularly cheeky, you could go as far as to say that Pentiment can be counted alongside the campaign of Black Ops 2 in the pantheon of games which actually are what everyone pretends New Vegas is.
I call it only mostly impressive because Pentiment’s key weakness is the linearity of its third and final act, which even if you’re being charitable can only really be called overbearing. Not to bang on the choices-don’t-matter drum too hard, because nobody can ever seem to agree what choices mattering in a game really looks like, but you’re much more likely to wish you were able to say or do something other than the options you’re given in the last act than in the preceding two. Potential twists and turns you might hope to direct this chapter’s plot towards are often snuffed out by blurted out variations of “actually, I was only pretending to want to do that” that you rarely have any control over. This isn’t to suggest that Pentiment ends on a sour note – the ending itself’s quite lovely – but from a decision making standpoint, the whole last stretch’s noticeably more limiting.
However close it comes, this is never enough to distract from Pentiment’s visual splendour. Jan van Eyck paintings and The Tragedy of Man are the only other media I can think of which incorporate so many different historical art styles into one cohesive package and so skilfully. Sebhat being drawn in the style of Ethiopian Coptic Orthodox art’s a particularly inspired touch, but in general it’s no wonder that the art director and animators are the first names to pop up on the opening credits, because it’s like a playable manuscript. Rarely do you come across a game where you can legitimately say that the visuals are a selling point in and of themselves.
There should be more games like Pentiment. It represents two things we need more of – big developers putting out more niche, experimental titles, and historical media which isn’t riddled with self-congratulatory 21st century arrogance that spits on the memory of everyone who happened to be born before an arbitrary point in time, in which characters actually believe what they say and aren’t one-dimensional caricatures of the past. Be thankful it exists, whatever its issues.
Pentiment
2022
ℑ’𝔪 𝔣𝔯𝔬𝔪 𝔞 𝔱𝔬𝔴𝔫 𝔠𝔞𝔩𝔩𝔢𝔡 ℭ𝔬𝔞𝔱𝔟𝔯𝔦𝔡𝔤𝔢. ℑ𝔱'𝔰 𝔦𝔫 𝔖𝔠𝔬𝔱𝔩𝔞𝔫𝔡. ℭ𝔬𝔞𝔱𝔟𝔯𝔦𝔡𝔤𝔢 𝔦𝔰 𝔬𝔫 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔟𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔢𝔯 𝔬𝔣 𝔊𝔩𝔞𝔰𝔤𝔬𝔴 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔦𝔫 2001 𝔦𝔱 𝔥𝔞𝔡 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔡𝔢𝔫𝔰𝔢𝔰𝔱 𝔭𝔬𝔭𝔲𝔩𝔞𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫 𝔬𝔣 ℑ𝔯𝔦𝔰𝔥 ℭ𝔞𝔱𝔥𝔬𝔩𝔦𝔠𝔰 𝔭𝔢𝔯 𝔠𝔞𝔭𝔦𝔱𝔞 𝔞𝔫𝔶𝔴𝔥𝔢𝔯𝔢 𝔦𝔫 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔩𝔡 𝔬𝔲𝔱𝔰𝔦𝔡𝔢 𝔬𝔣 ℑ𝔯𝔢𝔩𝔞𝔫𝔡.
ℑ 𝔡𝔦𝔡𝔫’𝔱 𝔨𝔫𝔬𝔴 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔰𝔞𝔶𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔭𝔯𝔞𝔶𝔢𝔯𝔰 𝔢𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱 𝔱𝔦𝔪𝔢𝔰 𝔞 𝔡𝔞𝔶 𝔴𝔞𝔰𝔫’𝔱 𝔫𝔬𝔯𝔪𝔞𝔩 𝔲𝔫𝔱𝔦𝔩 ℑ 𝔴𝔞𝔰 14. 𝔚𝔥𝔢𝔫 ℑ 𝔥𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔭𝔢𝔬𝔭𝔩𝔢 𝔰𝔞𝔶 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔪 𝔬𝔫 𝔱𝔢𝔩𝔢𝔳𝔦𝔰𝔦𝔬𝔫 𝔬𝔯 𝔦𝔫 𝔣𝔦𝔩𝔪𝔰, ℑ 𝔰𝔱𝔦𝔩𝔩 𝔭𝔯𝔞𝔶 𝔞𝔩𝔬𝔫𝔤 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔥 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔪 𝔦𝔫 𝔪𝔶 𝔥𝔢𝔞𝔡. ℑ 𝔡𝔦𝔡𝔫'𝔱 𝔩𝔦𝔨𝔢 𝔤𝔬𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔱𝔬 𝔪𝔞𝔰𝔰 𝔴𝔥𝔢𝔫 ℑ 𝔴𝔞𝔰 𝔶𝔬𝔲𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔯, 𝔟𝔲𝔱 ℑ 𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔫𝔨 ℑ’𝔡 𝔩𝔦𝔨𝔢 𝔦𝔱 𝔫𝔬𝔴. 𝔐𝔶 𝔪𝔲𝔪 𝔰𝔞𝔶𝔰 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔞 𝔩𝔬𝔱 𝔱𝔬𝔬. 𝔖𝔞𝔶𝔦𝔫𝔤 “𝔭𝔢𝔞𝔠𝔢 𝔟𝔢 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔥 𝔶𝔬𝔲” 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔨𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔥𝔞𝔫𝔡𝔰 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔥 𝔭𝔢𝔬𝔭𝔩𝔢 𝔴𝔞𝔰 𝔪𝔶 𝔣𝔞𝔳𝔬𝔲𝔯𝔦𝔱𝔢 𝔭𝔞𝔯𝔱 𝔬𝔣 𝔤𝔬𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔱𝔬 𝔪𝔞𝔰𝔰.
𝕿𝖍𝖊𝖗𝖊 𝖆𝖗𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖗𝖙𝖊𝖊𝖓 𝕮𝖆𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖑𝖎𝖈 𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖔𝖔𝖑𝖘 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖋𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖓𝖔𝖓-𝖉𝖊𝖓𝖔𝖒𝖎𝖓𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓𝖆𝖑 𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖔𝖔𝖑𝖘 𝖎𝖓 𝕮𝖔𝖆𝖙𝖇𝖗𝖎𝖉𝖌𝖊. 𝕴 𝖉𝖎𝖉𝖓'𝖙 𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖞 𝖐𝖓𝖔𝖜 𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖔𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖗 𝖗𝖊𝖑𝖎𝖌𝖎𝖔𝖓𝖘 𝖊𝖝𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖉 𝖜𝖍𝖊𝖓 𝕴 𝖜𝖆𝖘 𝖞𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖌𝖊𝖗. 𝕴𝖓 𝕽𝖊𝖑𝖎𝖌𝖎𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝕰𝖉𝖚𝖈𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖈𝖑𝖆𝖘𝖘, 𝖜𝖊 𝖏𝖚𝖘𝖙 𝖑𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖓𝖊𝖉 𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖌𝖘 𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝕮𝖆𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖑𝖎𝖈𝖘 𝖇𝖊𝖑𝖎𝖊𝖛𝖊.
𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝖋𝖎𝖗𝖘𝖙 𝖙𝖎𝖒𝖊 𝕴 𝖜𝖊𝖓𝖙 𝖙𝖔 𝖈𝖔𝖓𝖋𝖊𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝕴 𝖙𝖔𝖑𝖉 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖕𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝕴 𝖙𝖔𝖔𝖐 𝖘𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖇𝖎𝖘𝖈𝖚𝖎𝖙𝖘 𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖔𝖋 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖈𝖚𝖕𝖇𝖔𝖆𝖗𝖉 𝖜𝖎𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖆𝖘𝖐𝖎𝖓𝖌. 𝕳𝖊 𝖙𝖔𝖑𝖉 𝖒𝖊 𝖙𝖔 𝖘𝖎𝖙 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖐 𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖜𝖍𝖊𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖗 𝕴’𝖉 𝖉𝖔𝖓𝖊 𝖆𝖓𝖞𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖘𝖊. 𝕴 𝖒𝖆𝖉𝖊 𝖚𝖕 𝖆 𝖘𝖙𝖔𝖗𝖞 𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖒𝖊 𝖇𝖊𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖞 𝖇𝖆𝖉 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖌𝖔𝖙 𝖆𝖓 𝕬𝖈𝖙 𝕺𝖋 𝕮𝖔𝖓𝖙𝖗𝖎𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖙𝖊𝖓 𝕳𝖆𝖎𝖑 𝕸𝖆𝖗𝖞𝖘. 𝕴 𝖉𝖎𝖉 𝖆𝖑𝖑 𝖙𝖊𝖓 𝖔𝖋 𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖒 𝖇𝖚𝖙 𝖎𝖙’𝖘 𝖔𝖐𝖆𝖞 𝖇𝖊𝖈𝖆𝖚𝖘𝖊 𝖒𝖞 𝖌𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖉𝖕𝖆 𝖌𝖆𝖛𝖊 𝖒𝖊 £𝟑𝟎 𝖋𝖔𝖗 𝖉𝖔𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖈𝖔𝖓𝖋𝖊𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖜𝖆𝖘 𝖊𝖓𝖔𝖚𝖌𝖍 𝖙𝖔 𝖇𝖚𝖞 𝕲𝖔𝖑𝖉𝖊𝖓𝕰𝖞𝖊 𝖋𝖔𝖗 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝕹𝖎𝖓𝖙𝖊𝖓𝖉𝖔 𝟔𝟒.
𝕬𝖙 𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖔𝖔𝖑 𝖉𝖎𝖘𝖈𝖔𝖘, 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖑𝖆𝖎𝖓 𝖜𝖔𝖚𝖑𝖉 𝖜𝖍𝖆𝖈𝖐 𝖆 𝖘𝖙𝖎𝖈𝖐 𝖇𝖊𝖙𝖜𝖊𝖊𝖓 𝖘𝖙𝖚𝖉𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖘 𝖎𝖋 𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖞 𝖉𝖎𝖉𝖓’𝖙 𝖒𝖆𝖎𝖓𝖙𝖆𝖎𝖓 𝖆 𝖘𝖆𝖋𝖊 𝖉𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆𝖓𝖈𝖊 𝖋𝖗𝖔𝖒 𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖎𝖗 𝖕𝖆𝖗𝖙𝖓𝖊𝖗 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖘𝖕𝖊𝖓𝖙 𝖒𝖆𝖓𝖞 𝖉𝖎𝖔𝖈𝖊𝖘𝖊𝖘-𝖆𝖕𝖕𝖗𝖔𝖛𝖊𝖉 𝖉𝖆𝖓𝖈𝖊 𝖓𝖚𝖒𝖇𝖊𝖗𝖘 𝖕𝖔𝖎𝖓𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖋𝖑𝖆𝖘𝖍𝖑𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙𝖘 𝖎𝖓𝖙𝖔 𝖉𝖆𝖗𝖐 𝖈𝖔𝖗𝖓𝖊𝖗𝖘. 𝕳𝖊 𝖜𝖆𝖘 𝖋𝖚𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝖜𝖍𝖊𝖓 𝖍𝖊 𝖈𝖆𝖚𝖌𝖍𝖙 𝖞𝖔𝖚 𝖐𝖎𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖓𝖌. 𝕳𝖊 𝖈𝖆𝖚𝖌𝖍𝖙 𝖒𝖔𝖘𝖙 𝖕𝖊𝖔𝖕𝖑𝖊 𝖉𝖔𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖘𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖐𝖎𝖓𝖉 𝖔𝖋 𝖐𝖎𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖆𝖙 𝖘𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖕𝖔𝖎𝖓𝖙 𝖎𝖓 𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖎𝖗 𝖙𝖎𝖒𝖊 𝖆𝖙 𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖔𝖔𝖑. 𝕬 𝖋𝖊𝖜 𝖞𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖘 𝖑𝖆𝖙𝖊𝖗, 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖕𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝖜𝖊𝖓𝖙 𝖔𝖓 𝖙𝖔 𝖍𝖆𝖛𝖊 𝖆𝖓 𝖆𝖋𝖋𝖆𝖎𝖗 𝖜𝖎𝖙𝖍 𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖍𝖊𝖆𝖉 𝖙𝖊𝖆𝖈𝖍𝖊𝖗 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖗𝖊𝖓𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖈𝖊𝖉 𝖍𝖎𝖘 𝖛𝖔𝖜𝖘.
𝓘’𝓿𝓮 𝓷𝓮𝓿𝓮𝓻 𝓱𝓪𝓭 𝓪𝓷𝔂 𝓴𝓲𝓷𝓭 𝓸𝓯 𝓼𝓮𝔁 𝓮𝓭𝓾𝓬𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷 𝓯𝓻𝓸𝓶 𝓪𝓷𝔂𝓸𝓷𝓮, 𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓾𝓰𝓱 𝓲𝓽 𝓲𝓼 𝓶𝓪𝓷𝓭𝓪𝓽𝓸𝓻𝔂 𝓯𝓸𝓻 𝓼𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓸𝓵𝓼 𝓸𝓯 𝓪𝓵𝓵 𝓭𝓮𝓷𝓸𝓶𝓲𝓷𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷𝓼 𝓲𝓷 𝓢𝓬𝓸𝓽𝓵𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓽𝓮𝓪𝓬𝓱 𝓰𝓲𝓻𝓵𝓼 𝓪𝓫𝓸𝓾𝓽 𝓹𝓾𝓫𝓮𝓻𝓽𝔂 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓼𝓽𝓻𝓾𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷. 𝓞𝓷 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓭𝓪𝔂 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓰𝓲𝓻𝓵𝓼 𝓲𝓷 𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓼𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓸𝓵 𝓱𝓪𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓵𝓮𝓪𝓻𝓷 𝓪𝓫𝓸𝓾𝓽 𝓪𝓵𝓵 𝓸𝓯 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓼, 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓫𝓸𝔂𝓼 𝓰𝓸𝓽 𝓽𝓸 𝓰𝓸 𝓽𝓸 𝓪 𝓵𝓸𝓬𝓪𝓵 𝔀𝓪𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓹𝓪𝓻𝓴. 𝓜𝔂 𝓯𝓻𝓲𝓮𝓷𝓭𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓘 𝓶𝓪𝓷𝓪𝓰𝓮𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓫𝓮𝓪𝓽 𝓖𝓪𝓾𝓷𝓽𝓵𝓮𝓽 𝓪𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓪𝓻𝓬𝓪𝓭𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝓭𝓪𝔂 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝔀𝓱𝓮𝓷 𝔀𝓮 𝓽𝓸𝓵𝓭 𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓸𝓷𝓵𝔂 𝓯𝓮𝓶𝓪𝓵𝓮 𝓯𝓻𝓲𝓮𝓷𝓭 𝓪𝓫𝓸𝓾𝓽 𝓲𝓽 𝓵𝓪𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓸𝓷, 𝓼𝓱𝓮 𝓼𝓽𝓪𝓻𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓬𝓻𝔂𝓲𝓷𝓰.
𝓐 𝓽𝓮𝓪𝓬𝓱𝓮𝓻 𝓸𝓷𝓬𝓮 𝓽𝓸𝓵𝓭 𝓾𝓼 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝓱𝓪𝓿𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓼𝓮𝔁 𝓸𝓾𝓽𝓼𝓲𝓭𝓮 𝓸𝓯 𝓶𝓪𝓻𝓻𝓲𝓪𝓰𝓮 𝔀𝓸𝓾𝓵𝓭, 𝓻𝓮𝓰𝓪𝓻𝓭𝓵𝓮𝓼𝓼 𝓸𝓯 𝓬𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓻𝓪𝓬𝓮𝓹𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷, 𝓪𝓾𝓽𝓸𝓶𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓬𝓪𝓵𝓵𝔂 𝓵𝓮𝓪𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓹𝓻𝓮𝓰𝓷𝓪𝓷𝓬𝔂 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓬𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓻𝓪𝓬𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷 𝓸𝓯 𝓐𝓘𝓓𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓗𝓘𝓥. 𝓗𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓾𝓰𝓱𝓽 𝓐𝓘𝓓𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓗𝓘𝓥 𝔀𝓮𝓻𝓮 𝓽𝔀𝓸 𝓭𝓲𝓯𝓯𝓮𝓻𝓮𝓷𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓼. 𝓐𝓘𝓓𝓼 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓖𝓸𝓭’𝓼 𝓹𝓾𝓷𝓲𝓼𝓱𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓽 𝓯𝓸𝓻 𝓹𝓮𝓸𝓹𝓵𝓮 𝔀𝓱𝓸 𝓭𝓲𝓭𝓷'𝓽 𝓻𝓮𝓼𝓹𝓮𝓬𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓱𝓸𝓵𝔂 𝓼𝓪𝓬𝓻𝓪𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓽 𝓸𝓯 𝓶𝓪𝓽𝓻𝓲𝓶𝓸𝓷𝔂. 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓯𝓲𝓻𝓼𝓽 𝓰𝓲𝓻𝓵 𝓘 𝓮𝓿𝓮𝓻 𝓼𝓵𝓮𝓹𝓽 𝔀𝓲𝓽𝓱 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓯𝓻𝓸𝓶 𝓶𝔂 𝓬𝓵𝓪𝓼𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓘 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓴 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓸𝓷 𝓫𝓸𝓽𝓱 𝓸𝓯 𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓶𝓲𝓷𝓭𝓼 𝔀𝓱𝓮𝓷 𝔀𝓮 𝓱𝓪𝓭 𝓼𝓮𝔁.
𝓐𝓯𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓘 𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓭 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓖𝓸𝓭 𝓓𝓮𝓵𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓸𝓷 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓭𝓮𝓬𝓲𝓭𝓮𝓭 𝓘 𝓱𝓪𝓭 𝓯𝓲𝓰𝓾𝓻𝓮𝓭 𝓸𝓾𝓽 𝓱𝓾𝓶𝓪𝓷 𝓮𝔁𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓮𝓷𝓬𝓮, 𝓘 𝓼𝓽𝓸𝓹𝓹𝓮𝓭 𝓼𝓲𝓰𝓷𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓪𝓯𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓹𝓻𝓪𝔂𝓮𝓻𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓶𝓪𝓭𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓲𝓷𝓭𝓲𝓼𝓹𝓸𝓼𝓮𝓭 𝓬𝓻𝓸𝓼𝓼 𝔀𝓱𝓮𝓷 𝓲𝓽 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓽𝓲𝓶𝓮 𝓽𝓸 𝓻𝓮𝓬𝓮𝓲𝓿𝓮 𝓬𝓸𝓶𝓶𝓾𝓷𝓲𝓸𝓷. 𝓘 𝓪𝓵𝔀𝓪𝔂𝓼 𝔀𝓪𝓼𝓱𝓮𝓭 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓪𝓼𝓱𝓮𝓼 𝓸𝓯𝓯 𝓶𝔂 𝓯𝓸𝓻𝓮𝓱𝓮𝓪𝓭 𝓫𝓮𝓬𝓪𝓾𝓼𝓮 𝓲𝓽 𝓲𝓷𝓽𝓮𝓻𝓯𝓮𝓻𝓮𝓭 𝔀𝓲𝓽𝓱 𝓶𝔂 𝓼𝓲𝓭𝓮-𝓯𝓻𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓮. 𝓘𝓷 𝓶𝔂 𝓯𝓲𝓷𝓪𝓵 𝔂𝓮𝓪𝓻 𝓸𝓯 𝓼𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓸𝓵 𝓘 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓪𝓭𝓿𝓲𝓼𝓮𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓵𝓮𝓪𝓿𝓮 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓰𝓮𝓽 𝓪 𝓳𝓸𝓫 𝓫𝓮𝓬𝓪𝓾𝓼𝓮 𝓘 𝔀𝓪𝓼𝓷'𝓽 𝓮𝓷𝓰𝓪𝓰𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝔀𝓲𝓽𝓱 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓼𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓸𝓵'𝓼 𝓮𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓿𝓪𝓵𝓾𝓮𝓼.
𝘞𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘮𝘺 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘴, 𝘐 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘨𝘰𝘵 𝘢 𝘫𝘰𝘣 𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘰𝘢𝘵𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦. 𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯. 𝘐 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘤𝘋𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘥𝘴 𝘛𝘰𝘶𝘳, 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘤𝘋𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘥𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘰𝘢𝘵𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘤𝘋𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘥𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘰𝘢𝘵𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘶𝘱 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘸𝘯. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘸𝘰 𝘔𝘤𝘋𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘥𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘊𝘰𝘢𝘵𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘴𝘪𝘵-𝘪𝘯 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘵.
𝚆𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝙸 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝟸𝟷, 𝙸 𝚐𝚘𝚝 𝚊 𝚓𝚘𝚋 𝚊𝚜 𝚊 𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚌𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝙶𝚕𝚊𝚜𝚐𝚘𝚠 𝚄𝚗𝚒𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚒𝚝𝚢 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗 𝚊 𝚠𝚎𝚎𝚔 𝚍𝚎𝚌𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚊 𝚠𝚑𝚘𝚕𝚎 𝚝𝚎𝚗 𝚖𝚒𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝚊𝚠𝚊𝚢 𝚏𝚛𝚘𝚖 𝙲𝚘𝚊𝚝𝚋𝚛𝚒𝚍𝚐𝚎 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚗𝚘 𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜 𝚘𝚏 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚛𝚎𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐. 𝙾𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚍𝚊𝚢 𝙸 𝚕𝚎𝚏𝚝, 𝚖𝚢 𝚖𝚞𝚖 𝚐𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚛𝚘𝚜𝚊𝚛𝚢 𝚋𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝙿𝚘𝚙𝚎 𝙹𝚘𝚑𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚞𝚕 𝙸𝙸 𝚋𝚕𝚎𝚜𝚜𝚎𝚍 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚜𝚊𝚒𝚍 𝚜𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍𝚗’𝚝 𝚋𝚎 𝚊𝚋𝚕𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚎𝚎 𝚖𝚎 𝚘𝚏𝚏 𝚋𝚎𝚌𝚊𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝚜𝚑𝚎 𝚑𝚊𝚍 𝚊 𝚍𝚘𝚌𝚝𝚘𝚛’𝚜 𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚘𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝. 𝙰 𝚏𝚎𝚠 𝚢𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚜 𝚕𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝙸 𝚏𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍 𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚗𝚘 𝚍𝚘𝚌𝚝𝚘𝚛’𝚜 𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚘𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝. 𝚂𝚑𝚎 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚠𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚊 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚢 𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚐 𝚠𝚊𝚕𝚔 𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚕𝚘𝚌𝚑.
ℑ 𝔡𝔦𝔡𝔫’𝔱 𝔨𝔫𝔬𝔴 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔰𝔞𝔶𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔭𝔯𝔞𝔶𝔢𝔯𝔰 𝔢𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱 𝔱𝔦𝔪𝔢𝔰 𝔞 𝔡𝔞𝔶 𝔴𝔞𝔰𝔫’𝔱 𝔫𝔬𝔯𝔪𝔞𝔩 𝔲𝔫𝔱𝔦𝔩 ℑ 𝔴𝔞𝔰 14. 𝔚𝔥𝔢𝔫 ℑ 𝔥𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔭𝔢𝔬𝔭𝔩𝔢 𝔰𝔞𝔶 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔪 𝔬𝔫 𝔱𝔢𝔩𝔢𝔳𝔦𝔰𝔦𝔬𝔫 𝔬𝔯 𝔦𝔫 𝔣𝔦𝔩𝔪𝔰, ℑ 𝔰𝔱𝔦𝔩𝔩 𝔭𝔯𝔞𝔶 𝔞𝔩𝔬𝔫𝔤 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔥 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔪 𝔦𝔫 𝔪𝔶 𝔥𝔢𝔞𝔡. ℑ 𝔡𝔦𝔡𝔫'𝔱 𝔩𝔦𝔨𝔢 𝔤𝔬𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔱𝔬 𝔪𝔞𝔰𝔰 𝔴𝔥𝔢𝔫 ℑ 𝔴𝔞𝔰 𝔶𝔬𝔲𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔯, 𝔟𝔲𝔱 ℑ 𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔫𝔨 ℑ’𝔡 𝔩𝔦𝔨𝔢 𝔦𝔱 𝔫𝔬𝔴. 𝔐𝔶 𝔪𝔲𝔪 𝔰𝔞𝔶𝔰 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔞 𝔩𝔬𝔱 𝔱𝔬𝔬. 𝔖𝔞𝔶𝔦𝔫𝔤 “𝔭𝔢𝔞𝔠𝔢 𝔟𝔢 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔥 𝔶𝔬𝔲” 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔨𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔥𝔞𝔫𝔡𝔰 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔥 𝔭𝔢𝔬𝔭𝔩𝔢 𝔴𝔞𝔰 𝔪𝔶 𝔣𝔞𝔳𝔬𝔲𝔯𝔦𝔱𝔢 𝔭𝔞𝔯𝔱 𝔬𝔣 𝔤𝔬𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔱𝔬 𝔪𝔞𝔰𝔰.
𝕿𝖍𝖊𝖗𝖊 𝖆𝖗𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖗𝖙𝖊𝖊𝖓 𝕮𝖆𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖑𝖎𝖈 𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖔𝖔𝖑𝖘 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖋𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖓𝖔𝖓-𝖉𝖊𝖓𝖔𝖒𝖎𝖓𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓𝖆𝖑 𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖔𝖔𝖑𝖘 𝖎𝖓 𝕮𝖔𝖆𝖙𝖇𝖗𝖎𝖉𝖌𝖊. 𝕴 𝖉𝖎𝖉𝖓'𝖙 𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖞 𝖐𝖓𝖔𝖜 𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖔𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖗 𝖗𝖊𝖑𝖎𝖌𝖎𝖔𝖓𝖘 𝖊𝖝𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖉 𝖜𝖍𝖊𝖓 𝕴 𝖜𝖆𝖘 𝖞𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖌𝖊𝖗. 𝕴𝖓 𝕽𝖊𝖑𝖎𝖌𝖎𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝕰𝖉𝖚𝖈𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖈𝖑𝖆𝖘𝖘, 𝖜𝖊 𝖏𝖚𝖘𝖙 𝖑𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖓𝖊𝖉 𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖌𝖘 𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝕮𝖆𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖑𝖎𝖈𝖘 𝖇𝖊𝖑𝖎𝖊𝖛𝖊.
𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝖋𝖎𝖗𝖘𝖙 𝖙𝖎𝖒𝖊 𝕴 𝖜𝖊𝖓𝖙 𝖙𝖔 𝖈𝖔𝖓𝖋𝖊𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝕴 𝖙𝖔𝖑𝖉 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖕𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝕴 𝖙𝖔𝖔𝖐 𝖘𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖇𝖎𝖘𝖈𝖚𝖎𝖙𝖘 𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖔𝖋 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖈𝖚𝖕𝖇𝖔𝖆𝖗𝖉 𝖜𝖎𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖆𝖘𝖐𝖎𝖓𝖌. 𝕳𝖊 𝖙𝖔𝖑𝖉 𝖒𝖊 𝖙𝖔 𝖘𝖎𝖙 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖐 𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖜𝖍𝖊𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖗 𝕴’𝖉 𝖉𝖔𝖓𝖊 𝖆𝖓𝖞𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖘𝖊. 𝕴 𝖒𝖆𝖉𝖊 𝖚𝖕 𝖆 𝖘𝖙𝖔𝖗𝖞 𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖒𝖊 𝖇𝖊𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖞 𝖇𝖆𝖉 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖌𝖔𝖙 𝖆𝖓 𝕬𝖈𝖙 𝕺𝖋 𝕮𝖔𝖓𝖙𝖗𝖎𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖙𝖊𝖓 𝕳𝖆𝖎𝖑 𝕸𝖆𝖗𝖞𝖘. 𝕴 𝖉𝖎𝖉 𝖆𝖑𝖑 𝖙𝖊𝖓 𝖔𝖋 𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖒 𝖇𝖚𝖙 𝖎𝖙’𝖘 𝖔𝖐𝖆𝖞 𝖇𝖊𝖈𝖆𝖚𝖘𝖊 𝖒𝖞 𝖌𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖉𝖕𝖆 𝖌𝖆𝖛𝖊 𝖒𝖊 £𝟑𝟎 𝖋𝖔𝖗 𝖉𝖔𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖈𝖔𝖓𝖋𝖊𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖜𝖆𝖘 𝖊𝖓𝖔𝖚𝖌𝖍 𝖙𝖔 𝖇𝖚𝖞 𝕲𝖔𝖑𝖉𝖊𝖓𝕰𝖞𝖊 𝖋𝖔𝖗 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝕹𝖎𝖓𝖙𝖊𝖓𝖉𝖔 𝟔𝟒.
𝕬𝖙 𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖔𝖔𝖑 𝖉𝖎𝖘𝖈𝖔𝖘, 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖑𝖆𝖎𝖓 𝖜𝖔𝖚𝖑𝖉 𝖜𝖍𝖆𝖈𝖐 𝖆 𝖘𝖙𝖎𝖈𝖐 𝖇𝖊𝖙𝖜𝖊𝖊𝖓 𝖘𝖙𝖚𝖉𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖘 𝖎𝖋 𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖞 𝖉𝖎𝖉𝖓’𝖙 𝖒𝖆𝖎𝖓𝖙𝖆𝖎𝖓 𝖆 𝖘𝖆𝖋𝖊 𝖉𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆𝖓𝖈𝖊 𝖋𝖗𝖔𝖒 𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖎𝖗 𝖕𝖆𝖗𝖙𝖓𝖊𝖗 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖘𝖕𝖊𝖓𝖙 𝖒𝖆𝖓𝖞 𝖉𝖎𝖔𝖈𝖊𝖘𝖊𝖘-𝖆𝖕𝖕𝖗𝖔𝖛𝖊𝖉 𝖉𝖆𝖓𝖈𝖊 𝖓𝖚𝖒𝖇𝖊𝖗𝖘 𝖕𝖔𝖎𝖓𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖋𝖑𝖆𝖘𝖍𝖑𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙𝖘 𝖎𝖓𝖙𝖔 𝖉𝖆𝖗𝖐 𝖈𝖔𝖗𝖓𝖊𝖗𝖘. 𝕳𝖊 𝖜𝖆𝖘 𝖋𝖚𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝖜𝖍𝖊𝖓 𝖍𝖊 𝖈𝖆𝖚𝖌𝖍𝖙 𝖞𝖔𝖚 𝖐𝖎𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖓𝖌. 𝕳𝖊 𝖈𝖆𝖚𝖌𝖍𝖙 𝖒𝖔𝖘𝖙 𝖕𝖊𝖔𝖕𝖑𝖊 𝖉𝖔𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖘𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖐𝖎𝖓𝖉 𝖔𝖋 𝖐𝖎𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖆𝖙 𝖘𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖕𝖔𝖎𝖓𝖙 𝖎𝖓 𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖎𝖗 𝖙𝖎𝖒𝖊 𝖆𝖙 𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖔𝖔𝖑. 𝕬 𝖋𝖊𝖜 𝖞𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖘 𝖑𝖆𝖙𝖊𝖗, 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖕𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝖜𝖊𝖓𝖙 𝖔𝖓 𝖙𝖔 𝖍𝖆𝖛𝖊 𝖆𝖓 𝖆𝖋𝖋𝖆𝖎𝖗 𝖜𝖎𝖙𝖍 𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖍𝖊𝖆𝖉 𝖙𝖊𝖆𝖈𝖍𝖊𝖗 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖗𝖊𝖓𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖈𝖊𝖉 𝖍𝖎𝖘 𝖛𝖔𝖜𝖘.
𝓘’𝓿𝓮 𝓷𝓮𝓿𝓮𝓻 𝓱𝓪𝓭 𝓪𝓷𝔂 𝓴𝓲𝓷𝓭 𝓸𝓯 𝓼𝓮𝔁 𝓮𝓭𝓾𝓬𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷 𝓯𝓻𝓸𝓶 𝓪𝓷𝔂𝓸𝓷𝓮, 𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓾𝓰𝓱 𝓲𝓽 𝓲𝓼 𝓶𝓪𝓷𝓭𝓪𝓽𝓸𝓻𝔂 𝓯𝓸𝓻 𝓼𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓸𝓵𝓼 𝓸𝓯 𝓪𝓵𝓵 𝓭𝓮𝓷𝓸𝓶𝓲𝓷𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷𝓼 𝓲𝓷 𝓢𝓬𝓸𝓽𝓵𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓽𝓮𝓪𝓬𝓱 𝓰𝓲𝓻𝓵𝓼 𝓪𝓫𝓸𝓾𝓽 𝓹𝓾𝓫𝓮𝓻𝓽𝔂 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓼𝓽𝓻𝓾𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷. 𝓞𝓷 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓭𝓪𝔂 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓰𝓲𝓻𝓵𝓼 𝓲𝓷 𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓼𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓸𝓵 𝓱𝓪𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓵𝓮𝓪𝓻𝓷 𝓪𝓫𝓸𝓾𝓽 𝓪𝓵𝓵 𝓸𝓯 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓼, 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓫𝓸𝔂𝓼 𝓰𝓸𝓽 𝓽𝓸 𝓰𝓸 𝓽𝓸 𝓪 𝓵𝓸𝓬𝓪𝓵 𝔀𝓪𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓹𝓪𝓻𝓴. 𝓜𝔂 𝓯𝓻𝓲𝓮𝓷𝓭𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓘 𝓶𝓪𝓷𝓪𝓰𝓮𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓫𝓮𝓪𝓽 𝓖𝓪𝓾𝓷𝓽𝓵𝓮𝓽 𝓪𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓪𝓻𝓬𝓪𝓭𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝓭𝓪𝔂 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝔀𝓱𝓮𝓷 𝔀𝓮 𝓽𝓸𝓵𝓭 𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓸𝓷𝓵𝔂 𝓯𝓮𝓶𝓪𝓵𝓮 𝓯𝓻𝓲𝓮𝓷𝓭 𝓪𝓫𝓸𝓾𝓽 𝓲𝓽 𝓵𝓪𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓸𝓷, 𝓼𝓱𝓮 𝓼𝓽𝓪𝓻𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓬𝓻𝔂𝓲𝓷𝓰.
𝓐 𝓽𝓮𝓪𝓬𝓱𝓮𝓻 𝓸𝓷𝓬𝓮 𝓽𝓸𝓵𝓭 𝓾𝓼 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝓱𝓪𝓿𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓼𝓮𝔁 𝓸𝓾𝓽𝓼𝓲𝓭𝓮 𝓸𝓯 𝓶𝓪𝓻𝓻𝓲𝓪𝓰𝓮 𝔀𝓸𝓾𝓵𝓭, 𝓻𝓮𝓰𝓪𝓻𝓭𝓵𝓮𝓼𝓼 𝓸𝓯 𝓬𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓻𝓪𝓬𝓮𝓹𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷, 𝓪𝓾𝓽𝓸𝓶𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓬𝓪𝓵𝓵𝔂 𝓵𝓮𝓪𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓹𝓻𝓮𝓰𝓷𝓪𝓷𝓬𝔂 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓬𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓻𝓪𝓬𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷 𝓸𝓯 𝓐𝓘𝓓𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓗𝓘𝓥. 𝓗𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓾𝓰𝓱𝓽 𝓐𝓘𝓓𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓗𝓘𝓥 𝔀𝓮𝓻𝓮 𝓽𝔀𝓸 𝓭𝓲𝓯𝓯𝓮𝓻𝓮𝓷𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓼. 𝓐𝓘𝓓𝓼 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓖𝓸𝓭’𝓼 𝓹𝓾𝓷𝓲𝓼𝓱𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓽 𝓯𝓸𝓻 𝓹𝓮𝓸𝓹𝓵𝓮 𝔀𝓱𝓸 𝓭𝓲𝓭𝓷'𝓽 𝓻𝓮𝓼𝓹𝓮𝓬𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓱𝓸𝓵𝔂 𝓼𝓪𝓬𝓻𝓪𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓽 𝓸𝓯 𝓶𝓪𝓽𝓻𝓲𝓶𝓸𝓷𝔂. 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓯𝓲𝓻𝓼𝓽 𝓰𝓲𝓻𝓵 𝓘 𝓮𝓿𝓮𝓻 𝓼𝓵𝓮𝓹𝓽 𝔀𝓲𝓽𝓱 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓯𝓻𝓸𝓶 𝓶𝔂 𝓬𝓵𝓪𝓼𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓘 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓴 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓸𝓷 𝓫𝓸𝓽𝓱 𝓸𝓯 𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓶𝓲𝓷𝓭𝓼 𝔀𝓱𝓮𝓷 𝔀𝓮 𝓱𝓪𝓭 𝓼𝓮𝔁.
𝓐𝓯𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓘 𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓭 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓖𝓸𝓭 𝓓𝓮𝓵𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓸𝓷 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓭𝓮𝓬𝓲𝓭𝓮𝓭 𝓘 𝓱𝓪𝓭 𝓯𝓲𝓰𝓾𝓻𝓮𝓭 𝓸𝓾𝓽 𝓱𝓾𝓶𝓪𝓷 𝓮𝔁𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓮𝓷𝓬𝓮, 𝓘 𝓼𝓽𝓸𝓹𝓹𝓮𝓭 𝓼𝓲𝓰𝓷𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓪𝓯𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓹𝓻𝓪𝔂𝓮𝓻𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓶𝓪𝓭𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓲𝓷𝓭𝓲𝓼𝓹𝓸𝓼𝓮𝓭 𝓬𝓻𝓸𝓼𝓼 𝔀𝓱𝓮𝓷 𝓲𝓽 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓽𝓲𝓶𝓮 𝓽𝓸 𝓻𝓮𝓬𝓮𝓲𝓿𝓮 𝓬𝓸𝓶𝓶𝓾𝓷𝓲𝓸𝓷. 𝓘 𝓪𝓵𝔀𝓪𝔂𝓼 𝔀𝓪𝓼𝓱𝓮𝓭 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓪𝓼𝓱𝓮𝓼 𝓸𝓯𝓯 𝓶𝔂 𝓯𝓸𝓻𝓮𝓱𝓮𝓪𝓭 𝓫𝓮𝓬𝓪𝓾𝓼𝓮 𝓲𝓽 𝓲𝓷𝓽𝓮𝓻𝓯𝓮𝓻𝓮𝓭 𝔀𝓲𝓽𝓱 𝓶𝔂 𝓼𝓲𝓭𝓮-𝓯𝓻𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓮. 𝓘𝓷 𝓶𝔂 𝓯𝓲𝓷𝓪𝓵 𝔂𝓮𝓪𝓻 𝓸𝓯 𝓼𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓸𝓵 𝓘 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓪𝓭𝓿𝓲𝓼𝓮𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓵𝓮𝓪𝓿𝓮 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓰𝓮𝓽 𝓪 𝓳𝓸𝓫 𝓫𝓮𝓬𝓪𝓾𝓼𝓮 𝓘 𝔀𝓪𝓼𝓷'𝓽 𝓮𝓷𝓰𝓪𝓰𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝔀𝓲𝓽𝓱 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓼𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓸𝓵'𝓼 𝓮𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓿𝓪𝓵𝓾𝓮𝓼.
𝘞𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘮𝘺 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘴, 𝘐 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘨𝘰𝘵 𝘢 𝘫𝘰𝘣 𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘰𝘢𝘵𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦. 𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯. 𝘐 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘤𝘋𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘥𝘴 𝘛𝘰𝘶𝘳, 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘤𝘋𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘥𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘰𝘢𝘵𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘤𝘋𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘥𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘰𝘢𝘵𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘶𝘱 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘸𝘯. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘸𝘰 𝘔𝘤𝘋𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘥𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘊𝘰𝘢𝘵𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘴𝘪𝘵-𝘪𝘯 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘵.
𝚆𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝙸 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝟸𝟷, 𝙸 𝚐𝚘𝚝 𝚊 𝚓𝚘𝚋 𝚊𝚜 𝚊 𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚌𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝙶𝚕𝚊𝚜𝚐𝚘𝚠 𝚄𝚗𝚒𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚒𝚝𝚢 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗 𝚊 𝚠𝚎𝚎𝚔 𝚍𝚎𝚌𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚊 𝚠𝚑𝚘𝚕𝚎 𝚝𝚎𝚗 𝚖𝚒𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝚊𝚠𝚊𝚢 𝚏𝚛𝚘𝚖 𝙲𝚘𝚊𝚝𝚋𝚛𝚒𝚍𝚐𝚎 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚗𝚘 𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜 𝚘𝚏 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚛𝚎𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐. 𝙾𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚍𝚊𝚢 𝙸 𝚕𝚎𝚏𝚝, 𝚖𝚢 𝚖𝚞𝚖 𝚐𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚛𝚘𝚜𝚊𝚛𝚢 𝚋𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝙿𝚘𝚙𝚎 𝙹𝚘𝚑𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚞𝚕 𝙸𝙸 𝚋𝚕𝚎𝚜𝚜𝚎𝚍 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚜𝚊𝚒𝚍 𝚜𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍𝚗’𝚝 𝚋𝚎 𝚊𝚋𝚕𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚎𝚎 𝚖𝚎 𝚘𝚏𝚏 𝚋𝚎𝚌𝚊𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝚜𝚑𝚎 𝚑𝚊𝚍 𝚊 𝚍𝚘𝚌𝚝𝚘𝚛’𝚜 𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚘𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝. 𝙰 𝚏𝚎𝚠 𝚢𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚜 𝚕𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝙸 𝚏𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍 𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚗𝚘 𝚍𝚘𝚌𝚝𝚘𝚛’𝚜 𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚘𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝. 𝚂𝚑𝚎 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚠𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚊 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚢 𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚐 𝚠𝚊𝚕𝚔 𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚕𝚘𝚌𝚑.