Getting Into Character In Neverness To Everness

Just as an FYI, before we get to the post proper, I wanted to say I'm aware that some blogs aren't updating in the Blog Roll at the moment. It's a known issue and apparently Google is looking into it. I imagine first they'll have to find someone who remembers what Blogger is and then that person will need to find someone else who knows how it works but eventually I expect something will be done and everything will go back to normal. Or what passes for normal these days, anyway.

And now, on to the scheduled program, which today is another post about Neverness To Everness. Oh, joy! What's more, it's a particularly self-indulgent one that I'm mostly writing for my own amusement. So, nothing new there, then...

In a reply to Nimgimli in the comments to yesterday's post, I mentioned I was thinking of doing "a post on the characters and what I think about them" and guess what? This is that post. 

First, I guess I ought to figure out just who I mean by "the characters". In any gacha game there are several kinds:  

• Playable Characters - major characters you can have in your team  
• Supporting Characters - significant characters you can't  
• Walk-ons and Cameos, color and flavor but still a speaking role
• Everyone Else, the extras, the NPCs, the hordes

Supporting Characters can and sometimes do convert to Playable Characters. For example, Akane, who I mentioned yesterday, most likely will convert. She has a lot of dialog, a well-delineated personality and is already something of a fan favorite. Nothing has been announced but she's an odds-on bet to become playable at some point. Lacrimosa, to whom I dedicated a whole post a while back, has already been slated to become playable in the near future, as has Chaos, who I haven't mentioned before but who features heavily in the chapter of the main storyline I started this morning.

I'm not going to talk about any of them today, nor about any of the many minor characters that crop up in the story or make themselves known as you wander around the city, even if some of those are potentially as interesting and engaging as the leads. Hethereau is a big place and if you spend as much time there as I've been doing you'll run into a whole lot of people with stories to tell. We'd be here all week if I tried to give space to them all.

No, for this post I'm going to stick to Playable Characters only and even then only the ones I've seen enough of to form some kind of opinion. There are currently eighteen Playable Characters according to the NTE Characters List, which despite the name and internet address is not an official source. But it's good enough.

The eighteen are, in alphabetical order, Adler, Aurelia, Baicang, Chiz, Daffodil, Edgar, Fadia, Haniel, Hathor, Hotori, Jiuyuan, Mint, Nannally, Sakiri and Skia. 

Numerate readers, which I assume is everyone, will immediately have noticed there are fewer than eighteen names in that list. That's because a) I have left out Lacrimosa because she's not going to playable until next month and b) I have also left out the two, gendered iterations of the Player Character, known variously as Zero, The Appraiser, CoCo or Precious, depending who's talking.

That leaves fifteen, at least three of whom of which I have barely met and have nothing to say about, so we're down to a nice round dozen. Still a lot. I might have to break this post into two parts. We'll see how we go.

I also have absolutely no intention of discussing any of them in terms of their combat effectiveness, whether they're A or A Class, what practical benefit they bring to a team or any of that boring old guff. Plenty of places you can go look that stuff up if you care. 

All I'm interested in is who they are, whether I like them and why. I said it was going to be a self-indulgent exercise! I will say that my team so far has mainly been Mint, Adler, Hotori and very occasionally Skia, so it's conceivable that some element of those particular characters' combat effectiveness may have bled over into how I feel about them but I doubt it. Not the way I play. I am going to say if I'd want each of the twelve on my team but I'm basing that decision on whether I could stand to spend time with them, not how useful they might be.

And with that unnecessarily lengthy introduction, let's get to the characters who, again, I'll present in alphabetical order or else there will be pouting and possibly fist-fights. Yes, I am looking at you, Sakiri!

Adler: Eidon's butler, Hotori's amanuensis and protector and winner of the Hethereau Poker-Face Award for Lack of Affect three years running. Well, he would be if there was one. Adler is the exemplary professional servant from every costume drama since Mr. Hudson in Upstairs Downstairs. Unflappable, emotionless, impossible to read. I did not like him at all at first and even now I can't say I'm fond of him. I do, however, respect and admire him, although not for anything he's done or said in the game. He shows a very different face in one of Hotori's vignettes (Included in a previous post.) and having watched that, I see there's a lot more to him than the cliche. Still don't actually enjoy his company much, though. It's like teacher's come back into the room every time he appears. He can be a bit of a downer, if I'm honest. Already on my team, even though I can't remember ever inviting him to join. 

 

 Baicang - Baicang is devious, smarmy, patronizing, narcissistic jerk. Oh, sorry, was I being too nice to him? Yes, you're right. He's worse than that. God, he's annoying! I want to reach through the screen and punch him every time I hear him talking down to Flora. There's an outside chance something deeper might be going on with him but with a surface like that, who's ever going to dig down far enough to find out? I'm a bit confused about his status, too. It seems like the BAC has quasi-military ranks and Baicang is a Captain while Skia is a Lieutenant but Skia seems to be in charge. Then again, who'd ever put Baicang in charge of anything? He'll join my team the day I uninstall the game. No, actually, not even then. 

 

Chiz - Chiz barely makes it onto the list for the simple reason I've only met her once. She makes an impression, though. Pronounced "Cheese", as she's quick to tell you, Chiz is a representative of the Pink Paws Bank, where the dress code apparently includes going to work in whatever you slept in, even when that was hardly anything. Someone who looks less like they work in a bank would be almost impossible to imagine. Then again, if you call your financial institution "Pink Paws" you're already good with confounding expectation, I guess. I She's very bubbly although in this game there's plenty of competition when it comes to bubbliness. I'd have her on my team in a heartbeat. 

 

Daffodil - Eidon's enforcer.  Tough as nails, taciturn, dresses all in black, wears a business suit even when she's fighting. Even the ichi-daime of the Colluccis calls her Master... and yet she's actually quite diffident and unsure of herself in private, I think. She's rather sweet in a mildly terrifying way. A potentially intriguing back-story feels like it's just starting to develop in the quest I'm doing so maybe there's more to her than the hardened exterior suggests. I'd take her onto the team either way. At least she's quiet. 

 

Edgar - The enigma. Edgar presents as a small boy in what looks like a parody of Edwardian dress but he talks like a college professor. He has a pleasant, unabrasive personality, which makes for a fine contrast with the two girls he hangs out with. Even though he's unobtrusive and quiet, he rarely seems intimidated by anything, least of all Sakiri and Nanally, in whose company he comes across as being more long-suffering and tolerant than put-upon. It's almost as though he's secure in some world of his own, observing the chaos around him with an academic curiosity. I'd be very happy to have Edgar on the team. I feel like I might learn something. 

 

Haniel -  OMG! Haniel! It makes me tired just thinking about her. Haniel almost literally never stops. She openly despises sleep. She works a full shift plus overtime then goes clubbing 'til the early hours and when you blearily open your own eyes far too early next morning she's there, bright as sunrise, demanding you get up and start all over again. I'm convinced she's on drugs. She probably doesn't even think of them as drugs because she's so clean and nice but it'll be little pills she keeps in a bunny-shaped box or maybe she has an Oddity at home that makes her feel Fresh! and Bright! whenever she strokes its rainbow fur. It's got to be something. Sugar and caffeine will only take you so far. Haniel is exhausting but I'd have her on the team all the same. She's Fun with a Capital F. 

 

Hotori -  I think I've already made it clear how much I like Hotori. She's my favorite character by a margin. She's the owner and boss of Eidon Antiques and she presents as a lazy, sleepy, lush, which is fair because she does as little work as possible, sleeps all the time and drinks like several fish, if fish drank wine not water. Hotori, however, like all the characters or so I suspect, is More Than She Seems. For one thing, she's incredibly powerful. She can literally stop time. She also knows everyone who's anyone and from the reactions of powerful people she's a Power To Be Reckoned With in her own right. When we visited BAC HQ today, junior staff were starstruck and in awe. She either was or still is a Captain in that organization and the Director takes private meetings with her. Hotori is a fully realized character with a deep backstory we've only glimpsed and Lindsay Sheppard, her voice actor, does a brilliant job of putting all of that across. Hotori is on my team already and I'm extremely glad to have her. 

 

Jiuyuan -  Hotori's equivalent at Sterry Express and something of a rival. Possibly a frenemy. Jiuyuaan is cool and somewhat haughty and I don't feel I know her at all. She gives the impression of being considerably older than she looks, although since everyone looks so young that's a hard one to read. Her speech patterns and tone make her seem like she might be in her forties at least, though. I don't really have much of a take on her yet. I'm not sure I trust her. I definitely don't know whether I like her. Would I have her on my team? I'm not sure it would be my choice. If she wanted to be there, that's where she'd be. 

 

 

Mint - Lovely Mint! Mint is quite possibly the friendliest person you will ever meet. Mint makes up nicknames for everyone she likes and she likes everyone. She bases the nicknames on what people smell like. She calls Flora CoCo. Are you whimsied out yet? I'm not but then I have a high threshold for whimsy. Mint also lives in Flora's apartment for reasons unclear. Flora invited her over to see it and Mint just never left. She wanders around in her night-clothes, making little "Umm" and "Ahh" noises for no apparent reason and now Flora is wondering whether it mightn’t be time to start looking for that second apartment after all. Mint is second only to Haniel in terms of energy and enthusiasm but she does at least take a day off once in a while and I don't think she's on anything. She's just perpetually high on life. She was the first person Flora met in Hethereau and the first to join the team and she's extremely welcome to stay as long as she wants. In the team, that is, not in the apartment... 

 

Nanally - Aka the Ichi-Daime of The Colluccis aka The Tiger aka Natalie. Not sure when she changed her name or why. Nanally is an Esper of uncertain age (Aren't they all?) but probably somewhere in her teens. She lives at Eidon Antiques, where she works as an Anomaly Hunter, dealing with the less dangerous commissions. She speaks in a voice so high-pitched only bats can understand her, which can be a tad irritating at times. She appears to have based her entire persona on an anime movie (Or possibly TV series.) called Sin City Chronicles. This is a fictional IP within the NTE universe, not any of the several real-world versions that do in fact exist. Like Adler, Nanally's backstory is only alluded to in out-of-game media, which is a shame because it fundamentally shifts her personality away from annoying fantasist to something much more sad and emotive. Her relationship with Hotori is unclear. Are they Mentor/Mentee? Employer/Employee? Guardian/Ward? More information needed. I'd take Nanally onto the team without hesitation. She's enthusiastic, loyal and a great fighter. Also, she can run up walls, which could be really handy. 

 

Sakiri - Hmm. Hard one. Not Sakiri herself, although she sure would like you to think so. No, Sakiri's a bit of a mystery. She seems to be very young, possibly a child rather than a teenager, but then we know Esper abilities can affect aging so it's impossible to tell how old an Esper is by looks alone. She behaves like a hyperactive ten year-old some of the time but as Nimgimli says, like a psychopath at others. I find her antics highly amusing, She's like a firework, going off in all directions. She seems perpetually angry or outraged. She finds everyone around her annoying and irritating. Her main Esper ability seems to consist of summoning an Oddity called Kiramourou, who presents as some kind of all-devouring demon. She treats him like a badly-behaved pet and yells at him all the time but he looks like he can take it. When Sakiri is on stage, everyone else takes a supporting role. She's a tiny force of nature. Once again, though, in the out-of-game media featuring her, she comes across as someone with her own demons, not just a pet that looks like one. I'd love to find out more about her and I'd welcome her onto the team any time. Kiramourou too. 

 

Skia - Last and, frankly, least, we have Skia. Literally the only vaguely interesting thing about Skia is that he looks like a werewolf. He isn't a werewolf. That would be genuinely interesting. He just looks like one as a side effect of his Esper ability. (That's also why Nanally and Mint have tails and Sakiri has horns, I believe.) Just about the only amusing thing I've seen Baicang do is tease Skia about how soft his fur is and what a pity it is he can't use his nose to track things like a real wolf. And come to think of it, that's not even funny, either. But it does establish that even though Skia looks like a wolf he's just a human. And a dull one at that. I had him on my team briefly but I dropped him. Not keen to have him back.

 

And that's the lot. I left out Hathor, who's basically Skerry's version of Dafodill, and Aurelia and Fadia, neither of whom I can actually remember meeting. And now I'm off to have lunch.

That was a morning well-spent!  

It's Only Rock 'n' Roll - Life In Hethereau

It's been three weeks, give or take, since Neverness To Everness went live and I believe I've played every day. If I was playing the game through Steam, I'd know how many hours I've put in but NTE isn't on Steam so I don't. 

I guess if I was that interested, I could download and install one of those game-time trackers I see people blogging about now and then but I think that really would be taking the whole thing too seriously. I'll just take a guess instead.

Let's see... I doubt I've played any less than an hour most days. Once or twice, like yesterday, I was so busy I really didn't have time to do more than log in, collect my minimum activity rewards and log out again but usually I get involved in something that takes at least a short session to finish and a short session these days would indeed be about an hour.

Often, though, I've played a lot longer than that. This morning, for example, I played for a couple of hours and it's odds-on I'll play for a couple more later today. There have been a few days where I played for three or four hours. Let's say that, over the course of the three weeks the game's been out, I've averaged two hours a day. That seems about right.

So, over forty hours so far. And after all of that, I'm a smidgeon from dinging Hunter Level 24, which is when the next chapter of the main storyline becomes available. I'll get enough xp from tomorrow's basic log-in reward, although I might do something before then that dings me sooner.

As Mailvaltar explained in the comments the other day, Hunter xp is quite specific. You don't get it from everything you do. It mostly comes from log-in dailies and quests. Not all quests, though, and mostly not the ones I've been doing.  

Thinking about it, 24 levels (Almost...) in 21 days in a game where the level cap is 40 (Yes, alright, technically it's 60, but 40 seems to be the de facto practical cap for now.) seems pretty slow by modern standards. And yet it feels anything but. Too fast, if anything, given that I've really made no attempt to chase xp.

If you stand on the fountains, it stops the water spurting up. Ask me how I know...

So what have I been doing? Ah, that's the question, isn't it? I'm not sure I have much of an answer. A bit of this... a bit of that...

Let's take this morning's session, for example. It was probably about average. It should give a fair impression of how most of my sessions turn out.

I logged in with the intention of collecting my basic "Here I am again!" rewards. Other than that, I didn't have much of a plan. I was thinking I might take a look at the clothing options, see if there was anything I could do about getting something different to wear, but that was about as far as I'd taken it.

And I did do some of that, eventually, but not until right at the end, just before I had to stop for lunch. As usual, I ended up spending most of my time trotting around the streets of Hethereau, admiring the view, taking screenshots and getting caught up in the quotidian life of what has to be the best-realized city I've had the pleasure of visiting in any game yet.

I wasn't just roaming around at random, although that is what I find myself doing, often as not. I did have some sort of goal in mind. I was going to stock up on coffee and food supplies to keep my three cafes going.

This is not anything I'd expected to be doing when I imagined playing the surreal, high-paced, action-packed magitech rpg, Neverness To Everness. It's definitely not the game I was expecting. It's a lot better than that.

Come on! It's on Moomin Street! Who'd say no to that?

Still, as a cafe manager, I'd have to admit my involvement so far has been something less than hands-on. Each time I pay the lease on a property and open a new cafe, I somehow manage to convince a couple of my friends into working there for nothing, while I bugger off and leave them to it. About the only active part I play in the running of the business is setting the menu and collecting the money.

I don't do the cooking. I don't think that's even an option. I don't serve customers either, although that definitely is something you can choose to do - if you're clinically insane. And since the first day, I haven't even done my own shopping. 

I do the ordering, That much I can manage. Even then, though, I've been opting to have the supplies delivered. I've been taking the largest available shipment each time, meaning it only takes me a couple of clicks once every three days to keep the place stocked, but I pay through the nose for doing it that way. Delivery charges are obviously part of one of the city's many extortion rackets.

This morning, for no good reason other than miserliness, I decided I'd go pick up my own supplies from the store and save myself some money. How hard could it be? 

As it happens, not very hard at all. NTE has some exemplary systems to support doing your own shopping. You can add everything you need, automatically, to a shopping list that appears on screen and if you click on each item it will tell you which stores, in which parts of town, stock it. It will even open the map for you and show you where to go. And when you get to the store, you can have the shopping list and the store's inventory open at the same time to see each item being checked off as you buy it.

Aand... it took me about an hour to figure all that out. I started off just working purely from memory, as in "Oh, that 24-hour convenience store where I helped the guy with his Fluffy problem probably sells what I need. I vaguely remember how to get there..." Well, he did sell me some milk, when I eventually found him...

Can you believe that other guy only had milk?!

As I was wandering about looking for food stores I just happened to notice a possible new location for my growing coffee shop empire. I'd been ignoring the prompts for ages but I had the cash and I was right there, so...

Now I rent and run four coffee shops. Is that too many? (Probably, yes. By about four, I'd say.) Not sure who's making the coffee and taking the money at the new one because I don't have any more friends left who aren't already working at one of my other sweatshops cafes. I'm probably going to have to split up one of the teams and send someone over to the new place, I guess. #Livinthemanagementlife, amiright?

I had to visit three different stores, one of which was in a part of town I'd never been to before, so that took a while, not least because of all the new photo opportunities. I got it all done, though, and with the money I was saving by not paying sky-high delivery charges, I was able to buy double what I needed of everything. 

It means next time I have to restock, in three days time, I can just do it from inventory. I'm restocking once a week, now, nearly. I imagine once you have the money, you could buy in bulk and barely ever have to shop again. I don't think anything ever expires. There's no item decay in the game.

All of that took me a while but of course I also had to deal with the various protection rackets, muggings and other street crimes that plague the streets of Hethereau, night and day. Not to mention stopping to check what all those crows and seagulls were carrying and to pick up all those lost wallets... 

You just keep telling yourself that, Rabi.

As I was jogging through the big square near Eidon, I saw a girl with a cute-looking Oddity so I stopped to take a photo and ended up agreeing to try a free sample of cake they were handing out, which led me to pick up some kind of quest or other from her father but then before I could do anything about it I'd found this amazing record store up some back alley and agreed with the slacker in charge to go look for an anomaly that had stolen the store's record player...

Obviously not before I took a bunch of screenshots. Priorities! I can only think of two games I've played where there's a record store you can go into and look at the album sleeves: this one and The Secret World. The one in TSW has the edge in terms of the music that's playing but this one is bigger and has more to look at, not to mention do there.

It's called Exile on Main Street, which is a great name for a record store. It would be even better if the store was actually on Main Street, of course, but bonus points for ambition, I guess. Also bonus points for the Pink Floyd quote on the wall. 

The line is "We're just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl" from "Wish You Were Here"

I was pretty curious to see how the musical theme developed, not least since Flora is now the (Very, very bad..) drummer in Haniel's band. That's not some head-cannon thing. It's an actual storyline in the game, one where you go to a dive club with Haniel, meet the woman behind the bar, Akane, who Haniel thinks is her friend but who's really just humoring her, and you both end up jamming on stage after the club closes, meaning Akane can't go home... 

That storyline is ongoing. Flora has jammed with Haniel twice and now Sakiri and Nanally look like they're going to get in on the act so we might have a full band soon. God help us.  

Anyway, I mention it only because, after a trip round half the shops in the area, following the trail of some mysterious, loud "Rock Music", I ended up back at Eidon, where I was fully expecting to find Sakiri and Nunally "rehearsing" in the TV room upstairs. 

I guess it'll be okay to leave her. I put her in the recovery position...

Instead, what I found was Hotori, passed out on the sofa, surrounded by empty wine bottles, drunk as a fucking skunk. This is why I love her! Also, it had nothing whatsoever to do with the quest I was on, which is why I love this game.

When I went over to see if she was OK, a sweet cut-scene triggered in which Flora covered her boss with a blanket and cleared up the mess. That was apparently from another quest I had running but about which I had completely forgotten. 

Once I was sure the boss wasn't going to choke on her own vomit, I went out onto the balcony where I found Sakiri with her Oddity, Kiroumarou, the one that eats everything then sicks it up later.

Naturally it transpired that Kiramourou had eaten the record player and then gone all round town with the music still playing from inside its stomach because that's something that happens. And the record was even still playing when Kiramourou threw it back up! I took the record-player and the record back to the shop and span some sort of tale to Sidd, the dope-head owner, so Sakiri and her pet wouldn't get into trouble.

Geez, Sakiri! Chill, won't you? He's just an oddity!

I just want to say at this point that Sakiri treats Kiramourou abominably. She yells at him, abuses him, threatens him... so far I've never seen her say one single nice thing to or about him. And yet he's always there with her, defending her, helping her, fighting for her. Granted, he's a complete liability, with no self-control whatsoever when it comes to stuffing his face full of anything he can grab hold of, but even so! 

She could be nicer to him. She should be nicer to him! There's no excuse for Oddity abuse and you can put that on a T-shirt.

By the time I'd done all that, I'd been playing for over two hours. I'd also filled out all the dailies without trying so when I claimed the rewards, I got a huge chunk of xp and it all but dinged me. 

When Flora does level up, which will be tomorrow, if it's not later today, I can get her back to the main quest line, at which point I suppose it's not impossible some kind of coherent narrative might start to develop, although I certainly haven't seen any sign of one yet.

Then again, as you can see from the above, I don't really need one. The game's more than entertaining enough as it is.

Staring At The Sun

 

Absolutely no time to write a post today or tomorrow but I don't want to go four days in a row with nothing so let's all enjoy enjoy some lens flare!

Look Ma! No feet! It's taken me a while to figure out how to frame the shot to stop that happening. It doesn't help that the in-game camera shows the image without the frame that gets added when you take the shot.

Is that a dog kennel over there? Why, do you know, I think it is! But what kind of a dog would live on a rooftop? Would it be one called Ruddy, I wonder?

 

I think that's more glare than flare but I'll allow it. 

Now that's the real thing!

Pretentious? Moi? Mais certainment non!

And a little palette cleanser there, right at the end. Also, it's really about time I got some new clothes...

Tell Me About Your Childhood - Backstory In NTE

Hotta produces a lot of videos for Neverness To Everness. There are one hundred and forty listed the official YouTube account. They come in all flavors, from the exceptionally vivid and vibrant trailers that created so much of the buzz around the game a year or so back to the gameplay and combat and feature reveals. There are songs and cut scenes and appearances at conventions - promotions of all kinds.

None of those does anyone need to watch to enjoy the game, now it's out there to be played. Or to decide whether to play it, either, since it's Free To Play. If you want to know what the game's like, you can just download it, make an account, log in and find out for yourself.

If you do that and decide you like the game enough to keep playing, though, there are a few videos in that hundred and forty that you probably ought to make time to watch. Those are the vignettes, short stories and micro-movies that add background to the characters and also sometimes reveal them to be quite  different from what you might have thought just from seeing them in the game itself. 

Some of these ought to be in the game, not on YouTube and even when you know where to look, it's not just a simple matter of going to the channel and watching them. First you have to find them.

I was hoping to do that before I wrote this post but that was when I was thinking Hotta would have organized them in some way. Maybe they have but if there's any order or sequence, I can't figure it out.

It's not even a simple task to single the damn things out from the pack. There look to be several naming conventions in play but I'm not convinced whoever's using them pays much attention to how they're being applied. There are "PV" videos, "EP" videos, "Animated Shorts". I think PV means a take from the character's point of view, while an animated short is more objective. EPs are definitely music videos.

It's also a job in itself spotting when a new one arrives. I'm subscribed to the channel so they pop up in my YouTube timeline but that moves so fast I miss most of what's there. I get emails from Hotta but not about any of these. This is what comes from playing a game made by and for digital natives, I guess. The target audience doesn't need to be told to pay attention to this sort of thing.

I do, though, and since my audience here is almost certainly not part of the target demographic either, I thought I'd mention it as a kind of public service. If you'e playing NTE and not watching these videos, you're missing out on something you'd almost certainly enjoy and which might even change your perceptions of the characters you like or loathe or feel nothing but indifference for.

It certainly changed my feelings about a couple of them. Hotori was already my favorite character, purely for the slacker chic and anarchic undertow she brings to the game, but my appreciation and understanding of her deepened considerably after I watched this:

It explains nothing and yet it contextualizes everything. I know very little more about Hotori after watching it several times, other than she grew up rich and a Bad Thing happened and yet I feel as if I know her so much better. As for Adler, before I watched the video I thought he was a bit of an ass. Not any more. The gravitas he carries now feels like it comes from somewhere rather than just some pose he's taking.

Then there's this:

I have almost no clue what that's supposed to mean but it's a joy to watch. The animation is exemplary, the art design is gorgeous and it creates a sense of history that fills out the characters without really telling you anything about them. I welcome that approach in any medium. Don't tell me or show me - make me feel it. 

And finally in the Hotori trilogy there's this:

Which is basically a music video. I watch a lot of music videos and that's a good one. The song's not bad, either. And once again it works on emotion not reason.

All of those were released in the ten days or so running up to the arrival of Hotori as a banner pull so they're very much part of the marketing push, something that in no way undermines their value as narrative, lore and story. And, of course, mood.

Mood is really super-important to NTE. It's a mood piece, almost, as much as a game. Kind of a tone poem, perhaps.

At Hunter Level 21, Appraisal Level 2 and a couple of weeks into the game, I still have relatively little idea what the main storyline is, or if there even is one. I've been trying to remember if that was true of Wuthering Waves or Genshin Impact at the same stage but in both cases, later narrative developments have mostly overwritten my memory of how it all began.

Still, I'm fairly sure both those games and indeed almost every other RPG, online or off, multiplayer or solo, that I've played had a clearer through-line in the early chapters than this one. NTE seems to thrive on ambiguity and vagueness. It's an approach that sits very well with me. I do like not knowing what's going on.

For that to work, though, you have to really like the characters or at least find them fascinating. The game does a great job of that but the videos, even as they do almost nothing to explain the plot, do plenty to make the characters feel more empathetic. 

Nanally, for example, can seem bossy, harsh, brash and aggressive. Here's how she sees herself:

That's a PV video, which I'm taking to mean it's from the character's perspective. Here's one from the outside, looking in:

As well as making Nanally seem like a much more sympathetic character, these videos also go a huge way to explaining why such a young girl is part of a clean-up team nullifying and containing dangerous anomalies. She's a very powerful, skillful Esper, capable of showing a great deal of empathy for her targets. (How old is she, anyway? As with most characters in the game it's very hard to be sure.) 

Once again, watching these videos materially changed how I saw the character. I'm guessing - and hoping - that there's a lot more to learn about all of them inside the game but even if that's true, playing through character arcs takes quite a while. Assuming they even exist, it''ll be weeks if not months before I get to see most of them and I'd like to have at least some idea who I'm spending my time with before then.

Nanally also gets a music video. It's not as good as Hotori's but it's pretty good all the same. That means both characters have a PV, an Animated Short and an EP, suggesting maybe every character will eventually get a set of three.

So far, Sakiri, Jiuyuan and Fadia are the only others to get PV videos although for some reason the official Hotta PV Playlist also includes Mint's Character Short. So much for the naming conventions. I haven't seen those yet so I'll say nothing. I'm going to watch them later today, though. 

For now, I'll go out with a song. Chiz, who I would be happy to see more of, doesn't get a PV or a short yet but she does get a song. Here's her EP:

 Chiz is pronounced "Cheese". 'Nuff said...

What Are The Odds? Rolling The Dice In Neverness To Everness

In the comments to Monday's post, Mailvaltar mentioned that, since I'd just said she was my favorite character in the game so far, I might be interested to know the next limited banner in Neverness To Everness was going to feature Hotori as the S-Level pull. As I said in my reply, I wasn't as interested as might be expected because I generally don't bother all that much with the whole gacha part of gacha games. 

It's not out of any moral or fiscal objection to gambling. I'm British so I'm fine with all of that. We're a decadent nation. It's just that I prefer to stick with the smallest number of characters possible and change them as infrequently as I can get away with, while still being able to progress comfortably. Laziness is another national characteristic.

For non-gacha-gamers some of that might need a little unpacking. I'm not really the best person to explain it but I'm what you've got so you'll have to make the best of it you can. Then again, if I can understand it, anyone ought to be able to. I certainly haven't put much effort into figuring out the details but even I can grasp the basics. 

The way the games work is that you start out playing a single character but then quickly add several more to make up a team. I found it quite disorienting at first but I'm used to it now. 

The first few characters, you get for free in the early stages of the story. Often you add a few more freebies along the way as the storyline continues but after a while it's mainly down to "pulls". 

Every so often, usually on a set schedule, there are Events in the game. These events are unconnected to the narrative, and it's through these that new characters become available, although the characters themselves will almost always be familiar, having been introduced already through the story.

The characters vary in numerous ways. There's usually some kind of system, akin to resistances in traditional RPGs, whereby they inflict different kinds of damage, to which various opponents may or may not be susceptible. There may also be characters who provide healing or buffs and there will always be certain, desirable synergies between various characters. 

Most importantly, at least in terms of combat, some characters are just more powerful than others. All the characters have a performance grade, usually a letter code. Other games I've played have had three or four gradations but as far as I can tell, NTE just has two - A and S. 

Theoretically the best characters are S-Grade although experience in other games suggests that isn't always the case. Regardless of their actual utility, however, S-Grades are always the hardest to obtain, having a much lower chance to drop from the gacha system. 

The exact nature of the gacha mechanics differs from game to game. NTE uses the visual representation of a board game. You throw dice to move, hoping to land on the square that has the thing you want. 

However it's set up, the effect is the same: you spend a specific currency for each "pull" (Or roll as it probably should be called in NTE.). There are often multiple currencies, used for different pulls like weapons or accessories. Some of those currencies come free with gameplay, some of can only be bought with real money. For most it's a mix of both.

Most games seed you a little of the "real money" kind of currency, the one you need for the important pulls, just for playing the game, presumably to encourage you to buy more when you run out before you get the S-Class character you want, as it surely will. Some games I've played have been very stingy, others quite ridiculously generous. Noah's Heart, for example, gave me many hundreds of free pulls to the extent that I never even got close to using them all before I was given more. It's no wonder they went out of business.

NTE is reasonably even-handed, from what I've seen so far. After playing for a couple of weeks, I already had enough of the good currency for a dozen rolls. Even so, I still wasn't thinking about making a play for Hotori when I logged in yesterday, for the reasons I gave Mailvaltar. I'm barely used to the three or four characters I'm playing now. The idea of changing one out and learning a new one did not appeal, even if that character was my favorite.

I will do a post about the characters themselves at some point so I won't go into details here but I will just say I like nearly all of them. I'd be more than happy to explore any of their backgrounds in character quests. But that doesn't mean I want to fight as them.

But Mailvaltar said something else in his comment that intrigued me. He said "she can literally stop time. Not only in combat, mind you, also in the open world." Now that does sound like an ability I'd like to have, although I have no clue how it could work. (I've since read up how it works in combat and even that seems too complicated for me...)

I would love it if it worked in the open world the way it does in this video, though. 

You can see it in action near the end. It's impressive as hell. I somehow don't imagine we'll all be wandering around Hethereau stopping the trains like that but wouldn't it be nice?

I'll most likely also do a post about the character videos Hotta release, too. That one's just to show off the costumes Hotori can wear, character costuming being yet another possible post. I'm not at all sure I want to see Hotori wandering about my apartment in shorts...

The really interesting videos are the ones that fill out the narrative out of game. They're very impressive and they seem to be almost a requirement to understanding the characters fully. It's a somewhat metatextual approach to storytelling, not unusual in games but taken to a more rarefied level than I'm used to seeing. For now, though, I'll try to stay on track for once, instead of cramming several posts into one. 

Getting back to point of this one, yesterday I had a lot to do in real life so I only had time for a very short session in the morning. I just wanted to claim my login rewards in case I forgot later on and missed a day. 

As I went through all the highlighted options, a notice popped up telling me there was a new banner event, that being the genre jargon for a time-limited gacha draw with a new character. I remembered Mailvaltar saying that character was going to be Hotori and I thought "Well, I don't have time to do much - maybe I'll just take a look..."

I tend to apply the same rules to currency in games that I use in the outside world, namely only spend a fraction of what you have. In games, that fraction does tend to be a larger one but it's rarely more than half. I had a dozen Solid Dice, the "good" currency, so I thought I'd have half a dozen rolls just for the fun of it.

To give it some perspective, in NTE you get a Pity pull after 90 rolls. A pity pull is when you're guaranteed a win. Again, it's a fairly generous system by genre standards. There's a "soft" pity threshold at 70 unsuccessful pulls, when the base chance jumps from 1.87% to 19.59%. If you're still out of luck after another twenty tries, which at those odds would be bad luck indeed, your next pull is 100% guaranteed to be the S-Class character.

I got Hotori on my fifth pull. 

This is why gacha games never get any money from me. I didn't particularly want the character, even though she's my current favorite but now I've got her anyway. Not the first time, either. Go me! Ironically, it wasn't until the next day I got the email from Hotta telling me the event had started.

The next question is, will I add her to my team and actually play her? If I'd been playing for longer the answer would most likely be no, unless I was already struggling to win fights. I'm just too lazy. Within reason, I'd rather have a longer, slower fight using tactics I already know than stop and learn new ones to speed it up. It's not like I'm on a contract.

Of course, since my current tactics consist almost entirely of swapping between characters to hit the cooldowns, it wouldn't take a lot of re-learning but I'm guessing at some point I might need to do a bit more than that... 

But since I've only been playing for a couple of weeks, I haven't really had time to develop any specific muscle memory for the three characters I'm using. And there's one I don't have any particular fondness for: Adler. I don't dislike him - as I said, I like all the characters well enough - but he didn't really resonate with me at first. I'm coming to like him more but there are plenty of other characters I find more interesting or who seem like they'd be better company. He could easily step back to make space for Hotori.

I'll try it and see how I get on. She ought to bring more to the battlefield, being S-Class and anyway Adler never seems to do all that much. Then again, I haven't really got much of an idea what any of them do. Yet another post waiting to be written: how insanely complicated combat in NTE is on paper and how little any of that ludicrous complexity seems to matter when you come to the actual fighting.

The other thing about adding new characters to the team is that you have to level and gear them up. In past gacha titles, I've found that to be a real disincentive to making changes to the line-up but after just two weeks it won't be a problem. I've barely bothered to gear or level anyone yet!

So there we are. Looks like it's time for Hotori to tag Adler and let the butler sit it out while his boss takes over. (That, for those who don't play, is their relationship in the game.)

Maybe I'll report back on how it goes. And if it does turn out that Hotori really can stop time in the open world, not just in combat, then you'll definitely be hearing more about it!  

 [Edit] And sooner than expected. I just tested it in the streets of Hethereau and it actually works! One of the weirdest things I've ever seen in a game. Not sure if it has any practical applications but it's a lot of fun to play around with. Also, it seems you can have four in a party so Adler doesn't get to take a sabbatical just yet!

Head In A Hole

There's a new movie out just now called The Sheep Detectives. In it, a bunch of sheep - alright, a flock of sheep then, if you want to be pedantic about it - investigate the mystery of the murder of the farmer who owns them. They know how to do this because the farmer was in the habit of reading them detective stories in the evening because that's a thing farmers do, just like sheep solve murder mysteries. Frankly the one is about as likely as the other.

I watched the trailer last week and it looked surprisingly amusing. By chance, the novel on which it's based came into my hands at work a few days later. I had a look at that as well and it seemed like it would be a fun read.

Do not let any of this supposed evidence fool you into thinking sheep are clever, though. This are fictional sheep. Real sheep are not so smart.

Not that I'm saying sheep are thick. Most animals are a lot more intelligent than they're given credit for and I'm sure sheep, collectively and individually, have the capacity for all kinds of wickedly canny mischief you might not imagine they were capable of. Anecdotal experience of all kinds of domestic animals suggest that's likely to be true. 

I can tell you a couple of things the average sheep is not bright enough to work out for herself, though:

1. It's a bad idea to put your head through a hole in a fence.
2. How to get your head out again if you ignored rule #1.

When Mrs Bhagpuss and I got up this morning, it looked like being a reasonably pleasant spring day. We neither of us had anything pressing to be getting on with, so we thought it might be a nice idea to take a flask of coffee and a couple of apples and go sit on top of a five thousand year old burial mound, since we happened to have one handy nearby.

Stony Littleton Long Barrow is one of the finest surviving examples of a neolithic stone and earth tomb anywhere in Britain but it's not exactly on any tourist trail. There are no signs to direct you there and even if you have an idea where it is, to get to it you have to drive down a single track road with no passing places. 

When you get there, there's a parking space for about four cars and the enterprising small farmer opposite (I mean he farms on a small scale, not that he's the size of a Borrower.) has put out a couple of benches. You can buy an ice cream from him and sit on one of the benches to eat it, assuming he happens to have opened his little hut that day.

We've been there a few times. It's a lovely walk, over the bridge and up the long hill to the barrow. Once there, you have a fine view of the surrounding countryside, which is to say some fields, some more fields and some more fields after that. 

The barrow itself is amazing. I'd show you a photograph but I didn't take any today and I can't find any of the ones I've taken on previous visits. I bet it's on the internet though. Just hold on moment... Ah yes, here's the English Heritage page. And it's on Wikipedia. 

And up there's a picture of the sign at the site itself. I took that this morning, when I thought I might be writing this post.

Take my word for it, anyway. The barrow's a lot more impressive in person than in photographs because you can crouch down and shuffle inside it and get an overwhelming feeling of claustrophobia even if you don't normally have a problem with confined spaces. It's worth the long walk up the hill just for the relief of getting out of the damn thing and back into the sunshine.

But this isn't really a post about the barrow. It's about the walk back. 

We had Beryl with us but she was on her lead most of the time because the entire hillside as far as you could see in any direction was rife with sheep. There are often sheep there but this was way more sheep than usual. 

I quite like sheep. They look decorative, they're non-threatening and they nearly always get out of the way when they see you coming. Not like cows, which sometimes express a disturbing degree of interest and have been know, all too frequently, to trample people to death. My aunt and uncle once had to jump into a hedge to avoid being trampled. They're both dead now, although not from bovine trampling, I'm pleased to say.

As for horses... do not get me started on horses. I grew up with horses in the fields next to my house and
you do not want to go into any field that has horses in it, trust me. Horses have a very peculiar sense of humor, which includes running at people as fast as they can to see how they react. Then they stand there and laugh at you when you run away or fall over. At least they do if you're lucky. If not, they trample you, too.

So much for horses and cows. Sheep, though, sheep are fine, so long as you don't have a dog with you. Not that the sheep go for the dog. More the dog goes for the sheep and it all ends in tears and/or a fatality, usually for the sheep but sometimes for the dog, if the farmer happens to be out and about and has brought his gun and in my experience no self-respecting farmer leaves the house without a gun.

Beryl is not a dog for running after anything bigger than a squirrel and sheep are the size to her that elephants would be to us so we're not worried about her doing them any actual harm. Still, some sheep get scared by any dog, even small ones, the way elephants are supposedly scared of mice and we don't want to scare the sheep or get Beryl shot so she's always on her lead if sheep are around.

On the way back, though, we went along a high ridge and the sheep were hundreds of yards away along the bottom of the valley so we let her amble along behind us for a while until I spotted one, lone sheep ahead of us, apparently grazing in the hedge. There's always one that has to be different.

I put Beryl back on her lead and we were about to go around the sheep when we realized this sheep wasn't being different. This sheep was stuck.

The dim-witted creature had apparently tried to reach some particularly tasty leaf just out of reach in the hedge and now it had its head firmly wedged in a square of wire. As we got near, it thrashed about a bit and tried to force its way further into the hedge, which wasn't a great plan. Mrs Bhagpuss took control of Beryl, who was starting to express some interest, and I went to see if I could unstick the poor creature.

Sheep aren't exactly wild about about letting people they don't know come within arm's reach but this one didn't have a lot of choice. I've rarely had the opportunity to test it before but it seems as though, if they really can't get away, they go completely still, presumably in the hope of being taken for a particularly fuzzy boulder. Or maybe it was my soothing tone.

The sheep stood dead still and let me pull her head this way and that, even move her ears about, as I tried to see if there was any way I could maneuver her loose. There was not. I bent the wire as far in all directions as it would go but it was obvious the head that had gone in with sharp end first was not coming back out with the thick end leading. Same principle as a lobster pot, presumably.

We spent a while thinking about it but there was clearly no way to shift the sheep without a pair of wire-cutters. We decided we'd best leave the sheep be and see if we could find the farmer to let them know. We were pretty sure the small farm at the bottom of the hill had nothing to do with the sheep on the hills but there was another big house right in the fields where the sheep were roaming so we carried on down the path to to try there.

That turned out to be a bust, No-one home but a dog. I don't think is was a sheepdog, either, although I only heard it barking.

We worked out way back to where we began and I tried
the other farm. The one that sells the ice-cream. There was someone there but as we'd suspected they didn't own the sheep. Or any sheep. 

Still, even being the nearest person to some sheep comes with its own responsibilities. The chap's face did fall a bit when I explained the problem. "Oh, not again..." he said. 

He cheered up a bit when I asked him if he had a pair of wire-cutters I could borrow. "I don't mind going back up and cutting her loose if you can lend me a pair", I said, although what I was really thinking was "What a jolly jape! I hope he lets me do it!" In my head, I was nine years old and it was an Enid Blyton story...

The farmer (Not really a farmer at all, in fact, just someone with a couple of alpacas and a horse in a field behind his house. Yes, alpacas. Surprisingly common around these parts...) offered Mrs Bhagpuss a coffee while she waited and I trudged back up the hill to the sheep which, when I finally got there, was no more glad to see me than it was before.

Once it had calmed down a bit and resigned itself to being eaten by wolves or whatever it thought was going to happen, I was able to cut through the fence-wire with the cutters and watch the sheep just stand there as if nothing had changed. 

It turned out she wasn't just being extra-specially suspicious or even extraordinarily dim; she'd also managed to get some wool on her head wound round a strand of barbed wire because whoever fenced the field obviously though a thick hedge and a sturdy fence didn't make it nearly secure enough, so they'd run a strand of barbed wire between the two as well, just to be on the safe side.

I can tell you now that you can't cut wool with wire cutters. Or I can't, anyway. Luckily, with a bit of encouragement the sheep gave a mighty shake of her head and tugged herself loose. Then she scampered off, bleating. 

It would be nice to think she was saying thank-you but she bloody well wasn't. She never looked my way once, just towards the rest of her pals, all of whom had abandoned her to her fate without a second thought. She was either yelling at them to ask what the hell they thought they were playing at or trying to warn them about the crazy human with the metal claws.

For me, it was back down the hill to return the wire-cutters and accept a cup of coffee. Beryl and Mrs Bhagpuss had watched the whole thing from a comfortable distance. Beryl, reportedly, was not impressed with my heroism, although apparently she was quite interested to see me go and come back.

Dogs are easily amused. Sheep are dim. Life goes on. 

Career Opportunities - Work-Life Balance In Neverness To Everness

As Tyler Edwards pointed out in the comments to yesterday's post, there are certain constraints involved in designing a game to be released in China. Or there are if you don't want to fall foul of Fenris Creations - er, sorry, I meant the CCP. Easy mistake!

Until then, it hadn't really occurred to me that Neverness To Everness was a Chinese game. Indeed, it didn't even occur to me then, or not in that exact form. What did occur to me was that I had no idea where the company behind the game I was playing was based other than somewhere in the mysterious East.

I rarely do. Honestly, it might as well be the nineteenth century for all the attention I've been paying to where most of the "imports" I keep picking up and then dropping might be coming from.

This has been going on quite a while now, hasn't it? Forever, really, for as much as that means in the context of online gaming. I remember Mrs Bhagpuss and I playing the beta for some MMORPG from China so long ago I can't even remember what it was called any more. Just that it was one of her favorites for a while.

Whatever it was, I don't believe it ever came out in "the West". I just know it was long before we played Runes of Magic or Zentia although maybe not before I played NeoSteam...

The more I think about it, the more it seems it's always been this way, even if I do have a vague feeling I used to be much clearer on where the games I was playing were made. Final Fantasy XI came from Japan for a start. I always knew that. NeoSteam was Korean. I did have to fact-check that one just then but I was pretty sure. 

Zentia was from China and so was Loong. Or was Loong just set in China? It was published by Gamigo and they're... what are they now? German! I had to look that up even though I see some news item about Gamigo very nearly every day. Loong, it turns out, was developed by DACN out of Shanghai so it was Chinese.

These days, though, I rarely have much of an idea who's behind anything I'm playing, unless it's a company I know already. And sometimes, even when it's one I ought to recognize, I find I don't. 

I'm well aware Neverness To Everness is being developed by Hotta Studios. I've known that from the start. It's an easy-to-remember name. Or you'd think it would be. It can't be that easy to remember, though, because I only just realized this morning, as I was researching this post, that Hotta is the company behind that very successful MMORPG from a few years back, Tower of Fantasy.

At least, I think it was very successful. Wasn't it? For a while I saw a lot of people talking abut it but now I come to think of it, that didn't last long. No-one ever mentions it now. 

I never played it, which seems strange, given I'll play just about anything, so long as it's free and I think I can get a couple of blog posts out of it. As it happens, I know why I didn't play Tower of Fantasy. You won't guess. It's not a rational explanation. Or maybe it's too rational. 

I didn't play Tower of Fantasy because from the moment I saw the name I imagined the entire game was literally in a tower. I thought you'd have to start at the bottom and work your way up and that would be the all you'd ever do, which did not sound like a lot of fun to me, so I passed.  

I'm not completely crazy! There are MMORPGs that have towers like that inside them. It's a popular feature, I believe, although obviously not with me. I thought someone had just decided to make a whole game out of it, the way some developer or other is always trying to make an MMORPG that's all raids or all dungeons, one with no actual world to waste anyone's time.

By the time I'd realized my mistake it was a couple of years too late to jump on the very short-lived ToF bandwagon and so far I've never gotten around to giving it a go. I'm still not saying I won't but I'm guessing that particular bus has left the stop.

Although I feel like I might at least have recognized the name, in one way I'm not surprised I didn't. There doesn't appear to be a great deal of similarity between ToF and NTE. Different setting, different genre, different everything, pretty much. (ToF veterans are welcome to pop into the comments and tell me why that's just so wrong...assuming there's anyone reading who ever played it.)

Less defensible is my complete ignorance of where NTE was made. Is being made. It'd be nice to think country of origin doesn't matter for a video game but that would be a hard case to make. For all the hopes and fears trotted out across the past few decades, all the arguments in favor or against globalization, this is still a world of nation states and nations have cultures all their own.

Only in games, maybe not so much. It's blurry at best. For one thing, publishers with a global reach want to sell to all markets and they don't necessarily want to be running multiple versions to suit local tastes. Even if there is still a surprising amount of that sort of thing going on. 

For another, "globalization", as it applies to entertainment these days, often means "localization". Movies are made with different endings or a different emphasis in the storyline so as to play better in various territories. Games are localized not just by language but by cultural expectations including but not limited to age, dress code and the creatures you have to kill. I have a post brewing about aesthetic fragmentation that might get written one day...

Localization for the "Western" market does, theoretically, make it less obvious what the original intentions of the creators might have been but it's often no more than a thin, surface veneer stretched over a mostly unchanged framework. The innate cultural values and taboos that, consciously or unconsciously, drive the narrative and the aesthetic remain.

Or I assume they do. Except that I have such a shaky understanding of what those values and taboos might be, it's touch and go whether I'd recognize them in the first place. If there's one thing playing more games developed in China has taught me it's that I don't really know what China's like. Modern China, anyway.

Zentia used to be my idea of a "Chinese" game - all pagodas and dragons and people wearing straw hats. Neverness To Everness feels much more like my idea of a Japanese game, all modern technology, skyscrapers and neon. Which, to be fair, would also be my ignorant take on a Korean game, I guess, except I'd expect anything from Japan to be quirkier and cuter...

Is this racist? Maybe. I think it's more likely just ignorant. And lazy. I'd hold my hand up to both of those. 

Does it matter in the context of playing a video game? I guess not, so long as it leads to unconsidered assumptions being challenged and changed. And that does happen, quite a lot.

For example, unrelated to Tyler's comment and how it got me thinking about who was behind NTE and what they were trying to tell me, I'd already been wondering why there was such a huge focus on work in the game. It's a major theme. Possibly the major theme.

All the characters talk about their work all the time. It might be an even bigger obsession with many of them than food. All of them have jobs that they seem to take very seriously but despite their career goals, most of them also seem to have some kind of side-hustle going on. How they find time to sleep, let alone fit in any kind of social or private life, beats the hell out of me.

I'm not even talking about hand-wavy game mechanics, like the way they can all somehow pop up to fight my battles for me any time, anywhere. Or how the same characters can work for me, 24/7,  staffing the ever-increasing number of cafes that make up my growing business empire. No, I'm talking about proper, in-game second jobs the characters hold in character, usually menial, entry-level, gig economy deals like handing out leaflets in the street or doing courier work.

More worrying is the way no-one seems to have any kind of employment rights. The subject of overtime comes up constantly, always with characters dreading it but glumly accepting it as an inevitability of employment. And everyone appears to be on-call all the time. Having an official day off in no way prevents anyone from getting an urgent call telling them to come back to work. 

They all complain about it but none of them questions it. Work comes first seems to be a universally acknowledged maxim. Someone literally says it in one of the quests I did yesterday although I failed to get a screencap. As someone who's spent their entire life doing their best to avoid as much work as possible, I find it exhausting just to watch! I want the characters to kick back against the system that exploits them - organize, unionize, withdraw their labor - anything other than just complaining about it in private but doing it anyway.

I guess that's why my favorite character in the game so far is Hitori, the boss of Eidon Antiques. Hitori seems to do as little work as possible. She sleeps a lot, drinks a lot more, and mostly sends other people to do the jobs she can't be bothered with, which is all of them. As we see in the Main Story sequence, she's extremely capable when she needs to be but she doesn't feel the need to waste any energy proving herself to anyone. Mint, for one, could learn plenty from her example. 

The whole milieu reeks of double standards, hypocrisy and compromise, anyway, and Hitori is management so she can afford to delegate. She's not in any position to set an example. Half her staff is children! 

Granted, it's hard to tell exactly how old anyone's meant to be in NTE, what with the ever-rejuvenating anime art style, but Nanali, Edgar and Sakiri are specifically referred to as "kids" on multiple occasions, not least by Hitori herself. And Eidon isn't an isolated example of child labor. Illica and Haniel from Sterry Express seem to be much the same age, give or take a year or two.

What are the rules in Hetherau about employing children? Aren't they supposed to be in full-time education? There are certainly schools because one of the side quests takes you inside one but I don't see the slightest hint that any of the teenage cast is enrolled anywhere. 

Maybe being an Esper takes you out of the classroom? I could buy that if they were all transferred into some government program for potential assets in the Anomaly Wars but how would it square with them all ending up in the back room of an antique shop owned by an alcoholic, spending their time watching TV, bickering and pretending to run a junior version of the mob? 

But then the ordinary rules don't seem to apply to characters destined to become playable some day. It's different for Hethereau's regular citizenry. They don't get to sit around watching shows all day long.

Still, it is true that most of the people Flora meets seem to be reasonably happy in their work. All those hucksters outside stores and the sales people behind the counter inside. If you talk to them at length, though - and you often can because there's a lot of incidental, non-storyline dialog in NTE - it's often possible to sense an underlying dissatisfaction or ennui; workers for the same company getting a better deal, other branches offering a better quality of life... The grass is always greener ten blocks over.

Perhaps the most overtly subversive conversation I've enjoyed so far was with an unnamed "Slacking Citizen", who gleefully informed Flora that "slacking off is the essence of work". That's the attitude! She was still very concerned Flora not tell her boss, mind you, so i don't think she's going to be doing any organizing anytime soon

Maybe I'm reading more into all of this than I should but I can't help feeling the writers are telling us something about the society they live in. I get the feeling they may not disagree with the ethics of the way work is where they're from but they find the execution just a little hard to manage. Yes, work is great and of course we all need to do our best all the time but wouldn't it be nice to have a goddam day off, once in a while?

I imagine, if you're sufficiently attuned to it, you'd be able to sense specific cultural nuances within all the games that would clue you in to which specific countries the developers - or maybe just the writers - came from, without needing to look up the street address of the company to be sure. It's probably all there, embedded in assumptions about family, responsibility, work and individualism, themes that seem to come up in dialog over and over again.

For an ignorant westerner like me, though, what it mostly does is reinforce a pre-existing idea that life is more regimented in the East, wherever the East might be. And for me, the whole idea of taking what you do for a living in any way seriously seems almost distasteful. That's how I was raised.

I mean, it's only a job, isn't it? It's not like it's anything important...