Today in Normal Island:

The legitimate government department for culture youtube account is livestreaming the approximate length of the queue to look at the coffin of an old lady who was born into unimaginable wealth and privilege

Anyway its been nearly a day since they revealed it and every time i look at the logo for Fire Emblem Engage i think:

Playstation state of play also kinda meh....

Not much that interested me. There's still.... Not a lot of games with concrete dates being shown.

And I gotta be honest, I had kinda hoped they would forgo a GOW: Ragnarok trailer to show something we didn't know about? Like, it's a good trailer. A daaammn good trailer. But I was going to buy that game no matter what bc the 2018 game was THAT good. I wanna know what else is in the works ): ):

Anyway watching the US version for once was... weird....

Did u kno? They dont dub the Japanese in the UK version - they just give us subtitles. In the US version, they dub over the top.....

None of this sounded right. None of it.

Honestly, todays direct was overall a meh

So many farming games.... so so many farming games...

BUT

BOTW2 named and dated, can i get a hell yeah?? B)

I've been going through one of those periods where my brain just does NOT want to read books and I'm really getting frustrated with it now.....

No but actually i am fuming about the Nintendo direct thing....

Its not just that, but its another thing in the long string of nonsense thats been this country for the last few days....

From every company under the sun "offering their condolences". For a 96 year old woman who just so happened to be born into the right bloodline. To the black banners on every website I go to. To a whole bunch of sporting events being cancelled.... yet everyone is still going to work as normal. Tonnes of TV shows were cancelled. Live shows have been kinda sketchy. I still turn on my TV to see a list of programmes Sky have highlighted about the Queen. I walked down the town centre on Friday evening and every digital ad display was the same image of the Queen. Like some propaganda from a dystopian movie. Stores are using digital displays to show black screens and messages of "the queen is dead and we are so sad, our condolences ): ):"

And lets not forget..... UK Republicans expressing anti-monarchy views are literally getting arrested right now.

Like, its already totally normal country territory of stupid performative nonsense.

And then here comes a multi-national corporation going "oh yeah, we're not going to show this at the same time in the UK because an old woman died"

And it just feels like the straw that broke the camels back...... like... why does this matter? what difference does this make??? Its performative in the stupidest way. its still watchable live in the UK despite the hour delay. The hour delay is going to ruin whatever surprise the Direct will inevitably end on for those of us in the UK who want to watch the UK specific version (which, given the time of year, could very well be BOTW2 - one of the most highly anticipated games of the next few years) An hour delay also isnt really "respectful" anyway. What difference does one hour make in terms of "respect", when the content of the video has likely not been changed in any way? Like, do you need the extra hour to process a version of the video that goes "uwu we're so sorry about the queen, have our condolences" or something??? Cancelling a live TV comedy show the day after her death is respectful, regardless of me thinking this forced mourning thing is silly. Moving a livestream to a VOD an hour later in one country is... just a slap in the face of the fans from that country, rather than showing any kind of "respect" to it?

And like, IDK where i'm going with this anymore. I'm just.... banging my head against the desk at this Normal Country and its Normal Traditions that totally have a place in 2022 and arent completely and utterly silly when you really think about it.

.... And how its probably going to happen again sometime in the next 10-20 years ( o.o)b

Theres a Nintendo direct tomorrow, at 3pm UK time....

..... Except the official Nintendo UK channel will not be streaming it live, and will instead release it as a video on demand on youtube tomorrow at 4pm.

Why?

I:

The Venn diagram of people who say "if you don't like it then move" when you criticise the UKs entire political system compared to the kinds of people who complain about refugees crossing the channel in small boats is a perfect circle

Also.... Gee.... I wonder why Ubisoft are developing an assassin's creed game for mobiles.... And setting it in China.....

Can't have anything to do with the fact that mobile gaming is a bigger market in China than console gaming. Absolutely not.

I swear once upon a time there was a quote going around from Ubisoft about how they'd never make an Assassin's creed game set in Japan for some kind of reason. Potentially that it would be "boring"?

I'm talking about a half remembered tunglr post from nearly a decade ago, so who knows how legit it ever was.

But I do find it INTERESTING how theyve finally announced a game set in Japan.

.... Two years after Ghost of Tsushima released to widespread acclaim and excellent sales. And plays pretty much like the pre-Origins Assassin's Creed games.

You can't convince me they didn't look at the reveals for Ghost of Tsushima and went "oh no.... we should have made this game" and finally changed their mind on making a game set in Japan.....

Man I put this Ubisoft forward on out of an obligation to watch viddy game streams, and keep up with the industry

And man are they really taking a long time to say Not A Lot.

See Serebii mention there are shiny snom raids currently active in swsh

Think "yeah I can turn this game on and covertly play some raids while working until i get the p1ss-snom"

Turns out the first raid I entered, before I had even logged in to work for the day, was the boosted shiny snom, lol.