Redwolf's Journal (continued)

 Whilst dogsitting, I rummaged through Netflix to try out an anime, Hero Mask . It looked like it could be interesting, even if the main character being a cop with a habit of going after criminals in spite of property damage and ths like (named James Blood of all things) felt a bit cliche. Well, after going through most of the first season waiting for things to pick up and mysteries to pay off, I just gave up. I rate it a "meh." The idea of biotech/superscience masks that give super powers isn't terrible. The shady organization behind them faking the death of inmates to use them as test subjects is predictable, but has potential. One of the "bad guy" company men in charge of keeping it under wraps being a former friend/partner to the protagonist could be something. Starting things off with a mask-wearer who can change his appearance and regenerate assaulting a police headquarters makes it seem like the series may be action-heavy. Yet none of that really pays off

 Cyberpunk 2077 has had me thinking some about RPG characters in general. I have a lot of thoughts. I don't know if I can organize them well, but at least I can put them out in some fashion... Perhaps more than most genres, cyberpunk is about living hard and fast even if it means dying early - being the candle that burns twice as bright yet half as long. That's sort of baked in to the stories, depicting a quiet life under corporate rule as a fate worse than death. To some extent, that philosophy exists in most games. Fantasy adventurers are willing to take on dragons and the like, after all. The motivation for this may be glory, money, or upholding some greater principle. These stories, though, are stories for a reason. Things get messy if you try to inject too much realism. Money as a motivator is one of the aspects that crumbles the quickest - having enough money for that cutting-edge cyberarm or that magical sword often means having enough money to retire in luxury. And less

 Having sunk a lot more time into Cyberpunk 2077, I have further thoughts, but a lot of them get into spoiler territory. Not so spoilery: - Crafting can be a very big thing in the game if you want/let it, but there it isn't a well-explained system by the game itself, particularly things like how crafting mods can randomly(?) be higher rarity, but weapons not so much. - Upgrading... is poorly explained and not very practical from my understanding. Gear seems to have a hidden item level based on when you pick it up, and upgrading lets you boost that (apparently a level at a time up to your current level), but after a few times, the component cost gets prohibitively high, meaning there's a functional limit. So don't really expect to keep using the same few iconic weapons the whole game unless you accept the damage won't keep up. Later-game, slots on armor seem more valuable than base stats, so that item level matters less there. - The special part of tech weapons is being