Category: Spooky

Yeah, that room

This is a “hidden” area in Silent Hill: Downpour. It is also the best hidden room in the history of ever. There really isn’t much to it, just a medkit and a handgun, but I think the fact that it’s there is good enough. I’ll admit that I would have liked maybe a ghost or two, or to have been able to enter the other rooms of the apartment, but what can you do?

The lack of interactivity is a bit of a missed opportunity, but at least they did a really good job on the detail. The living room table is missing, but I knew where I was immediately. They even included Henry’s loafers!

(Cheat sheet for idiots: It’s the apartment from Silent Hill 4: The Room)

When it rains, it downpours

In celebration of my fancy new promotion, Stephanie (who is the best, BTW) bought me Silent Hill: Downpour. I think I was pretty clear about how much I loved Shattered Memories, so it shouldn’t be too shocking that I was a little wary when the first details for Downpour hit.

The game was being developed for 360 and PS3, which sounded to me like a death knoll for Shattered Memories’ style, which focused almost entirely on exploration and atmosphere. Then came the guns, which meant that combat was back; combat has never been more than “acceptable” in Silent Hill games, and is usually much, much worse. I was immediately awash with fears of the game being produced with a “hey PS3 blood and guns derp derp” mentality.

Fortunately, I couldn’t have been more wrong. I’m only a quarter of the way through the game, so I’m not sure how things are going to roll out, but so far I’m really enjoying it. Downpour actually does feel a lot like Shattered Memories in most ways. The flashlight mechanic is less prominent here because you have to manage weapons as well as illumination, but it’s still an important part of gameplay. The single (playable) Otherworld section I’ve been in was a mix of puzzle solving and running from an undefeatable enemy. Otherworld transitions are unexpected and visually interesting (I do miss the ice though).

Downpour carries on the Silent Hill tradition of shallow, janky combat. The biggest improvement here is the ability to block, which is way overdue. I don’t know, maybe Origins and/or Homecoming allowed your character to block; I haven’t really played either. But yeah, blocking isn’t going to change the whole game, but it does make monster encounters more managable.

The monsters are also apparently affected by the weather. A loading screen tooltip that came up once said they come out in greater numbers and are more aggressive when the rain is really coming down. I haven’t witnessed a heavy rain yet, but I was surprised at how some of them will elect to run away when the rain stops. Monsters located inside always seem to be equally aggressive, but I suppose that makes a certain amount of sense.

The world is an interesting kind of hybrid of open and linear design. Another Silent Hill staple, now that I think of it. The first couple areas do a fairly good job of herding you forward, but give some nice rewards for exploring off the beaten path. Once you actually make it into the town, you’re given a bit more choice in where you want to go. Between locked doors and blocked/crumbled roads, Silent Hill still tries to push you in the direction of the next plot point, but you can run around town pretty freely. Another tooltip that I saw hinted at a subway system that might allow me to get around town faster, which has me wondering exactly how big Silent Hill is this time around.

One of my favourite things about the game so far is that it has side quests. Yeah, honest-to-God side quests in a “survival horror” game. I use quotation marks because survival horror isn’t really a genre in video games anymore. But anyway, side quests! I’ve only done two at this point: one rewarded me with copious amounts of bullets, I don’t think the other had any reward besides the satisfaction of doing a good deed.

The other thing about Downpour that I’m really digging is that it is terrifying. It might have less to do with the game being scary and more to do with the fact that I’m playing it the correct way. I knew nothing about the game before launch aside from what was shown in the very first trailer; I didn’t even know it was released until I haphazardly noticed it on a store shelf. Also, I’ve been playing it alone in the dark. The right atmosphere mixed with not having a clue what’s going to happen next is exhiliarating in the most horrifying way.

Suffice it to say, I am leaning on the radio static (which signals monster presence) more than I ever have before in a Silent Hill game. Somehow though, monsters are still managing to get the drop on me and catch me off-guard.

It’s not as scary now that I’ve learned how most of the monsters act and what the rules of the game are, but those first few hours were something else. The tension remains high because you really never know what’s going to happen next. I’m currently making my way through a library section of a tower, and there’s this… ghost, I guess that keeps randomly pushing stuff over and giggling. It’s nothing new to the horror genre, but it’s spooky as all heck when you’re not expecting it. There was another related event that actually made me jump out of my chair, but the game is still fairly new so I’ll avoid any more spoilers for now.

So Silent Hill: Downpour is pretty great. I’m not sure if I like it more than either of the Silent Hills that star Harry Mason (Silent Hill Play Novel not included), but it’s definitely my favourite SH game otherwise. You done good, Konami. You done good.

Forget fingerpaints

There are more than a few vacant cells in Arkham Asylum that have random things painted on the walls. By the time you notice the Riddler’s cell, it’s nothing new. Only, instead of handprints, his cell is marked in footprints? That’s slightly more unsettling and far more unexpected. Props to you, Rocksteady Games, for making even the little details in Batman: Arkham Asylum really awesome. I hope Arkham City has the same level of creativity.

(Did he draw all the question marks with his toes?)

Rivet City ransom

Continuing my trek through the capital wasteland of Fallout 3, I finally reached Rivet City last night. As I’d suspected though, getting there was not just a leisurely stroll along the coast.

I set off from the Brotherhood of Steel’s Citadel to take a bridge over the river. Upon approaching the bridge, I spied a raider chilling in some wreckage. I dispatched her, and just as I was about to ascend the collapse end of the bridge, a huge explosion went off. I had no idea what caused it, but was startled enough to stand still and survey the area for any more raiders that might be trying to explode me. It was lucky that I stopped too, because two more explosions followed shortly after, and they were exactly where I would have been had I kept moving. The area was free of any more attackers, so I wrote it off as ghosts and pressed on.

On the other side of the bridge I found a peddler who tried to rip me off and a small encampment of raiders. I relieved them of their heads and proceeded to loot their base.

Moving farther south along the coast, I came upon the Jefferson Memorial, which was fairly heavily guarded by super mutants. These were the garden variety, and it was here that I learned that my combat shotgun was by far my most effective means of dispatching super mutants. This was a great discovery not only because super mutants take way too long to deal with otherwise, but also because by this point I was hauling around well over 600 shotgun shells.

I went the long way around the memorial, and coming up on the entrance to the aircraft carrier known as Rivet City, I noticed a super mutant outpost across the square. Me and my shotgun cleared the mutants out, looted the place, and were even able to rescue a hostage.

Finally reaching Rivet City, I started exploring the ship and meeting the inhabitants. In the science lab I completed one mission by telling some dopey white-collar that I’d found the corpse of an android he’d been hunting. I also picked up a fourth bobblehead for my collection back in Megaton.

While I was there, I also made the mistake of talking to Dr. Li, which sort of broke the game. There’s an achievement for each quest in the game, and my next story-relevant quest was to go to Galaxy News Radio to find my father. The stop after that would be to visit Dr. Li in Rivet City, and since I skipped the GNR bit, the game wrote off the rest of the quest and didn’t give me the achievement. Load game.

I continued exploring the ship, causing trouble and helping the inhabitants as I went. I broke into many locked rooms and computer terminals, but never stole anything. I made a hefty donation to the church to bolster my good karma, and helped a young couple get married. I bought a bunch of ammo and talked to a few people about their problems, but couldn’t find any ways to resolve a few of the situations. Eventually I met the aunt of the orphaned boy that had originally inspired my trek to Rivet City, and she happily agreed to take him in. 330XP. Nice.

Checking the list of unresolved quests on my Pip-Boy, I noticed that I had agreed to enslave a man named Flak who lived in Rivet City. He was one of the local arms dealers, so I figured it would be best to get him alone in his room to capture him with as little fuss as possible. I broke into his quarters and waited in a dark corner for the duration of a day. He never came in, so I figured it was time to try something new.

I snuck into the Rivet City marketplace, and quietly moved into place behind Flak’s stall. He was lounging on a couch, and I was hidden from everyone’s sight in the shadows. I pulled out my mesmetron, which would put him into a submissive state so that I could get him to willingly put on a slave collar. The mesmetron’s blast just made him aggressive at first, and he shot up his partner before going into the stupor I was waiting for. I made my move and collared him, but apparently the other citizens didn’t like that very much, and as Flak ran off to a life of slavery in Paradise Falls, the rest of the Rivet City dwellers pulled out their weapons and proceeded to ventilate me. Load game.

I figured that my business wasn’t something I’d be able to do in a populated area, so I tried following Flak around until he went up to higher deck where nobody else was present. I zapped him with the mesmetron and he turned violent and shot at me for a bit. After dodging his bullets for long enough, he  became passive and I collared him. He ran off to Paradise Falls again, and I waited a bit, double-checking the area to make sure nobody knew what was going on. I left Rivet City, and the guards posted at the entrance apparently had deduced what I’d done and unloaded into me. Load game.

I decided at that point to give up on Flak until I’d completed all of my business at Rivet City. Once there was nothing left for me in the ship it wouldn’t matter if the inhabitants wanted me dead. I left and pursued a new quest that I’d gotten from a mercenary in Underworld: to find and save the rest of her group who were pinned down on a hotel roof.

I’d already found the hospital that was adjacent to the hotel in my prior travels, so getting there wasn’t an issue. The super mutants surrounding the area didn’t put up much of a fight either. I had to get into the hotel via a makeshift bridge from the second floor of the hospital, and that part was quick enough. a Mr. Handy helped me out for a bit, setting all the super mutants and centaurs that got in my way ablaze. Unfortunately, he floated in the way of one of my shotgun blasts and is now lighting super mutants on fire up in robot heaven.

The Statesman Hotel was far more annoying than it needed to be. I battled my way up six or seven floors (I stopped counting after four), and reached the top after an incredibly draining trek. My ammo reserves were eaten up by dozens of super mutant masters, and if the hospital hadn’t been loaded with stimpaks I’d probably be almost out by now. I might even have to go back and search for more later. My new best friend, the combat shotgun, broke about halfway up. That’s been the worst part of it. A combination of my hunting rifle, sawed-off shotgun, and frag mines/grenades don’t work as efficiently as the combat shotgun does.

I sit at the top of the hotel now, the mercenaries I’ve come to help too weary to fight their way back down. They’ve asked me to find a fission battery that they’d seen on the third floor that they can use to repair the hotel’s elevator. I really have no idea how many floors there are in this place, but I’m not looking forward to working my way back down and then all the way back up. I killed every super mutant I met during my first ascension, so hopefully their numbers stay down when I head back in. I’m considering fast-travelling back to Megaton to get my shotgun repaired and then just starting from the hospital again. I’m not sure if this will respawn the super mutants or if my leaving the area will get the mercs killed, but I suppose that’s why there’s a “load game” option.

Either way, I’d better get a boatload of XP for this one.

TE @ C4

It’s gotta be… weeks now since I went to Central Canadian Comic Con. It was cool, I must say. Though I guess I’m not as much of a nerd as I thought it was because it was (local) Nerd Mecca and I wasn’t super-psyched about it. Oh well. I took a few (blurry) pictures while I was there. Everything from Minecraft to papercraft, and even one ass that did not belong in that costume. Actually I took a few pictures of those, but I figured one is enough to prove my point and deleted the rest. Be thankful. There’s an alternate universe where this post is all pictures of asses that shouldn’t be seen by human eyes.

         

         

              

         

         

              

              

         

Dead Island

I’ve recently been spending large chunks of my weekends on Dead Island, and I’ve got pretty mixed feelings about it. For the tl;dr crowd: I like it, and I’m pretty sure that if you like Fallout 3 you’ll find much to enjoy here.

The big thing about Dead Island is that I don’t play first-person shooters very often, but Techland somehow managed to take the handful of recent FPSs that I have played and mash them all together. I haven’t played enough of Fallout 3 (about 25 hours?), and I haven’t seen any more than the cover of New Vegas, but they were quite clearly the base inspiration for Dead Island. It’s an FPS set in a big open(ish) world, where you have to scrounge stuff from everywhere to survive.

Missions are doled out one at a time to further the story, but you can strike out on your own and do as you please (this is how I spent my time with Fallout 3). Along the way, you’ll likely meet up with some people who will give you sidequests. Some will just be crazy and try to kill you. I only encountered only a single homicidal human in the first third of the game, but they become a little more common as you go along.

Like Fallout, your weapons will decay with use and become useless. Well, mostly useless. You can still beat zombies with your blunted cleaver, but it does barely any damage and any special effects (like fire or electricity) are lost. You can repair them for a fee, upgrade them for a few more bucks, and modify weapons to give them special traits once you have the proper blueprints and parts. Armor does not exist though, which is good and bad. Good because you don’t have to constantly stop to repair or find replacements; bad because a handful of zombies can tear your fleshy hide apart right quick.

Where Dead Island really departs from its cousins is in weapon selection. The first area of Dead Island provides melee weapons almost exclusively. It’s great, visceral fun, but in the first dozen or so hours I spent with it, I’d only held two revolvers and about forty bullets. Fallout 3 was fun for me because I could skulk around the landscape with a hunting rifle and pop any enemies before they had a chance. Yeah, ammo was a little more scare than I liked, but at least it was there. Games that force stealth are no fun, but when it’s an option, that’s how I usually play it. It also provided a survival scenario that I could take at my own pace. If I wanted to avoid the mutants, I hike the long way around the mountain or take the shortcut through the cave. Here, the world feels much less open and you rarely have the option to go around zombies. You’re always the hunted, and rarely get to play the hunter.

The big difference between Fallout 3 and Dead Island where maps are concerned is that in Fallout, you have one gigantic map with all sorts of tunnels and buildings to explore. Dead Island is divided into several large areas with no such “dungeons” to find. I definitely would have liked at least a couple segregated areas. There is the hotel and a couple small apartments that take you to separate maps, but those barely count. We’ll have to see what later areas bring. The majority of the buildings are just textured cubes too. A good portion of the cabanas in the resort area have proper interiors, but once you hit the town map you’ll start wondering if all those doors are just painted on.

The game is a lot like Fallout 3, but it’s also coloured with shades of Borderlands and Left 4 Dead. Like those two, Dead Island is intended to be played cooperatively online with other people. The game wouldn’t even let me start at first because it’s set by default to online co-op and I don’t have a gold subscription to Xbox Live. I haven’t spent enough time with Left 4 Dead or its sequel to pass judgement on just how similar Dead Island is to them, but I hear that the “special” zombies on Banoi island bear more than just a passing resemblance to those in Valve’s games.

Borderlands though, I have played quite a bit more of. While it’s not quite as much an influence on Dead Island as Fallout, you can’t ignore the signs. For one, weapons in Dead Island are colour-coded. Yes, it’s a thing in other games too, but the only other one I’ve played that does that is Borderlands. The major difference being that I didn’t see a second-tier weapon for hours in Dead Island, whereas I picked one up on my third or fourth quest in Borderlands.

Another similarity is that random pickups respawn in both of these games. It takes away from the survival aspect (which wasn’t a part of Borderlands anyway), but I feel like it adds to the gameplay. Yes, the aspect of running around with no bullets is thrilling for a little while, but I find that when I run out of weapons, a game that centers around killing is considerably less fun. The old-style Resident Evils play that feature properly: they limit your ammo, but enemies never respawn, so it’s almost a like a puzzle where you have to figure out where your ammo is best spent. If weapons weren’t strewn about so liberally in Dead Island, you’d run out in no time and be stuck running away or punching zombies to death. To give you an idea of how useless punching is in Dead Island, they give you the achievement for killing while unarmed after just 25 zombies.

From the start of the game, you get to choose from four characters, each which his or her own strengths and skill trees. Just like Borderlands. Did the characters in Left 4 Dead have any differences that weren’t cosmetic? While this is key to building a balanced team, the fact of the matter is that I’ll never play this game with others. So I really wouldn’t mind if there were a “single-player” character, who could choose from the entire pool of skills. Also I’m not a fan of the “skill pipe” system, where you have to pump points into unrelated skills to get to the one you want. What I’m saying here is that they should have copied Fallout’s skill system too. I’m cool with prerequisites for advanced skills, but those prerequisites should make sense, and not just be arbitrarily placed along a line. Why to I need to get the “medkits are more effective” skill before I can buy the “less likely to be noticed” skill? Healing and stealth are two totally different fields.

Anyway, I’m coming off too negative. I really like Dead Island, though I fear it will end up sitting incomplete along with Fallout 3 and Borderlands despite that. The thing that ties them all together is that they’re all so huge and open, that I get an initial rush of excitement, with the exploring and the screwing around, but then burn out before I can even make it halfway through the story. Yeah, there’s something I never thought I’d lament: games being too long and having too much content. 16-year-old Ryan would be so sad if he knew that he’d grow up into a man that had trouble finishing games that surpass a 15-hour requirement.

Dead Island has a few good things about it that weren’t key traits of other games though, and while I’d love to talk about those, there’s one thing that really bugs me about the game. I mean really boils my turnip. I usually don’t care if games with high NPC/enemy populations re-use character models/sprites. A few of my favourite games don’t even bother to recolour clothing, never mind create unique NPCs. But Dead Island really takes the cake; on the resort map, there are literally two female NPC character models: the standard one, and the one that’s a little chubbier. Female zombies are the same, but discoloured and with bits missing. Yes, their heads and bikini patterns change, but they’ve still all got one of two bodies. Oh yes, and every single female (outside of the two playable females) in the game is wearing a bikini until you get back into the hotel. It is ridiculous. Sex appeal is great; I have no problem with bikini babes. This is overkill though. The sexism line has been long since crossed. There are at least a dozen generic male character models. Would it have hurt to put some short shorts on at least one of the female models? Come on, Techland. Have a little class. The good news is that once you leave the resort there are properly clothed ladies, but I had played over ten hours before I got to that point.

So after all this complaining, what do I like about Dead Island? One thing that sticks out in my mind is the “thug” zombie. Thugs are a good foot taller than your average walking dead, and they can knock you flat with a single hook or headbutt. They are dangerous, and you learn that quickly. Encountering a thug is terrifying because you know that you’re going to be facing something that can kill you with little effort. Compounding this effect is the fact that thugs emit the most blood-curdling roar in the history of video games. It chills me to my bone, and instantly makes me stop cold in my tracks to assess my surroundings. The only thing that keeps thugs from being a total nightmare is that they move at about half the speed of a normal zombie. Still, the tension blows through the roof whenever a thug howls, and I find taking them down incredibly satisfying.

The best way to stop a thug, of course, is to remove his arms. Severing enemies’ body parts has been one of my secret favourite things to do in video games for years. I played the first level of Turok 2 over and over, never caring to progress in the game, just happy to play with the different weapons and see how they tore the monsters apart. Dead Island definitely strikes the right chords in this regard. Once you get your first cleaver or machete, you’ll never want to go back to pipes and wrenches. Blunt weapons can be used to break zombie bones (which is hilarious in its own way) and smash in their heads like so many pumpkins. Bladed weapons, logically, will completely remove the offender’s limbs. Sometimes you’ll swing at the right time when a zombie charges you, which will sever his head in one swing and put the game into slow motion to watch his head pop up while his body keep running past you. It’s quite awesome, but takes more than a little luck to pull off regularly.

Outside of thugs though, removing limbs isn’t strictly necessary, as by the time you’ve got that second arm off, that zombie’s probably re-dead anyway. Decapitation, of course, is always your best bet. They’re zombies! And they’re scary! A lone zombie isn’t much trouble; you’re equipped with a kick move that almost guarantees knocking a ghoul down, and once they’re down, they’re meat. Though as I noted before, a bunch of zombies can easily tear you a new one. I don’t know how many times now I was poking around and got mobbed by a group of four or five zombies. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but they hit hard and flail around pretty quickly. Especially the “infected” class of zombies, who are Dead Island’s version of the Hollywood zombie. Not that classifying the fast ones as “infected” makes a lick of sense. Aren’t all of them infected? Isn’t that the problem?

Anyway, I’m getting totally off-track here. My point there was that zombies are scary. Especially since they level up with you. You life bar gets bigger with each level-up, but it’s really moot because zombie arm/claw/bite/whatever strength increases at about the same pace. Infected class zombies (they move faster and hit harder) are even more lethal because if they get you, they usually get in three or four hits at a time. If you’re up against two or more infected, there’s a good chance you’re going to die. Regular zombies (“Walkers”) are considerably less dangerous, even in large groups. They have one advantage: they’re clever enough to get the drop on you. Walkers are the only zombies whose howls blend in with the ambient noises floating on the air, and they also like to play possum. I figured obsessing over tearing apart corpses to make sure they don’t get me when my back is turned was going to be a habit exclusive to Dead Space. I was wrong.

I’m sure there are other good things about Dead Island aside from zombies. There really probably are. It’s just, they’re all done better in other games. Most of them in a single game! That doesn’t mean it’s not worth playing though! If you can get over the slightly janky combat system, dependably buggy graphics, and vicious difficulty spike, you’ll have a grand old time on Banoi. Might even be better with friends. I’ll never know. I’m excluded from that world because I’m a dinosaur and prefer local multiplayer.

Let’s Play Minecraft – Day Five

The rattling of bones and wailing of zombies was too much for me to sleep through. The night wasn’t passing quickly, curled up in the corner wishing for sleep. My body had been put through so much in the last few days that I couldn’t grasp why it wouldn’t jump at the chance to shut down for a while. Guess my mind has been through just as much, and it didn’t want to shut off for fear of what might happen if I let my guard down.

I wandered outside slowly, hoping not to draw the attention of any attackers. There were a couple zombies standing on the southern end of Hope. Just standing. Once in a while one would emit a groan, but they didn’t notice me. I hoped to keep it that way.

A silent creeper was bobbing around in the water just past the ledge south of my hut. It did see me, and I knew that I wouldn’t be safe with it prowling around. The thing was too stupid to take the long road around the island’s edge, but I didn’t want to find out if it would learn better. As it bounced up and down in the water, desperately rubbing against the rock face, I swung my sword at its head. The creeper fell backwards and hissing started. As the monster jumped at the rock again, it exploded with tremendous force. I was thrown back several feet, and while my ears were still ringing I managed to roll onto my side, expecting to see the zombies bearing down on me.

There was no such danger. Apparently zombies aren’t too interested in exploding creepers? They continued to stare out at the ocean. Maybe they were longing for home too?

The creeper’s blast left a huge, jagged hole where there was once a sharp corner of rock. If I had been any closer, I might not have been so lucky as to walk away with all my bits intact.

I spent the twilight hours digging away at rock half hoping I could put something useful together with the bits of cobblestone, half hoping there was something of value hidden below Hope’s bland surface. No such luck. On my way back to the hut after my little excavation, I saw the strangest thing; on the far end of the island, I swore I could see a ghastly pair of eyes floating about. One of the zombies had gotten bored and paraded into the water, but there was still another figure there. Its body was a dark shade, visible only because stars that lined the horizon would blink on and off as the thing moved around.

Hiding in my hut seemed like the appropriate thing to do. Every living being in the place had been hostile so far, and I wasn’t going to assume the best for this new creature. I would wait until dawn and try to get a better idea of what the thing was.

I did doze off for a little while as I waited for the sun to rise, and was woken by the mournful howls of a zombie. The one that remained by the beach had caught fire, and was shambling around in circles, completely neglecting the water that was no more than two meters away. While the creatures here were fierce, they weren’t very bright.

The zombie melted away into a pile of nothingness and I got my first real glimpse at the new islander. It was a short one though, because almost as soon as the fire that enveloped the zombie extinguished itself, the other thing caught fire and burned to death. The thing could have almost passed as human-esque. The parts were there, head, torso, arms and legs. They were just all… wrong. Its head was massive, probably looked even more so because of its atrophied torso and long, slender limbs. For the short few moments it was in my sight, I felt a deep-rooted fear take over me. I was pretty sure that this was not a friendly creature.

Where the alien had stood I found a small, emerald pearl. If it did anything, I couldn’t figure out how to use it. I suppose it would just go into the pile of junk that I was collecting. Perhaps I’d be able to trade it if I ever found intelligent life that wasn’t out to kill me.

The morning was spent mostly doing the usual. Here, that meant lying about enjoying the sunshine and quiet rustling of the waves against Hope. I did get up and harvest a bit of wheat to fill out my supply of bread. Something a little less plain would have been nice.

In the afternoon, once I’d rested up a little, it was time for launch. My destination was the island not too far off the northwestern side of Hope. The boat worked like a charm. I was a little impressed with myself for managing to construct a boat that didn’t leak at all. Things were good.

Upon arriving at the new island, I started to step out of the boat and slipped as I placed my first foot into the shallow water. My other foot kicked off the boat, and as if friction didn’t exist, it simply shot away across the ocean. It stopped roughly halfway between the new island and Hope, and I did not relish the thought of having to swim out there to retrieve it.

The new island was so featureless that I didn’t even bother naming it. All of that hard work for nothing. I was beginning to wonder if there really was anything to this world besides a few meager islands and endless ocean. This island was flat, shaped like a horseshoe, and had absolutely nothing on it outside of a single yellow flower. I still wonder how it looked so big from Hope.

While swimming out to my boat, I had an even stranger and more frightening experience than everything that had happened up until now. I had just made it, put my hand on the edge of the boat to lift myself in, when suddenly my vision went black. I could still, feel, and my hand was now empty. Suddenly I saw a huge flash of white, and then I was sinking. My vision returned, and I hurriedly grasped at the sky that seemed so far above me. The air above had never tasted so good. While I was glad to not have drowned, I worried about both my blackout and the fact that my boat had vanished completely. I paddled in a circle, but it was nowhere to be seen.

If this ordeal ever ended, I pledged to myself, I would never swim again.

Making it back to the beach of Hope was tiring, and rain had begun pouring down. Though I was more concerned about what had just happened to me. Was I losing it? Was my diet of bread and bread not enough to sustain me? Maybe it was just a symptom of my combined physical overexertion and lack of sleep. If I blacked out while I was under attack by one of the many monsters lurking about these isles, I’d be done for. I dragged myself inside, finding that I was considerably less hopeful for survival than I was that morning.