u/yesaroobuckaroo

Specifically in S5. I love it's "scorched sky", the clouds, and god... the lightning. I am a sucker of lightning and The Abyss perfectly nails it - distant flashes within the clouds specifically.

Long yappy breakdown ahead:

Something i LOVE about The Abyss is it's familiar-yet-alien terrain. It adds a special sense of wrongness due to it's familiarity. Mars, Titan, and Venus all invoke that same feeling in me. So different and alien, but so, so scarily familiar. Specifically, where the Pain Tree is located in The Abyss looks like especially familiar; just like Nevada. I don't know if that's intentional or just a cool coincidence, but it's cool regardless.

Now..

The way i view it, The Abyss (and the Upside Down) are both a reflection of the raw, brutal processes of life - that's why EVERY inter-dimensional aspect (Gates, the Vines, the inter-dimensional membrane, the Wall of the Upside Down, etc) are all so distinctively grotesque and alive. They all specifically resemble the inner workings of our bodies; our organs, flesh, etc. It's life, species, humanity, but without the intricacy, agency or specialty that makes Earth-life beautiful. Independence, agency, free-thinking, autonomy, fashion, society, music, love - you get the gist. None of it exists in Dimension X - It is all stolen from you. That's what makes it a barren, harsh wasteland.

The dimension/planet (if the landscape we see is just a planet in a universe akin to ours) itself is, essentially, one giant body. Consuming and growing. The Mind Flayer is the brain and everything else it connects to it's Hivemind is it's Body. That's why it desires to grow and spread.

It seems like everything beyond our dimension is similar to The Abyss - brutal, raw, and unapologetic life. The Hellscape, the Upside Down, The Abyss; they all share that similarity that they're so horrifically unforgiving and raw.

But our dimension, the Rightside Up, and our planet both defy that inter-dimensional formula everything else seems to follow of being brutal and raw. Earth is full of life and love. So many different species (and people) that are beautiful because they are different, so many unique ecosystems, biomes, climates, all localized on Earth.

That's what makes The Abyss so cool - It's life without the love or autonomy that makes Earth so beautiful. They're one of the same, but with that one detail changed; in one you're free and independent, in the other your autonomy and individuality is forcefully stolen from you to aid a singular 'ruler' that wants you to serve as it's Body to control and spread.

I know it's a bit of a controversial design because people think "If cold why sunny desert????" but... I mean, if that's really the limit of your thinking and all you can conjure up, i don't think the design is the problem lol.

Mars is a sandy desert VERY reminiscent to those on Earth and yet it's cold. Saturn's moon Titan is similar; sandy, rocky desert but has a thick, hazy atmosphere and is freezing.

I also love the Pain Tree. There's something about gigantic, 'alive' structures that are just so cool. Subnautica 2 has something similar and i get so giddy thinking about it lmfao.

I'm sorry if i repeat myself a bit in this post lol

I love phasmo and hold it so dear to my heart but oh my god the animations are just... terrible 😭

I love jank. You love jank. Jank is what made the earlier playermodels so loved! But these animations are not janky, they are objectively and eye-hurtingly bad in a way that takes AWAY from the preexisting jank rather than adding to it by making everything look less like genuine human jank and a looot more like inexperience mixed with higher-up laziness. They've made TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS off of Phasmo and... can't hire a single well equipped animator that can make a simple yet logical animation.

This is seriously insanely disappointing and i doubt i'll be playing the game until they fix this. Because yes, it DOES take away from the experience.. by a lot.

I feel bad for the poor person whose work is being blasted (by me included) but this is beyond them; I'm not disappointed at them specifically, not at all, but that kinetic completely cheaped out (despite having made tens of millions of dollars, mind you) and hired somebody clearly not fit for the job and then APPROVED these animations for release (which is tomorrow).

It is insanely disappointing how horribly scummy all of these companies are and how they're allowed to get away with it. First it was Void Interactive with Ready or Not, now it's Kinetic with Phasmo. Awesome.