Was surprised to see a Steins;Gate animation a while back. Got some enjoyment out of the 'game', so figured why not.<br /><br />It was pretty good. Really, REALLY slow, but, somehow still pretty good.

No. I mean, it doesnt have a chance, you opened the floodgates to some seriously stiff competition.

 
Background  from Mega Man Legends 3

OOOOO Look at me! I am Ryudo and I like making people cry while listening to excellent game ost's!

And the big bad shown in todays video shall henceforth be known, as SquidButt.

They just had to, didn't they?
 
EDIT
 
UGHGHGHGHGHGH

Dont forget squidbutt!

Well, we already knew the swimsuits were returning. Even if we hadnt already seen them, shulk in his skivvies is ridiculously popular in smash bros so...

But yeah, g string heavy armor appears to be back in full force from sharlas armor catalouge. Fortunately, they seem to have just as many practical looking armours as butt floss looking ones this time.

Reminds me of Guyver.

Eh?



I dont know... I just dont-

Oh wait, THIS Guyver

Yeah, thats the ticket.

Honestly, I think ive noticed several Japanese pop culture references with the armours so far, and those are just the ones someone like me can recognize.

So now that we have concept art confirmation of the obvious fact there will be a Nopon town:



we can also reasonably deduce with more certainty that the other native races to Mira will also have home towns.



So My bet is the Nopon home city is going to be in the jungle continent to the west of Neo LA.
That hostile alien races home city is going to be in the black iron area to the far north, that technology is theirs.
The pizza loving aliens town will be in their massive cruise ship.

And maybe the blue goatface guy has a town full of his people as well.

Chrono trigger was re-released on ds, so it will work on 3ds, it was also released on the wii's virtual console, so it can be played on wii u through wii mode.... Oh man, just thinking about this explanation seems like its going to be huge..

Its the the basic battle system Makoto Shimamoto went back to to base the xeno battle system off of.

Enemies are on the field, so its not random battles like FF or other JRPG's, some enemies just wander around, some actively try to hit you, when the player character comes into contact with an enemy, a battle starts, so you have control over whether you battle or not.

The battle system runs off a system called the 'Active Time Battle' system, or more specifically a custom version of Hiroyuki Ito's ATB made exclusively for chrono trigger, outlined by director Akihiko Matsui, and designed mostly by lead battle planner Makoto Shimamoto, who had... Issues with the design philosophy of the ATB and squares battle systems. He thought it was nonsensical to use football and formula 1 racing for design inspirations to an rpg. He thought the players lining up in a straight line on one side, and the opponents lining up on the other side (Like a football play beginning) was silly, and lacked potential for increased strategems, peices should be all around the board, and have different attack shaped, like chess, not stay in fixed lines with only attack 1 or all. And so we had the ATB version 2.0, which was used in chrono trigger, and ONLY chrono trigger. As soon as Shimamoto left, square devolved back to 'football' design of lining up characters facing off with each other, for the battle system.

So, when in battle, enemies still move around in real time, (but the player cant, however the characters go to their battle positions somewhere on the field (Which is generally different for each fight, making the strategy for each fight different). The players have a 'time bar' that fills up according to a speed statistic (Which increases with level) when the bar fills up, that character can act. The enemies also run off of this system, however the player can not see their speed bar.

When one of the party members bars is full they have three choices, a normal attack, which attacks one enemy, with a chance to do a double damage critical hit based on a percentage determined by the player characters critical stat, or a 'tec' where the player could use special skills, that could affect more than one enemy, or had certain element attributes that some enemies were weak to. These Tecs had various hit boxes to them. Some went out in a straight line from the player to the selected character, hitting all other enemies in the path. Some were an area of effect around the selected enemy, that would hit nearby enemies, some were an area of effect around the character, hitting enemies near the character... You get the idea. Since the players characters were in different places for each battle, and the enemies moved, this made using certain skills, with basic timing a strategic act, you would wait for enemies to line up, or get close together, before using a certain tec. Tec's costed MP points to use, if you ran low on mp points, you couldnt use a tec until you restored them using an item like an ether. To use a tec, you select the 'tec' option that was below attack on the menu. Another, larger menu would appear, with all that characters available tecs, and you selected the one that you wanted. Hands would appear pointing at the enemy the player selected, and the player can cycle between enemies with the d-pad. Multiple hands would appear over other enemies if they were in, or moved into the tecs area of attack.

When you use certain groups of characters, they will learn that they can combine their moves, to form larger more devastating attacks, or big ccures and buffs, combining two characters moves for a double tec, or three characters moves for a huge triple tec. You simply had to wait until both or all 3 characters had their speed bars filled, so they could act at the same time.

The third option the player had was to use an item, which would open up another menu with every item the player had, and the player has to cycle through to find the item they want, to cure, or restore mp, or provide a buff. I generally didnt use the items unless I absolutely had too, typically only using them to restore mp after battles... Partly because Cycling through all that garbage is clumsy, and partly because Im a pack rat hoarder who collects billions of items but doesnt want to 'waste' any by using them.

Winning battles awards experience points, get enough points and the character levels up, increasing their stats, so they have more health, do more damage, have more mp, and sometimes learn new moves.

By exploring and finding chests, or buying from stores in towns the player finds, you can buy new swords and armor that bolster the players stats, resulting in more damage, and better defense. A third item called an accessory can also be equipped, further enhancing stats like doing more damage, or giving new skills like being able to see enemy health, or the ability to counter attack. Chrono Trigger is REALLY good at this, big on rewarding players with cool stuff for finding secrets, and upgrading already cool stuff further by considering how time travel 'works'.

Thats the basic gist of chrono triggers battle system, the precursor to Xenoblades. Now I will detail how Xenoblade wii improves on this foundation.

In Xenoblade Enemies are also on the field, except now they have better AI, and respond to certain stimulus, its no longer touching enemies that starts a battle, some will attack when they see the player cross their line of sight. So you can sneak around behind them. Some will attack if they HEAR the player, so running behind them wont work, but you can sneak past them by not running. some respond to the use of ether. Some enemy types will come to the aid of their buddies if you attack them, so you may start out fighting one enemy you can take, but quickly attracting a hoard you cant handle, (There is an option to try and get the attention of only one enemy and draw it away from its friends) If the player wants to get the jump on an enemy, or fight an enemy that wouldnt normally fight them, either because they arent aggressive, or they are scared of the player because the player is a much stronger level than them, the player can select enemies with the trigger buttons, pressing L or R until the desired enemy is highlighted, and selecting the fight command from the selection bar at the bottom of the screen by highlighting it and pressing a. What level the enemy is, and what their ai routine is (Sight, sound) is displayed above enemies heads. Even the starting area has wild life that is far beyond the starting parties capabilities. Makes for fun risk reward experiences. You can try sneaking past them to try and get later game level goodies early, (Sometimes you can) or you can back when you are more powerful and explore areas you couldnt get to before because the enemies were too strong.

Unlike Chrono trigger normal attacks are now done automatically as long as you are close enough to the enemy to hit them, because having to push a button to do a normal attack for this kind of battle system is redundent and silly. Its a waste of time, why WOULDNT you attack when you are close enough, and are able? Having to push a button just for that would be redundant and a waste of time. The speed of how fast your player makes normal attacks is dependant upon that characters stats (The player has ways to adjust these stats, to build characters who can attack very rapidly)

In xenoblade, the player can now move during battles in addition to the enemy, allowing for more strategy. So now you can position yourself to line up enemies for moves that attack all enemies in a straight line, like the monado buster. On top of this, whether the player is in front of, to the side, or behind the enemy also matters. Some moves inflict status ailments if done from the side, or do more damage from behind etc. However, while it may look like the battle takes place in real time in videos, the way it plays is still the active time system. What matters is where you and the enemies are, the moment you PUSH the button to activate the attack, not where you and the enemies are when the attack animation happens. For example, when you use the monado buster, shulk goes through a cool sword powering up animation, and then a huge sweeping strike, where the enemies are when the strike hits doesnt matter, its where the enemies were the instant you pushed the button to start the attack. So, if three enemies are all lined up when you push the button, then wander off, those three will all get hit wherever they are. But if three enemies are outside of the line in front of shulk, and then wander into the attack animation, they wont get hit. Its not real time. Its not an action rpg.

Special moves in Xenoblade are called arts. They function a LOT like techs in Chrono trigger, having certain areas they effect, like a straight line, a cone, a circle around the player etc. Unlike chrono trigger, the time bar is not applied to the character itself and when they can act, but to each individual art. When you use an art, you have to wait for it to fill up, or 'cool down' before you can use it again. This puts a lot of the battle tempo under the players control, making battles much faster and less drawn out. On weaker enemies, you can blow all your arts one after the other until the enemy dies. On older rpg systems, that same enemy would take five minutes or more as you have to wait to use your moves one at a time. On stronger enemies, blowing all your arts at once may take off a decent chunk of health, but would leave you without any options besides auto attack until your moves cooled down (And draw lots of aggro). To use an art you simply use the d-pad to select the desired art from the hot bar at the bottom of the screen and push a. Special moves can be leveled up, and switched in and out of the hot bar via the menu when not in battle.

Each character has a 'super move' that has to be charged to use. Most moves charge by hitting enemies with normal attacks, although some characters are unique. This move is the big circle in the center of the hot bar. For shulk, when it is full, this activates the monados over drive, and the blade glows brighter, a little longer, and smokes more, and activates the monado menu, which changes shulks normal moves in the hot bar for his special monado moves, where shulk can either buff his allies by allowing them to damage Mechon that other party members normally cant hurt, or by giving them ether armor, or attack with things like making the monado blade super huge and doing a big smash attack.

CHaracters can gain the attention of the enemy, or 'aggro' by doing lots of damage, or attacking a lot, or doing fancy moves. This is denoted by red rings around the character, the more red rings, the more the enemy is really mad at that player. Enemies will concentrate on characters that tick them off. THis can be used to draw attacks toward characters with high defense and a lot of HP (Reyn) Or characters with high agility who are hard for the enemy to hit. THis can also be used to keep the enemies from attacking the player, or more fragile members of the party.

Shulk can see the future and has visions. This will activate (Even when shulks not in the party) when an enemy does a move that will kill, or do a lot of crippling damage to the attacked character, it shows in black and white with distorty special effects, the move that happens and what it does to the atttacked character. A bar above the enemy will then display how much time is left until the event occurs. The player can attempt to change the future in any way they see fit. They can try to heal the targeted character so that the move doesnt kill them, they can try and get the attention of the monster away from the character, so it attacks someone else who wont be killed, they can try to knock the creature over, seal its special moves, use a monado shield, kill it, etc. etc. etc.

Each character in the party has 'tension' or their morale, represented by their battle portrait, getting owned will reduce their morale, depressed characters get hit easier, have a harder time getting clean hits on enemies, or even hitting them, and deal less damage, going up to these players and pressing B will give them a pat on the back and some motivation to get out of their funk and get their head back in the game. WHen characters are doing well, and kicking butt, their tension raises, until they are 'really feeling it', and flames erupt behind their portraits. When like this characters hit for more damage, have higher accuracy, and are harder to hit.

Occasionally, when the player does something cool that other party members like, they will comment on it, or when they see an attack coming to your character, they will warn you when this happens the 'b' button icon appears in the middle of the screen with a shrinking ring around it. Time it so that the shrinking ring is the same size as the ring around the 'b' button icon and press the b button, when successful the player will deal more damage, or dodge the enemy attack, and get several boosts, temporary stat boosts, a tension boost, and a boost to the unite guage.

The unite guage is the blue bar above the player portraits and hp, and consists of 3 parts. It is generally filled by beating on enemies, or taking hits, using certain arts, and succeeding at the parties shout outs with the 'b' button. When you, or someone in your party loses all their health, they collapse and cant fight anymore. You can spend a section of the unite guage to revive the fllen character (or your party can revive you) If the player character falls and their is not a single full section of the bar, the player fails and starts over... from the last landmark they were nearby, with everything they had the moment they died, typically no more than 30 seconds away from where they died, vastly reducing frusteration, lost time, and encouraging exploration and expirimentization, and getting into tough battles.

When all 3 sections of the unite guage is filled, the player can perform Xenoblades version of the triple tec, teh chain attack. THe player gets to choose a move from each player. Choosing moves of the same color icon, does bonus damage, increasing the multiplier each time the combo is kept going. Super attacks are 'wild' in that they can continue the combo from any color, and any color can be played off of them. This can result in AMAZING amounts of damege. If your characters have a high affinity (They know each other well) they can continue the chain attack if the player succeeds in the 'b' button timed press. The higher the affinity between party members, the more likely the chain attack can go on, and on, and on, and on.... Meaning you can loop across all characters multiple times. However each art can only be used once during a chain attack, after you use it, it goes dark and you cant use it again during that chain attack (Making it more difficult to keep those combos going.) With a clever selection of arts for each character, and smart use of the super moves 'wild card' ability, you can keep combos going for extremely brutal damage.

Unlike Chrono trigger, there are no battle items like potions or elixers in Xenoblade. Item management was not fun, and not strategic, it was boring, time consuming, and tedious. So they did away with it. The party heals rapidly when not in battle, with all characters being at full health after a couple of seconds, and all status ailments being cured. This means you dont have to spend time doing invintory on all your garbage, and stopping what you are doing to go get butt balm to continue your journey. It also means they can put more challenging battles in the game, since winning a battle means the party will be at their peak and ready to go again. A great move that streamlined a lot of irritating unnecessary nonsense that typically weighs down rpg's.

Status effects play a large role in Xenoblade, but ill only really get into two. the first one is the combo of break and topple, because its super important and one of the first things you need to make sure you dont miss. Certain moves cause a status effect called break (They generally have pink icons) when an enemy is afflicted with break, they can then be knocked over by using a move that has topple (Generally the green icons) toppled enemies take 50% more damage, and lose thier defense. This means enemies that you normally cant damage, can be damaged if you topple them (Frusteration avoiding hint for the beginning of the game)

The other one, is much later in the game, but can be a subtle surprise if you ignore the tutorial, it is called spike damage. Spike damage is either damage, or a status effect done by the enemy (or the player) when certain conditions are met. Usually its just being nearby the enemy, but their are other variations, such as spike damage being dealt when the enemy is hit with an auto attack, or spike damage being dealt when the enemy is toppled. This needs to be overcome by either using armor that alters spike stats, negating spike damage, or using special moves to seal spike damage. Spike damage can quickly consume your party without you noticing. if you suddenly find your party wiped out, or down a lot of health, and you are sure you were kicking butt, its probably spike damge.

This seems like a lot, and its just the fundamentals (I havent even gotten into character skills, or skill linking between characters as they get to know each other, or gems) but its rationed out over a considerable amount of time, and introduced with tutorials you can then look up at any time with excellent detail.

Xenoblade X is heavily based off of Xenoblade, which was based off of chrono trigger, bu I cant even really go into detail about the enhancements made to the new system, because really im still processing it... And likely will be until a couple dozen hours into the new game (And likely more), which is something I love.

But if you get the hang of chrono trigger, you will have a basic working framework of how to get a handle on the more complex Xenoblade X.

Chrono Trigger is also a pretty good barometer for whether or not you might enjoy xenoblade X. It doesnt have the amazing scenery porn, but its environments are a lot more intimate than the grid based and squarish design looking jrpg's like FF and its imitators, and exploring was a huge factor.

If you find yourself interested, intruiged, wanting to know what happens next, or interested in finding whats in this place you discovered, or getting caught up in the adventure at all while playing chrono trigger, despite it being an old snes game, you will LOVE the Xenoblades.... Cant really say how much youll like other jrpg's though... Chrono trigger never was much like other jrpg's of its time, or after its time... Until Xenoblade.

Tonights update prepping for tomorrows doll video.

Here guys, this will make up for the music in the battle video.

holy shiznet at the new music download. Makes up for the videos music.

Hopper cam is awesome. I am going to lose soooo much time to this doo dad.

which is not good for me... outside of the original xenoblade is there a game out now available for Wii U or 3ds that I could purchase that would ease me into this game?

Chrono trigger

Damn thats a huge freaking update.

Hopefully that youtube translation fairy decides to grace us with some translations again.

Comparing a 4 year old game to a 2015 one? That's sad, I understand you guys are hype about XBC, but abusing Skyrim to make yourself feel better is laugh worthy. Also it's clear that Nintendo and Mon-Soft aren't moving forward if they ain't getting their chosen goals. I just hope the game is known to everyone, as it could be a good sleeper hit.

 

Yeah, too bad we werent the ones who made those comparisons, over, and over, and over, and over and over, and over, and over again. Hell, its STILL being done on other boards. I bet desert punk has found himself a nice echo chamber to circle jerk too after he realized this game was real, and he couldnt use his bad ports=best wii u can do gimmick anymore.
 
So yeah, when we get confirmation that the game was 10x bigger than the game we were repeatedly told the wii u wasnt powerful enough to handle, as they pointed at every crap ps360 port as 'proof' that the wii u was weaker than ps360, yeah, were going to bring it back up and laugh at it. Get off YOUR high horse.

Ugh every ES past ESII is awful. In fact only Daggerfall was worth a damn. Horrendous awkward combat. unforgiveable amount of glitches and bugs. Ugly brown textures and aesthetcs as inspired as a pig vomit covered turd.

 

They were all exactly the same as daggerfall in that regaurd. The only thing that changed was they got smaller and smaller as the graphics improved. The combat remained exactly the same as the 90's sprite based game. It was acceptable... you know, back in the 90's.....

 

Skyrim tried to buck this with its gimmicky magic and shout system improvements, but all they did was staple a gimmick to the 90's elderscrolls horribad combat.

Can someone answer this for me. Wii U uses custom discs as they always have but it has the same capacity of blu ray at 25GB per layer. It's disc drive is a 5x cav 22MB per second. PS4 uses Blu Ray 6X cav 28 MB per second. PS3 was 2X. Can Wii U not do dual layer for some reason? Why the second disc?

 

My guess would be the seamless world.

 

The extra layer would increase the rom size capacity of the disc, but with that extra 25GB of data on that disc, well, now you have an extra 25GB of data adresses to search through when looking for, say, that texture the game wants to stream in, thats not currently in ram.... With the same search/read speed you had back with half the data to search through.

 

When you are watching a movie and everything is sequential, it doesnt really matter, when you are playing a game that stops to load the next area, it also does'nt really matter. When you are playing a 400 km squared seamless open world game, and you are doing tons of random access calls to your disc I bet having to deal with an extra 25GB adds up pretty fast.

Texture this game is FULL of a crazy variety of textures.

One of the first thinks I noticed. That's a TON of paint.

Even Destiny reuses a lot of textures and in Some areas takes the color palette really low.

But it till uses a ton of textures.

X however seems like and endless deluge of very large and variable graphics assets.

One of the more impressive things is looking down at the map from a high distance and not being able to notice texture tiles. That's huge. Try that with Skyrim and the like. Big difference.
Taking massive textures like that, the geometry, ai, scripting, collision detection,blighting, audio, etc... And fitting into aRam a with no loading... Whoa. That's dome serious load and memory management going on.

These guys deserve big sales just for being geniuses. Not to mention what's dhaping up to be a stellar game.

 

Oh, you mean like this?

 

 

I still can not believe how many people still swear up and down XcX is 'just on par with 360 open world games, its not doing anything ps360 hasnt done better in games like skyrim'

 

Its like they literally can not see the texture repeating every damn foot.

"[Kawabata] Xenoblade Chronicles X is using up most of the space on the Wii U disk. It's really, really close to the storage limit. (To the point that at one stage we were considering using more than one disk for the game). To enjoy playing, the enormous seamless map must load quickly (which was achieved through the hard work of our programming division), but we had help from Nintendo proper implementing a further improvement to what we had. I believe we're going to reveal the details of that on the official page in the future, but to people considering purchasing the packaged version of the game, as one of the game's developers, I highly recommend you make use of this improvement."

 

Sounds like there will be an install from disc option.

 

I WILL buy the packaged version of this game. And I will absolutely take you up on your suggestion, Mr. Kawabata.

*EDIT*
I told you to stop the damn tone policing. You had better start responding to what people have to say instead of your pedantic notions on how they say it.

If you dont know what tone policing is, google it.

If you cant figure out why tone policing is a horrible glib crappy way to behave, (hurr but i use all the 'polite' wordings as i completely dismiss everything they say to change the subject to how its said) then i suggest you just try actually talking about the game for once.

 

This goes for everyone. Tone policing, or the Tone argument fallacy, is a crappy demeaning way to behave, and I will have none of it here, and dont think because you use 'nice' words to do it, (there is no other way to do it) that its going to fool me, I respond to WHAT people SAY, not the way they say it. I expect everyone else to afford others the same respect.

Posts are back on topic now, no more derailing.

I can't wait for this game it is gorgeous but what is going to  erk me is that some people will down grade this game because it runs at 720p not 1080p and look past the seer beauty and scale of this game.  To run at 720p is still impressive to me because I haven't to see anything yet on the other 8th gen and even last gen consoles that had XBC X's atmospheric scale.  My hat goes off for the devs at Monolith they have truly outdone themselves.  Now if only we could get that bundle over here in the west.

The game could have been 1080p 60fps, and those people would have just made up some other reason to crap on the game.

So, is this a system seller for Japan... especially since Nintendo is offering a bundle?

I think so.

Confirmed:
 
The pre-load for the game which went live in Japan a short time ago confirms the following details:

- Single Player RPG
- 4 Players Online Quests
- 32 Players Indirect Online (For Information exchange and item trading)

#XenobladeX supports GamePad, #WiiU Pro Controller, USB keyboard. Miiverse support. Off-TV play. 720p. pic.twitter.com/doXkkkLoxj

Found what seems to be a pretty good translation of what went on in the video:

http://www.scooptend...ew-field-video/

OH COME ON NOW MONOLITH! COME ON! REALLY?! You just made EVERY Saga fans panties drop. This truly is Gears meets Saga meets Blade.

For some reason pretty much every saga 'fan' I know of outside this board absolutely hates Xenoblade and Xenoblade X (And has never played xenoblade), and any similarities and the fact its not on a playstation only seems to make them fester and hate more. Not that im surprised, this is, after all the 'fan' base that incessantly dog piled, mocked and ridiculed Sorayasaga to the point of attempted suicide when she needed support the most. They are already hate raging over this very screen. At least the gears fans are excited.



Anyways, Im pretty sure its beyond safe to say this is Episode 1 of the Xeno series. Modified for copyrights and the wisdom of experience gained of course, but this is blatantly chapter 1 of the Xeno story.

The layers!!!

Its so nice to finally see some more 3d game design in 3d open world games.

I am going to be going nuts with the screen captures

Good points.

But honestly, I feel Nintendo can eliminate a ton of this crap by simply marketing their games effectively. putting out high quality screenshots and videos all over the web (YouTube, create and send to ign etc...).

With X especially, unless you already own a wii u it was nigh impossible to see a good look at the footage.

If you see the YouTube videos, the "screenshots" all over the web, etc., they all look incredibly muddy, washed out, etc.

Then... You see the "direct" that moment Monolith put out and it's like "what the ohmygoshijustvomitedthewheatiesiateforbreakfastbevausethislookssofreakingamazing!"

It looks nearly like a different game because the difference between conpressed, decompressed, and decompressed again by the time it shows up anywhere. Then that crappy conpressed video gets a screen grab taken and compressed again into an even more crappy conpressed JPEG.

It actually makes me a little angry as this would be so freaking easy to fix by sending press kits with high quality screens and videos to the major players. And it would cost nearly nothing.

And the stinking media sites KNOW THIS. and they choose to use junk screens of junk videos.

When I show people the latest gameplay and tutorial video they unanimously freak out and have to have it.

Before then, they've heard of it a bit and weren't impressed.

It's all in the presentation.

Come on Nintendo.

Yes, we appreciate that you are focused on the GAME, not on swindling people out of their hard earned money.

But dadburnit, get with the program and have one or two people focus on marketing it right and leaving the industry with a proper high impression of the game.

Of course the media knows what they are doing to this game. They arent covering this game, because they are paid pr mouthpeices for AAAAAAA publishers. Nintendo refuses to play their reindeer games, so they give them gimped coverage, and the anti nintendo 'nintendo is backwards' narrative, because AAAAAAAA publishers want to make sure you know games that work the way they are advertised, work the moment you buy them and put in the disc, come complete for the buying price, instead of half a game for full price with a season pass sold seperately to get the whole game, is backwards because it doesnt have arbritrary feature that is nowhere near the big deal people have been brainwashed into thinking it is.

Voice chat is a nice feature. It is NOT a necessity for a game to not be worthless crap. The game actually WORKING when you put the disc in the machine, IS. But dont tell that to the media, thats not the picture their AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA retainers want to paint.

. There is no longer an enthusiest press for videogames, only extended pr mouthpeices.

Besides, there is no amount of advertising than cut through an entire generation of publisher media brainwashing.

People who are saying this:


Does more, and looks better, than this:




Are beyond the ability to objectively assess reality.