What piece of content would you most like to have a sequel or reboot?
There are two easy answers for me. The first, as you might have guessed from the top picture, is Deus Ex. That needs another sequel. Or rather, Mankind Divided needs to be finished. Squenix thought they could jump onto the “episodic” game bandwagon, and deliver, at most, 2/3 of a story, with some added multiplayer game modes to keep the players satisfied. This didn’t work. No matter how good that piece of a story game it is, it’s not complete, and this time the players didn’t bite. Which led to Squenix basically cancelling the series. Which sucks, because Mankind Divided was the first Deus Ex sequel to even come close to the first game.
The second is going to be a little different: Star Trek. Star Trek needs to be rebooted. But, you might say, it’s been rebooted once, maybe twice in the last decade or so. True, but it’s all sucked, and sucked hard. Only the first reboot film, in 2009, at least managed to be fun while sucking, which means watching it wasn’t a chore. Maybe Lower Decks can bring back the feeling of real Trek. (I hear the latest episode might actually be decent; the clips I’ve seen are funnier themselves than the last two episodes put together, at least.) But I want a return to form: sci-fi shows set on a military space thingy where the future is hopeful, but weird and dangerous stuff happens. Also having good writing and characters would be good too. We don’t have any of that now.
Poppin’ Party could be considered the “main” band of Bang Dream. They’re the first band you meet, they’ve got the most story, and really they’re the reason the game even exists (Kasumi’s voice actor was already doing music for the company, so they decided to make a game about girls’ bands.) As such, they’re probably the least-defined band out of the bunch. Musically, it’s all over the place: they’ve got some rockin’ stuff, but also some really sugary pop stuff. If you’ve ever listened to K-On’s music, HTT is a good match for Poppin’ Party (PP) (it wouldn’t surprise me if the characters are a good match too; the two bands have a lot in common…).
To tell the story of PP would be to tell the story of the game, so I’ll quickly summarize. Kasumi follows a trail of stickers into Arisa’s house (yes, into her house), which doubles as a pawn shop. Inside the shop’s storage there’s a Random Star guitar; Kasumi, who’s obsessed with stars (the stickers were star stickers), must have this. And what’s the point of having a guitar if there’s no band? So Kasumi, despite never having played before, strongarms a few weaker-willed individuals (like Arisa) into her band. Of course they aren’t any good at first, but they have passion, and that’s what counts in anime. They eventually become a sort of “mascot” band for their neighborhood, and the local concert venue.
And now for the girls:
Kasumi Toyama
Kasumi, the leader and founder of Poppin’ Party, is, to put it simply, a complete idiot. She’s the girl version of a typical shounen manga protagonist: bad at school, headstrong, loud, brash, stubborn, friendly to a fault, full to overflowing with energy, rushes into things without thinking, and comes up with all sorts of silly ideas. Being an idiot, she often doesn’t realize how difficult things will be, until she’s hit some point of discouragement, where she falls apart. But being simple, she’s easy to put back together too, and gets right back up to try something else. She’s also got an almost irresistible force of will, which helps her get her way more often than not, when she can’t give good reason for a thing.
Kasumi is both the vocalist and rhythm guitarist for PP. She’s the only one who had no experience whatsoever with her instrument, so she’s the one that had the furthest to come. However, if nothing else, she has determination, and she puts in the effort to get to an acceptable level. She is also the main lyricist, which explains why the songs are so all over the place musically – she basically goes with her whims.
Arisa Ichigaya
Arisa is about the exact opposite of Kasumi. Where Kasumi is the Fool, Arisa is the Straight Man, in traditional manzai comedy fashion. Arisa is incredibly smart, top of her class, despite rarely coming to school (because she had no friends, so why bother?). Arisa pretty much just wants a normal, quiet life, but then she always gets caught up with a bunch of weirdos and antics. She tries to keep her feelings to herself, but she’s as easy to read as Kasumi, and often ends up blushing when caught trying to act cool. Sche puts on airs of being a proper young lady, demure and polite; despite that, she doesn’t suffer fools well, and often has outbursts when crazy stuff happens – usually aimed at Kasumi, the likely cause of such crazy stuff.
Arisa is the keyboardist for the band. She learned how to play piano as a child, but she hasn’t kept up with it. She’s the type that always likes to be extremely prepared and in control, so her lack of skill is always nervewracking, on top of her usual shyness. She also acts somewhat as the manager for the band: Kasumi is always half-planning stuff, and Arisa likes to be sure in every detail, so she takes care of those things. (Also doesn’t hurt that her basement is the home base for the band.) While she doesn’t like to admit it, she really cares for the band, and goes the extra mile for them.
Rimi Ushigome
Rimi is just one giant ball of anxiety in a small frame. She’s extremely shy, quite nervous, and takes a long time to make decisions for herself. So naturally, she got swept up in Kasumi’s tornadic energy. She’s also kinda dumb, which doesn’t help matters (though not anywhere near Kasumi’s level). However, she likes what she likes, and is very willing to let everyone know: chocolate coronets, horror movies, and music.
Rimi is the bassist for the band. Her older sister is the bassist for another band (Glitter Green), who taught her the basics on how to play. Even so, she’s not too skilled at the start, and much like Arisa, gets incredibly nervous during performances. Even so, she was the first one to say yes when Kasumi wanted to form a band, and is always excited for both practice and performances.
Tae Hanazono
Tae can be summed up in one phrase: space cadet. She’s never really all there. Sometimes she seems like a complete idiot, while others she’s the wisest one in the room. Usually the former, though. She’s always ready to go along with Kasumi’s ideas, often confusing the situation even more (much to Arisa’s consternation). If ever there was a non-sequitur that didn’t need to be said, she’s there to say it – usually about rabbits.
Tae is the lead guitarist for PP. She’s the only band member who’s particularly skilled with their instrument, having played guitar since she was a child. However, she never joined a band before PP – she preferred to watch; in fact, at the start of the game she’s working for a concert hall. She joins PP after tutoring Kasumi for a while, convinced that there was something special with her, some special feeling with the band.
That’s not what the fanfics say…
Saya Yamabuki
Saya is the Normal One. While Arisa tries to be normal, Saya actually is. In fact, she’s so normal, I don’t have much to say about her. She’s not dumb or smart. She’s grounded and centered. But she doesn’t really perform any role in the dynamic of PP. She’s just kinda there being pretty. Her parents run a local bakery, which means she’s often left taking care of her younger siblings. In fact, this makes her the last member of PP to join up – she felt her family responsibilities would interfere with the band.
Saya is the drummer. She was actually a drummer for another band in the past, but she quit after a family incident (which, again, made her extremely hesitant to join with PP). Her role in the band mostly seems to be getting treats for parties and practices. It’s funny, she basically gets an event that’s all about her, and yet she still doesn’t make much of an impression to me.
Tell us about some of your hobbies outside of the realm of your specific niche.
I’m guessing that’s talking about hobbies I don’t talk about here on the blog. Uh…
So let’s change the prompt around a bit! I’m going to talk about a hobby that I want to get into, but haven’t because of lack of time or money, or laziness (usually this). And that’s cooking, and baking in particular.
I like cooking. It’s something I’ve enjoyed doing for some time. But I don’t do it very often. Thing is, when I’m actually needing to eat, I don’t want to cook. It’s like my enjoyment goes out the window, fleeing from me like some sort of scared bird. But when I’m not hungry, I also don’t want to cook, since I don’t want to eat – and I don’t particularly enjoy eating reheated food either. Nor do I like making basic “meal” foods, like the stuff you make from a box. Not that I’m bad at that, but it’s just not fun. What a pickle. So I either eat out or do frozen stuff (which fits with my diet, but it’s not fun, and I’m almost too lazy for that).
I also don’t mind baking, generally. Just mix stuff up, put it in the oven, and let it take care of itself. Well, sometimes. Breads and pastries require more effort, and I’m lazy. But they taste sooooo good, and there’s a lot that I”ve never tried before, that you have to pay real money to get at a bakery.
So, at present I just watch cooking shows on the internet. Sure, the food looks good, and it makes me hungry. But then I look at the prep, all the ingredient, and I balk. As I said a couple days ago, this past weekend some siblings came by for breakfast (they were passing through the area after a vacation). I was thinking of what I could make, and I thought, I’ve always wanted to try the big fluffy pancakes you see in anime. So I looked up some videos, and it’s pretty simple. But I don’t have a mixer, and you have to make a meringue (which I’ve never done before), and then it’s a bit finicky to actually cook, and excuse after excuse. So I just did french toast, which was good and fun, but not new or exciting.
So, that’s something I want to get into. Just need to get a stand mixer, a hand mixer, a bunch of ingredients, a pot or three…
(Naturally there will be spoilers, especially for the most recent main story chapters.)
Sometimes you can have a good story, but it’s undermined by poor writing. The opposite can also be true – a bad story can have good writing. Today we’re going to look at an example of the former, in the newest addition to the main story.
To bring everyone up to speed, all you need to know is that The Great Evil, Fantasy Satan, (officially, The Other) was defeated, and Zethia was saved. Except then she was kidnapped pretty much immediately, and now Euden and friends going to get her back (conveniently, the kidnapper told them where to find her). Turns out that said kidnapper, Nedrick, is the boss of the Agito (the super-powered bad guy group of evil), has it in for Euden.
Now the big reveal comes (to Euden – the players have had this information for months): Euden isn’t the natural-born prince, but was adopted after the king’s seventh child died soon after birth. There’s some other stuff too, like Valyx (one of the other princes) gets turned into an Agito temporarily, everyone gets beat up by the agitos, and so on. But the big deal is supposed to be how everyone, and particularly Euden, reacts to the fact that Euden isn’t who he thinks he is.
Naturally, pretty much everyone except Euden is fine with it, because they are his friends. Euden is at first shocked, as one would expect, but he eventually gets over himself and gets back to work.
My overall reaction is a big Meh. There isn’t any real revelation here that we didn’t already know. There’s no big character stuff that we couldn’t already guess. There isn’t even a whole lot of character drama, besides what I’ve shown above. As far as worldbuilding goes, the only thing we get is the reveal of the last Agito in-game, and just what is up with them (the masks are magitech that brings out base emotions while simultaneously really buffing their stats.- basically turning people into monsters).
That, and there were two bits where the writing really took me out of it. The big one was during the reveal – why would anybody as smart as Nedrick (who had everything figured out) think this would change much. Sure, being told you’re adopted, when you thought your parents were your birth parents, is a big deal. But that doesn’t effectively change anything here: as Euden correctly points out above (though he does it to himself, when he should be saying it out loud), he’s got the dragon blood, so no matter what, he’s in. And, from Nedrick’s (and everyone else’s) point of view, he was officially adopted anyways (says so right in that book), so he’s got claim as much as anyone else. All the official stuff he’s done is just as legitimate as it always was. And all his friends there literally heard Alberius – the founder of the kingdom – tell Euden that he was the true heir to his power. And of course, that doesn’t change how his siblings feel about him – the older ones presumably know, and Zethia is the last person who would care (and now it’s not incest anymore…). As we see, Nedrick’s plan isn’t to usurp Euden’s place, even he did want to kill him, so I don’t see the point.
Second, back earlier Ciella tried to sow conflict in the heroes by implying that Eli had a secret that could ruin their friendship (it’s that she already knew about Euden’s situation, that’s all). As if friends didn’t have secrets from each other. This is a thing that comes up a lot in media for teens (or is written like such, as many jrpg’s are). The fact that this worked, even a little, upset me a bit, and took me out of the story. In a somewhat smart move by the writers, Euden at least dismisses this, saying that Eli will tell them in her own time, but it’s not important at that moment. Of course, if the writing were actually good, someone (I’d say Shanon, both for in-character reasons, and because she’s the one that got the idiot ball here) would point out that even friends keep secrets from each other, and that’s perfectly ok.
(We also have the fact that Brunhilda forgets she’s a dragon, and jobs in her human form; but that’s usually the case, so I’ll just ignore if for now.)
So yah, pretty middling new chapter that didn’t live up to the hype. Though I guess they never do. Even though there were a few easy fixes to the writing, overall this is basically a filler arc, right before the start of the next part of the adventure.
If you could meet any person you look up to, who would it be?
And I have to echo his response:
No one.
Now, my reason is completely different. I don’t want to meet anyone I look up to. I’m already awkward enough meeting people I already know, let alone complete strangers. Meeting someone I look up to would just put me so out of whack that I’d completely waste the opportunity. Hell, I do that enough with people I’ve known for quite a while.
And it’s not a lack of confidence, or social anxiety (well, not just…). I’m just bad at that whole “conversation” thing. Just yesterday, I had breakfast with a couple of my siblings who happened to be passing through town. I am quite comfortable with them, as one would expect. But still, the conversation was a bit awkward and forced. Not through any strain in our relationship, but just my lack of being a good conversation partner.
So yah, no meeting heroes, or even just people I admire.
BUT…there are some people I’d like to talk to. Not just random conversations, obviously, but about topical stuff.
You.
Well, not you, specifically, necessarily, but the general type of person who would come to this blog. If you’re here, it’s because you share some interest with me. Probably video games, maybe Star Trek. Something we could talk about. I’d say some of the people I follow on Twitter or Youtube would be fun to talk to, too. Maybe not in person, but on a podcast or stream maybe. I often have delusions that I have something meaningful to say about a particular topic, and it’d be nice to do it in a somewhat more personal manner than this blog.
Some months ago I got a new car. It came with Sirius satellite radio, something I’d never experienced before. Much to my surprise, unlike the traditional radio with its broad genre stations, the Sirius stations are often quite specific. While there’s an Oldies station, there’s also a whole Beatles station.
I looked through the station list, and one stuck out to me: Ch. 39, Hair Nation. Hair metal all day, erry day. I love me some classic rock, and I figured some stuff I’d like would be there, but, like most folks, I generally made fun of the whole concept of hair metal. Still I tuned in.
And it’s been the only channel I’ve listened to the whole time.
There were a lot of familiar tunes there, but also some new stuff. Queensryche was one of those new ones to me. If there was one band that was exemplary of that hard metal sound back at the start of the 80’s, it would be them. And also hair, I suppose. I’ve listened to a bunch of their stuff on Youtube by now, and it doesn’t stay that way. But I still think they’re quite good overall. Below is probably my favorite of theirs.
This episode is better than the last one. It’s funnier (I laughed twice). Mariner is slightly less annoying. This is far less of a parody and more a straight comedy. If I must give a rating, it’s Meh. (Last episode would be rated Bad.)
Again, Mariner is the worst part of the episode. As I said, she isn’t as annoying, but she still is. Her major character flaw from the first episode, her dangerously impulsive nature, is gone. Now she’s merely a free spirit. But she moves extremely squarely in Mary Sue territory. The only time she does something strictly wrong, it’s [spoiler] not actually wrong, but just helping her buddy out.
The other thing that continues to bug me is that they keep Boimler (or whatever his name is) as the buttmonkey. It’s one thing to take the uptight prick down a peg or two, but he isn’t that. They just won’t give this guy a break. His main job just seems to be making Mariner look better by comparison. He’s obviously also supposed to be in the straightman role, but the point of the straightman is that they are usually correct/right, and that never happens for this character.
I still don’t know who this show is for. The humor is quite immature, and not particularly smart. Not that this is a bad thing in and of itself (that top pic is one of those times I laughed), but CBS is trying to market this show as a proper Trek show (not the for-kids cartoon), and Trek fans skew older, more mature. It’s trying to catch that Rick and Morty audience, but they won’t want to watch this, I’d bet. It’s too Trek, and we know that isn’t very popular right now, despite all the money being thrown at it. Once again, it’s clear that Trek fans made this show – you can’t make the above pic by just skimming Memory Alpha (which is how STD and Picard were written). But other Trek fans don’t really want to watch this either.
This was the other time I laughed, but I figure there are maybe only 200 people in the entire world that know why.
Dragalia Lost is one of those games I really like for some reason. I’m not terribly good at it, and it’s not the best game, even in its genre, but still I keep with it. I think it’s mostly due to the story. There’s just something quite charming about it.
Not to say that it’s particularly good or anything; it’s not winning awards anytime soon. And that’s a shame. I know story is just an ancillary thing for this sort of mobile game – this one actually has gameplay – but the devs think it’s obviously still important for the fans, since they’ve put more of a focus on getting more story out, and faster. But…it leaves something to be desired. With just a little more depth, a bit more thought than the basic jrpg tropes, especially in the main story, and it could be something really special here.
To put it simply, the game’s protagonist (Euden) is the seventh child (of eight) of a good king. Said good king dies at the beginning, after getting possessed by The Great Evil. The Great Evil (not it’s name, just what it is) then possesses the younger twin sister of the MC, Zethia, who also happened to be the figurehead of the local dragon-worshiping religion (ie, the fantasy pope gets possessed by the fantasy devil) – and therefore is not a potential heir to the throne. Then said Great Evil decides she/it is going to take over the kingdom, and does – and renames the kingdom from Generic Eurofantasyland to The Evil Empire.
Right there, there’s something potentially interesting. See, one needs to have a claim on the throne, in order to claim the throne. (At least politically.) Zethia had no claim, so she has no authority to claim. Now, being The Great Evil, she has phenomenal power, and that creates an authority of its own. But that power needs to be demonstrated first. From all that we can tell, Zethia just walked onto the throne and claimed it, no opposition (besides from Euden’s little band, who’ve been branded as kingslayers – one of the few things the story gets right in this area). Not only did Zethia not have any claim in the first place, but she’s also the eighth child of the king. What about the other six or so? We quickly learn (and it makes sense) that a few don’t care about ruling, or are otherwise unfit to do so. But that still leaves at least one, and probably more, that should contest this – most notably the oldest, who naturally was assuming he’d be the next king (and has the ambition and ability to do so). But no, we see all of Euden’s older siblings simply fall in line, and none of the nobles dispute such a breech in propriety. Oh, and no one seems to really care that Zethia, the Fantasy Pope, remember, renamed the kingdom to basically be The Evil Empire – the evil world-conquering empire ruled by and worshiping The Great Evil, whom the kingdom’s founder vanquished. No big deal I guess – even to the religion she’s the head of, which is specifically opposed to said Great Evil.
And that just takes into account the internal palace politics. What about the international scene? At least the game takes some time to flesh out its world a bit: there are the not!forest elves (Sylvans), who nominally are part of this kingdom, but not really because they all live in the inpenetrable woods (and are thus exotic to humans – except for all those generic Slyvan NPC’s that show up in town scenes all the time); the other generic Eurofantasy kingdom to the north that is apparently somewhat hostile but not really since we get some of them as gacha characters; the not!Venice merchant city-state to the west; the not!China somewhere to the east (but not too far east); and the not!Japan, also not too far to the east. How do all these react to this turmoil? Asides from the not!Venice, we don’t really know – and even in this case, we only know something because the MC asks for their help, for an alliance.
And then there’s the issue of Euden and his band. At the beginning Euden and friends find an abandoned castle – abandoned, because it was hidden in a magic forest with magical mist. They use this as a base to harass the Evil Empire, and to help the various people messed up by said Evil Empire. Eventually there’s a sufficiently-large amount of refugees that Euden actually is able to declare independence from Evil Empire. What comes of this major event? Not a whole lot. Besides going to not!Venice to get an ally, things just proceed in typical JRPG fashion: save villagers from monsters or The Evil Empire, go to parties, throw parties. entertain foreigners, fight off the occasional Evil Empire patrol, and so on. The game’s story rarely uses the fact that Euden is a ruler to much effect. Sometimes, late in the story, he commands an army, or something, but generally he’s just a jrpg protagonist going around with his jrpg party gathering allies. And of course there’s the typical gacha stuff where he interacts personally with just about every character, in a manner befitting a jrpg protagonist, not a ruler (they say king; but duke, or maybe even count, would be more appropriate).
In just these few worldbuilding, political areas, the game somewhat falls flat. And it’s a real shame, because this isn’t just another typical jrpg (or even western rpg) story. They could have actually done something special here, but they didn’t even think out the implications of events in their own story. And that’s the real kicker – I think a lot of people look down on mobile rpg stories because the stories tend to do this. It seems most stories aren’t written by proper writers, but by people high up on the dev team – often the directors themselves – and that can lead to these situations where there are good idea seeds, but the seeds aren’t allowed to grow and mature, at least not properly (tonight’s story update is probably going to be a good example of this, but that’s spoiler territory). It’s just lost potential.
I’m going to be honest here: this was really hard. Sure, one or two of these won’t surprise anyone who’s been reading the blog at all, but beyond the obvious? I just don’t know. Lately, a lot of things that used to animate me…don’t. But, I will persevere.
Pizza
I love pizza. Really love it. I eat it as much as I can, which is obvious looking at my physique. Up there is a picture from one of my favorite places, Shakey’s. Haters gonna hate, but I love that style for some reason. But I love pretty much all pizza. Deep dish, paper-thin, lots of toppings, just cheese, whatever, I love it. Sure, there are pizzas I don’t like, and I of course have my preferences, but pizza is one of those things that excites me, just thinking about it. I look forward with great anticipation every pizza day, all week.
Astronomy
I don’t remember if I actually was the one that took the image on the right, but I was definitely the one who analysed the data to make it.
When I was a kid I really loved space. Then I kinda grew out of it; or perhaps more accurately, lost exposure. Your typical high school just doesn’t focus on that. When I went back to uni I took a 101 course in Astronomy, as an easy elective for my Physics degree. Sure, it was that, but it rekindled my excitement for astronomy. I took a few more astronomy classes, but reigned it in, as I needed to eventually graduate. But I figured I’d take the rest of my science electives in astronomy. Unfortunately, the timing didn’t work out for that (some classes only offered a certain semester, which were gatekeeper classes for more stuff, etc.), but I did get to do some actual work and research with the telescope, which was awesome (even though I had a 4am shift for work…). If I had to do it again, I’d skip out on Physics, and go into Astronomy.
Star Trek
This was one of the obvious ones. Hell, I named my blog after Trek. I love Star Trek to death. Good Trek, that is. Or even mediocre Trek. But not the bad stuff. That’s part of why I haven’t been able to get excited about much lately: one of my greatest loves is just plain bad, and has been for most things since Enterprise ended about 15 years ago. All the new official canon is bad or terrible. Can’t get that thrill anymore about any announcements, because all that can come of that is disappointment. At least the old stuff is still there, and I love talking about that at every opportunity. I even still play STO, despite it going the way of the dog too.
Gacha Game Stories
I like game stories in general. I know most game writers aren’t the best, but I tend to like them anyways. I of course get most excited for RPG’s, because they usually have the most, and best, story. But I put gacha games here in focus because they deliver on a regular basis. Sure, they tend to be merely context for image and sound files for whatever gameplay there is, but that’s what I love about it. As I said, I’m not expecting an epic, or a classic, but just something decent (in fact, in a future post – maybe tomorrow – I’ll talk about some things that would improve the stories in a couple of games I play). I like the background. I like the context. I like that they are short. And I love the delivery schedule the best. The games I play deliver some new story or another at least once a month. Even MMO’s generally take several months between story content updates; they might be meatier in comparison, but they’re just as disposable. In an earlier era, I’d probably be the guy devouring every pulp sci-fi magazine; these gacha game stories are a modern equivalent, I think. And, as I posted towards the beginning of the month, I really dislike it when people just dismiss the stories as trash, without engaging with them. Tell me why you think it’s trash. I just want to talk about these, have a discussion, theorycraft, worldbuild, headcanon, I don’t even care what you think as long as we’re talking. That’s exciting.
As I stated long ago, I made up a little bit of a history to the world of the Deus Ex games. Yes, I know they’re supposed to be “our world,” but obviously things haven’t happened as they said they would in the games. But even considering that, there’s a lot of the “behind the scenes” stuff that isn’t necessarily what happened in our real history, that would matter to the world of Deus Ex. Naturally, all that follows is my own creation, basically a bit of fanfiction.
1919 – During the negotiations to form the League of Nations, a group of world leaders and major businessmen come together to form the Illuminati – a group to guide the future of mankind to a better, and thus more profitable, place, where major wars would not disrupt the general progress of mankind. The world would become a more united order, the people losing the dangerous differences of racism and nationalism, but instead become a block of consumers and workers. Both the United States and the Soviet Union reject this plan. The Soviets create their own (less) hidden guiding order instead, modeled after Marx’s ideals. In America, however, there is a lot of support for the Illuminati.
During the Great Depression, the Illuminati are able to install a series of puppets in the United States, up to the president, Roosevelt. However, their fortunes are reversed in Europe, where Germany, Italy, and Spain all break free from Illuminati influence. The Fascists, however, do not form another secret block; Hitler instead chooses to go the old-fashioned route of alliances, diplomacy, and war.
After WWII, the Illuminati and the Soviet block consolidate their power. Between the two, most of the nations of the earth fall under the influence of some secret society – pretty much everything besides Africa. It pretty much follows the communist/not communist lines.
Until Nixon, that is. Nixon opening up China was really the Illuminati gaining control influence over the Chinese government. The Illuminati doesn’t really care what form the government takes, as long as it follows guidelines.
Speaking of Africa, that proved to be a huge problem for both the Illuminati and the Soviets. Both pushed anti-colonialism – new, weak governments are easier clients than a strong empire, after all – but Africa quickly became a mess. Africans weren’t interested in merely having new masters. And all the aid and bribes in the world couldn’t overcome the tribalism and corruption of these new, weak governments. It wouldn’t be until later that things settled down enough for the big players to gain a foothold there.
In the late 1980’s, the Soviet block fell apart. Authoritarianism and militarism couldn’t compete with globalist consumerism, neither economically nor psychologically. The Illuminati took over the structures the Soviets had put in place.
The rise of the Internet in the 1990’s greatly expanded the power and control of the Illuminati. It’s much easier to control the hearts and minds of a few prominent elite than to seriously influence the masses. The Internet allowed the Illuminati to directly interface with millions, and eventually billions. And of course, the data collected would create ever-better ways to reach said billions, individually, until basically everyone was constantly under surveillance.
Either patriotism, or the lack thereof, could be used to further the Illuminati’s ends. But both in the same country, in significant amounts, were a problem. America was in this state, with half patriots and half anti-patriots. This sort of soft cultural separation kept both halves on their guard. A crisis would be needed to either push one way or the other, or completely separate the two sides. Fortuitously, terrorists attacking New York City created that crisis for them; this created a clean cultural divide that the Illuminati could exploit, both against the world and against each other. Control of the internet would exacerbate relations on both sides, creating an easily-exploitable paranoia. Various plagues, foreign wars, and disasters would only increase this.
To add to this political turmoil, mechanical augmentations became a huge cultural phenomenon. First started with helping maimed soldiers gain full mobility, augmentations quickly became more and more advanced, to the point where not having them became a major disadvantage in pretty much every area of life.
Dating Sims on the Holodeck 