A Travelogue of Sorts
Many Types of Cheese
First, the caveat: I'm not overly familiar with European history/geography beyond a general idea of where the major countries are and the main languages. Thus, Switzerland being divided into a mostly-French-speaking half and mostly-German-speaking half was something of a surprise.
-The national stereotypes of Switzerland being full of picturesque wooded mountains, little villages, cows, goats, and cheese (as a result of the cows and goats) turned out to be entirely true, at least for the areas around Geneva. Even in the summer it got a bit chilly up in the mountains, however, so I suspect it's not a very good location for winter vacation unless you're into skiing or other snow sports. It's something of a mystery how commerce and industry in the little mountain villages work though.
-The national stereotypes of France being obsessed with its wine and cheese were also entirely true, as such were available every meal and apparently the cops around the area aren't too concerned with some amount of alcohol consumption so long as you were in sufficient command of your faculties when driving. In both France and Switzerland it seems quite common to get to a town and find out that there's a brand of cheese named after it (Gruyere, for example). Or wine, or both.
-The other thing that Europe is known for is its architecture; for some reason the American pioneers never saw fit to airlift their ancestral flying buttresses to the New World, so it's sometimes surprising to round a corner in some European town and find 15th century architecture and sometimes cannons. Modern architecture needs to be fancier, honestly. Same deal with the huge cathedrals (+1 Faith, Culture, and Happiness, 1 slot for great work of art) and their enormous stained glass windows and pipe organs surprisingly not full of beer.
-Speaking of beer, that also appears to be quite popular. As the eastern and western halves of Switzerland are split into German and French speaking communities, the food seems to also adhere to these lines. Near Geneva there's cheese, wine, dried meats, fruit, cheese, baguettes, truffles, cheese, lake fish, foie gras, and cheese. Towards Bern, on the other hand, you start getting into potato, sausage, and schnitzel territory. Also, beer. It should be noted that the meat-dipped-in-broth fondue they serve at Melting Pot is actually foreign to Swiss restaurants (apparently called "Chinese fondue" over there; the Chinese have no idea what they're talking about, of course) and true Swiss fondue is just cheese. A pleasant discovery was the availability of little potatoes to go with the usual bread as fondue dipping. Chocolate fondue is also apparently a foreign thing like fortune cookies.
-Along with the old buildings in urban areas there were also a number of old medieval castles chateaus (+3 Culture, +3 Gold, must be built next to cows wine), usually in defensive positions such as atop a hill or next to a lake. The ones open to the public put in a strong reminder that people were shorter in the past, as evidenced by the height of the doorways.
-The tourist industry seems rather important to Switzerland as a whole, so I'm not quite sure whether all the stuffed Saint-Bernards and bears are only for tourist trap purposes or also something the locals are into. There is also a bear pit at Bern, which was basically a bear-zoo just on the outskirts of town.
-Area outside Geneva was also way more rural than expected, consisting mostly of vineyards and cornfields. Agriculture right outside big cities is not something I've experienced much.
PAX
-Returned from Europe right into PAX with jetlag. Didn't go to any panels because the lines were long for the major presentations (Firaxis for example) and half the panels have apparently turned into sexism/racism/whatever stuff, which has been something of a delicate subject recently*.
-Did go to the SWToR cantina event, which was not actually part of the con (thankfully as I didn't have a pass for Sunday) and got free food (free booze was available but not into booze). The QA session with the devs wasn't terribly informative but I did get to ask about a bug-related issue that's been bugging me for a while.
*I totally get the frustration experienced by those gamers who are not into the traditional fanboy-oriented content of most AAA titles; it's something I've complained about as the moe culture in Japan's grown and many older series I used to like have turned into things I would not touch with a ten-foot pole (Shining Force, or the original Super Robot Wars spinoffs, off the top of my head). However, spewing vitriol at content for a different audience than yourself (instead of trying to support more content that you do want) seems counterproductive.
Game News
Haven't done one of these in forever.
-Civilization: Beyond Earth to be released on 10/24. For a game with a month and a half to go before release they've been showing a lot of gameplay and trailers, so one hopes that the final product will be relatively bug-free at launch.
-Speaking of 4X games IN SPACE, Galactic Civilizations 3 is in beta, key available with preorder. From the reviews (?) it seems that they're in a quite early stage of the beta where a bunch of systems are not yet working. The stated release date seems to be April 2015.
-Couple of demos at PAX for Kingdom Hearts 2.5 HD Remix, to be released on 10/2. There's even a special bundle for 1.5 and 2.5, which slightly makes me regret not waiting to buy 1.5.
-Disgaea 5 announced for PS4. Details unclear as of the moment.
-The next Ys game has also been announced for PS4, though both of these productions are some ways off. Given what we've seen in Sen no Kiseki it's unclear whether Falcom's 3D graphics technology actually warrants moving games to PS4 (the limit seems to be how much time/money they can throw at the content itself rather than technical limitations) but I guess we'll see.
-Persona 5, on the other hand, will be released on both PS3 and PS4.
-As will be the... remake? Sequel? to Bladestorm, subtitled Hundred Years War & Nightmare. This title is significant in that there's a Hundred Years War mode, based on the historical period as in the original game (camel archers and elephants in Normandy nothwithstanding) and a "Nightmare" mode that's completely fantasy-based, which is where the dragon in the trailer comes from. Perhaps we'll get King Arthur vs Boudicca vs Napoleon or something.
-There is also Sengoku Musou Chronicle 3, multi-platform for PSV and 3DS this time around, to be released 12/4.
-And after Zelda Musou, of course we're also getting a Dragon Quest Musou. Just in case Koei ran out of crossover material, or something.
-Tales of Zesteria, on the other hand, does not have a release date yet. It has introduced most of the characters and plot and combat system gimmicks, but there have been relatively few actual gameplay shots.
-Trailer out for Bravely Second, though it still hasn't answered the question of what the player party will look like as the game system isn't really geared towards a one-character party and we've not seen info on anybody other than Magnolia.
Non-game-news-related... or, well, semi-related, I guess - Capcom is suing Koei-Tecmo for use of "saves/content from older games used to unlock content in sequels". Quite aside from the question of what kind of judge allowed that patent in the first place, Capcom's Basara series is a blatant rip-off of Musou and Koei has thus far been turning a blind eye to it even though they would be totally justified in suing Capcom. While patents and copyrights are different things, it's mind-boggling that Capcom would even choose to poke this potential anthill.