LJ down? and Dragon Age 2 First Reactions.
Two drive by points before I go work on running all kinds of errands:
1. Is LJ down? downforeveryoneorjustme.com says so, so does lj's status page, but I'm curious if it's affecting everyone or just some clusters (albeit likely big ones) of users.
2. I finished Dragon Age 2 last night. (Given that I ended up being away from the game because I was out of town for a whole week, I'm pretty happy with how fast I played through it.) Slowly but surely I'm getting better at this gaming thing.
I'm intrigued by it.
Aside from the fact that I am very sad that I suck at getting the appearance of the main character to look like Adam Lambert because one of the companions looks a lot like Tommy Joe Ratliff. (The companion's name is Fenris, and he's an elf with an attitude.)
This makes me sad because on the romancing your companions front, Bioware did slightly better in DA2 than in DAO its expansion packs. (In DAO, there were two presumably bisexual characters who could be romanced by player characters of either gender. In DA2, all four companions who come with the basic game can be romanced by either gender.)
There was also not the epic fail of fatphobia, homophobia, and general misogyny that snuck up on me in Orzammar in DAO. On the other hand, there's the whitewashing of Isabela among other issues. And the whole city that the Hawke family flees to reads to me as vaguely Middle Eastern (as only fantasy can do, you know? not grounded in an actual fully developed lived world, when its done badly, but made up of touches and elements borrowed from existing cultures.) Given the plot, which I can't talk much about without spoiling, I find that setting problematic indeed.
On a more shallow note, I want a main character to look like Adam so he can romance Tommy. I might have giggled to myself about this a lot through the last play through. Because, apparently, I am 12.
I did appreciate the fact that I can play a female character who is attracted to women and still earn the romance badge. (More than ME2, Bioware.) And I appreciate that if not for the fact that I played on a PS3 and that I suck at it, I could customize my PC avatar to get that Adam/Tommy romance (unlike ME2. I'm still looking at you, Bioware.)
Gwen from Torchwood voices one of the other companions. Which is cool, but weird, since that character didn't have a UK accent in DAO.
Everything in the reviews is true. I worked really hard to avoid spoilers, so it drove me nuts for a while every time I'd get to an area with the same layout as a previous area in which I couldn't open certain doors. Once I got far enough into the game to guess the plot, I did some careful reading of reviews, all of which talked about that.
It's also made me want to go back and finish Awakening.
and it's just like DAO in that I now want to go back an play it several more times, to see what changes to the plotline my character's decisions can make. I had to stop watching a let's play partway through (I'd play up to a point, and then watch the LP up to that point. For those who are unfamiliar with games, LPs are audio/visual files of someone playing the game and commenting on it captured from their computers during play. They're like walkthroughs, but when done well, they come with commentary that a walkthrough doesn't.) because that player had made different choices, and I don't want to be totally spoiled for all of those. Bioware knows how to push my bulletproof narrative kinks something fierce. I kind of wish that they didn't.
It does better on the lack of video game logic than a lot of the games I've played. (I am a n00b who doesn't play many games, so if there are cool games not from big studios out there, chances are I don't know about them. Feel free to fill me in.) By VGL what I mean is that your lawful paladin can open chests of loot in other peoples' homes without consequence. (For those who don't game, most role-playing games keep track of how much your character breaks laws, helps people cross the street, takes bribes, uses violence to bully others, etc. In some worlds, certain classes must maintain a certain approach to the world when it comes to things like good and evil, law and rebellion. But video games often allow (nay, even encourage) your character to break those rules without consequence. For example, the fact that you're a big deal means that you can blithely break laws with no consequences. Like wandering around a city that imprisons its mages with mages in your party without anyone noticing. There are still plenty of moments that strain credulity, but there are also moments in which your actions have consequences, and I kind of liked that.
In the lead up to the very last big battle, I was so deeply engrossed in the story, that I actually killed of a companion whose skills I really needed in the big battle. Normally, while I role play when its convenient, I still play with an eye to strategy. It was only well after I'd killed that character that I realized what I'd done. So kudos to Bioware for making a narrative that sucked me in that deeply.
I think that's partly because like ME2, the player character is fully voiced. We hear Hawke throughout the whole game, rather than just choosing written lines of dialogue that the other characters hear but we don't. It's a more immersive interactive narrative than DA:O and DA:O-A.
I see why they limit us to playing humans. It would have been very, very expensive to do multiple recordings of different voice actors with that many hours of dialogue. But I still don't like it.
And the appearances of DAO characters were all great.
I assume they're'll be tie in novels; I'm not sure now if I want to read them. They kind of made me dislike the world more when I read the DAO ones, and they definitely made me dislike David Gaider.
At any rate, that particular monkey is off my back. The first playthrough is achieved. I am never quite as obsessed on a second run, so, yay.
If anyone else is playing and wants to talk about it, feel free to do so in comments. I just can't promise that comments will stay spoiler free. If they don't, I'll edit this post to note that as soon as I can, but I have errands to run today, so I'll be AFK off an on. As a result, I'll ask those who put spoilers in the comments to do their best to make them skippable for anyone who wants to avoid them.
1. Is LJ down? downforeveryoneorjustme.com says so, so does lj's status page, but I'm curious if it's affecting everyone or just some clusters (albeit likely big ones) of users.
2. I finished Dragon Age 2 last night. (Given that I ended up being away from the game because I was out of town for a whole week, I'm pretty happy with how fast I played through it.) Slowly but surely I'm getting better at this gaming thing.
I'm intrigued by it.
Aside from the fact that I am very sad that I suck at getting the appearance of the main character to look like Adam Lambert because one of the companions looks a lot like Tommy Joe Ratliff. (The companion's name is Fenris, and he's an elf with an attitude.)
This makes me sad because on the romancing your companions front, Bioware did slightly better in DA2 than in DAO its expansion packs. (In DAO, there were two presumably bisexual characters who could be romanced by player characters of either gender. In DA2, all four companions who come with the basic game can be romanced by either gender.)
There was also not the epic fail of fatphobia, homophobia, and general misogyny that snuck up on me in Orzammar in DAO. On the other hand, there's the whitewashing of Isabela among other issues. And the whole city that the Hawke family flees to reads to me as vaguely Middle Eastern (as only fantasy can do, you know? not grounded in an actual fully developed lived world, when its done badly, but made up of touches and elements borrowed from existing cultures.) Given the plot, which I can't talk much about without spoiling, I find that setting problematic indeed.
On a more shallow note, I want a main character to look like Adam so he can romance Tommy. I might have giggled to myself about this a lot through the last play through. Because, apparently, I am 12.
I did appreciate the fact that I can play a female character who is attracted to women and still earn the romance badge. (More than ME2, Bioware.) And I appreciate that if not for the fact that I played on a PS3 and that I suck at it, I could customize my PC avatar to get that Adam/Tommy romance (unlike ME2. I'm still looking at you, Bioware.)
Gwen from Torchwood voices one of the other companions. Which is cool, but weird, since that character didn't have a UK accent in DAO.
Everything in the reviews is true. I worked really hard to avoid spoilers, so it drove me nuts for a while every time I'd get to an area with the same layout as a previous area in which I couldn't open certain doors. Once I got far enough into the game to guess the plot, I did some careful reading of reviews, all of which talked about that.
It's also made me want to go back and finish Awakening.
and it's just like DAO in that I now want to go back an play it several more times, to see what changes to the plotline my character's decisions can make. I had to stop watching a let's play partway through (I'd play up to a point, and then watch the LP up to that point. For those who are unfamiliar with games, LPs are audio/visual files of someone playing the game and commenting on it captured from their computers during play. They're like walkthroughs, but when done well, they come with commentary that a walkthrough doesn't.) because that player had made different choices, and I don't want to be totally spoiled for all of those. Bioware knows how to push my bulletproof narrative kinks something fierce. I kind of wish that they didn't.
It does better on the lack of video game logic than a lot of the games I've played. (I am a n00b who doesn't play many games, so if there are cool games not from big studios out there, chances are I don't know about them. Feel free to fill me in.) By VGL what I mean is that your lawful paladin can open chests of loot in other peoples' homes without consequence. (For those who don't game, most role-playing games keep track of how much your character breaks laws, helps people cross the street, takes bribes, uses violence to bully others, etc. In some worlds, certain classes must maintain a certain approach to the world when it comes to things like good and evil, law and rebellion. But video games often allow (nay, even encourage) your character to break those rules without consequence. For example, the fact that you're a big deal means that you can blithely break laws with no consequences. Like wandering around a city that imprisons its mages with mages in your party without anyone noticing. There are still plenty of moments that strain credulity, but there are also moments in which your actions have consequences, and I kind of liked that.
In the lead up to the very last big battle, I was so deeply engrossed in the story, that I actually killed of a companion whose skills I really needed in the big battle. Normally, while I role play when its convenient, I still play with an eye to strategy. It was only well after I'd killed that character that I realized what I'd done. So kudos to Bioware for making a narrative that sucked me in that deeply.
I think that's partly because like ME2, the player character is fully voiced. We hear Hawke throughout the whole game, rather than just choosing written lines of dialogue that the other characters hear but we don't. It's a more immersive interactive narrative than DA:O and DA:O-A.
I see why they limit us to playing humans. It would have been very, very expensive to do multiple recordings of different voice actors with that many hours of dialogue. But I still don't like it.
And the appearances of DAO characters were all great.
I assume they're'll be tie in novels; I'm not sure now if I want to read them. They kind of made me dislike the world more when I read the DAO ones, and they definitely made me dislike David Gaider.
At any rate, that particular monkey is off my back. The first playthrough is achieved. I am never quite as obsessed on a second run, so, yay.
If anyone else is playing and wants to talk about it, feel free to do so in comments. I just can't promise that comments will stay spoiler free. If they don't, I'll edit this post to note that as soon as I can, but I have errands to run today, so I'll be AFK off an on. As a result, I'll ask those who put spoilers in the comments to do their best to make them skippable for anyone who wants to avoid them.