OOC: Games and Games and Roleplay and Things..
So the last few days I've split my time between writing character backstory, playing a visual novel, and watching Squall play the xbox when I haven't been making use of the Netflix and forcing supernatural drama on us all. There's a lot of story and ideas floating around in my head now, for better or worse.
Some cuts here and there for length (for those who don't care).
I've been watching him play Lost Odyssey, which is an RPG we've had sitting around for a long while and neither of us have ever successfully gotten very far in. That's not been because it's a bad story or a poorly executed game by any means.. mostly it's because we only recently acquired an HD television and can finally read the menu text. Yes, seriously. Though in its defence, I don't think it was an issue of not being high definition but a problem of my old tv being really quite small and crappy. Games are a little easier to play when you don't get frustrated, of course. The voice acting and animations are really quite good and I find the characters interesting. He's on disc two of four (which is quite a lot of content for the xbox, I think) and the pace is not as fast as the earliest parts, but I still have a ton of questions I'm eager to see answered. It's also promising that the game isn't completely linear but doesn't just drop into something completely open in the last third. That's something that's frequently happened with Final Fantasy games. This wasn't a major flaw, but when you play Final Fantasy VIII, for example, and you're very close to a resolution and then they "give you the airship" and send you on your way, there's a little while there where you're kind of overwhelmed by the fact that you have real choice. Final Fantasy XIII also did this, only it was worse. The entire game was on rails and extremely fast paced and engaging (at least in my opinion, I know there are many who disagree with that statement all over the internet) and then you get to the last third of the game and you have a ton of side quests you can do (and really should do to avoid having your ass handed to you) and tons and tons of territory to explore and it felt a little like the story hit a wall. I actually put the game down for awhile because I felt really uninspired to continue if it meant I needed to do side quests (which in general I don't enjoy when there's a story I neeeeeeed to resolve) or otherwise farm endlessly to get the ultimate weapons. Turns out there was nothing forcing me to do either of those things and I was very satisfied with the ending. I am hoping Lost Odyssey continues as it has been to an equally successful completion. I know there are probably critics who dislike the sheer amount of reading in this game. Character backstory and "memories" are revealed in the form of (at times) lengthy text-based events that you read while they play soothing music. I very much enjoy these. They are breaks in the action and generally completely unrelated to one another. Sometimes happen in rapid succession to one another and leave you sitting there for a bit, but the little mini-stories are usually very memorable and emotionally moving. I can't think of a better way to illustrate moments in a long, full life. It inspires me to want to write such deep stories for my own characters.
The visual novel I've been playing is called Katawa Shoujo. I only heard of it because Squall mentioned it to me, and I'm sure he'd read about it initially on Kotaku or Destructoid, as he tends to follow both of those websites. From what I've been told it was an independent project eight years in the making and is available for download free of charge! That is an awesome thing! It is a dating sim-style game that is mostly a lot of reading but you do have choices to determine the path the story will take. You can get to know and "pursue" one of six different girls, taking place in the setting of a private high school for special needs and handicapped students. I just completed one of the story arcs this morning and I found it to be a very rich and emotional story. There are times when I actually felt very sad for the characters to the point where I almost cried! But things in my story had a very happy ending. :) I will say, for anyone who might give it a try, that the game does have some adult themes should your path and relationship develop to that point, but it is all quite tastefully done. I myself generally shy away from that material in a game, but I found it very appropriate and not at all off-putting especially considering the heavy themes featured in the particular storyline my character followed. You also have the option of completely turning the adult content off. I don't know what happens then. Perhaps a fade to black and a small summary? I highly recommend it either way! :D
I'm STILL writing my app for the LJ game. Why oh why I have such a hard time with history, I'll never know. It's so easy in a fantasy world or WoW or anything else, but so difficult in a "real world" setting. I wonder if it says something about my experience with storytelling or roleplay that explaining had a quiet, normal, non-traumatic upbringing sounds almost boring. My characters in WoW had exactly that up until the invasion of Quel'Thalas (since of course all blood elves have trauma baked right into their backstory regardless of character type), so this should be no different, but I guess it's a little easier to say your characters were comfortably rich in a fantasy setting like Warcraft. Everyone seems to make their own way in WoW, so the idea of poverty and that sort of thing isn't directly noticeable. There's this idea that if people work hard, they survive. And every culture is different. Humans had a lot of farmland or served in their military or the elves all seemed kind of well off in general because magic made their lives easier, but you could assume that there were vastly rich nobles making even the comfortable middle class look bad by comparison.
It's like.. if I say that my character who lives on standard Earth (even with supernatural elements about) grew up in a family who never really had to struggle financially or something like that, I'm being unrealistic. Even though I know there are people like that. So then I feel like I have to inject something into the family dynamic to make it less-than-perfect. That feels wrong somehow. Couldn't the contrast between the old life and the new be that the idyllic life of the past where everything was ice cream and rainbows has now been shattered? Why does that feel so completely artificial to me? Squall says there's nothing wrong with writing it like that, but it still doesn't feel quite right to me. I have no idea. Even mulling it over for a few days now I'm still at something of an impasse with this, even though I've moved on to different parts of the app, like personality. The personality is cake, it's just a struggle to explain why he is the way he is.
On a different note, I've broken up our Vampire Diaries marathons by watching Being Human. I originally scoffed at the show because it was on SyFy and I've had less-than-stellar results with them in the past. A lot of times I couldn't suspend my disbelief with poor special effects or generally thin characterisations. This, however, actually has me interested. I know we're getting somewhere when I can care about the characters beyond what they are and start looking into who they are. Points! I'm trying to pace myself with television because having good series to watch while Squall's out really makes the time go by easier. I'm going to have about six months of time to fill soon, so it's good to save! I know a lot of that will be spent watching Lost, and that's going to take quite awhile. I also have plans to play a few xbox RPGs as well as Mass Effect 3 which will be sooooon! So excited! More opportunities to have relationships with my dear turian. :3 (Yeah, I went there).
I also picked Catherine up for the second time last night. I felt like tacking puzzles that make me nervous again. XD Also I wanted to see the third ending because Squall got the perfect ending with Katherine and I got the perfect ending with Catherine, so now I'm going for the perfect ending with neither. Maybe I can actually keep people from dying this time. :O Unfortunately I saved no one in my game the last time. Playing an Atlus game makes me want to get through a Persona game, and while I have access to Persona 3 on my PSP Squall thinks I'll have greater success with Persona 4. I guess we'll see!
On an RP front aside from my future on LJ and possibly on a MU* somewhere, my WoW RP has largely dwindled down to one person. Occasionally that will grow to three people when old friends leave SWTOR for a bit for some light social RP but that's pretty rare mostly because I struggle with go-to-an-inn-and-small-talk RP in the first place. Sometimes those encounters heat up and little arguments happen, but there's not too much of an over arching plot involving my characters so it doesn't ever go anywhere for me. It's nice to still be able to RP reliably with at least one person though! At the end of the day we can both be satisfied with where our little stories are going and that's what's key. RP with groups is always good, but I might not worry about that again until Mists of Pandaria is closer and we actually have things in-character to discuss as a group. When the wars are won and lore is all kinds of broken, what does anyone talk about? *sigh*
At least I have free time to do other things!
I've also made some progress with my riding! It seems actually making the effort to work out outside of my job and lessons is paying off. I no longer have the problem with my steering and control and Adam has actually given me some real compliments about my progress. In the next couple of weeks or so I'll likely be able to move on from the one horse I've been riding to another so I can start with cantering (because try as you might, you will not get Sovereign to canter even if you wave a whip around). This horse will likely be Jeb, who I am a liiiiittle nervous about (though I've ridden him before, briefly), but I know Adam wouldn't put me on him if he didn't think I could handle it. The problem arises if you let Jeb a) quit paying attention to your aids or b) let him feel like you're not in control. This makes him nervous, like he is going to have to make life and death decisions for himself and his rider and that's when he panicks. As long as you keep him engaged and working he's an absolute doll. I don't forsee a problem since I've always been on top of that sort of thing, so I'm very excited! Adam's just waiting to make sure I have a solid position with my lower legs, so we've been doing balance exercises the last couple of weeks. Riding in two point one-handed is no joke, but in that position you have no choice but to learn balance. He also thinks the other balance issue is that the stirrup leathers on the saddle I use have been stretching, which makes me have to actually work harder to maintain the proper position. Not a major problem, and probably something that will pay off later. I love the feeling of accomplishment. :D
Some cuts here and there for length (for those who don't care).
I've been watching him play Lost Odyssey, which is an RPG we've had sitting around for a long while and neither of us have ever successfully gotten very far in. That's not been because it's a bad story or a poorly executed game by any means.. mostly it's because we only recently acquired an HD television and can finally read the menu text. Yes, seriously. Though in its defence, I don't think it was an issue of not being high definition but a problem of my old tv being really quite small and crappy. Games are a little easier to play when you don't get frustrated, of course. The voice acting and animations are really quite good and I find the characters interesting. He's on disc two of four (which is quite a lot of content for the xbox, I think) and the pace is not as fast as the earliest parts, but I still have a ton of questions I'm eager to see answered. It's also promising that the game isn't completely linear but doesn't just drop into something completely open in the last third. That's something that's frequently happened with Final Fantasy games. This wasn't a major flaw, but when you play Final Fantasy VIII, for example, and you're very close to a resolution and then they "give you the airship" and send you on your way, there's a little while there where you're kind of overwhelmed by the fact that you have real choice. Final Fantasy XIII also did this, only it was worse. The entire game was on rails and extremely fast paced and engaging (at least in my opinion, I know there are many who disagree with that statement all over the internet) and then you get to the last third of the game and you have a ton of side quests you can do (and really should do to avoid having your ass handed to you) and tons and tons of territory to explore and it felt a little like the story hit a wall. I actually put the game down for awhile because I felt really uninspired to continue if it meant I needed to do side quests (which in general I don't enjoy when there's a story I neeeeeeed to resolve) or otherwise farm endlessly to get the ultimate weapons. Turns out there was nothing forcing me to do either of those things and I was very satisfied with the ending. I am hoping Lost Odyssey continues as it has been to an equally successful completion. I know there are probably critics who dislike the sheer amount of reading in this game. Character backstory and "memories" are revealed in the form of (at times) lengthy text-based events that you read while they play soothing music. I very much enjoy these. They are breaks in the action and generally completely unrelated to one another. Sometimes happen in rapid succession to one another and leave you sitting there for a bit, but the little mini-stories are usually very memorable and emotionally moving. I can't think of a better way to illustrate moments in a long, full life. It inspires me to want to write such deep stories for my own characters.
The visual novel I've been playing is called Katawa Shoujo. I only heard of it because Squall mentioned it to me, and I'm sure he'd read about it initially on Kotaku or Destructoid, as he tends to follow both of those websites. From what I've been told it was an independent project eight years in the making and is available for download free of charge! That is an awesome thing! It is a dating sim-style game that is mostly a lot of reading but you do have choices to determine the path the story will take. You can get to know and "pursue" one of six different girls, taking place in the setting of a private high school for special needs and handicapped students. I just completed one of the story arcs this morning and I found it to be a very rich and emotional story. There are times when I actually felt very sad for the characters to the point where I almost cried! But things in my story had a very happy ending. :) I will say, for anyone who might give it a try, that the game does have some adult themes should your path and relationship develop to that point, but it is all quite tastefully done. I myself generally shy away from that material in a game, but I found it very appropriate and not at all off-putting especially considering the heavy themes featured in the particular storyline my character followed. You also have the option of completely turning the adult content off. I don't know what happens then. Perhaps a fade to black and a small summary? I highly recommend it either way! :D
I'm STILL writing my app for the LJ game. Why oh why I have such a hard time with history, I'll never know. It's so easy in a fantasy world or WoW or anything else, but so difficult in a "real world" setting. I wonder if it says something about my experience with storytelling or roleplay that explaining had a quiet, normal, non-traumatic upbringing sounds almost boring. My characters in WoW had exactly that up until the invasion of Quel'Thalas (since of course all blood elves have trauma baked right into their backstory regardless of character type), so this should be no different, but I guess it's a little easier to say your characters were comfortably rich in a fantasy setting like Warcraft. Everyone seems to make their own way in WoW, so the idea of poverty and that sort of thing isn't directly noticeable. There's this idea that if people work hard, they survive. And every culture is different. Humans had a lot of farmland or served in their military or the elves all seemed kind of well off in general because magic made their lives easier, but you could assume that there were vastly rich nobles making even the comfortable middle class look bad by comparison.
It's like.. if I say that my character who lives on standard Earth (even with supernatural elements about) grew up in a family who never really had to struggle financially or something like that, I'm being unrealistic. Even though I know there are people like that. So then I feel like I have to inject something into the family dynamic to make it less-than-perfect. That feels wrong somehow. Couldn't the contrast between the old life and the new be that the idyllic life of the past where everything was ice cream and rainbows has now been shattered? Why does that feel so completely artificial to me? Squall says there's nothing wrong with writing it like that, but it still doesn't feel quite right to me. I have no idea. Even mulling it over for a few days now I'm still at something of an impasse with this, even though I've moved on to different parts of the app, like personality. The personality is cake, it's just a struggle to explain why he is the way he is.
On a different note, I've broken up our Vampire Diaries marathons by watching Being Human. I originally scoffed at the show because it was on SyFy and I've had less-than-stellar results with them in the past. A lot of times I couldn't suspend my disbelief with poor special effects or generally thin characterisations. This, however, actually has me interested. I know we're getting somewhere when I can care about the characters beyond what they are and start looking into who they are. Points! I'm trying to pace myself with television because having good series to watch while Squall's out really makes the time go by easier. I'm going to have about six months of time to fill soon, so it's good to save! I know a lot of that will be spent watching Lost, and that's going to take quite awhile. I also have plans to play a few xbox RPGs as well as Mass Effect 3 which will be sooooon! So excited! More opportunities to have relationships with my dear turian. :3 (Yeah, I went there).
I also picked Catherine up for the second time last night. I felt like tacking puzzles that make me nervous again. XD Also I wanted to see the third ending because Squall got the perfect ending with Katherine and I got the perfect ending with Catherine, so now I'm going for the perfect ending with neither. Maybe I can actually keep people from dying this time. :O Unfortunately I saved no one in my game the last time. Playing an Atlus game makes me want to get through a Persona game, and while I have access to Persona 3 on my PSP Squall thinks I'll have greater success with Persona 4. I guess we'll see!
On an RP front aside from my future on LJ and possibly on a MU* somewhere, my WoW RP has largely dwindled down to one person. Occasionally that will grow to three people when old friends leave SWTOR for a bit for some light social RP but that's pretty rare mostly because I struggle with go-to-an-inn-and-small-talk RP in the first place. Sometimes those encounters heat up and little arguments happen, but there's not too much of an over arching plot involving my characters so it doesn't ever go anywhere for me. It's nice to still be able to RP reliably with at least one person though! At the end of the day we can both be satisfied with where our little stories are going and that's what's key. RP with groups is always good, but I might not worry about that again until Mists of Pandaria is closer and we actually have things in-character to discuss as a group. When the wars are won and lore is all kinds of broken, what does anyone talk about? *sigh*
At least I have free time to do other things!
I've also made some progress with my riding! It seems actually making the effort to work out outside of my job and lessons is paying off. I no longer have the problem with my steering and control and Adam has actually given me some real compliments about my progress. In the next couple of weeks or so I'll likely be able to move on from the one horse I've been riding to another so I can start with cantering (because try as you might, you will not get Sovereign to canter even if you wave a whip around). This horse will likely be Jeb, who I am a liiiiittle nervous about (though I've ridden him before, briefly), but I know Adam wouldn't put me on him if he didn't think I could handle it. The problem arises if you let Jeb a) quit paying attention to your aids or b) let him feel like you're not in control. This makes him nervous, like he is going to have to make life and death decisions for himself and his rider and that's when he panicks. As long as you keep him engaged and working he's an absolute doll. I don't forsee a problem since I've always been on top of that sort of thing, so I'm very excited! Adam's just waiting to make sure I have a solid position with my lower legs, so we've been doing balance exercises the last couple of weeks. Riding in two point one-handed is no joke, but in that position you have no choice but to learn balance. He also thinks the other balance issue is that the stirrup leathers on the saddle I use have been stretching, which makes me have to actually work harder to maintain the proper position. Not a major problem, and probably something that will pay off later. I love the feeling of accomplishment. :D