“When the world turns its back on you, you turn your back on the world.” I was a child the first time I heard those words. A bipedal meerkat spoke them as the camera zoomed in on him and he alternated between gesturing at an imaginary world behind the camera and pointing an instructive finger at the young, depressed lion that was just off screen. As far as scenes go in The Lion King, it’s important for the plot but maybe not the most visually interesting. The sort of thing that would normally slip past a child of five or six, which is how old I was when I first saw it, but one of my younger siblings became obsessed with the movie and we watched over a hundred times before a new movie caught their attention. If you watch something that much, enough that you can still recite the whole movie, front to back, about two and a half decades later, you wind up taking it all in even as a child. Maybe especially as a child. It was an interesting thought to me, back then, as it was the answer that meerkat, Timon, offered in response to the suggestion that there is, in fact, something you can do when bad things beyond your control happen to you. It was a big thought for a child, but it was something I thought about constantly and so it stuck.
Continue readingVideo Gaming
Passing Time With TCG Card Shop Simulator
A week ago today (the day you’re reading this and six days after I’m writing this), I stopped resisting my desire to buy any kind of new game to help me get over Dragon Age: The Veilguard and bought a game I’ve had my eye on for a few weeks now. I’d thought to buy it last month, but I was busy with Dragon Age: Inquisition and couldn’t afford any distractions. I was already distracted enough, thanks to being neck-deep in Dragon Age stuff and Veilguard just around the corner, so I let it pass and figured that, by the time I thought of it again, I’d probably be over my incredibly surface-level interest. I mean, I’m not one for simulator games and TCG Card Shop Simulator is just another entry in a long line of incredibly similar-looking games, so why would this one hold my interest in a way that literally none of the others ever have? Other than, you know, being introduced to it by watching two members of Friends at the Table have a great time playing it and it being focused around not only something I have personal experience with (trading card games, which is what TCG stands for) but something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about (game shops). So, last Tuesday, while in a fit of malaise and depression, I bought the game and immediately lost three hours of my life.
Continue readingWhat’s Actually Next Now That I’ve Finished Veilguard
Every so often, I decide to watch something on Twitch. It’s usually Friends at the Table streaming something because, if I’m being honest, I don’t much care for watching one person play a video game. If it’s a group of people, or one person is playing but there’s multiple voices involved, I enjoy it more, but I still don’t generally enjoy watching people play games. Friends at the Table is different, though, because my entire familiarity with them is listening to them play games, so watching them play games feels like a lateral move. Another reason I tend to avoid it is because I’m a sucker for “this looks fun!” type enthusiasm. I will absolutely get suckered into buying a game because I saw someone else enjoying it and then wind up not liking it myself because a large part of the fun was watching the other person play it. If I avoid watching streams of people playing games, then I don’t have to contend with wanting to buy a bunch of indie or smaller-studio games that I will never play (like 90% of my Steam library) or that I just won’t enjoy for longer than I watched the person stream it. The rest of my reason for not watching much streamed stuff is that I generally enjoy playing a game more than watching someone else play it. There are exceptions to this, of course, but it’s still generally true. All of which is largely beside the point because I’ve been watching a little more streamed stuff lately than I usually do and I’ve been thinking about buying some new games to fill an incredibly specific and empty niche in my life right now.
Continue readingSpoiler-Filled Thoughts On Veilguard Right After Beating The Game
In case the title wasn’t clue enough, this post is going to contain spoilers for the end of Dragon Age: The Veilguard pretty much throughout the entire thing. This little preamble paragraph won’t have any (nor will the full game review I’ll be posting next week), but you continuing to read this before bailing out to avoid spoilers is REALLY risking it. You’re playing with fire here. Just head out before I have enough words to make sure no preview of this post contains any kind of reference to the end of the game or my feelings relating to it. Which is pretty much now. You’ve been warned!
Continue readingSpoiler-Free Thoughts On Veilguard Right Before I Beat The Game
I’ve almost finished Dragon Age: The Veilguard. I’ve explored every map, found every chest (well, the ones included in the counts for each map since I’m positive I missed a few of the chests from the special areas you can only access during certain quests), completed all of my companion quests, gotten all of them up to level nine (saving Harding, my Rook’s partner, who is level ten because I take her everywhere with me), and even gotten an hour or so into the final quest. I’m almost finished with my first playthrough, though I suspect I’ll keep playing it through again as the next year passes. There’s a lot I want to explore in the game, still, and while most of the big decisions haven’t felt that consequential yet, I’m interested to see how they all play out anyway. Plus, I still need to romance the other six companions since there isn’t a single one of them that I didn’t fall at least a little in love with during this playthrough. I just, you know, had to stick to Harding in order to fulfil a dream almost a decade in the making (since I couldn’t do more than flirt with her in Inquisition, which was criminal). I’ve been having a lot of fun, even if I do have to admit that I’ve been playing it as much as I have been not because I enjoy it that much (I enjoy it plenty, though, just to be clear), but because I desperately need to escape life right now and don’t really want to leave myself with extra time to think about things. As far as games go, though, I don’t think I’ve played one in a while that drew me in as deeply as this one has.
Continue readingI’m Tired and Sad, So Let’s Talk About The Legend of Zelda: Episode 31
I’m out of blog posts, exhausted, and super depressed about everything going on in the world (which is why I’m out of blog posts, but I’ll write about that later). So, rather than try to kick my ass into gear in order to pretend that I’m still writing these a week ahead of time, I’m going to fully admit that I’m writing this on the eleventh, that I’m probably going to have to edit this after it posts tomorrow, and that all I can seem to do right now is take refuge in what scant comforts remain to me after I burned through them in the first year of the pandemic… [this is why I try to write them early enough that I can edit them before they go up since the rest of the post doesn’t really support this idea here]. The primary comfort amongst them being The Legend of Zelda and Majora’s Mask in particular. I feel a little weird, writing about it right now, but it also feels kind of appropriate given that it is a game about preventing the end of the world while the world is constantly ending. About finding joy or love or peace as the world falls down around your ears. About grief and endings and healing throughout them. I’m pretty sure that all the recent thoughts buzzing around my head are a result of something I read and a discussion I had rather than something I wrote, but it still feels like I’ve touched on this recently even though I have clear evidence I haven’t.
Continue readingI Finally Beat Dragon Age: Inquisition Just In Time For Veilguard
Well, I did it. I beat Dragon Age: Inquisition’s final bit of DLC, thereby completing the franchise, before the official release time of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. As I’m writing this, there are still four hours left before I can start downloading the game, so the victory isn’t as clean or as neat as I’d like. No victory is clean or neat or entirely complete when you’ve stayed up until at least 2am every night prior and then just didn’t sleep during the final night. It’s not quite pyrrhic, but definitely not a victory I feel super great about getting. I mean, that doesn’t invalidate my win or anything, but this so-called win is just a silly little goal I set for myself after talking about it with my Dragon Age “Book” Club (which might even include actual Dragon Age books someday, who knows?). I feel proud of having done the thing, but I wish I also hadn’t filled my upcoming day (the day I’m writing this, October 31st, a week before you’re reading it on November 7th) with as much stuff as I did. I’ve got a blood test (which I’ve been fasting for, meaning I did all this on no sleep and no caffeine in the last 20-ish hours), breakfast out with myself after that (for caffeine and food following the fast), my Veilguard download to start, early voting to do, and then physical therapy in the early afternoon. I was originally planning to go to a Halloween party tonight, but I don’t think that’s going to work out [turns out it worked out. I went and had a nice time being around people for a couple hours. And, you know, doing literally anything that wasn’t a Dragon Age game]. Even if I still wanted to go despite being tired, I don’t think it’s terribly safe for me to drive across the city twelve hours from now [I rallied and had no problems], in the dark. Just feels like I might be tempting fate at that point, even if I can have as much caffeine as I’d like once I’ve gotten the blood test [I had a normal amount].
Continue readingEverything You Need To Know For Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Have you or someone you care about decided to play the fourth installment in the Dragon Age franchise without playing any of the prior games or having only played one or two of the previous entries? Has it been multiple years since you played a Dragon Age game and the constant stress of this past decade have driven all recollection of them from your mind? Well, I’ve got everything you need right here because I played through all of them, and every single bit of extra content, be it game expansions or downloadable content, in the last three months. Rather than bore you with the specifics of every single one of those games, though, I’m going to tell you everything you need to know to be able to make some amount of sense of the world based on the thirty-ish hours I’ve put into The Veilguard as of writing this on Monday afternoon (two days before this goes up) and what I’ve gleaned from other people about what I haven’t yet played. There will, of course, be spoilers for all of the three previous games (Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening, Dragon Age 2, and Dragon Age: Inquisition), but those games are at least ten years old and the entire point of this post is to tell you what you need to know, so I’m assuming you’ve already left if you want to avoid spoilers or don’t feel like there’s anything you need to know. They will be fairly light spoilers, scant on the details and the execution of things, so you should be able to enjoy yourself if you go back to the older games in the franchise after playing through Veilguard (but, honestly, probably don’t do that because the game play is RADICALLY different in the original game, more so in the second game, and then slightly less so in the third game), but you will know all the important bits from those games. Now, without further ado, Dragon Age: Origins: Awakening.
Continue readingThe Last Day Before Dragon Age: The Veilguard Comes Out
I’m writing this about a week ahead of time (I’m still slowly recovering my buffer) and I have no idea if I’ve gotten close enough to the end of Dragon Age: Inquisition that it might be a reasonable goal to finish it before the fourth game in the Dragon Age Franchise, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, comes out. That was my initial goal, months ago during the summer when I first made these plans, but so much has happened to derail that plan that what felt like a decent amount of buffer space has slowly slipped away from me. I mean, I even had a two-week period where I barely touched the franchise because I was so burned out from a mixture of sleep deprivation and work demands that I couldn’t over my dread at the thought of returning to Inquisition for the first time since 2017’s failed attempt to replay the game. I’ve overcome that, though, as I’m writing this (technically I overcame it weeks ago, but I’ve also overcome ALL my hesitancy to play the game), and am approaching the one-hundred hour mark (I’m in the mid-seventies right now). It actually feels like clearing the whole game and its DLCs might be achievable now, since I can absolutely melt every boss I encounter and I’ve made it through the biggest of the world maps in the base game. I don’t know how long the three DLC pieces are going to take me and I am saving them for a bit further down the plot line, but I think it might truly be possible if I can actually use my final weekend well. Still, all I’ve got is a pile of plans and the desire to feel hopeful about literally anything, so this might be wishful thinking on my part. I’m sure the version of me editing this the day before it goes up will have a better idea of how achievable that goal is [I don’t], but right now it feels like it might be within my grasp despite my fears of the week prior. Especially because I’m taking days off and can spend more time than usual playing video games in the last three days before the game releases since I won’t be doing any overtime.
Continue readingThe Mightiest Creatures Wandering Dragon Age: Inquisition Were No Match For My Blade
In the almost-week since my last Dragon Age: Inquisition post, I’ve put in a significant number of hours, made exactly one step forward in plot, gotten swamped by the newly available huge maps, chosen a mage specialization, and killed six dragons, two of them almost single-handedly. It’s been a wild few days of gaming and I have to say that, while I’m definitely still struggling to feel like I’m having fun with the world exploration stuff, I am absolutely loving combat as I’ve locked into a fun build that, as it turns out, is VERY popular on the internet due to its huge damage and nigh-invincibility. Sure, there’s a necromancer build that CAN do more damage, according to the forums and posts I’ve looked at, but playing a Knight-Enchanter Mage with gear that grants my character, Echo, guard on each hit means that I’m pretty much always invincible. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve taken actual HP damage (excluding the times I’ve jumped off of something I shouldn’t have because I was too impatient to walk around after fast-traveling) since I locked in my build on Sunday (nine days ago as you’re reading this), and I’ve beaten down two dragons that were three levels higher than my Inquisitor after the entire rest of my party stood in an AOE and instantly died. Sure, they were grueling and lengthy fights, especially the one against a dragon that had a huge amount of resistance to the damage type of Echo’s staff, but I was able to work my way through the entire dragon, including one that kept giving itself a full bar of guard, without ever one taking a hit to my Hit Points. It was exhilarating to discover that I could do this and then pretty boring to just keep up the same sequence of abilities for the next twenty minutes. The other four dragon fights, though, where most of my party survived or didn’t fall until the end of a grueling fight, were a lot more fun.
Continue reading