Month: May 2019

Return to Homeland

/ lachesis / Leave a comment

Part 1: Are Disliked Books Worth Revisiting?

There are two sides to this argument, both of which have occurred in my head simultaneously. On one hand, life is too short to waste time on bad books. For any avid reader, including myself, multiple lifetimes would be needed to read the entirety of one’s backlog/wishlist. Why waste that precious time on a disliked book? I agree with this thought process provided the book is badly written or utter trash.

However, sometimes a book enters our lives at the wrong time. Perhaps we aren’t in the right mindset for it. Perhaps we have not yet experienced any life events that make the book relevant and relatable. In cases like this, perhaps that previously disliked book is worth returning to at a later time. This is the situation I’m in with Homeland.

The first time I read Homeland, I thought it was okay. For a highly lauded book in the “nerd” community, I didn’t think it was anything particularly special. The quality of writing was average, the characters a bit flat. Nothing about the world building drew me in. Perhaps the writing is just mediocre. Or perhaps I read these books at the wrong time.

The Dark Elf Trilogy (starting with Homeland) takes place in the Forgotten Realms setting, which is one of several original settings for Dungeons and Dragons. Various tabletop campaigns and video games have taken place in this particular universe, making the lore immense and expansive. Of course, the first time I tried reading this series I had never been exposed to either the tabletop RPG or the video games.

Fast forward about 5 years. By now, I have played multiple video games based on D&D (including Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Baldur’s Gate, and Icewind Dale) and I’ve been a D&D 5th Edition dungeon master for over two years (and a player for four). I watch Critical Role like it’s religion and I am a complete sponge for D&D lore. If any time is the right time to revisit the Dark Elf Trilogy, it’s now.

I’m only on page 18, so I have yet to make any significant judgments on the book. I was, however, very excited to run into bugbears and shriekers. If a mantle, piercer, or roper shows up I’ll be ecstatic because those are creatures I’ve actually used in my game! If an aboleth shows up, I’ll just die of happiness (I used a version in my last session that caused an epic total party kill. Yes, I am a brutal DM. But it all worked out because my players made a Faustian deal to return to life…). We have yet to see if the nostalgia and familiarity factor is sufficient to overcome any mediocrity.

Going Old School with Divine Divinity

/ lachesis / 1 Comment

Day 1: Lesson Learned

With all the turmoil in the industry sometimes it’s nice to get into our TARDIS and travel to a time when things were a bit simpler. Sadly, I don’t have the time traveling sort of doctor in my life, so when I’m feeling the tug of that old nostalgia it’s time to dig deep into the dark recesses of my Steam and GOG libraries. This time, I emerged from my quest with Divine Divinity. You may have heard of a little game called Divinity Original Sin. Divine Divinity is the ancient ancestor of the fantastic modern title.

The game started with a rather confusing cutscene involving some cultists, some glowing female humanoids that may or may not be goddesses (trust me when I say all this was extremely unclear), and a nice looking hunk of stereotypical fantasy muscle who is very clearly Conan the Barbarian. Yes, it’s definitely Conan, despite Larian not owning the Conan license. Headcannon is real cannon. Fight me. Anyway, dear Conan got wacked by some super powerful light goddess juju and a nice kitty found him. I’m being literal here. He was rescued by a cat.

Okay, time to select a character. Like most old school games, I couldn’t customize my appearance. I had the choice of a static male or female survivalist, mage, or warrior. After dabbling in a few other old school RPGs, such as Icewind Dale, I don’t trust magic any more, I’m not a fan of rogues, so I chose the good old bread and butter warrior. I picked the scantily clad female one, Conana the Barbarian, whom I lovingly refer to as Xena. Me as Xena wakes up in some creeper’s basement. Of course this self professed healer “claims” a cat found me (apparently cutscene male Conan is genderfluid and turned into Conana. I’m so proud.) and he rescued me, healing my wounds. So that was nice and all, but I still maintain that keeping Conana in a basement when there’s a perfectly good bed on the first floor majorly sketch. Who knows though, maybe she fell on top of some fresh cow pies (that’s polite language for poop for you non country folk) and carries too much of a stench for anyone with nostrils.

After wandering through town, finding a magical healing shrine, stealing the last healing gem, finding out that the magical source of healing is broken, catching the shop keeper getting extorted, stealing some herbs, raiding some empty houses and breaking a bunch of barrels, I found myself overhearing some juicy drama between the mayor and his assistant. Apparently the mayor has gone majorly schizophrenic (this isn’t an insult, he’s literally hearing voices and seeing things). He goes so crazy mad that he freezes his assistant who I then have to rescue. I go through the basement hidden in the well (apparently no townspeople have noticed the lack of water in the well…????…), convince the major to unfreeze this fellow, then once all is right in the world, go back to my exploration. I found another cellar, enter….and promptly get cut down by a nasty skeleton. Yup, dead. I go to load save and………..yup. That’s right. Old school games don’t really autosave. By my stupidity, I lost ALL of my game progress. Instant rage quit.

The point of the past paragraph was to explain everything I had done in the game that I lost. It was over an hour of gameplay. So let this be a lesson to everyone: SAVE YOUR DAMN GAME. Don’t be like me. I’m a terrible role model.

PEACE.

Games as Apples: A Metaphor About the State of the Gaming Industry

/ lachesis / 1 Comment

For those of you who are not gamers or do not keep up on gaming news, the news recently has been tumultuous. Currently, game publishers have been honing in on a new trend: games as a service, also known as live service games. The basic idea is to create a game that is constantly evolving and being updated as people play. Think less The Witcher and more World of Warcraft without the monthly sub. Sounds great right? Perhaps in an ideal world, but alas, we live in the world of extremely greedy AAA game publishers. The best way I can explain the current state of live gaming is with a metaphor.

Say you love apples and always have loved apples. You enjoy trying new apples. You hear about a brand new type of apple that is about to go on sale. The pictures make the apple look mouth watering; the skin a juicy combination of green and red and the flesh inside a creamy white. The creators have touted eating this apple as a completely unique experience. You wait a couple of months, maybe even a year, then you hear that the apple is finally being sold at your local supermarket! So you happily drive to the store where a representative of the company is offering these apples. Except the apples aren’t the red and green from the picture. They are grey. The representative of the company tells you that you have to pay extra for the red and green apples, pointing to a display behind her. They look really great, but are an extra three dollars! The representative tells you not to worry, the apples still taste the same.
You buy the grey apple and bite into it and it is completely tasteless, perhaps even a bit mealy and dry. This is not the apple they had advertised! The representative tells you that the apple hasn’t finished developing yet, but they plan to improve it over time. So why exactly did they start selling the apples before they were ready?
Time goes by and the creators have starting selling a second version of the apple. You buy another grey apple as the colorful ones still cost several extra dollars. The juiciness has improved but the texture is still off. Over time, the creators keep selling new versions of the apples, and you keep buying them in hopes that one day the apple will be the one they promised to deliver on. However, other customers get tired of buying these apples which aren’t as good as the classic favorites, so they stop buying them. Eventually the creators aren’t making enough money and have to downsize the company. Suddenly the “new” apple stops getting better. The company stagnates and eventually goes out of business.

In the above metaphor, the color of the apples are cosmetic only microtransactions (which cost your actual hard earned real life dollars), things like skins and customization for your character, finishing moves in fighting games, and tags or sprays in games like Overwatch. Some games even have loot boxes, which is like drawing an apple blindly from a bag. Cosmetic items aren’t terrible as they don’t really impact the gameplay. Some games, however, have items you can buy that impact gameplay. For example, repair kits or tools in Fallout 76. Since these kits aren’t available in game, the only way to get them is in the shop. Sure, you can pay for them with special currency earned in game (ATOMs), but gaining that currency is extremely slow. Why is this cash shop system even needed in the first place? Why not just offer the repair kits for normal game currency (bottlecaps)? I can only come up with one answer: corporate greed.

Cash shops and microtransactions aren’t the only issue plaguing “live service games.” The games aren’t even being released complete! Some notable recent titles include Fallout 76, Anthem, Black Ops 4, and Battlefield 5. Fallout 76 was released with a plethora of game breaking bugs. Anthem was released missing loads of content promised at E3. Heck, the game didn’t even LOOK the same. Currently, Anthem’s endgame consists of a handful of missions. That’s it. After a disastrous launch, Bioware released a roadmap/timeline for planned content releases. They missed almost every single one of the deadlines. DEVELOPERS, CAN WE PLEASE STOP RELEASING UNFINISHED GAMES AND CLAIMING THEY ARE “LIVE SERVICE?” Using live service as an excuse for an unfinished game is pathetic. Using live service as an excuse for needless microtransactions is just greedy.

Players see what you are doing, publishers, and no one wants to play a buggy unfinished game. Of course who gets laid off when a game fails? Not the people responsible for the bad decisions. No, they lay off the poor employees who are doing the best they can, working 100 hour weeks (yes, overworking employees is also a common issue in big game companies), and following mandated instructions from management. Instead of figuring out another solution (like not being a bunch of greedy jerks), the decision making executives fire the hard working grunts but keep getting fat executive bonuses. Ahem Bobby Kotick ahem.

I am beyond sick of the corporate greed that has infected the games industry. Unfortunately, it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better.

My Unusual Inspiration

/ lachesis / Leave a comment

I have an undeniable dislike of GIFs. Not the file format. I’m talking those little animated pictures that loop. Like this one of the lovely David Tennant as Dr. Who.

As much as I love the Doctor (especially Tennant Doctor), holy potatoes this is distracting!!! On pages saturated by animated GIFs (which are usually even more distracting than this one), my eyes are continually drawn to the moving pictures rather than the significantly more important text. The most atrocious examples of this involve book reviews like this: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/340987215?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1
I’m sure its a great review, but I can’t get past the first two paragraphs because of the accursed animated GIFs.

So what does this have to do with me creating a blog? While I was perusing the internet, desperate to find some other souls who hate these damned images as much as I do, I found a blog post about book review trends. The first trend were animated GIFs, but the second was liveblogging. Me, being a book reviewer and a writer, was intrigued and decided to start my own blog. However, as someone who, in addition to reading, plays video games, board games, tabletop RPGS, and watches TV/movies, I figured I’d make this as more of a general nerddom blog with some liveblog posts (which I will tag appropriately).