The Nameless King

As part of my "self-isolation", I've been doing three things: gaming, reading and writing; in that order. The ratio would probably be 80:15:5.
And over the course of four days last week, I've played a certain section of a game over and over and over.
The game is Dark Souls III. If you're into games at all, you know what I'm talking about. If you aren't, well, it's a fiendishly hard game. But, it's also fair. It requires, atleast in the initial playthroughs, a lot of caution, and a lot of dying.
 

This is a Filk song for the game. And it captures it quite well

Souls games begin with you waking up undead, and navigating a short tutorial section, before you face a boss enemy - to whom you will die a few times, before making your way to the game's hub area.
From there, you go on, looking for the MacGuffins - bells to ring, items to collect, and at the end of each area is a boss - usually a punishingly hard boss. And you die, and you run the "gauntlet of misery" back to the boss, until you manage to survive the encounter.

I spent four days - around twenty hours - just fighting one of them.

In the game's mythos, he is the exiled son of the thunderbolt wielding prime deity. This world survives because of the first flame, which provides heat and light, and keeps darkness at bay. And in the beginning, Gwynn, the God of Thunder defeated the primordial dragons, but his eldest son, and the Gods' greatest warrior, betrayed them, and joined the dragons instead. He was banished, and all records of his existence were destroyed.
He is the guy I spent all those hours fighting.
The run-up to the fight is epic in itself. The area is called Archdragon Peak, and you battle your way through vicious serpent-men who can destroy you in a couple of hits. You run past one dragon that lands in your path, weaving through ruins filled with enemies, dodging gusts of fire when you get out in the open, until you get to a point where you can strike at the dragon's weak spot. Then you toil up a mountain side face off against another dragon and another horde on enemies, until you find a safe spot next to a giant bell.
You walk up to the bell, and pull a lever. The bell tolls, and thunderclouds gather. Gather may be too mild a word - they boil around you. One moment, its a clear sunny day, the next, your standing on a vast cloud, and in the distance, a speck gets bigger and bigger - until you see that its a massive dragon, with a man perched on it.

Then the music starts, as the dragon swoops towards you. And its rider lifts up a massive spear, crackling with lightning.

Progress in most games - be they racing or sports or FPSs - is all about pattern recognition, and how quickly you respond. It all comes down to seeing cues, and pressing the right buttons.
The build up to the boss fight - or level - is designed to teach you what you need - which cues to look for: which moves are one shots; which cues presage the beginning of a combination of obstacles/threats; which moves require instinctive responses; which cues need just that bit of delay before you respond, and so on.
But what makes the King so hard is that he has a huge variety of cues - in this case attacks. Most of them are telegraphed, but figuring out what each cue means, and how to respond to it - decisions on whether to dive away or sidestep, to dive once or multiple times, whether to move towards him or away, linearly or diagonally - have to be made instinctively. And add to this the fact that you lose sight of him when some of his rushing attacks move him behind you, and you're frantically turning around to figure out where he is, while he's lining up a devastating strike.

Dark Souls is known for its punishing bosses - a tradition that goes back to its first edition, where players encountered the formidable duo of Dragon Slayer Ornstein and Executioner Smough.  And the Nameless King is probably the hardest boss in the series - which includes the three Souls Games, Bloodborne and Sekiro.  One of the most popular comments in the video of the Ornstein and Smough fight goes something like this: "So this is how it sounds beyond 10 seconds".

Fighting the Nameless King, I felt that comment.

The first time I went in the dragon wrecked me. The the king pounded me to a pulp with his great spear. Then the dragon burnt me to a crisp.

I tried again.
I died in 10 seconds.
Again.
15 seconds.
Again.
45 seconds, and almost killed the dragon.
Again.
Dead in 5 seconds.

This went on for an hour, before I killed the dragon.

Then this happened.

 
The first time wasn't too bad. I was able to keep myself alive, and waiting for openings, would risk the odd attack. I kept chipping away at his health bar, and got it halfway down.

And then I got greedy.

And he curb-stomped me.

It took me another day for me to beat the first portion - the dragon part consistently. Even then, one wrong move, one bad reposition, and I would die.

I started getting to the second phase more consistently, but I never did as well as I did the first time around.

I think the first time, I was more open-minded - more willing to play it safe because I didn't know his patterns, more alert because I didn't know what to expect.

Later, it was all "Oh shit, he's going to do this deadly attack and I should be really far away", panicked moves, and then he would switch up his attack and eviscerate me.

Over and over again.

For three days.

I looked at videos of the battle on the internet. I tried ranged attacks. I tried tanking. The end result was the same.

"YOU DIED"

Finally, I posted a plea on reddit. One of the suggestions was that I rebuild my character for this fight.

I did that - it was a completely new playstyle, one that I wasn't accustomed to, but I felt a lot sturdier. I had been, to use TVTropes jargon, a fragile speedster/glass cannon. Now I was the mighty glacier.

It was over in 3 minutes.

When the king finally collapsed, I didn't feel much. I thought to myself, "That's done".

It was only later, when I thought back about the boss battle, that a feeling of relief seeped through me.

Now I could get on with my life.

And maybe next time, I would defeat the king as a fragile speedster. That would be the real test.

But for the whole day and the next, I really felt like this.

Dark Souls, James Joyce and Reading resolutions

I just finished Dark Souls.
For those people who are not videogame inclined, Dark Souls is the first of a genre of fiendishly difficult games that require boundless patience, close observation, and agility of mind and response (and fingers) to get through - at least on the first playthrough.

Such stuff as  nightmares are made on: The big guy grinds you to pulp with that hammer - and the little guy(who is three feet taller than you are,  skewers you with his spear - which shoots lightning

It’s almost an exercise in masochism - but, as you get better at understanding the games rhythms and patterns, you get better at dealing with the challenges it throws at you - and overcoming those challenges leads to a such a satisfying payoff.

I first started the game - when it came out in 2011. It received rave reviews from people in the industry I respected, so I bought it.
I played it for four hours - and was unable to progress beyond the tutorial. I switched to something less demanding.
Yesterday, I finished the game. And it left me thrilled, satisfied - and drained.
And I have to decide whether to play it again - or start on its even harder sequel.

---

Which brings me to Joyce.
Many years back, I tried reading Ulysses. I got half-way through the first chapter, but found it tough going. I gave up. It was in some ways, reinforcement of my own snobbery. This was all “literary stuff”, and it was for pseuds and self-proclaimed “intellectuals”, I told myself - and went back to my Wodehouses,my Clubland heroes and James Bond.
But over time, at various times in the past couple of decades, I have been seeing so much more of people writing why Joyce was special. And this year - pushed by book Twitter - I’ve made a resolution.
I’m going to finish Ulysses.

It maybe, like Dark Souls, there may be times when I think I can’t handle it anymore. There may be times I want to throw the book across the room. But then, there’s also the possibility that I will get the books patterns and rhythms - and find the same kind of exhilaration that I did from the game that I abandoned nine years ago.
When I was a child, my mother used to tell me “Some books are like grapes, you just consume them as they are. Some are like bananas. You have to peel the skin off, before you get to the tasty part. Still others are like coconuts. You have to break the outer shell, strip the intermediate fibre, and then get through the inner shell, before you get to the juice and the sweetness of the kernel”.
So that’s my resolution. To crack open Ulysses and get to the kernel. Whether I find it tasty or not is another matter, but hello again, stately, plump Buck Mulligan.

Playing like a girl

The first fifteen to twenty minutes of a new video game are vital. In it, you've got to set the scene, establish the protagonist, and give the player a feel for the controls. Of course, most of the keys are standardized across games, but things like the range of a jump or the size of the hitbox need some getting used to. There's the story, as well, the sequence of events that set the narrative in motion.
The easiest way to do this is with the "attack on the homebase" trope, of course, where the homebase may be anything from a spacecraft  to a village. (Halo 1, Knights of the Old Republic,Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, Dragon Age:Origins - the Human Noble origin, atleast, Dragon Age 2, many others). The other, of course, is the ever popular "Player as prisoner" opening (Every Elder Scrolls game ever, KOTOR 2, Shadows of Amn, even the original Prince of Persia).
Horizon Zero Dawn begins with a birth, an adoption, and a little girl coming to terms with the fact that she is an outcast and that "normal" people will not even speak to her. Oh, and that this is a world in the far future, while steel dinosaurs prowl the land, but humans are still making do with spears and bows.

That's a Thunderjaw, a metal T-Rex armed with missile launchers, machine guns and a laser cannon

I've only played one set of games as a woman character, and that was the Mass Effect series, and that, only for Jennifer Hale's performance as FemShep. But that was to "check it out", and the character I identified with was Sheploo(the male default character, modeled on Mark Vanderloo ), and Mark Meer was always my def Shepard. And wherever the player character's gender is a choice, I always chose male.
Horizon Zero Dawn was the first game that I played in its entirety as a girl.

I loved it.

There are different levels of engagement when you start playing a game. The first couple of hours tend to drag a little, especially in RPGs. There's exposition, of course, and there's the getting used to things like inventory screens, maps and quest objective tracking, getting the basic economics of buying and selling stuff. There are also the questions of skills and weapon upgrades as you gain your first levels. Does this skill work as well as it sounds? Will I be using melee or range? How important is crafting going to be?

Then, there's the period of increasing engagement, as you begin to find out what tactics work for you, and which weapons. You've faced the first boss, and managed to come through. This is when you get hooked, and you consume the game, like popcorn or a bowl of paneer maggi. You can't stop yourself, and you want more - the next level, the next skill points, the next weapon or weapon upgrade.

All this, obviously, is gender neutral. And Horizon Zero Dawn does an excellent job of this. But it also gives you a likable protagonist - not one of your run-of-the-mill hardasses like Master Chief or Marcus Fenix or John MacTavish or Nick Reyes or Nico Bellic or even Darth Revan (I exclude Shepard, simply because he's introduced staring pensively out of a window at the earth and the fact that he can quote Machiavelli and Beccaria), a protagonist who you can empathize with, who is both a woman and a pariah, but who handles those loads without making the story about Aesops and morals, one who manages to be a teen without being aggravating.

Games give you agency, in a way that books or movies or any other artform can never do. And that agency allows you to identify so much more with the character you play. When I played Baldur's Gate, I would dream of the further adventures of its protagonist. I would compose mental fan fiction on the undocumented exploits of Revan and the Jedi Exile. For the past fortnight, I've gone to sleep thinking I was Aloy, with my tearblast arrows and Sharpshot Bow and spear, dreaming of ways to take down stormbirds.

Yep, that's a stormbird

A very good friend of mine presented me a T-Shirt, with the names or the titles of every video game character that I loved playing. The Nephelim. The Nerevarine. The vault dwellers and couriers and sole survivors from Fallout. The Nameless One. The Grey Warden. Nathan Drake. Geralt of Rivia (One of these days I'm going to post a Witcher related question on a Facebook quizzing board and reply to the person who posts the correct answer with the comment "You're a real Geralt of Trivia, aren't you?"). The Dovahkiin.
But if I had the T-Shirt remade, right on top would be the name of Aloy of the Nora.

---

It's 4:10 am in the morning. I'm running a temperature and I've just finished playing Horizon Zero Dawn. I'm feeling high and awake and so...satisfied.

On the Diablo hamster wheel

Just finished playing Reaper of Souls. So when I say "finished", I mean I finished the campaign as a Crusader - the new class that's part of the Diablo expansion, went into adventure mode, finished all the bounty missions for each act once and visited 5 Rifts.
Oh. I got through all this on expert difficulty.

For those who don't know much about Diablo - which is practically everybody I know, apart from two of my nephews - When you start playing the game, you can choose one of three difficulties. Normal, Hard and Expert. The you unlock the "Master" difficulty. Then, you are probably ready to play the game. Because after Master come the real difficulty spikes - levels Torment 1 to 6.

So expert difficulty is as kind of a misnomer. It stands for "at this level of difficulty, you probably know which buttons to press when, but you still haven't figured out which skill combinations do the most damage. Your gear is probably terrible, just a bit higher than 'disastrous' and 'abysmal'"


The game is divided into acts - the core game has 4, and the Reaper of Souls expansion adds a fifth.

 

I'm just throwing this in because of the sheer ridiculous amounts of awesome involved

The story is - well - there are demons, there are seven great evils, five of whom you already killed off in the previous game, and you take care of the two that remain, here. But due to a P2C2E, the titular baddie - who was killed once in the original Diablo and once again in Diablo 2 comes back and gets killed again. To get to him, you cut your way through hordes of monsters, elite monsters, unique and super unique monsters with a bunch of capabilities that range from the irritating to the deadly.
The demons, unsurprisingly, take their names from the usual sources. Since they kicked off the franchise by calling it Diablo - which is again a Spasnishification of the devil and comes from Diabolos - which is greek for The Daily Mail - sorry, its greek for slanderer, they're pretty much stuck with that. But the usual suspects are there from the Talmud - Lilith, Duriel - which is supposed to be Hebrew for "God is my home", Azmodal, Baal, Belial from the Lemegeton and Mephisto - either from Faust or from the 8th circle of D & D hell. And there are the angels - who either follow the "el" naming convention - Malthael, Tyrael, Auriel, Itharael or the Harry Potter curse convention - Imperius, Inarius, Cruciatus - oh wait - that one isn't there, so far.

But angels and demons are an aside. The original game defined the hack and slash genre, and since I'm playing this on the xbox, its now a button-mashfest.  You select a monster with the left trigger, and keep clicking 'A' to damage it. If you're feeling particularly adventurous, you can click 'Y', 'X' and 'B'. And squeeze right trigger while you're at it. And there are lots of monsters. Lots and lots of monsters.

Some mobs are even bigger - but thats how it looks. You can't even see your character

The key thing about the game, the thing that ensures your survival, is gear.
You have weapons and you have armour. Weapons and armour come in multiple categories. There's the normal stuff - which has one attribute: Armour for - well - armour, damage for weapons.

Then you have the magic items, in prefixed or suffixed, in blue text.

After that comes the rare stuff. The text is in yellow, there are more magical properties.

And then there's the stuff that you grind for. The stuff that you spend hours and hours on, killing the same monsters over and over again, hoping to see an orange spire of light rising from the ground, hoping to see an orange star on the minimap. That's a legendary. The legendary item is usually just a little better than the rare gear you have, but once in a while you get a beauty.

So, I found this sword - it was level 70 when I found it, and did around 2400 damage. But that wasn't the great thing about it. The killer was the "Chance to summon a demonic slave". Not only does the demonic slave pop up every now now, but he is linked to you by CHAINS OF FIRE, and those chains do massive damage. So you get your enemy - or mob between your demonic slave and yourself, and watch the chains BURN through your foes. With this, I was able to graduate from killing wimpy zombies on normal to Rift Guardians (really bad bosses) on Torment.

But the bosses are incidental. The storyline is incidental. Its about gear. Grinding for gear. Hoping that the next piece of equipment will be better than the one that you have. Raising the difficulty, fighting bosses, entering rifts and hoping you'll see that star on your minimap. It's the distillation of consumerism, it's the addiction reflex, and I've been playing the game more or less non stop for the last couple of weeks.

Return to Sanctuary

I've been playing Diablo 3 for the last fortnight, pretty much non-stop. The PC version was pretty hard to get, but good old Venus managed to get me a copy of the XBox version a week after release, so its been all about Tristram, Caldeum and the Arreat plateau almost every minute I can spare.
I was 28 when I first played Diablo. I picked it up in Landmark and I think I got till the penultimate level - I fought Archbishop Lazarus and maybe even killed him. I'm sure I did not fight Diablo the first time around. I played it without really getting into it. At that time, my nieces were like and 8 and 3 years old and I was much more into playing Prince of Persia 2 - with Malu sitting on my lap, watching the "red prince", as she called him, wade through skeletons and slither under slicing blades. It was only after I went to Hyderabad that I really got hooked by Diablo. This time it was Diablo 2. I bought the second game, and was blown away. I was working in Satyam at the time and had rented an apartment in Ameerpet. Rented furniture, empty rooms - pretty spartan. But I had a PC and a TV and a DVD player, so everything I needed was right there.
I loved it. From the first quest in the Den of Evil where you meet Corpsefire the zombie, your first superunique, to the final level in hell. The green fields and caves of the first act - meeting that little blue bastard Rakansihu, who diarrhea'd lightning and moved frustrating faster than your mouse; Treehead Woodfist, who hit like a truck; Bishibosh the Shaman, the resurrector of Shamans; bloody Blood Raven, zipping around the screen; the Countess and her minions, who dropped the first rune I ever found; Andariel herself, spidery, nipple ringed with her poison nova; Radament the mummy, another fucking poisoner, the huge Coldworm the Burrower, lying surrounded by minions; Duriel - oh Christ - fucking Duriel, moving like a snake and hitting like a battering ram - and freezing you as he does it over and over and over; the Fetishes in Act III, swarming all over you while one of their number climbs on the shoulders of another while breathing flame at you and Witch doctor Endugu, waiting for you at the lowest level of the Flayer Dungeon, infested with soul killers and Stygian Watchers. And there was the fight with the council members in the temple: Geleb Flamefinger, Toorc Icefist and the other guy - where the only strategy that works is the "Run Away" And then on to hell itself- where you make your way past Hadriel into the Chaos Sanctuary and open the seals. I still remember the Oblivion. The Infector of Souls was a joke,  The Grand Vizier of Chaos was tough but Lord DeSeis - oh man, he was the absolute pits. I believe that he was nerfed later, but when I played him - first as a paladin, he would kill me in seconds. And there was big red himself. With his streams of fire and that bloody red lightning, the bastard made me run for cover into the cathedrals entry way and town portal something like every 10 seconds.
Fuck, the amount of time I spent on that game! I would return from work at around 10:30 and think, "OK, just a couple of hours" and the next thing you know, it's 4:00 am.
And then I bought the box-set. This one.

Yes, that was just one box

The opening cutscene blew my mind.

 It doesn't seem like a big deal now, but then, back in 2001, it blew me away - especially the old Barbarian at the gates of Sescheron. Irritation, curiosity, shock, terror, resignation and weak defiance chase across his face - not at all bad for 800x600 resolution. And Baal himself - ghibbering and gleeful, turning the old man into chunky giblets, giggling all the time.
So now I had two more character classes to try out, and more baddies on to kill. Almost a year went that way.
Looking back, I realise that despite all this obsessive playing, I never was close to hardcore. My best character was a level 80-something assassin, but I never lasted very long in Hell mode. I think (I may be completely wrong) that I made it past the first couple of acts on Hell, but I got tired of dying so often and losing my experience and money that I finally gave the game up.
I left Satyam in 2002 and left the box set with my nephews. A few months later, my cousin tells me "What have you done? All my son does is play that game - for hours at an end, while his textbooks gather dust." I felt a quiet glow of satisfaction. I had passed the torch on.
Anyway, about DIII. I'm 43 years old. My eyesuight is going. My reflexes are nowhere near what they were 15 years ago, when I first entered the town of Tristram, one one 640x480 pixelated night.
So, now I play on the console.It's a lot easier. I'm playing the demon hunter, who looks like this. I didn't want to start with the melee characters.

And she totally kicks ass

So, I've played for about a week now. I've completed the normal run, on normal difficulty. The art is a combination of D1 and D2. Tristram is darker - it's always night-time. The monster enchantments now include stuff like "Vortex", which pulls you in from afar;"Jailer", which locks you in a force circle or some kind; "Plagued", where you have to dodge green pools of poison and "Nightmare", which is just good old D&D  "Fear".
It's smooth, the loot keeps falling, you find rares and legendary items at reasonable frequencies. The dialogue is not much, but the story is a great deal better than the first two versions. And it's enough to keep an old fogie happy for a long time.
//The only problem? I have GTA V lying unwrapped on my table

I'm Commander Shepard and this...

Well, you know how it goes.

If you don't, you're still not beyond redemption. You can still play Mass Effect and Mass Effect II.

It begins here

Works its way through here

And come to where I am, along with about 20 million others, waiting for Mass Effect III

And does it end here?

 

You can join us in our daily ritual of praying to St. Casey of Hudson, High Priest of Bioware, patron saint of epic space operas, that he doesn't screw things up. And that he delivers what he and his team have delivered three times before, each time as good as the last - and given that the first was KOTOR, very good indeed.

You can join us in praying that the demons of Executive Meddling are kept at bay by the forces of artistic integrity, gameplay awesomeness and huge commercials from the first two games

And you can wait and wonder what happens next

Marriages and Baby Carriages

Does the soap opera continue in other ways? Does Tali die in labour when when Shepardetta Vas Talizorah's emergence damps her mother's nanosuit? Or does Femshep have Garrus's baby, making Kaiden Alenko wander off into the sunset singing "FemShep, is not my lover...but the lizard is not my son..." - which becomes a breakaway pop hit on Galactic Radio and a staple of Citadel elevators?

Do they travel through star systems looking for a cure for Thane?

Doleful: Eye of Rachni, Toe of Krogan,
Wool of Vorcha, Tongue of Turian,
Volus Fork and Thresher Maw Sting
Elcor Leg and Collector Wing
For dealing with Kepral's trouble
a swill to make Drell eyes bubble?

From the Elcor adaptation of Macbeth, directed by Francis Kitt

Or does Sheploo have bouncing blue babies with Liara, blue biotic bullets that charge their way out of her singularity? Or is it Femshep who mated with our blue centurion and raised the question of two mommies - causing paroxysms of Fox outrage and more interviews with Cooper Lawrence? Or will there be options for Shepard to sleep with other species - a threesome with a hanar and an elcor? Will there be an email to Shepard asking him if he wonders what a Volus looks like under the suit? Or does Shep find Shiara's baby in the Normandy airlock? Does Shepard boink a Krogan?

Do Jack and Miri make a porno? Will Joker get to watch?

And will Joker consummate his simmering romance with EDI? Will she fabricate for him an exosuit that goes easy on his Vrolik's? Or will Joker borrow Shepards Heavy Bone Weaves to survive his boner?

Is Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani a romantic interest in the third game? Is she into the “M” in S&M? Will you slap her, kick her or punch her on the face? Will you get tired of duplicitous asseverations in addition to her snide insinuations  and disingenuous assertions?

Minor Questions

Does Shepard destroy the EArth? Or does he save it? Will there be an EArth left to save

Is Harbinger the biggest boss? Or are there others reaper than he? Are all Reaper names trisyllabic? Do we meet the Reapers Binswanger and Rumpswinger? Or, to use Crowshaw convention, Reaper Gobblecock

Are the gasbags of Eden Prime the secret weapon? Is Shepard an amnesiac Reaper?

Do the Reapers have a kill switch? Is Shepard really Scooby Doo in a mask? Are the Reapers Mortgage Bankers in Mecha Cthulhu costumes?

Creeper! Reaper! Forget the rest of the world

And Urdnot Wrex, Urdnot Wrex. He'll steal your woman, then he'll butt your head, Urdnot Wrex, Urdnot Wrex.  I'll be searching all the joints in Tuchanka for Urdnot Wrex . Does the awesome Urdnot return?

Is Chorban's research good for anything? Do the Keepers mutiny? Does Executor Pallin see the Reapers from his office?

The Trial

Aaaah. The trial sequence. So who gives evidence? Who does Shep call? Samesh Bhatia?Random couple off street, recipients of parenting advice?Helena Blake, Mob boss and Missionary?The Kirosa Family? Father Kyle? Matriarch Aethytna? The consort? The Turian Councillor - "Ah. Genocide. We have dismissed that claim?" Dr. Chloe Michel? Conrad Verner? Does Harbinger bust in and deliver a scenery chewer in the courtroom? I know, Charn and the Blue Rose of Ilium appear on the stand, Charn denouncing the charges against Shep in verse. In e.e.cummings verse! And talking of poetry, does Ashley Williams move from Alfred Lord Tennyson to Allen "God" Ginsberg? Is Shepard's loquacity influenced by accumulated Paragon/Renegade pointage through the first two games? Does Morrigan - Aeryn Sun - Admiral Whatshername give evidence against Shep? Will there be vocal schizophrenia when the Rachni rep lands up as well?

Who prosecutes? Little TIMmy? "I bring additional evidence, m'lud - he blew up an entire space station full of Protheans. The last of the Protheans. If that is not genocide, I'll switch to Nicorettes".

Will Moridin be the Judge? Will he sing "The Punishment Fit The Crime"?

Resources

Right. We've gone through the galaxy on a pig with wheels, looking for heavy metals, light metals and rare earths. We've scanned and surveyed star systems and strip mined them to depletion for Iridium, Palladium, Platinum and Eezo. So what next? The Sol system is dead already. Even Uranus, a source of endless chemicals - is dead. Would Uranus sound better if we used the traditional spelling of Ouranus? Hmm. I guess not.

Finally

DOES SHEPARD LEARN TO DANCE?

Yes, I know. I'm a sad sad man...

The Hero and the Champion

Playing Dragon Age II now, and comparisons and contrasts and complements to Origins become inevitable.

The  first thing that strikes you is the attack animation. Your jaw drops when Hawke uses whirlwind on a bunch of Hurlocks  - remember the term “ludicrous gibs”? The ludicrousness of these gibs is inestimable – as Hurree Jamset Ramsingh, the Nabob of Bhanipore would say.  The next thing is the art.  The change in the art style had been heralded well before the game arrived – and the change in Lothering is dramatic. While the initial Lothering was – well – brown, atleast it was an earth brown, offset by the green of the mabari tree. This Lothering is sand brown, and there are no trees, just dead black crags of rock all over. Maybe its meant to show how the land changes during a blight, but the only reaction it got from me was a pained “yuk”.

Another thing that pissed me off was the elf redesign. I know a number of people did like it. Tycho raves about Merrill (it’s actually the other way round ), for fuck’s sake, but she just reminded me of a marapachi.

The next thing is the conversation wheel. Complete with helpful icons – There is a black fist against a red background for a response like, say, “Fuck You”. The icon, my handy reference guide says symbolises “An Aggressive Response” . Its pretty much the ME conversation wheel, with icons.

Kirkwall. Is cool. It’s up there with Baldur’s Gate and Athkatla, and a welcome change from lameass Denerim. The city has as many sections as either of the former. There’s The Gallows – the point of entry for your immigrant hero, as well as the home of the Templars and the Circle of Magi. There’s Lowtown, where the lowlives – and you, atleast for the the first three game years live. There’s Hightown, and there’s Darktown – home to  those for whom being a lowlife is a step up the social ladder.

After you get past the changes in the art, the inventory system starts to mess with you. In that you can’t equip your companions with armour. You find a lot of armour sets and pieces during your adventures, but you can’t equip Aveline with the Stonehammer armour set? WTF? Every piece of armour you find is restricted to Hawke. This follows… [Virtual Shackles]

There are other changes, as well. Warriors lose dual wielding and archery. Its rogues only now. You can’t change your default swordnboarder to a two hander or vice versa. Only Hawke has both shields and two handed weapon skill trees available. There are some new skill trees – for all classes. and specializations are specific to your companions. Your Hawke gets to choose, though.

Origins was high fantasy. It was about getting people together to face the Blight – Gondor calls for aid, in TVTropese. There were no really difficult moral choices, except maybe the choice between Bhelen and Harrowmont – and that only because you read about the consequences of your decision in the epilogue. [Note: I usually play disgustingly noble/good characters – and if I play the anus or the crazy , its usually because there is an achievement to be unlocked].

DAII is low fantasy. Very low fantasy. The human treatment of the elves is now overlaid by Qunari hate and a brewing war between mages and templars in Kirkwall, where the veil is so thin that a mage may sneeze and end up an abomination. Your companions are quite extreme in their diametrically opposed views and any decision you make usually ends up pissing one or the other off.

And your companions. I think this is, by and large the best group that Bioware has put together since – well, a very long time. And the list starts with Varric, the first person you see in the game, even before you meet your character.  Varric is neither a simpleminded bruiser nor a psychotic automaton– he is just a storyteller, a merchant and unhealthily in love with his crossbow, Bianca. (Mirabelle, he says, was taken). There are some characters for Origins/Awakening who make appear as companions here, but none of them shine the way Varric does. That doesn’t mean that promiscuous Isabela or dorky Merrill (who was definitely not as dorky in the Dalish elf origin) are not funny. They are. And Aveline’s courtship has to be the most HILARIOUS quest in the history of RPGs.

Isabela – “Captain Isabela” who gambles and fights in the Pearl and teaches  you duelling in Origins is back now as a companion. She is – well – as promiscuous as ever, though you can romance her and make an honest woman of her – if that is at all possible.

Merrill reappears here as well, with a much more significant role. In Origins, she was your Dalish Elf’s mage companion. She seemed smart, very grounded and stable there. Here she’s a dork. And a blood mage. And a love interest. And the only mage without access to any kind of healing.  Unsettling, but acceptable. Unlike Anders.

My biggest quibble with the companions, though is with Anders. Anders in Awakening was a laid back apostate with a sense of self deprecating humour. Here, he’s a frikking terrorist. Yes, what he does is required by the plot – to force a choice and a confrontation. But that’s not it. In some ways, he’s become a hipper and more hypocritical version of frikking Korgan. It might have been so much better to put some other crazy mage in his stead, but I’m sure Bioware did their focus groups and market studies that made them go with a darker and edgier Anders.

The villains. Since the game is a three act tragedy – so to speak, you have villains at the end of each act – and act bosses. There is no game boss as such, which is a little disconcerting. The really cool boss is the Arishok, and he was a boss I desperately did NOT want to fight. Not because he’s unbeatable or anything, but  because he is frikkin honourable – and he likes and respects you. Curse you Bioware. couldn’t you have given the Arishok and Hawke a way out without the former having to betray the Qun or the latter having to betray his friend? The Act 3 boss – is well – meh.

But the game is not about the boss fights. It’s about a world gone mad – CMOT Dibbler would approve – and your hero doesn’t save the day. Hell, he’s probably the reason for a few of the fucked up things that happen.  And there are no easy ways out. You have to screw one group or another – and both have good members and bad. Whatever you do, the world gets WORSE – which is actually unprecedented in an RPG – I mean, you usually get an option for a good ending and one for an evil ending – but I don’t remember any RPG where either ending left the world a more fucked up place.

Origins was about a hero who went from riches to rags – a hero who lost everything (Dwarf Noble, Human Noble, Dalish Elf and to an extent Mage). DA II is about a hero who had nothing to begin with, but ends up rich and respected.  Origins was about losing your family and finding the Wardens who give you a duty to take its place. DA II has loss of family, but its a much more natural progression in terms of time.  But unlike Origins, the game actually shows you grieving after your mother’s death, and companions and lovers visit and commiserate.

And the “Ohhhh, Bioware” bits? Isabela’s armour upgrade – “Rigid Boning”. A faction of Kirkwall thugs – “The Reining Men”. A quest called “Kind of Want”. Isabela asking Aveline about her sex life –“Does he … cup your joining? Dwarf your beard? Arl your Eamon? Shank your Jory? Praise your Maker? Grope your grinder? Establish his canon? Kaddis your Katie? Dampen your Divine? Pamper your Paragon? Grey your Warden? Pudding your peach? Float your frigate? Explore your Deep Roads? How about "satisfy a demand of your Qun. Or master your taint? That's an old one."

---

Now, with two games gone, Bioware has left the DA universe in an interesting place.  Since the series is not so much about a single hero’s adventures in a fantasy world, but rather about the world where heroes have adventures, I can’t wait to see where they go with it. And there are so many hooks. What happens with the Qunari? Who is Flemeth, really? What does she get out of her mysterious appearances and rescues? What about Morrigan and her child? What is the situation in Orlais? What was Leliana’s and Cassandra’s original plan? Where is Hawke? Who will return?

I can’t wait…

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Note: There is this blog entry by Gerald Nascimento which covers some of the complaints – about repeated areas within the game etc – by pointing out that while other games try to be movies, DA works like a play

The Mazes of Menace

Recently, you have begun to find yourself unfulfilled and distant in your daily occupation. Strange dreams of prospecting, stealing, crusading, and combat have haunted you in your sleep for many months, but you aren't sure of the reason. You wonder whether you have in fact been having those dreams all your life, and somehow managed to forget about them until now. Some nights you awaken suddenly and cry out, terrified at the vivid recollection of the strange and powerful creatures that seem to be lurking behind every corner of the dungeon in your dream. Could these details haunting your dreams be real? As each night passes, you feel the desire to enter the mysterious caverns near the ruins grow stronger. Each morning, however, you quickly put the idea out of your head as you recall the tales of those who entered the caverns before you and did not return. Eventually you can resist the yearning to seek out the fantastic place in your dreams no longer. After all, when other adventurers came back this way after spending time in the caverns, they usually seemed better off than when they passed through the first time. And who was to say that all of those who did not return had not just kept going?

Asking around, you hear about a bauble, called the Amulet of Yendor by some, which, if you can find it, will bring you great wealth. One legend you were told even mentioned that the one who finds the amulet will be granted immortality by the gods. The amulet is rumored to be somewhere beyond the Valley of Gehennom, deep within the Mazes of Menace. Upon hearing the legends, you immediately realize that there is some profound and undiscovered reason that you are to descend into the caverns and seek out that amulet of which they spoke. Even if the rumors of the amulet's powers are untrue, you decide that you should at least be able to sell the tales of your adventures to the local minstrels for a tidy sum, especially if you encounter any of the terrifying and magical creatures of your dreams along the way. You spend one last night fortifying yourself at the local inn, becoming more and more depressed as you watch the odds of your success being posted on the inn's walls getting lower and lower.

In the morning you awake, collect your belongings, and set off for the dungeon. After several days of uneventful travel, you see the ancient ruins that mark the entrance to the Mazes of Menace. It is late at night, so you make camp at the entrance and spend the night sleeping under the open skies. In the morning, you gather your gear, eat what may be your last meal out side, and enter the dungeon...

So begins the Nethack guidebook. Your only introduction to the Mazes of Menace. One of the hardest games ever. One of the simplest premises ever. Go down a bunch of dungeons, recover an Amulet. Get out.

Oh, you can go in as a human, a gnome, a dwarf, an orc or an elf. If you are playing the Slash’em variant, you could be a Drow, a Doppelganger, a Lycanthrope or a Vampire.

Your could be lawful, neutral or chaotic, and will have an appropriate aligned deity.

You could be – oh – so many things – an archaeologist with a fedora and a bullwhip, a barbarian answering the call of Crom, a caveman – a newly trained troglodyte, heralded as the Chosen one, a healer- starting off as a Rhizotomist. Perhaps a tourist - praying to Blind Io, Offler or the Lady, trying to find the Amulet with the Platinum Yendorian Express Card.

Whatever you are, whoever you are, you start off at level one of the Mazes of Menace - a series of randomly generated dungeons - with ASCII characters representing everything from you - @ , a white at, walls , armour  - boxes and chests.

And the bestiary?

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz. ABCEDFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ. ':

How do you fight? By moving on to a square with a monster on it. But thats not the only thing you can do. You can dig through walls. You can find secret rooms. You can drink from fountains and use toilets. And if youre lucky - and lawful- you can dip a longsword into a pool and have the lady in the lake transform it into Excalibur. You can eat a mushroom and start hallucinating that your pet is a Mother-In-Law or a PushmiPullyu Llama. You can kill a long worm and enchant its tooth into one of the best dagger based weapons - a crysknife.

You can polymorph yourself - and if you can cotrol your polymorphism, you can become a dragon  - or even better a cockatrice. Why a cockatrice? Because you can lay eggs. No ordinary eggs. You can lay petrification grenade eggs. Or if you are a dragon, you can use your breath weapon - burn your enemies, freeze them, melt them in acid - or disintegrate them.

You will come across all kinds of stuff as you travel. Good stuff, bad stuff, artifacts. Say a prayer if you find a named lawful silver saber - the amazing Grayswandir. (Withywindle isn't there though). If you are playing the Slashem variant - you may find the Wallet of Perseus, an artifact Bag of Holding with 6 times the capability of a normal Bag of Holding. Or you may find the Houchou. A weapon that instakills if it connects. What kind of weapon, you ask? It's a spoon.

There are special dungeons, too.  There are the Gnomish Mines, leading on to Dwarftown. There is the Oracle, who gives you answers to questions you don't need answered.There are the quests - tailored by class. A samurai deals with Ashikaga Takauji. A Valkyrie has to fight Lord Surtur. A caveman or woman Tiamat. A barbarian has to fight Thoth Amon for the hear of Ahriman. Lord Carnarvon instructs your archaeologist to retrieve the Orb of Detection from The Minion of Huhetotl. Or youre a knight? King Arthur commands you to retrieve the Magic Mirror of Merlin from the Dragon Ixoth. A tourist? Twoflower wants the Platinum Yendorian Express Card- which unfortunately is in the Thieves Guilds Hall, deep in the Shades. And you know what they call a horse in the Shades.

So what can you do? Fly? Sure. Walk on water? Get the right boots, and no problem? Genocide entire species of monster - no worries. The fabled scroll of genocide will do ya. Bless em - by dipping them in Holy Water and you can wipe out the entire class of families of the monsters you wish to destroy. Tip - start with the Liches.

And then theres all the things you can do with cockatrices. I won't even get into that.

If you’re lucky, you get the amulet, make your way past the elemental planes of Earth, Air, Water and Fire to the Astral plane to sacrifice the Amulet to your God – and you meet three of your compadres – guys mentioned in the Bible – Revelations Chapter 6 – Pestilence, Famine and Death. By now, you are the other Horseman.

Oh – and how long does it usually take you to get this far? Anywhere from a year to a decade. It took me seven years for me to complete the game. My only ascension, Tez the Samurai. Haven’t done it again, though it’s supposed to get easier.

It doesn't matter what your games are - whether you’re the Solitaire/Minesweeper corpo type, or the hookey playing Seal Clubber from the Kingdom of Loathing or the master of multiplayer Halo – the Pwner of N00bs across XBox live – or the Raja of the RPG, the boss of Bethesda, Blizzard and Bioware – you have not seen gameplay that comes close to the gameplay NetHack provides.Or as this guy puts it -While the graphics may seem primitive by today's standards, today's gameplay seems primitive by NetHack standards. So will gameplay twenty years from now. By NetHack standards, positively paleolithic.

There’s a Telugu proverb about books- some are like grapes – pop them in your mouth, and you get their sweetness, others are like bananas – you have to peel them to get the edible stuff. And there are those like coconuts, where you have to take a machete to them, before you can even think of peeling after which you have to crack the nut to get at their sweetness.

NetHack is the ultimate coconut. Once you get past the shells and the fibre, the payoff is incredible

Tropes@work

You're fighting the Tome across Tropes

You can't focus your attention within working, or during much for anything, so you turn between the nuclear solution among boredom: the Tome between Tropes. It's a giant book that explains and gives clever names beside all from the recurring themes about literature, popular culture, and even real life.

There are two things down the book that make it purest evil: the first is that anyone can add except it, so it's always changing and growing larger. The second is that every entry contains several references below other cleverly-named tropes, and touching one over those names sends you off an explanation within that trope's name, complete onto references in other tropes . . . and throughout some point you look about and see you're eight years older than when you started.

Irresistible.

2010

These are the things that made my year. They’re in no particular order, but each one of these took up a significant amount of time.

1. Dragon Age: Origins. Bioware’s game was released last year. But I spent several hours – at my last estimate around a thousand hours, playing the game and all its add-ons – Warden’s Keep, The Stone Prisoner, Awakening, The Darkspawn Chronicles, Lelianna’s Song, The Golems of Angmarrak and Witch Hunt.  I was expecting something on the scale of Baldur’s Gate. But it was nothing like BG and not as good as I hoped it would – which did not prevent it from being quite good. High points were the Tower of Ishal, the Mountaintop, the Dead Trenches, especially the Broodmother battle and the Climax – especially the run up to the climax, through the Market District and the Alienage, via the Palace Grounds with a detour at the city gates and the battle in front of Fort Drakon.

Best Moments: Watching your warden evade a lunge by the Flemeth, and leap on its head, hanging on with his knees around its neck and saw through the dragon’s throat , pulling her down  and land the final blow in slow motion. Made all the more awesome if your warden is on fire and all your companions are dead.

Taking Flemeth Down.

Letting your dog take down the Orange Hurlock Emissary in the Refugees quest. The dog knocks the bugger down, and starts chomping on his throat and when he manages to get up charges at him, knocking him down again. Very satisfying.

2. The Mahabaratha. I spent most of the middle months poring over the Mahabaratha, reacquainting myself with the old tales that I knew and reading stories I did not. It started when I came across Arjuna’s rage – and how the only time he had gone berserk was after hearing of his son’s death. This led me to the Abhimanyu Badha Parva, the turning point in the war where the pre-agreed rules of battle were discarded. And it makes Abhimanyu one scary badass. The whole tale – breaking into the chakra vyooha, cut off from his uncles by Jayadratha’s boon, alone and surrounded by enemies, taking down every one who battled him is the kind still provides a rush. A 16 year old kid scares the crap out of the largest army in the world. Its a fantasy, of course, like the climax of a Rajnikanth movie, but it still makes want to cheer.

Best Moment: Attacked from behind, his bowstrings destroyed, his charioteer killed, his standard broken, his shields shattered, the boy jumps down and picks up a chariot wheel.

3.Morrison’s Batman Storyline: Wasn’t very impressed with the Final Crisis storyline. My mind rebelled against the idea of Damian Wayne. I was quite unhappy with the idea of Jezebel Jett, but given her name, I was quite sure she would turn out to be one of the bad ones. But after I started reading Rikdad’s summaries, I got drawn in and before I knew it, I had become a Morrison fan.

Best Moments: Joker’s “Apophenia” speech. The Bat Radia and the Arkham lockdown. The Damien Batman story. Joker “Reiki to the rescue”.

4. The Kingdom of Loathing: As many pop culture references as TV tropes. Including lobstrosities that bite your fingers off and say dad “a chick, dod a chok”, snow queen crowns that “makes you feel like the Queen of the World. For some reason, when you wear it you feel like hanging off the front of a ship, then freezing to death when your lover dumps your ass into ice-cold water.”, rolling stone monsters that try “to roll over you, but can't get no satisfaction” or “Its grotesque mouth puckers and it whistles. A couple of wild, wild horses gallop up and kick the stone so it rolls right over you” and many many others. Also, the weapons, the meat as money, sleaze and stench as elemental. Jick/Mr.Skullface rule.

To put it in their own words,

In the depths of your boredom, you stumble across an amazing game you can play on your work computer. It's an unbelievably detailed simulation of life in both dimensions and both colors, with every simple line of the universe rendered in the same lack of detail you see every day. Even better, the writing of the game is amazingly clever, almost as clever as the disembodied voice that describes everything you do and every item you examine. As you continue playing, you can tell that there's a robust set of mechanics underlying the whole thing, too, so it has endless replayability. But then it starts to get all up its own ass with self-referential fourth-wall-breaking, so you know you have to end it.

5. WoT: The Crossroads of Twilight – book 13 of the WoT was published in October. Since then I have read the book 3 times, updated my collection with “The Gathering Storm” (which I hadn’t bought), The Great Hunt, The Dragon Reborn and The Shadow Rising – which my niece took without remembering to return.

Thankfully the books I have have the Serpent/Wheel logo on them, and not those horrible scenes from the books.

I reread the series twice and started going to the old WoT websites – and the WoT Encyclopaedia is one of the sites that I look at when I have to wait without anything to do.

More to come…

Odds and Ends

I love this. Its been on Xbox Live, but this is the first time I really noticed.

Season 3 Music Video

And it’s been plugged by the Jossman himself – who says that they were primary influences on Dr. Horrible

And there’s this

Season 4 Music Video

Just finished reading the new Percy Jacksonverse book by Rick Riordan. “Heroes of Olympus The Lost Hero”. Quite nice, combination Bourne Identity and Greek Myth. It tracks an amnesiac demigod called Jason, with his friends, Piper and Leo as they try to save Hera/Juno from her kidnapper and prevent the rising of the giants. Good fun.

Gamercards

I was looking through this site – add-ins for Windows Live Writer, the simplest blog editor around – and one of these add-ins was a tool to insert your XBox 360 Gamer Card.

I also found this – a website that will return the details of your gamerscore, given your gamer tag.

Still, it wasn’t enough – I needed a great deal more control – I went through a whole bunch of sites providing leaderboard info – mainly

MyGamerCard.net	Provides a bunch of templates for custom Gamercards. Registration required for some templates. Also provides leaderboard information
Glop	Similar to myGamerCard.net, but fewer templates
XBox Live Card	More templates, but mostly variations of a theme, colours and background images vary
XBox Friends Watch	By this guy called Adam Kinney, based on tute samples, also described in his blog

Adam Kinney’s site was useful, but doing the gamercard obviously required a much stronger grounding in Silverlight than I have – or access to Expression Blend, that I don’t have.

Right Now, the easiest thing to do would be to use Duncan Mackenzie’s Webservice – and use the generated Xml Response. 

Let’s see if I can do something with this :)

Mass Effect 2 – contd.

Just completed the game – veteran mode, Infiltrator class. The final boss- the human reaper embryo wasn’t tough. If you took cover before his devastating beam attack – which is very clearly telegraphed, you can finish him off without getting injured. The Widow Sniper Rifle is terrific here – as is the Particle Beam weapon.

Now I’m trying the Vanguard class, and its much tougher. Beginning to realize how much I had relied on the Infiltrator’s cloak.

Update: Just completed Vanguard. The toughest part of the game was the Heat Exchanger run in the Collector Base. The Biotic charge works here, but its not as effective as the cloak.  Anyway, managed to bring the whole team back alive.

Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect 2 is amazing.  It helps that you are playing a believable badass and you have the flexibility of the conversation wheel and the behaviour interrupts. The story is nice and tight, with unexpected tie ins from the first game – the email from Chorban about his research into the keepers was a nice touch as is the message from the Rachni queen, delivered by the Asari on Ilium.

Gameplay wise, scanning planets from the Normandy is way better than lumbering around in the Mako for minerals, but the advantage to that was you could end up fighting thresher maws. Here the only maw I’ve come across is the one you deal with when you participate in Grunt’s rite.

A couple of quibbles though. The loading screens are way more painful than the elevators in the first game. The system of highlighting interactables just plain sucks. And I prefer the old overheating mechanics to the new heat sink approach in the weapon systems.

Still only partway through the game. Acquired all the team members apart from Tali and Kasumi and have about four loyalty missions pending.

Good stuff.

Baldur’s Gate

Good Old Games are reissuing the original saga of Baldur’s Gate series. It’s long overdue, I think. The game was issued in 1999 and it’s probably not an understatement to say it revolutionized cRPGs. It was one of those games that implemented a pitch perfect rendition of the ADD rules, so much so that the game manual is more or less the ruleset in print form

So how does the game hold up, ten years on? How does it compare to the Oblivions or the Dragon Ages of the noughts?

It holds up pretty damn well. Sure, the interface is clunky. The pause doesn’t work on the inventory screen, rest until healed hasn’t been implemented yet, the choice of portraits is limited and inventory management can be a nightmare.

On the other hand, you have

Story

A story that knocks your socks off, starting with the prologue. A Nietzsche quote – probably THE Nietzsche quote, a murder, an armoured guy with glowing yellow eyes of doom, a cryptic statement - “I will be the last and you, you go first”

You then create your character – the usual ADD way – roll for stats – and its known for players to stay several hours rolling and rerolling stats until they get to the best set for the character they create. You choose a race and a class – and if you are a magic user, you choose spells and you’re off.

The game begins with a tutorial that unfortunately cannot be skipped. It’s invaluable the first time around but gets painful on subsequent playthroughs. Once you’ve killed the rats and given the cow her medicine and delivered scrolls to the scholars, you meet up with Gorion, the player character’s (referred to as CHARNAME because that’s the name of the variable representing the PC ) foster father who tells you that he has to take you away from the majestic library that has been your home for all your seventeen years.

Gorion and you set off, you don’t really know where he’s taking you, except that he keeps hinting at some grave danger you are in. He is proved right as you are ambushed by the armoured figure from the prologue.

Gorion is killed while holding the attackers off and you escape. The game begins at this point – and it proceeds on multiple levels – as murder mystery, political conspiracy, an investigation into your past – as you try to find out why the armoured figure is trying to kill you, what your connection is with him and why someone is fanning flames of war between the city state of Baldur’s Gate and its wealthy neighbour Amn.

Art

It’s the first infinity engine game – 2d backgrounds with character sprites. The artwork is gorgeous – there’s no other word for it  - especially in the coastal areas. The cutscenes look primitive and patchy, but the art hasn’t dated.

Locations

Faerun is a well documented place – and the Sword Coast is one of the better documented areas of Faerun. Bioware just used the locations covered in the “Volo’s Guide to the Sword Coast”. The PDF is available here. The names of the inns, the key people in the key towns – its all taken from this book.

This adds to immersiveness of the experience. You deal with Telthoril and Ulruant in Candlekeep – and with Elminster in Beregost and Baldurs Gate and Volo himself  in Nashkel.

Characters

The number of NPCs you come across is staggering. You start off with Imoen – the ensemble darkhorse for this version. Imoen was an afterthought of a character, created to provide thieving skills to good player character classes.

You can meet up with Xzar and Montaron, two psycho Zhentarim investigating the iron crisis. You can add Kivan, a laconic ranger who is out to kill the game’s dragon for revenge. There is Kagain – who provides tanking for evil parties and the not very useful Garrick the bard. You can turn a statue human if you want a good human healer.  There are spoilt brat rich kid daughters running away with ineligible young men, there are gnome thieves, there’s the kick ass daughter of one of the baddies and there are Jaheira and Khalid, a half elf couple whom Elminster recommends meeting when you encounter him for the first time.

There are drow priestesses, dwarf fighters, whiny elf mages, mad gnome priests and many many humans you can recruit to your cause.

And you have Minsc.

Minsc is one of the most popular characters in gaming. He’s one of the reasons to love PC gaming – according to this article, he’s 77 out of 200, ranking ahead of Half Life’s gravity gun. He has multiple websites devoted to him and pages of quotes. He is the T-Shirt, his hamminess and his relationship with his miniature giant hamster – Boo is one for the ages.

“Go for the eyes” is a meme, as is “Butt-kicking for goodness”.  There have been bruisers in other RPGs, but no one comes close to Minsc.

And finally, you have Charname, your avatar. And you cant help but feel affection for a character who is given the opportunity to say this

"OK, I've just about had my FILL of riddle asking, quest assigning, insult throwing, pun hurling, hostage taking, iron mongering, smart arsed fools, freaks, and felons that continually test my will, mettle, strength, intelligence, and most of all, patience! If you've got a straight answer ANYWHERE in that bent little head of yours, I want to hear it pretty damn quick or I'm going to take a large blunt object roughly the size of Elminster AND his hat, and stuff it lengthwise into a crevice of your being so seldom seen that even the denizens of the nine hells themselves wouldn't touch it with a twenty-foot rusty halberd! Have I MADE myself perfectly CLEAR?!"

Duration

Its a big game. Its beyond big, its huge. Easily around a hundred hours of gameplay. Today, a forty hour game experience is uncommon.  It’s sequel was twice as long, but that’s another tale.

It would, I assume, be possible to speedrun the game in about 8 hours? You have to do the Nashkel Mines, the Bandit Camp, Cloakwood, Cloakwood mines, Wyrms Crossing and a couple of Baldur’s gate quests, Candlekeep return, Undercellar, Palace, Thieves Warrens and Undercity.  But it’s the sidequests that make this game up, cleverly designed and integrated with the main plot – there are few  fetch of token collection quests.

The Ending

The best sequel hook of all time.

Miscellany

Very nice articles on Game Design – using Behavioural Science here. And another good one on game addiction here

Dragon Age

My post fallout 3 obsession. Been playing DA:O pretty much non stop, since I got it, with minor breaks for Borderlands and a moment of madness when I gave in and bought me a PS3.

Well, its a Bioware game. That usually means the following.

Size: A playthrough – with most of the side quests ignored will take you around 40 hours. You play a completionist’s game, it will take you around a hundred. While, this is nowhere near Baldur’s Gate – where BGII with the Throne of Bhaal expansion would take you around 250-280 hours, its still loads more than any other game. Fallout and Oblivion have similar lengths – but a lot of that length is caused by grinding mechanics – enemy respawns in visited locations, freeform adventuring, the ability to continue playing after the main quest (with the Broken Steel expansion in Fallout 3) etc.

Writing: Is usually good, lots of hooks and jokes, very few BLAMs, lots of mythology gags and pop culture references. Lead writer was David Gaider, who wrote the unofficial and amazingly KICK ASS BG:TOB module Ascension – more about that later – who won my undying fanboy adoration when I tried his improved Abazigal.

Romance: Oh all kinds, whether you are male or female, whether you’re human, elf or dwarf, straight or gay – or even bisexual.  And options for consequence free sex – with your choice of human/elf/dwarf/animal at the local brothel)

Characterization: Usually very good, much deeper than the usual video game characters – especially the baddies – case in point – Shale, Loghain.

Tactical Gameplay: You try fighting the mooks, Diablo style, you’re dead before you know it. And the sheer number of demonic spider types is staggering. Enemy archers can spam scatter shot – a kind of group stun arrow which prevents you from doing anything for a few seconds -  disabling you while other baddies tear your ass apart. Emissaries and enemy mages cast stuff like crushing prison – where you take constant damage without being able to move or defend yourself – or curse of mortality – constant damage, cant be healed, bye bye. So you have to use the pause button a great deal – direct your mages, your tanks and DPS dealers.

Over and above this, Bioware have been dishing out downloadable content frequently, adding to the number of adventures you can have and several goodies in the form of arms and equipment that kick butt.

The closest I can come to describing the DA experience is junk food. You just cant stop eating.