Mostly Current Gamings
I'm still making my way through Baldur's Gate 2 at a fairly leisurely pace. Some things I remember, some I definitely don't. I'm sure I've gotten further along in the game back in the day, but I find myself asking if I finished it. It's a little bit awesome to be able to replay a game without giving up in boredom because I've seen it before (though de'Arnise keep and a few other details have been a bit on the familiar side).
Ah, those classic Bioware NPCs with their banter and romances. And all those side quests. And loot (well, okay, there's a ton of useless loot at this point). When I finally finish with it, I feel like I might want to go nab a modern-compatible Planescape: Torment to play, or perhaps pick up a copy of Divinity: Original Sin which seems to be a recent game in the same vein.
Guild Wars 2 is continuing with its Living Story Season 2. More terrain opened up, including some nice-looking canyons, and just a tiny bit more story revealed so far (admittedly, I've got another story instance or two to do before finishing this installment). Mordremoth finally gets name-dropped, though I'm a little confused at how my character knew that name. We see Omadd's isolation chamber (which pretty much kills any sympathy I had for the character). Actual plots, plans, and reasons are still unclear.
There was mention, though, that ghosts are (or at least could be) manifestations of magical energy. This ties in with a post I read yesterday that referenced an interview from last year (sheesh) explaining lore details I didn't realize. Magic in the GW2 world is in everything (at least living beings). Class special abilities are all expressions of people tapping into the magic they innately possess, which is a reasonable explanation but it has a lot of deeper implications. That shopkeep? Totally capable of some sort of magical effects if he applies himself. Waypoints are asuran devices tied into the lay lines of the world - that doesn't feel like a revelation, though I'm not sure I consciously knew that. The Dragons consume magical energy until the ambient magic drops below a certain threshold, at which point they sleep - leading to a cycle of high/low magic in the world and the waking/sleeping of the Dragons.
Mingle all that magical background with the ghost bit and the metaphysical cosmology of the world starts to look very Lifestream-like to me. Magical/spiritual energy may not be created or destroyed, but just changed in form and pushed around in the world and the Dragons are a part of that. If that's the case, it could mean destroying Zhaitan just dumped a whole load of energy back into the system in a very unnatural way. It's hard to say what that might do...
And on the side, I'm amused by new videos from Weird Al. I think I'm mostly impressed that "Trendy" looks like it was a continuous take.
Ah, those classic Bioware NPCs with their banter and romances. And all those side quests. And loot (well, okay, there's a ton of useless loot at this point). When I finally finish with it, I feel like I might want to go nab a modern-compatible Planescape: Torment to play, or perhaps pick up a copy of Divinity: Original Sin which seems to be a recent game in the same vein.
Guild Wars 2 is continuing with its Living Story Season 2. More terrain opened up, including some nice-looking canyons, and just a tiny bit more story revealed so far (admittedly, I've got another story instance or two to do before finishing this installment). Mordremoth finally gets name-dropped, though I'm a little confused at how my character knew that name. We see Omadd's isolation chamber (which pretty much kills any sympathy I had for the character). Actual plots, plans, and reasons are still unclear.
There was mention, though, that ghosts are (or at least could be) manifestations of magical energy. This ties in with a post I read yesterday that referenced an interview from last year (sheesh) explaining lore details I didn't realize. Magic in the GW2 world is in everything (at least living beings). Class special abilities are all expressions of people tapping into the magic they innately possess, which is a reasonable explanation but it has a lot of deeper implications. That shopkeep? Totally capable of some sort of magical effects if he applies himself. Waypoints are asuran devices tied into the lay lines of the world - that doesn't feel like a revelation, though I'm not sure I consciously knew that. The Dragons consume magical energy until the ambient magic drops below a certain threshold, at which point they sleep - leading to a cycle of high/low magic in the world and the waking/sleeping of the Dragons.
Mingle all that magical background with the ghost bit and the metaphysical cosmology of the world starts to look very Lifestream-like to me. Magical/spiritual energy may not be created or destroyed, but just changed in form and pushed around in the world and the Dragons are a part of that. If that's the case, it could mean destroying Zhaitan just dumped a whole load of energy back into the system in a very unnatural way. It's hard to say what that might do...
And on the side, I'm amused by new videos from Weird Al. I think I'm mostly impressed that "Trendy" looks like it was a continuous take.
I have Torment. I was intending to do a blind playthrough (I've never played the game before) of it, recording myself and my friend (who has played it) nattering at me and harassing me and then uploading the Let's Play to YouTube. Alas, we never managed to find the time to do so or the technology to do a recording of both video and the dual audio.
ReplyDeleteWe're looking forward to trying out the new content. Samantha, I think, is waiting until Saturday so she can do it with you. We've not been in a good enough mood to do anything much this last week, so it's just been sitting there.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like quite the undertaking, especially since RPGs of that era tended to shoot for around the 40-hour mark for a primary play-through. It's totally worth playing, though. There's a lot of reading involved and the game engine is surely dated, but it was very well crafted. Before the game, I wrote off the Planescape setting as just sort of a kitchen sink approach to D&D. So I played and was utterly amazed at the quirkiness of it all. The setting is given a thick atmosphere, almost a (very good) character of its own. They NPCs, by and large, rock. There's a whole lot of Morte the skull in Dresden's Bob. And for as much as it is D&D/Planescape, combat is usually not the point. Things normally D&D dump stats open up whole conversational branches that can sometimes avoid combat and still earn XP. I also give points because it's a personal journey - discovering why the Nameless One is an amnesiac immortal rather than vanquishing some threat to the world.
ReplyDeleteI hope the week works out as well for you as it can.
ReplyDelete