Mera'din

13.) What Remains of Edith Finch Interesting quick little walking simulator style game. Took maybe an hour and a half to get through. Pretty sad, but had some interesting mechanics to it at times and kept me engaged. Solid experience for something I got for free. Might have been annoyed if I had paid more than like $5 for this though. Not much else to say. This style of game is pretty straight forward and kind of hard to fuck up if you have a decent story. Side note: Feel like I missed an opportunity with the order I played these last couple in. Could have had the FFXIII game be my 13th entry if I had done this one sooner. Oh well. XD

At least we get some understanding of what the fuck is even going on now (kind of). Looks interesting. Want to see more game play before I grow too attached though. Could easily end up being the kind of thing I don't care for but time will tell.

There is not a lot of time between the end of Ragnarok and the start of Infinity War. Despite the gap between movies for us, the timeline seems pretty narrow for the character. It was basically a cascade of events hitting one after the other in rapid succession from Ragnarok through to the first part of Endgame and they all kind of tailed off of one another. They're all part and parcel to fueling his insecurities. Also, Whedon implied the same thing that Russo said in like 2015. Someone asked him at Q&A thing about why Cap couldn't lift the hammer and his response was “Did he fail? Or did he stop?”

Yeah, I've heard a lot about it. My wife watches it. I don't have the time right now to commit to it though. 2+ hours per episode is pushing what my free time allows right now. X_x

Just because they're not saying anything doesn't mean they weren't working on it. In EA's quarterly financial call they had not too long ago, they flat out said they're still fully supporting the game as it sold incredibly well and fills a gap in their lineup. Say what you want about the company, but they're not going to lie to their shareholders. That's about the only thing they DO care about. The press on the game has been the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. When two of the guys started working on something else, people lost their fucking minds talking about how they were giving up on the game and all this other shit. They were two of the Edmonton team that had stayed on extra time to help with the transition to Austin taking over the game. They literally said months earlier that that was going to happen. Those two didn't have anything to do with the development of the game pretty much from the point it came out, outside of said transition, and the transition had finished. Still plenty of people playing the game. Unless I play at utterly bizarre times, I always have a full group when I do a random thing. Probably the only thing that would really be dead at this point would be the regular story missions since everyone would be done with them. Even if there weren't a lot of people playing, if they fix the stuff they need to it will be fine. There have been plenty of games that have had a resurgence after worse states than this.

Nope. That's one of their "big" projects so I'm assuming we'll see a complete overhaul (which it needs). Most people bitch about the drop rates, but there's not anything particularly wrong with that. RNG is a bitch, but I get Legendaries pretty regularly just playing on GM1 (like I said, I've completely maxed out 2 different javelins). So I'd expect something more profound. Hopefully alongside new content. Once they get a couple more strongholds in too, that will help. Have 4 now. New one was really fun, but definitely need some variety. 6 strongholds and some "higher" tier of content (some kind of raid style thing) would be much more well rounded.

Final clan for the base game is Malkavian. Disciplines are Dementation (ability to drive people mad) and Auspex (6th Sense/Projection). Legitimately surprised they went went them. Using Dementation helps (in V5, Dementation has been rolled back into Dominate like it had been in a couple previous editions), as it gives them something unique. At this point I was honestly expecting Nosferatu or Gangrel since they both have unique disciplines (Obfuscate and Animalism/Protean respectively), but I guess not. Malk's also have Obfuscate traditionally, but with the 2 discipline thing they're doing I wasn't expecting them to get it since it's the least defining part of the clan and Dementation and Auspex are far more signature for them. Malkavian is easily my favorite clan and I really enjoyed them in the first game (though some people didn't). The experience playing as one changes the game pretty heavily and it sounds like that will apply this time though a lot of people should be happy with it. Sounds like they're trying to move away from the "goofy gibbering idiot" sort of crazy, and into more of a darker tone and pushing more of a paranoia angle. Should be interesting. Not much else to say really. They said there would be gameplay revealed June 10th (there will be a playable demo at PDXCon), and they said they will continue doing streams going forward, just covering different topics obviously. I'm expecting the first DLC clan we'll get will likely be Gangrel at this point. The title of the first "Season" they're doing (Season of the Wolf) kind of leans in that direction for sure. Stream was kind of shitty this time around. They had video conferenced in Brian Mitsoda from Seattle (streams take place in Europe) and there was some pretty horrendous lag so it was hard to tell what he was saying a lot of the time. Videos:

Everything they've been doing has been for the better, but if you've stopped I don't see any real reason to start back up for a while. Wait for some big additions and really meaningful changes. I'm still playing a little bit each day mostly just saving up currency and what not and doing individual javelin challenges and stuff. Have both Interceptor and Colossus completely decked out in Legendaries and have all of their challenges done thus far. As long as they get shit out before I run out of side things to do, I'll be happy.

1.20, First update in like a month: https://www.ea.com/games/anthem/news/update-120 They've been pretty silent and rumor is they've been in pretty heavy crunch to catch back up to where they wanted to be at this point. Tweet went out a couple days ago about new story and lore content being finished up, and this update apparently has a lot of "under the hood" changes not listed that are supposed to set up for their first big roadmap thing that was originally supposed to have happened already, so we'll see how fast they can get that out. As such, they're also adding a Test Server on PC and will have the "Cataclysm" thing on it to test starting tomorrow it sounds like and will also be doing a stream about it around 3pm CST: https://answers.ea.com/t5/News-Updates/Update-on-1-2-0-the-Cataclysm-and-next-livestream/m-p/7902351#M15 Patch has some solid stuff in it either way. Can "fast travel" to the different strider locations now, map will show collectibles and rare enemies when you're near them and things like that on top of a lot of bug fixes and some ability buffs.

Another video today: Album is phenomenal too. Love pretty much every song on it. Some definitely stand out more than others, but am enjoying all of them. For a bit it seemed like they were going by the track list for videos, but they skipped one between Radio and this. Unfortunate because that is one of my favorite songs, but that one probably would have found a way to insight controversy and since they just did that with their first new video, maybe they wanted to wait a bit. XD Probably my favorite song on the album is "Puppe". Starts out slow and then gets a bit manic during the chorus. Reminds me a bit of something like "Mein Herz Brennt" tone wise. Lyrically, probably relates closer to something like "Mein Teil" for those that bother to get into that side of their music.

I feel like you'll enjoy the 3rd game a lot more. Potions are more meaningful (maybe not up to par with 1 still but I know I used them a fair amount vs. never using them in 2 basically), and the plot is a LOT more interesting between the Wild Hunt, the search for Ciri, and the crazy antics of Dandelion and co. There's a lot more interesting side stuff too and the monster hunting is more prominent and has more of that feeling that being a Witcher MEANS something and you actually have a job to do instead of being some pawn in weird political machinations the entire time. Even the DLC is really good (Blood and Wine especially). 12.) Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII This was... a lot better than I was expecting if I'm going to be completely honest. To a point. I finally bit the bullet and got it because I found a new copy for like $7, and I really enjoyed XIII-2, though I heard horrible things about this one so just stayed away from it until I could get a price I was comfortable with. The core mechanics of the game are garbage. You're basically on a time limit (world ends in 13 days, time counts down as you play. every 5 sec. or so is a "minute" in game) and I swear every single quest in the game is designed to waste as much time as possible. Would have been the most frustrating thing in the fucking world going into it blind. However, I had a fucking phenomenal guide I found and it turned it from a garbage heap into a halfway enjoyable experience from a gameplay side. Combat is reminiscent of X-2, with an outfit swapping mechanic that alters you stats and abilities, but is fully customizable which makes for a semi-decent experience for what it is. Story is where I was honestly surprised. Heard terrible things, and though it's rough around the edges, they wrapped up all the story threads from the first two games decently and I didn't hate it. Game starts out feeling like it should be called "The Book of Mormon: Final Fantasy XIII" since the basics of the story are you're literally doing peoples chores to save their souls before the world ends. Part way through though, the story shifts into some sort of acid trip Atheist wet dream about murder god and setting everyone's souls free to live their own lives and shit like that. They even kind of explain why Lightning is so deadpan monotonous all the time (I know it's not because of the VA, she's the same one that does Liara in Mass Effect). Side quests were fucking awful both in terms of writing and voice acting, but the main stuff was decent outside of the words "chaos", "hope" and "light" being uttered so many times it was starting to feel like someone was copying Kingdom Hearts' homework and just swapping out key words. This is especially awkward sometimes considering there is a character named Hope, and everyone calls Lightning "Light". >_> Overall I didn't hate it, and didn't feel like I wasted my time with it. Between XIII-2 and this, I feel like I hate XIII itself SLIGHTLY less now, so that's something I guess. XD

Now that I've had time to sort of sit on this for a week or so and think it over here are my thoughts:

This week is indeed Ventrue. For disciplines they'll have Dominate (Force of Will style mind control) and Fortitude (super resilience). They didn't do a live stream this time due to scheduling issues so they have a pre-recorded segment but still answer questions gathered from previous streams and such that they didn't get time to answer (mostly general questions about how the game will work and what not). They also go in depth about why the went with the clans they did and reinforcing that they want to support this game for a long time and want to add more clans to it. Even mentioning things outside the traditional set clans, such as the Antitribu clans and things like the Daughters of Cacophony. Would really be cool if they take it that far. Really like how blunt they are with some things too. They don't shy away from saying they changed things because as great as they can be in a table top game, they're garbage for a video game, or that there are some things they just aren't going to do or will do differently because it's how they need to do it from a business standpoint. Videos:

Blizzard tried to warn them about this years ago too when demand was really coming to a head before they decided to finally go ahead with the thing because people wouldn't shut up.

Album is out today. Also, missed this one last week. Not from new album. Cover of a Depeche Mode song from a tribute album, but still good:

That's all well and good for things in the long run, but how about we start simple and just finally fucking do cross platform games, Sony?

Yeah, they're one of the ones I'm hoping to see sooner rather than later as DLC. Hell, maybe even shake things up and actually make them a launch clan. In terms of lore, they've started joining the Camarilla now so it wouldn't cause any massive shakeup in the story and Obtenibration would be a really cool power for a video game. Expecting the next one to be Ventrue, and then PROBABLY Gangrel last, but I sincerely wish it would be anything BUT Gangrel, because I find them kind of boring but we'll see. They're being tight lipped on how many they'll actually end up adding post-launch, but that's probably because they want to see how the game does long term. Paradox is known to support their games for fucking ever though (they have games that released 6+ years ago that still get expansions even) so it would be cool if we eventually get all 13 of the main clans at the very least.

Today is Toreador. Their disciplines will be Celerity (Super Speed) and Presence (Crowd Control for lack of a better simple description. Like, LITERAL crowd control. Can make people follow you and stuff like that). These streams have been pretty informative. They go into more than just the particular clan and are starting to give little bits of information otherwise. I also like how the one guy goes pretty in depth about the way each clan works from a story standpoint and tries to give examples from well known vampire based movies that match the "style" of a particular clan for those that don't know anything about VtM. One cool thing they call out in this one is that the game will have auto-saves, and specifically, it will make a SEPARATE auto-save at the point where you pick your clan so you can start off of that point if you want to try something else or don't like the clan you picked without completely starting over. Videos:

Was announced today that Big Bad Wolf Studio (the studio that made 'The Council' ) is doing a Vampire: The Masquerade game. I'm not exaggerating when I say that ever since I played episode 1 of The Council, this is EXACTLY what I wanted to see come out of this studio. The style and game elements of that game all felt like they were MADE for a World of Darkness game and I am beyond excited. https://www.rpgsite.net/news/8483-an-additional-vampire-the-masquerade-rpg-is-in-development-more-information-to-come-at-this-year-s-gamescom

Because people nessecarily haven't seen the episode that just aired and aren't responsible enough to not click on the topic when they know that I guess? XD I'll post more later but I have two things to say before then: "You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain." Also:

I never played the other ones so don't know how it compares, but this looks like a nicer, more story driven version of that Marvel Heroes Omega game.

Clearly Steve Rogers doesn't suffer from depression? I don't really know what you're looking for here. The established him pretty early on as the kind of person who could have the whole world against him and he will never give up and never stop fighting. He'll always get back up and keep going no matter how bleak shit is and will help everyone he can along the way. Even his contentions with Tony stem from that drive. He was not willing to compromise his beliefs for anything, and would rather die fighting for all that he is than sacrifice even one part of it. Some people just don't break. At least not outwardly or in any quantifiable way that matters for this discussion. I don't know where the insistence on comparing Thor with him is coming from either. A better comparison for Thor would probably be Stark overall. Both in terms of their early lives, parts of their personalities and the kinds of shit they've had to deal with.

Fucking. Casual.

You misspelled the word "years". >_>