GhostofAnakin

The Blackwall sidequest finally triggered, but not until after I'd finished the Arbor Wilds. I got the Sera romance scene. I was expecting more elf on elf action.

My Blackwall quest doesn't seem to be triggering. I'm just after Adamant Fortress, at the point where he's supposed to disappear because of you know what if you've played the game. But while I can't find him anywhere in Skyhold, I can still use him in my party to go on missions (he's blocked out as a party member if it triggers properly). I'm about to go to the Arbor Wilds and can even select him to be part of my party to go there, but he's nowhere to be found in Skyhold and is holding up another quest (Sera's romance quest where I have to speak to all party members about her gift).

I just thought they'd walk like normal human women do, not female apes from Planet of the Apes. Hell, every other video game got it right, *including* BioWare's own previous titles. For instance, the female characters in Mass Effect were fine (apart from FemShep's Basic Instinct moment). So I just don't know how they could end up walking so weird looking in DA:I.

Gwent can be quite addictive. I'd ignored the card game pretty much until I'd finished the main story, but after that I found myself looking for different gwent opponents for hours at a time.

First time I brought Cole along as a party member when doing the Fade mission. He had some interesting comments. Solas always has a decent amount to say, but that's not surprising given he's such a fade expert.

I've said this already, but I loved how the sidequests seemed like little stories on their own. Even the short "fetch item for me" type quests presented it in a way that felt like a lot of time and effort was put into it; between actual animations during dialogue, to the person giving the quest actually giving a bit of backstory, to the quest itself likely not being as straight forward as you first thought.

Cassandra loses her appeal for me more so when I see her walk. She's got a ... stern face, but it's not ugly. She's kind of on the butch side, but still. I could get over it. But then I see her walk like an ape and I'm like, no. Unfortunately, BioWare seems to have made every single female in the game walk like an ape. I just don't know how animators in the year 2014 (when it was released) can do such a horrible job with how the females in the game move about.

Vivienne is such a boring character. And for all his muscles and bulk, Iron Bull is a wussy on the battlefield. He's usually the first to fall. Somewhere in Seheron, Sten is shaking his head and saying, "No."

Chris Avellone has decided to follow in LeBron James' footsteps and take his talents to South Beach. He'll announce it via press conference on ESPN tomorrow at noon.

I want to play as Dudu. Incidentally, that's got to be the worst name translated from what I assume in Sapkowski's origin is a meaningless word, but to English refers to something not quite so innocent.

The (first) free DLC was a Witcher contract about missing miners. The other DLC was an alternate outfit for Yennefer. I regret getting that one because I can't seem to go back to her old outfit. It keeps defaulting to her DLC outfit, even when I toggle the option off in the menu.

The dialogue wheel not quite matching what you want to say or not quite describing what your PC is about to say really screwed me over during this last play through. I'd wanted to side with Briala (I'm playing as an elf as well), but I also wanted to let all of them know I knew their dirty secrets. So I chose the "it's all your faults" option, thinking I'd just call them all out for lying but then pick who I wanted in the next couple of dialogues. Instead, it picked an ending to that quest I didn't want. The other spot that dialogue wheel really screws you over is in the rare occasions you get a "special" option (literally only says "special"), and I don't know whether to pick it or not because it doesn't even hint at what your PC is about to say.

I just finished the most boring section of DAI (to me): the Orlesian ball. I still say the build-up to this quest could have been so much better. You should have been given quests/information about the three individuals before even going to the ball. I guess that's what happens when Bio decides to devote time and energy to useless open world fetch quests. The actual meatier quests get truncated/not fleshed out enough.

Ha, I imagine one of those has caused an enormous amount of aggravation to those whom want to have their cake and eat it. I wanted cake, but ended up with humble pie.

Yeah, CDPR seems to do well enough right now when it comes to stories/writing. A place like Bethesda could really do with someone like Chris A, though.

I stuck with Yen my first time through for story-sake (just wanted to see the Yen/Geralt romance play out), but it went against every instinct I had. Every single time dialogue came up where Geralt had the opportunity to tell her off or to break it off with her, I had to will myself not to pick that option just so I could finish what I started. On my next play through, Yen's ass is getting the boot the first time Geralt has the opportunity to do so.

Sucks to see Chris go. I wonder how this will affect Obsidian. You always worry a little bit when one of a company's owners, and one of its creative forces, leaves, and what that means for the company going forward.

More DA:I. I've been sticking to the main quest+companion tasks, largely. I do a couple of the other quests if they're on the way to where I need to go for the companion quests, but I'm not going out of my way to do them otherwise. I want to do the Orlais court thing before the Warden thing, but I'm low on power so I need to grind a bit to be able to head there.

Decided to take the Knight-Enchanter specialization. That spirit blade is all kinds of fun to use. Though my character's not really geared toward melee, so I'm probably not getting as much benefit out of it as I would if I'd spec'd my character differently.

I think I'm going to do a speed-run for this play through. I've been trying to do the various sidequests and it's just killing me. So dull. My only issue is I might not be high enough level to take on Jaws of Hakkon if I don't do all the non main story maps.

This is my first time through, so I'm not entirely sure. I've read that it's best not to be attempted before you're around level 22 or so. Also sounded like it doesn't really affect the main story, so it can be done post-game. But the only problem there is you won't get to use all the new gear and stuff in the main game.

I thought they were going to patch the issue with lack of party banter? Or is this dead silence 95% of the time how it's supposed to be? I'm walking around the Hinterlands and the only sound I hear is my character's footsteps. Even the music seems to cut out for minutes at a time. Then every once in a while (a rare occasion) two members of my party will banter for one or two sentences, then back to silence for the next hour. I think that's part of why the open world feels so dead and barren. Even with a party of four, it feels like I'm running around by myself in the middle of nowhere with very little to do.

DAI - it's going to be a while until I can play the JoH DLC.

Having trouble getting into this newest play through of DA:I. The "open world" quests part is so boring compared to what I just spent the past 2 weeks playing in TW3. I'm finding myself ignoring a lot of the short, inconsequential fetch quests and focusing on the main story + beefier, fleshed out sidequests. It's slow going right now, though, because I'm still early in the game and need more "power" to unlock main story quests. On a random topic: I hate how the females walk, particularly Cassandra. They all walk like apes.

Two of my favorite gwent cards I currently own are the Avallac'h one, which is a spy card that you put on the opposition's side but has a value of zero, so you don't actually add to their strength. And it gives you the ability to add two more of your own cards to your deck of 10; then there's the Yennefer card, that's got a value of 7, but also allows you to pick up an additional card from your discarded pile and play it instantly. The opponents with monster decks can be annoying because they have a bunch of cards that double in strength and also allow them to play similar cards instantly. But the best defense against that is to have those weather effect cards, or the card that scorches the highest rated card on the board. One time an opponent was playing with the monster deck and had something ridiculous like 80 points due to their melee combat row (they had that horn that doubles the cards' value in a given row), thanks to like 10 cards in that row that were linked in some fashion. I laid down that weather effect that reduces every card in the row to a value of 1, and saw his total shrink from 80 down to 20 (he still had the horn effect doubling what should have been a bunch of 1s). Those spy cards really come in handy. Especially the Avallac'h one (value of zero) and Thaler one (value of 1).