Tigranes

Please remember to take your daily dose of Manny! Prevents testicular cancer. So we are sidequestin' all over the Orobas Fjords, and I've juggled the chronology a bit to keep areas / quests together. Taking up the Champions' request to look in on some of their soldiers, we visit the remote, anti-dragon-zoned village of High Hall to find that they're dealing with a crazy wizard and his trolls. Apparently they made fun of him one too many times. We respond with some killing and pillaging of children. When we encounter the mage, he seems pretty angry. Apparently there is a way to pacify him, but Manny is too badass for that, and mindreads him instead. We get, and use, the subsequent option to destroy the rune, making the trolls smack the wizard and themselves to death. We gain 5 renegade points. With the end of the Magic Tantrum Crisis, the villagers crawl out of whatever holes they were hiding in, and start generating new sidequests to kickstart the local economy. Remember, the right way to help your country is to ask for assistance on every personal problem... ...by allowing fake adventurers such as these to also earn a living, stimulating consumer spending. Everyone knows that adventurers are the most impetuous spenders around. The farmer is frightened by a ghost and this 'descendant of the Divine' promises to rid it for a hefty fee. Manny, however, offers to do it for free. Is his subversive pinko nature breaking through the veneer of the Capitalist? Sorry, Casper. We will return to the village of High Hall presently, but for now, we move on. Remember that our primary purpose for being here is the 4 MacGuffins that will open the Hall of Echoes - where we can then try to revive Ygerna, killing Damian. One of the MacGuffins leads us to three ancient trees who all speak in third person. These upstanding citizens provide riddles where there are no personal troubles to be found, thus doing their part for the economy. With the seeds from the three seeds, we open a certain gate and jump some fire-traps... ...and stumble across the Patriarch, the first really badass dragon in the entire game (Manny excluded). Centuries of solitude has allowed him to sharpen his diffident aristocratic wit razor-sharp.

That one is a complete non-event: photos can make any 1-1 tussle look like a foul. Obviously there's a bit of bias in me but that was hardly afoul and Barca didn't complain either. Now the last minute handball, there is actually a case. Certainly accidental ball-meets-arm, but it could certainly have been given nevertheless in that situation. But I don't think any Barca fan would say they were robbed in this one. Defending against Barca is always tricky because (a) they are awesome, and (b) their game needs them not to be pushed around, and they know this, so they dive like fish meets water every game. I can understand why, it would suck if their football was destroyed by thugs with big elbows (like sometimes happens in the EPL), but it just means Arsenal had to be careful to try and defend without setting that off. Song did well but he was definitely a time bomb and the sub was probably very wise. re. football/soccer - a more pointless waste of time one can scarcely find.

Yeah, it's not that they weren't awesome as usual, I think the significance is that for once, somebody played open attacking football against Barcelona and won without controversial penalties, deflected unlucky goals or whatnot... with a 20 year old goalkeeper. This probably means 10-0 in the return leg, though.

That's because well, it's a basic truth. *shrug* if you have an answer to that question worked out in your head,no problemo.

Presentations did show an easy difficulty and a souped up player. That said, I think the design is that many regular mobs will have basic routines (e.g. rush enemy, shuffle at enemy), because you're not meant to take your time and tactically take on every single one, you're meant to blaze through those at high speed smashing several of them with a single spell, etc. So the real challenge will be whether bosses, and other larger / stronger creatures, have good behaviour routines or not - if they are, then that's a good combination of mindless mobs and intelligent bosses.

While I'm still young, this is more and more my belief from the contact I'm starting to get with many academics - not all are like that, but most are, and that really makes the whole environment very stuffy. ...which is why I'm doing a PhD. Yes, shut up. On a History degree I agree with Enoch. You should only do a humanities degree with no obvious link to a career field/option if you are sure you are absolutely passionate about it and you want to really get into it. There's no point otherwise. Monty is right that discipline is what you get out of a BA more than the content, because BAs have been dumbed down so every idiot can get one and the stuff you learn is utter bollocks, but you still want to pick the right one because the kind of discipline you learn, and the kind of general skills you pick up are very different - i.e. what you learn about research doidng history and what you learn about research doing physics. Anyway, if you really want to go for history you should. What I see very often though, is that people who weren't quite sure when they picked a degree the first time, end up not being quite sure when they pick a second time either, moving just for the sake of moving or because they keep feeling the first pick was wrong. So it's worth thinking about carefully. Edit: Oh, I just got into the Annenberg School of Communication, University of Pennsylvania. One of the premier institutions in the field, but not such a great fit with my research direction. We'll see what the other places say.

Main problem is aiming explosives to hit them because they're so fast, even in vats. I've found it unreliable.

Alright, so after significant adjustments, Manny is once again packin' steel and ready to go. The majority of the rest of the game will take place in this area, the Orobas Fjords. Most places of interest are located in narrow, isolated cliff areas with rivers running far below, requiring us to use the Dragon form to navigate. There is a huge amount of people to see and quests to do here, possibly even more than in the Broken Valley. I'll be jumping across time sometimes to try and show sidequests together and reduce confusion. Our primary motivation is to continue finding the 4 MacGuffins necessary for the main quest (to revive Ygerna and thus destroy Damian), and also our specialists' quests for upgrading their functionalisties. The necromancer quest brings us to a lava-filled cave, the home of Barnabus. Not to be confused with Barbados, our alchemist. Or was he Barnados? Barnabas? Barnie? Bernstein? Bertrand Russell? It's been a while since we had some platform stuff. The lava kills us in about 0.5 seconds. This area doesn't seem too difficult, but, ah, my laptop seems to overheat after a while of Div2, something that I got to try and fix, and the lava makes the place run at 7fps. Many deaths ensued. We also had to jump across about twenty moving platforms. You can see below, by the way, that we've got a greater array of skills now. From left, they are Fireball, Rush Attack, Thousand Strikes (hit people very fast), Charm, Firewall (persistent area damage), Heal, potion, and Summon Creature. The final stage of the Mario Experience requires us to jump down to that one platform, which is moving. Obviously, I failed, I forgot to save, and had to do the whole thing again. After that, killing Barnabas was cake. Nearby, we also meet the bastard cousin of our Great Nemesis, the Magic Glowing Ball. You won't fool me by painting yourself blue, you child eaters.* *Claim may not stand up to close scrutiny. You can see nest towers and such around the fjords - these lands generally appear to be inhabited by Dragon Slayers and the Champions of Aleroth (the ones I called 'Old Order' before). I'm a bit confused about this, but it seems the Champions are collaborating with Damian on some level. In any case it's a very unfriendly area for a Dragon Knight. Certain areas are marked No-Dragon Zones - to enter these magic barriers is to die, very quickly. We have to find ways to turn some of them off, or just hotfoot it. One-way teleporters also exist in locations around the fjords. The Champions used to use them for their various outposts before recent troubles, and this is the easy way in to most no-dragon areas. We pick up several quests from the Champions' harbour outpost. Apparently there is a particularly fiersome goblin clan in the fjords that has shot down many zeppelins - we need to hunt down wyvern nests where they might have taken useful zeppelin parts. Because wyverns are genetically related to magpies in this world. Suffice to say that this took about half an hour of combing every inch of the bloody fjords. We are also given the mission to find some Champion soldiers who went to investigate a troll infestation in a nearby village, and to assassinate the leader of the said goblin tribe. Let it never be said that Manny ever turned down paid work - we could never betray the Capitalist Ethic. --------------------- We are still a fair way behind how much I've played. On one hand there's way too much to show in chronological detail, but on the other, I don't want to rush the SS too much because it makes it seem disjointed. Tomorrow we'll look at many of the side missions in the fjords, roughly organised into interesting bits and major quest happenings. (Majek: Yes, Q to turn into Dragon, U to teleport to battle tower. can't believe I missed 1/3 of the skills, though...)

And thus we enter the second half of Divinity II's main game. From now on we can turn into Dragon whenever we are (a) outdoors and (b) have enough room - even when in the air or water. Unfortunately, you can't see or fight ground enemies in your dragon form; instead, there are dragon-specific enemies to fight with which, again, won't interfere when you are humanoid. Here we see the basic premise of Dragon combat. The smaller towers fire ballista; the larger ones are 'Nests' that periodically spawn enemies; and finally we have wyverns and the like flying around. Our Dragon form also gets its own inventory and skillset, including the ability to summon a helper dragon. I can't say I'm a fan of ddragon combat - I don't think such arcadey stuff are enjoyable unless done superbly in an FPS, and I'm pretty horrible anyway. There are way too many projectiles flying around and it's impossible to keep track of all the wyverns flying around. Still, I think it's a great addition to the gameplay in the sense that it opens up new ways of navigating, and you can very fluidly land and walk on foot, jump and fly around, etc. Despite Manny's valiant efforts, Damian has declared that the shiznit is on. He completely burns down Broken Valley, killing everyone - thankfully we had completed all sidequests there. Sentinel Island is also now engulfed in toxic air. Only the Battle Tower stands unharmed. Now let's learn the various functions of the Battle Tower, to which we can teleport freely anywhere anytime. We are now able to outsource the laborious task of ingredient gathering, but they require investment in weapon and armour to increase the rate of success. Manny is overjoyed that we have finally graduated to the most powerful class in history - the Capitalist. As a Capitalist, it is only Manny's right to employ his very own minstrel. We have also decreed that every pot of fauna used for decor in our tower must be at least five feet tall. Every true capitalist knows that the size of his flower-pot represents the size of his offshore capital. I can think of a few other ways you can please me, baby. Have you thought about relocating to CD Projekt? What do you think about featuring on your very own card? Call me. We'll do lunch. And of course, the four specialists that we had handpicked now have their own workshops. Each of them also gives us a personalised quest (different if we picked different fellows) that we can do to upgrade their capabilities. For now, we use the necromancer to finally create a Creature of our own, a summoned ally whose stats will differ according to the limbs we graft on it. The alchemist finally solves our chronic potion shortage issues. The skill trainer allows us to extend the skill caps - all skills are capped at Level 5, but we can 'unlock' this for individual skills. We can also respec for an ever increasing cost. Finally, the enchanter (forgot to SS) lets us enchant and also disenchant items. The range of customisation is very wide; we will henceforth focus on modifications that increase the HP/MP regeneration rate and melee damage. Looking at the former SS' list of skills, though, I was getting confused. I was seeing skills that I had never heard of before. See, this is the skill tree, and it doesn't feature many of the... ....oh. You can scroll down. I, ah... I guess I'll be ordering that respec then.

The MannyJourney, the fastest updated LP in the history of the interwebs, is back! Where we left off last, we were invading Laiken the Necromancer's battle tower to seize it for ourselves, meaning to summon the Demon that he soul-forged with as a quick route to victory. Unfortunately, Sassan tells us that the only other being that knows the Demon's true name is a goblin, and Laiken cut out his tongue. Naturally, this calls for a mindread. Picking Goethe's book in the bookshelf gives us the secret compartment, and the true name, Razakel. Protip: Always use the kamehameha pose to summon demons. It focuses your magical energies and enhances your cool quotient. The demon was not too difficult to beat down, but we soon realised it had a trick up its sleeve. Using the dreaded Forced Dialogue power to hold us in stasis, it ran off towards Laiken, forcing us to fight him after all. Laiken invested most of his tyranny earnings in modern sculpture... ...but found out he couldn't afford nose surgery. Really, you'd think the evil and the undead would invest some time in facial reconstructive magic. Probably because they're all men. This was a tough fight. Along with Laiken hurling magic from afar, we had to deal with the Demon again and several undead. Thankfully, we had told Sassan to focus on healing us, and eventually beat down the demon - thus, if you were paying attention, destroying Laiken too. Oh, Gandalf Dumbledore! It's nice to see you again after everybody is dead, we really needed someone to fill that crucial role. And you're just as bad, I'm-so-evil-I-won't-kill-my-enemies. The two procrastinators get out their handbags and Damian whines about the good guys killing his evil, dangerous and powerful lover. Anyway, Damian is seriously pissed now and it appears that his armies are finally threatening us. It is time. Manny will shed his mortal coil and be born anew. He will become bigger, stronger, badder. There will be thunder and lightening, and other impressive pyrotechnic effects in the air. It is time to draaagoooooonnn!

Preordered .wav, thirty quid for a physical copy is nuts, though Radiohead usually make 'em nice.

Let's move on from Volo: The Psychological Dissection, shall we?

I love the stocky little dwarves, they look exactly like garden gnomes. Seems a pretty decent RPG but nothing special so far, interested to see how the story pans out.

Wals, normally the bits come down, but for that particular case, I never got the corpse either. Later, I discovered that offing him the 'normal' way does let you, well, wear his nice dress and parade around.

I think Sentinel Island is the worst looking area in the game - I'm generally impressed by most of the indoor areas, especially ones with 'special' monuments. Orangey barren lands never translate well to SS, either. Majek, what fight did I miss? I'm on a blind run so obviously I'll miss quite a few things. I've played on too far by now, but I think I have a save around there to load again and try.

Sounds like another milestone in making a franchise so obnoxious it puts me off the game.. but then, multi-platform delivery isn't necessarily bad, I shouldn't judge by the cover alone. Horrible as the cover may be. So.. difficult...

Finally, the trainers. Hermosa was the captain of a ship that the Island brought here wholesale (i.e. shipwreck). The mindread shows that she thinks she rocks, naturally. Our alternative is Kenneth, an equally confident man teleported from the Slayer camp. He offers to duel Hermosa to demonstrate his superiority, but backs out because he won't hit a woman. I doubt any society based on a proliferation of magical powers sufficient to turn women into axe-wielding killers would retain a gender-based code, really. Goodbye, Kenneth. Being unable to teach Manny how to slap women was a key gap in your application. Alright, now let's get with the plot. Laiken has magically sealed the Battle Tower from entry. Our way in is to enlist the help of his former 'love', Sassan, who Laiken had killed then used her blood to seize the tower originally. First, we use a spell to stop the wind raging around her grave... ...so we can light some candles. Manny, just use a freaking match. You look ridiculous. Sassan proves just as abnormally big-busted as the rest of the population. We help restore her to life with yet another Macguffin from a nearby cave... Sassan assures us that the sight of her alive and with Manny will force Laiken's hand. I suppose even powerful necromancers are bound to the same laws of emotion we all are: you must never let an ex pass you by in the street without much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Oh yeah, he's pissed. After about fifty dead guards and creatures, we've broken our way into the tower. We're skipping most of the fights because being an ARPG, there are quite a few - and although they remain entertaining, Manny is now pretty decent and does not risk death every other mob. We are told that yet again, a Soul Forge spell is at work here - Laiken has done it with a Demon then banished it to their own realm to protect himself. Our plan is to summon it then kill it. What is it with Soul Forge anyway? Is it that good? Do you get free cookies every hour? ------------- Tomorrow: we face Laiken, and finally gain the full array of Dragon abilities.

And now, it's time to meet the 8 candidates, two per each position - Alchemist, Enchanter, Necromancer and Trainer. The choice we make will have an impact on the kind of quests we get and the bonuses we get later on. We can also mindread each candidate. First up is Allan the Alchemist - he boasts that he can make the magical Allan's Brew, but his journal reveals he has no idea what he's doing and his mind is no cleaner either. On the other hand, Barbatos the Alchemist is a fully certified snob, and demands that only those with three or more doctorates should approach his ginormous brain. I do so admire ginormous brains! In the end, the choice is simple. Manny likes to surround himself with big brains, because he likes crushing their delusions of grandeur. (Apparently, Allan is arguably the better choice in terms of in-game rewards, though.) Next are the necromancers. Jonelath used to serve the Black Ring, our enemies, but has been teleported here. The mindread shows he hates our guts, but he would probably serve well. Meanwhile, Igor, his servant, is more submissive, but shows a deliciously evil streak when we encourage him. The choice is simple. Igor gains 5 Dark Side points, and develops a tinge of red aura around his noggin'. Wesson the Enchanter seems to be a pretty average guy, mostly endorsed by his wife Ginny. The other option, Radciff, thinks he's the bee's knees too, though. Curious how Mindread = Truth in this game - he thinks he's the man, so he must be the man. We decide the best way to go is have them match off in a sword-making competition. It takes just one cutscene to finish and is an objective measure of their skill! Radcliff wins soundly, but at the last minute Manny has a change of heart. We killed the nice man to save the crazy axeman when dealing with the schizophrenic! We robbed and killed the smelly Dragon Elf! We shall save Wesson and his obnoxious wife this time, and restore balance to our troubled abdominal region, uh, heart.

Manny's Adventures continue at breakneck speed for the benefit of our three and a half readers. It has nothing to do with the fact that I"m totally addicted, oh no. It's all for you. We arrive in Sentinel Island, the second major area of the game. Some kind of half-barren Autumn island look, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but I don't mind too much. We are greeted by RPG Obligatory Naked Dryad , who is an incarnation of the Island itself. She tells us that Laiken the Necromancer controls the battle tower, and we must (a) look for a way to get in, (b) meet two candidates for each position, such as Alchemist, that I will have open once I take the battle tower, and make my choice. Apparently the candidates have been whisked here by the Island - and the one not chosen will die, because this is hardcore. We can't romance the island. Manny shakes his fist and vows that his next appearance better be in Dragon Age 2, because he's hurtin'. Sentinel Island proves to be just as crazy as Broken Valley. This reminds me of the sound file for necromantic spells in BG2, which I always heard as "Vita Mortis Hariharihariha *foompf*". He's clearly doing some hard cogito there. At this rate of parodies, I'm surprised we don't hear "I Believe I Can Fly" every time we turn into a dragon. Hang on... is Div 2 moddable? Anyway, he turns out not to be a candidate (or we'd have picked him in an instant) - just wants a big fat wyvern egg for his dinner. Our RPG Honour Code demands that we accept this glorious quest. On the way, we meet Dragon Elves. Yes, the island is entirely pouplated by savage, armoured Dragon Elves. The lore actually makes a lot of sense - Dragons wanted some half-intelligent servants to guard the island, and so interbred with Elves, who at that time were still pretty stupid and undeveloped. Then, the ages of isolation after the dragons' demise turned them into angry mooks. Sentinel Island is filled with sidequests, and every sidequest comes free with a terrible pun. I won't SS this one, but we just had to find the remains of a... whale he was hunting, and bring back a souvenir. On our way to the wyvern eggs, we meet a Dragon Elf (yes, they look like that) who has retained his sanity, and explains the history of his crippled race. He offers a salve which will fool the wyverns into thinking we are one of them, in return for clearing his cave of ghosts. We feel sorry for this lonely old relic of an ancient race, and accept... but not quite sorry enough that we won't loot his cave at the same time. Poor old bugger gets pissed, attacks Manny, and dies. I blame him. Well, what's done is done. Now it's time for some sexay. Rub the oil, Manny, rub the oil! Tha's rite. Only the biggest egg will do for Manny the Hunk o' Steel. Alejandro Manny, Spanish Lover, makes off with the booty by jumping off fifty metres towards the ground. No fall damage. No tears.

Today I woke up, did my driving test, and 12 hours later, did my PhD app interview. 15 seconds into the driving test, the car randomly died at the middle of a roundabout, and I generally drive like a chicken on pot, but I passed. The interview went pretty well with several good moments and no screwups, so we'll see. Wals, Monty, you folks owe me a drink if I get in, because I won't be able to afford one.

It'll be 'twitchier' in the sense that it'd be more like Diablo / Torchlight / whatnot rather than Dragon Age / NWN2 / etc. Control one guy, roll and jump around a bit, use abilities in a fast paced battle with bodies flying, not pause, order your party to do things, watch it happen. Clicking ,holding the mouse down or using hotkeys is pretty standard in these kinds of games (though these days you don't have to click click click to keep attacking one guy).

I'm holding off on my 5th NV playthrough, kind of hoping we'd get DLC2 on the PC reasonably quick as well. Surely they can't do the moronic exclusive crap for every one of them?

Keep in mind I'm playing with pretty much lowest settings and all bells/whistles turned off, game looks OK otherwise. And actually, I much prefer the parody dialogue - of course not all of it succeeds at being funny, but hell it's infinitely preferable to 50 hours of "Wilst thou help me, good sir?"

Finally, a symmetrical room where we must spot the difference. THe answer was a tiny cup on the ground. Clearly, these tests are designed to select the most intelligent and powerful men in the land. The dungeon is pretty damn big, and after passing the tests we come across an old library guarded by ghosts. They explain that they were followers of Maxos, damned along with Lovis and Amdusias when they were found wanting. Appaerntly the only crime of these low-ranking mooks was that their leaders were morons. Here we have another case of Choice & Consequences : destroy the soul stone and free the ghosts, damning Lovis to an eternity of playing blackjack with his left hand, or return the stone to Lovis and ignore the ghosts. Manny would usually go for the big, unrepentantly evil Lovis, but the ghosts do a pretty good job of grovelling for sympathy. Having reassured the ghosts, we finally proceed to meet Amdusias, the big baddie. Apparently he was royally pissed off when Maxos picked Lovis over him to be a Dragon Knight, and looked for unorthodox methods to dragonify himself. This naturally leaves some clues behind for us to dragonify Manny in the near future. Ironically, though, the result is that Amdusias currently does not know how to turn himself into a human. This is pretty much what you see when we fight Amdusias. The dragon hovers out of reach, blasting us at the speed of a machine gun taped to another machine gun. With our top of the line laptop, this means that Manny must run for his life at 5fps to try and get to the altar and begin the ritual... ...which he does after about seventeen reloads. You look a bit of an teenage emo under all that armour, Amdusias. I suppose that explains the strange things you've been doing with your body. Amdusias the Emo is considerably less powerful, and there is not even time for a screencap. The leftmost item in the last SS was Lovis' soul stone. After much thinking, and much regretting of potential loot lost, Manny destroys it and frees the ghosts. Then goes to see Lovis, because we're nice like that. I think he's taking it rather well, don't you? Aaaand that's all loose ends wrapped up, really. It is time for us to leave Broken Valley behind. We have now defeated Amdusias and gained some knowledge as to what further macguffins are required to dragonify ourselves, take ownership of the Battle Tower (that the necromancer we found controlling the bandits currently lords over), and then work to revive Ygerna, thus destroying Damian the Big Bad. Just so we forget, though, good ol' Damian comes to see us again and have a nice friendly chat. It's terribly nice of him not to kill Manny now, but it's good to know that saving the world is still a gentleman's sport. And so, to Sentinel Island, the next quest-and-loot hub of our grand adventure! Thanks kids, and see you next Saturday, 9:30 for more Manny Action. (or tomorrow.)