the_dog_days

Finished Dragon Age: Inquisition and all it's DLC a few days ago. Just in time for my computer to get repaired. DA:I was alright but I can say that if I ever replay it I'll never play vanilla again.

Japanese, German group mating? Think I saw that one.

Gothic 4 was so bad it made me reconsider Skyrim, which I initially hated.

I'm leaving this typo 'cause it pleases me thing.

Absolutely it can be improved, but what made it terrible was that it was the exact opposite in tone to the original Gothic. OG Gothic starts out with you being read your rights, an official interrupts to hand you a scroll to take to the mages, official tells you doing so the mages will reward you, you agree and get tossed into the pond at the bottom of the cliff. Dragging yourself to the shore, you meet one of the old camp followers who lifts you up by the collar and punches your lights out. Then you meet Diego who makes it clear that the only reason he's being nice is 'cause he's there to recruit for the old camp and if you tell him about the scroll he lets you know that if he wasn't on kill-on-sight terms with the mages he'd kill you and deliver it himself. The first guards in town try to shake you down for protection money upon your entry into the old camp. Everyone treats you like what you are, the new bottom b****. The demo had some unnamed or even introduced NPC toss you the scroll with no explanation, and they send you down in a pulley. After a pointless explosion and way too long cut scene you land in a cave within the magic barrier. After a combat tutorial with multiple raptors (who are easy to defeat) you meet Diego who immediately takes a liking to you (even compliments you on how 'skilled' you are even though he found you passed out). He tells you what the scroll is and where to take it and after reaching the old camp the guard is all polite and complimentary (no one paid you real compliments in OG Gothic) tells you to come on inside. That's where the demo ends. The point is, OG Gothic was all about the grind to the top where as the demo for the remaster was all about power fantasy. It makes me thing the people who worked on the demo, at least, didn't really understand what makes Gothic so good.

I played the demo last year. It was terrible. I'll stick to the original with mods.

Of course they eat dogs, 'cause there can be only one.

RedBird Capital (aka, Dwayne Johnson and Dany Garcia) are talking with the CFL about their opportunities going forward. This smells like a hostile takeover to me and I'm not alone as twitter's running wild with theories about a CFL/XFL merger. As a fan of both leagues (go, Saskatchewan Roughriders) I love this idea. I just hope that if a merger does happen they keep the Canadian rules as I don't see either league having much success grabbing a US market using NFL rules without NFL talent.

Renpy is super easy to use. I messed around with it like a decade ago and quickly set up a scene with branching choices.

Nah. He'd just have mommy issues.

I am a bookworm and since my computer died I've been getting more reading in, too. Nothing educational but whatever I find lying about my sister's house and since she has two preteens they're mostly YA novels and the like. But no, I'm not reading the tie in novels. I always need money.

Forgot to mention I played the dlc for DA2, as well (playing all the dlc in each game is a part of the challenge). Legacy was alright with a good boss fight at the end where my healer and off tank went down almost immediately so I had to do the entire fight without half my party. Mark of the Assassin felt like a guest celebrity episode of a sitcom. By the end my grumpy mage hate Felicia Day or whatever her name was. Which was funny 'cause they tried so hard to make you think the character is awesome. I'm guessing Mark of the Assassin is where BioWare got the idea for Diana Allers as they both go way over the creepy threshold. Finally there's the Sebastian dlc. Summary: he will complain about everything (and the voice actor does a good job) but then they didn't get any of the other cast in to record reactions so Sebastian comes off as some whining ghost. I haven't done any DA:I dlc yet.

A little over a month ago my computer overheated. With nothing but my Switch and my nephew's Xbox One to occupy my time, I decided to replay the Dragon Age games. Origins was great. I forgot how dark some of the notes and codex get and about the slog in the middle. I played a human rogue, didn't romance an companion (though I did hookup with several NPCs), never recruited Zevran (my family had just been assassinated so I wasn't feeling merciful), betrayed Alistair, married Anora, tried to get Logain to do the dark ritual but must've missed the right dialog prompt and had to do all the heavy lifting myself. Followed up playing all the DLC and Awakening. Most of the DLC is kinda blah except for a boss fight at the end of Golems of Amgarrak. Even Witch Hunt was boring until Morigan showed up in the final few minutes. Awakening, on the other hand, is pretty darn good. I've been saying for years they shoulda expanded Awakening and just made that Dragon Age 2. DA2 is still every bit as bad as I remembered it being from the one other time I played it. I didn't like the characters, the city is tiresome, the combat is mechanically improved but the fights with multiple waves of enemies in every encounter makes it boring, and the ever present fact there's no central conflict as a player goal all hamper it. I was short tempered a mage dude with a one sided crush on Aveline. I won't waste your time with anymore about what I didn't in this game 'cause no matter what you do or who you recruit the ending is always the same as I found out. Currently I'm playing DA:I. I hate the wartable (which is something there's a mod for if only I could play on PC. Which is ironic 'cause it's a substitute for a better system they used in Awakening. I'm about half way through and struggling to find motivation to keep on. That's despite not recruiting the annoying companions.

I want this crossover movie.

Bigger, though you might need a magnifying glass to tell.

They powered up the lens flair levels to over 9000 and also made the terrible ME3 default femshep face canonical throughout.

"Wife telling you to sell"

Well, Stafford is only going to be 33. He's a far better talent than Goff. Goff's contract gets higher the next few years until it runs out while Stafford's is only more expensive than Goff's this year and far less expensive each successive year after that. The Rams' window for winning a super bowl is only the next few years before they need to renew a bunch of contracts. Honestly, it wasn't a bad trade at all if you look at it from the Rams' win-now perspective. Plus Jared Goff is consistently ranked around 20th best quarterback in the league and had one of the worst contracts in the NFL and they managed to get out of it while sending him to a team that apparently wanted him. Part of those picks were less about proper compensation for Stafford and more about compensation for picking up that horrible contract.

Glory Hole Repair (NSFW, obviously)