Tale

PM me. I'll drag my consumptive butt down the pub and ask the regulars. I can just imagine you asking a bunch of drunk strangers "which would you prefer intergalactic heroes to fight, an intelligent virus or robots?"

Yesterday I drank Jack Daniels and paced around. Struggled trying to figure out a conflict for my new project that I could be happy with. I think writing out how I'm struggling to figure out a conflict helped, because one of the floated ideas started sounding much better. Yay.

I want to agree with you. But it's kind of a two-way street, if you'll pardon the cliche.

Played a little Dark Souls 2 yesterday. Made it through 4 or so bosses that were giving me trouble. And now I'm not sure where to go next except down the hole.

Why do you have to complete this book? Most authors I've read about in this situation put the current book to the side and return to it after they've done the new book rather than rushing it to an end. Because I need the experience in writing complete books. Not just writing up until I get a little bored and then starting up a new one. That would be a terrible practice to get into. I'd never get anywhere. I'd still be outlining or writing chapter 1s. Edit: And I got my (free) business cards today. Thinking about joining a writing group and the business cards will help me either look like a dedicated professional or a loon who's getting ahead of himself. Either way works for me. And now I can do those things where I drop a card in the jar for a chance to win a free coffee.

I've been writing all week. The book I'm working on turned to crap somewhere around this most recent chapter. I had a high point where I thought I was doing excellent and then it immediately bottomed out. I think it's my fault, I started thinking too much on what book I was going to work on next and feel like I'm rushing through this. But I still have to complete this book. And I still have to start a new one. If I'm lucky, or perhaps if I'm extremely unlucky, I'll come back and fix it with a rewrite. But right now I think my writing ability is going to grow more from getting to an ending and then starting the new book instead of doing revisions.

It's definitely a bad idea in general, but the decision to give it a cameltoe and a sexy appearance is also an artistic (as in visual arts) failure. I think the cameltoe was just not originally intended for her. Some guy in art got creative with a detail on an NPC that he never expected to get looked at closely, then it was decided to make it into an alternate costume for the character.

The Quiet Earth Mostly loved it. Mostly. Science fiction about a guy who finds himself the last person on the earth. Maybe.

I'm going with innocent until proven guilty. But it's a fascinating story nonetheless. And reprehensible if true. There are people out there who put my belief that all incarceration should serve rehabilitation to the test.

Aside from games, I wrote. I spent the vast majority of the day writing yesterday. I got up earlier with the intention, decided to write from morning until 3. Played a game for about an hour and got bored, went right back to writing. At about 9 or 10, I wrote a scene that I have to say is my best work yet. And shows remarkable improvement in all areas. I've been struggling with setting up scenes, but I think I did it wonderfully there. I was able address the transition from the previous scene with dialogue and bring the reader up. I was able to express the characters and hint at some elements of backstory. And it all happened in about a page, so I wasn't rambling on.

A small amount of Shadowrun Dragonfall. I also beat Broken Age over the weekend. The laptop I'm borrowing is too crappy to run Broken Sword 5 well. Even Dragonfall chugs at times. But it ran Broken Age fantastically once the game was patched. And it runs Banner Saga, too. Broken Sword 5 is what I'd really rather be playing, though. My heart's not in Dragonfall. Which is kind of good, because it means I spend more time writing.

Started up Shadowrun Dragonfall. I still love their descriptions and dialogue.

I did play it and didn't like it. Which I guess is probably standard for Jan Jensen because I didn't like Gabriel Knight either. I was particularly put off in that when the two researchers sit down together they begin to talk as if supernatural occurances are scientifically proven to occur and only quacks doubt it. But then nothing about the setting really took advantage of that. So I don't know if the author was trying to worldbuild or if she was being preachy about her belief in ghosts. I never felt like I had any idea where the story was supposed to be going, either. Or how any of it was supposed to connect, even by the end. It was like just a bunch of stuff that happened and then a twist.

I'll caveat that. VO can only set the scene well when it's done as part of a greater scene. Characters interacting with the background, pacing about, and reacting expressively and not with 5 stock animations. I'm not sure why RPGs fail at this, but I suspect part of it a pacing issue with the way choosing dialogue works as well as just how much dialogue and cutscenes they have to do. They have to cut back and it ends up looking like the Star Wars prequels. Sitting, standing, walking, shot/reverse shot. An inexpressive Shepard sitting on a crate while the camera cuts between him and Garrus who is flailing at buttons that don't do anything isn't contributing much to mood for me. It's nice to hear about reach and flexibility in voice, but the body language is completely dead.

Sucker punches are a problem because you're not expecting them. I think that's a consistency issue. One game can build its difficulty curve. It can show you mechanics in safe environments, then introduce unsafe environments. Then over time it can complicate mechanics and combine mechanics in new ways to produce interesting situations. But as long as it builds up to that, it's not a sucker punch. And another game can avoid a curve altogether. Brute force yourself against challenges, figure out what the mechanics do in the heat of the moment and by your own trial. Both are cool. But they probably shouldn't spend much time together in the same game. Though I'm not averse to them spending some time together. The former could benefit from an optional encounter with the latter.

I don't even know what to think anymore!

Dead Space Extraction Only the second crappiest Dead Space game, not counting the mobile ones I never tried.

Well yes. Because while it's dumb, at least Isaac kills the Brethren Moon instead of capitulating to its grand design.

Finished Dead Space 3, played Awakened, and started up Extraction. I enjoy comparing bad game endings to Mass Effect 3. It's kind of petty, but it's a fun exercise. Like for Dead Space 3: It's pretty dumb. It's as if Alien 3, much maligned as it is, had featured Ripley getting superpowers and ended with her flying around like superman before going Carrie on a queen. But it's still better than Mass Effect 3's ending. But with the Awakened dlc, I'm not sure I can say that anymore. If Mass Effect 3 had ended at the point where the fleet warps into earth it would be in the same situation. No battle or anything, just the ships appear and see the Reapers, roll credits. That analogy is precise. Who does that? Who ends a DLC on a cliffhanger? Did they miss the part where EA was talking about cancelling the franchise if the game didn't have massive sales? I'm instituting a new rule. Nobody's allowed to do DLC with a cliffhanger unless the sequel's already been announced.

The Leviathans noticed the other races of the galaxy creating thinking computers that inevitably lead to their own destruction. In order to address this issue, the Leviathans built a thinking computer of their own because they lacked the appropriate fear and reverence for irony. Those computers still exist today, committing acts of galactic genocide in an effort to preserve all life.

When does that start to get good? I've tried reading it from the start a few times since he's one of the contributors to the Writing Excuses podcast, but those first strips are painful.

I see that we're well past the 500 mark. And we seem to have moved quite a bit from discussing the Ukraine, so I won't be starting up a sequel.

I've given everything I can, there are no heroes left in man.

I'm curious as to when Obsidian made a claim about how many significantly different endings a game would have. Not to claim it didn't happen, but I do like to keep track of these things. I remember Bethesda's remark about having hundreds of endings for Fallout 3 and Bioware's remark about having so many endings you couldn't really classify them as a, b, or c for Mass Effect 3. I will note that the further back it goes, the less excuse there is for doing it today.

I want to hate this. But maybe it's my natural distaste for their wheel and attempts at cinematic dialogue. I don't think I'll love it, but maybe it just won't annoy me. It's like a parody at this point and you have to laugh. There's a fundamental disconnect between Bioware and the audience for what constitutes "slight degrees of variation." Bethesda's an offender, too. But you think someone would catch on and just stop saying this stuff.