melkathi

Just quickly darted over to our next door neighbours (the bards college). When I returned Sofie had found and adopted a fox...

Most amazing thing happened today in Skyrim. Lucia helped with chores around the house without having to be told.

It is a lawsuit not filed by an employee though but an agency. So it can;t be shrugged off as a vendetta by a disgruntled former employee.

Skyrim Dawnguard is the storngly story driven part of the game it seems. It doesn't take itself too seriously. Or it gives the impression it doesn't as one of the main NPCs is voiced by Laura Bailey (female boss voice in Saints Row). "Empire? What... what empire?" The Cyrodiil Empire? Duuuh? "Cyrodiil is the seat of an empire? I must have been gone longer than I thought." And of course one liners like "I always wondered what the dwarves actually looked like. I hear they're like elves, but with beards."

They were very cagey about the details. Usually businesses advertise their great daycare options, maternity leave etc. Dark Brotherhood? Nothing.

Dark Brotherhood broke into one of my houses? I broke into one of their Sanctuaries. No-one witnessed their break in. I left no witnesses to mine. I think we are square.

Dark Brotherhood abducted me in the night to initiate me. I gave it some thorough thought. Would joining the Dark Brotherhood benefit my children? Offer them extra protection in their lives? Speaking of children, did the Dark Brotherhood break into the house where my children were sleeping? So I killed the leader of the Dark Brotherhood. Nobody threatens my kids.

I think I am done with Skyrim. The usual Bethesda flaws are becoming too many to allow the game to be fun. I have now resigned myself to just open the console and type kill whenever yet another dragon attacks because of fast traveling. Which means I also do that to most tedious boss fights. Loot is irrelevant and only exists to burden the player in the excessively restrictive encumbrance system, to force you to run back and forth (without fast traveling so as not to spawn a lot of dragons who's bones weigh too much as well). In the end the only loot worth anything is the ridiculous amount of iron ingots you need for house construction, which you get by traveling from vendor to vendor to purchase as they restock (without fast traveling to avoid dragons? ). That is not a gameplay loop. It is simply wasting players' time hoping they don't realise they aren't playing a game. So console it is and player.additem. If I didn't have the kids, I would have uninstalled already, but as is, I have a responsibility as a parent, so I need to finish purchasing all the houses and building all the houses. Then finish this silly dragon main story, take care of the vampire attacks, and put an end to the war. Because what kind of mum would I be if I left Skyrim like this.

I gave the girls real daggers. It is a dangerous world, and now that at least Lucia has had a lot of training, it felt like it was time. The moment she got a real dagger, Sofia, who never cared about sword practice went wild. I actually had to put a stop to the training because the furniture was becoming collateral damage.

Laurits is a great take on Loki. In season 2 I even like the change in Saxa when she tries to take responsibility in the giants' interest, but finds the other three opposed based on traditional gender roles. I feel that this part was done well.

I met some teachers from Soweto many years ago at a learning conference and watched their presentations on the problems faced in education in townships. I will not pretend I remember anything from that presentation.

My scathing Shadows of New York review: As the game continues the story of Coteries of New York, it is hard to review it without comparing it to that game. Coteries gave players the choice of three interchangeable characters with little to no personality. The choice in Shadows to focus on one character and flesh her out, allowing players to actually care about her, was a step in the right direction then. Coteries only had one ending, which made sense, considering the utter lack of power a fledgling vampire had, but it left players disatisfied seeing none of their choices matter in the least, tiniest bit. Shadows has two endings, not counting the way early on to die and not play the game. Again, a step in the right direction. Yet somehow, the improvements hold the game back. Where Coteries had choices that changed events during the game but ultimately didn't affect the ending, Shadows has very few choices, which add to a hidden counter for which ending is achieved, but do not alter anything during the journey there. Where Coteries had a number of side stories you could advance over the course of the game, and to make each of the three playthroughs give you new events to explore and new choices to make, Shadows has nothing to explore. Each night you choose to read two out of three possible encounters, but none of them have any meaning, any progression. They are one off events that simply allow the writer to showcase some character they came up with. Coteries had a bland protagonist but a very interesting supporting cast. Characters with personality that explored the unlife of vampires and different ways different clans deal with it. The cast of characters in Shadows is the same. Yet those same characters that were so interesting in the first game have lost all personality in the second, being just soulless vessels to give plot information. If even that. As a result, the second "playthrough" comes down to clicking the next button for ten minutes, to skip to the choices, choose the opposite approach in morality, read the one line that differs, then read the changed ending. Should that ending be the "good" ending, it will be grand standing posturing - a fitting end to the self absorbed navel gazing that precedes it. Had this been a novelette, without any illusion of choice or two endings, I would have mostly enjoyed reading through it. Though I would still have rolled my eyes at the ending. It is well written and tries to explore the main character's inner struggle. The different format would not have made the other characters any less flat and lifeless, but it would have felt less like the writer's cry: This is my amazing writing! I did not buy the game for the amazing writing, but for the tale it tells. A story needs both. And Shadows of New York focused so hard on getting the words right, it forgot to have these words mean anything.

It was the third one. Also the utter failure, as I suck at marketing. The original two were published the traditional way with a publisher, in physical form. They didn't do great, but they ended up in book stores and I made three digits in royalties, when other unknown authors pay money to even get printed. This one, in English, on the other hand relied solely on me, and I am incapable of self promoting. The release also triggered a long bout of depression, so I gave up on it. Next attempt will be a graphic novel. After that I will revisit this story to either do as a point and click adventure or a graphic novel. I don't have the money to found an animation studio and turn my stories into netflix series... Edit: With me "how long" is hard to tell. My design process always infuriated my professors at university since it is completely introverted. I can sit on a sofa for months without any progress, then write 40K words in two weeks because: "OK, I worked it out."

Wartales is quite promising. I enjoyed the demo. You get to play 7 battles, then it ends. I guess it is Battlebrothers meets Expeditions (Conquistador (I disliked Vikings)). I posted a while back the comment by the devs how they took the battlebrother formula and implemented advanced leg mechanics. If you are looking at indy demos, you could also look at the demo for Gamedec. It's a cyberpunk rpg thingie.

Also, @Gorth is a moderator. If you never hear of me again, I got banned for literary crimes against humanity. Goodbye cruel forum.