Enoch

Careful-- Hurlshot might think you're volunteering! (The two of you are both in NorCal, right?)

Picked up the Dragon Age: Inquisition GOTY edition. My frugal side says that I should've waited a few months to see if we get a holiday-sale price-drop, but I can afford to ignore my frugal side every once in a while. I'm interested enough in the setting to want to give it a shot while DA2 is fresh in my mind. I'll probably stagger this with Grim Fandango-- I tend to need "breaks" from puzzle-driven adventure games. Haven't yet gotten much further than character creation. (The wife needed the good PC for some work stuff last night.) I made a Dwarf-lady archer-rogue named Doris, because I've heard that the main themes are very elfy, and I like to be a contrarian when I play this kind of game. (I'd consider trying out a city elf background, but such is apparently unavailable, and the Dalish are a clownshow.) The game looks pretty, with the prominent exception of lip synching and player hair options that look like they're straight out of 2009. DA Keep was pretty neat. I think it worked correctly-- DAI told me that a custom world state has been imported, but I haven't confirmed that in-game yet.

So, we finally have an NDAA conference report! Do we think the Administration is going to let them get away with using the OCO dodge to get around the discretionary budget caps? Vetoing an NDAA can be a tough sell, but they've laid out reasonable rhetorical grounds for it. And how about that "simplification" of the defense business systems acquisition review statute?! ... I tend to have a different perspective on the military than most people I know.

Out-of-the-blue question only because I saw this thread at the top of the forum: Anybody have experience running this game on a machine that precisely matches the minimum specs for CPU & GPU? I'm probably still going to hold off until I get around to an upgrade sometime next year, but I could be tempted into jumping in before then were I convinced that it would run smoothly on the rig I've got.

That equipment, though, was the solution to a bigger problem. It probably leads to more CTE than the old-fashioned gear would, but it prevents a lot of skull fractures and neck injuries, which can be life-threatening in a much more immediate sense. My enthusiasm has certainly been dampened a bit as all this information has become available in recent years. I often find myself wondering if I can't find something better to do with the hours spent watching football games, part of which stems from the shame of the enjoyment I'm getting out of patronizing a billion-dollar business predicated on exhibiting the physical and mental destruction of young men to a cheering audience. So, yeah, go Giants.

Finished Dragon Age 2. Yeah, coherence wasn't a particular strength of that ending. The characters that I roleplay in Bioware games lately tend to have "I'm sick of this **** always happening to me" outlooks, which left me a little short of companions by the endgame. At the point where you pick your party for the final push, there's a "what about the rest of us" line that made be laugh a bit, as "the rest of us" was just Varric. Also, I got an amusing bug in Act 3, in that it failed to recognize the fact that, based on my DAO import, Zevran should have bled to death on the side of the road years ago. Not really mad about that, though, as his quest earned me the best dagger I found in the game, and DA: Keep should be able fix that if/when I go on to Inquisition. Anyhow, with that over, I happened to glance at my Steam library and was reminded that I bought the Grim Fandango re-release/remaster a few months back. So I've started playing that.

And that's a big part of the problem with politics in the U.S. today-- the rival party is viewed as "an enemy." A reasonable public servant who earnestly wants to help provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare of the Unites States of America is not my enemy, even if we have different opinions on the appropriate means by which to carry out the government's constitutional duties. Elected officials who are willing to burn **** down to prove what badasses they are might be, though.

I'd say that Boehner is a reasonable guy who was in an impossible situation. It's impossible because a quarter of his caucus (and the media and other entities supporting them-- largely right-wing talk radio) have lied to their constituents, promising that they could achieve all manner of victories in spite of Senate filibuster rules and executive veto powers if their leadership were simply "tougher." The wingnuts probably all know that this isn't true, but they want to look like badasses for taking on "the establishment" and they're nihilistic enough to not care about the collateral damage that they do along the way. (Alternately, they're cynically responding to their own political realities-- they're sitting in gerrymandered districts where the only real threat to their re-election is a primary challenger from even further out the right wing. The only safe way to prevent that is to never compromise on anything, even if said compromise would avoid serious harm to the nation that they profess to love and take an oath to defend.) I don't agree with a whole lot in Boehner's politics, but I respect that he was an earnest guy who cared about serving his country and who was doing the best he could in the situation he was presented with.

Magicka. Duh. Given that, you know, magic isn't real and all of our conceptions of what a mage "is" are based on folklore and fiction, I'll pick the fiction that involves a lot of fourth-wall-breaking humor and **** blowing up. (Alternate choice: LEGO Harry Potter.)

Wow, . This'd be the first Bioware game with a "DLC included" edition since DA:O, right? I wonder what changed their minds.

Another upshot of living in the sticks. No one ever comes to screw up traffic! Well, it's not like DC is an easy commute on non-Pope days. It can be entertaining on some days. I sometimes drive by the Vatican embassy (where he'll be staying), and in the evening rush hour, there is often an older gentleman holding a giant "VATICAN HIDES PEDOPHILES" sign. I once saw him getting off the bus at a nearby stop with his sign, which was extra entertaining because a group of nuns got off at the same stop. I wonder how that guy is handling the visit from His Holiness... Still, I'll take "it might just take 2 hours to get where you want to go" over "it's always at least 2 hours from anywhere you want to go."

Like I said: They're losing their ****.

So, some guy in a funny hat is coming to town tomorrow, and the whole city is losing their **** over it. I'm willing to risk tomorrow, as Señor Preachy isn't scheduled to arrive until 4PM or so, but it looks like I'll be home Wednesday and Thursday. Unfortunately, the tyke's daycare being in my office building means that I'll be spending my time off chasing an 18-month-old around, rather than working from home or relaxing. It sucks to be burning through my leave time balances for something like this, but it's worthwhile if I can avoid any chance of being stuck in a 2-hour commute with the youngin' in the car. (Aside: pope.dc.gov is probably the greatest government url I've ever seen.)

I'll differ at least a little on GD's point about the U.S.'s declining economic power. In a certain sense, so long as the USD is the reserve currency of choice, America is pretty much kicking the rest of the world's ass. That's why nobody really cares about the size of the debt or deficit when they buy Treasuries. This enables a lot of really useful policy options that aren't open to any other country on the planet. There have been challengers lately-- the Yen had its day in the sun; the creation of the Euro was a shot over precisely this bow; China has aspirations for its currency. All of those movements have taken pretty huge kicks in the teeth lately. Things ain't all sunny in Dollarville, but it still looks a hell of a lot more attractive than any of the other options. (Indeed, one useful way of looking at the world right now is that a second cold war is going on as we speak, and will likely continue going on for the next century. It's being fought on the battlegrounds of reserve currencies and cyber-warfare. In this view, Saddam Hussein's greatest sin wasn't invading his neighbors or financing terrorists or trying to make WMDs-- it was threatening to accept currencies other than the USD in international petroleum transactions.)

I doubt that it's based on any serious calculation. There is a willingness among likely GOP primary voters to believe that the current administration has greatly weakened the US's military capabilities. The play for a candidate like Carson is to stoke that concern so that he can offer his leadership/policies as a solution.

Man, DA2: Legacy was a festival of obligatory stupid. (Spoliers below; game is old enough that I'm not going to bother tagging.) So some dwarves come hunting for the PC and his/her sibling for mysterious reasons. We defeat them off-screen, so the player never really gets the sense that the threat is a serious one-- as far as we see, they're basically the same mooks who jump off buildings to attack us every time we stroll down to the Docks after dark. Then we track them back to their base, where the gameplay actually starts. Turns out that they're mysteriously compelled to capture Hawke because of psychic influence by a being that was imprisoned by Grey Wardens centuries ago. This being is apparently super scary and super powerful. And the only solution offered is to... let it out and try to kill it with 4 people?? We're fighting an ancient darkspawn archmage to avoid a few Carta Thugs? We don't think that just maybe the ancient Wardens would've simply stabbed the guy themselves-- rather than build this enormous and complicated prison-- if they thought that was a viable solution? Also, the "Hawke's Key" dagger looks ridiculous.

How did the last two moderates do? They met expectations-- they lost to a better-funded, better-advised, and more talented campaigner, on an electoral map that was not favorable to them. Replace them with the less moderate candidates who challenged them in the primary, and all you do is add 5 points to Obama's margin of victory.

Dragon Age 2: Legacy. I'm mid-Chapter-2 in the main game, and it's still got my interest. The start of the Chapter was a bit of a drag, though. It's an instance where the compulsion to explore every corner of the game environment works against my enjoyment of the game-- it gets especially tedious when all the maps are the same ones I explored in the previous chapter, and when you've got do it twice because stuff changes with the day/night cycle. Plus, the core plot motivation is noticeably weaker-- why should I go around beating up thugs in Darktown now? I'm rich, dammit! But, as I said, I got through that and I'm still having fun with it. Anyhow, I've played through most of the non-plot-critical quests open to me, and advanced the plot-critical ones as far as Leandra's death. That seemed like a good spot at which to blow off the Viscount and go do a family-centric side mission outside of Kirkwall. It's interesting how the game is framing and re-framing it's main conflict. (I.e., the Mage-Templar thing.) In chapter 1, a player who doesn't come in wholly devoted to one side or the other is probably going to be at least moderately pro-Mage. You're playing a refugee whose father was an apostate mage, with a sister (or self) who is also an apostate, hiding out in the slums in part to avoid the attention of the Templars. That's a starting point built to establish sympathy for the other apostates you meet. I followed along with that, trying to role-play it appropriately as a Rogue Hawke. I made a few moderately pro-Templar choices, where the mages in question seemed especially dangerous, but I was otherwise pretty nice to wizardy types, and maxed Friendship with Bethany in short order. (Among those dangerous mages: Anders. I didn't appreciate him roping me into the insane risk of fighting a bunch of Templars inside the Chantry, so I've been either avoiding him or repeatedly reminding him that I consider him an unstable menace.) Chapter 2, though, presents a different situation. Hawke is now wealthy nobility, with something to lose in a town where the real power resides in the Templars. And, in my game, anyway, Bethany is off in the Circle, and apparently finding it not so bad. I've followed the prompts offered-- Hawke has now seen first-hand the temptations that spirits in the Fade offer on Fenriel's quest, and she's watched a deranged blood mage murder her mother. Between that and the backstory offered by folks like Fenris and Merrill, she's now thinking that the Templars have the right idea. The approval minigame remains annoying, but, with a tiny bit of peeking at the wiki, I've managed to get folks pretty much where I want them (friendly with Varric, Avelline, Fenris, and Bethany; unfriendly with Anders and Merrill), with the exception of Isabella. I'm not particularly fond of the character and haven't used her much (in part due to skill overlap with my melee Rogue main character). And when I have, I've been pretty inconsistent in making decisions that she likes or dislikes. She's on the slightly friendly side of the grey zone right now. Still pretty early in the DLC; not much to report there yet.

Dem Cowboys are what they have always been: An embodiment of everything that is wrong about America. Those who support them deserve nothing but heartache and ruin. (Also, they signed a great pass-rusher who will miss the first 4 games because he likes to hit women, and their best DB blew out his knee.)

This statement is correct. In bizarro world. Celebrity casting never did much for me. And as someone who didn't know who Ms. Day was before she showed up in New Vegas, she barely qualifies for even that.

Wait-- Bioware DLC actually on sale? Since when is that a thing that happens? My DA2 game is into early Act 2, and I'm considering acquiring some of the DLC. (It seems that "Legacy" is generally viewed as the one that is most enjoyable and most important to the overall series narrative.) More broadly, on DA2, the companion relation meters are bothering me. It's an improvement over DAO, which allowed the player to disregard most in-story decisionmaking (apart from a few crucial moments like the Urn) and buy the companions' affections with waves of gifts. And I like the idea of adding a "rivalry" mechanic as a counterpoint to "friendship," but it creates the ME2 alignment problem-- you can be either Red or Blue, but choices that are non-committal or inconsistent are Clearly Wrong. This is further complicated by the fact that companions aren't strictly "yea" or "nay" on the range of issues confronting the protagonist-- to their credit, they appears to have somewhat nuanced views on topics. Anders hates the Templars but also hates Blood Magic; Isabella wants the player to be greedy but not to the point of cruelty. A player looking to build Rivalry with Anders would side with the Templars, but would be cool with the use of Blood Magic. Would-be Isabella rivals would be well advised to be alternately selflessly generous and casually bloodthirsty. Particularly when chasing rivalry points, the player sees lots of metagame incentives that work against character-consistent role-playing. It's a less broken system than DAO's, but the raised stakes (i.e., it actually being hard to earn full Friendship/Rivalry) make the degree to which it is broken more prominent. In that vein, I've recently realized that I made the mistake of simply avoiding the characters who I didn't like much. What I should've been doing is dragging them around on missions they hate. Which is tedious (requiring time and thought invested in stuff like their gear and their Tactics) and not character consistent-- if Hawke thinks that Anders is dangerously unstable, why would she choose to bring him along on her murder-hikes? The answer is probably to think less about min-maxing this kind of stuff, but, hey, certain CRPG habits are hard to break.

More precisely, it's the intersection between federal labor laws and federal antitrust laws. The NFL CBA is a collectively bargained-for labor agreement established under applicable federal labor relations law. This is taken seriously because the owners of the individual businesses that make up the League need the antitrust exemption that is provided by federal labor laws to agreements resulting from collective bargaining. (The NFL teams do a lot of stuff that would be per se illegal under antitrust law-- among other things, the draft and the salary cap.) Disputes arising under the NFL CBA are therefore grounded in federal law and provide for subject-matter jurisdiction in federal court. That said, yeah, this ended up in Court mostly because of how laughably arbitrary the dispute resolution process within the terms of the CBA actually is.

Quite a few complained about that, always thought it was clear enough. The way they worded the quest made me stop at least cause I felt it was a point of no return. Different temperaments I guess. What is worse is the follow up conversation where the dozen head honcho admits to having sold you out to the Crucible Knights to use you as a distraction. For that my character would lock him up in the keep's dungeon and throw away the keep (was going to type key, but the typo illustrates the point nicely enough). They set you up and you do not even have a dialogue option to be miffed about it? That is worse than the childish tantrums the player throws in DA2. Speaking of which, I am playing DA2. To my surprise, I don't hate it. (Yet.) As I mentioned, the demo put me off the game, back in the day, as the camera and combat style were exactly what I didn't want to see DAO become. This time, I'm approaching it a bit more open-mindedly, as it's not that dissimilar to some other games that I have enjoyed before (most prominently, the KotOR games). The reinforcements-in-waves stuff remains idiotic, and it does feel faintly ridiculous to play with friendly fire off, but it's passable. And, so far, the game compares will to its predecessor in the writing department. I'm not bothered by having a more defined protagonist, and the dialogue wheel has its challenges, but the early companions are far less annoying than Alistair and Morrigan were. I had been planning to play Hawke as something of a jackass, but I'm finding it difficult to do so around Bethany and Aveline, whose company I'm enjoying. Plus, an overall story motivation of "find a safe home for you and your family" beats the pants off of "only the Chosen One can save the world from a horde of slavering evil monsters!" I'm presently in the thick of Chapter 1 sidequests. They're way too densely packed-- each major map has at least one marker on it at present-- and the journal isn't very good at reminding me what they're all about. (It only seems to tell me what I should do next, without any reminders I can find of who I'm working for and what the overall goal is.) Together, that gives the overall impression more of chasing the "quest arrows" than of figuring out how to complete a task. But, if I make myself focus on mission at a time, the content of the quests themselves has been pretty satisfying. I'm probably not far enough in to be bothered by the infamous area re-use issue. I've passed a number of caves conveniently blocked off by carts and mysterious doorframes on blank walls, though, so I can guess what's coming. I'm willing to treat it as a aesthetic issue and I'll try to not let it bother me. That said, I'm not going to be happy about it when they ask me to run through the Bone Pit again. Whoever designed that area for a game with this kind of camera needs a good smack on the forehead.

Finished The Banner Saga. In a game that is so good at hitting deep emotional notes with sparse art/animation/text (and that map!), the thing that bothered me most was when I lost civilians to starvation. Soldiers die in battle? Heroes fall in plot events? Well, it's a tough world; stuff happens. But civilians starving because we ran out of supplies, well, that felt like pure avoidable error by leadership. (That said, the game is replete with "haha, screw you for picking option C despite every indication that it was a reasonable choice" moments, a few of which can easily lead to starvation issues. I get that that was part of the point-- immerse the player in the role of a refugee caravan leader forced to make decisions with imperfect information-- but it still got me rather angry at the game (rather than the in-world causes) from time to time.) This is probably crazy of me, but I'm actually thinking of giving Dragon Age 2 a go next. (I nope'd out of the demo back when it was new.) After the earnest empathy, wonky slow-paced fighting, and slow-scrolling art canvasses of the Banner Saga, some twitchy, cheesy, fanservicey Biowarism might actually feel good. I'm thinking of a thoroughly unlikeable melee rogue Hawke. I've been moderately spoiled on some broad plot points, so I figure that, if a large part of what the Hero does is going to fail spectacularly regardless of her actions, I might as well make a character who deserves to see her life's work fall apart. Female, because I'm a reflexive contrarian with regard to "canon." (I've also got a "dead chaste Warden, drunken loser Alistair" DAO save to import around here somewhere.) ... (Yeah, I should probably just apply a cold compress and find a good book to read for the next few days before The White March hits.)

I didn't have a problem with the art, but my overall take was the same. I'll revisit it post-update if I have time, I'll and consider the sequel if it's well received, but I'm not particularly motivated to back it. The elemental battlefield-control system was fun for a while but was getting stale by the time I was done with the Cyseal map. And the rest of the game's systems were kind of a mess. The writing had some passable comedy (best comedy crafting system-- which is the only good kind of crafting system-- since Dungeons of Dredmor), but it was very hit-or-miss, and a laugh here and there wasn't nearly enough to sustain interest over the game's length.