The Greatest Tales Ever Told

I wasn't really shooting for this, but I discovered it about a week ago when I got MIN up to 30.  Finally got around to finishing off this achievement for the Chronicler's Crown.  It looks pretty sweet too, always a tough choice between this or the Paragon's.

A Life of Adventure

I haven't written much on my time on FFXIV yet; I've been meaning to--and have a number of things to write about (opinions on the game, I'm now leading a successful, modestly large endgame Free Company with 3 groups at Turn 4 or higher in Coil, etc) but haven't really had the time.  I've got something worth documenting for today though so I'm gonna post this quick:

Completed A Life of Adventure and got my Paragon's Crown.

On tanking speculation in Final Fantasy XIV

This is meant to be a reply to this topic in the Wiping as Intended tanking forum, but they apparently haven't added me as a member yet so I can't post it directly there.  WaI is a guild/free company created by some guys I sort of knew in SWTOR that I'm joining at Callsign's behest as part of a compromise to get them to come to Behemoth.  Anyways, here goes:

This is going to come off as a bit ranty and maybe a little hostile but bear with me, I've got good intentions.

A lot of the "theorycrafting" that has been done here and everywhere else on the internet that I've seen so far (especially with regards to tanking in FFXIV, which I'm invested and have personal experience in) is basically full of shit.  By way of introduction let's start with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YzzZ99AoMU.  You want to know how I know it's complete bullshit right away?  Without any real evidence or supporting justifications, he claims that PLD is easier to play than WAR.  All you have to have done is played GLA and MRD in phase 4 to know that he already doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.

Here's your GLA flowchart circa level 20:
Is there more than one enemy? => yes => Do you still have MP? => yes => Flash => Are you an idiot? => no => Flash again => Is one of the DPS attacking a target out of order or is the healer not playing somewhat conservatively? => yes => Sigh, Flash again => Now what? => Resume Fast Blade>Riot Blade>Flash until stuff dies
Is there more than one enemy? => yes => Do you still have MP? => no => You're doing it wrong, now hurry up and Fast Blade>Riot Blade => okay => Now use Flash
Is there more than one enemy? => no => Are you way ahead on threat? => yes => Fast Blade>Riot Blade
Is there more than one enemy? => no => Are you way ahead on threat? => no => Fast Blade>Savage Blade

Here's MRD:
Is there more than one enemy? => yes => Do you still have TP? => yes => Overpower
Is there more than one enemy? => yes => Do you still have TP? => no => You're shit outta luck, hope nobody's attacking mobs you don't have threat on => /panic
Is there more than one enemy? => no => Alternate Heavy Swing and Skull Sunder

Marauder "Bind All Keys to Overpower and Smash Keyboard" Tanking is hardly much of a challenge at 20.  Maybe it's trickier at 50 but clearly Mr. Happy doesn't fucking know about that either.

IRL I'm a pharmacist, and a large part of my job is dealing with medical research literature.  Distinguishing between quality research and research that has cut corners and used faulty methodology to reach a reasonable-sounding conclusion is a difficult skill to learn and practice.  The reason I bring this up is because I experience the same sort of frustration reading this thread and others and watching all the YouTube drivel on the subject that I get at the exact moment I realize a study has only been constructed to support alterior motives or agendas, support faulty per-ordained conclusions, to serve the zeal of its authors, or to make some chaps some cash down the line at the expense of the science of healthcare.  You look at something like Mr. Happy's video and it's instantly clear that he didn't make it with any consideration on whether his information was accurate or useful, it's there for clickbait, views, and subscriptions and it's really helping nobody.

There's something you all need to keep in mind.  There's no data.

No.

Data.

(Or maybe there is, but nobody seems to be keen on citing anything.)

We don't know how the environment will act at level 50, we don't have a clear picture of what stats or stat growth will look like, what items are available, the types of encounters that will be easy or difficult, how party sizes and composition will affect raid efficacy, etc, etc, etc.

Perhaps more importantly there's no tools yet with which to accurately collect data.  Plus, SE as an MMO developer has a long history of obfuscating the information you're given, which is why actual, verifiable numbers are even more important.  Anyone who has played FFXI probably has a pretty good idea what I'm talking about.  This isn't WoW where tooltips give you all the numbers and freely accommodate data parsing.  Early HNM through the first few years of FFXI were kind of magical in how much of an art there was to figuring out what works and the extent to which the game had to be brute forced to extract useful data.  I was still an officer in Memories of Xendor when Ginnai was developing the MoX parser for SWTOR and having actual data and numbers completely revolutionized the raiding scene for us.

Your heads are in the right place and it's a great showing of the passion with which you're all eagerly approaching XIV, but we have no numbers.  Making guesses and calling it theorycrafting when it's speculative at best is, well, a tad intellectually dishonest.

Update: I eventually posted an edited version of the above here.

WONDERFUL

Payday 2 is unplayable without some coordinated friends.  I hadn't experienced anger in 20 minutes so I decided to try a few pubbie games.

Game 1: Watchdogs
-On day 2, explain how we can get all bags out after the second boat
-Few minutes later: "Hey guys, we'll load up the second boat then just leave one bag behind."
-Did you not read what I just said about getting out with all the bags?
-"That doesn't work"
-Yes it does, I even went and took screenshots because I got sick of arguing with idiots like you
-"No it doesn't"
-Yes it does, look at the goddamn summary screen at the end
-"No it doesn't"
-Yes it does
-"Fine"
-"Were you in the beta?"
-Yes, it worked then too
-"..."
-Few minutes later, host DC's right when a pair of Bulldozers show up

GREAT

Game 2: Bank Heist: Gold
-"Cool, glad to see you can bring a saw"
-Five minutes in to the game, same guy asks if I'm a tech because if not he can restart the drill faster after I beat him to restarting the drill because I was next to it and he was with one other guy in the lobby wasting ammo
-I literally had to start the thermal drill, start a drill on the safe in the manager's office, run out to grab three sets of boards (the fourth were picked up by the above guy who just held on to them the entire game), and saw open the ATMs by myself while the rest of them sat around dumping ammo needlessly into police
-Vault's about to open, two of the other guys are demanding I drop ammo bags because they're somehow out of ammo on both guns, tell them I'm not dropping them until we're in the safe
-Set up shop in the safe, sawing open deposit boxes
-Ammo bag is gone before I can reload my first set of saws
-Second ammo bag's gone before I can even make it a third of the way across one wall
-Whatever, at least we manage to finish the damn game

COOL

Game 3: Watchdogs
-Okay, well there's a level 100 guy in this game and other two are higher level than me, guess it's weird that you'd bring a saw on Watchdogs but whatever
-Guy with the saw immediately opens the truck, apparently the 100 guy gets butthurt and leaves
-Some random fourth guy joins, everything goes smooth
-First escape arrives, we're all waiting on the street, it's unarmored but whatever it doesn't need to be
-Random fourth guy dicks around meleeing swat and generally being dumb instead of getting to the SUV with the rest of us, driver gets killed
-Host returns to lobby, then kicks random fourth guy, I'm sitting there wondering why he didn't just boot random fourth guy on the street so we could finish this shit and anyways it's not like it's appreciably more difficult having to take the helicopter escape
-Whatever, definitely don't want to play with these guys any more...
-Lose will to play Payday 2

NEAT

I HATE

So I actually got so furious when, for the second time last night, I was booted RIGHT AT THE GODDAMN END of Watchdogs Day 2 because people are too fucking stupid to realize that you can walk out of the mission with bags and save a ton of time that I actually went and did a solo run on Normal just to gather screenshots as proof.  Here they are.

I only brought 5 bags along because I wasn't willing to waste the time flinging around the 9 bags you normally start with by myself.  They're sufficient enough to prove the point since you need at least that many to fill up the first boat and unlock the escape and have one left over.

SEE, I'M CARRYING A BAG, IT'S RIGHT THERE.

 OH WHAT'S THAT?  5 BAG(S)?  OH JEE, $500,000?  NEAT HUH.

Bonus screenshot to highlight the fact that not only can you do that on Day 2, but if you carry bags out of Day 1 regardless of how you manage to escape (getting out via car starts you closer to the truck carrying the bags on Day 2, taking the helicopter puts you a ways away) the bags spawn next to you right at the start of Day 2.

Final Fantasy XI: Kurohyou, Jillia, Phoenix, TiamatsFangs

I have a lot I'd like to write about this post and I'm gonna take it from the top in just a moment, but before that I'd like to take a moment to explain that the title of the post is intentionally weird and I'll get to explaining it somewhere below (or in another post).  Jillia, if you somehow manage to find this, please, please, please send me an e-mail at spantera@gmail.com or find some way to get in contact with me.

A couple weeks back I came across a post on Facebook: one of my old friends from FFXI, Techno, talking to another old friend, Margulis, about the FFXIV beta.  I interjected to ask a couple questions about it since I was kind of in an MMO drought and I then went and signed up for the beta for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn.  Last weekend I managed to snag a key from Alienware Arena's giveaway (and then later got a key direct from SE for this weekend) and got a chance to try it for a few hours and catch up with some old TF buddies that have been playing XIV.  The game itself is amusing, kinda eh but I'm really relishing the chance to nostalgia bomb with some old friends and familiar character/class styles (making up for lost Mithra time).

Oh, and I was seriously, seriously giddy to have auto-translate again.  That thing is so much fun.

When Final Fantasy XI first came out I was still in high school and didn't have the means to procure and subscribe to an MMO, but as a big Final Fantasy fan I vowed to myself that one day, one way or another I would find a way to play it.  About a year after I graduated I finally was in the right position to pick it up.  My senior year of high school I was really big into Tribes: Aerial Assault and by the time I got into FFXI I still was in touch with a few old clannies who were now playing it, and they managed to get me a friend code for Phoenix and I hopped on board their social linkshell.  I can't quite remember the name of it...

I was Kurohyou, a Hume male, beardy style.

That first LS (we'll call it LS1 for now) introduced me to the environment that would typify most of my FFXI tenure: bittersweet drama.  The distinguishing feature I'll always remember most was the Lexi/Talenar/Elvaan-PLD-guy-whose-name-I-forgot trio.  Lexi was the only female and WHM in the LS, which meant despite the fact that nearly everyone absolutely fucking despised her, they were obliged to kind of put up with her.  She was married to a guy called Talenar (a THF), and this almost wouldn't be worth mentioning except that she was near constantly hitting on and generally fawning over a second guy, the Elvaan-PLD-guy-whose-name-I-forgot.

My first main was WHM, entirely because I hoped to relieve Lexi's stranglehold as the group's only healer.

At some point, when I was doing the first level cap raising quest, on the part where you have to get THAT paper I had been struggling, stress-fully, to farm it all day.  At some point some friends from LS1 offered to help and somehow Lexi and co. came along.  I don't remember the details but for whatever reason Lexi's presence put me into an incredible, seeing-red fury.  I do recall she was bitching about having to come help me and this upset me greatly because by luck it happened to drop shortly after they all showed up.

Anyways, the only other notable thing I can remember about Lexi is that later a guy named Atistab (whose name I only remember because of the below image) and I became really good friends when we discovered we had a mutual hate for Lexi (who had been in his Dynamis LS for a long time).

There was a second LS I was in between LS1 and TiamatsFangs, all I remember is that the leader was a guy called Ninboy who was one of the few max level goldsmiths on the server.  And man, digging up that image I came across a number of interesting images from those days.

This is Astarael, a career BLM who was another of a constellation of old friends from my Tribes days.

There was some point when I was partying in Valkurm Dunes (would have been in the earliest area) when I joined a party with Jillia and Margulis (they were a couple at the time IIRC).  We had one member of our party who was pretty bad and the three of us were arguing with him which made us all fast friends, and from there I joined TiamatsFangs--a group that I've been involved with in varying degrees over the years but I've always maintained contact with at least a few of them as time has gone by.

Jillia and I were close friends.  I hesitate to say she was my closest friend ever because at the time I was still quite close friends with Brandon Seidler (whom I'd dragged into FFXI at some point).  I'm not too shy enough to not admit that I had a smouldering unrequited crush on her for quite a while as well, but I also don't mind saying that at the very least I loved her like a sister.

This was the picture she posted on the TiamatsFangs forums.  She was a PLD and an absolutely badass tank.  I'll come back to her because there's a baffling backstory that leads into the last time I left the game so we'll save that until then.

I'm actually going to cut this post short here and come back to things.  Topics for another post: Nikki/Moosey/Clashes, Aurawyn, Kiren, Arithia/Faux/Kazeryushin, Girr/Homer the Scammer/SWTOR follow-up, more Jillia, playing FFXIV.

Quick tl;dr on the post title/first paragraph: I lost contact with Jillia shortly after she quit to go to university and the combination of our close friendship and the really bizarre circumstances surrounding her exit from the game form a seriously haunting mystery that I hope-but-don't-expect might someday be resolved.  Got the idea earlier today that if I can get this post to pop up on Google or other search engines with the right combination of keywords she might stumble across it someday.

Edit: It's a number of weeks later now and I was cleaning out some tabs on my browser when I noticed this post pops up at the top of a Google search for "Final Fantasy XI Jillia Phoenix" and quick searches confirm that "Kurohyou Phoenix", "Jillia Phoenix", and multiple other permutations show this post at or very close to the top, so mission accomplished.  The TF gang and I (especially) would love to hear from you again if you're reading this, Jilli.

Remember Who?

Remember Me: not particularly impressed.  I'll give it a few brownie points for trying but everything about it was kind of disgustingly sub-par.  It's kind of a mess to critique because you can see where so much work was put into it to make it into the alarmingly bland experience it was.

The premise for the story was interesting but commits the cardinal sin of not properly exploring its depth.  Here's the gist of the background so I can give an example of what I mean: in the near future a genius inventor has created a method of digitizing memory so that memories can be stored, transfered, quarantined, or deleted and the technology is so developed and so ubiquitous everyone has implants that allows them to network with virtually everything (Plot immersion breaking point #1: everyone?  Seriously?  Nobody thinks this is a bad idea?).  You play as Nilin, who is a memory hunter--a type of criminal who specializes in memory theft--but as a twist her abilities to manipulate memories are so advanced that she's able to "remix" memories, altering them so as to fiddle with the fabric of her victim's personality (Plot immersion breaking point #2: it's hard to sympathize with a character who wants to take the moral high ground when she's literally meddling with the fabric of people's identities and in numerous instances flat out cleaning out everything.)

Anyways here's the example-of-what-I-mean about the game not exploring the depth of its own ideas: midway through the game you break into the office of the CEO of the big evil megacorporation you've been fighting against in order to alter a key memory in their past to make them suddenly decide to take the company in a less evil direction.  First of all, it's weird that it's one event--and secondarily right from there the event is a car crash that they bitterly blame on their child.  Second, how is changing one memory from 20 years ago make up for everything that's happened since?  I mean the CEO literally just got done telling their secretary to prepare a list of everyone who went home early that day so they could be summarily fired the next day.  It's never hinted or mentioned anywhere that further memories are altered recursively (which would have cleared all this up)--in other words, they're going to remember each and every decision and action taken along the road to being CEO of Evil Megacorp Inc.  Third, what's to stop them from realizing they've been tampered with the instant they consult another human being and discover their recollection of events doesn't match others' and/or the physical or historical evidence?

Maybe that's a weak example.  Anyways, the game conceptually treats memories as distinct, almost-physical objects but fails to really explore how memories interact with each other to form the fabric of one's collective experience and identity.  Instead memories are absconded with, deleted wholesale, and generally mucked about with without really exploring the consequences.  They kind of deal with it in a very nebulous way in the form of the Leapers but it's wholly unsatisfying.  Lots of the plot is, frankly.

And also, like Yahtzee put it, the moment you establish at the beginning of the game that the main character can manipulate memories you might as well throw up a big gigantic neon sign saying TWIST COMING.  READY FOR THE TWIST?

The setting is pretty disappointing too.  We have this rich environment in Neo Paris and it's really elegantly fleshed out and put together--in the background to all the linear corridors you run through.  The camera is both hilarious and frustrating in its un-cooperativeness too, it really seems to fight back when I'm trying to move around and inspect the details of the environment in a way that's really baffling, like they were so obsessed with adhering to some sort of cinematic vision, the developers are actively fighting against your efforts to take a moment and look around and appreciate the art direction.  And even the game's attempts to direct your attention to some big scenic background are poor--there was one segment where I was climbing a pipe and would have missed a very nice image of the sprawling city if I hadn't suddenly noticed the music was doing some awkward swell and I was probably supposed to be looking at something other than the precarious ledges I was climbing.  The worst part is you're in a sprawling future metropolis and you literally visit 3-4 of the same general locations 2-3 times each.

The gameplay is likewise a bit disappointing for different reasons.  The keystone gimmick--memory remixing--is really, really cool but is very limited in scope and only shows up about 5 times.  The game gives you periodic ability unlocks in a kindasorta Metroidvania style but the entire game is pretty hardcore linear (if something branches off to a tiny detour you can be sure there's a collectible hiding somewhere).  The combat is slightly interesting but very samey.  They made the excellent choice of using an Arkham City style combat system but then watered it down but then give you the neat little cookie of customizable combos.  And, while this is nice, there's no real depth to it, no cost-benefit decisions to make, it's just simple pick-what-you-want-put-it-where-you-want-it visual dickery that's frankly kind of hard to appreciate when you're busy dodging shit and keeping an eye on other enemies in the thick of combat to really appreciate.

The bulk of the gameplay is the acrobatic conveniently-placed-ledge crawling and it's applied liberally and everywhere, and while it's not atrocious the game sure beats that dead horse into a pulp.

The director was some French guy and the entire first segment of the game was pretty reminiscent of Indigo Prophecy (I hope it's not the same French guy who directed that because I haven't taken the time to go make sure it wasn't).  The entire experience screams game-that-should-have-been-a-movie.  Last night as I was drifting off to sleep I was trying to decide how possible it would be to just record the entire game and edit it down to an un-interactable movie.

Overall it wasn't an unpleasant experience.  The real star here was the art direction and the visual themes--the concept art for the game is gorgeous and it really came through.  Unfortunately they're the face of a superficial and dull plot and a gimmicky excuse for a video game.

Deus Vult

The following is a collection of semi-AARy posts I made on Facebook chronicling my various exploits in Crusader Kings 2 the last number of weeks.
---
It seemed I was destined to expand my grand strategy collection having spent so much recent time on EU3; Paradox sale on Steam over the weekend and today is CK2 day. Already spent the entire afternoon as a sort-of-ambitious Sicilian count.
---
Crusader Kings 2 consumes my free time at an alarming rate. I was a tad ornery when Laura was trying to ask me what I wanted for dinner because I was in the middle of a succession crisis, but then I realized a moment later that she had been home from work for a while and was asking what I wanted for dinner because it was 5PM, not noonish.
---
My Duke of Mercia also holds one province in and the Duchy of Lancaster. When the previous pope called the second crusade, it was conveniently at just the right point in time that the Saracen dynasty that held Jerusalem at the time had just finished exhausting their military beating back a rival Muslim dynasty, so when I and a handful of lesser western European powers came riding in there was nothing but ripe sieges and stacks of 2k soldiers everywhere, and when the crusade won I accidentally inherited all of the pope-inaugurated Kingdom of Jerusalem. I now had 100+ holdings which was much higher than the 8 max I could administrate, so I quickly unloaded the four brand spanking new duchies on a bunch of whiny uncles who were mad they didn't have any land. Anyways, one of those uncles decided the Duke of Mercia shouldn't ALSO be the Duke of Lancaster and started a plot (which I foolishly backed) to depose the title for the latter duchy. But being as the ambitious uncle has four kind-of small territories all the way over in the middle east and his opponent controls essentially two duchies worth of provinces in northwest England, he's spent the last several years ferrying over tiny groups of soldiers (started off between 1-2k troops) and promptly smashing them into a much larger force (8k).

The last boats seriously unloaded a squad of 14 guys.

The Duke of Mercia apparently doesn't have any boats (he has a few ports but isn't calling any of his ships) so he's just sitting waiting. I'm waiting for the damn war to be over with (could take decades for the negative warscore to build up at the rate soldiers are slowly being ferried from southern Israel to England) so I can just revoke the damn title anyways (which I can do for free because the cunt supported the pretender in the last succession crisis).

Deus vult.
---
I remembered Steam actually co-operates when trying to take screenshots with CK2 when I noticed this funny little detail up the top-left. My character had just gone from Infirm to Incapable and his wife, Queen Birgitta of England was appointed regent. At some point I'd also gotten an event to have an affair...with his wife. Fun fact: via the gift of tragic irony she's also the highest intrigue vassal I have and is thus my spymaster. I'm several years into Saexraed's grandson's reign and grandma Birgitta is STILL my spymaster.

  
---
Decided to give the ASoIaF mod for CK2, loaded up the Feast for Crows scenario, picked Martell because Dorne is relatively passive to the central conflict, except shortly in Aegon VI landed in Westeros but I couldn't remember canonically if Dorne supported Aegon's campaign (did a little digging on the wiki, apparently the event that popped up where Arianne is sent as an envoy is yet to occur in the Winds of Winter) but he already has secret pro-Targaryen plots afoot and Aegon VI would technically be his nephew so I figured why not.

Anyways, immersion was immediately broken when, in the first battle of campaign, my troops summarily cornered and slew Jaime Lannister.
---
While I wasn't looking, Scotland managed to somehow inherit all of Norway, which gave momentary pause to my future plans to take Scotland for myself. Fortunately, a few years later virtually every Norwegian duchy revolted and at present Norway's back to the status quo. Meanwhile, Scotland has also somehow inherited what's left of Connacht.

Two words: Scottish vikings.

---
I ran into a snag in my England game where midway through an offensive war to unify Portugal (the third Crusade that granted me the Kingdom of Portugal somehow left two counties in Islamic hands) my king died in battle and quickly resulted in a small succession issue that obliterated my slight advantage over the Moorish reply to my offensive. Took a break for a few days (played some Mount & Blade) and then came back to my save before I'd started my offensive. Went smoothly this time.

When the above king's grandson inherited (his direct son had died to illness) things were very smooth. No rival claims and he cleanly inherited two kingdoms which were under gavelkind succession (which is tough to do, he had at least one eligible uncle and/or brother and I'm not actually sure how it technically happened). Things were great until his two eldest sons starting warring over separate duchies in Portugal (which was still under low crown authority which permits intra-Kingdom warfare). This wasn't unmanageable (I was actually using it to my advantage to try to maneuver the elder son into a stronger position on succession) but then the Duke of East Anglia decided he wanted independence and dragged two other duchies with him. Even THIS wasn't unmanageable but the Fatimid Empire took advantage of the situation to decide he wanted Jerusalem back. With ~2/3 of my potential forces attempting to pacify the other third, I managed to put down the rebellion and bring all my forces into the far east side of the Mediterranean JUST in time to lose the entire Kingdom of Jerusalem to war score.

I actually wasn't too discouraged by losing Jerusalem (one less kingdom title to worry about doling out on succession), but I used it as an excuse to rage-revoke the primary titles of everyone whose rebellion caused me to lose it.

Anyways, I played for a little bit after that, but attempting to mitigate the gavelkind succession of the Kingdom of Ireland and Portugal was more daunting than I was prepared for this afternoon so I decided to quietly retire that campaign for now. The lesson learned here is not to create titles that have de jure gavelkind succession until you ALSO have the ability to create the title one level above it. For instance I basically should never have created the title for the Kingdom of Ireland because it's liable to pass to my heir's sibling and thus completely invalidate the effort spent uniting the Irish mainland. I still would have had to deal with having Portugal and Jerusalem thrust on me, but dealing with 2-3 extra kingdom titles is better than 4.

I started a game as King of France, since I have yet to touch them in a grand strategy game and immediately found another set of problems. Like England, France starts with primogeniture (unlike, say, the Iberian kingdoms), which is much much easier to deal with compared to gavelkind. Unlike England, France starts with no established crown authority which isn't a real disadvantage by itself but means that your internal politics are going to be in constant turmoil as your vassals bicker incessantly and makes individual dukes who accumulate power potentially dangerous. In addition to all that you start with the very menacing HRE looming to the east.

I actually had to start twice. Both times the HRE went full on angry war for the laughably tiny county of Gent. The first time just as I was marshaling all my forces, my uncle decided he should be king and took about a quarter of my forces with him. My 10kish army was getting stomped by the 30k HRE stack when I realized I could just surrender Gent at absolutely no penalty aside from losing the county. When I restarted again, I just gave him Gent and then reclaimed it like 5 years later when the duchy that held it declared independence from the HRE. It seems that the size of the HRE is mitigated by the same problem I'm dealing with--the low crown authority means that basically your "country" is a bunch of tiny duchies constantly warring with each other while you're busy trying to deal with world politics, and the HRE has the added problem of elective succession which means there's only really going to be brief windows of time where there's actually a unified HRE to be worried about knocking at your door all at once. They're already suffering somewhat from a number of independent nations popping out from the empire.

Anyways, the constant intra-kingdom warfare is really chaotic and I'm just trying to hold on long enough for my next heir to institute medium crown authority which'll put an end to internal disputes. Then I only have to worry about my dukes poking the sleeping dragon to the east.
---
After reading about a von Habsburg count to HRE challenge I decided to give that a try. Had a really slow early game that picked up steam when I convinced the emperor to give me the Duchy of North Burgundy but then came to a screeching halt once medium crown authority was instituted and I couldn't even press de jure duchal claims when I was finally in the position to.
---
Woke up yesterday at like 6AM thinking about my France campaign. The trouble I was having planning ahead was that I wasn't sure where France should go in the endgame. I always like to plan on shooting for the de jure empire of my chosen country but I can't foresee what the next goal is after forming Francia, but laying in bed thinking about it I was starting to get psyched up to just go for it and see where it takes me.

But as I sat down at my computer, before I loaded it up I did a quick review of the wiki tabs I had up and I was looking at the tab on succession laws trying to think more on dealing with gavelkind succession when I was reading the section describing seniority succession and the section mentioned that it's a useful tool for unifying the Iberian kingdoms which sounded really interesting so I went and started a game as Leon instead.

Right off the bat I had to consider the same issue that I was slightly vexed with when I tried starting as Castille: do you make an early grab for the other Christian kingdoms so that you have full control over the push into Moorish territory or do you keep the alliances and risk them either calling you into wars with very weak positioning and/or taking land for themselves and putting you into a weaker position. The advantage of starting as Leon is that you're already playing the eldest of the Jimena kings; a quick survey of my neighbors showed that the king of Castille (to whom the king of Leon is heir) was the heir of Galicia, so I decided I would try to grab Castille and hope Galicia falls apart. Castille starts weaker than Leon, but when I declared war they called in Galicia and Navarra. But I had a little luck on my side, Galicia's Duke of Portucale started a faction to hand Galicia over to me, so I marshaled my forces and bitchslapped the small contingent from Galicia so the Duke of Portucale could mop up and give me a nice birthday present before turning back to Castille.

So less than a few years in and I held all three of the western Iberian kingdoms. Nice start. There was a slight wrinkle; Galicia's crown authority didn't start high enough for me to convert it to seniority succession right away. I decided I was fine with this though since I got the duchy of Portucale out of the deal, which meant when my king died his son would inherit the two counties comprising what remained of the Kingdom of Galicia while I got to keep Leon, Castille, and the lower half of Galicia. As it turned out, it got a little better, because the King of Navarra was the senior-most heir, so on succession I picked up Navarra when I lost Galicia--but this was only a temporary boon, it too couldn't be converted straight to seniority but I only needed its resources long enough to expand decisively into Moorish territory. By the time I lost Navarra's three provinces I'd gained 3-4 times as much territory by expanding south. Playing in the afternoon yesterday I steadily advanced south taking more and more territory.

I was gonna continue the advance today but I've been distracted watching CEO 2013 all day. I briefly tried to play while having the stream run on my second monitor but I accidentally won the Second Crusade for Jerusalem (again, seriously I didn't want it this time, I arrived late when the warscore was already like 70-something, beat down a 13k enemy stack and didn't even have time to start a siege--somehow that had given me the highest contribution rating and before I could load my troops back onto the boats to run off with my Crusader trait I suddenly had a whole new kingdom under my belt--quick aside: somehow the Kingdom of Jerusalem started with seniority succession, so one less massive headache to deal with) and suddenly had a lot of minutiae I had to deal with and I didn't want to have to divide my attention so I'm saving the county handout for later.
---
Taken at the start o' my last session. I've since expanded farther south and control about half of Ghana (had truces with both Jerjerid and Almoravid so I had nowhere else to throw soldiers). Had some trouble following my last succession that was eerily reminiscent of the trouble I ran into at the end of my England campaign but I managed to ferry troops over in time to save northern Jerusalem from an opportunistic Jerjerid attack. As I was taking a chunk of Ghana, there was a Catholic crusade for Hungary, which is the western tip of Cumanian blob there; it was won and picked up by a single HRE duke who is now probably busy trolling the emperor.

     

One if by Land, Two if by Viking Longboat

Recent screenshot from the ongoing Russia game. A lot of really amusing and interesting things here. To begin with, the USA and Canada (the latter, strangely, south of the former) have both emerged from what was perviously a large Scandinavian colony. Louisiana is also it's own sovereign nation now. Likewise, so are Haiti and Mexico which are both noticeably drifted away from their real-world locations (granted Mexico once stretched up through California). It's hard to see easily here, but there's one lighter-green island in the southeast Bahamas which comprises the whole of Brazil, separate from th darker green Portugese colonies. The darker purple is actually Burgundy, which has inherited most of France and are now vassals of Milan (the greyish-purple), who is the current Holy Roman Emperor and controls basically all of Europe west of Russia/me except where Spain and the UK would be. The merigold-yellow is Scotland, which has random colonies all over the world.

Universal

I've been seduced by Eropa Universalis III the last few weeks and I'd like to write a little bit about my learning experience because it's really a very intimidating game until you take a little bit of time to learn it and then it becomes absolutely amazing once you have a reasonable grasp of how to play it (it's like Dwarf Fortress lite in that regard).

I first got the game quite a while back, installed it, played the tutorial, loaded up a game as England, was absolutely vexed by the UI and immediately gave up and uninstalled it.

So I reinstalled it a few weeks back in search of boredom soothing.  I went into it with a little more conviction this time.  I decided to go with Scotland, figuring I'd be vaguely safe while I can sit back and watch the world unfold as I learn how to play the damn thing.  Unfortunately the early mission Scotland usually gets is to claim that one little island in the far north that's held by Norway.  I tentatively moved my army up to the island and threw out a Declaration of War hoping the large sea between Norway and here would be large enough to belay retaliation, perhaps at least as long to seize the island then promptly sue for peace.

Less than a month of siege and Norway dropped a stack twice the size of my army onto the island.

So that was a bust.  I decided to look for a better newbie nation.  I was trying to avoid picking a larger nation (which are generally safer and indeed easier) because I didn't want to have to figure out how to manage a large number of territories at once.  I discovered that Portugal is an excellent newbie nation since you can pretty much just ally Castille and forget Europe exists as you sail off to colonize the entire sunset.  However, Portugal has a very boring early game since you basically do nothing but wait on your tech in order to get Quest for the New World.  Not yet having accustomed myself to the pace of the game, I felt weird sitting and doing not much for literally decades at a time in game, so I gave that game up.

Next I decided it was time to dive into a larger nation, but I thought I might shy away from Europe since I was unfamiliar with the politics of the period.  Instead I went over east and picked Ming, which occupies a comfortable position sitting on most of China.  Ming turned out to be an excellent choice for someone who's not-completely-new-but-still-doesn't-have-the-hang-of-things.  Ming has a solid strategic, economic, political, and diplomatic position but has its choices limited as a function of the Imperial court mechanics.  Basically your nation has three factions which each enable only a select number of gameplay options at a time, which as it turns out is excellent in not only teaching you that these mechanics exist as distinct organisms but also teaches you when and how to balance using them.  When Eunuchs are in power you can trade and colonize, you can only build when Bureaucrats are in power, and you can only allocate missionaries and most effectively build armies when the Temple faction is in power.  Also, since your policy slider choices influence the balance of these factions (and if you go looking for guides they'll tell you to prepare to Westernize) it also serves as a very crude introduction to slider strategy.  Finally, since your north borders are lined with multiple barbarian hordes you get plenty of practice engaging in warfare.

At some point I got bored with Ming (once you get used to what every faction allows you to do it quickly becomes stifling not being able to do everything at all times), so I tried Portugal again but couldn't get a solid grasp on colonization mechanics.

Briefly tried a game as Iroquois in an attempt to recreate this amazing AAR but quickly gave up and decided I might come back to try again later. 

So I started a Muscowy game instead!  And here's where I finally got the hang of things.  Set out with a goal of Westernizing and forming Russia and things ballooned nicely from there.  Being that you're landlocked for most of the game it's nice only having to focus on land power, and since you're in a great position to maintain military dominance you don't have to spend much time puzzling out early economic and production policy--you kind of grow into it as your expand your territory.  Westernizing is not as brutal as it is for other nations since you start in the Oriental tech group, so it's a nice little intro to that mechanic.

This screenshot's now two days old and a few years short of a century have passed. I've since colonized all the way to the east coast of Asia (grabbing all land that wasn't already claimed) and swallowed up all the barbarian hordes between me and Manchu/Ming (including Kazakh which you can see here). Had a brief war with Persia, grabbing all their northernmost provinces. Every couple decades Lithuania declares a reconquest war, dragging Scandinavia and an assortment of other random allies with them. Every time I punish Lithuania pretty heavily for it. The first few times I barely beat back Scandinavia, who would always ask for peace as soon as my eastern armies where in a position to end their stack, but I got sick of them re-signing treaties with Lithuania so in the latest war I took about a third of their European territories (they have a ton of colonial territory in the west).

It's fun managing the absolutely massive empire, but it's basically just down to waiting for someone to blunder into a war with me so I can steal their stuff.  I'm looking forward to finishing this game off and moving onto a more challenging nation.  I might try Portugal again now that I have a firmer grasp of most of the game's mechanics.

Also, this is my 100th post, am I cool yet?

Hopes Inverted

I'm in need of a break from World of Tanks (which I've been playing profusely for the last month or so), so I came across Arcane Saga Online and decided to give it a try.  Unfortunately I got halfway through customizing the controls before I realized there was no option to invert the mouse Y-axis, which makes the game unplayable for me.  Had the same problem with Perfect World Online a while back and had the same solution: immediately uninstall it.

So I was thinking to myself, if I was going to play a fantasy-stylized Korean AMMO with outlandishly clad women I might as well play THE fantasy-styled Korean AMMO with outlandishly clad women--for I recalled at that moment that Tera is now free to play.

And it shall be so.  Downloading the client as I type this.

I played the beta a while back with Callsign (I think I probably made a post about it back in the day) and was unimpressed, but I'm in need of a quick fix and its had some time to stew so let's see how it's doing.

Also, did I make a post about the Firefall beta yet?  I'm in the closed beta for that and it's interesting if pretty empty at the moment.  I'm concerned because it's being patched with actual content VERY slowly and it's already approaching open beta.  I played it a lot for a few days before getting pretty burnt out on the same grinding waltz of content for xp and materials (high level ARES missions and Melding Tornado events which are lovely for xp and the obligatory Thumper grinding for mats).  I'm hoping I can come back to it in a month and there'll be more to do, but I already haven't played it for a few weeks and when I checked on it yesterday there were just handfuls of random bug fixes.

Fallout Soon, Fellow Wastelander

I've been playing through Fallout: New Vegas again to keep from being driven nuts by my shitty DSL internet (which has been practically unusable for large portions of the day for months now).  I had a dream the other night that would make a really cool premise for a new Fallout: it started just before the bombs hit and in the dream the player character was a child in the back of some bus on some school field trip or something.  The PC survives the blasts but is turned into a ghoul, which immediately gave me several interesting ideas for a number of angles for the story to develop:

-We could get a peek at the world immediately post-bombs (ghoul form would make the ambient radiation a non-issue from a gameplay perspective).
-Otherwise, the player could get trapped somewhere only to be rediscovered in "modern" times.
-The player could stumble across something that reverses ghoulification.
etc etc

If you really wanted to out on a limb you could turn the whole ghoul/not-ghoul thing into a set of Dark Souls-esque game mechanics.

In other news, I tried the Marvel Heroes beta over the weekend.  Got through the tutorial and briefly perused the forums before I decided it was completely not worth the waste of time.  The former was hella boring and promised a lot of future grinding that if I wanted to commit to I'd pick a better game (made me kindasorta want to play some more Path of Exile) and the latter was filled with the requisite fanboy forum-denizens who are happy and willing to swallow developer cock instead of acknowledge any form of criticism.

It's bizarre how much they're pushing the game's status as an MMORPG, because you get silly stuff like this, specifically #8. It's an ARTS.  Diablo clone if you prefer.  It's free2play and it's the shady kind where if you want to play a particular hero you're going to need to shell out cash for it or grind ad nauseam.  It wasn't eye-catching or interesting in any novel way, but don't take my word for it--go try it yourself.  I'm just saying I found it really really boring.

More like Bioshock Infinitely Lame

Adapted from a series of posts I've made elsewhere.

Bioshock Infinite: I'm not impressed. Tried too hard to one up the look of its predecessors without properly capturing the spirit. The story is not extremely engaging, nor particularly thought provoking. It touches on themes of political ideology and sociology to justify the setting without exploring them with any depth or finesse--which could have been an improvement upon its forefathers' flimsy pedantic, black & white morality shortcomings. The gameplay is disgustingly linear (although to its credit they at least try to hide it) and is at best a cash-in on the series' iconic imagery and at worst a cash-in on generic actiony spectacle shooters.

I'm a pretty huge fan of the first Bioshock; I even liked the much-less-critically-successful sequel. I think what really killed Infinite for me was about halfway through the game when I realized I was basically playing Dishonored in a floating cloud city without the stealth mechanics. I kinda wish they'd given it a different name instead of Bioshock.

The game just didn't have any humanity: take the first Bioshock where even the average mook (not even taking into consideration that care was given to creating personalities for every archetype of splicer) was identifiable as a person who fell from various levels of grace into the mutated hell of plasmid overuse (plasmids, also note, were more than a gameplay mechanic and was quite central to the overarching plot). In Bioshock Infinite at every stage you're gunning down faceless zealots of various flavors, with virtually no distinguishing characteristics amongst them--the most egregious example being Cornelius Slate's soldiers, whom you have no reason to fight and have absolutely no reason to fight you other than that the Hall of Heroes apparently was in dire need of local adversaries.

Honestly, the most exciting part of the game for me was the brief moment in the ending sequence where you end up in Rapture (I was actually kind of hoping there'd be an even longer nod to the first game, maybe witnessing the plane crash before you enter the lighthouse).  And even that moment was partially spoiled by the cockblocky way the sequence conveniently puts down a recurring big bad which would have made an excellent boss fight somewhere instead of just getting tossed in the trash heap with the rest of the plot.

It's a cushy themepark ride; significantly more style than substance, content only to briefly amuse you with flashing lights until the ride commensurate to the ticket you paid for is over. 

An irrelevant long-winded post about Solomond Island in the Secret World that nobody I know will understand or really care about

I originally wrote this 4/6/2013.

I really love Solomon Island as a quest-chain, even though I have a lot of complaints about it.

At the beginning of the Secret World you discover that your character has somehow swallowed a super-power bestowing bee whilst sleeping and wakes up discovering that they have the power to wreck their apartment over the course of a week.  You're quickly whisked away to one of three factions representing a covert power struggle.  They all essentially do the same thing: tell you that you're now super awesome, that there's some evil something that needs to be dealt with, and that you as an unwitting newbie have to go sort that shit out.  Not much motivation given, but eh that's what you've got to go on.

You're immediately shoved off to Solomon Island, a "small" island off the coast of Maine, where a mysterious fog is terrorizing the place The Mist style complete with zombies, Cthulu-esque horrors, an evil cosmic life-eating infectious force, a convenient rift between the dimensions of Earth and Hell, ghosts, evil giant burrowing insects, and a few other varieties of supernatural terrors.

So here's the full back story, it comes in a few parts (if you're the sort of person who cares about spoilers and think you might want to play the Secret World someday, you're probably not going to want to read the rest of this):
-At some point a thousand years ago, a contingent of Mayans escorted by some dark evil god invaded Solomon Island looking for...something.  Unfortunately the island was then occupied by a tribe of native Americans called the Wabanaki.  The Mayans proceed to slaughter the Wabanaki, who do their best to fight back, and are in danger of being eradicated when, conveniently, a group of Norse explorers wielding a powerful light artifact show up and join the battle on the side of the Wabanaki to push back the Mayan expedition.  The Norsemen and Wabanaki together set up powerful wards to protect the even bigger even more powerfuler artifact that the Mayans were after before the Norsemen depart and are summarily sunk some distance out by what can be assumed is some remnant of the dark god's power.
--As a silly aside, the powerful light artifact which is the focus of the Solomon Island quest, is never directly named, is the source of my favorite line from the Darkness War ("TheNorsemenhadbroughtwiththemthepoweroftheirgodsandthiswassomethingtheMayanswerenotpreparedfor."), and is heavily implied to be the source of all of Solomon Island's troubles, is Excalibur (if you check the Verangian's buff when he uses it during the Darkness War, it refers to the sword by name).
-Flash forward to modern times, a fishing boat from the island goes missing for some time but eventually returns sans part of its crew and with the rest suffering from some insidious hallucinations.  They're followed very shortly by an abandoned shipping barge that had disappeared from the same area several years before which is itself accompanied by a dense fog that covers the island.  The people who escape the fog (perhaps by hiding in a supermarket), eventually find the rest of the town empty but for a few days until the missing contingent of citizens return for a mini zombie apocalypse.  Also, there's Cthulu-inspired sea horrors invading.
-It's also established in the introduction of the game that there's an overarching malevolent force called the Filth that has been popping up (and promptly covered up) all over the world.  Somehow, and at the same time, they also choose this exact moment to pop up on Solomon Island.  I think at the time that the game was released it was meant to be surmised that the Filth were the harbingers of the 2012 Mayan apocalypse and that shit was getting worse as time marched towards December.  The link is less apparent now that December 2012 has come and gone, but it's alluded to a couple times early on and promptly forgotten as though it was perhaps something that would be more present-in-mind if played parallel to 2012 IRL.
--It's implied that the shipping barge had discovered the wreck of the Norse ships and had recovered Excalibur.  From here it's not clear if the dark powers behind the fog were attached to the sword (I thought it was implied in a few places that the fog was a direct result of the sword's power being brought back to the island) or simply following in an attempt to claim it...somehow.
---A man who has been pursuing the means to open a portal to Hell so he can become Hell-Stalin and liberate the everyday working demon, conveniently succeeds in doing so RIGHT on Solomon Island AND at the same time as the fog, which also opens a ton of related unstable portals in one whole corner of the place.
---The local secretly-Illuminati-controlled college has a sudden alumni ghost flare up at the same time.  Also, there's a haunted amusement park and mansion, but it can possibly be assumed they were haunted before the fog rolled in.
---A race of evil insects who had apparently burrowed under the island for some time (I think it's implied that the Mayans brought them over but I can't quite recall) suddenly decide its time to set up shop on the surface.
---Also, every local legend about angry spirits or backwoods creatures?  Yeah, they're all true now.  Bigfoots, wendigos, angry hauntings, evil possessed scarecrows, even the village idiot who oversees the junkyard is now building giant trash heap golems.

While all of these are basically convenient explanations for a variety of quests, it starts to get comically out of control while you're on your tour of the single most supernaturally unlucky island in the world.  There's a very convoluted transition from where you go from investigating the cause of the Draug's invasion to stopping the Filth from getting their filthy hands on the Gaia Engine.  The first part of the island is the strongest, narratively speaking, especially since it's focused only on the sea monster invasion, but by the time you move on to the second part of the island everything else starts kicking into overdrive.  The entire thing kind of overstays its welcome too even from a gameplay standpoint; by the time you're done with Blue Mountain, if you've done everything there is to do, your character progression (which is tracked by an approximation based on the number of skill points you've spent and the abilities you've unlocked) should be somewhere around QL7 out of a max of QL10.

I kind of wish the Filth subplot would have played a backseat, maybe as a subtle behind-the-scenes manipulator, to the Cthuluey Draug plot, for no other reason than that the sea monster invasion was an infinitely more interesting thing to explore in an MMO than garden variety corruption #53.  Actually, now that I think about it, it could perhaps be argued that the first part of the island, Kingsmouth Town, reaches a climax when you defeat the Ur-Draug at the wreck of the Polaris, which might explain why the Draug are suddenly second-string villains by the time you reach the Savage Coast on the other side of the island.

Anyways, I applaud The Vanishing of Tyler Freeborn for at least attempting to tie things together, even if its conclusion is rather weak.  The link between the sea creatures and the Filth is extremely not clear in the base story.  Issue 5 attempts to tie them together by coming to the implied conclusion that the ancient Norse ship was sunk by the Filth, which "evolved" along its own, separate path to the Cthulu-type horrors with zombies con queso we see in Kingsmouth Town et al.  In my opinion it cheapens the Draug as primary villains, but at least the effort was made to tie up that loose end.

To top off my complaints, Solomon Island ends on a horrendous cliffhanger that's not resolved in the current content.  There's another minor kick-to-the-balls moment in the inter-mission transition for the Illuminati where it's implied that there's dozens of other weapon-artifacts that you may-or-may-not get to see, but that's maybe more forgivable.

It's my party and I'll Far Cry if I want to.

I've been playing Far Cry 3 lately and enjoying it for the most part, but the more I play it the more it worries me.

Far Cry 3 is the epitome of the science of modern game design.  It's also the next logical step in open-world sandbox-style games after Skyrim, and it certainly bears a lot of the marks of its influence.  Everything about this game is designed to keep you playing a little bit longer: XP based character progression, tons of collectables, hunting for crafting materials, tiny bits of treasure scattered everywhere that trickle slowly into your wallet, guns that slowly unlock availability as time goes on (or can be bought) and are further customizable, Assassin's Creed-style slowly-unlock-the-map-and-side-missions-as-you-go gameplay, Skyrim-style laughable sidequests where everyone needs something that's conveniently in walking distance.  Layered on top of a save-your-friends story where you go from OHMYGODIHAVEN'TSHOTAGUNBEFOREICAN'TKILLAMAN to fuck-yeah-jungle-survivalist-badass in the span of about 20 minutes and you're literally egged on by an alluring woman who promises you approval and (I'm not kidding) full-on graphic sex if you give her everything she wants.

And yet everything manages to simultaneously be an instant gratification roller-coaster ride.  The game is filled with cutscenes and character actions where control is taken away from you to do something actiony while your vision is locked in all its headbobby glory to a camera lodged in your character's eye sockets.  Your character is established as being a well-off white kid from California who hasn't touched a gun in his life and couldn't imagine shooting even his kidnappers, fortunately your older brother (whom you're held captive with) is an ex-marine so he's able to show you the ropes before being conveniently killed--but it's no problem because you're instantly adopted by the warrior tribe culture that's fighting against the pirates who kidnapped you and your friends who have this mysterious power that turns you into a master-stealth-ninja-survivalist by merely placing a small tattoo on your left arm.  Everyone on the island instantly knows your name and how much of a badass you are, there's zero character development at all--you're instantly the only possible person in the world who can solve this island's troubles.

Putting myself in my character's shoes is very difficult.  I feel like it robs me of what could have been an amazing character development experience when my character is suddenly a master marksman with what should be years of jungle special forces training literally the second I step out of Dennis' shack.  There's no tension, no proper sense of the stakes whether it be in a small situation like taking over an outpost to the overarching story (your character constantly whining about the imminent danger of his friends doesn't do it, and is frankly meaningless to us when we the player don't KNOW Jason's friends personally).  And the extent of the actual in-game character development I've seen thus far is the friends you rescue being shocked that you're no longer a benign white boy who panics at the first sign of danger like they do.

I feel like the setting is a mask for what is basically an empty game experience that only exists to eat up my time and money.  It's the sodapop of video games--empty calories that tastes sweet but has no substance.

Holy dicks look at that fucking passive skill tree. Seriously, look at it.

I originally wrote this 2/5/2013.

(http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree)

I've been playing a lot of Path of Exile the last several days and I like it quite a lot not only as a solid game but for what it represents in the state of game development nowadays.

Diablo 2 was a groundbreaking game for which there are now three big games vying to take it's place as a modern interpretation.  In my opinion, Path of Exile is the real spiritual successor to Diablo 2, where Diablo 3 is a nominal successor (and nothing but) and Torchlight 2 is...well it's kind of a goofy, awkward attempt at reskinning the classic.  There was a MOBA comparison that I keep wanting to draw that doesn't quite fit, where PoE is Dota 2 to D2's WC3 DotA, D3 = LoL, TL2 = HoN etc.  Anyways, we can forget about Torchlight 2 for now (and it's rather damnable how easy it is to), because the most relevant contrast is between Blizzard's Diablo 3 and Grinding Gear Games' Path of Exile.

It's no secret that Blizzard has fallen from grace.  They had a number of groundbreaking franchises which peaked at the release of World of Warcraft and ever since they've floundered trying to recapture the magic.  The latest showings of their big 3 have all really defined what it is to miss the mark; Starcraft 2, recent WoW expansions, and now Diablo 3 joined the cast.  At a time when Blizzard is part of Activision's video game marketing machine, Diablo 3 was a classic modern "Triple A" release, with all of that marketing monster behind it.  But the results were mediocre at best.

Meanwhile, Path of Exile was developed by a very small team from New Zealand that recaptures the thematic style and gameplay openness that made Diablo 2 such a lasting game all while sliding into a smooth, fairly bug-free-but-not-flawless open beta.

Anyways, it's a great sign that when video games continue to grow into the marketing behemoths they've become, where a game isn't considered a hit unless it has a big stupid action setpiece themepark ride, super srs TV commercials, retarded Pope Doridew™ product placement tie-ins, and can afford to buy great reviews and viral marketers, that there will always be small, dedicated developers ready to step in and fulfill the demand for games that recapture the old spirit of gaming in a modern light.

But fuck "indie" devs, they're arrogant, lazy, and greedy fucks who just want to cash in on hipster chic gamers who have massive hardons for retro graphics.

Also, I haven't finished deepthroating Dark Souls yet.  Holy shit that game is amazing.  We seriously need more games like it.  My dream game is a modern recreation of Vagrant Story with all of Dark Souls' game mechanics (call it Vagrant Souls?).  Sadly, it seems likely that its quality was a happy accident as the developer seems ready to abandon a lot of what made the originals great for its sequel in hopes of attracting a wider audience.  "Attracting a wider audience" is usually the death knell for any established decent franchise.