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Tag Archives: romance
Everyone's Hiding Something
character, combat, Divinity: Original Sin 2, fashion, plot, romance, story
Minor spoilers for some characters and story lines in Divinity: Original Sin 2
Well, played, but mostly did mop up stuff. Explored Braccus' tower. Found three annoying dudes playing cards. They killed me. So I reloaded and busted two of their soul jars, which killed them. There was one guy left, and I could SWEAR I had his soul jar, but couldn't find it in my inventory, so I fought him. And then fought him again. And again. Then just left and explored the rest of the tower.
Nosed around, got recipes, got loot. Teleported a zombie in front of a fire trap. That was satisfying.
Talked to some weird corpse thing in a well. Gave it money. Got loot.
Talked to the rat that couldn't tell the truth. Tried to help him. Unlike couldn't lie rat, he died no matter what I did. Left him be.
"Focused my source powers" on the "mysterious tech" to open the barrier. Nosed around. Got loot. Couldn't open one tomb.
And that was that.
Gotta admit, I was expecting more bloggage out of that tower. I was expecting more SOMETHING out of that tower. Kinda anticlimactic.
Anyway, did that, then was feeling good about being level seven so I went and fought the witch in the cave full of bodies. Finally won. Got her stuff. Went back to the dragon and….did that. What did you do with the dragon?
And then called it a night.
I'm getting the sense that this is about it for this island. I can't think of anything I haven't done except the grand finale here, or what is likely to precede the finale.
I'm also getting the sense that leaving this island is leaving the hinterlands. You've left. I kinda doubt you're in some sort of endgame, which means, what, this is the hinterlands and the game is REALLY gonna open up once I do this last bit.
Yeah, Braccus' tower wasn't all that exciting, other than the fighting and the fire traps.
So you couldn't save the lying rat? See I met the lying rat first. He said he needed a jolt of magic, I didn't want to kill him, so I tried First Aid. Everyone likes First Aid, right? But it killed him.
Then when I met the truth-telling rat I thought "well, trying to heal didn't help: I'll blast him with my Staff of Magus!" Which killed him. So I'm down two rats. At least you saved one of them.
I'm sure there was some logical way to save them both, but we don't reload a lot of saves, so they're dead now.
You focused your source power to get through that barrier? Funny…we just got to it and were standing and looking at it when that ghost Withermore (the guy in Fort Joy who wanted you to break his soul jar and free him from being stuck to the wall with a spear), popped up and said "let me repay you by opening this!"
We said OK, because why not, and he made the barrier vanish and then vanished himself. We were glad to see he seemed to be doing OK, though.
We freed the dragon and gave him the wand he asked for, which turned out to be the Purging Wand we needed to destroy the shriekers. So then we had to go to Braccus Rex's treasury to get another one, which we did. No big deal, really. And it never hurts to have a dragon like you, that's what I say. Have you been to the treasury? That's the only other major location I can think of.
But yeah, you're correct: you're about done with the island, and once you leave the island the world seems to open up quite a bit, although I'm not sure exactly how much because we've barely seen the edge of the map.
First aid killed the lying rat, too! Restoration helped the outside rat just fine, so I tried it on the lying rat and killed it. So I reloaded all "OK, maybe it's, like, opposite day" and used attack magic….and killed him.
Huh. Withermore didn't turn up for me. I was there, chilling, wondering how to open it, and noticed the "mysterious tech" by the door. So I interacted and got choices. The first was "touch it," and as I got my hand near stuff started changing and I felt a presence and Lohse got weird, so I pulled my hand back, and it was all "But you notice there's a chill in the air that wasn't there before." Then the other options were, like, "use water magic" or "attack it" or whatever, and one was "focus your source powers" or something, so I picked that, and the doohickey broke, and the barrier came down and there ya go.
Oh treasury's already done. That was Trombley and the cursed ring and the soul jars and all that shit. And I have the helmet. I'm good.
Didn't expect him to be all Lizard man.
But yeah, he was all "You….you're willing to part with the purging wand?" And I was all "Hey, man, I have a spare. Doesn't everyone?"
Barely seen one edge….open up quite a bit……you played, like, all weekend. You've barely seen an edge of the map.
Good lord.
The next area is cool, though, right? You're still into it?
Oh, right, Trombley! We talked about Trombley. Ha–"sure, take my Purging Wand, it's no trouble at all, I have a backup! Also a mildly cursed helmet to achieve the same purpose!"
We at that point had not been to the treasury or found the helmet, so it was kind of a moment of "SHOULD we give away this thing that we just learned we need to get by the shriekers?" But hey, we like to help out a dragon, and metagaming a bit we assumed there would be SOME other way to get by them, so we gave it to him anyway.
Joke would have been on us if the game then said "sorry, you're trapped here forever…guess you shouldn't have been nice to a dragon."
But they would have wasted so much content if they didn't let us off the island! We figured they wanted us to succeed, in the end. That's part of the unspoken contract we have with game designers. They WANT us to succeed and advance so we can appreciate all the cool stuff they made. Also so we don't hurl the controller in frustration, ragequit, and never buy another game by them. So it was really pretty much a guarantee there would be some other way to deal with the shriekers.
And the thing is, once you're done with the island there's a sort of interlude period on the ship before you get to the next land. Some stuff happens there. So we haven't actually been on land very long. But yeah, we're still enjoying it. Good times.
Slane: What cursed helmet?
Lohse: ***points to Beast*** That one.
Slane: How's it cursed?
Lohse: Makes him warm.
Slane: ***looks around chilled, frozen wastes, shivering Lohse, Sebille, Ifan*** You sure it's cursed?
Beast: ****Puts feet up, sips rum drink**** Totally cursed.
I thought the joke was gonna be that Slane was gonna attack. It's a common thing in games: you give thing to dude, and, when dude POOFS into something new and unexpected, a fight is going to ensue, and a tough one at that. I was quite relieved that it didn't, as I really wanted to go have a drink and make dinner and hard fights are LONG.
Hmm. Stuff on ship. That's cool. Character interaction. Possible flirting.
I do hope that this game gets to a point where all potential companions are in the same damn place, and said place is pretty easy to get to. Swapping companions out, thus far, has been a pain in the ass, which is why I haven't been doing it. We could use a ship, a tavern, a alternate plane of existence, something where everyone can be. Does one present itself?
Well, it seems like the ship itself is kind of going to be our base, at least for the moment. We have the option to store things on it now, which sounds handy. Carrying too many buckets? Send them to the ship! I don't know, I haven't actually tried it yet because we're still in the "sell every possible thing you can scrounge because we always desperately need the money to buy more resurrection scrolls" stage.
We had a fight last night that took all our resurrection scrolls and most of our potions. One of those "you know…if we had lost, I bet we could have done a better job the second time and maybe not burned through ALL our resources…" and yet, hard fights are long, and reloading just to save some scrolls seems petty. So we'll just go back to town and sell everything we own again. It's cool, we've got a rhythm going by now.
Although as long as you're on the island, aren't all your possible companions at the sanctuary right now? Check! If you want to switch up before the battle, I mean.
They're not! Fane was on the beach there, for a while, but now he's gone and I haven't seen the Red Prince in ages!
Who are you running with right now?
Dude the single biggest accomplishment from last night, eclipsing even the satisfaction of defeating the witch, was finding the recipe for resurrection scrolls. I even had the ingredients to make two on me!
But yes, I, too, am selling fucking everything. They see me coming and roll their eyes as I come into camp all "Who needs more buckets? Who needs more bigassed pictures of a man?"
They're just buying my shit out of pity at this point.
But I'm still hurting for gear. Ifan finally got shoes last night and, just his luck, they're the kind of shoes that don't have feet, more furry anklets.
And I got a "soul coat" for Lohse last night that has good armor but really should be called the "Armor of infinite tits" because, in addition to female armor that showcases what female characters already have, this seems to have bestowed…..certain attributes to Lohse. She was rather lithe, athletic, and then she put this on and she's a Swedish barmaid.
Beast: Holy Shite what happened to yooo? (Trying to type Scottish)
Lohse: No idea. Maybe it's cursed.
Beast: Not from where I sit, Lassie!
Beast: Here, though, borrow my helmet, you look a little cold.
I had one upper body garment, I can't remember what it was, that looked normal in the picture but when I put it on was some kind of criss-crossed bikini top. It was odd.
That's weird that they aren't in the sanctuary. Ours all hung out there for a while. We saw them there multiple times–figured they were enjoying the healing spring.
Right now we have Lohse (whom we keep accidentally calling Bairdotr, because like Bairdotr, she's the archer who backs up Mr. O's fighter character) and the Red Prince. He told me a bit more of his story last night, but no flirting opportunities so far. He may not care for non-scaley people, I don't know. I'm keeping an eye on the situation.
I've noticed things look….kinda different on Sebille sometimes.
Lohse: Here, babe, you look cold. Please take this very sensible garment I've been wearing a while and WHOA how'd it change like that?
Sebille: (in her best British Diva voice): It didn't, darling. I just wear it better.
So you call Lohse Bairdotr….do you now? Hmm. How interesting. How very, very interesting.
How's she been as an NPC?
She's fine. Doesn't seem as weird as your PC version, although she's definitely a bit different from the rest of us.
I THINK this is a conversation she had with Gannibog, although it may also be something you said that I'm misremembering: when asked about the Hall of Echoes she said something like "oh, you saw a god? I just saw me, or the thing in my head."
At another point, while discussing whether the gods still have power/are relevant she said something like "well, the thing in my head's stronger than they are anyway, so I'm not worried."
At other times, she's talked about kicking it out. So she seems not quite sure whether it's something she wants, or wants to be rid of.
Although maybe more the latter, because when you get to the ship there's a weird thing where you have to re-recruit everyone (I thought maybe it was so people in two-player games could switch who was running which NPC, but I don't know what difference it will make for you…I suppose if you decided you wanted to play as a dedicated Lone Wolf with no companions you could avoid recruiting any of them?), and we both recruited the same characters because we're boring, but anyway when Gannibog was talking to her, before she would agree to travel with us, she made him promise that if she was taken over by the thing, we would kill her. If you won't promise, she just says "sorry, I can't join you."
So she's sincerely concerned about what the thing might do to the world if it gets out. Could be the Void. Or, in your asylum reading, could be 'recognition of reality.' Anyway, she feels very strongly about it.
Hmm. She admitted she saw no god. I wonder how'd that have gone if Sebille had talked, cuz certainly Sebille and Lohse wanted to talk about it in my game.
Stronger than gods? Hmm.
In my game, my personal quest is, very much, get rid of it. Stop it.
My Lohse is downright terrified of it, whatever it is. And it DID get out once, and that went very badly for all involved.
I do think it's "recognition of reality" or, really, her true self. The fountain seemed to imply that, at some level. Whether that means she's worried about challenging her delusion, wants to stay in it, or she really is afraid of her true self (I do believe she's in an asylum, after all) I cannot (yet) say. Nor do I completely understand the relationship between the head thing and her music. She seems to think it's part of what makes her talented, what makes her HER, but it smashed her lute and doesn't want her to be HER. I think that might be her mixed feelings on it, because she certainly values her music and her talents, and thinks the head thing gives that to her.
I'm telling ya, they're all nuts.
AND I'm telling ya, they're all characters from the last game.
I have my reasons for thinking this.
And I still think that, in an early draft of this game, Lohse was the main character and Sebille was the love interest/friend/main NPC, and I don't think that just cuz I'm playing it that way. Have you talked to Lohse as Sebille?
Since I didn't recruit her, Lohse won't talk to me. All the character development stuff has to be done with the same PC that the NPC originally signed up with. I don't remember if it was that way in that last game, but that's how it works this time.
So I basically cannot have conversations with Lohse, only Gannibog can…meaning we cannot share stories from our pasts, and, I expect, that she will never be a love interest for me. If I try to talk to her (or Gannibog tries to talk to the Red Prince) they just get a "can't talk now!" Another interesting choice in the mechanics of the whole thing.
As for her thinking the thing is the source of her music–I don't know if she means THIS thing. I remember at the very beginning when we first met her, she said something like "I've been host to all kinds of things," and that these things power and inspire her performances. She mentioned that the reason she was in Fort Joy was because she was singing and "something got a little carried away and let the Source come through." So I think certainly some of the things that have been in her head before were musical or artistic and inspired her in her musical art.
But she seems to feel that the thing that's there is quite different in some way, and maybe part of the difference is that it is not musical, and does not inspire or support her art. Maybe it hates her art specifically because it is a different and more malicious kind of being (I didn't get the sense that she had much trouble with the things that were in her head in the past, other than one of them accidentally landing her in trouble with the Magisters).
Weird. That's a very, very weird mechanic. Especially as Sebille STARTS most of the Lohse/Sebille stuff. More on that in a bit.
Interesting. Because I had been thinking about what Source is in this game (note, not the last game). In the last game, and maybe I'm misremembering, we never saw source. We certainly didn't have these puddles of it, or water coolers full of it. Which is why I think, in THIS game, which has tweaked the metaphors because the game is from a different person's perspective, Source is drugs (or booze).
As you are aware, I think these characters are real people in the real world who have been put in a hospital because they're unwell mentally. In Lohse's case, having been "host to many things" that make her music, having the "Source come through" during a performance, certainly seems to back up the idea of addiction, and explains why her "real self" would want to stop it.
After all, everyone's "source power" seems a bit….nuts, and/or a pretty good metaphor for using substances to deal. When Lohse uses source? She sings and drives people mad. Beast? Source causes blindness and bewilderment. Ifan? A wolf that only he can interact with appears for a while and protects him from the nastiness of the world. Sebille? She breaks the shackles of pain. I mean, c'mon. Breaks the shackles of pain?
And purging source? From Lohse's perspective, makes people empty. Unable to have fun, be free.
As for the Sebille stuff and why it makes very little sense that you can't talk to Lohse, I'll guess I'll say cuz it won't spoil anything you can't do.
So last night, I'm in front of the statue to the seven in the tower that's all abandoned, Sebille gets a "we gotta talk" exclamation point. I talk to her, and she says "He's abandoned. Just like us. Just like we were." I'm all "Huh?" and she says "You were raised abandoned. Alone. Like me." There are choices, and I pick "I never said that," and she says "Yes you did. When we talked before. In the forest." I say "I'm not sure what you mean," and she pauses and says "My mistake."
You REALLY can't talk to Lohse?
I cannot. I've tried, but I click on her and she just dismissively says "can't talk now!" In a "we're cordial working acquaintances on this team, but not good buddies" sort of way. There are no references to previous conversations in the forest that may or may not have taken place.
I think maybe entire relationships are just going to be different/nonexistent depending on if one of the characters is a PC. I mean, in your game, the NPCs aren't hanging out sharing stories, right? (I mean, as far as you know. I like to assume they do, actually, but in terms of the impact on the game?)
So if you weren't playing Lohse, if you were playing, say, Fane…none of these conversations would take place in your view, and if they did take place when you weren't watching (and we can easily imagine that they did!), they wouldn't mean anything in particular for the way the game unrolled for you/Fane, the PC. So much stuff must just be hidden in the background.
Or maybe you could know about all of it…I mean, you can talk to one of them AS the other. So if you remember to regularly talk to every character as every other character…maybe you can still get in on all the potential relationships and stories. Hm.
I have been chatting up everyone as everyone else. Beast is very flirty with Sebille. Who isn't? Ifan and Sebille don't like each other much. Sebille can't stand the Prince. Beast keeps trying to get Ifan drunk and is mad he'll drink with me and not him.
So shit's there.
When playing co-op, do you ever get the "Everyone wants to talk at once" deals? Like, everyone lights up with an exclamation point? I get that a lot.
Ooo! Ooo! I also think that whole "hidden in the background," I had a thing once where Lohse was talking and someone got an exclamation point then it faded, remember? Maybe, had there been someone playing with me, THEY could've talked to that person behind my back, as it were. Has that happened? Mr. O is talking to someone and, say, the Prince grabs you to talk about something he said?
No…that hasn't happened that I've noticed. But yeah, sometimes we get a bunch of exclamation points, and we'll usually have one of us talk to whomever and they say something, but it's entirely possible we could have been talking to different people at the same time.
My Sebille totally flirted with Ifan! Interesting that that came up when she was a PC, but apparently not when they're both NPCs. Also, my Sebille doesn't really hate the Red Prince…but then, it makes sense that the character might be different as a PC than as an NPC. I mean, as an NPC they must basically just follow an established storyline that probably goes a certain basic way, since they probably by default will make certain choices based on certain priorities and established preferences…but when a player takes over and plays the character, they might make quite different choices based on different priorities or preferences (for example, Sebille as a rule isn't a big fan of lizards since they enslaved her, but I personally kind of like lizards, and therefore I'm willing to cut the Red Prince some slack that she as an NPC might not).
Yeah, Sebille won't even join your party if you have the Red Prince with you. She has opinions.
I could flirt with Ifan! I did, by accident. Poor guy. He should know better. The PC is always into women.
In my house, anyway.
I wonder who the female love interest would be if you played as Sebille. Lohse, I would guess.
Well, since Lohse is the only other female character, I would guess you're right. But alas, in our game Lohse does not speak to Sebille, so all that opportunity is lost.
But yeah, in terms of flirting, and based on the dialogue tags, it seems there are probably certain dialogue/personality choices that are specifically for the character, and then there are some that are available in general and to the PC. It wasn't a [SEBILLE] dialogue option to flirt with Ifan, it was just dialogue, which might well have been available to someone playing ANY of the characters.
There must have been some complex story trees for all this.
Boy, I'll say. And I'm impressed that it hasn't tripped over itself yet. Games with one story and one story tree often trip over themselves. This? Damn, man.
There have also been times when I chose NOT to take the dialogue choice that was specifically tagged for Sebille. Usually I do it, but occasionally I think "oh, that won't advance this conversation the way I want it to" and say something else–generally something less confrontational–which is another interesting way that the game toys with the line between pre-written characters with detailed backstories and personal motivations, and characters that players can 'role play' and make more their own.
Yeah, I've done the same. Lohse often makes jokey comments that make light of the moment (I mean, her personal choices) and that's gotten me into trouble. Sometimes taking the non Lohse option seems the prudent choice.
While we're on dialog, another weirdness is that sometimes the game starts a dialog with a character that I am not currently controlling. When I did the historian bit, I wanted Lohse to do the talking cuz RPG and all. So I selected her, she's the one running around, etc., and the first time? Defaults to Beast talking. I reload. Then, Sebille. I reload. Then Lohse. No change in how I was controlling it.
Cuz it usually doesn't happen that way.
Ooh, that is odd. I've only noticed that once…when I went up to talk to Zaleskar as the Beast because I already knew Sebille was going to get in a fight, and then BOOM, it was Sebille talking to him anyway.
Turned out I had to leave here out of sight down the hill and THEN go talk to him as another character. But that I assumed just represented the very strong potential for conflict between those two characters–it's extra weird that with the historian, the game couldn't seem to make up its mind who should be talking (other than that it wasn't who you were playing). That's peculiar.
It was. Maybe just a glitch.
But then, after all that, there was nothing that Lohse could have said unique to her. But there was for Sebille.
Silly me.
It's a big game, there are bound to be a few quirks.
Surprisingly few, considering. And considering it's a port from PC.
They did a good job. Thanks, Butch's ex, for giving us this fine game!
We're Not Really Sure What's Happening Right Now
character, combat, Divinity: Original Sin 2, music, plot, romance
Confused spoilers and crosstalk for Divinity: Original Sin 2
So didn't play much….but found yellow flag place. I'm gonna assume you found yellow flag place. Got the "find the dude" stuff, had the person all "yeah, sure, I'll take off the collar, whatevs" which was convenient, comically easy and rather anticlimactic, and talked to the shrine.
And stuff GOT SAID.
I am very, very, VERY curious as to what that shrine said to you and what happened thereafter.
That's all I got. Been busy. But I am very, very curious, as I am pretty damn sure it went very, very differently for you.
OK, played more! Played both a lot and not much, which is true, or as much as I can realize things are true in my altered holiday reality.
What do I mean? I mean the majority of time I spend playing this game is me wandering around, finding things that kill me, trying a billion times to figure out a way not to be killed by the stuff that's killing me, then realizing I just can't without leveling up (I'm still five) and reloading a save from before.
The vast chunk of time I wasted last night involved a maze and a bunch of gargoyles. Have you found the maze and the bunch of gargoyles? It was one of those time sucks where you do JUST enough to convince yourself that you can, in fact, DO the place, so you keep trying for way too long. I'm sure you just blew through it.
I did, however, go bust out Slane the dragon and talked to him for a while. You do that? Then I trucked back up to the blind magistrar (who I tried to deal with earlier but died) and ignored him and found an elf with three crucified soon to be shriekers and killed them. Poked around a camp. Don't like Dallis. Will not like the inevitable fight against Dallis later.
But here's how I can sum up last night: When you save, the game keeps a clock. I, after some trial and error out of curiosity, checked to see how the clock works. It's how many hours of game you're at that actually "counted." So, say, you have a save that says 11h 0min. If you play half an hour, die, reload that save, play for fifteen minutes, it will say 11h 15min. It won't count the wasted time.
So last night I played, real time, for over an hour. The difference between the save I started with and the save I will continue from is seventeen minutes.
This is getting frustrating. Do I just suck? How are you guys doing this? Are you not playing on classic difficulty? Should I turn down the difficulty? I mean, I'm on Classic, which is three out of four on the difficulty scale, so pretty hard, but still.
I believe we're on Classic. I don't know why we would have set it at anything else. We're level 7, trying to figure out how we can scrounge enough XP to make it 8 before we go back to the big fight before we can try to get on the boat and leave the island.
We did the maze with the gargoyles. We did not breeze through it. We used one crumbling skull to open the door right ahead of the main door, and we were obliterated by flaming skeletons. Tried a couple of times but couldn't make any headway against them, so we reloaded and used the crumbling skull on the door to the left instead. Fiddled around with that for a while, and eventually just cheated (sort of…I mean, it's a legal cheat since they did leave the option available) and used the teleportation gauntlets to get over a wall to Braccus Rex's Tower. Screw doors, you know?
But before that we had a frustrating session of not being able to make any progress, so it's not just here.
Here's a tip if/when you go back there: if you can get to Braccus Rex's tower there's a "Domineering Statue of Braccus Rex" to the left of the tower door, and if you annoy the statue it will teleport you back to the outside of the maze again. Which is nice if you were done in the maze anyway, but probably not so great if you're still trying to get into the tower and you don't want to bother with teleporting everyone over the wall again. Just FYI.
We did free the dragon Slane! We gave him a thing we got from the cave…remember how we talked about the cave, and I said we'd picked up a thing in there that would probably be useful later? Well, did Slane talk about the evil witch who chained him up? And maybe ask if you had something of hers that he would quite like to have? Well. There you are.
But as to your earlier message…damn, we are doing different things. Who did you talk to who removed your collars? We found the hideout, which was A yellow flag place, but we did not find anyone to talk to about collars! We are still wearing our collars!
Are we talking about the same place? With the refugees, who'd been fighting the Magisters? and the little kid, Han, who had the boat and took you out of Fort Joy? They were waiting for Gareth to return and lead them and you had to say he was dead? (Apparently he's dead? I don't remember him. Maybe he's not even dead in your game, I don't know.)
Some of them were wounded, and I healed them, and they all said "yay, thanks, now we can fight against the Magisters later!"
And the "find the dude"–what dude are you looking for? We're not looking for a dude!
But we did talk to the shrine. Oh yes. Basically, Gannibog talked to a dwarf god, and I talked to an elf god, and they both told us we needed to fight and be ready to take over because there's a disturbance in the Source, and basically that companions were fine in the moment but we should turn on them when the time came because THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE (they did not literally say that, or the bit about the disturbance in the Source, but I feel it was implied). And then the elf god said to Sebille, "oh, and Lohse–you should just kill her now."
WHAT IS UP WITH LOHSE that the elf god wants her dead, man?!
I tried approaching the shrine as Ifan, and it didn't do anything, but then when I talked to him about it later he said something like "oh yeah, I saw a god, told me to seize power and what-not" and Fane said basically the same thing to Gannibog–so apparently ALL THE CHARACTERS are supposed to be serving their gods and that could mean eventually (or more immediately!) killing each other off?
This could get interesting.
But also confusing, because we seem in some cases to be not doing the same things at all.
I dunno, man. This game is weird with XP. I get 2100 for getting to the sanctuary, I get 1500 for healing each guy therein….and yet I suck.
Maybe if try to find Gareth like everyone wants me to.
I did the same thing, re getting killed by flaming dudes and putzing around on the left, which, for me anyway, only seemed to lead to a rat that couldn't lie and wanted my help. Which I will do later as that's lost to the land of did but never saved.
I do not know of teleportation gauntlets of which you speak, but now I really, really want them.
I figured that was the thing from the cave. That witch was also lost to to the Land of Things Done and Unsaved, but as soon as I freed Slane the red flag popped there, and I said "Ah, yes. A fight I cannot do. Of course."
Figured.
Yes to all questions. And I think I know where we differed.
I have not found gauntlets, or anything up north. When I got to the sanctuary, everyone was all "Gareth! You must find Gareth! He is our leader! Find him! We miss him! Etc.!" They said he went….wait for it….north. Where you have been and I have not. I have a feeling that you might have stumbled upon him before you went to the sanctuary while I did not. Maybe he had gauntlets of teleportation on him. I'll keep you posted, as I am gonna go look for him.
Anyhoo…when I got there, there was a dwarf singing to/consoling a woman who was distraught cuz she missed Gareth. I was with Beast, and Beast started chatting the guy up (he chats up every single dwarf you meet and they all love him and are nice to you). Consoling dwarf is all "You still have your collars? Do you want help?" and I'm all "Uh……yes," and he turns to crying woman and says "Can you help them out?" and POOF! Off go the collars.
Maybe you finding Gareth meant she went away somewhere to mourn and you never met her. There wasn't a singing, consoling dwarf? Or maybe you had to have Beast chatting him up?
And does this mean you haven't gotten source points and still can't use that locked ability in your hotbars?
As for the statue… Dude……WHOA.
So when I talked to it, poof. Every single solitary dialog choice was [Lohse]. Unique to the character. Ergo my certainty it went differently for you.
But it was really nice to me! It got all "My child…you're suffering…." and I gave myself over to the feeling, and narrator was all "You haven't felt such a maternal love since you were a small, small child. You feel so warm, so comfortable, so happy." And there was all this mother stuff, almost like (gonna go there) Lohse was being spoken to by her real [life] mother. You know, if she was, just saying, in a hospital. The statue was concerned and loving and showing great empathy and pity. It was a LONG conversation along those lines. The thing in Lohse's head did NOT like this and was "pounding on her chest wanting to get out," and the statue said "Leave my child alone!" and it "ran away, as if in fear." It being the head thing.
So yeah, my statue very much did not seem to want me dead. Not one bit.
I'm telling you…this whole game universe is a delusion. Though, and here's what I'm pondering, is the "real" Lohse, the real life sane Lohse, actually Lohse or the head thing? Is the head thing, the thing that's trying to "get out," Lohse's SANITY? Is IT the good guy? Is that why YOUR statue wants you to kill Lohse? Because Lohse is the evil, delusionary thing that's keeping the good head thing IN?
But why was statue so nice to me? Was it talking to head thing?
Oh, and, as soon as the conversation ended, the whole water thing in front became all holy water like and is now healing everyone and the whole sanctuary was all like "WHAAAAAAT?" Did that happen for you? You know. Like a baptismal font. I take back the whole "We haven't seen anything biblical yet."
What was really odd was, in the middle of the dialog, someone in my party got the yellow exclamation point "dude we gotta talk" icon. Didn't see who, as the text was blocking. Then, a couple of choices later, it flashed and disappeared and no one would talk to me, like whoever was going to speak changed their mind.
What's getting weird is that, the more we play, I'm getting the sense that in a prior draft, or maybe THIS draft, Lohse is the main character of the game. You guys are playing "NPCs," in a sense. I haven't had a single instance where any NPC has mentioned any other. Not. Once. You have, and you haven't had what I've had which is all kinds of BIG SHIT happening that involves ANYONE during a quest that isn't character specific, have you? I've had that happen three times now, and now this major difference during a main quest.
You should get her and run with her a while. I'd be fascinated to see what would happen.
You starting to believe Rivellon is just a delusion? Or a metaphor for delusion?
And as for elves, the only time head thing REALLY went nuts was with blind elf. Head thing busted out and WANTED HER DEAD. "Kill the elf" over and over and over.
I like this game. I like this game a LOT more because I'm seeing other sides of it. We should blog or something.
Oh, and, as another aside to this game being about a delusion (specifically Lohse's), her source ability? She sings….and drives everyone around her mad. Enemies start fighting each other and everything.
Yes, her song drives people crazy. And remember when the voice made her break a lute? The voice does not like OTHER people going crazy, just Lohse.
Go get Lohse. LOTS of story there.
We found a sad woman wondering where Gareth was, and I was all "sorry to tell you, Gareth is dead." And she said "are you sure?!" and to be honest I personally was NOT sure, but one of the options was "carefully describe Gareth's appearance and clothing," so I think we must actually have seen him and in-game we're sure he's actually dead.
I don't at all remember WHERE we saw him, but we see a lot of dead people, and apparently he was one of them. Sorry for the spoiler, although who knows, maybe your Gareth is still alive! Maybe you'll get somewhere in time to save him, and we didn't!
I don't remember a singing, consoling dwarf. Maybe the Beast had to be there… We need to go get the Beast too. But no, we don't have Source points, and our Source abilities are still grayed out on the hotbar. Which is annoying, because they would probably be useful!
So…elves and Lohse's demon or whatever do not get along, eh? Hm. And wait, you just talked to the statue itself? You didn't see a god of humans (or something) in the Hall of Echoes? That's quite different. Gannibog and I both had the Hall of Echoes, and then met our racial deities (or some figures who claimed to be that–they might have been lying for all we know). We were both talking at the same time (of course), so I missed some of Gannibog's conversation, but my god was not very nice to me. Sneered at me for being a slave, called me weak, finally seemed to settle for making me his champion because "well, you are godwoken."
And no, the statue did not turn into a fountain. It was still a statue when we left it. Very different and interesting.
Well, what do you know! I played more, and decided to wander up to the only other yellow flag I have, which was marked as "Braccus' Armory," which is probably why I noped on out of there when I first fount it. It's due north of the burning pigs.
Fought some magistars at the gate, go inside, four more magistrars fighting a green outlined dude named….GARETH! Fight ensues, Gareth is badass, we win, I use all my healing and healing scrolls but whatever. Gareth is all "Hey, thanks guys, I can give you shelter-" I'm all "Sanctuary? Big fountain? Yeah, know it well." He says "Oh, then, meet me there!"
So I looted some, then zooped back to the sanctuary.
There, everyone is VERY happy. "Oh, Gareth is back! We are saved!" The crying woman is all hugging me, there's much rejoicing. He is now a red quest flag.
Well….everyone is happy but one person.
So, after our chat, decided to see how anyone else reacted to the shrine. I went up with Sebille, and the only two options I got were "Bow your head in reverence" or "walk away." I bowed, narrator said "There is nothing but a feeling of peace and calm coming from the statue" and that was it. No gods, no kill Lohse, nothing. Nice healing pool still healing everyone.
But I talked to the priestess there. She. Was. Impressed. All "You received its blessing! This is amazing! For so long I had nothing but a pond to pray to, and now!" But, she was nervous about Gareth, all "he's so eager to rush in to battle…I fear he does not think things through." So she was kinda down on the Gareth thing. BUT I passed a persuasion check and she told me that, to really help, Braccus hid a cache of weapons and wands on a beach to the east and I should go check it out and it's really hard to find cuz it's a cave. "Oh," says she, as I paraphrase, "while you're there, be a dear and bring me soul jars so I can offer them to the Goddess which would be really great." So I might do that.
Dude, you couldn't miss the singing dwarf. He wouldn't shut up. He was loud. He sang the whole time.
They are useful! But, FYI, source is not easy to find. Do not use said abilities willy nilly. And, when you do find "pools of source" (they look like oil slicks but have this green/purple sparkle around them), choose carefully who walks through it. Not enough points in the puddle for more than one character.
Hall….of Echos? Uh…..wazzat? I did not GO to the Hall of Echos. Isn't that, like, the afterlife? My statue did all the talking. I went nowhere. No one did.
And yes, big pool of handy healing goodness.
But….the water is still coming out of the statue's eyes, like tears. Hmm.
So, if your Gareth is dead (which, given he was in this fight, certainly seemed a possibility, as he did get hurt), how is your story moving along (if you can say without spoiling)? Cuz in mine, Gareth is certainly the Man with the Plan.
Braccus' Armory…was that the place with the ice on the ground by the steps? You had to climb up some vines by the pigs to get there?
We fought some magisters there, but I'm damned if I remember anyone named Gareth being involved. That might have been where we found his body, come to think of it…but if so, he must have been dead when we got there. I mean, I have no memory of anyone else besides us taking part in that fight, and if he was a badass, he surely would have survived long enough for us to notice him. We could have used the help. And if he'd been involved at all, and we saw him die but we all lived, we would have at least talked about whether or not it was important enough to reload and refight the battle to make sure he lived so we could see whether he had anything to say…we had no such conversation.
I wonder what we did to make him be dead?
Anyway, whatever, it's not as if we're going to go back and replay anything, so this is what we're doing without him: someone at the sanctuary said "go talk to [dude whose name I don't remember] who is Gareth's second-in-command," and I went and talked to him, he was very uncertain about whether he could fill Gareth's shoes in the coming battle, I tried to persuade him he'd be fine but failed because I have zero persuasion skill, and we haven't yet come to a battle where they're involved, but when we do, it probably won't go well for us since [dude] is scared and will probably not lead them effectively. At least I healed them all up.
I'm also wondering if maybe we're not talking about the same shrine/talking statue. The one I'm talking about was not in the sanctuary, and there was no one nearby tending it or asking us about soul jars, or talking about a pond. There was no pond, either. (Although we ran into the soul jars on an unrelated quest anyway.)
I think I remember a statue and a pond in the sanctuary, but we just got a sense of peace and moved on? So that's still different. But the statue that took us to the Hall of Echoes to meet our gods was somewhere else on the island. I'm trying to remember where. Somewhere near the pigs, maybe? On the other side from the ruins with the magisters where we did not find Gareth (alive)? I remember it was up on a little ledge…you had to go up a ramp, maybe climb some more vines. I don't know, we just stumbled across it, as one does.
And we have already found some pools of Source, and wondered what they were for since we couldn't seem to do anything with them. Presumably it will be more significant once we don't have collars…assuming we can even get the collars off without a singing dwarf around to persuade the sad woman.
We tried going back to talk to Nebora about it again, figuring that maybe killing every magister in Fort Joy would be enough to impress her (after all, we basically saved all the inmates from a grisly death! at least until reinforcements arrive), but she had nothing new to say.
Uhh…yes. Very near the pigs. Between the pigs and the blind guy. And you fight dudes in a courtyard, they're trying to get in a door, there's two staircases, one on fire one covered in ice.
Maybe you left too soon? Or something? Then came back?
Cuz there was the courtyard fight, then up the icy stairs, and you could hear dudes shooting at something. They didn't attack you unless you charged into the room. I had a feeling it might be Gareth, so I charged. But if you got close and they started shooting and either a) you didn't notice or b) you left, maybe they finished killing Gareth. I dunno.
Scared guy… Oh, that guy? Kinda young? Will sell you books? Him? He was right next to singing dwarf!
The statue in question is the waypoint shrine for the sanctuary. If you hit "use" on it, boom. Talking. So maybe you just walked by it and said "Ah, good. A waypoint?"
And the priestess tending it was standing on a platform a little bit above it.
Hmm. I've found the waypoint by where I found Gareth (the armory), one just passed some about to become shrieker dudes (called "abandoned camp," but nothing did anything. When I hit use on them (which I am now doing as they might speak), all I got was the menu of places to travel to. Ditto the one on dragon beach.
We'll never figure Nabora out.
Unless you google. Which I just did. Wanna know?
Nah, we'll just proceed. I'm sure we'll figure it–or something else–out eventually.
This statue with the Hall of Echoes was not a waypoint. It was…yeah, I can't remember where it was. Somewhere outside the fort! Googling is not helpful, because it doesn't give a location and references a character we did not meet, so I'm not sure it's even talking about the same thing.
It's…around. Somewhere.
Oh…Gareth was in the hall ABOVE. Hm. I'm not sure we ever fought anyone up there. Yeah, that was probably it…we did wander in and provoke a fight up there, but we were all beat to hell from the last fight so we fled. Then when we came back, there was no one there. Except, probably, Gareth's body.
I didn't even see anyone besides enemies in the combat, but Gareth was probably there, they were probably too many for him, they killed him, and wandered off. Our bad, Gareth. I mean, you could have shouted or something so we knew you were there. Still, our bad.
And yeah, the young guy with the books, that's who's in charge of our daring battle plan now. I mean, who knows, he may rise to the occasion. Or we may be doomed. Or, more likely, HE may be doomed. I'm sure we'll manage fine.
Ha–this takes me back to how a recurrent theme for us in the last game was "we mean well! sorry we just set you on fire!"
The waypoint in the sanctuary did nothing for you?
No, but as you say, we may have just walked by it thinking "ah, waypoint."
I'll try talking to it next time we play.
Do. I am curious.
Yeah, Gareth was way at the top of the screen, other end from the door. I would've missed him, too, but my initiative sucks and he went first.
OK, went back there, found a room with a cursed lever and a helpful rat. Left.
Went toward the secret cave. There were salamanders. Had to kill them. Did kill them! Leveled. Finally.
I'm now about to enter a mysterious glowing cave past the salamanders that I'm sure you found.
But here's a thing: During the salamander fight, the magic voice talked again and healed us, and was all "Don't think I don't see you….I always see you…." and Lohse said "I think I recognize that voice…."
Any of you recognize it?
We have run into a voice a couple of times that seems to have some kind of history with Ifan. It mentioned him particularly. "There you are…I see you…" etc. He didn't mention recognizing it, that I recall, although if he said it in the heat of battle, who knows?
I'm also, at this point, not completely sure it was the same voice. It was called "Disembodied Voice" both times, but that could be any number of beings.
Oh, and speaking of Ifan, we FINALLY got Zaleskar to talk to him. Had to read a note that Gannibog had been carrying around that gave Borris' code phrase that Ifan needed to say to Zaleskar. Way to read your notes, Mr. O'! (I can't really complain. Naked Zeus knows I have also been guilty of carrying things around for weeks without looking at them.)
And yes, the glowing cave…there's some good loot in there. Also, possibly, some soul jars. Good, valuable, quest-relevant loot. You're gonna love it.
Really? Cuz the first time it showed up it said "There you are…Lohse child…" called her child. And it was Lohse who recognized it, sorta.
Hmm. Maybe it's a plot point and it has to recognize someone.
Dudes….dudes. I knew that about Zaleskar!
Two things you automatically do, before you pick things up: Read shit, and eat people. Always. Then you don't forget!
You guys hit extremes. So painfully meticulous about some stuff (stats, loot) and then rather….scattershot on the rest.
And you had me at loot. I need loot so badly. I'm broke, I have very little healing (thank GOD Lohse has something that makes regeneration a skill), and I'm so low on gear Sebille is still barefoot. And I don't think Beast has pants. Not sure how I feel about that…..
That's low on gear, all right.
I don't think the voice called Ifan "child," but I don't remember for sure. We were kind of in a tense situation of fighting for our lives and losing.
And you're right, we need to be better about reading things and eating people. My sign should say: "Notes read? Corpses eaten?"
I just loot, OK! I triangle to grab everything, and then I look at it later. In some cases, months later. I can't be bothered with little details like what I've picked up or who sent me on which quest or what gear I have.
"Oh, hey, I had Griff's armor all along, I could have put that on the Beast!" is the kind of thing I might say.
I'd do the same, especially as all the books look the same. But hit square and you can read it before you pick it up. This way, you actually read it.
Because sometimes, as you saw, you HAVE to read it to move shit along.
Voice called Lohse child for sure.
Something is very up with Lohse.
I also find it interesting that the only character she's been able to flirt with is Sebille. Head thing doesn't like elves, Sebille stuck her with a SYRINGE when they met, yet she can't flirt with anyone else.
Ah, those love-hate relationships between people with demons in their heads and escaped slaves who eat corpses! Such a classic romance trope. I'm into it.
Talk about a weird love triangle. It's bad enough to have a triangle with two sorceresses or a sorceress and a red head rogue. Shit, I've even had a love triangle with a starship pilot and a blue headed alien! But a triangle with a BEBHBB and a demonic in/sane presence in my head? That's a toughie.
Cuz how do you not have a third wheel?
Lohse: "Oh, Sebille….you're so hot…I dig you so much…let's make out-"
Head voice: "I'M RIGHT HERE YOU KNOW….."
Lohse: "Stop it you."
Sebille: "You want me to stop?"
Lohse: "No, not you, the head voice."
Sebille: "It's hanging around?"
Lohse: "Yeah, pretty much…but it's cool. I'll tune it out. Where were we?"
Head Voice: "I'm gonna sing show tunes just to fuck up your evening."
Lohse: "Please don't."
Head Voice: "TO DREEEEEEAM THE IMPOSSIBLE DREEEEEEEAM…..
Lohse: "Dude…"
Head Voice: "TO FIIIIIIGHT THE UNBEATABLE FOE……"
Lohse: "I'm gonna have to take a rain check, Sebille. I'm….kinda not in the mood."
Sebille: "Again?"
Lohse: "Sorry. It knows a lot of show tunes."
And it turns out Sebille really likes making out to show tunes, but SHE can't hear them! It's one of those tragicomic ironies.
I can see it. Sweeney Todd was about cannibalism.
Though watch:
Lohse: "Let's do a mind meld. Then you can hear it."
Sebille: "Does it know the whole score to Todd?"
Lohse: "You know it."
Sebille: "Get over here, baby."
Head Voice: "I'll show you! I'll sing it like Lou Cariou instead of George Hearn! HA!"
Sebille: "Yeah….Lohse? I'm gonna take a rain check….kinda not in the mood….."
Wow. This shit got obscure.
Meanwhile, in a Parallel Reality…
character, combat, Divinity: Original Sin 2, plot, romance
Various spoilers for plot details early in Divinity: Original Sin 2
Only played a little, little bit but that's OK cuz what a little, little bit it was.
I met Sebille.
Dude. Tall, dark haired, blue eyed, homicidal, quite possibly evil but still, very emotionally vulnerable, British accent (yes, yes, Morrigan was Australian we're putting that small detail aside for now)…..She's the most BEBHBB I've ever met! It's almost like the devs of this game played Dragon Age! I mean, what are the ODDS that the makers of this game played Dragon Age????
I'm going to teach her some spells and we're going to elope.
I'm going to spend quite a bit of time with her in my party. After all, it'll be good bloggage to compare how she is as an NPC vs. how she is as a PC. So I'll keep her around. For bloggage. So we can blog about it.
Yup. So we can blog about it.
I sense a lot of good bloggage ahead.
It's going to be great.
We still haven't traveled with Lohse, but I have Ibn Schnitzel with us right now. We've got him on crossbow, since we didn't have any archers.
Fane has turned out to be this game's Wolgraff for us, in that he's a backstabbing rogue who dies in practically every fight. Somebody's got to do it.
Oh this is interesting. I've decided to take what the game gives me and keep every NPC what they said they were in the first place, instead of being all "Hey, nice, but we could really use….."
So I have a ranger (me), Fane is a wizardy magicy guy, Beast is a Battlemage (HA!), Prince is a fighter and Sebille is a rogue. The fact I'll resurrect her all the time will make her LOOOVVVVEEEE MEEEEEE!
Haven't met Ibn yet. Where is he?
See? We're playing differently!
So how are you playing Sebille? I'm curious as to how yours will differ from mine.
And c'mon, you doubted for a second I was gonna dig Sebille? You know me.
Did you get inside the fort yet? He's in the square in Fort Joy. Looking all moody. You'll know him at once.
Honestly, it's kind of a toss-up between him and the lizard right now. The lizard is armored (both with natural scales and acquired gear) and has a tragic past and hired assassins after him. Ifan Ben-Mezd (to momentarily use his proper name) is brooding and a hired assassin and probably also has a tragic past. I'm so attracted to them both!
Since I'm ruthless and quite possibly evil, I may break and then devour both their hearts. But we'll have to see how things develop.
Oh dear. She's torn.
Yeah, I've been all over! I just met Griff the bad guy! Is Ibn around there? I met him, then right outside Sebille was hiding watching a lizard and she but a syringe in my neck and then we killed the lizard and I flirted.
You know, usual way I pick up women.
There can't be any more fort I haven't seen. I've had quite a bit of practice with forts lately, you know.
I'm at the point where I have "free the dude from griff" marked and "get into the place for the dude's soul" marked. I have to have bumped into Ibn at some point, right?
The hell is he?
Ifan is right there on the square in front of the big statue. I don't know how you missed him…Did you get into a confrontation on the square with a couple of rough types hassling someone? He was right next to two or three other people when we met him.
So I stabbed you in the neck with a syringe? Intriguing! And I killed a lizard? Also intriguing…was it a lizard sleeping under a canopy down by the beach, kind of? Or some random lizard?
This is going to be interesting, each of us playing characters who are in the other's game as NPCs. I mean, just now I instinctively said "I" did those things, even though in your game Sebille obviously isn't me. We'll definitely have to travel with our game's Lohse, for the bloggage.
Sadly, a quirk of this game compared to the first one is that NPC stories only advance when they're being run by the PC who recruited them, and Mr. O's Gannibog recruited Lohse, so until he decides to swap Fane for her, we're kind of out of luck. And right now, he's kind of invested in following Fane's story, so I don't know when that will be. I don't know why they did it that way, to be honest. In the last game, NPC stories would advance as long as they were in the party when certain things happened (like, if you fought what's-his-name while Bairdotr was there), regardless of which PC they were 'chained' to.
Oh right! Yeah, I met him, and I was all "I stand with you," and the thug backed down. But then the elf was all "Follow me!" and charged off, so I followed the elf, and found the elf cave and all that shit, and I haven't seen Ibn since. Where'd he go after that?
That's the lizard. Had some tough sounding name, so I was expecting a fight, but she just kinda killed the hell out of him. I let her talk, so I didn't hear much that he said. And yes, a syringe.
It's even letting you romance the Prince? Or even like the Prince? Cuz my Sebille has some opinions on lizards…..
Ah, Mr. O! Always so stubborn.
You don't know what you're missing. Well, I'll fill you in, so you will know what you're missing.
He didn't go anywhere, in our game. He was just hanging out there near the statue until I went by and said "OK, you know what, come with me, I think I might have heard something about your story."
And no, I'm not sure if one can romance lizards or not. The game isn't forcing me as a character to dislike lizards, though, so I'm being optimistic about the idea. One CAN romance–or at least flirt with–Ifan. I did that last night. But we'll see where it goes.
So you killed that sleeping lizard…hm. Stingtail, right? Did he have any…plot-related loot on him? Anything Griff might have been interested in, say? I'm curious how that might have developed.
Really? OK, I'll go back there. I want to at least say hi.
Yes, that's the one. And, if you're asking if he had a fantastic looking orange, why yes, yes he did.
I stopped there, though, so I don't know if it's THE fantastic orange.
Well, I stopped after I flirted. I just can't help myself.
We're so fucking predictable, aren't we?
We are. We can't help ourselves. Flirting is in our game DNA!
Ah, the orange! All right, cool. I was indeed wondering about that orange. Go talk to Griff and report back. I have a feeling our game developed a bit differently from how yours will, and I'm intrigued to learn what an alternative path looks like.
We're doing different things! Except for flirting at every opportunity. That's going to be the same.
Oh not every opportunity. Nope. Every opportunity I have with SEBILLE. There's no way I wind up with anyone else.
Especially as I would otherwise end up with the musical jester hottie.
Hey….wait…..
I was so taken by the appearance of a BEBHBB to rival all BEBHBBs that I failed to notice that Lohse is a cute, singing minstrel type redhead. Wasn't Lelianna a bard? And cute? And a redhead?
I'm starting to see a number of parallels…..
Fine–I'LL flirt with everyone at every opportunity. You flirt only with Sebille. Whom I cannot flirt with. We'll be different! Together, we'll cover everyone! Man, what a great blogging opportunity.
Out of curiosity, as Mr. O has a custom character, have you had the option to flirt with him? I know Scarlett and Roderick flirted like hell, and you'd likely have the opportunity to flirt had he played, say, Ibn, but how that going with his dwarf?
Nothing so far. Most of the "big exclamation point" conversations have been between us and NPCs, not between the two PCs. It will be interesting to see if there's any option going forward, or if there's just not a romance option outside of the built-in story arcs of the premade characters.
This really does promise to be a rather fascinating topic…the whole mechanic of having several different existing characters with backstories, any of whom can be played, as well as the option to make a character from scratch.
It is a very interesting twist, and a hell of a writing challenge.
So how did the whole lizard on the beach thing go down for you, as you are playing Sebille? Or is that gonna be a spoiler?
Man, I wish you had had Lohse when you met the blind elf, or when you found the singing dwarf. I want to know hat would've happened.
Cuz if you travel with her a while, I'm gonna call it (mostly cuz I'm thinking on Lelianna): There's going to come a time where you might have to kill her, or, at least, a time when she might attack.
She's kinda nuts.
But then, I could've attacked Sebille. It was an option. Makes sense, really, when you consider she put a syringe in my neck.
An interesting choice of weapon, that. I'm gonna have thoughts on that. Later.
Technically, it's my tattoo needle, because my skin is a record of all my contracts. Let's be precise!
I can't tell you quite all about the Griff thing because spoilers, but I can say that I had the Red Prince with me when we met, and he and Stingtail had a discussion about how they need the drug hidden in the oranges to have dreams about the future. The Red Prince is looking for someone who can dream deeply enough to tell him something he needs to know to further his story, but Stingtail is not it.
So my Sebille, using personalized character dialogue choices, basically tortured the lizard (scratching him with the needle and threatening all kinds of horrors) until he wept and wailed and gave back the oranges. But I left him alive. There was a choice like "it's not worth your time to kill the sniveling wretch" or something, and I took that. Basically, I didn't want to murder him in front of the Red Prince, after they'd just had such a cordial chat about dreaming and everything. But I'm definitely not a nice person.
So when we went back to Griff with the orange, Stingtail was still alive…which might have had an impact on what happened after that. Or not. You'll have to tell me what happens for you.
Is it now? Hmm… I will have thoughts.
I did not have Prince with me when Sebille killed the guy. Why? Because the first thing she said upon sticking a needle in my throat (how'd she do that with my collar on?) was "Why are you travelling with a lizard?" She made it rather clear that either we dismiss the lizard or she was done with us and/or was gonna fight. I said to myself "Hmm. She's hot, the lizard is annoying, I need space in my party for her…." So I told Lizard to go wait for us elsewhere. Off he went.
So then down to the beach, Princeless, and Sebille's all "there he is." And I had the option of barging in to do the conversation or not, and I thought "This isn't my problem, let Sebille handle it," so she did. Rather grotesquely.
I learned nothing of oranges. I just found it rather fortunate he had some.
IN-teresting. My NPC self clearly has a lizard issue. My-game self apparently was able to overcome this…but that's another interesting angle, to make it so some of the characters have serious issues with other characters. Makes it challenging to balance things and get to the end of everyone's story, I imagine. Especially if someone wants to always have Sebille in the party.
Serious lizard issues.
OK! Got some in. Went and saw Griff, and my story was probably more straight forward than yours. I just said "Yup, found the orange, here ya go, thief is dead" and he was all "Ah. Thanks." and let the elf go. Sebille talked to him first, and found a name of someone she wants to find.
Then went and found Ibn, who was right where you said he would be. Told Fane to chill, and picked him up. Went to see his contact and now he wants to find the same dude that Sebille wants to find. What could possibly go wrong?
So now I regret picking up Ibn. No idea where Prince and Fane went. Sigh.
And got a quest from a dog to find Emmie, which will end poorly, I am sure.
But I have a way out of the place! Thanks to freed elf. Is that the road you went down?
Oh, and found Migo and gave him a flower and got a ring and that was sure weird.
No idea where Prince and Fane went.
Dude, we found Migo, and the conversation went bad and we wound up having to kill him. Then went back to talk to the Magister who wanted us to find him and had to say he was dead, which was not the outcome she'd wanted. Awkward.
And we went back to Griff, gave him back the orange and he wanted to know the name of the thief and both the NPCs were like "don't tell him, he'll just kill Stingtail and he's suffered enough" so Gannibog and I agreed not to tell, and then Griff got mad and attacked and we had to kill him and all his associates. Noosey, etc. It was a pretty rough battle.
But we got a Hero point for refusing to give up Stingtail, so…yay us. Then we freed Amyro and he went back to the elf cave, we went back and chatted with him and he told us Saheila is super important and that we need to tell some other elves that she's here. So we said OK.
But I didn't learn anything about the person I'm looking for, so that's interesting. I'm not sure, maybe I as Sebille never talked to Amyro, maybe that was Gannibog…see, here's where it gets kind of frustratingly complex. Does every character have to talk to ever NPC or you're going to miss stuff? Apparently. And yet, who can remember who's talked to whom already? We've all talked to a lot of people, but maybe not everyone!
I did find out who Ifan is trying to kill, so if that's the same person, I guess we have a shared goal.
I believe that if you split up from companions they go back to where you found them, so the Prince and Fane should be along the beach somewhere. But good luck, I haven't actually gone back to get anyone again–I just know that's where Fane's body ended up when he'd been dead(er) for a while.
Lemme guess: he was all "Where does the Yarrow grow?" and you didn't have it. He said that to me, and I was like "Uh……what? Gonna die" and one option was "Give him the yarrow flower," to which I said "I have a yarrow flower?" But I did, and he was happy, and talked about his daughter for some reason, and he gave me a ring and that was that. I should go back to the magistrar. Or not.
My Stingtail was already dead, so the only choice I had was "tell him the name of the thief" or "Don't." I'm paraphrasing. I didn't, but he was cool with that.
My Griff lives.
I got the Saheila thingy, but what's a hero point? I have no hero points! What are hero points????
Nah, when I went to talk to Griff, Sebille was all "May I speak to him first?" I was all "You're hot, so go ahead" and she talked, and bribed him or something, and was then all "I must find [guy]." So that happened. It was one of those "Go to talk to a dude and get interrupted by an NPC in your party" deals.
Ifan is trying to kill the Bishop, right? Well, he needs supplies from the same dude Sebille wants to find. Starts with a Z.
Oh man, Zalesker or whatever!? Wow, this is going to be a lot different. We found him, and every time I (Sebille) try to talk to him, I just get in a fight. There's no non-fighty conversation option. Which is annoying, because he has good supplies! I have to give everything to Ifan to sell for me. Oh, and Ifan, even though I found a note saying he needs to talk to that guy, won't talk to him. I mean, he'll talk, but not to say anything relevant, just to trade. There aren't any specific supplies he appears to need or anything.
It's weird and annoying. Hopefully we didn't break anything by doing things in the wrong order.
At least we're heroes! Which I think just means that we get certain, hero-specific dialogue options at some point in the future when we're talking to someone who might be impressed by our mercy or our staunch refusal to give up a source or whatever. "I'm no narc, man!"
And yeah, we didn't have the yarrow flower. Oops. Got the ring off his exploded corpse, though! And then had to give it to the Magister when we went back to talk to her, so…you may or may not want to do that. Or maybe you won't have to give it to her–I had to give it to her to prove he was the thing that was dead, given that he turned into a horrible monster before attacking us (more shades of Dragon Age and how mages can be possessed by demons or whatever). If he's alive, you can probably tell her and she'll be happy and maybe you can keep the ring.
Yeah, him! Everyone wants a piece of him!
It can't break quests, can it? Did you move shit forward?
I like the ring. I want the ring.
If it's anything like the last game, there are all kinds of ways to keep moving forward, even if you miss certain things (like by not having Pet Pal and being able to get info from animals). I'm fairly confident it hasn't broken anything permanently, although we'll see. But we're outside the fort and appear to be moving along, so…we'll see.
Which path did you use to get out of the fort? And did you finally get pet pal?
Oh! On that!
Black Cat up and died. Just up and died. He was following us along, and I went to talk to a magistrar by the gate, the dude Ibn wanted to talk to, and he just up and died. That was that.
So I have no idea, other than he seemed to be….more human than one would think.
Interesting. I guess that explains why we found the cat dead.
We got out of the fort through the dungeon.
And yes, I now have Pet Pal. It's saved us from at least two fights so far.
You know, it occurred to me last night, that maybe we could have saved the cat, or even befriended it, by giving it a herring or something. I keep forgetting this game doesn't handhold you to the point of "The Cat says 'I could really use a herring.'"
Poor cat. Next time, ask for herring.
How Would YOU Express the Soul of Detroit?
character, Detroit: Become Human, Disco Elysium, Divinity: Original Sin 2, making games, mystery, plot, romance
Spoilers for Detroit: Become Human
Man, now even the house is interfering with game time. I was trying to catch up. I, what, got away from the doctor I mean Zlatko, stole a bunch of parts as Markus. Today, played the Eden Club scene, played the amusement park scene, and was making progress, man, and then the guy who's here to de-jack the drain for the washer showed up early.
Stupid house.
So how was DOS2? I'm sure you finished. Ha. Don't finish this weekend. Ha.
I think ha.
Anyway….I liked the Eden club bit. And no, not for the gratuitous skin. The tracking with a timer was cool. I especially liked if you stop to look at a Traci on your way in Anderson is all "What are you doing? We have work to do." Well played, game. Well played.
I let them go. Didn't shoot. Software got unstable, so that pretty much clinches that Connor is going deviant. What I didn't really get or buy is that Anderson liked the fact that I let them go. I was expecting a scolding. Hmm.
The scene in the amusement park I kinda loved. Like, LOVED. Turning the zombie trope into Jerry the Carousel man was themeage I might ponder a very long time. Zombies, after all, are humans who become shells of themselves, walking embodiments of the worst of our impulses. So droid zombies being super happy guys who just want to make children happy is a powerful image.
I just played it, but man. I'm gonna be doing some pondering.
That scene and the piano scenes, alone, make this game worth playing.
I…..wish I could say the same for Zlatko and stealing the supplies. That sure was a whole mess of QTEs. A WHOLE mess. Too much mess.
I also think that introducing North and Luther this late (at least, I hope it's late, as you are 82% done with DOS2) is a mistake. I want to get to know these characters. They seem interesting. And yet, I have a feeling they'll be characters who a) I won't have time to get to know and b) folks who the game expects me to CAAAARE about as if I had time to get to know them.
I dunno. I'm just glad this soul crushing weekend is over. Long weekend. Hopefully, things will improve on that front going forward.
But hey! Bloggage.
Please tell me you're not WAAAAAY into DOS2.
Dude, we're about 1% into Divinity. We've met some companions. That's about it. I think it's a big game. The first one certainly was. Don't fret!
The Eden Club was another example of my Connor being terrible at his job. I took too much time talking to robots (it was kind of funny to keep making Anderson pay for them), and never caught up to Traci. So she's off somewhere and I never decided whether or not to let her go, I just didn't find her.
Connor's not the only one who's terrible, though: on the theft of parts, I messed that up too. I tried to save the security android, went back to save what's his name, alerted the cops somehow, and we wound up escaping with only a few items, not enough to do much. North was not happy with me.
But my Kara did successfully escape Zlatko, free the experiments, recover her memory, save Alice and join Luther. It was a nice bit of poetic justice that if you unlock the door and let the experiments out, they'll come to your aid later. For a pretty tropey 'escape the creepy house' sequence, I thought that was fairly well done, though…sneaking and then running through those doors, hiding, ducking and dodging, trying to protect Alice…it was all pretty tense. And, speaking of poetic justice, having the android who works for the guy who takes advantage of deviants turn deviant, that was an unsurprising but still satisfying twist.
As with so many of the antagonist characters, Zlatko was pretty much a caricature of evil, so that whole bit was like being smacked with a big narrative-hammer, but again…for what it was, I thought it was well done. And at least this time he pretty much avoided the gross sexualization that was so unpleasant with Madison…I mean, Kara was definitely the "tied-up-damsel" but they didn't take off her clothes or anything to make it even more disturbing, right? I'll take that.
I did really like the amusement part bit. As you say, the twist on "creepy abandoned amusement park," having all the Jerries just wanting to make children happy, was pretty cool. And kind of sad in an interesting way…these androids were created with this purpose and then just abandoned, and now they can only wander around trying vainly to do what they're supposed to. Kind of a less obvious version of the junkyard full of broken androids.
And the carousel in the snow, Alice enjoying it, Kara noting that that's the first time she's seen Alice smile…it was a nice, moody scene.
I did feel kind of the same way about Luther and North–these characters are going to be important, but are we going to have time to actually know them enough that we get WHY? See how you feel at the end…
Sure, sure. 1%. You mean 91%. It's cool.
Is it good so far?
And dude, you suck.
So what I did was find the Tracis (plural). You find the deviant, and two attack you (or one attacks Hank) and you end up fighting two scantily clad women cuz this is a David Cage game and all. In the middle of the battle, you see the two Tracis grab each other's hands, like they're in love. If you pass all the QTEs (or enough), the not blue haired one charges you, and you have to decide to shoot or spare. I spared, and she ran right past me into the blue haired one's arms. There was a confession, a "I just wanted to live….to feel her arms around me again…I love her…." and off they went. And it wasn't really a "decide to let her go." It was "shoot or not," without knowing the consequences. Cool.
And I successfully stole parts, which was ALSO a lot of QTEs. I got rewarded by a rousing "we shall RISE UP!" speech by Markus that seemed a little canned but hey. Jericho ate it up.
And as for Kara's story, if by "unsurprising" you mean "Luther could have had a neon sign saying 'It's cool, I'll turn deviant later in this chapter,'" then yes.
I did like the return of the altered, monstrous androids coming to kill Zlatko. Nice touch.
This is what David Cage has reduces us to. "Hey! Not totally offensive! Just kinda offensive! Nicely done!"
Though….upon pondering….maybe there was some attempt at themeage.
Cuz this isn't the first time we've escaped a house, as Kara and Alice, from a possessive, abusive, violent caricature of evil in this game. Todd was a possessive asshole, who vented his anger and insecurities on Alice, Zlatko was a possessive asshole who vented his anger on androids. Todd and Zlatko even looked alike. All of this might have just been lazy assed storytelling (We need an action sequence…how about an escape? We need a baddie….how about another slob who's mean to females?) but maybe it was supposed to be a mirror.
Not sure what it meant to say if it was, but maybe.
Very sad, in the amusement park. "Usually, it's humans who come here just to hurt us….." That's a glimpse into pure human sadism. Who would just hurt a smiling guy who's trying to make children happy?
But admit it: When you saw the mob of them, your first thought was "Oh, here we go, fight time!" The whole set up: finding Luther's gun, moody place, creepy decorations, them coming to the window….you got that hands tightening on the controller feeling. Admit it.
And then, they just wanted to show everyone their carousel.
Which is also kind of an indictment of the (human) player. Always seeing everything as a threat, or a fight.
Oh, I'm sure I'll see how I feel at the end. If I ever finish. Is there a lot left?
Though in terms of feelings towards characters…..
I'm finding something odd in my reaction to this game as it continues and I'm not sure I like the fact my reaction is changing. Specifically, the more I play the more I like Connor and the less I like Markus.
I'm not sure why I'm liking Connor more, or if that's a bad thing. Maybe it's just because being a detective is cool (when you actually solve cases. Ha). But the fact I'm liking Markus less troubles me. Yes, I could say that I liked the bits with the piano, they were great scenes, and the stealing was a QTE fest, but still, the fact is I liked the (black) android better when he was a piano playing servant to an old white man than I do now that he's an activist and rising up and sticking it to the man.
It troubles me that I feel that way. So I'm hoping it's just the QTEs. I very much do.
I do suck. I am terrible at games.
Divinity is fun so far. Very familiar, the same presentation and style and mechanics as the last one. Different characters, obviously. I need to get back into that mindset, because right now it's still quite confusing having the split screen and one of us talking to people while the other loots and so forth. We'll get into the groove, it's just an adjustment.
I also liked Connor more as the story went on: he definitely has some character moments. There's some real tension there with the question of whether he'll stay true to his programming, or become deviant.
I never didn't like Markus, though–he always seemed pretty sympathetic to me, even though I could also see how he was becoming more of a potential threat to humans. Interestingly, I realize that I didn't read him as black, specifically, although certainly it makes sense, given the big-hammer Civil Rights comparisons, that he would be. Or could be. I mean, he's an android, so race is presumably whatever his product designer wanted to make it (and we could certainly talk about the implied social conventions that would lead to different models looking like different human racial groups, if this game were more about the world at large).
I actually remember thinking it was interesting that there WASN'T an obviously black character in that civil-rights-activist role, and wondering about it…like, is that good because it's not quite as direct a copy of actual historical events, or bad because it assumes that players wouldn't be sufficiently engaged with the story if the character was black?
If we're going to wonder about problematic unconscious attitudes in ourselves, I could wonder if because I didn't see him as particularly black, I subconsciously found his revolutionary activities more sympathetic than I would have if he'd been, say, Luther? I don't know any way to test this, but…people have unconscious associations that affect how we perceive things, so I can't deny it could be true.
It's very simple: The side of the screen where the character is grabbing all the loot she doesn't need, ignoring stats and missing important dialog? That's you. The side of the screen where the player is fussing with loot that's really all the same, fussing over every stat and missing important dialog? That's Mr O.
As for Connor though…it's a weird thing, because we've been presented with instance after instance where humanity is pretty awful. It's a fairly steady drumbeat in this game: Becoming human maybe isn't all that great. And yet, the more human Connor gets, the more I like him. Hmm.
And whoa, wait, you didn't read Markus as black? Really? I read it that way from the moment he came on the screen. I even thought it was a tad eye rolly that they chose Markus to be the android they used the "back of the bus" imagery for.
That's interesting, because I think part of the reason that I'm getting a little "really?" with Markus' storyline is I read it as so very bluntly being "black character in civil rights activist role," that subtle as a brick metaphor that David Cage does.
You really read it differently?
Yeah–I didn't perceive him as black until you mentioned that. I think I noticed that he was less white than Connor and Kara (not hard, since they are both fish-belly pale), but I didn't think 'black,' just…less white. And that only in passing. If I'd thought about it, I would probably have guessed he was meant to be mixed race (or was modeled on someone who is mixed race, given David Cage's habit of putting actual peoples' faces in games), but I really didn't think about it.
I guess this is where I interject the classic oblivious-white-person phrase: "I just don't see race!"
Or, also popular, "you're different, Markus–I don't even see you as black." As if that's a compliment.
I'm a terrible person who is terrible at games.
And yet my terrible obliviousness allowed me to find the storyline of Markus taking on the role of a civil rights leader to be somewhat less crushingly obvious than it would otherwise have been! I actually pondered whether it might be trying to be slightly subtle!
Perhaps David Cage's games are better the more clueless you are.
Also, humans ARE pretty terrible! All the villains in this game (and many, as discussed, are cartoonishly villainous) are human. Sympathetic humans are the exception: I kind of like Lt. Anderson, and Carl was decent in a rich-old-guy sort of way, but does that really balance the many examples of humans being monstrous? Using their authority over androids to abuse and harm them?
Why do androids even WANT to "become human"?
Why, indeed? But then, do they? I haven't seen an android yet that wants to "be human." Connor has no opinion on the matter, Markus wants humans to treat androids as equals, Kara just wants to be left alone. We haven't seen any android saying "I wanna be just like the humans cuz the humans are so great!"
Shit, the android who I got to confess to murder (my shame!) said that when Ra9 or whatever comes then "We shall be the masters." That doesn't sound like "I wanna be just like you."
Maybe (well, you know this as you're done, so don't spoil), Amanda is worried that they WILL become human!
I am reminded of the old cartoon the Jungle Book. Seen it? I shall summarize. In the original cartoon, there is a song sung by the orangutan king or whatever that's all "I wanna be just like you…." It's jokey. Cartoony. The refrain "You'll see it's true that an ape like me, can learn to be human, too!" is set out as a joke with monkeys wearing hats and shit (note: this was also incredibly racist because half of the "humor" was "jungle people" thinking they could be "human!" what a riot god humanity sucks.)
They remade the Jungle Book a ways back and made it far darker. They redid the song against the backdrop of the orangutan king learning about fire, and how he can use it as a weapon. So when he sings "I wanna be like you…" and "you'll see it's true an ape like me, can learn to be human, too!" it isn't at ALL funny, it's a realization that "becoming human" is maybe not so good. (Christopher Walken did it in the remake. Very good movie.)
Sorry, that was quite the diversion.
My point here is, does anyone want to become human? Seems that's more of a negative than a positive.
Indeed…maybe "become human" is actually more of an exhortation to the human characters/us, than it is an aspiration of the androids.
"Become human"–all that stuff about yourselves that you think is so great, how about you practice that with regard to these other intelligent beings here?
Because you're right, none of the android characters express any desire to be human, just to be treated like free, reasoning beings. To be TREATED like humans, by implication, but as we know, humans treat other humans terribly all the time for all kinds of reasons, so good luck with that as an argument.
I certainly read it that way.
But then, David Cage titles are always a little funky. I never did figure out what we were supposed to be beyond. And why does he feel the need to put the setting in the title, there?
Nothing against the city of Detroit, but it seems a tad much. We don't play games with titles like "Thedas: Dragon Age: Origins" or "Boston: Fallout 4" or "Big Spooky House: Gone Home."
So maybe we can just ignore David Cage's titles.
I would actually kind of be interested in playing a game called "Big Spooky House," but maybe that's just me. And you're right, his titles are odd. Or…well, Heavy Rain was straightforward enough. And I assumed it was "beyond" the boundaries of life and death, right–they were trying to break that barrier? And then two souls, well, that's clear enough as the game develops. So maybe that's not that weird.
And maybe that means we SHOULD pay attention to his titles, because they ARE supposed to signify something.
But Detroit, well, it's set in Detroit, that's fine. And Detroit makes us think of Motown, and industry, and lately failing economies and crushing poverty…maybe we're meant to have all that in mind. Technology, mass production of consumer goods! Hovering on the brink of societal collapse! Stations on the underground railroad!
Maybe it works better than we thought.
You're right that it certainly fits the themes to make the game set in Detroit. That it does. But the problem is that, with the exception of a casual mention here and there, there's nothing that is explicitly Detroit. It's in Detroit because is SAYS it's in Detroit. If the game wasn't called Detroit, we wouldn't have really noticed it was in Detroit.
Now, sure, we're not from Detroit, and it's not as easy to show that something is Detroit than it is to plop the statue of liberty or Big Ben in a game and have people be all "New York!" "London!" I suppose we might have a reader who sees this and is all "Fuck you, man, there were, like twenty-seven things you'd've totally recognized if you took the time to learn ANYTHING about this fabulous city I live in," but I've never been to Detroit and, sorry, the only thing that sets this game in Detroit for me is the title.
So yes, good place to set this, themewise, but kind of an awkward way to convey setting.
Well, fair…but as you say, given the lack of dramatic Detroitian landmarks (sorry, people of Detroit, if Detroitian is not the preferred adjective), how else would he get that across other than to say "this is Detroit"? If he wanted to evoke the history of Detroit for themes, how can he do that without tossing the name around in dialogue and maybe slapping it on the title for good measure?
He probably knows that most of his players have never been to Detroit and know almost nothing about it, and therefore will not recognize it even if he includes every Detroit landmark there is (which he could have done, for all we know)–if he wants us to think of it, he's got to mention it.
Would we argue that he's better off not evoking Detroit at all, and just setting the game in some vague Anycity, USA? I agree, he certainly could have done that with no real impact on the way the game unfolds. Does it matter if it's in Detroit? Maybe not, any more than it matters that Godzilla wrecks Tokyo and not Anycity, Japan. And yet Tokyo gives us a certain sense of the setting that we wouldn't have otherwise, even if no scene in the movie is recognizably related to any actual part of Tokyo.
Maybe that vague background sense is all he's really going for here as well.
Oh I certainly think having the game in Detroit, given the themes, makes a lot more sense than just Anycity, for all the reasons you said. It makes more thematic sense that this game is in Detroit than, say, the last battle of ME3 was in London. That was just so people could be all "Ooo! London!" Detroit, here, has weight.
But it's a tricky setting because people know Detroit as an idea more than a place. We've never been there, but we both see "Detroit" and it's immediately evocative of GM and factories and Motown music and the rust belt and and and. We immediately associate Detroit with all of that. Most everyone does. And yet, while most everyone has that immediate association, one enth of a percent of people who have that association can even begin to picture the skyline of Detroit.
It has the metaphorical oomph of a New York, an LA, maybe even more than a Boston, but it doesn't have a Statue of Liberty or a Hollywood sign or even a Fenway Park that makes you go "Ah, yes. Here we are."
So we're leaning towards just using it as a bludgeon in the title being OK? Still seems he could have done more.
I think given the various other bludgeons in this game, using Detroit in the title is neither egregious nor ill-fitting…so yeah, I guess I think it's OK.
I mean, in an otherwise very subtle, understated kind of game, it might seem like "wow, that title shout-out to Detroit was a bit much," but if we're rolling along with all the rest of it (which for the most part I did!), I think yeah, do the shout-out, why the hell not?
This is not a game that has the time or patience to add complexity to villains or subtly underplay its messages or use its setting to add gentle shading to the background context.
Still, it should have. Why didn't it have time? It's not like it had a whole lot of gratuitous, leering nudity. He could have replaced that with something else.
Something that wasn't Anderson scolding Connor for looking at women. Pot, kettle, Mr. Cage.
Ha! True. It's especially amusing considering that Connor, a program-following police android, is pretty much the last one to be leering at anything with actual lust. I assumed he was just distracted by all the lights and colors, myself.
Poor David Cage–can't catch a break.
"Look, you don't like gratuitous leering nudity, fine, I'll take it out. I'll even obliquely scold myself for it! But don't ask me to replace it with subtle plot development or scene setting. That would violate my truest self."
Yes. Lights. Colors. Very scantily clad lights and colors.
My Connor was too busy being terrible at his job. I swear I talked to every single android that DIDN'T have any memory of Traci.
I did have it in the back of my mind that maybe he didn't entirely want to find her (them–but he never learned there were two), and this was part of the software instability. He's programmed to be good at his job, so why does he keep failing?! Maybe it's intentional! (Yeah, yeah…that's what I always say whenever I do a bad job at something. I didn't really WANT it to work! I meant to do that!)
Or maybe it was cuz most of the Tracis you had to talk to were women and your Connor was being driven towards the men by some different hand than the hand driving my Connor.
So in the "games in the future we shall likely play to avoid tlou2," right now, go read reviews of a new game called Disco Elysium.
Right now before I forget.
You had me at "Become a hero or an absolute disaster of a human being". I like both those options!
Sounds amazing. And coming to consoles next year.
On the list it goes!
That 'Chorus' one met its fundraising goal, too. So many things to play!
So great that there are so many interesting, blogable, interesting games coming out!
That aren't TLOU2.
(For those who missed our exciting coverage when we played it, we were permanently scarred by The Last of Us.)
If One Ending is Good, Three are Three Times as Good!
Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, combat, Death Stranding, mechanics, monsters, Outer Worlds, plot, reviews, romance, TV
Spoilers for getting near the cultist ending of AC: Odyssey
Well, considering the weekend got busy, probably good that the game is making you do one last chore.
Did you kill the ghost? Or are there three things (one of which is a fort) you have to do first?
Let me know how it ends. Or kinda ends. Or ends but not really. Or should've ended.
It took me way too long to weaken Achaia enough that the conquest battle was provoked, considering I've been provoking and ignoring them throughout the game, but I did that last night and defeated the final cultist. Now I have a quest to go find Aspasia, who is in…wait for it…Kephallonia! Back to where we started!
Fingers crossed I'll finish it tonight. I'm sure it will be deeply thoughtful and thematic and rich with material for discussion.
Or I'll just backstab her and run away.
Whichever.
Seriously? Way back where it started? That's kind of a nice touch. I like that.
Why'd you have to do all the conquest battle shit? Wasn't the dude just in the arena or something?
Maybe she just died of the plague.
THAT would be awesome. "Aww, you think you did the wrong thing? Your blogmate is all smug cuz he saved everyone? Well, cuz you unleashed malaria you don't have to fight the final boss!"
OK, now I'm really hoping for that because hinging it all on a quest back in the tutorial would make me forgive all this game's sins.
Oh man, that would be so great! Hahahaha! Malaria: the assassin's final weapon against the cult.
I would love that.
One of the guys I had left on that line was in the Arena (and, helpfully unlike most of the enemies, he had not leveled up along with me, so when I finally got around to going there and he was still level 29, I wrecked him effortlessly and bailed).
His clue led me to the last guy, who would only make an appearance if I fought for Athens in a conquest battle in Achaia. Apparently he has a lot of riders in his contract.
Anyway, all this roaming around looking for cultists did remind me why there was so much map we didn't really get to in the main, family-based storyline. Achaia? I'd never set foot in it until I had to go there for a (different) cultist. And some of those islands or areas of the sea, too.
Oh, and I did finally do that bit with Roxana and the Battle of 100 Hands, that you did 100 years ago while luring that one guy into a naval battle. Romanced and recruited her, obviously. I think I've slept with at least 50% of my crew at this point.
Oh I never finished that one! I liked her, and thought that quest would end with killing her, so I left her, alone and lovelorn (but very much alive) wondering why every other hottie gets a spot on my boat.
How'd that one end?
I went back to the battle, killed everyone else, and the two of us were finally the only ones left standing in the Final Match Up. Then the master of ceremonies, whatever that dude's name was, said "all right, now fight for the prize" and we gazed mournfully at each other and I said "we don't have to do this," and she said "don't make this difficult! winning has been my only goal for so long!" and I said "there's so much more to do in the world! join me on my ship!" and she said "OK!" (You know, with slightly more formal language.)
Then the dude got all mad and attacked us, because he was really invested in someone dying in that competition (I suppose the cult made it a condition of his continued employment and life), so we had to kill him and his guards, but it was no big deal.
There was a kind of nice comment Kassandra made going into the battle, something like "imagine how much all these warriors could accomplish uniting against the cult…instead, we gather here to kill each other." It kind of made the whole thing make sense in a larger, social-control context. Obviously the cult would rather have highly trained mercenaries fighting each other than turning their attention to larger matters.
Ah man! That sounds good! In a whole lot of annoying combat way!
And I could have made the social scene on the boat even more awkward!
Sorta reminds me, I show up with all my family. Mom, dad, bro all asking "So who are all these ladies?" Kassandra all "Uh….heh….yeah….now, don't get mad, dad, I'm a grown woman why are you all looking at me like that?"
Oh, in other news:
The Outer Worlds Critic Reviews for PlayStation 4 – Metacritic
Apparently the Outer Worlds is very good.
Though I still vote for Death Stranding after Detroit. Mostly cuz Junior might buy Outer Worlds himself and I can steal it later. But I will defer to blogmate.
Well, because I'd put it off so long, it was really more "a bit of minimally challenging combat where no one else is even elite status."
I basically just wandered around the battlefield (which was a series of different environments) assassinating people or waiting for them to kill each other off. It might have been kind of an interesting challenge if I'd done it earlier, but it was pretty much nothing at level 60, even though the other fighters were technically 60 as well.
Oh, and after Detroit…I already own Divinity: Original Sin 2, which has been sitting around for months. Do you have an opinion about that?
I think it's certainly on the list, but, pending reviews, I kinda want to hit Death Stranding while it's still fresh. I have a feeling that it's going to be rather avant garde, and we avant garde well.
Plus, after so much of things looking the same, I'm kinda in the mood for something REALLY different. Death Stranding and Outer Worlds are new universes, and, after my 5493875489th temple and my 357435874th horse ride, I could use that. I certainly want to play Divinity 2, but swords and spells and D&D isn't exactly something we'll go "whoa, THAT'S a thing."
Plus, don't you have to play with Mr. O?
Yes, but he said he's coming on a quieter period at work, and he's not playing anything else, so he may be free for it.
I am sensing a strong desire to play this game.
Ok I'm in. But don't let him slow you down.
But there are features of death stranding we might want to think of…because Death Stranding is kinda sorta not really but kinda multiplayer, we might get the intended experience when the most people are playing it as possible.
You read about the mechanic? The whole "bridges" thing?
Anyway, we can stall a little. It comes out November 8th, but the review embargo has lifted so I'll find some reviews for us to read so we can see if it's any good or interesting before we have to commit.
I did not read much of anything about it. I like to approach games with pure, blind enthusiasm.
"What the hell is this, some sort of interactive vidja entertainment program?" is the kind of thing I like to say.
"What does this button do?" is another.
"When do I get a shotgun and how do I set things on fire?" is yet another.
So no, I don't know anything about bridges. And honestly, anything multiplayer-ish sounds like a negative at first blink, but you've done more reading than I have (I read…uh…your comments on the subject. And also I watched that one preview you sent), so I trust your judgment.
You know, more or less. As long as it's not about old classics where you have to shrink sweaters in the past and stuff.
You mostly say that third thing you said.
I, too, was skeptical about multiplayerish shit, as you know, and it's a key reason I want to read reviews first, so I can figure out how multiplayerish it is.
What is seems like…..
So it's a single player game. Everyone plays the same character (that would be Norman Reedus, who the women at the bus stop say is hunky, I defer to you on that), in the same world, same story, like any other single player game. The deal is that you can "help" or "be helped" rather anonymously when people see "reflections" of what you do. That is, sometimes, stuff that other people build (Say, a ladder up there, or a bridge over that ravine) shows up in your game. From random strangers. Also, someone might be playing and find a ladder or a bridge or something you built. There are, apparently, places to drop extra resources, drop boxes like, that then get randomly sent to other players' drop boxes, kinda sharing with random strangers across game dimensions or some shit.
But this is all supposed to link in to the THEMES and shit.
It sounds different. But, again, a reason to read reviews.
I don't think it has sweaters. But it's Kojima, so you never know what it will have.
I'll find us some reviews to read.
Hunky? That dude in the preview? Uh…if you say so, women at the bus stop. Seemed a little pasty to me. I mean, no offense to Norman Reedus. I'm sure he's a lovely person with many fine qualities. (Or a total bastard! I don't know, I have no idea who he is.)
Maybe he looks better in other contexts than the 30 seconds I saw of him in that weird-ass preview. Those other contexts are probably what those women are basing their assessment on.
Anyway, that mechanic DOES sound interesting. In a potentially annoying way, as well as a potentially useful one, but we'll have to see how it ends up working in practice.
His other context is zombies. He's on the Walking Dead, a show otherwise sane people seem to love. Tried it for the first season and thought "Uh…..this….isn't good….." But maybe that's just because Norman Reedus isn't my type.
IF it ends up working in practice. And how. At the very least, it's something that would give us a few good days of bloggage, I'm sure.
OOOHHHH…right. The Walking Dead.
Like you, we watched the first season–I think maybe even just about the first two thirds of the first season–and thought "Next." Just…it didn't even maintain the minimum level of interest for me that it was worth getting the last disc from Netflix, back when we used to get discs from Netflix.
And yet so many people LOVE it! More power to 'em, it takes all kinds, etc.
But yeah, I think I can kind of vaguely recall that pasty face in that context. Hm. Nope, not hunky there, either.
Maybe he became more attractive in later seasons that we didn't watch. And since we never will, I shall never know. It's OK, I'm comfortable with my ignorance.
I, too, am comfortable. Though not really ignorant: I can state with certainty he wasn't my type in that, either.
What if there's a later season where he magically becomes a scantily clad sorceress?
I have to admit, adding magic is a twist that would greatly increase my interest in that show.
I can't decide if that would improve my attitude toward the show or mute my love of sorceresses.
Better not risk it. Sorceresses give you much more joy than that show ever would, even improved.
Indeed. I shall avoid that show for the sorceresses.
This is getting weird.
Finish this damn game so we can get back on the rails. Or something.
I will! I just need to go to Kephallonia and probably do three things for Aspasia before I can kill her. Ha.
All three of which will be on islands on the other side of the map nowhere near fast travel points.
But very close to question marks.
Undoubtedly! If there's one place on the map I haven't been yet, I'll have to go there.
But I walked right by an alpha animal and a bandit camp last night, because I knew they would not help provoke a conquest battle.
I'm resisting.
I'm proud of you. Very proud. Very, very proud.
Please finish the game.
Just Say NO to Love Potions!
Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, challenge level, character, combat, family, morality, plot, romance, story
Some spoilers for things along the main plot in AC: Odyssey
I forgot it's Monday.
Sums up this wonderful family weekend.
But I finished the Lagos bit and I have many, many thoughts.
Even got to play more!
Went over to the next main quest line, met a couple of blasts from the past, killed, what, three dudes, spent a great deal of time looking for Thebes (you'd think she'd know where that is), finally found it, called it a day.
So if you did any of that, or Lagos, I got thoughts. Hoowhee, do I have thoughts.
Ah, Lagos! See, I tried to do it Brasidas' way–ignored all mom's tasks about burning things and killing people and went right to Lagos. But he attacked me anyway (although he did say "thanks for saving my family") so I had to kill him, and then Brasidas got all mad. I wanted to say "dude, I tried, back off!" but whatever.
The thing is, I had previously killed a couple of his captains and burned some stuff just while passing by, because they were location objectives, so maybe he heard about that and that's why he didn't trust me. You won't have killed captains in passing–you tell me! Did you get him to renounce the cult?
I also did some other stuff, we we can start there.
I did not, but lord knows I tried. I did burn his stuff because I didn't want to deal with bodyguards, so he was pretty dejected when I found him.
Here's how it played out for me.
I go in, all "denounce the cult," trying to be nice. He says "You expect me to believe that after what you did to the Monger?" Like, whoa. An NPC reacting to how I decided something all those levels ago, in a way that MAKES SENSE. I tried to be all "Dude, not this time. Really. Leave the cult," and he's all "I can't trust you…but at least you are giving the honor of dying like a Spartan," and he attacked me. Brasidas was all "Great, we're gonna starve."
So, here's really my story line, as I did stuff in a different order than you did: I did the brother's blue quest (remember that? Way back when?). The big nasty loan shark was all "I'll only forgive the debt if the Monger dies in public." So I decided to kill the Monger in public TO HELP THE NICE GUYS one of whom I slept with. ONLY that reason.
Fast forward to now, and, all of a sudden, I can't talk my way out of a situation, people are going to starve, because of a decision I made to help a couple of brothers in a side quest.
MAN that's good.
First, it's so non linear. That quest was a DLC. You didn't have to do it at all. You could've done it whenever. So I'm sitting here, having this experience of "Dude, I just doomed people to starvation because I was trying to be nice to this poet guy," and you're not. Few people are. That's damn good non linear storytelling.
Second, and this is the big one, games usually tip their hands on the consequences of Weighty Game Choices. I had absolutely no fucking idea that killing the Monger in public would lead to any impact later on, especially an impact that would prevent me from peacefully saving Spartans from salvation. Usually, when a player is all "Hey…wait…I didn't mean…." there's a way to let the player off the hook. This didn't.
It also goes WAY back to when we were talking on the helpful load screen tip "Save before you make Weighty Choices" and our discussion on when, or if, it's cool to reload, and how people want their game to be THEIR game. Here, the only way I could prevent Spartan famine and do what I wanted to do was to reload a save from, like, 35 hours ago and who's gonna do that? We THOUGHT this game was one of those "Hey, save, pick an outcome, it's cool, whatevs" and maybe it isn't.
This game is like a toxic girlfriend. Every time I'm this close to breaking up, she does something awesome.
That's true, he did say that to me too! I was too busy being annoyed at Brasidas for acting like we didn't even TRY, but you're absolutely right, that was a very good callback.
In my case, I killed the Monger in public to please the hetaerae, not to help the brothers, but same deal…my long-ago decision, made with absolutely no awareness of any possible connection, comes back to haunt me. Well, not me. I'll be fine. It comes back to haunt the Spartans, I guess. But it's very true, that's a nifty way to make something a long time ago actually mean something now. Like the bit with the plague on Kephallonia.
So we'll give this game that: it's good at making stuff we did come back in different (yet logical) contexts.
And also speaking of decisions we made a long time ago…did you go after the Boeotian champions? And run into…someone? I thought that was interesting too.
I ran into two someones! More on that in a bit, I'm still on Lagos.
But how Lagos is even better than the plague is that the plague, at least, was transparent enough that you could guess a possible outcome. Letting sick people go could make people sick. That's a logical connection, so, when it happens, you can be all "Yup, kinda knew that was a possibility."
But "If I kill this guy this way instead of that way, people will starve to death" isn't anything you could even begin to predict. That's very, very rare in games.
True, the plague and people getting the plague connection was logical. Less so was the reaction of the Pythia when you arrive (either "you saved those people!" or "you let them die!"), although that didn't really have a huge impact on the game overall since she still gave you the information you needed.
Though we could also argue that this bit doesn't have a huge impact on the game overall either, if by that we're referring simply to our own experience as players. I feel bad–sort of–that a bunch of Spartans may starve (I mean, we've talked about our mixed feelings regarding the Spartan Way before, and if they're too hungry to attack Athens with as much vigor, am I really that broken up about it?), but I doubt it will mean anything terribly significant to the way the game winds up for me.
I could of course be wrong! Maybe we'll end up reviled in our native land because we left so many people hungry, where we could have come out of this as heroes.
On the other hand, we DID win Sparta an Olympic wreath, so they'll probably forgive us. "Hey everyone, enjoy looking upon my pankration wreath as you watch your children suffer and die! Feels better, right?"
Or, maybe they'll be so hungry they'll attack Athens with MORE vigor to get their food, and this will turn out to be the thing that propelled Sparta to victory! After all, as the load screen tells us, the Peloponnesian war ended with Sparta occupying Athens. (Thanks for the spoiler, GAME.) Whatever we do or don't do, we're not going to change that history.
Regardless of the level of the impact on gameplay, though, I do agree with you in terms of respecting the way this game has given us a completely unforeseen consequence of a decision made far away while we were thinking about something else entirely. It's a nice example of the interconnectedness of things.
Well, gameplay aside, I do feel kinda bad. The whole starving, famine thing isn't just limited to soldiers. We're damning kids and whatnot to starve. That's not very nice.
Another nice touch that I just thought of about the whole interconnectedness of things was Brasidas' little "Told you so" moment. "If you had just done what I said…." Usually, "told you so" moments are eye rolling. Like:
"If you do that, my planet will explode and I will be sad."
"What, this?"
KABOOM!!!!!!
"See? My planet exploded. I am now sad."
Here, Brasidas gets in a "Had you done what I said, this wouldn't have happened. I, important game character, was trying to guide you and you done fucked up" thing, but it wasn't explicit. Back with the Monger, he never said "Wait! We might have to talk a cultist into leaving the cult! They'll never trust you if you do this!" Never. His "Told you so" moment was, kinda, not really one, cuz he never told us THAT.
That, too, is a subtlety you rarely see in games.
I dunno, man. Now I'm starting to think that things might matter re the endgame. After all, we didn't expect the whole Monger thing to matter. We were all "What, he was gonna die at the end of this quest anyway, so what?"
But, as you want to talk about the dudes we ran into, this would be a good segue, unless you want to do the segue yourself.
You mean Stentor? And stepdad? How about them, right?
Man, Stentor does not like us. But stepdad was chill. It was kind of cool he showed up again, and presumably if we'd actually killed him way back in the day, we would have had to kill that one champion ourselves, so that was an impact (if, again, not a huge one). I was perfectly happy to have him killing people for me–I can share the work. And his talking about how he could help Stentor be a better commander than he (the Wolf) ever was…maybe that's some delayed impact as well, since presumably the Spartans will be better off now.
Maybe partially making up for all the people we doomed to starvation.
Yeah, them.
See, I didn't like this (so far, I'm not finished with the quest). I had the same reaction I had to the lameness of the end of Markos' "story. When we see Stentor, the game obviously wants us to be all "DUDE! It's the GUY!" and care a lot, but it's hard to do that when we haven't seen the guy since what was effectively the tutorial. It has been a very, very, very long time since we saw ol' Stentor. The whole "step brother I never had who hates me" dynamic wasn't particularly established in the twelve thousand hours between when we met him and now.
It almost read like Stentor was a bigger character in some earlier draft of the game. When we met him, gold armor, early in the game, he sure as hell felt like he was going to be a main character, more than just someone who pops up again in the endgame. The whole idea of dad leaving the Spartan army to him, the fake son and not his real (but still fake, complicated, AC, you know) daughter… That all seemed like story line that got left on the cutting room floor.
I felt the same way about dear old dad. Sure, he finished a quest for me and, at this point of the game, anyone who finishes quests for me is a-OK. But he kinda got the Markos treatment. He shows up out of nowhere, there's a pat little conversation during which things are rather summarily tied up, and scene. Not "Oh hey! I found mom! And did you know my real dad was all freaky and has seen Atlantis? And DUDE why didn't you tell me that bro was, like, a cult weapon?"
None of that.
And one would think that Kassandra might want to chat with him about that, at least a little.
We kinda sorta but not really let the whole "why didn't she talk about Phoibe?" thing with Markos go because it was possible that you could get to Markos before the whole Phoibe dying bits (I still think they could have changed some dialog, but I digress). Here, there's absolutely no fucking way that you can get to this point of the game, seeing dad, without knowing about mom, real dad and brother. None.
Thus, this should've been a more fleshed out scene, which is a let down.
Wait…I told him I found mom. He said "you found her! where?" and I said "ruling Naxos" and he said "that sounds like her," or something, with this kind of reminiscent smile. So it wasn't a huge conversation, but it definitely came up and we shared something. Which was more than we would necessarily expect considering we've only seen him the once since we were 8 years old and he tossed us off a cliff. I mean, Morkos raised us, I think the lack of any kind of follow up/closure with him was way more egregious.
As for Stentor, I felt that Kassandra, like me, had to remind herself who this dude was, and that she was a little startled he seemed to feel so strongly given I've barely spared him a thought the last six months. I played it kind of jokingly (but perhaps not such a joke) cocky, like "the gods have answered your prayers, I'm here" or whatever, which probably didn't exactly endear me to him.
I dunno, it worked all right for me.
Really? I didn't do anything like that. Indeed, we talked about Stentor, which I thought would be the last thing Kassandra would want to talk about with him, considering all the other shit. I mean, come on, Kassandra got thrown off a cliff trying to stop the Wolf from throwing her brother who is now a cultist off a cliff. Wouldn't you think a "do you know that the kid you chucked off a cliff is now kinda a bad guy?" might have come up. Instead, I get five minutes of dialog about some dude I met in the tutorial.
And yeah, her caring about some dude I, too, had forgotten about was jarring. All the more reason I think that three or four scenes between then and now that would've set this up didn't make it into the final cut. The game sure acted like Kassandra and Stentor had some kind of relationship, but given that it's established she met him in the tutorial and, thus, has seen him a grand total of twice in her life, I didn't buy it.
And this on the heels of such a well thought out, interconnected series of events.
This game is so fucking inconsistent.
Well, did my day playing.
Rescued a horse. Got distracted by Hippocrates. Did his shit. Killed the last champion.
Pro tip: Don't bother rescuing the horse unless you want to help a nice shopkeeper.
Not much to say, unless you, too, got distracted by Hippocrates.
That's weird that you didn't mention mater to stepdad. Maybe there are mutually exclusive conversation trees, and we just got onto different ones. Because we did talk about Stentor, but certainly not only Stentor.
Also interesting that it's coming across to you as Kassandra caring about or having some kind of relationship with Stentor, which is not supported by the text (so to speak). I really don't have the impression that she gives much of a damn about him beyond vaguely knowing who he is and that he's a big deal in Sparta, which makes much more sense given what we've seen. Perhaps also different dialogue options?
Of course I rescued the horse. The merchant gave me helpful information about where to find Drakon! Of course, the lover gave me exactly the same information, so I could have just done that. Did you talk to the lover? That was interesting. Quite a twist on the usual cute romance tale. "Here, I'll get you this potion and pretend I'm doing it to be helpful but really I'm planning to kill your true love while he doesn't have his armor."
Of course I also got distracted by Hippokrates. I got distracted by him TWICE, in fact. So if you're doing the one where he's torn about whether or not to treat an evil slave master, be aware he has another quest in Thebes to come. Which is quite interesting, actually, but optional, so I'll respect if you're just not in the mood by then.
Well, "relationship" to the point where she seems to have a strong opinion of him. My reaction was "The fuck is this guy?" whereas she has some deal of emotion. I dunno. She seems to give more of a fuck than she does about other people.
No! I missed the lover! What could I have done?
I will say that flammable oil didn't do me any good. I chucked a torch, missed, ran, just did a fight.
I rescued the guy, freed the slaves, told him we can't judge (which is ironic, as we do all the time). I do wonder if his "Only the gods can judge" to us, given we've been judging all the damn game long, was a loaded line. Are we a god?
Is there another thing for him?
You really only needed to talk to one person–the lover or the guy who lost his horse–to get the information, so you saved some time only getting the horse. But the lover was interesting…you go to the exclamation point and it's in this gym where a guy is training and making mournful noises about how he's afraid he's losing Drakon's love.
So you chat with him and he says "if only I had such-and-such ingredients, I could make a potion that I can smear inside his armor and it will soak into his body and make him adore me forever! But I would have to keep his armor for a while…"
And Kassandra says "are you sure he'll be OK without his armor?" and he says "oh, he's mighty like the gods, he doesn't need armor!" or something, and then you can offer to go get the herbs he needs. Then after killing some bandits on this lady's farm you take the herbs back to him and he does this gleeful dance about how great it is that Drakon is going to love him, and sings a little song about how close Drakon's training location is to this other spot where they can meet. He's totally doing the "dorky-but-adorable-young-person-in-love" thing, and it's kind of funny, but with this weird ominous undertone of "by the way, I'll be taking this information and using it to murder your lover."
Which I then immediately did. So the moral is, don't trust random helpful strangers? (Except in 90 percent of the game's quests we're a random helpful stranger who doesn't actually mean any harm.) Or, don't take your lover's armor? Don't try to keep your lover through magical trickery?
Anyway, I felt a little bad about it, although just to be clear, I DON'T really condone trying to keep a lover through magical trickery. It's interesting, too, that this is the second time we've had a "love potion" quest, and also the second time it's gone horribly wrong for the person wanting the potion, because love potions don't actually work and are just someone (the "witch" in the previous quest long ago, or Kassandra herself here) trying to use someone else's desire for their own ends. I'm sensing a strong anti-potion theme here.
Did Drakon have armor when you fought him? He didn't for me. It was a very quick fight because I snuck up and backstabbed him and then used a couple of abilities whose names I don't know. I didn't even try the flammable oil.
As for Hippokrates, I did wonder about that "only the gods can judge" line. Is he saying Kassandra is a god (or a demigod, at least), or is he pointedly reminding her that she's NOT a god, and that she in time will also be judged? Anyway, I told him he should heal the guy, and then–I thought this was amusing–knocked the guy out and 'recruited' him for my ship. That'll keep him from abusing any more slaves!
It was a fairly interesting philosophical question, though, and quite relevant to today given all the 'conscience clause' arguments we're having about whether pharmacists can refuse to give out birth control and so forth.
SHOULD a physician treat all patients regardless of how horrible they are as people? I mean…yeah. Of course. But…what if they're REALLY horrible? Wouldn't it be super tempting to refuse? "Screw you, slave-torturer, I'm not treating your boar injuries!" And yet, once you start drawing lines, pretty soon you're refusing to treat someone because they worship the wrong god, or have the wrong color skin, or want the wrong pill, and then people start judging YOU.
This is only one of the many reasons neither I nor Kassandra are doctors.
And yes, Hippokrates has another quest, also on a topic that's still controversial and relevant today! Not abortion, I don't know if they'd dare to touch that. A different hot medical ethics topic. Good for some discussion, if you want to spare the time. But it does involve the usual three things to fetch, I won't lie.
Man, I didn't even see the lover quest.
Whoa, man. That's some cold shit. "Sure….I'll get him to love you….IN HADES!" I'm kinda glad I did it my way. I didn't sabotage young love (knowingly) and got a dude his horse back. He really seemed to like that horse.
Hey, you don't know the potion wouldn't have worked. You killed the guy before he could come under its effects.
As for trusting helpful strangers….remember way back when when I met the lady claiming to be the Monger's fiancee? Well, I finally killed the mercenary she wanted me to kill (because in Arkadia they ALL CAME AFTER ME).
It had….an ambiguous ending, and trust was kinda a theme.
Two way trust. I'm still not sure about what I did…. You never did that, did you?
He had armor. Yes, yes he did. Big, tough, pain in the ass armor. It was a fairly long fight, actually. You did it right.
HA! That's fucking awesome that you recruited that guy. I always forget you can do that. I wonder if you can do it to cultists.
Don't you work at a medical school? Scary.
Well, the only line I know of the Hippocratic oath is "First, do no harm." Hippocrates didn't do any harm here, per se. That was the bear. So he wouldn't have broken the part of his oath that I know.
Of course, for all I know the second line is "Second, treat everyone, even evil slavers."
I, too, am not a doctor.
Three more things…Jesus, really? I already DID three things for Hippokrates in this game. One's in a fort, too, isn't it?
Ah, so the armor did make a difference. Hm. Well, at least you didn't cruelly take advantage of young love. My fight was shorter, but your conscience is cleaner.
Actually, librarians have a similar code of conduct: help people get the thing they want (if it's legal) even if you disapprove of it. If that dude comes in looking for literature on 500 Reasons It's Good and Right to Torture Your Slaves, I have to help him find it if we have it in the collection, and let him check it out if it circulates. That's my job, and it's not my business to moralize about it or try to prevent him from seeing it.
And I'm not sure if it's in the dude's oath or not, but the logic likewise goes that if it's the doctor's job to treat people, the doctor needs to treat people and not moralize about it. But I'm sure when they're terrible people, it must sometimes be kind of tempting.
The things you have to get for Hippokrates' next quest are not in a fort! I don't think so anyway, because it just said "a wealthy house" or something. But I'm not completely sure which house, because I got the quest to steal some things and then it turned out I already had them, so clearly it was some location that had a question mark on it that I had already looted in passing. But the good news is, it's in Thebes, so you won't have to go racing across the map.
Oh, and then you have to go find some more herbs, but that just involves riding out of town a ways, you don't have to get into any fights unless you run into wolves or something.
Oh, and I did not do the Monger's fiance quest–I told her "yeah, I killed him" and got a red FAILED noticed, and we went our separate ways. You can spoil.
Just when I thought we were making progress….three pronged herb quests return.
There's a librarian's code? That's…..kinda awesome.
"I DESPISE YOU! But, you did fill out your hold form correctly, so here's your fucking book. And, as tempted as I am to say it's due in two weeks…..I have to tell you three. But I'm not happy about it."
As for the financee…So I think I got tricked.
We've talked about merrily killing dudes, but not taking quests that are about selfish personal feelings ("Kill her lover so I can step in!" etc.).
So if you get the quest, it's called "Grieving Widow to Be." I figured that was a play on "wife to be." But, when I killed him, I go back and I can recruit the quest giver to my crew. I did (as one does) and she's all "Well, I've always wanted the freedom to sail the seas" or something about freedom.
Which got me thinking. What if it's "Grieving widow to be" as in, she's going to be a widow? After all, why the hell didn't she know I killed the Monger? Everyone else does. Why was she so "sure" that mercenary did, when he obviously didn't? She never offered money; she was playing on the guilt angle, the "avenge the fiancee" angle.
I don't think she was the Monger's fiancee at all. I think she tricked me into killing her husband.
But I'm not sure……
Especially as, when I went to read the bios of the mercenaries I killed one was "He never wanted to be a mercenary…his wife made him do it. Maybe she should have been one, as cold hearted as she is…" but I don't know if THAT'S the one cuz so many came at me!
So I'm not sure.
You got the failed quest because you obviously weren't gonna fall for the trick. YOU know the mercenary didn't kill the monger, right?
I mean, we have professional ethics, man. I'm sure lawyers do too (all the jokes aside).
And interesting about the monger! That's cold, all right.
A bit roundabout, since if she'd just said "my lying husband cheated on me and then ran off with my great-grandfather's handaxe" we would have been all HE MUST DIE, but…cold. And that backstory is suggestive. Hm.
Maybe she just didn't realize she didn't need such a complicated lie.
Also, we ARE making progress! Real, serious progress! I swear!
Right after Thebes, basically, I went back to Sparta, talked to the kings, dealt with the cultist king, fought my brother…the end is near!
Well, less far, anyway.
Have courage.
Do you have to serve the people who…..
….I can't even say it…..
refuse to whisper? Or is that beyond the pale?
Oh dude, WE don't even whisper anymore. Whispering is so done. I'm more likely to not serve someone who does whisper, because I can't hear what the hell they want.
"SORRY, DID YOU SAY YOU NEED A BOOK ON TORTURING SLAVES? COMING RIGHT UP!"
Nothing is sacred. Nothing.
I knew we lived in troubled times, but this is it. The surest sign yet of the end of civilization.
I'M SORRY, DID YOU SAY YOU NEED BOOKS ABOUT OVERTHROWING CIVILIZATION? LET ME SHOW YOU TO THAT SECTION IN THE STACKS!
Dude, whispering in the library is the very cornerstone of civility! If we, as a nation, nay, as a species cannot rely on librarians holding the line against such unbridled barbarism, what can we rely on????
Also–WHOA already?
But I'm STILL only level 44! I can't fight the brother!
Shit. I'm gonna have to magpie, and this will infuriate me. If I have to do busy work to progress, I just might rage quit.
But yes! I think she tricked me! And, what's more, I reloaded to do the quest cuz fuck I'm not failing a quest and missing out. I reloaded to do a quest that I wouldn't have done had I not been tricked!
That's pretty great.
Well, I'm exaggerating, we do still speak quietly. Because people are studying! But seriously, actual whispering is counterproductive. I'm not even deaf yet, and I can't make it out when people come up to the desk with that.
And you're good–the recommended level for that battle is 38.
Oh, it's not a question of deafness. You just can't hear them over the fan.
Ha! Good point. I really need to upgrade.
The game is taking pity on me.
That said, I should be able to kick Minotaur ass rather handily, and that isn't happening.
Is it a shitty, annoying, throw the controller in fit of rage fight?
The minotaur? It's a long, chipping-away-at-a-giant-robot type fight, yeah. I didn't find it that terrible once I put it on easy, just lots of running around healing while shooting at him, but it was definitely not a piece of cake.
Here's a tip: I wrapped up the Atlantis bit and afterwards the dialogue basically says "in case some people don't complete this quest, let us never speak of it again." (Not in so many words, but that's the gist.)
So it was kind of interesting, but it apparently has no real bearing on the main story, and if it's driving you up the wall, you can just abandon it.
The brother fight, on the other hand, is not that bad.
Wait, Pythagoras didn't tell you shit out of deference to me?
You did all that for nothing?
SO glad I'm letting the Minotaur be.
Man…..a chip and chase fight. I…don't like those.
No, no…Pythagoras told me stuff, and things happened, then at the end I said to Herodotos and Barnabas "OK, I'll tell you what happened, but we can't tell anyone else because Atlantis secrecy mankind whatever."
Which I interpreted as "in case someone didn't finish this questline, there will be no major impact on the main story."
I'll ask you later. And I'll go "Ooooooookaaaaaay."
And then suggest we take a long break from Assassin's Creed.
Sounds like a plan. Progress!
"We have other children." –Things you don't want to hear your parents say
Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, children, combat, family, morality, romance, story, theme
Spoilers for the Olympics and Old Flame stories in AC: Odyssey
So you know my feelings regarding Tuesdays. I dislike Tuesdays. But maybe, just maybe, Naked Zeus feels a little bit bad for me for he has graced me with today. A quiet day.
Playing will get done. I'm right by the last blue quest (the old flame one). That's next. That's today.
Ah…bliss. Thanks, Naked Zeus, for this mercy!
I played some last night. Finished up with the feuding families. Young love!–didn't really see that coming. "Kill them! We have other children." Definitely didn't see that coming. Killed the fathers instead, because young love and a chance to end a family feud, although since they have other children, the feud will probably just carry on through them. Kassandra certainly didn't seem too optimistic about it.
"We'll start a new life, founded on love!"
"Well…good luck with that."
Also finished the one with the thieving street urchin. I have a feeling there was something there I didn't get. "But what happened to the guy who distracted you while I robbed you?"
"I had to kill him. He would just have enslaved you again."
And then the kid looked sad, so I think probably she wasn't his slave, they were probably partners. But Kassandra obliviously continued "no need to thank me! You're free!" and sauntered cheerfully off, while the kid recovered enough to say "now we can keep everything we steal!"
So that was a little odd.
But anyway, then I went to compete in the pankration, defeated the first two guys (burlap lingerie…the itchiness just spurs me to fight harder!), had a break to learn that Allie was poisoned and Kallias was a cultist, headed to the fort to find the antidote, assassinated the cultist (that'll teach him to stroll down a moonlit road alone) saved Allie, and now I have to fight the final pankration match but didn't get to it last night.
Go seek out your old flame. Some moderately interesting stuff there.
Yeah! That one was pretty good. Nice twists. "We have other children" was pretty cold. Interesting that the one thing they didn't fight about was the fact that they weren't going to end the feud. They could have said "Well, they're in love, let's put this behind us," but they were willing to kill their children (or have them be killed) JUST so they could keep fighting. Both of them! They agreed on the fact they loved hating each other.
I wonder what they would have done had you killed the kids.
Dude, I'll raise your odd with the street kids. I was going to ask you about this.
Cuz I did the same as you, and went back, and she was all "What about the guy etc." and I said, rather jauntily, "I spared him." I did? When did I do that? When did you kill him? And she was all happy cuz he was nice and gave her extra food, and then was happy cuz they can keep everything they steal and scene. I was going to ask you when we spared him. Guess you don't have an answer on that one.
Maybe it was glitched? Maybe a timing thing?
But again, nice twist on perception. Here's Kassandra and the player all looking at this kid, remembering Phoibe, all wistful, protecting the innocent, she's just like Phoibe so cute "Now we can keep everything we steal." It ends with the kid being kinda awful. That's a nice twist in and of itself, but it also forces you to rethink Phoibe in the first place (and Kassandra). We put Phoibe on a pedestal because of her place in the narrative, but she was a thief and a liar, too. We do that all the time in games. We've talked a lot about how games make us be awful, yet likable, people. We don't often see games give a nod to the fact that your companions, even the very likable ones, are just as awful as you.
The cultist was strolling for you, too? I thought that was kinda funny. Though I'm nervous: now I only have one cultist left in that branch, and, when I hover over that undiscovered cultist, it says "Hunt other members of this cult line to get the clue." Game, I've killed the other four. Where's the clue?
So how do you read Allie being poisoned and living? I've been expecting Allie to be the big bad ghost of Kosmos for a while. He's just too everywhere. Here we have, on one hand, him being poisoned. On the other hand, he was the only one that lived, and that would be a nice cover, right?
I don't trust him. Do you trust him?
Oh, I trust Allie. He's too obvious a schemer to be THE schemer.
Killing the guy who worked with the kid was totally an accident for me–I think he was just one of the people I hit with a rain of flaming arrows when the whole camp started chasing me (I tried to sneak in and deal with the captain quietly, but no dice). I remember her saying "there's that malakas who distracted me in the market, he must be in on it" or something, but I didn't actually make a note of who she was talking about, or intentionally try to either attack or spare him.
Sparing him was probably equally accidental for you–you either managed to get the captain without rousing the whole camp, or he just wasn't one of the dudes who got close enough to you to die.
I'm glad we accidentally did different things, though! At least we can compare.
"We have other children" WAS cold! It was kind of shocking to hear. We're so used to the narrative that children are so incredibly precious to their parents, that this seems unthinkable. And yet, people do kick their kids out of the house for making the wrong choices, and we wouldn't have been startled at all by that result, so "go ahead and kill them" is really only a step past that. (Admittedly, a big step. From "you're dead to me," to "I want you literally dead" is pretty significant. But this is a murder-themed video game, so nothing should surprise us.)
It really did clarify how important the feud was to both of them: as you said, this was the one thing they instantly agreed on. "Yes, definitely kill them, we need to keep this hatred alive." It wasn't even a question of "let's just take our treasure back and disown them and keep feuding"! They had to die.
That's a serious feud. I do wonder what would have happened if we'd shrugged, said "sorry, kids, they did pay me" and killed the children. Which–returning to our discussion of the law yesterday–IS in fact that more law-approved thing to do! I believe the Greeks were big on filial piety. Obeying your father. Those kids, by taking unapproved lovers AND stealing from their fathers, committed major sins. Just as we 'should' have supported the priestess and thrown that woman off the cliff, we probably 'should' have gone ahead and killed those kids.
Although, as I noted then, there's no real in-character reason to think Kassandra would do that, given her own many, many, many casual violations of the law on any given day. It would actually be a lot weirder for her to start citing the letter of the law now, than to continue supporting young lovers and women sneaking into the games.
I dunno, man. I, too, fucked up the stealth and killed everything that moved. But I did overhear, before I fucked up the stealth, the guy being scolded by the captain, and he was all "But the children need food!" and the captain all "Then tell them to steal more!" and "But they'll be too weak!" and that sort of thing. I never got "That's the malakas that distracted me." So maybe it was that? Seems a strange thing to make it contingent upon.
And true about Kassandra's disregard for the law, but it was different, law wise, in that the sneaky woman was being "tried" by some legal/religious/established authority figure. These were just asshole parents. They were also telling Kassandra "You have a job, we paid you, misthios, blah blah," so, in character, Kassandra would have been doing it for the money, not a sense of justice or whatever. With the sneaky woman, the dialog choices were "She didn't do it," and "She's guilty" and "do whatever." There wasn't anything along the lines of "Hey, money's money," which this would be.
That said, we've killed for money a whole lot in this game.
I think I would've felt ooky either way. Even though I didn't hesitate to spare the lovers and kill the fathers, I always feel ooky when I'm killing unarmed dudes who really, really can't hurt me. Shit, one of them was running away. Chasing down an old man to murder him is kinda ooky.
I wonder why they didn't have a dialog option to try to defuse the situation. It was basically kill the lovers or kill the parents. I would have tried to find a peaceful way. Maybe the game wasn't going to let us to do that on purpose, not let us off the hook. Interesting.
Yeah, I noticed that as well. It felt like there could have been an option besides killing one of the two sets, but there wasn't. And yeah, I felt gross killing that one who was running off. I knocked him out first, because sometimes knocking someone out counts as 'killing' them (captains and polemarchs in camps, anyway), but it didn't work.
And I kept thinking "dude, just surrender and promise to be nice to the kids, I'll let you go!" but he didn't. So he had to die. Which as you say, when it's unarmed people fleeing, feels icky. But probably not as icky as if it were the unarmed young man and woman fleeing for their lives.
But it was kind of similar to the woman in that in both cases the people did something they knew they weren't allowed to (sneak into the games, take their fathers' money), and then justified it by arguing that they had the 'right' (family history! this is our inheritance!). They're clearly appealing to a moral rather than legal right, and it's interesting that we see those two concepts opposed in each case.
We did. Though both sneaky woman and the lovers did argue some semblance of legality ("My family had Olympians so it's legal!" "We'd've legally inherited it anyway!"). Flimsy, and we certainly made our choices based on morals, not laws, but we do that all the time in games. Shit, I would argue that a good deal of the escapism of games is the ability to be moral (or, for some people, intentionally immoral) without regard for laws or societal norms. Games where you play stiff, rigid, well behaved dudes don't tend to be fun (Looking at you, LA Noire). We're well behaved in real life. We see the system leading to injustice in real life. We don't need more of that when we're playing games, too.
Very true. It's always interesting when they give us any kind of moral decision, because you're right, we do have the opportunity to do what we think is right regardless of what may be legal (like murdering hundreds of captains!…or, uh, saving young lovers), with minimal consequences, in a way we don't necessarily have in real life.
I think it's probably a reason we don't see so many "cops and robbers" types of games. Usually, we play games where the police are to be feared (see Mafia 3, RDR2). Very rarely do we get the chance to play a good guy in a realistic game. If we want to be a paragon, we have to be a space marine, because being a space marine is cool no matter what. But toeing the line of law and order? I can do that in real life.
Well, a lot of your war-themed games are basically about you as the player being one of the good guys, upholding the rule of right or whatever. Cops and robbers in the sense that Our Side is the Good Guys and Their Side is the Bad Guys.
Or so I assume. I don't know, we don't play those. Perhaps they are more morally complicated than I'd expect. I shouldn't judge!
I will anyway, though.
But I just spent a bunch of time playing the endless game we shall play forever!
Did the whole blue quest line. And killed some bears for someone who hates baldness.
I liked the blue quest line! Not sure how themey, but an interesting contrast to the usual. Trying to be domestic, and having to give it up was a cool thing in games. We don't usually see PCs wistfully getting this close to something normal.
Of course, I urged the boy to farm. It was interesting to basically say "Dude, you don't want to be a video game hero," especially after this morning's talk of how much fun it is to be a video game hero.
And I got all the choices right in the market cuz I'm cool like that.
And now I'm close to mom and what's his name, so I'll do that next.
How'd you read the blue quest?
I definitely took it as an interesting reflection on Kassandra's own choices. Her speech about "every time I see the sunrise, I know it could be my last– when I say goodbye to someone I care about, I don't know if I'll ever see them again," was kind of a summary of the downside of the mercenary life.
And it was just nice to hang out with Anais…finding her a shell, walking through the market knowing she liked the honey-glazed pears best, etc. It was an interesting twist to throw in the robbery of the house while they were gone, and the kid saying "this wouldn't have happened if you'd trained me to fight!"
But he was still alive, and I wonder what would have happened if we did train him to fight. Would he have fended off the bandits, or would he have attacked them, but gotten killed? He IS just a kid. I feel OK about our choice, anyway.
Amusingly, I was dodging bounty hunters the whole time I was trying to teach him to farm. "Let's just hide in the grass for a minute and then set these piles on fire…now wait for that guy to go around the corner, then I'll sneak over here and kill these chickens…" (Also, the return of the Doom Chickens! I don't know about you, but I did a TERRIBLE job killing those chickens quickly and cleanly. They came at me! All I could do was fight back with my sword! It was awful!)
I could pay off my bounties, sure, but I find evading bounty hunters adds a little spice of adventure to even the most mundane tasks.
Ah, see, some of that WOULD have been cool if I could have found her playing hide and seek without checking the internet, and had it not taken me approximately twelve days to find the shell.
She's fucking good at hide and seek, that one.
Dude, I was all sneaky, stealthily approaching the chickens, fired an arrow, missed, got swarmed, almost died, had to use the ring of badass (or whatever it's called) ability and knocked the kid down, too.
Quick. Clean. Heh.
And it was the same with me, but I didn't even HAVE bounties, save for the automatic "Oh, you're in Attika? Fuck you" bounty that seems to pop up whenever I'm in Attika. This was more than enough for them to fuck up both my game of hide and seek and my ride to the beach. And you can't pay that one off!
On that…..
Was there dialog for you on the ride to the beach? Cuz I was busy getting shot at, and, when I escaped, it was just silence. I miss something?
Hm…no, I don't remember any particular dialogue on the way to the beach. If there was anything, it was musings on "remember how we used to go to the beach in Kephallonia" or something, not a major point.
That's weird…it took me about 30 seconds to find her in the field, and I had a quest icon right on the shell, so the most time-consuming part was bringing a boat over so I could shoot those sharks before I went after it. (Because of course I had to be out of combat to interact!)
Random luck, I suppose.
I have five bounty hunters chasing me in Olympia right now, based on all that criminal activity at the fort. I kind of wonder if they're going to interfere with my final pankration fight. I mean, it's the Olympics, I would assume they'd be sports fans enough to stand aside until the event was over, but one never knows.
Dude, I got that whole "exploration area" bullshit. No shit, game.
You know if you go to the surface and tread water you can snipe the sharks just like you're on a boat. Not sure how that's physically possible, but then, we can jump off buildings, so whatever.
I could not find her for shit. Even after watching it on YouTube, it took me a while. I was genuinely starting to think it was bugged.
That would be awesome if the bounty hunters interrupted your event.
"I am the champion of the Olympics and I will face, you Kassandra and who are those guys?"
***biff, Bam, Pow***
"You done? Can we get on with it who's that"
***WHAM! POWEE!***
"OK, look, respect to your wins and you look fabulous in that burlap-"
***KAPOW!***
"-but some of us aren't mercenaries-"
***WHAMMO!***
"-we're athletes who have put our whole lives into this sport-"
***OOF! ARGH!***
"-And this is our biggest stage and you're kinda ruining it-"
***HI YA!***
"Look, what if I told you I was a captain?"
***Dead silence. Icy stare***
"That's better."
That's super weird! I just watched her walk into the field in the cutscene as it faded to black, walked right after her as soon as it loaded, and stumbled on her probably 10 seconds later. It felt almost too easy, but I'll take it compared to having to look it up on the internet. That sucks, in a frustrating, annoying way. Like, it's not even a super clever puzzle that's too hard or something, it's just 'where specifically in this damn field did she go?'
Ah well. The looking around the farm to see what she would like was fun. I kind of like these little memory test bits they do. It's a fun change of pace from the usual combat mechanics.
Dude, I KNEW she was in the field. I think I looked at every single stalk of wheat in that damn farm. I think I tripped over her four times before it gave me credit for finding her. I think it only did because it felt sorry for me.
I did like the memory bits. Those are nice.
Sheer dumb luck, then. I certainly take no credit for it.
But the memory bits are nice. I messed up one earlier, trying to tell the story of Theseus to those kids. "How did he solve the riddle?" "He just did, OK?!"
I only got one part wrong, though–they still liked it pretty well.
I wonder if you got the oil right.
Cuz the oil happens.
Oh yeah? I look forward to it. I wondered if I'd ever get to do anything with it, now that Testikles is tragically deceased.
Did you tell the person you were replacing him or that you were him? I told the truth, but I kinda wish I didn't. I have to stop thinking that lying will shut down the very important quest line.
I said I was his replacement. I didn't think "I am Testikles" would have been very plausible…although who is some games-committee jerk to tell me what my parents named me!?
"It's a family name."
"It was changed when we through Elis island. Used to be Goldfarb."
Double HA!
I can't top that.
In Which Very Little Happens
Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, romance, story
No real spoilers
All right! Off to beachy scenic romance at long last!
But started yet another blue quest that is, yes, awesome. "The measure of a man." Also in the place I am that you should go to. And do the stuff I've been doing.
So play a bunch this weekend. And by play I mean do the stuff I've been doing.
Or, wait, that's so presumptuous of me. You're married. Go do something romantic! Or something! Why should I have all the fun?
Nah, never mind. Do the stuff I've been doing.
I did the quarry last night. Nice of them to make the guy you were trying to kill one of the captains you had to kill for the location objective. I love efficiency.
Then I checked out a few question marks in the neighborhood. Did you talk to the woman in the village who wants you to escort her son to the agoge for training? That was somewhat interesting.
But go have fun! I'll try to accomplish things in your absence.
That Went Well and Also Badly
Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, character, gender, romance, story, theme
Spoilers for the Lost Tales about the bad day and the daughters of someplace
That was interesting! I love it when you have quests that kinda mirror each other.
So you finished both, right? I'll wait to see if you did.
I'm really still pondering my reactions to them, or why my reactions were so different.
But my reactions were a) genuine surprise that the horse lady actually jumped off a cliff (I thought we'd be able to save her), b) chuckling despite how awful it was that that smith died (was that the same smith from Supideo?) c) telling the truth about all of it to the general, d) not killing the general, e) not banging the "eagle bearer," f) asking the eagle bearer to join my crew.
There's a LOT to unpack from these two quests. If you've finished, unpack we shall.
(I will say once, and only once today, as we have beat this horse well past its demise, that this game is SO GOOD when you're doing the blue stuff and not when you're not.) (OK, that's off my chest.)
Yeah, those were very interesting quests to do right next to each other. I did finish them both, and they're really mirror-images, in a way: the 'straight' heroic helper version where you come in, try to help people, and do, and the twist version where you try to help but everything goes horribly wrong.
In funny yet horrible ways! I mean…damn, it was not my fault all those people believed that other Eagle Bearer's nonsense! Riding a horse off a cliff, or demanding to be set on fire, that's just plain stupid! That's not on me!
The blacksmith, that was just a tragic accident…and yes, sadly amusing as one thing after another lands on him. Kassandra's face! Ouch. We don't that often see video game characters making facial expressions other than stoic determination or battle rage (or seductive glances, if we're lucky!), so I kind of appreciated–while feeling bad for her–the way she looked so disturbed and disheartened at some points during this quest. I think that's also kind of why we love goofy interludes like drunken parties or singing contests or whatever. It's just fun to see the character in another setting.
Anyway…yeah. Most of that wasn't my fault! And yet it interestingly WAS almost my fault, because that guy basically did do exactly what I do: show up and promise to fix everything. And people believed him, in part, because of people like me who do this kind of thing and succeed. Which is another interesting idea: in a world that does contain semi-divine, basically superpowered people, you have to assume there would also be plenty of people pretending to be those people for purposes of scams, drawing on the common understanding that such people exist.
And in ancient Greece, where there was a common understanding that the gods sometimes walk among us, or have children who walk among us…
It was really quite a fascinating little adventure.
It was! And it's interesting you bring up gods cuz that was something that occurred to me as well. We'll do this first. Then we can talk on the ends of the quests….
So the women's village: That went far better, right? And with them, they wanted to learn from the eagle bearer. Their approach was "Teach us. Teach us to hunt, teach us to fight." Also, to some extent, it was "YOU believe in US." Kassandra actually says "I believe in you" to the daughter of the blacksmith. Confidence and critical thinking win the day.
In the "cursed" village, they believe in the "eagle bearer' blindly. "He said this fruit will make the horse fly! Good enough for me!" Their "hero" wasn't someone who wanted to spar to fight better. Their "hero" was a doofus who believed, blindly and erroneously, that his helmet made him immortal. Faith dooms them (or comes damn close to dooming them), makes them blind to the real hazards and, in the eyes of the player, makes them absurd.
As does their lack of faith in themselves. They keep saying "We're doomed. We suck." They don't listen to Kassandra telling them they can.
It seems the game is saying "Believing in gods is dumb. Believe in facts, believe in yourselves." Which goes to the "themes" of the main game, such as they are. Right?
Yes, there was some of that for sure. The women really did seem to want help in learning how to handle things themselves, but assumed that they would be doing a lot of work, whereas the other village kind of just wanted a magic fix. "Bring us our immortal hero! Give magic Pegasos berries to the horse!"
The women didn't really talk about any kind of supernatural aid (other than, as we all do, hoping for the favor of the gods): they were concerned about needing to know how to hunt, needing the confidence to work as a smith, etc. The Ore of Aphrodite was a bit magical, but then, it might also have just been really pure and therefore easier to work with: there was no claim that it would form itself into weapons with no effort or anything.
So yes, an interesting focus on "let's get this done ourselves" in one case, and "let's find some magic to do this for us!" on the other.
Which, as you say, relates interestingly to the larger question in the game of whether gods are real, whether they help people, whether we need to just do things ourselves, etc.
Yeah, it was all pretty striking. In the end, after saving a bunch of the villagers, I wasn't exactly proud. I was happy I saved the daughters of whatever. This village? I kinda found myself saying "Man, fuck these guys." They were just so stupid.
But, as Mrs. McP is home and I'm busy, we must get to the ending.
So before, when I was asking about how things might be different in the daughters had we been playing as a man, what I wanted to discuss was the whole "Hey, you did it! You get to bang the hottie as a reward!" You couldn't complete the quest until you talked to her and had the option to seduce her. Sex as a reward is an icky, awful trope. I didn't feel it was icky, though, as Kassandra isn't a man. Perhaps I'm wrong in that regard.
I was pretty stunned when you had the option to bang the other guy. I didn't, for some reason, and I'm troubled by that. Was it just cuz he was ooky? I hope so, because the alternative is that I didn't feel I "earned a reward" for this quest, which implies I DID "earn a reward" for the last one. If I subconsciously felt that, then I have some pondering to do. I'm telling myself it was just because he was ooky…..but I'm troubled. I don't want to think that I felt all high and mighty on the last quest only to fall for the ooky trope on this one.
How'd you read into all that?
I thought about that briefly, but also we very often have the option to seduce people as a 'reward' for finishing a quest, so I didn't feel this opportunity was egregious.
Think of what's her name, Odessa?–the first romance we got, who we could sleep with after solving her problem with the guys trying to steal her farm, or the handsome doctor we could sleep with after solving the problem with his former-Oracle aunt or whatever, or, as you say, the fake Eagle Bearer, or probably others I'm forgetting.
So I was pretty fine with it. I mean, yeah, it's a trope, but given its frequent appearance in this game (and the fact that I want romance!), it didn't strike me as a specifically sexist trope here.
I DID sleep with the fake Eagle Bearer, although I agree, he was ooky. He seemed so oily and sneaky…but my policy has been to romance anything with a 'heart' dialogue option, and I wasn't going to let a little matter of personal taste get in the way of that proud tradition!
And as he argued, he didn't personally kill anyone, just took advantage of their gullibility. Plus, I did find his chicken 'Chikaros' amusing. I appreciate someone who makes me laugh, even if it's in a rather cheesy way.
Then I recruited him for my ship. And of course also the woman, Tyria or whoever. Sleep with 'em and bring 'em on board, then never speak to them again, that's my way.
I've got a lot of one-eyed people on board these days! (Did you get that story on Mykonos, where Barnabas was in love with a one-eyed woman you could recruit? It was not an option to sleep with her, though. She was only into Barnabas.)
I recruited them as well. They're actually pretty good companions, bonus wise.
Even if it's not sexist, I think the sheer ookiness of the guy was meant to make you think "Wait…." The game was all "Hey, you're used to sex as a reward, here. Sex. Enjoy," with someone who was totally not enjoyable. It was an interesting twist.
And no! I didn't get that for Barnabas! But maybe that's because I haven't finished up with the whole Leda thing….
So were are you off to next? Back to the main story?
I'm tempted to go straight into another tale of ancient Greece, because that's where the drama has been, but I suppose at some point we should return to the main story.
Maybe I'll do one step in the main story and then go on to another lost tale. At this point, I'm thinking it's definitely worth finishing those.
Hitting all the forts and killing all the captains…a less important goal.
Sorry. Got busy.
We're gonna have to finish this game eventually you know.
Though I am enjoying the blue stuff….
[Insert Hyena Laugh Here]
Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, children, combat, homework, parents, plot, romance, story
Minor spoilers for points in AC: Odyssey
This new gaming schedule is making blogging tricky. I have to adjust. It's the homework, man. The homework. Yesterday, gaming time got delayed (by which I mean, by the time I had time all I wanted was scotch) by a rather dramatic difference of opinion on how to interpret the grading rubric for Junior's science homework. This took a lengthy period of time to resolve.
I'm starting to worry this is the new normal.
This mid day gaming means we have to find a way to be erudite at the end of the day. We have trouble remembering how to spell by the end of the day.
I'm concerned.
Oh gods, homework wars. So not into it. O'Jr. had limited homework last year and hasn't brought any back so far this year, so we may dodge that arrow (as Kassandra would say) for a bit longer. Whenever he does have it, though, it's kind of miserable.
Maybe…we have to talk today about yesterday's midday gaming? So if you play today, don't mention it, but try to remember it for tomorrow?
This sounds like a recipe for trouble.
I did more stuff for Alkibiades last night. Got another nice reward, if you know what I mean and I think you do.
Oh, silly elementary homework is cake by comparison. Nugget brings home a page of simple math. Fine. You just say "No TV until you do it," he does it, it's done.
But middle school, you see, has graded homework. Not "Did you do the sheet or not," but shit with rubrics. RUBRICS Femmy! And these stupid rubrics all say stuff like A=Superior detail, B=Good detail, C=Average detail. So, of course, Junior does something, is all "Looks superior to me," and I look at it and say "Uh….is this finished?" And he's all "What? I followed the rubric! What more do you want?" and I tell him, and he's all "YOU'RE NOT MY TEACHER! YOU DON'T KNOW SHE WANTS THAT!"
And then I sigh, knowing that game time will just have to wait, as the next forty five minutes or so of my life is gonna suck.
When Junior is in high school and Nugget is in middle school….I don't even want to ponder that.
Alkibiades–Man, that dude can PARTY!
Watch, the game'll be all "Ha ha, you've been banging the ghost of Kosmos all this time! Well, except the time you spent burning war supplies……"
Ha! He probably will turn out to the Ghost of Cosmos! That would be pretty funny, especially for those of us who seized the chance for sexytimes with him at every opportunity (by my count to date: three opportunities).
"Damn it, now I'm going to have to kill the greatest lover I've ever known. Siiiiiigh."
Or maybe it's an agonizingly difficult choice: Do I kill my brother, who's kind of murderously insane but still family and who am I to talk about murder really, or do I kill this charming sexy fellow who's incidentally been masterminding my brother's murderous insanity?
He IS a bit of a devious mastermind, with all his getting us to deliver insulting presents and haul people into sketchy neighborhoods to be knifed to death. Who's to say he's not also in charge of the Cult?
My plan for middle school homework is to send them to boarding school and let them worry about it.
Not really! I need that money for games and booze.
I know! The only "clue" I have is that "The Ghost is involved in Athens politics." He certainly is involved.
****snicker****
When you finish the game, tell me so we can move on.
It is a catch 22, that. There is nothing more expensive than paying someone else to deal with your children.
So Mrs. McP better get a raise, soon, cuz I am fucking underpaid.
You do deserve a raise. Childcare is criminally undervalued.
I hope I don't have to kill Alkibiades. We've had some fun times.
But man, if that's what it takes to get to the end of this game, he's going down.
You can tell me all about it.
He'll likely be on a boat.
But hey! At least you won't have to be all "Damn, which bearded guy is it?"
My other theory is Alithusia or whatever. She's everywhere, man. Everywhere.
Aspasia? Hm. Yes, she does get around. And she seems to know quite a bit about the Cult, which could be because she hates them, or because she controls them.
I could see that.
That's the one.
I can't tell the women apart, either.
If it's her, you can tell me all about it.
I'm gonna go play.
I will tell you all about it. It's gonna be great. You're gonna love it.
Butch [later]:
So after the naval battle for mom is….
ANOTHER naval battle?
Game…..
Yeah. Game…
If it helps, I haven't had to do a naval battle since! Of course, that's because I was doing Barnabas' story and Alkibiades, not the main story. The main story is probably nothing but naval battles from here on.
I wouldn't be at all surprised. Not. One. Bit.
Oh, so you didn't go to Thera or wherever? We're at the same point of the main story?
Is Barnabas' story worth it?
No, I haven't gone to look for my father yet. Barnabas is actually kind of relevant to stuff we've been discussing on and off, so it was pretty interesting.
Plus, it's pretty quick…I mean, you have to go to each island from his visions, but the amount of work you have to do on each island is fairly slight. And moderately interesting for its take on various myths and legends. I promise, not a fort in the lot!
No forts? What about boats? WHAT ABOUT BOATS?
And where'd you find Allie again? Lokris or wherever the fuck?
No boats! I mean, you have to sail on a boat to get to the islands, but no naval combats are involved in the actual completion of the story missions! It's amazing!
I wound up back in Attika for various reasons, and Allie was there. He was nowhere near any of the smaller islands we've been on lately.
Damn it, Femmy! Resist major magpie!
It would be quite the irony if, after all this, I finished this before you. Which will likely happen, as we do irony. That we do.
That we do!
That we certainly do.
Although in this case it was only minor magpie. I mean, I wanted to go back to Demosthenes, the guy who wanted us to kill polemarchs, because I'd killed all the polemarchs and wanted to get the quest off my list. And he's in Athens! And then Allie was right there, and I couldn't resist because maybe I'll get some sweet lovin' out of it!
Spoiler: if you go talk to Demosthenes, he will ask you to kill some more polemarchs. He's like the ancient Greek version of Preston Garvey in FO4. "Another military camp needs your help! And by 'help' I mean go murder some polemarchs!"
To be fair, all of Garvey's missions also involved murdering people. The similarities are eerie, really.
I also want to get the 'recruitment drive' quest off my list, the one for Xenia the pirate queen, where you destroy different types of ships? Because somewhere in all those naval battles, I completed that mission, and she'll probably give me some money if I go back.
Oh fuck that guy. I'm letting the Polemarchs be. Kevin worked hard for that helmet. He can keep it. I do not miss Preston Garvey. I certainly won't work for his ancestor.
Wait…you met the pirate queen again? And got a quest? I don't have a quest for the pirate queen! I liked the pirate queen! Though, not enough to sink a bunch of ships for her.
Naw, this was one of those quests she suggested when you first get to the island: "there are ways to make money."
I already had the money, and only picked it up because of course I did. If you didn't pick it up then, you sure as hell shouldn't bother to go back and pick it up now. Especially since all that naval combat you just did, which would have helped you check off some items for the quest, would now count for nothing.
Oh, fuck that noise.
Though I still have the one about pillaging the chest…..in the fort….so fuck that, too.
Shit, I still have the one about killing the boar WAY back when I was level, like, twelve. All the way on the other side of the map.
So, you know, fuck that, too.
How are we at the same place when you're doing everything and I'm saying "fuck that" with regularity? Unlike other games where you've gotten way ahead of me, I'm actually playing. Almost daily. Even some on the weekends! Have you stopped sleeping?
It's more that I've stopped waiting for Grigio to sleep. We've finally reached a point where I can say "I'm going to go do things, you stay here" and he will do it without freaking out. More or less. We'll hear his clomping little footsteps up and down the hall as he goes to look for a toy or a blanket or a drink of water or something, but as long as he doesn't come downstairs, or break something, I'm willing to ignore it.
This leaves me a more reliable chunk of evening time to burn war supplies and assassinate captains and polemarchs.
Be very, very thankful you have stairs between where your children sleep and where you spend your evenings. I can't say "If he doesn't come downstairs," cuz his room (And by his I mean Nugget, as he is the only one that dares leave his room) is right by, well, everything.
You can't hide from Nugget. You just can't.
It's terrible. Cuz now they're at an age where they come out and are all "Can I watch you play?"
I haven't used my headphones in forever. No need. I ain't gonna wake them.
***sob***
You'd THINK I could just say "Take your iPads downstairs, watch annoying Brits play video games while laughing like hyenas" and they'd go but no…..
They insist on watching the laughing Brits UP HERE.
I hate the laughing Brits.
Apparently, when you write erudite, funny posts about video games and booze and children, it's not as popular as playing games badly while laughing like a hyena.
There's no reward for the kind of quiet, nonstop brilliance we excel at. Classy, too.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I think that counts as a hyena laugh.
Someday, someday soon, your kids will discover this nonsense.
It's awful.
But it shuts them up.
So, you know, pros and cons.
Yeah, it's only a matter of time before we have to introduce them to the joys of video games. I mean, they already know they exist, they know we play, but soon they'll want to start playing too.
And we can hardly deny them! Because we want them to grow up to be well-balanced individuals with an appreciation for the finer things in life, and we want to share those fine things with them, and they're too young for booze!
But at the same time, sharing the console with more people is only going to lead to heartache.
It's bad enough you have to share with Mr. O.
Just….when they discover the youtubers…..
It's…..so…..awful…..
You have no idea…..
They're all the same, too! Bad at games, loud, British…..
We're none of those things!
I liked the guy who spent 10 minutes on the etymology and pronunciation of the word "lich". Make them watch that. It's educational AND game-related (for certain games).
See, look at some of our past posts. They're long. Smart. Great, if I don't say so myself.
And yet, these hyenas are millionaires. MILLIONAIRES! They just laugh like idiots at minecraft! AND THEY'RE RICH!
We are not. And we are smart.
Life is unfair.
They're probably secretly miserable.
Whereas we're OPENLY miserable, at least when we don't get to play games.
Their grapes are no good, either.