When I started up Dragon Age Origins again I was only planning on playing that one, but as I finished with DAO I realized I wasn't done yet. So I started up Dragon Age 2.
DA2 is interesting in many ways, especially because it's the thing that connects DAO with DAI. If you skip DA2 you'll have no idea how the events of DAI came about, but it's all due to a certain Fereldan refugee and their apostate Grey Warden friend.
So this time I was adamant that I would complete Fenris's romance and not be impatient and not flirt with anybody else whatsoever. Fenris is amazing. I love him.
But because I chose to romance Fenris I also chose to support the templars and not the mages which ultimately doesn't make a difference in the outcome or end-game boss battles. I'm just pleasantly surprised that I managed to get Anders at max friendship while also getting Fenris at max friendship. I usually choose the mages, but anything for Fenris.
All of Anders's dialogue comments about past events in Awakening made me smile. Every time. Every mention of the Warden. Hell, even Cassandra interrogating Varric throughout the game made me smile. So much nostalgia everywhere.
Fenris and Merrill look absolutely amazing in the elf style they chose for DA2, Zevran does not. What did they do to you?! Alistair's cameo was fun, but same question there: what did they do to you?!
DA2's story is good in how it perfectly paves the way for DAI while keeping the events of DAO relevant. And considering how often a certain red lyrium idol shows up in the trailers and teasers for Dreadwolf, DA2 might also be paving the way for the fourth game. Honestly, can't wait!
However I do understand the complaints for DA2. It's the same few areas to explore. Every dungeon looks the same, every house interior looks the same. So much copypaste. I wish I didn't have to re-discover the map for every place in every act. Doesn't make sense that Hawke doesn't know the layout of the Wounded Coast after six years.
I wish they'd kept the gift system from DAO, and I wish the companions could wear different armour too and not just Hawke.
DA2 is fun and casual and breezy in a way that DAO isn't. In DAO, even if you play a happy-go-lucky kind of Warden there's a constant sense of doom hanging over the whole game. Which is understandable, considering. But in DA2, half the fun is playing a punny, humoristic and completely inappropriate Hawke. And everyone just goes along with it!
And let's not forget that Hawke is the one who awakened Corypheus to begin with. "Had some dealings with him in the past", my ass, Hawke! You got us into this mess!
If they had kept DA2 more like DAO, with more diverse interiors and environments, maybe DA2 would've been better received and more people would play through the gloriousness that is this story.
1. Fool Moon, by Jim Butcher. So I don't enjoy the werewolf schtick and I don't understand the world's obsession with them. What I did enjoy was how Butcher took every version of the werewolf legend and made them all valid for his own universe. I like that. I also really liked how Murphy held her own even though I wanted to scream at her for being and idiot when she decided to not trust Harry again. And was that a hint towards a juict family mystery on Harry's part? I'm gonna eat that right up. If the previous book did a lot of world building, this book did a lot of relationship building (and thank you to Harry's subconscious for pointing out the absolute obvious chemistry between Harry and Murph). The crime in this book was fairly obvious with Butcher adding in several layers just to make it complicated but it ends up just being convoluted. That said I had a lot of fun reading this book. Butcher's brand of humour is right up my alley and I'm excited to dive deeper into this series.
2. This is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone. Everyone was talking about this book a couple years ago and so I decided to read it. I was so confused when I first started reading it. The narrative just throws you straight into a finished world, no introduction, nothing, but the world-building happens as you go along and by the end you have a pretty solid idea of how it works. It's half-epistulary, half-narrative and it just works. And it's so beautiful! And that final in-your-face is so satisfying! When I first started out I did not expect to come away thinking this was one of the best books I read this year, but damn. It's perfect. Two quotes that really spoke to me: "A desire to be apart, sometimes, to understand who I am without the rest. And what I return to the me-ness that I know as pure, inescapable self... is hunger. Desire. Longing, this longing to possess, to become, to break like a wave on a rock and reform, and break again, and wash away." And also: "But when I think of you, I want to be alone together. I want to strive against and for. I want to live in contact. I want to be a context for you, and you for me." This book is a love story; a tragic, impossible love story in a sci-fi setting in a far-flung future. And it's amazing.
3. Lethal White, by Robert Galbraith. In acknowledgements at the end the author states that this was a hard book to write, and it’s noticeable throughout. The first hundred pages draaaaaaaag. The prologue picks up exactly where the last book left off and everything seems amazing, but then there is a timeskip in which the two main characters create a divide between themselves by not communicating and while it’s definitely realistic it’s also very hard to read. Strike and Robin get called upon to investigate the source of blackmailing that's targeting a Minister and while it’s interesting and things just entangle themselves more and everything keeps getting more complicated, it doesn’t feel like the plot really starts moving forward until halfway through when the murder happens. The murder is related to the blackmail which is somehow related to the mentally ill person who barged into Strike's office at the very beginning. There are so many plotlines going on at the same time, so many seemingly disparate threads that somehow connect to each other and I love seeing them come together. I have never figured out a Strike novel before the conclusion and that just makes them all wonderfully engaging reads. I just wish it didn’t drag so much for the first third to half. I'm really excited to read more now and I have the next two books on my shelf.
4. Everyone's an alien when you're an alien too, by Jonny Sun. This was a very quick but also very cute and heart-warming read. The books is a cross between a comic and a picture-book, but it has some valuable lessons about belonging, happiness and death. The story is about an alien who's sent to Earth to study humans. As the story goes on the alien meets and befriends everything but humans and learns a lot over the course of just over 100 days. The book is full of intentional spelling mistakes that gives the book character and even for a grammar nerd like myself it’s so well done that I hardly even notice it. My favourite quote from this book is: "Look. Life is bad. Everyone's sad. We're all gonna die. But I already bought this inflatable bouncy castle so are you gonna take your shoes off or what?" I also really liked: "Treat every day on Earth as if it's your last day on Earth because it is, until you spend another day on Earth." This book is a perfect example on how to say a lot with very few words.
5. Skalpelldansen, av Jenny Milewski. När jag läste Yuko som min första introduktion till Jenny Milewskis skrivande så var jag inte övertygad. Yuko kändes taskigt researchad och som om den red på succén från The Grudge. Men att en svensk ens brydde sig om att skriva om något så väldigt japanskt gav tillräckligt med cred för att jag skulle vilja utforska mera. Skalpelldansen är betydligt mycket bättre. Den var seg i starten, men blev sen svår att lägga ifrån sig. Genom första halvan av boken undrade jag om hon skulle köra på "huvudkaraktär som får liv" eller "extrem-fan som utför alla dåd i författarens böcker". I slutändan gjorde hon inget av det och körde på en vinkel som är så kliché att det inte ens kom för mig att hon skulle välja den. Men hon får det att funka! Riktigt bra dessutom! Jag är imponerad.
I haven't played this game since 2016 or so, but a few weeks ago I suddenly got a craving for Dragon Age. Put it off for a while, but eventually caved and installed it.
I decided to not go for anything special and just do my canon experience. Got all the companions to max friendship, romanced Alistair, made my Warden his queen and had neither of them die to the archdemon.
Chose mages over templars in the Circle. Chose elves over werewolves in the forest. Chose Harrowmont over Bhelen in Orzammar.
The part with Hespith and the Broodmother in the Deep Roads still creeps me out. And I hate the Fade.
After the main game I turned to the small DLCs. Leliana's song is still the most meh DLC ever. I didn't need to play out her story when she's already told it me once. The Darkspawn Chronicles are pretty fun though. Disturbingly fun. The battle for Denerim but from the darkspawns' perspective and if HoF didn't exist and it was just Alistair and co.
Golems of Amgarrak DLC remains my most disliked venture in Dragon Age because O-M-G I HATE GOLEMS. Especially inside that teeny tiny room where they've shoved four steel golems and three stone golems and all of them hurl rocks at the team so all the team has time to do basically is ragdoll away until they die. GAAAAAH! So many reloaded saves. It was like managing a goddamn chess board to get every character in a position where they wouldn't get ragdolled about too much so they could do some damage and still I had to use an absurd amount of health poultices and injury kits. Just lucky that the golem I picked up had learned how to revive, but that also meant keeping that golem alive and that was almost impossible... The fight against the Harvester in the end of the DLC was easy in comparison to getting ragdolled around by seven golems.
Witch Hunt DLC was extremely interesting though. I honestly don't think I've replayed DAO since I played DAI... But there are so many references to the rest of the series. In the Circle two mages are discussing the refugee situation in Kirkwall, which directly references the start of DA2. Morrigan is on the hunt for an Eluvian which correlates with DA2 and Trespasser. And she speaks of a change happening to the Veil and within the Fade which hints towards both DAI and potentially Dreadwolf. Finn is amazing and I want more of him.
Awakening was equally interesting. While Anders is generally a lot more fun and easy-going in Awakening than he is in DA2 there is one occasion where he speaks about "Mages almost needing permission to live" which really sounds like Anders from DA2 and it's one of the sentiments that ignite the whole thing in Kirkwall which spirals into the events of DAI. In the Blackmarsh region of Awakening there are Veil Tears and Fade Rifts/Portals all over the place and that's just a direct reference to DAI imo. In Awakening the Architect says he was born the way he is, but we can probably make a qualified guess and assume he's an original like Corypheus, but just like Corypheus didn't at the start the Architect doesn't remember. There is an end screen after Awakening which says that the Warden disappears, which hints towards their travels as told by DAI.
I love Awakening. My only gripe is that it should've been longer. I don't feel like I have enough time to really make Vigil's Keep my own or show the people of Amaranthine that I can rule them well before it's time for the final showdown and everything just ends. There isn't even any time to get the companions to max friendship T_T I need Awakening to be longer.
The most interesting thing about replaying now so long after I've played the other games is to see the incredible amount of foreshadowing in the first game. There's so much. So much that I had either forgotten or had gone completely over my head back when I played this game religiously.
Every companion in one sentence each:
Shale is best girl. Sten is adorable in all his grumpyness. Alistair is best boi. Wynne is hilarious. Zevran is amazing. Morrigan's pain runs deep and I love her. Ohgren is too annoying and too good at destroying anything good he has going for him. I don't care much for Leliana and she exists like an afterthought. Ariane is badass. Finn is my spirit animal. Anders is best friend material. I wish Nathaniel was romanceable. Sigrun is very cute. Velanna is a hardass. Justice is like the grandpa figure who holds your hand with all his wisdom, but is still childish in his wonder of exploring a new world. I wish Mhairi had survived. I like Sketch. Tug and Silas are forgettable. Jerrik and Brogan are also forgettable.
I was going to only replay DAO, but I accidentally DA2 as well =D
The last time I wrote about this show we had just finished the first half of seaosn five and the second half wasn't out yet.
Both of us were feeling pretty done with this show, as much as we liked and enjoyed it, but we also really wanted to know how it all would end.
The second half of season five with the war and the race to become god was all super cool! I really like when writers play with the mythology like that. I loved Lucifer's redemption arc embedded within the war, and him finally admitting to himself that he loved Chloe (That only took you five seasons, Luce, jfc).
The most interesting thing about season 6 was Rory and I loved her.
I got this game when it was new, installed it and everything, and then didn't play it until now.
Far Cry 6 feels more Far Cry than Far Cry 5 imho. We have the crazy, fun characters. We have the unwilling protagonist. We have bases to take over and animals to hunt. We have areas to free and hostages to rescue. We have drugs and crazy doctors and really cool guns.
So they went back and got the crazy characters and missions from Far Cry 3, kept the crazy weapons from New Dawn and Blood Dragon, and got the dictator from Far Cry 4? And Hurk isn't in it? But Danny Trejo is?! This is awesome!
I really liked Dani from the start. She's got some real attitude and lots of spunk, but she feels like a real person through all the crazy shit she has to go through. The characters and missions made me sometimes laugh and sometimes cry and they were always engaging. I had a really good time with this game!
The Stranger Things update/addon was really cool. Running for my life from a Demogorgon was a lot of fun and just the right amount of scary.
Any criticisms I have mostly revolve around endgame tbh. After you finish the story you end up back at camp and every week a specific zone will get taken over by insurgents and you once again get to run around and take over bases and outposts to find clues towards an iunsurgent leader which you then kill. It's a stupid way to make the game last longer - "Here, we undid all these things you did so that you can do them again! FUN!" No. No it's not.
The DLCs are basically rougelite runs through the minds of Vaas, Pagan Min and Joseph respectively. Roguelites are not my thing so when I booted up Vaas's DLC and it said "if you die you lose your gear and perks and have to start over" I just felt my entire will to play sink to the bottom. But I played through it, got through it and at the end it wanted me to play again to beat my own high score. Really?! No.
I had a lot of fun with the main game. It's just the endgame and DLCs that kind of ruined it for me, but at that point I was already mostly done with everything so it didn't really matter.
What did matter however was that Ubisoft Connect crashes every single time I try to use the screenshot button. It occasionally had that problem in AC Valhalla too (for over two years now). Although in Valhalla it wasn't every time, only sometimes. In Far Cry 6 it was every single time. I discovered this when I was playing through the Stranger Things update/addon and wanted to screenshot everything because it was so damn cool and it kept crashing on me every single time. And every time I had to start the questline from the very beginning. Ffs. Not even an autosave after cutscenes, Ubi? Why you gotta hurt me this way? /s The result being that I had to restart the update like five times before I gave up on screenshotting anything, with the added result that I don't have any screenshots at all from this game because photo mode is more hassle than it's worth. Let me just press my one single button without having to mess around with settings in photo mode T_T
So TL;DR: Base game great, endgame bad. DLCs are meh and Ubisoft Connect sucks.
I also ended up really enjoying the music in this game. It was mainly all in Spanish with the added feature that after every session I'd come away with Despacito stuck in my head. And Despacito isn't even in the game xD I burst out laughing the first time a car drove by Dani totally blasting Livin La Vida Loca on full volume xD But I really came to like the songs by the in-game band Maximas Matanzas. Not the kind of stuff I usually listen to, but man it's bombastic and grand.
After we finished with Fallout 76 we picked Tiny Tina's Wonderlands as our new co-op game. We have played through the entire Borderlands series (one, two, tales, pre-sequel, three) together so it was only to be expected that we'd play this one together as well.
Both of us we're excited for this game from the time it was announced. We are very different gamers though. Before we started Toni did research online on what class to pick and which to combine it with etc etc. I started the game up and went with my gut. He played as a Clawbringer combined with Brr-zerker. I played as Spore Warden combined with Graveborn. It suited me perfectly to have two, sometimes even four, companions to help me fight and my tornadoes were absolutely badass.
The whole game was like an extended version of Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep DLC for Borderlands 2 and we had so much fun with it. I loved both Frette and Valentine and those two together with Tina was just the perfect DND chaotic party.
If I have any criticisms it's that not many of the characters outside of the party were memorable (I don't remember any names, except Mike) and that there was a bit too much reusing of enemies. Skeletons and Coiled from the get-go until the very end. There were some cool zones though. My favourites being the one where a bean stalk had grown through the entire zone and also the one where we were literally climbing a giant skeleton.
We made sure to do every single side-quest. collect every single lucky dice, poetry page, marble, scroll, rune puzzle and obelisk - basically 100%-ing every zone until we moved on to the next one. I kind of wish smashing the marbles would amount to more than storytime. Seeing the final boss of the obelisks displayed as trophies at the tavern in Brighthoof was always a highlight of going back there.
I actually kind of enjoyed going around on the Overworld, although Toni definitely didn't :P
After we finished the main quest we went around the Overworld and picked up the last few lucky dice and completed the single last sidequest, before we headed to Dreamveil Overlook to go through each of the four mirrors and complete the DLCs. And the DLCs were extremely disappointing. Short runs through locations to pick up items and defeat a boss. A glorified fetch quest times four, with Vesper in the background spouting every dad joke in the universe ever. And to get the last few achis we'd have to do each DLC four times to unlock the highest difficulty? Fuck that. Not engaging enough to try for just an achi.
All in all I had a lot of fun with Tiny Tina's, but Borderlands 2 is still the best one.
Tfw I realize that this is my third time playing through Oblivion but it doesn't have a dedicated post on this blog.
First time I played Oblivion was in 2013 and I was pretty confused a lot of the time. I remember being annoyed by all the Oblivion gates popping up everywhere (now I've learned there's a set amount which gives me an incentive to do them. I used to think they were random spawns), and I remember being terrified of Ayleid ruins, and I remember laughing my ass off at the blue-skinned Dunmer because they looked like smurfs.
Second time I played Oblivion was in 2016. I got to level 30, hadn't completed the main quest yet, got bored and dropped the game indefinitely.
Then we got to this year and there's been so many Oblivion references this year. From lots of Oblivion talk on the r/Skyrim Discord server, to the Oblivion chapter in ESO, to Oblivion clips in almost every single Game Fails video from GameSprout on Youtube recently. Then I joined the r/Oblivion Discord server for basically the same reason I joined r/Skyrim - I like the game. Didn't have any plans to replay the game when I joined, but that ended up being the final nudge I needed and I reinstalled the game and started playing.
And it seems to have been the perfect time because I'm enjoying it a hell of a lot more than I did on the previous two playthroughs.
This time I decided to try to do everything the game had to offer. Complete every quest. Explore every location. All the hidden content, and non-journal quests, and actually complete every single Oblivion gate. I had done a lot of it on my first playthrough back in 2013. But I discovered a bunch of daedric quests that I hadn't done that first time.
So basically what I did was I did the main quest up until I got the quest called Paradise. I knew some side quests and what not would become unavailable after I completed the main quest so I stopped there. After that I completed the Fighters Guild and the Mages Guild. Then I did the Thieves Guild and the Dark Brotherhood. Then I did all the town quests and wilderness quests and addon quests and non-journal stuff and daedric quests. Finally I did the Knights of the Nine DLC, and then I completed the main quest. After the main quest I went on the addon quest to find Mehrunes' Razor and then I went to do Master Training quests. My proudest achievement is that I managed to complete Seeking Your Roots completely without help.
I still love the Thieves Guild questline in Oblivion and the Dark Brotherhood questline completely broke my heart all over again. According to my memory of my first playthrough it was a hassle to be a vampire but this time around I actually kind of liked it, but I still completed the Vampire Cure quest before I did the Purification quest (why you gotta keep hurting me like this?). Mainly because vampirism turned my cute little Bosmer into a very masculine-looking old woman ._.
After I had done all the stuff I had planned on 100%-ing Shivering Isles and then go back to the base game and discover all the places and do all the Oblivion Gates. But after completing all the side quests of Shivering Isles and getting halfway through the main quest I suddenly lost interest in the game again and I didn't finish it. I remember I loved Shivering Isles in my first playthrough, but also that I became bored with the game when I started Shivering Isles on my second playthrough. This time I can safely say that the sidequest Taxonomy of Obsession killed my vibe. Because I always do Shivering Isles as the last thing I'm always level 30 or more when I get there, and all the creatures she asks for are way over-levelled for the Calm spells she provides for the quest. So after struggling with it for way too many hours I finally resorted to summoning low-levelled variants through console commands to finish the goddamn quest, but it had killed my vibe.
Several of the quests in Shivering Isles are annoying one way or another. Ghosts of Vitharn is pretty unique but also so annoying. Work is Never Done was another one I started to do the way it was intended but then I gave up and just added everything the quest asked for via console and handed it in, because my god, dude. Addiction was annoying on a whole different level. Get addicted to this substance on purpose and then suffer withdrawal effects from hell after just a couple minutes. Doesn't help that you go from base game where everything is fairly simple after level 30 and get to Shivering Isles where suddenly every enemy is a bulletsponge that hits like a truck. It just made the whole experience annoying.
In this playthrough I adored everything about the game until I got to Shivering Isles, and at this point I'm wondering if my good memories of Shivering Isles isn't just the nostalgia talking.
This is a trilogy of point-and-click, hidden object games by Artifex Mundi. I picked these up when I was angry with AC Odyssey for something nice and simple to take my mind off it. I played through the first two in pretty quick succession and immediately started on the third which took me forever to complete because I started playing AC Valhalla, ESO and Oblivion before I actually went about finishing it. Which is rather dumb because each game in this trilogy is like four hours long :P
Each game has a separate story. The first one is a classic story of a wronged bride and a curse, lots of dark magic and demons. It was quite fun, but nothing special.
The second game had a bit more story to stand on. It tells the story of two kingdoms who were once on friendly terms. But one kingdom delved deep into magic which plunged the kingdom into darkness and left it in ruin. The other kingdom graciously accepted their refugees and banned all magic so as to prevent their kingdom to go the same route. Swans play a big role, as do fairies and nettles. This is the most memorable entry and the only one I played through twice.
The third game is Victorian era and has monsters and legends appropriate for that time-period. This game features rune-casting battles. The story features a protag with amnesia, resurrection magic and a world literally falling to pieces due to misuse of magic. This game was honestly pretty cool and with the added rune-casting battles it had a lot more action than I'm used to in hidden object games. This story would've worked as a full-blown RPG. I'm impressed.
Artifex Mundi never disappoints with their hidden object games and I'll be sure to pick up more in the years to come. They're relaxing and easy to play and often surprise you with how good they are.
We watched a bunch of movies this summer just like last year and most of them were horror related.
1. Choose or Die (2022). This is a horror movie about a computer game from the 80s, that's basically coded into being an AI. It was fun to watch it get increasingly more horrifying. That scene where a character is literally throwing up video tape was terrifying. It wasn't a bad movie, but also not one of the best we've seen. I did enjoy it, though.
2. ARQ (2016). This is a sci-fi post-apoc movie about a couple who gets stuck in a time-loop and have to figure their way out of it. I was kind of disappointed at the ending, because it was so open-ended. I just spent 1½ hours watching a story that doesn't have an end. Not a proper one at least. I guess I enjoyed the suspension of the ambivalent ending, and the action was good. But all in all a pretty meh experience. I was hoping for something more.
3. The Cabin in the Woods (2011). Toni had seen this movie before and he wanted me to see it because he remembered that there was a twist he really didn't see coming and he thought it was so good. Imagine his disappointment when I had figured out the twist less than halfway through the movie? xD They kept dropping hints and my brain put them together. Anyway it was a very enjoyable film and I could easily watch it again. It's a horror movie, but it definitely has a twist.
4. The Adam Project (2022). We had both heard a lot of good about this Ryan Reynolds movie and from the trailer it looked fun so we decided to watch it. It was a pretty classic time-travelling sci-fi flick and Ryan Reynolds was Ryan Reynolds. It was alright. Nothing new.
5. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022). This is marketed as a sequel to the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre from the 70s and they actually work on that story. The survivor from the original is back (not the same actress though). The town where everything happened is all but abandoned and a ghost town. A group of idealistic young people buy the town to create a green community. Leatherface is not impressed. The rest of the movie is classic slasher and we enjoyed it. I really liked Lila.
6. Malevolent (2018). Classis ghost story horror movie, but THAT twist! I really didn't see the twist coming until just before it happened, so well done writers. A group of young people pretend to be ghosthunters with a psychic that can cleanse houses of spirits. Except the psychic figures out along the way that oopsie they're the real deal. And this house they're contracted to do is really, really haunted. But not in the way they think. I had a good time with this one.
7. The Cleanse (2016). This was marketed as a horror comedy on Netflix and we usually enjoy that so we decided to watch it. Not a Netflix movie so didn't have a trailer. Turned out be something completely different and it was the most awkward movie we've watched all year. It wasn't scary. It wasn't funny. There was nothing horror about it. The whole thing was just unbelievably awkward. No. Just no.
8. Das schaurige Haus/The Scary House (2020). I wanted to see something with a classic haunted house so we ended up with this Austrian teen horror movie. It was pretty amusing and better than I expected. The whole family mystery thing added to the suspense. Definitely recommend.
9. Metal Lords (2022). As metalheads we had a lot of fun with this movie. It's a teen movie, but so good and funny and heart-warming and the soundtrack is amazing. It's a coming of age story and the characters do a lot of growing up. The trailer says it all. Just watch it.
10. Come Play (2020). A monster called Larry wants a friend. And he has decided that friend will be the autistic boy Oliver. Oliver's parents don't like the idea. This is a horror movie and it was pretty chilling at times. I had a good time with it. What bothered me most about this whole movie was the parents trying to force Oliver to learn to talk rather than having the entire family learn sign-language. But other than that this was a solid horror movie.
11. The Whole Truth (2021). This is the first movie either of us have ever watched in Thai, and probably the first movie we've watched that neither of us could understand a word of, but slap some subtitles on and it's no big deal. This is a solid ghost story with lots of family drama and secrets and mystery and even at the end when you think every secret has come out it's evident that the whole story still hasn't been told. I enjoyed every single thing about this movie and how chilling it was. The only thing we both deemed ridiculous was how grey and animatronic the ghost looked.
12. The Visit (2015). M. Night Shyamalan movie without a trailer, but we decided to give it a go. Shyamalan is either really good or just falls flat on its face. There's no in-between. This movie however was thoroughly chilling and unpleasant and absolutely perfect. There isn't a lot of action, but the suspense just keeps building up until the very end. Where it starts out slow, it ends up super intense.
1. Thin Air, by Michelle Paver. This book was brilliant. Written like an old-fashioned account of events, I originally thought it was an old story, but it's actually less than 10 years old. I've always had a fascination for the explorers of the past - how brave and daring they must've been to venture into the unknown with barely any technology to speak of; early 20th century expeditions into the Arctic and Antarctica, or through the African jungles in the 19th century, or chasing the horizon across the seas for millennia, or climbing that mountain to the top. So this story takes place in 1935 and it's written like it. It follows a group of Englishmen attempting to climb the third tallest mountain in the world; the Kangchenjunga, and they're all in awe of a previous expedition to the mountain in 1907. None of the hitherto expeditions have made it to the top, and the one they're all admiring ended pretty badly. The thin air on mountains make you sick, and mountain sickness messes with your head. All of this adds up to a chillingly brilliant ghost story.
2. From the Earth to the Moon, by Jules Verne. I'm a big fan of 19th century sci-fi, because the science is dubious at best and ludicrous at worst, but the sheer hope for the future is just amazing to see/read. So what happens in this one is that the Gun Club in the US is fresh out of things to do because the Civil War has ended. One of them proposes that they send a projectile to the moon, basically to just prove that they can, and the entire Club agrees that it's a splendid idea. What follows are a lot of gentlemen hard at work doing calculations to figure out the best time to fire such a projectile, how it should be done, what it should be made of, and how in the world they'll manage to give it the speed required to reach the moon. When the day for the launch draws near by a couple months an adventurer appears and suddenly the entire enterprise changes from "sending a projectile to the moon" to "sending people to the moon". Basically so that they can establish communication with the civilization on the moon. It's kind of fun to read their logical arguments for why there obviously (duh!) is a civilization on the moon, and on every single planet in the solar system. They go on a long tirade about how the supposed civilization on Jupiter is superior to that of the Earth (guess nobody had figured out that Jupiter is basically just gas yet?) This book was first published in 1865 and I had a lot of fun with the supposed science and how they applied themselves to get to the moon with the resources they had. Verne wrote this story more than a full century before we actually placed a person on the moon. Mind-blowing.
3. Sekaiteki Youtuber ni Natta Tohoku Sonzai no Eikokujin, by Chris Broad. If you have watched every single video by Chris and listened to the podcast then you have a pretty good idea what this book is about. Chris tells the story of how he ended up going to Japan, what brought him there, what his years as an English teacher were like, and how he ended up doing Youtube full-time. He gives his opinions on the Japanese society; what's great and what could be improved. He relates the story of how his channel grew to where it is today and finishes the book by telling his readers about the covid pandemic and what it did to foreigners in Japan and how it impacted him more personally. He ends the book by telling fans how he'd like people to act when they run into him. All in all it's a pretty sweet book. Chris talks a lot about understanding, collaboration and charm and it's obvious from the pages (and his videos) that he genuinely loves Japan and what he does. It's heart-warming to read. It took me forever because I can't read as fast in Japanese as I can in English or Swedish, but in the end I really did enjoy this book.
4. The Forgotten Garden, by Kate Morton. Read in Swedish. I've had some bad experiences with translations and so I often avoid them where I can, but this translation was beautifully done. This book would have been right up my alley when I was 12-14. Historical venues, family mysteries, hidden places, and strong-willed women were all things I enjoyed reading about at that age, and that was the main reason I decided to pick up this book. For the first part of this book I wasn't convinced, nothing seemed to be happening and the different perspectives showed up seemingly without any connection to each other. But in the second part the different perspectives started to meld together to form one coherent story and that's when I became invested and realized that I still like a lot of the same things now as I did at 12. I thought this would be a book I would donate, but it became a book I'd like to read again. The story follows Nell, Cassandra and Eliza respectively. In her early 20s Nell finds out that she is a foundling and not the biological child of her parents and she spends the rest of her life trying to find out where she came from. It wasn't until she was in her 60s when her father died that the things she was found with were returned to her and following the clues from those things she heads to Cornwall, England from Australia, where she ends up buying a cottage. Circumstances of life later prevents her from going back to that cottage and finding out the real story of where she came from. Her granddaughter Cassandra inherits the cottage and the mystery of her grandmother's origins. After the death of her husband and son, followed by the death of her beloved grandmother, Cassandra decides to go to England to get a change of scenery and also to poke around the cottage. Her initial thought is to sell it, but she gets tangled up in Nell's mystery and goes on trying to solve it. All while Nell and Cassandra follow clues in their respective present day (1975 and 2005 respectively) the reader also gets to follow Eliza from 1900 to 1913 and Eliza's story has some very pronounced effects on both Nell and Cassandra. It's been a great ride and I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would.
5. Mondo et autres histoires, by J.M.G. Le Clezio. This is one of the books I saved from when I studied French at uni, to read later without the pressure. Le Clezio's language is beautiful and he writes fantastical stories in a pretty magical way. I can see how pretty they are, and I feel the magic when I read them, which is why it's so frustrating that they don't engage me. It was a chore to pick this book up. I read it on and off for almost a month without really making much progress, and in the end I decided to DNF it. I really wish I'd enjoy this book because it's so beautifully written. But I just didn't.
This season was probably the best yet. The stakes are higher, the adults are in on it, and both demons and echoes are aplenty.
I didn't really like the addition of the Timeshift key. Time-travel usually just mess things up, but it did create a means for one character to return, and it also made it possible for the emotional reunion at the end. So I guess I'll take the good with the bad.
This season was very final in a lot of ways and they could comfortably end the show here. But then there was that one thing at the end that makes the entire finality of this season very open-ended. So if they want to do more they can.
I'm only sad Josh didn't get to be in on the whole thing. He had such a large part to play in this season and they didn't let him in on their secret.
Oh how I've been looking forward to this show! I love the comics, and after the announcement that it would be made into a show I just kept thinking "don't fuck this up". And I'm happy to say that they didn't. The comics are from the 80s and honestly progressive af for that time period, but they work so well in a modern environment too.
The story is about Dream a.k.a Morpheus a.k.a The Sandman. He's one of the Eternals along with his siblings Death, Desire, Destiny, Destruction, Delirium and Despair. Death, Desire and Despair all make appearances on the show.
The show is basically the first two volumes of the comic. It starts off with Dream's imprisonment and his subsequent escape and how the world is affected by his absence. Everything that happens in the show is a direct consequence to Dream's imprisonment.
Hob's story is one of my favourites in the comic and they did it so well in the show.
The extra episode added just two days ago also features two of my favourite stories from the comics.
The only realy complaint I've heard about this show is that it's a bit slow, and yes, the beginning of the story, even in the comics, feature a hell of a lot of world-building. But it's such an incredible world. And there's plenty of action. If David Thewlis doesn't get an award for the diner episode I'll riot.
First time I played this was during a free weekend some years ago via Bethesda's own launcher. This was before the game was even on Steam so it was pretty new. Then it released on Steam and in one sale or other I bought it and played it for around 25 hours (this was in May 2020) before Toni said it'd be fun if we played it together. So I stopped playing on my own as to not discover everything about the game by myself and waited to pick it up until we decided to play it together. After Generation Zero this became our new co-op game.
Both of us loved Fallout 4 and 76 is the same engine and same style so we both expected to really love 76 as well. But it has been a kind of a roller coaster. It nails the Fallout vibe, which we both love, but the gameplay leaves some things to wish for.
To start with it has the most unintuitive multiplayer ever for a multiplayer game. We can't just both start the game or we'll end up in different instances. One of us has to load into the game and then the other person has to go through the Social menu to join that person's game. When we do that we are not automatically in a group (which would make sense since we're actively joining in on each other). We have to invite each other to group even though we just joined each other's games. And even with that grouping seems to have mostly been designed for Events and Daily Ops (dungeons). Questing together is mostly not together. A big chunk of quests have instances that you can enter as team leader or join someone else in your group who's already in, with the caveat that only the team leader gets the quest progression. So if you want to play those instances together you'll have to do it more than once. Each player has to enter as team leader and have the others join to get quest progression. With the result that we mostly solo those places. So even when playing together the game doesn't allow us to play together. I remember that these areas weren't instance-locked the first time I played during the free weekend on Bethesda's launcher and my only guess is that they implemented this change so people wouldn't have to wait around for spawns. Which would be a stupid attempt to solve a problem that every online RPG ever has - other players.
Daily Ops (dungeons) allow you to be as small groups as two people, but as such a small group it was also pretty damn impossible to complete. At least without using up all our ammo and stimpaks, and dying several times and having our armour parts break...
And that's another complaint we both have: the enemies are too bulletspongy. Legendary class enemies will use up an absurd amount of ammo, and they'll kill you in 3-4 hits so better put your stimpaks on the quick access wheel. But even when they aren't legendary class, some enemies just require too much ammo, both with VATS and without. Super mutants, Yao Guai, Deathclaws, FUCKING ROBOTS...
We're both trying out builds and mixing and matching perk cards to help with armour/ammo/damage, but the entire level system past level 60 is just way too limiting. I don't need another five cards if I don't have the means to add them without losing something else. Legendary perk cards are too few and far between. Level cap should be at 80 instead of 60.
I like guns that shoot fast and have big mags so I'm running a Commando build. Bf likes to do a lot of damage so he's running a Shotgunner build. That said even at level 75 I'm running around with three different kinds of automatic rifles, that use different kinds of ammo + a melee weapon as backup should I run out of ammo in THREE RIFLES. Because it has happened. I have also run out of stimpaks on more than one occasion.
We start every session in good moods and happy to get back into it. But every session is marred by some annoyance.
One thing that always annoys me is how you can't fast travel anywhere in this game without getting slapped in the face with a Daily Quest when you arrive. Stop throwing them in my face! Just put a fricking exclamation mark on the map like everyone else. FFS. If I'm going somewhere it's probably because I have a quest pointing me there. So I'm already on a quest. Usually a quest that I can't do an infinite amount of times and so I will prioritize that. Just stop cluttering my journal.
Another annoyance is the imbalance between resources and the appalling scarcity of some constantly needed resources. Ballistic fiber is rare af and required for basically every repair ever. Lead is required to craft the ammo I need. Bf needs plastic for his ammo. And modding requires adhesive. So we're running around a post-apocalyptic world picking up every pencil, duct tape, glue, toy, and plastic plate (and fight over the few pieces of ballistic fiber) that we can find, until we're overencumbered. Which doesn't take long and we spend about 80% of every session as overencumbered.
We don't hate the game, either of us, but it would be a massively improved experience if we didn't have to get annoyed each session. And we will continue playing it at least as long as there are quests to do (not dailies; actual quests) and maybe it will get better as time goes on. But if SPECIAL is capped at 60 then it shouldn't take until level 100+ for the gameplay and mechanics to become good. Usually online games struggle with endgame, but in the case of 76 it seems to be all that matters. Everything before endgame is just a struggle.
Both of us gave in around level 80 and bought Fallout 1st because our stash boxes got filled up with crafting mats and more legendary weapons and armour from events than Murmrgh and the legendary scrapper could manage to deal with (a daily cap on vendor currency is pretty crap tbh), and we needed the Junk Box to shove all the mats in. Both of our CAMP vendors were filled to the brim with stuff we wanted to get rid of (why isn't it possible to send excess ammo to vendors?)
Launching our first nuke was the first sign that we approached the end of the game and boy did the game turn that into a FUCKING GAUNTLET. Robots upon robots upon robots upon robots... I now have a burning hatred for sentry bots and assaultrons.
We got past level 100 before we decided that we were done with FO76. At that point we had finished all the main quest lines from base game and DLCs and the majority of the side quests and we were basically just running around doing events and challenges. When I got past level 90 I was finally at a place where I could dump both my melee weapons and two of my three rifles and only run around with my favoured rifle, because I finally had enough resources and caps and perks to be able to comfortably acquire and craft the correct ammo. Enemies were still spongy (seems to be that way for everyone that doesn't have a legacy weapon) but it was mostly manageable.
So yeah, Fallout 76 was a wild ride with both of us ready to throw in the towel more than once, but instead we persevered and got to the endgame where we found a lot of things were mostly repetitive.
Still... Would I consider going back sometime? Yes.
After all this complaining did I still mostly have fun? Yes.
The conclusion to the Gates of Oblivion season was lackluster. The Fargrave zone reminded me a lot of the Clockwork City zone and while it was cool it got very restrictive and very repetitive very fast. The back and forth between the city of Fargrave and the plane of Oblivion became a whole lot of loading screens.
I did enjoy the wandering horrors though. They reminded me a lot of the wandering horrors in the Imperial City, but without the risk of accidentally killing a player from another faction since Fargrave is a pure PvE zone.
Eveli was the highlight of this DLC. Most other characters fell flat and even recurring characters from Blackwood didn't seem to have the same feeling in Fargrave.
The final fight against Molag Bal was really cool though!
Nothing more to add, really. This DLC felt like an intermission.
Next up on catching up with ESO was the Blackwood chapter. I had been idly curious about this since it was announced since it kind of incorporated the events of Oblivion into ESO. Was it super nostalgic to go back through Oblivion gates and run through masses of daedra? Yes!
I had a lot of fun with this chapter and it served as a great reminder that the ESO community on PC-EU is absolutely great. I wanted to do all the world bosses before finishing the main quest. So I waited patiently at one of them for people to happen to run by. They didn't and I tried it myself a couple times without success (sometimes it works alone) so I shouted in chat asking if anybody wanted to help me with this one boss. I got six randoms joining me and we ended up doing all of the world bosses on the map with each of us providing the corresponding daily quest.
A similar thing happened on the group boss in one of the public dungeons where I tried it myself a few times, because usually I can manage them alone with some focus and hard work. But this one was just too overwhelming to do alone. So I resigned myself to come back and do it later and left the area where the boss was. When I got out there was another player just outside killing some mobs and when he was done he just casually asked if I wanted to do the group boss. I said yes as I had been trying it myself several times. Went back in with that player and he took the time to explain every mechanic of the boss to the point where I actually had to tell him to stop because I had figured out the mechanics in my several attempts, but it was so sweet. So we started the boss and just naturally, without any special communication, ended up being me on adds and activating mechanics and him on damaging the boss. I threw some heals his way and helped damaging the boss when I could, and in no time at all we had defeated the boss.
Blackwood was a haven for public dungeons, because not only were there the two usual public dungeons that are present in every big zone, but every Oblivion gate counted as a public dungeon. And these gates were a lot more fun to run through and complete than the original Oblivion equivalents.
Blackwood introduced companions, which is a NPC that follows you around and helps you fight. They also have personalities and different things they like or dislike and you can raise their disposition towards you by doing things they like. As they grow to like you more they will also offer quests for you to do. You can find equipment for them and they level up just like your own character and you can assign skills to them and decide how they will behave in battle. Need a tank? Your companion's got you covered. Except I was as per usual max level when I got to Blackwood and my lowbie companion was brand new and so squishy I decided to just keep them as dps. Do what you can, little guy. Since Blackwood is a starter zone I imagine the companions are more useful for a new character where they level up alongside you. For me, and seemingly for a lot of high level players, the companion was just a sidekick that spent more time lying passed out on the sidelines of the boss battles than actually contributing anything :P
As for the story it reminded me of a detective/mystery story, where the player had to follow clues to find the Ambitions. Extremely powerful weapons according to the legend, that Dagon would use to enter Tamriel. All the new characters in the story were well-written and I ended up pretty attached to more than one of them. I'm happy there was no major character death in this chapter (looking at you Dragonhold and Markarth).
My favourite sidequest was probably the one involving Alchemy from the Summerset chapter, who has returned in this chapter alongside their travelling band of performers. It was a really cute sidequest about following your dreams and being whatever you want to be. But you can never go wrong with Lady Laurent and Stibbons and they both showed up again in this chapter :3 Poor Stibbons keeps getting in trouble.
Eveli was a welcome return. She was first introduced in Orsinium and I loved her back then. I loved her even more after this.
