Game completed: Avowed (twice!)

I was very excited for this game. Partly because it was Obsidian, partly because I really enjoyed The Outer Worlds, partly because it reminded me of Dragon Age, and partly because it looked hella cool!

I've seen so many people saying Avowed is just The Outer Worlds but fantasy, but as I played it I got more Dragon Age vibes than Outer Worlds vibes. Outer Worlds is absurd and humoristic with a dark undertone. Avowed isn't like that. The darkness isn't an undertone, it's prevalent and everywhere, any humor is just to defuse serious situations. Threats of famine and invasion with subsequent subjugation are imminent and very real, on top of that there's a plague decimating the population. 

Playing through Avowed I could definitely see that it had the same devs as Outer Worlds, but Avowed is in no way a carbon copy of Outer Worlds in a new skin. 

So, the story. You're a Godlike from the Aedyran Empire sent to the Living Lands to investigate a plague called the Dreamscourge. You're sent as an Imperial Envoy by the Emperor personally, to see whether this plague he's hearing of will hinder the plans to incorporate the Living Lands into the Empire. The people living in the Living Lands are not fans of the upcoming Imperial annexation and there are a lot of rebels and opposing forces going around. As you follow in the wake of the plague you become entwined with the locals and the politics of the Living Lands, and the Dreamscourge has a deeply personal revelation in store for you too.

For my very first playthrough I got as far as the end of the second zone. The big thing that happens there shocked me so much I had to look up whether it was possible to have it end differently. And it was. That's also when I discovered that I had missed a whole heap of stuff. So I decided to restart the entire thing. 

The next playthrough I played all the way to the end and once I got there I immediately started another playthrough to make different choices and get some achis I didn't get the first time around. I think I prefer how this last playthrough turned out. 

The major choices have major repercussions. As it should be.

For my first complete playthrough I played Wizard class. I spent the majority of my time running around with a wand in one hand and a shield in the other :3 All the wand waving made me think of Hogwarts Legacy tbh. 

For my second playthrough I was a Rogue. The game allows for two weapon load-outs and I had bow in one and sword and shield in the other. There was an achi for parrying with a shield, hence all the shields, also I suck at timing things, do the math. 

I absolutely loved all of the companions. Marius took some getting used to and a lot of work to break through his walls, but my heart ached for him once I discovered why he had those walls at all. Giatta and Yatzli are my girls. I loved running around with an all girl team with those two. 

To nobody's surprise, though, Kai *cough* Garrus *cough* is my favourite. Avowed doesn't have much in the way of romance, and that's fine, but there's one instance where you can tell Kai that you like him and then the end slide shows them together afterwards. Warm, fuzzy feeling :3

I fell to my death misjudging a jump more than I died in combat xD Climbing is dangerous.

After having played through Avowed two and a half times I still didn't feel done with the world. So I went and got Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2, both of which take place in the same world as Avowed. 

I replayed all of Starfield for Shattered Space DLC

When Shattered Space released I was deep inside Dragon Age The Veilguard, so it wasn't until very late last year that I finally picked up Starfield again. And then played nothing but for over two months. At the point of writing this it's been almost a month since I stopped playing, but I've been distracted from blogging. 

So I wasn't all that happy with my original character which brought me to the decision to simply replay the entire game from the beginning with a new character to eventually play the DLC, rather than do it on my old character. For this playthrough I also added a bunch of mods, and if you know me it's mostly UI changes and added questlines, nothing that changes the game too much. Same deal when I mod Skyrim. 

So I made a new character and started my journey, went through the entire main quest until the point of no return, all side quests, companion quests, mod quests etc, before I jumped into the DLC. Doing this was probably a really great choice because going through Shattered Space as a worshipper of the Great Serpent was eye-opening and there were so many dialogue options related to that single trait which wouldn't have been available if I wasn't devoted to the Great Serpent. And of course I had Andreja with me the whole time I was playing this DLC.

The Oracle starstation was hell. Not because it was bad but because I really really hate the no grav environments. I hate navigating them and I hate dealing with weapon recoil in them during battle. But aside from that what happened at the Oracle starstation was pretty cool and definitely invited more questions and, to me, incentive to find out more. So off we go to the Va'ruun homeworld.

Va'ruun'kai is crazy beautiful, though. With it's pink/purple sky and ebony-like creatures. I was in awe throughout most of time there. That promo picture of a citadel? It's really real. It really looks like that and it's so pretty *w* The new grenades you can make with the remains of the new Vortex enemies are really cool, and generally I enjoyed the new enemies and the reasons for how they came to be. The Promised were nice little mini bosses (or just really tough enemies) scattered throughout the world.

The main quest of the DLC then has you complete a pilgrimage followed by being accepted by each of the Houses. So, so, so many parallells to the Morrowind main quest omg. Once all of that was out of the way most of the main quest would be completed, but it should have given you incentive to explore the area and pick up a bunch of sidequests which give you more on the people and culture of the Va'ruun'kai, which in turn gives you background for how did we get to this point?! There are some real choice and consequence sprinkled in there. You can flood an entire farm as the end result of one quest or choose to save the farm, but then you'll have to stick to the status quo in the place you're at, which uuuuh... probably isn't good in the long run. Which is the lesser evil? Up to you.

The DLC has multiple endings, the impacts of which aren't readily noticeable in true Bethesda fashion. Which ending you get is up to you and the implication of each of them are some pretty great changes for the Va'ruun as a whole. 

Throughout the main story you'll get to interact with the Speaker, and each and every one of those interactions gave me strong Dagoth Ur vibes. There's really so much Morrowind in this DLC. Generally, the Va'ruun is just how they inserted Elder Scrolls into the Starfield universe. They worship the Great Serpent (that's just Satakal) and their society is run by Houses (that's just Resdayn). Not to mention that the name of the Va'ruun Ambassador in New Atlantis is Bal'Mor. Balmora. All Elder Scrolls clues. There's a lot more, but you get the idea. I really wanted to post a Va'ruun prayer or chant to the Great Serpent to pick it apart with Elder Scrolls lore, but I can't find a written version and I don't fancy watching a bunch of Youtube videos in the hopes of finding one so we'll have to make do without it. Why doesn't every game have a UESP?

After I finished the DLC I decided to play enough that I unlocked the last few achievements I was still missing. One of them was to get to level 100. I was around level 85 at the time and figured I could just do mission board things until I got to 100, but that became really repetitive really fast. So I went through the Unity and started all over again in NG+. And then I continued playing way past level 100 while waiting for Avowed to drop. 

Unfortunately, my Steam installation corrupted halfway through this playthrough, when I was mostly done with Va'ruun'kai, and I lost almost all of my screenshots. 

Ghosts S01-03

We stumbled upon this show on Netflix and thought it looked fun. It was so much fun! Netflix only had the first two seasons, but we found the third season on a different streaming platform so all good.

So the show is about a young married couple. The wife inherits an old mansion from a relative and the couple decides to move in there and make it a B&B. Only issue is that the mansion is very haunted, which the couple are blissfully unaware of until the wife has a near-death experience and comes out of it able to see and talk to ghosts. Chaos ensues.

I adore Isaac and Sasappis.