A Minor Variation

Report on first half-hour of Final Fantasy XIII: so far, the women are kicking ass.

As my previous posts suggests, I finished a play through Dragon Age. And had an OMG WAIT THAT WASN'T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN reaction to the consequences of one of my decisions.

I can't yet give an overall verdict on the game yet, though. Partly that's because there's still a lot of stuff I haven't tried out yet - four other origins and a bunch of sidequests and different choices and all - and partly because my D: D: D: reaction to the aforementioned spoiler is coloring my opinions and the part of me that reacts to how it works as a story (which is very well, really) is running up against how I intended it to play out in a kind of silly way.

Also, the fact that for some reason the choice that I made was not accounted for in subsequent dialogue - even though it was an unavoidable choice and I didn't have to go out of my way or do anything special to take the option that I did - struck me as a bit sloppy. In a game with so much depth and so many different choices, I could understand if bits were unaccounted for in some sidequest or optional extra bit someplace, but why on earth wouldn't you cover all the bases of the main, plot-critical decisions?

Of course, it's no skin off me to go back through and rearrange my choices a little, but the sudden, unexpected dissonance made me uncomfortable.

ALL OF THAT SAID, it's a great game, and I do not have enough things to say about how much I love how the party interactions. My biggest complaint right now has nothing to do with the ending at all, it's that, having gone all the way through the game with a human noble, when I try starting another origin it feels somehow wrong to play a different character type... my brain has latched onto the character I played first, which is also a problem I had a bit of with Mass Effect, but the wider variation of character backstories and the fact that the Dragon Age PC, unlike Commander Shepard, isn't fully-voiced makes things much worse this time.

I expect I will get over it. At the very least I want to play a male Dalish elf so that I can romance Zevran free from the temptation of Alistair's presence. /shallow.

I will probably write some fanfic. So much of the stuff that would ordinarily be between-the-scenes in a different game is actually played out in Dragon Age, so I don't know how much fic I will write, but the impulse is there all the same. Alistair will probably feature heavily, to no one's surprise.

So I've been sick for the past slightly-more-than-a-week, which has sucked. As a result, about all I have really had the energy to do has been playing Dragon Age Origins.

I truthfully wasn't interested in DAO at all throughout all of the buildup to its release. I was pretty well aware of it because I was keeping tabs on Mass Effect 2's development, but it just didn't ping me at all until I started hearing the comments from people who were actually playing it. Then I had to try it out - and if Mass Effect 2 is anything like this, I'll be very happy.

I'm especially hoping that the party interactions are handled in a similar way; I love the random in-the-field conversations and things like having the other party members comment (usually hilariously) on the romance subplot. It gave me an entirely disproportionate thrill the first time I switched control from my main character to her love interest mid-gameplay and heard him say "My love?" instead of his default response. I'm coming to the conclusion that even though we know the romantic subplot will be less prominent in ME2 than it was in the first game, if they just include such tiny but immersive details I'll be content.

There are definitely some elements that are familiar to me from the other two Bioware RPGs that I have played (KotOR and ME). Handily, they are elements that I enjoyed from those games. It's also very aware of all the usual sword-and-sorcery tropes - playing the human noble origin is a little like playing the first chapter of Mercedes Lackey's By the Sword as a video game - but it gets markedly less predictable and more complicated once the main storyline gets underway. I think I was put off, or at least left somewhat cold by, the aggressively Dark And Edgy marketing, but as sinvraal commented on masseffect, it's not purposelessly dark, and the player has plenty of opportunity to make their character a light in the darkness, something that appeals to me.

I'm also really liking the various moral choices - thus far I've been able to work things out pretty much the way I've wanted, but there have been a few points at which I really worried about it. More than that, there's a feeling of interconnectedness to the different quests, thanks both to the Gondor-calls-for-aid plotline and just the way little details carry over, making them not just checkpoints to be marked off on the way to the endgame. There's a nice, organic flow to it.

No complaints on the characters. The approval system was a little frustrating at first mostly because I just couldn't seem to do anything that Morrigan or Sten approved of, but I've been able to manage a bit better as I go along, and Morrigan - though she'll probably never be among my particular favorites - has mostly stopped annoying me as we've come to understand each other a little better. I mostly really like other party members (aside from Leilana who I somehow missed and Oghren who I'm looking forward to but haven't managed to pick up yet) - Alistair is snarky and adorable, Wynne is badass, Zevran is entertaining, and Sten is intriguing. And the dog! Plus various neat supporting characters, as well. As a bonus, the game passes the Bechdel test - with flying colors, if you're playing a female PC, but even if you're playing male I suspect it still passes thanks to the interaction between supporting characters.

I'm a good ways into the game at this point - I'm beginning to see the endgame looming, and I'm in the odd position of kind of wanting to start over from the beginning, not just to try out a different origin but to make the game last longer.

...being worried for Alistair might also have something to do with it. Possibly.

Observation:

If Team Cosmos in Dissidia: Final Fantasy were the Justice League, the Warrior of Light would be Superman... and Squall would be Batman.

I'll have more useful comments on Dissidia later, but right now I'm too busy preparing to beat up Ultimecia in Shade Impulse.

Caught some interviews with Bioware staff on Gametrailers TV last night, including some new information on Mass Effect 2, most of which pleased me. They're still being cagey about Shepard's status, of course, but they did mention that the player character's identity would be confirmed at E3... and I'm not really that worked up about it anyhow, so it's all good.

( Cut for the disinterested. )

I recently finished playing Knights of the Old Republic II. I'd heard a lot about how the game's release was rushed and how a lot of content was cut form the official release, and how the game suffered as a result, but even so, I have to say that it's a good game. It is fairly obviously a rush job - the final stage of the game is clearly missing a lot of content, leaving any number of threads dangling, and aside from that there are a good many bugs. But it's also got an honestly cool storyline, one which spends a lot of time exploring the nature of the Force and the way it affects the setting without resorting to lame, mystique-killing devices like midichlorians. I enjoyed KotOR I a lot too, but it wasn't until KotOR II that I really felt I'd been reminded of the things that I like most about the Star Wars setting.

As always, for me, a lot of it comes down to the characters. The Jedi Exile deserves a special mention for giving new meaning to the term "dysfunction junction" - RPG character teams are always at least a little dysfunctional, but the Exile's teammates, for the most part, actively hate one another. Seriously. Okay, Atton and Bao-Dur seem to get along reasonably well by the later stages of the game, and apparently Mandalore and Visas can get kind of chummy as well, but for the most part I was just sitting back being entertained by the constant snark being slung in all directions. The special hatred that Kreia apparently reserves just for Atton tickles me especially for some reason.

To nobody's great surprise, Atton is my favorite of all of them, because I like them broken and oh man is Atton broken. I am particularly charmed by the fact that he seems hell-bent to sacrifice himself for the Exile. He drops enough hints in various different bits of dialogue that I was kind of surprised when he didn't pull some kind of grand kamikaze maneuver during the endgame, and I suspect that something to that effect must have been in the cut content; the boy is clearly self-destructive.

About the other characters I have somewhat less to say. I will observe, however, that when your wise old mentor mind-rapes your friends - repeatedly - you know you're in the midst of something special.

I also love being able to turn basically the entire party into Jedi.

I am a bit more divided on the game's Grand Revan Retcon; while it's kind of gratifying, after playing the first game, to go through the second game watching more or less all the characters having little fangasms over Revan, the whole bit about "actually the whole thing was a Grand Plan to prepare the Republic for the greater threat of the True Sith" rings a bit hollow when combined with the details of some of the more heinous things Revan actually did, such as, you know, employing a whole bunch of specially-trained assassins for the specific purposes of capturing and torturing Jedi in order to break them into Sith. Etc.

Of course, the game's moral structure is unusually blurry for Star Wars in some ways, so.

The big trouble now is that I'm remembering all the stuff I like about Star Wars and have... no outlet for it at all, aside from maybe re-watching the original trilogy sometime soon. And maybe writing some fic.

So, I'm playing Final Fantasy XII. I've recently acquired the second-level Quickening for Basch, which is called Ruin Impendent. The animation for this involves Basch punching the enemy several times, and the usual light-show. It's shiny, but fairly standard for FF.

Until I happen to look at the game's description of the move, which begins: "Collapse space-time..."

Immediately, all I can think is:

Basch punches time.

I am such a geek for finding this so funny.

Kingdom Hearts II is getting odder - albeit more intriguing - all the time.

Pirates of the Carribbean world.
Steamboat Willie world.
Tron world.
Stitch.
Yuna and Rikku, FFX2-style... as a summon?
And appearances by Seifer, Raijin, Fujin, and... Vivi.

Preliminary thoughts on X-Men Legends II:

This is more complicated than the first one. I'm kind of glad the Gamestop guy suckered me into getting the strategy guide, too... it's the only means I have of keeping track of what powers do what.

Also, when I said that I wanted more variety in opponents, I didn't mean BIG SQUISHY BUGS.

Sadly, Rogue's new voice is pretty bad. But Gambit's seems... slightly less craptacular. Slightly.

With regards to Kingdom Hearts II, I find myself vaguely curious about the context of this image.

But more significantly, if what I've been told is to be believed, Seifer is also going to be in KHII... and this is him.

I'm pretty sure Squall-in-my-head just did a spittake.

And now, thanks to ahumblepen, I'm stuck picturing kidSeifer RARR SWING FLAIL!!! and Leon holding him off with a straightarm to the head, going "..."