Kyir

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content count

    319

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Kyir

  2. Posted

    I really hope there isn't a big patch after this before TI comes around. Every seems like it's in a really good state right now.

     

    (Also OG vs VP game 1 was insane)

  3. Posted

    The topic of weird fictional rules and the implications of memory alteration reminded me of an email I started writing around the third IIT cast that ended up much to long to send in. It's about the presence of a vast wizarding conspiracy in the Harry Potter series, but this seems like as good a time to post it as any:

     

    Spoiler

    Hi Thumbs,

     

    For your consideration, I would like to posit the existence of a powerful wizard-run Illuminati in the Harry Potter setting that manipulates all of magical society from the shadows. I believe JK Rowling hints at this fact throughout the series, and that observing this drastically changes the way in which the books should be read. I present the following as evidence:

     

    1. The first book establishes that there are means of extending a wizard’s lifespan for significant periods of time. Wizarding ability appears to increase with age (at least to some degree,) and as such it is reasonable to assume that wizards would achieve incredible power by the end of unnaturally long lifespans.

    2. The use of memory-altering magic is persistent throughout the series, as is evidence of the  transitive nature of factual evidence in the wizarding world (moving photographs, self-altering text, etc.) Wizards do not seem to realize the problems this could cause, and many of them show no compunctions about altering the memory of muggles despite serious health risks. In this state of affairs, it would be possible for a group of powerful individuals to conceal their presence from the wizarding world without halting their manipulation of it.

    3. The current organization of wizarding society seems unlikely to have persisted naturally. The separation from the muggle world may have made sense at its inception, given the dangers of witch hunts and the general superiority of magic at the time, but the modern world has much to offer wizards (clinical trial design to increase potion safety, actual dental care, health treatments that do not risk removing all of a person’s bones, etc.) For such ideas to not gradually seep into wizarding society despite the interplay of individuals between the two worlds suggests some active force preventing their implementation.

    4. Efforts at educating individuals in government structure, sociology, or anything not directly pertaining to individual acts of magic are either underfunded or simply deemed unimportant. Qualifications for government and administrative positions appear to be largely based on personal connections or magic ability as opposed to any solid qualifications. Few options for higher education are available, to the point where dangerous texts are being kept at a school for children. A society with such poorly-defined qualifications for important jobs would be much easier to manipulate by a group of central individuals who control the power levers.

    5. Furthermore, the basic laws of magic as understood by average wizards appear to make no sense, and go largely unquestioned despite this. The restriction on transmuting objects into food, for instance, suggests that “food” is a single classifiable type field. It fails to encompass the fact that some materials can only be classified as food for certain organisms, as well as failing to address the fact that some inedible materials can become edible with proper treatment. For a “law” of magic to be so devoid of meaning suggests intentional obfuscation regarding the true functioning of magic is taking place, likely to obscure the magic used by members of the Wizard Illuminati.

    6. On the topic of power levers, the economy of the wizarding world likely would not be able to naturally function in its current state. Aside from the difficulty of establishing value when the creation of physical wealth can be achieved via magic, there appears to be a very weak correlation between employment and income. The Weasleys appear to subsist almost entirely on the income of one mid-level bureaucrat, and almost no instances of true poverty are presented despite the apparent capitalist nature of wizarding society. Similarly, few instances of egregious personal wealth are presented. The easiest way to explain the persistence of such a state of affairs is very micro-level manipulation of the economy through the central bank of Gringotts by one or more members of the Wizard Illuminati.

     

    There are more specific pieces of evidence that could be presented, but I think this captures the broad points well enough to move on to the implications of such an organization’s presence in the Harry Potter series: that many of the key events of the book were orchestrated in an attempt to place an easily manipulatable pawn in the position of Minister of Magic, namely Harry himself.

     

    The jubilation provoked by Harry’s mere arrival in the Leaky Cauldron during the first book points to widespread propaganda efforts during his early life to bolster his reputation and create the legend surrounding him. The reaction he receives seems otherwise improbable for a child who has been out of sight for multiple years even after seemingly mysterious events. The further close attention he receives from both the Minister of Magic and Dumbledore himself indicate that both are aware, if not members of, the plot to elevate Harry to a position of power, since both men would surely otherwise have more important things to do otherwise. This raises the question of whether or not Voldemort was also engaged in this plot to some degree, or if he was simply an unwitting pawn of powers greater than his own who saw fit to allow his actions until a hero could be put in place to defeat him.

     

    I could go on, but I think I’ve made an incredibly airtight and well-supported case for the existence of a Wizard Illuminati.

     

    - Kyir

     

     

  4. Posted

    There have been a lot of amazing games to watch at this major. I think my favorite so far was Liquid vs. Newbee Game 3 (though my team-biases are somewhat in play there.) Most of my compendium predictions were super wrong though. I expected to see a lot more Slardar and Shadow Fiend than we are, and games being a lot faster in general. 

  6. Posted

    I'd agree that's probably the reason I don't find any of the player characters particularly interesting this time around. In possible future campaigns, I don't think interesting characters would necessarily be incompatible with good jokes. As to whether or not that will actually happen is another question I guess.

  7. Posted

    The new arc is interesting as a mini-game thing (provided it doesn't take way too long,) but the first episode of it has helped me realize that my growing indifference to the series is really rooted in the characters the players are... playing, I guess. The whole "the fate of the world rests on their shoulders" thing isn't really that compelling when I don't find the characters themselves very interesting (personal preference, obviously.) I'm kind of ready for them to wrap this whole thing up so we can move on to characters that have a bit more thought invested from the get-go than they had this time around.

  8. Posted

    My first two games of ranked were both positive experiences, but that's not a huge sample size (and the phone-linking isn't mandatory yet either anyway.) It's going to be interesting to see how much the solo-queue only setting will increase the time I have to wait in between games. I might just leave it off, since I don't run into people going in together much anyway in ranked.

  9. Posted

    Anyone with a better memory than me know where the two Estus Shards that Nick is missing are? I'm inclined to think that it's the Irithyll and Grand Archives ones, but it's a pretty specific thing to try and remember and I'm not very sure on either count. As for the last two Bone Shards, I'm thinking Cathedral and Grand Archives again (maybe?) I remember him getting smashed by the skeleton ball, but not whether or not he killed the wizard skeleton controlling it for the shard inside. I realize the Bone Shards provide a pretty negligible amount of extra healing at this point, but it might help anyway.

  10. Posted

    I can only speak for myself, but the presence of so much general garbage on Steam definitely makes me less inclined to buy smaller, less polished games despite the improved refund system. I think improved faith in the legitimacy of games would probably improve sales for legitimate indie devs.

  12. Posted

    I may have bit off more than I can chew doing this on NG+3. The optional boss is absolutely destroying me one-sidedly.

     

    The last boss is a real struggle at this difficulty too. I might have to just go back to a NG character to beat this. I can really relate to Nick after fruitlessly spending about 7 hours between the two of them.

     

    EDIT: Finally beat it! What a final boss. Probably my favorite one in all of DS3.

  18. Posted

    I beat the game after 50 hours, so... spoilers ahead while I try to summarize my thoughts I guess? I didn't come away with many positive feelings, but I'm not sure what else I was really expecting aside from a way to burn some time. I'd probably put it a bit above ME3 in terms of my series rankings (1 = 2 (with DLC) > 3) Exceptional DLC might salvage it, but I don't think this team's earned my faith enough to consider buying any at this point.
     

    Spoiler

     

    In the end, I found it to be a largely bland and disappointing game with a few positive aspects that didn’t quite manage to redeem it. The basic combat and exploration loops were satisfying for the most part (though the spawning system in Kett bases is terrible,) but almost everything outside of shooting things and driving cars was a slog. BioWare seems to have staked the entire game on giving the player a sense of awe at the unknown and providing difficult choices based on the environment they find themselves in and then didn’t deliver on either. There were some pretty impressive sights scattered across the game, but none of the environments provoked a feeling of profound alienness (not even the critically-acclaimed floating rocks,) and the removal (not replacement) of paragon/renegade options made most possible decisions feel like they might as well be coinflips with bland outcomes.


    Really, I think the paragon/renegade removal is emblematic of what I don’t like about the game. Most aspects of ME:A have the feeling of something being removed without a suitable replacement being provided. Characters, in particular, feel like an attempt has been made to remove some of the specificity of past ME characters (Mordin largely being summed up as the wacky alien scientist, etc.) but without providing anything interesting in their attempts at more rounded characters. Aside from the easily lovable angry grandpa Krogan, I couldn’t really bring myself to care about the lives (past or future,) of any other characters. There’s a bunch of history and a few interesting character traits, but nothing like the best characters from past games. The antagonist also finalizes the series long decline into just having “evil uninteresting aliens” to kill. The kett are Collectors 2.0 without even a remotely interesting backstory, dialogue, or visuals (and the human and robot enemies are just as bland.) The angara, too, are just the sorts of aliens established in the original trilogy without anything interesting about them. Like if Turians had just been slightly more pointy humans with a slightly different society (I realize they still kind of are that, but the angara are  aggressively boring for being from an entirely different galaxy and having the weight of the game on their shoulders.) Finally, none of the cities had any of the charm that the best ones of the original trilogy did. There’s little separating any of the colonies from each other, or from the hive of scum and villainy, or from the verdant nature city aside from what’s going on outside them and a few other touches.


    The game’s actual writing didn’t do anything to support its weaker areas either. The twists are entirely predictable (especially on the nature of the kett and the identity of the Charlatan,) the dialogue is average when it isn’t plainly bad (there are a few bright points, though not many,) but at least the pacing of it all was decent. On the dialogue in particular, I was disappointed with how little cross-character interaction there was on missions, even when it wasn’t the best writing ever. That’s usually one of my favorite parts of these games.


    Overall, I don’t completely regret having bought the game. The shooty bits were still fun, like I said, and it’s the only game of the series where I actually enjoyed some of the boss fights. I do regret spending time doing optional content in the hope of some of it being redeeming though, because none of it was.

     

     

     

     

     

  20. Posted

    It's a good book to bag on. There's a lot to complain about and there's disagreement on what any redeeming qualities actually are. For what it's worth, you're not missing anything in the rest of the book. Both books start off much stronger than they end, which leads me to wonder if the author is just giving himself too much space to work with and would have more consistently good material with a tighter plot arc. That's coming from someone with a deep affection for meandering side-story bits too.

  21. Posted

    I ended up getting this game after a friend mentioned how much she was enjoying it. My thoughts so far:

    • The animations turned out to generally not be a huge deal for me. There's definitely a lot of awkwardness and glitches, but not enough that I'm actually annoyed by it most of the time.
    • The writing and characterization has turned out to be a huge deal for me, because it generally ranged from dull to REALLY BAD. I only really feel any emotions about two of the six companions, and few of the combinations of them produce any interesting dialogue. I remember a lot of people saying that the characters felt more fleshed out this time around, but I'm definitely not seeing it so far.
    • The gameplay is genuinely enjoyable though. First Mass Effect game I've played that has actually challenging bosses (on Hardcore at least. Don't want to think about Insanity right now,) and the dodge and jumppack add a lot. Despise the critical mission autosave-only thing, but it's whatever. The Nomad's pretty fun to drive.
    • Really though, these characters. Ugh.