miffy495

Just put in a little shy of 2 full days worth of hours to finish Dragon Age Origins. You can see my thoughts in that thread, but hell since this is where people laud their accomplishments, I may as well join in.

As I said, I didn't even know there was a dragon until I noticed there was a horn in my inventory that I didn't know the purpose of. Went and blew it, and it summoned a dragon. Whups. Killed it and felt kinda bad that it would have just left me alone if I'd done the same for it. Just beat the game. Completion time of about 47 hours, 20 minutes. At least, the save I made in the hall after the victory party was 47:19. A good end for the game, I thought. I was quite happy with how it went down. I'm going to take a break from role playing for a bit, probably by finishing the campaign for MW2 so I can uninstall it, thus making room for the Awakenings expansion I bought yesterday when it was on sale. I assume that since my character survived the campaign, I can keep using her in the expansion?

What order did you do things in? It may have helped that it was the last thing for me. I died a hell of a lot in the Circle of Mages tower, but since I had already been through hell learning how to play earlier in the game, the deep roads weren't too much for me. I may have just been overleveled, our you were underleveled, or something. I just finished the Landsmeet. What the fucking fuck? Is there a good way to resolve this? Specifically, Also, I noticed that I had a horn in my inventory that could supposedly summon a dragon, so I took it to the mountaintop and tested it out. The thing arrived and started chewing on my mage. Like, actually picked her up and started gnawing. I killed it, but it was probably the most intense fight I've had in the game. Afterwards, I felt pretty bad about the whole thing. It was just flying around doing dragon-y things, and would never have bothered me at all if I hadn't specifically gone to great lengths to piss it off and call it to me. Now this giant creature that had been living for centuries is dead, and all to give me an achievement and some bones that a dude made into armor for me. Oh well, what's done is done. I assume all I have left now is the endgame. Everyone is building it up as such, anyway. I bought the expansion today as it was on sale on Steam, so I'll be going straight into that, I think. Cool coolgame.

Yeah, it may have been you I was responding to. I remembered some people absolutely hated the deep roads, but couldn't be arsed to look up who. I didn't find them that bad at all, and even if I had, I was done them about as quickly as I was any other section. I don't get the complaints.

Deep roads took me a night. Maybe 4 or 5 hours of play? I explored everywhere and did every quest from Orzammar, so I don't know what the issue was for you. In fairness, the past two weeks were the last half of the circle of mages, all of the dalish elves, and all of the dwarves. I had already done the Redcliff stuff a couple of months ago, then stopped playing for a while.

No, you're thinking of "007: Synopsis of Lobotomy." A very understandable mistake.

Given how much DA:O has eaten my past 2 weeks, I'll probably pick up Awakenings if it's on sale. I guess I'll see tomorrow.

Ahaha. Yeah, I can't do science for shit, but my words are pretty good for fighting.

Been playing the shit out of this for the past week. Gotta say it's been a lot of highs and lows. Particularly the section with the Dalish elves. I find Tolkien-esque fantasy to be boring beyond words at this point, so when I walked into this wooded clearing and was greeted by a bunch of skinny people with bows and pointy ears, I was really disappointed. Especially since I was playing as an elf, but she is a badass who dual-wields swords and loves chopping off heads up close. It's sad that I found it so damned refreshing that the elves were actually flawed but there you have it. I just finished with the dwarf stuff today now, not finding the deep roads to be nearly as grueling as everyone else seemed to make them out to be, and that marks the completion of the four factions. I now have everyone entreatied, and thus will shortly be embarking on what I assume will be the endgame. I have to say, given my extreme aversion to high fantasy, I'm enjoying this game far more than I ever would have thought. I'm glad I dropped the cash on it.

I'm sorry if it wasn't your intent to imply that about me, but that was how I read it and it felt unjustified. It read (again, to me) like you thought you were putting me in my place with that, and I thought a response was required. That was all I assumed from your post. The rest was me clarifying exactly what it was that was pissing me off, lest someone else (or you, if what I got from the tone of your post was incorrect) get that idea about me and discount my opinion as a result. Again though, for clarificatory purposes, at this point the only thing that irritates me about the comic itself is that art style that my brain finds insufferable. Everything else comes from lobotomy's synopsis, which I am completely willing to accept may not be representative of the comic.

I just got a philosophy degree. I spent the last five years getting pissed off at things I've read and replying to them with lengthy essays. I want my reading to piss me off, but for the right reasons. Being intellectually challenging and making a valid point that I disagree with and can have a constructive argument based on is good. Perpetuating a stupid stereotype and celebrating being a selfish twit is not. Your post is making me out to be closed-minded and offended by anything I don't agree with. This is not the case. I actively seek out readings that piss me off, but there is a difference between getting pissed off and motivated by your reading and getting frustrated that the pigeon-holing of geek culture is only being furthered in a way that makes you ashamed to enjoy your hobby. It's the difference between being irritated (and challenged) by something that David Lynch does as an artistic statement and being irritated that a movie has nothing relevant to say and has characters which are nothing but stereotypes. Again, haven't read the books. I'm going entirely off a description which was probably a one-off which was not intended to capture the full breadth of the experience. This is what that description sounded like to me though, and I resent the implication that I shelter myself and ignore media which does not confirm my beliefs.

Yeah, I think I can give that a pass now. It seems like all the parts about geek culture that I work really hard to separate myself from (geeks are losers, the primary goal in life is to find a girlfriend, finding said girlfriend is the ultimate prize, referencing shit for the sake of referencing it is clever, and that being, as you put it, "oblivious and selfish" are common traits among all geeks that deserve to be looked past because we have hearts of gold blah blah blah entitled bullshit whydon'tthecheerleadersloveme...) being extolled and celebrated. These things are bad things to be and believe, and the way you've described Scott Pilgrim makes it sound like it plays up those stereotypes. I love video games. I like a whole lot of geek culture. But that stereotype is why I still feel a twinge of shame when I call myself a gamer in mixed company. In their minds, I'm being equated with people who believe that. Granted, it may not actually be as bad as you inadvertently made it out to be. The person who was recommending Scott Pilgrim to me before is a really smart girl who knows her comics, and what you described seems like the sort of thing that really irritates her. Still, if that's the takeaway, maybe I should just keep ignoring it.

Oh wait, did you mean getting the codex pages, Patters? I still don't recall what you mean by the "fetch a flag" thing though, Nappi, so that's all I can think of. The codex pages didn't bother me because I was ridiculously anal about collecting them as I went through the story. There was not a single one that I didn't already have when that mission came up, so I didn't have to do any collecting. Hell, when I played AC1 I did every single side mission, even though you only needed to do three to get to each assassination. I just play that series in a strange way, I guess.

Fetch quest? I don't remember any fetching?

I'm pretty sure that a recent XBLA game fits the bill. I forget the name, but there was a Quick Look of it on Giant Bomb not too long ago. It was top-down, with some races and some vehicle combat. Sorry I missed out today. As I told Patters, my boss had to run out of town again so I was in at work covering for him during the festivities.

Also, they have done it a few times. The weird jingle in the background from the boat simulator trailer, for example, or when they're talking about Subject Zero.

I'll promise never to ask what that is if you promise never to tell me.

Oh my god, I want it so bad. Which platform this plays better on will determine which motion thingy I buy...

That's what the time off is to consider. My mind is currently fighting itself. The options are to continue with what I started university to do and go into professional school to be an elementary school teacher, or to keep going with philosophy as I absolutely loved it and wouldn't mind following through to attempt a doctorate and teach that one day. The latter is a lot more work, but I seem to have a talent for the subject matter and I really enjoy both the work and the presentation of it. Much to contemplate during the next few months.

Starting around September, I'll be putting together a bunch of grad school applications for Fall 2011. For now, I'm sleeping til 12 every day before going to my full time awesome night job, while also attempting to put together a life with my girlfriend before she starts up the school year this fall. Fun real life stuff. Whoo!

Nah, I'm with you. I've heard it's great, and I even believe that, but every time I come close to picking up one of the books I am completely turned off by the art and put it back. I just don't know if I can have that staring me in the face for as long as it takes to read a series. I can't even say specifically what it is, but that art style just pushed me away from it completely. EDIT: And after watching the trailer, I'm having the same reaction. Looks like it could be fun, but damn is the art irritating me for reasons I can't put my finger on. Oh well. I guess I'll give this one a pass.

I'd be interested. My friends moved the game night to a night that I find it very hard to make it to with any regularity, so I'm going into a bit of withdrawl. I also have Catan and Carcassonne on XBLA, and have been meaning to pick up Ticket To Ride for a long time, so if anyone else owns it I could be persuaded very qickly.

Oh, also: Grad presents! Mostly hand-me-downs, but when the things that are getting handed down are your stepdad's 2 year old 46 inch plasma TV and your mom's 12 year old but really well maintained Rav 4 (never had any troubles, and gets 500km on a tank), that ain't bad. I knew about the car about a month ago, but now have the keys and thus my own set of wheels. The TV is an awesome surprise, as I've been using my computer monitor to run my consoles for the last 5-ish years. Shit yes. They're both moving to another province and into a smaller place, so it's probably mostly the convenience of "we don't need two cars and two TVs and now we don't have to move them across the country" (they moved in together two years ago and still have all the stuff from both houses) that caused them to fall to me, but I'm plenty happy with the outcome.

I actually thought Flowers For a Lady was kinda predictable and that the payoff wasn't worth it. Maybe hearing other people talk about it had built it up too much, I don't know. That said, my revenge quest is now going to be suspended so that I can finish the story and see what the hell everyone is writing about in spoilers. Damn the game having an apparently great ending!

Oh, sorry. We were on XBLA, not iPhone.