The Calling (Dragon Age #2)

Regular followers of my reviews will already know that I'm a huge Dragon Age fan, and specifically for the lore, which I love unpicking with my fellow fans. The Calling by David Gaider follows on from The Stolen Throne, though I suspect anyone who picks up these books will at least be conversant with the games so many of the characters will be familiar to them.

I'm no huge fan of Gaider's fiction. His writing is what I'll term is adequate, and he most certainly is in need of a developmental editor to help with characterisation and polishing up his writing. The Calling certainly flows a bit better than The Stolen Throne, and it was a more interesting read in terms of lore, but that's where it stops for me. I read this for the lore. And because I am interested in Fiona, as well as Alastair's back story.

Maric is still an idiot. Well meaning, bumbling, but an idiot. It's great seeing a little from Duncan's perspective, though here he's painted out as an irresponsible youth who's prone to childish fits of pique. And at one point of the story, I completely felt that he landed into the TSTL category. While I enjoyed this story a lot more than I did the first instalment, there were still aspects of it that made me say, "But why, mummy, why did they do this?" So, yeah, I'd liked to have seen better expression of character motivations so that I could at least understand why they responded the way they did under certain circumstances.

I will, however, recommend this one to die-hard Dragon Age fans who want that little bit of dishing out of extra lore – which is helpful, especially to those of us who write fics set in the world. But I do feel Gaider should stick to writing games and leave the fiction to those who have the feel for it.

Mass Effect: Andromeda – final verdict

Okay, so this is a follow-up from my review for Mass Effect: Andromeda that I wrote here when I had a fit of pique about aspects of the game that annoyed the ever-living crap out of me.

I haven't really changed my opinion of the game, though granted my first play-through was for the story rather than gameplay. If you're looking for the impact that BioWare stories have that every raves about the earlier games, you're not going to feel it here. I ran with the Jaal romance on this play-through and though there'd been much anticipation about this before the game's release, I was underwhelmed to say the least. And I'm not sufficiently invested in the game to immediately play it afresh but with different romance options like I was with Dragon Age: Inquisition. That says something.

As friends of mine noted, the primary quest for ME:A doesn't take all that long, and it was mostly go to this location, take out a few consoles here, free these peeps, kill that dude, and then GTFO. I think because I was playing the game on casual setting, I missed out on pushing the combat system to its full capabilities, and should I have the time and motivation in the future, I'll most certainly take longer and focus on combat, crafting and technique, and play the game on a harder level ... and take my sweet time with it. Which means I'll probably not play through the entire game again by the time I get bored. Because, let's face it, there's a kind of monotony to every quest in ME:A. I heard folks bitching that Dragon Age: Inquisition was already bloated with fetch quests, but oddly enough they didn't bother me as much as they did in ME:A.

There was a huge lot of frothing about bugs and glitches about the game, and unfortunately my play-through had its fair share. Perhaps the most annoying was the times when saved games bombed the game upon a return between gaming sessions, and if it weren't for the earlier autosaves, I'd have lost entire chunks of gameplay. And yes, there was that bloody annoying permabroke issue with the Nomad. Okay, it's not totally a permabroke thing but for the love of fuck, get all your forwarding stations set up before you spend more time on Elaaden. Don't be like Nerine who needed that forwarding station and ended up trashing three hours of game play because there was no way for her to fix her fucking Nomad. Yes, that made me boiling mad.

What did I enjoy? Okay, once I got used to driving the Nomad vehicle, it was loads of fun. And I really, really enjoyed my Remnant-tech sniper rifle. In fact, should I decide to play this game again, I'm going to focus on building up Rem-tech research points and spend time crafting a sick armour and weapons set-up. There was something seriously satisfying in being out of visible distance and taking out all my enemies before they saw me. [Says she who'll most likely either play mage or archer in RPGs]

What's nice also is that you're not locked down to a character concept. Although I started out as a biotic but then upskilled with more sniping skills. My secondary weapon ended up being an Asari sword. My tactic ended up being sniping as many kills from a safe distance, then going in blasting with biotics and my sword, so that I ended up almost like some crazy-ass Jedi. That was loads of fun.

Team members I opted for eventually were Cora, because of her sick shield boosting, and Jaal because he ended up being real bad-ass back-up for my sniper Ryder. Vetra wasn't bad either, and Drack was perfect for when I needed a serious tank.

The lack of any real consequences to choices was the main issue for me with the story. What Dragon Age got *so* right was the emotional wringer they put me through. When I finished Trespasser I moped for weeks after, cursing a certain bald apostate hobo elf roundly. (I honestly felt as if I'd just been dumped.) And there was That Thing with A Certain Party Member that was a real consequence of action taken during the main game that hit me in the feels so hard I felt really, really horrid.

The only thing that made me feel horrid in ME:A was a decision I made that impacted Drack. Yet even that wasn't as heavy as Varric asking me "Where is Hawke?" during one of my DA:I play-throughs. (And the reason why I never ever leave Hawke in the Fade ever again because fuck I love Varric so much and I don't ever, ever want to do anything to make him cry.)

Can you see what the issue is here? There is none of that passionate "oh my god I love these characters so much I'magonna puke" I get with Dragon Age. I was fond of Drack. Jaal's voice reduced me to a slight quivering in my ladybits, and Cora was like a reboot of Cassandra, which is why I took her with me. Everywhere.

Yes, the terrains are lovely, but the wildlife, such as it was, was much of a muchness. The same fucking little bird critters flying around Elaaden are right there in Havarl. It's like BioWare didn't take much time to create enough variance in the eco-systems to give each planet enough of a stamp of individuality. Yes, they're still fun to roar through, and the fact that the environments start out toxic, makes some of the travel quite challenging, but it all started to feel the same but slightly different flavour. Oh, this planet is freezing, this one's radioactive, this one's got poisonous water...

The theme of a twin Ryder was kinda neat, but I feel from a story-telling side they could have done more with it. Though things did go pretty dire for my Scott Ryder, I never really felt that he was in any true danger, and was a bit disappointed that he couldn't play a more active role in the story. His involvement halfway through felt more like an afterthought than anything else.

Anyhoo, I didn't totally hate ME:A, and it's really not a bad game (and the environments are lush). The multiplayer was pretty fun too, but I am honestly not invested enough in the game to spend any more time on it than I already have. It has replay value but its repetitive nature and fetch quests can become stale quickly.

Mass Effect: Andromeda (update)

Right. I'm now 50% through Mass Effect Andromeda, and I've come to the sudden realisation that I've stopped caring about the game. None of the characters truly hit me in the feels – I honestly don't have that squishy, emotional mushiness I had with games like Brothers or Dragon Age. The much-vaunted romance frustrating. The gameplay is repetitive. I know I'm OCD, but there are only so many fetch quests I can stomach.

Sure, the maps are lovely, but after last night I feel as if the game is a chore. What nearly did my head in yesterday was the perma-broke glitch with the Nomad on Elaaden. Apparently there is a way to fix it, but then you need to have activated the northern-most forwarding station (which I hadn't). So, guess what? I lost 2 hours of gameplay going back to an earlier save where I still had a functioning Nomad. Fast travel didn't fix the fuck-up either. Nice one, BioWare. Nice one. [grumbles]

My overall conclusion about the game, after reading this article and having a good ponder about my own experiences thus far, is that it was doomed from the start due to multiple reasons, and the fact that it was rushed through to shipping with so may glitches, I just can't even. I'm going to give myself another weekend or two to finish the main quest, and then I'm done here.

I'm really disappointed, as ME:A has so much going for it, but it's cumbersome, badly put together (I mean, haring halfway around the galaxy on Yet Another Fetch Quest and then another ... and then another). BioWare bit off too much with this game, and it's a Frankenstruct of some really schwaai ideas that kinda lumber around making groaning noises while knocking over furniture.

Things going for it include the neat combat system, which was fun (and challenging). And I must thank ME:A for teaching me how to play a shooter, because I was horribly resistant to the idea of playing a shooter up until this point.

Next up on my plate will be Horizon Zero Dawn, however, sooner rather than later. I've been told that even though I still refuse to play Witcher 3, I MUST MUST MUST give Horizon Zero Dawn a chance. (And yes, I have a soft spot for archers, so this is likely.)

A thought on open-world gaming: There is a reason why Skyrim is such a timeless classic, despite there being a skeletal story (and it justifiably being called the "golf" of RPGs). It feels like a second world you can live in, where you can customise the kind of experience you want. As a world it feels cohesive. ME:A just feels ... sparse, hastily populated, where you never really feel as if the choices you make have any real impact on the final outcome. I know that a good RPG plays with the idea that you have the illusion of choice, but I felt with Dragon Age this illusion carried through a lot better, and the game just felt tighter. I'll happily play all the Dragon Age games again (and again). I'm just not sure whether I'll be returning to Mass Effect, even if it's to play the older games.

Journey #review

I’m not the world’s greatest gamer – just ask my husband creature. I’m a latecomer to console games, and spent the first few hours of playing Elder Scrolls V walking into walls, trees, bears... While (at time of writing) I’m still afflicted with Dragon Age Inquisition, I’ve also taken a little time out to play an indie game the nice young man at BT Games at our local mall said I’d enjoy.

According to Wikipedia, Journey is an indie video game developed by Thatgamecompany and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 3. It was released on March 13, 2012, via the PlayStation Network.

Okay, that’s the nitty gritty. I bought my copy for PS4, and never before have I appreciated surround sound as much as I did with this one.

This is a pretty game, and if you’re not one for scenarios where you crawl up walls or engage in intricate button mashing to kill your many-tentacled opponent, this one might suit you. The nice young man said Journey is very restful, so yeah, there he’s spot on.

If you’re playing this as part of your PS Plus, you stand the chance of meeting other players in real time, which is kinda sweet, because the only way you can communicate is by prancing around with the little robed figure you play or pinging them with your special powers. You’ll recognise other gamers who’ve played this before, because their cloaks will have extra patterns on.

At its heart, Journey is a simple quest game. Your character travels through a ruined, desert landscape towards a mysterious mountain. Along the way you solve simple puzzles and, by moving the controller, you can control how your character moves. If you get it right you can even fly (a little). Unlike the first time I played Elder Scrolls V, I soon got the hang of this (and you can possibly even let your octogenarian mother try this at home).

The graphics are simple, yet achingly exquisite, but then again I’ve always had a soft spot for ruined landscapes. And, while I don’t think it’s possible for you to die in this game, there was a dark moment where I was genuinely afraid (you’ll know it when you see it) and my heart beat quite a bit faster. The only frustration I had was near the end, where I had to co-ordinate with the floaty jellyfish things in order to fly. Timing and aiming skills were useful. But then, as I’ve stated, I’m not the world’s greatest console player.

A word on the music – it’s by Austin Wintory and is beautiful, haunting and indescribably atmospheric. Go get it on Bandcamp.

All in all, this is a soft, mystical experience. There are no surprises – I had an inkling there’d be some sort of mystical resolution, and I was correct. But I finished with a soft sigh and smile. This game is deceptively simple, but it’s really, really special.

Dragon Age: The World of Thedas Volume 1 #review

Title: Dragon Age: The World of Thedas Volume 1
Introductions by Mike Laidlaw and David Gaider
Publisher: Dark Horse Books, 2013

Every once in a while there’s a book I simply must have a physical copy of in the house, and this is one of them. Hardcover, full colour printing throughout and devastatingly beautiful art – enough to make me want to purr, caress its cover and breathe sweet nothings into its pages.

This is one for the fans of BioWare’s Dragon Age game franchise, and it’s well worth the clams forked out and the effort of importing. (And rushing down to the postbox every time the postman whizzes by on his bicycle.)

{And yes, I’m still smarting from the import duties SARS gifted me with for the privilege of buying this book.}

What’s clear from the three games brought out so far is that the fantasy world of Thedas is chock full of lore – so much so that I’d hazard to say that given a few years the peeps at BioWare are going to give Tolkien a run for his money. As it is, they’re snapping at his heels.

Volume 1 pretty much reads like a traveller’s guide to Thedas, not only giving a timeline for events – starting with the rise and fall of the elves’ Arlathan, to the expansion of the sprawling Tevinter Empire and the subsequent blights, but also giving an overview of the races, nations, magic, religion, the fade, the blight and assorted wildlife. This volume is by no means exhaustive, but serves as a good introduction to the setting without giving away too many spoilers for those who’ve yet to play the games.

Even my husband – who’s patiently still waiting for me to get over my fascination with the game – had to admit that the book’s layout and art are pretty darn impressive. This is a pretty book – there’s no denying that. It will cause the fans to make grabby fingers. It’s also useful as reference for those who’re addicted to unpicking canon and who may wish to create fanfiction. And volume 2 arrived recently in the mail too. Like my centenary edition of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings that also graces my permanent book collection, this one’s a keeper.

As a storyteller, I’m envious of those writers who’ve had the chance to contribute to the creation of this world, and as the map suggests, the games, books and comics have only scratched the surface of all the possible future tales yet to be told. Yes, this is standard high fantasy involving elves, dragons, mages and brave warriors, but it’s what the content creators say with these stories and their art that is important – touching on many important issues. The world of Thedas matters, because in many ways those existing, familiar tropes resonate on a deeper level. The fact that so many of the heroes are tragic, and are faced with impossible choices that turn out badly no matter what, attests to the fact that the BioWare writers are basically horrible, evil people who love to torment gamers. But we love them anyway and keep returning for second helpings. And the great thing about the games is that for a while we can tune out the real world where we have little agency, and plunge ourselves into a world where we are the heroes who can and do make a difference.

The Elfish Gene by Mark Barrowcliffe #review #memoirs

Title: The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons and Growing Up Strange
Author: Mark Barrowcliffe
Publisher: Soho Press, 2009

Warning: If you’re hoping this is a book extolling the virtues of fantasy roleplaying as a positive outlet for socially marginalised teens then WRONG. This is not the book you’re looking for. Step away while you still can and go read some fanfiction. What The Elfish Gene is, however, is Mark Barrowcliffe’s memoirs of growing up in Coventry during the 1970s, and how as a completely gauche, socially maladjusted teen he fled into the world of fantasy RPGs because he simply couldn’t cope with reality.

This is a tragic book. And it made me incredibly sad. Mark comes across as bitter about his past, possibly bitter about the fact that he was so lost in the games that he wasn’t functioning in society. These are not the types of memory I have of my own gaming days, and after finishing this book, I almost feel tainted. I ask myself, is this how I am with regard to the books, games and films I get excited about? To the exclusion of participating in the world at large?

Then again, I don’t recall the sheer, blithering nastiness of my fellow gamers that Mark does. Possibly, one can say that boys will be boys, but I’m an anomaly in that regard – a girl who likes her fantasy RPGs a little too much. Sure, I met a few like Mark at the few events that we had in Cape Town during the 1990s, but I avoided them. The rest of the folks were just incredibly fun to be around, all student types, and we had really good times.

What I got from The Elfish Gene is mostly Mark’s bitterness, suggestive of deep-rooted self-loathing, that he had to dig deep and bring up all that was ugly. And, yes, it’s easy to see how games like D&D can create festering little dick-measuring contests among folks, but FFS, there’s more it than what he states.

Yes, there are bits that are genuinely laugh-out-loud funny, like Mark’s Ninja escapades, but most of the time I felt I was laughing *at* him for being such a sad puppy, and I was really glad to be done with the book. Yes, also to the fact that Mark pokes sticks at valid issues with the social interaction with *some* gamers, but yikes… I needed to read something uplifting and joy-making after this. As a snapshot into a particular era, however, and the mentality of the people at the time, this book is fascinating, in the same way as one is sometimes compelled to rubberneck at the scene of a gruesome motor vehicle accident involving a drunk pedestrian, errant livestock and a lorry transporting manure.

To game, or not to game, is this even a question?

When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I was an avid gamer. I think it probably had something to do with the fact that I didn’t grow up with any gaming consoles in the home, so every chance I got to play, I took it. My parents raised me to believe that gaming was a colossal waste of time, reserved for naughty boys who didn’t do their homework and who never amounted to much after they finished school.

(Granted, this was probably brought on by my brother, who used to hang out in a dingy back room at our local superette where the boys used to smoke, swear and jimmy Pac-Man with washers so that they could have free games.)

I still remember visiting my friend Katherine, whose dad had one of those PCs you booted up with floppy discs, and you could play games like Space Invaders and Hangman. Hardly riveting stuff. My other friend Chavane’s dad had a PC that had *gasp* a stiffy drive, and we used to play Buck Rogers and the Planet of Zoom. Or rather, I’d watch Chavane’s brothers play it. I was worse than useless and kept crashing into things.

Fast-forward to the mid-1990s, where I was introduced to Master of Magic, a turn-based fantasy RPG game. Now we were talking. Each time you started a new game, the software would randomly generate a new map. Things were different each time, and you could customise your wizards. I lost track of how much I played that game. Hours of my life I’ll never get back, but I don’t regret one minute. My boyfriend at the time complained that the only reason I wanted to spend time at his house was so that I could use his 586 to play “that fucking game”. I know that I could probably get a simulator and run Master of Magic on my Macbook now. So far, I’ve resisted the temptation, no matter how much my wicked friend Andrew says he can set it up. I have a life.

Or so I thought.

I also did a fair amount of RPGs and LARPs during my student and young adult years – mostly White Wolf’s Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse. I also freely admit that most of my novels I now write are based on my love of storytelling that was fostered during my student years. Except now I no longer have players to meticulously destroy my carefully constructed worlds. [Yes, Tim, Rob and Maarten, I’m looking at you.]

Once upon a time, I had to babysit my brother’s kids. I used to let them sit up watching movies while I played Age of Empires on my brother’s computer. Needless to say, the last time I let them watch Hellboy, and Mikayla got scared, my brother decided not to let us damage their impressionable young minds again. AoE was wicked, though, since I have a major soft spot for games that have that level of interaction with the environment.

Up until 2006 I still gamed regularly. By this stage, we’d progressed onto getting a Mac G5, ostensibly so the husband could occasionally work from home. I remember at that time thinking that R30k was a lot to drop on a home computer. [laughs weakly]

But I used this puppy for playing my favourite Blizzard games, namely StarCraft II and WarCraft III. This was round about the time that the internet was becoming way more accessible to normal people. And then, hello, World of WarCraft happened and I gave up gaming.

Why?

I wanted to write books. If you're idly curious, yes, you can go check out my Amazon author page. I've been a busy girl.

Also, the internet was bloody expensive back then. And slow.

So, I wrote books. I wrote quite a few, some of which I’m not going to actively encourage anyone to read because the headspace where I’m now is very different from where I was then. But, as they say, every author has a book they must get out of their system before they can move onto better things. In my case I wrote a whole slew of titles. Catharsis. I’m a better person for it. Promise.

I thought the gaming thing was over. I thought I’d gotten gaming out of my system. That it was a phase of my life that I’d put behind me.

[Go on. Laugh all you want.]

A few years ago the husband won a PS3 in a photography competition. I remember at the time thinking that money would have been nice. What on earth were we to do with a PS3? Neither of us was into gaming. We used the PS3 as a fancy DVD player and media centre, and streamed media off the computer onto the geriatric CRT telly we’d inherited from a friend’s brother because a piece of the screen had been chipped out (you really didn’t see it when you were gazing deep into Johnny Depp’s eyes) and the right-hand side of the screen tended to have this weird magenta effect.

I don’t quite remember which game it started with, but a friend lent the husband one of his. I think it was LA Noire. That was it for the husband. Tickets. I lost the him, and he started trawling Cash Crusaders every week to pick up new games.

I still wasn’t sold, BTW. I thought it awfully adorable that hubby was playing games. None of the available games attracted my attention. Assassin’s Creed didn’t blow my hair back. That is, until my friend Brian showed me Skyrim. By that stage, we’d purchased a friend’s old 40” flatscreen TV, and we’d invested in a decent surround sound system. Yes. Things were getting serious.

Serious enough for us to start pre-ordering games from BT Games at the local mall. Serious enough
that zOMG, open-world RPG! Sold! Something snapped into place for me. What I loved was that I could create a character, be a specific race (hello, erm, elves, khajiit) and just explore an entire world with all sorts of stuff happening. It took me two or three game sessions to co-ordinate moving and looking around. Let’s not talk about how often I walked into walls, okay?

But I really cut my teeth on Skyrim. The world was so big, I literally got lost in it. There was constantly something new to discover. And ugh. Spiders. Yuck.

From there, the rest has been history. I’ve come to realise that there’s a lot more to creating a world than the old games I was always told by supposedly older and wiser people were a total waste of time. Creating a beautiful, tangible world filled with lore and relatable characters is an art form, one that I, as a storyteller, can totally understand. In a way, it’s more special than the movies, because in a game, you are totally immersed and part of a world. You are able to effect change instead of passively sitting there and just absorbing what others do. Your decisions matter, and that’s more than can be said for real life.

Put a bunch of gamers in a room, and you’ll discover people who’re passionate who, despite coming from vastly different cultural backgrounds, have a common, shared culture through gaming, and a sense of camaraderie despite their age, religion or nationality. We gush about Cullen’s curly blond locks or bitch about whether we like Dorian’s moustache.

Recently when I was on a panel for the Franschhoek Literary Festival young readers programme, I dropped that I play games, and immediately the eyes lit up. They breathlessly wanted to know *which* games I liked. The age gap *POOF* vanished. We now had something in common. I’ve sat at dinner tables with bored teens, with whom I’ve casually struck up a conversation about games, and suddenly, instant friendships are formed.

I also now religiously trawl BioWare and CD Projekt Red’s sites to see whether they have job openings for writers…

My childhood dream of seeing one of my stories scripted for a film has been replaced by this insane dream to be part of the crew helping to create lore for a new game.

I don’t feel guilty about gaming anymore, because it’s something I give myself permission to do once I’ve finished my other work and studies. (Oddly, I rarely watch films or TV series anymore. I get frustrated when I can’t change a storyline.) People comment that I seem rested, and in buoyant spirits when I arrive at work on a Monday. As if I’ve just come back from a holiday. And, in a sense, I have. Whether I visit Thedas so I can go romance Dorian Pavus and close rifts, or hunt griffins as a Witcher, I’m relishing this opportunity to step outside of reality into a different world where I am a person with agency, where I can shoot fireballs out of my hands.

Screw the Maldives, let’s hunt dragons.