Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Thanksgiving Plans and Dragon Age

Sadly, I have finals on Thanksgiving, so I won't really be celebrating on Thursday. Fortunately, the other Fulbrighter were nice enough to move our Thanksgiving celebration (Fulbright tradition) back one day. We are spending the weekend in Kyoto and I am really excited about meeting everyone again. I fell slightly bad that I won't really be contributing to the feast though. While some others are bringing nice food and stuff, my limited cooking skills mean I will probably be providing money/supermarket food. The good thing about having finals now is that I have a few days off after the weekend (but we have less than a week off between quarters) so I can stay in the Kansai region for a bit longer.

Also finally finished one play-through of Dragon Age. It literally took away one week of my life, sigh. Great game though, and the storyline is more mature than most RPGs. When I play RPGs I tend to go for the "good" choices. In Dragon Age, sometimes there is no "right" choice. Do you support the Prince who basically killed and schemed his brothers on his way to the throne but will be a strong and progressive king who wants to have equality? Or the chancellor who was hand-picked by the king on his deathbed but is conservative, would be a weak king, and supports the caste system? The strong possible tyrant like Caesar or a someone who whose policies will bring about civil war and unrest. In one scenario you can choose whether to destroy an artifact that can basically create super-soldiers, which are very important when your side could be massacred by monsters anything soon. The cost, it takes one life to create one soldier. Will you be pragmatic or the idealistic one? I had a hard time with decisions and while I didn't get to really play the moralistic main character this time I appreciate how the story developed. Not so happy about how much time I spent on it though.

I am glad that RPGs on the computer (non-MMORPG variety) have not completely died out. Computer RPGs were some of my favorite games in my childhood and arguably why I started semi-gaming. Old fashioned single player RPGs are still the best IMO.

Oh, and James, in the game the leader of a gang of slavers was named....Caladrius. I nearly laughed when I saw the name because that would be the last job in the world I expect you to have. I really considered letting him go too but in the end poor Caladrius just had to die for his crimes, haha.

1 comment:

  1. Don't worry, I agree, haha! :) In Fallout 3, I completely massacred the slaver town my first time going there, it didn't even occur to me that I could actually choose not to kill them. Sounds like Caladrius had it coming!

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