In the wake of Dragon Age Cate and I were having a giggle over how those people in the rendered trailers and TV spots have nothing to do with the in-game characters, save unnervingly emitting the same voices.   This turned to wondering why, when that Warden’s eyes are always smoldering supernatural blue in these things, Gray Wardens in-game don’t display any clear differences from normal dudes.  In turn this had us thinking there ought to be a Gray Warden-specific talent string you could invest in with the Warden and with Alistair, one of which ought to be “Awesome Blue Eye Smolder.”  Doesn’t even have to do anything else; we’d spend a point there, regardless, just to differentiate.

But the disconnect between that prerendered ad material and the actual game got me thinking again about how irritating that kind of thing is.

When games looked like FFVII and everyone’s in-game models had inscrutable juggling clubs for hands it made sense to cut to a prerendered sequence to nail the action and emotion of an important turn in the story.  Anymore, the stuff is unnecessary — character models have expressive, articulate faces these days, and seeing an in-game model react believably to a situation just feels more “alive” than notchily cutting to a prerendered sequence handled by a different team with characters, lighting and environments that look similar, but different.  FFXII was a stunning example of this; the in-game models were phenomenal-looking for a PS2 game and featured some of the broadest emotive capability I’ve ever seen, and yet the game frequently jumped to wooden-looking FMV where Balthier was suddenly Asian and bleached his hair.

Going out of your way to create things that rupture suspension of disbelief is stupid.

So I’ve finished Dragon Age: Origins.

It is the kind of game I used to hate.   Rough around the edges, with a bland western fantasy aesthetic and character building lifted wholesale from D&D.   I grew up on kawaii bullshit and pretty protagonists that could effortlessly punch through schools — getting to where I’d even look at unapologetically western games built around what PC gamers have come to love and expect versus what I cut my teeth on as a console JRPG kid has been a long and roundabout road.  Meandering through Elder Scrolls games, full loot MMORPGs and casual stabs at P&Ps (not to mention hurtling toward 30 and getting tired of the kinds of interpersonal melodrama and teenagers with attitude that typify Japanese RPGs) I eventually found myself at a vantage point from which I could appreciate a game like Dragon Age.  Summarily, I pulled my head out of my ass just in time.

I played DA:O alongside my sister, with she on the PC version (which I’ll hereafter refer to as the One True Gospel) and I on my PS3.  The version disparity dead horse has been beaten elsewhere but the game can’t be discussed without this coming into play.  Moreover, I think shit has been grossly understated elsewhere.  DA:O does not come in PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 versions;  DA:O is a PC game with bullshit, awkward, phoned-in console ports that just happened to be simultaneously released.  People talk about how the 360 version has ugly textures but preferable, steady framerates, the PS3 version is notchy but features better textures and colors that pop more (what) and the PC is the standout, with its capacity for zoomed-out tactical views and a slightly more elegant interface.  This talk is garbage.  Simply put, the game looks like absolute ass in its console incarnations.  I say this not as a graphics whore, or someone who doesn’t get Bioware RPGs;  I say this as someone who’s played the game on both a PS3 and a modestly endowed PC.  The PC version is actually attractive. The textures are appealing, the vertigo-inducing shimmer nonexistent, the lighting natural.  The tactical view is nice, but nicer still is a bright, responsive UI that puts everything at your fingertips and looks decent doing it.  Where the PC menus are dark-on-white and recall venerable tomes, the game’s console counterparts are dark and twisted, light-on-black Moonsiders crippled by some of the worst interface lag I’ve ever seen.

Now, remember: I said up there that I myself finished the withered and reviled PS3 Dragon Age, not the sainted PC version.  Even so, I am reminded what fandom feels like; it’s been awhile since playing through a game left me with a genuine pit of regret in my gut that my time with it was over. 

Every version of the game is plagued with niggling faults and outright bugs.  Bafflingly long load times, frequently fucked-up event queuing, easy-to-break NPC AI.   Outfits like Bioware (and Bethesda, and others) are never taken to task for this stuff because stupid oversights are easier to forgive in the face of scope and ambition, and DA:O is all about both.

The character interractions are a goddamned joy.  I think George was starting to feel genuinely annoyed with my attachment to sometimes-lion, sometimes-emokid Alistair.  I spent the endgame in impressively rising dread at whatever might come between the latter and my character, and in fact had to rollback to a previous save a couple times to ensure I was able to pull a happy ending from an awesomely nuanced shitfire of circumstance.

I was used to rolling back to a previous save, though. DA:O is not a brutally hard game, but it doesn’t pull its punches, either.  Encounters are tough, frequently requiring you to rethink your strategy and approach them from a different angle, sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally.  They’re more or less finite, too, so grinding out a few more levels to overpower a boss is generally not an option.

And now pardon an abrupt end to my rambling but I have to close up shop for the night (I’m writing from work) and head home so I can get back to that second playthrough.

Not the 3-hour masterpiece a friend of mine carved this year (not Azzy, either), but significantly more brütal, anyway:

… but seriously, the game is entirely too short.  What ought to be at least a third of the game amounts to a single brief stage battle that leaves you feeling like those particular game assets kind of went to waste.

And the multiplayer’s a bit of a wreck so I really do feel done with the game, far too soon.  I could’ve gone for more.

I guess I’ll have to wait a bunch more years and publisher-related dramas for more Double Fine.

Next up: Dragon Age.  Probably.  Meanwhile, why didn’t anyone tell me there was an Electric Six track pack for Rock Band?

Unrelated, Where the Wild Things Are could only be improved by my being 20+ years younger.  The bipolar reeling from highs to lows and the overall emotional tone were pitch perfect; exactly like being 5.

So I’ve had enough time with Brütal Legend now to have an opinion.

It’s everything I expected, which means, among other things, that it defies classification.  If I was forced to try and liken the game to something else I think I’d have to say Warcraft 3 + Zelda: Wind Waker + Rock ‘n’ Roll Racing + Tim Schafer.   Warcraft 3 is the principle ingredient there for a reason; the game has long been purported to feature “RTS elements”; this is kind of a massive understatement. About half the time the game is an RTS and its multiplayer focuses solely on this facet.

Jerry Holkins mentioned this but controlling something that is unquestionably an RTS with a console controller is awkward.  I spend about half my time in a given stage battle selecting the wrong unit, or selecting all the units, or issuing orders that are precisely the inverse of what I wanted to happen. This is often hilarious as it’s thematically in keeping with the Brütal Legend tale — i.e. Eddie Riggs, roadie extraordinaire, attempts to organize clueless misfits — but it’s frustrating just as often.  It’s also easily forgivable in the context of a game this ambitious and this tailored to my own personal preferences.  It’s hilarious, it’s gorgeous, it’s deep.  It’s totally metal, man.

That crazy homeless squatter Spectre-X is back up.

Thanks to Mr. Deveria, tireless avenger of the interwebs (and his lovely wife, who held my hand while he poked through all the tubes).

… has come and gone.   You may or may not have noticed the switch to the new web host; one enduring sign is Spex’s restored blog’s inscrutable database problems.  Don’t quite have those ironed out, yet.  Mine — and a sekrut, third one — had issues of their own but they were easily solved.  Random.

You’ll find the squidboard is back.   I’d like to say better than ever but it’s phpBB-driven again so that’d just be a lie.

Also: snow.