Author: Dan

Categories
Computer Games

Dragon Age: Inquisition

The newest Dragon Age was pretty firmly pencilled in for a day one purchase until I watched a few preview/review videos over the weekend. The consensus seems to be that it looks amazing, the world is big, the engine is great, the particle effects are the bomb, but the gameplay is… not so great.

The original prided itself on treating your character differently according to race and background, in one of the previews I listened to the guy was playing a Qunari mage and no-one gave a crap. In Dragon Age II Qunari mages are masked and chained but you can head up the Inquisition as one and no-one bats an eyelid, that seems off. I loved playing my alienage Elf and getting crap about it, your character and class mattered in Origins, I hope it still matters here.

Some of the quests sound very much like generic RPG grind (collect 10 Ram Meat showed up a lot), and it sounds like they’ve stick with the quest acquisition system from Dragon Age II where coming across something gives you the quest which isn’t totally a bad thing but I hope there are plenty of situations where you have choice. Even though I rarely choose them there should be options to screw people over, extort them, rob them, keep things for yourself. RPGs have to be about choice.

Reviews of the combat were mixed, it seems to be geared up to hitting buttons on a controller rather than the tactical queuing of attacks though the camera seems to be able to do a hell of a lot when paused so which is only really useful for the tactical combat approach so I’ll see.

I guess I still want to play it but I’ll wait for a few reviews before I buy it, see if it gets more Origins-y after a few more hours of play.

 

Categories
Animals Illustration

The pigeons of Westeros

There are many ASOIAF AUs roaming the interwebs but this Pigeon AU by Thrumugnyr did make me smile. Until I realised that the ridiculous Lannister pigeons are real breeds:

pigeons

As the post says:

Cersei and Jaime are both fancy pigeon breeds. Jaime is a Cropper and Cersei a Jacobin. Yes these breeds actually exist. 

I’m pretty sure I’ve ranted before about how dog breeds are pretty fucked up and while pigeon fancying doesn’t look like it’s quite as cruel it’s still bloody weird:

pigeon2

Humans don’t half do some weird old shit with animals.

Categories
Geography

Endonyms

endonym1

This reminds me a little of the Atlas of True Names, Endonym Map is a map of the world with all countries labelled in the language of the people who live there.

My first thought was that Ireland should be Éire but this (and other such quibbles) are tackled in the errata.

Categories
Art People

Kokeshi

kokeshi1

More than a little mesmerising.

Kokeshi (こけし kokeshi?), are Japanese dolls, originally from northern Japan. They are handmade from wood, have a simple trunk and an enlarged head with a few thin, painted lines to define the face. The body has a floral design painted in red, black, and sometimes yellow, and covered with a layer of wax. One characteristic of kokeshi dolls is their lack of arms or legs. The bottom is marked with the signature of the artist.

Watch the craftsman at work below.

Categories
TV

Futurama Couch Gag

A show out of ideas teams up with a show out of episodes

I’m actually surprised it’s taken this long to have a Futurama couch gag, this can’t be the first, surely?

Categories
The Web

Belief

Jon Stewart was asked about BuzzFeed and Vice the other day, and had this to say:

“I scroll around, but when I look at the internet, I feel the same as when I’m walking through Coney Island,” Stewart told New York magazine. “It’s like carnival barkers, and they all sit out there and go, ‘Come on in here and see a three-legged man!’ So you walk in and it’s a guy with a crutch.”

Buzzfeed responded:

…it suggests that Stewart, like many people in the media industry, confuses what we do with true clickbait. We have admittedly (and at times deliberately) not done a great job of explaining why we have always avoided clickbait at BuzzFeed

The article goes on to talk about how the curiosity gap, the origins of clickbait in television cliffhangers (‘find out after the break’), and defends Buzzfeed’s titles as explanatory rather than the vague clickbait found elsewhere online.

The top comment on the article is a single link: a search of Buzzfeed’s articles looking for the phrase “you won’t believe”. And the list is marvellous.

You won’t believe Snowdonia is in Wales, you won’t believe that two recent pop songs can be mashed up, you won’t believe that fashion can date, that raccoons climb trees, that vader is the Dutch word for father, that Ireland is green, that people can be afraid of things, that food doesn’t require meat to taste nice, that wrestlers wear silly costumes, that bodies of water can freeze in winter, and that lots of people used to watch Friends.

You could probably title it: “You won’t believe the things Buzzfeed thinks you won’t believe“.