Dragon Age 2: Replay Thoughts

I've been playing Dragon Age 2 again lately, because honestly, I missed it. It was fun.

I've also been playing Dragon Age: Origins again, and I'll eventually import that save into 2, then use the decisions of both in the Keep for my third inquisitor. Big plans. Right now I'm mucking about on a 'just for fun' 2 save.

I don't take many screenshots, because I play with subtitles on, but I have a couple, one of my Hawke's usual team, and a close-up of the blood mage himself. (Most of the time, he's a normal mage, but damn is blood magic handy in a tight spot. No wonder half of Kirkwall resorts to it.)

Pictured: Fenris wearing the red armband of 'has banged Hawke', Hawke, Varric's blood-repelling chest-hair, and some pious bastard in blinding white armour. Compare with Sassmaster Hawke's similar team shot.

There's a lot I've forgotten about this game, like who leaves/doesn't come back if the approval numbers aren't ideal, and maybe Varric is why I had persistent gore turned off in the first place, and so on. I feel like I'm fumbling my way through a first playthrough again, and that is something amazing.

It's been interesting watching this Hawke evolve as events unfold, most notably his personality. Act 1, 100% sarcastic dialogue. Act 2, 50-75% sarcastic dialogue. Act 3, all over the wheel. The point where things start tumbling down is in one quest, where, on selecting the funny option, Hawke gets most of the way through the line before breaking off and saying 'that's not funny at all, actually', in a serious tone. I always second guess the comedic dialogue choices after that.

I really only gave him blood mage speciality because I didn't need the second speciality point - biotic force magic is all I need. (I am a terrible healer.) But it has been handy to switch to for the extra power, crank out a few heavy spells after the mana runs dry.

Also, the Fenris romance is interesting, but could use more 'but I'm a mage' at times. I was hoping for more conflict, but I had to drag him around while I was trying to get Carver's friendship up, didn't I? I did indeed max Carver's friendship, and Fenris' in the process. I'll have to try a rival romance with him another time.

BIG Inquisition Spoilers. No really. Huge. OR: My brother noticed another thing.

Previous 'My brother noticed a thing' post. (Mass Effect spoilers.)

So... this time it was ambient noise. "When I stand here, and this character is not in my line of sight, I hear this noise."

Read more jump going in here.

BIG spoilers below.

Seriously, it's a thing you don't learn until the after-credits scene.

Oh, and there's an after-credits scene, so stick around for that.

Note: Not labelling this post with the character involved, as that could also be a spoiler.

Crafting

And the exact moment I decided to craft my companions' armour:

Blackwall: Looking good. Inquisitor: Exquisite. Dorian: ...

Really, though. Plaideweave?

That's more like it. Not the armour he finished the game in, but better than plaideweave.

Here was the end-game armour for my Inquisitor and Dorian:

Matching hats! I made four of them, then ran out of lambswool. Varric has one, and I think Blackwall wound up with the fourth. Until this point, I had 'hide helmets' option checked. They're still hidden in cutscenes, I didn't see an option to turn that off, but they look great in the wild.

For my Inquisitor, I prefer the armour in the first two screenshots to the one he ended up in. Mostly for the colours - if I had the latter armour in those colours it probably would be my favourite. Still, it's not bad.

Anyway, some spoiler-free info on this playthrough: Romanced Dorian. Played 95 hours before going to the final fight. Left a bazillion sidequests undone. Gave up on the war table about 60 hours in, kept sending my people out as soon as they were free, but so many markers, still so many.

Dragon Age Inquisition: First Thoughts

I'm barely out of the first zone, and all the screenshots in this post come from before the main title splash screen. I've also avoided anything with subtitles or that might be a visual spoiler.

Firstly, I'm very glad I recently upgraded my graphics card, because this game is really using it. Looks amazing.

The controls are a little awkward, and I think it's going to take longer to get used to them than usual, but we'll see. Combat is a struggle right now, steep learning curve, but I'll get there.

You can actually flirt with the restricted romance options, they just turn you down. Can't tell you how much I would have loved something like this after Garrus' reach and flexibility chat. (He shares that story to male Shepards too.) So far my male inquisitor has flirted with Cullen, who is only available to female humans and elves. It was adorably awkward. Didn't flirt with Cassandra, although I'm warming up to her faster than I expected.

The character creator is probably the greatest one I've seen so far. Everything down to eyelash length...

Pictures of my Inquisitor, a human rogue by the name of Mitchell Trevelyan:

I think of him as the inquisitive inquisitor, every time a dialogue option includes a question, I pick a question. Seemed like a good idea from a player perspective, to get all the background info, and a feel for the characters. I'm playing blind here, only the dialogue and codex to guide me. Well, that, and experience with DAO and DA2.

I'm enjoying watching his face as he bumbles around cluelessly, the expressions are excellent. I omitted some of the better ones because there were subtitles on the frames. I could crop those out, but, I could also go back to the new game I just got.

Also, for a first character in a Bioware game, Mitchell isn't doing too badly. For one, I still like his face. This was probably the first time I didn't exit back to the menu and try again.

"I think I'll upgrade my graphics card."

One week later... my computer is finally fully operational again. That was fun. BUT! It's done now! Shiny new graphics card! Runs a lot cooler and faster than my old one. I am looking forward to games where the settings aren't 'textures:high, everything else:low/off', and the FPS matches my monitor's refresh rate.

I just hope I don't have to do this again for a while.

Sovereign?

"Vanguard of our destruction? How's that working out for you, big guy?"

The lamp is called 'The Sovereign', and the description reads: Innocent jellyfish or malicious alien lifeform? You decide, with this great conversation-starter!

Not sure whether to buy lots of this lamp for Kaidan and Shepard's place, or avoid this lamp for Kaidan and Shepard's place. The latter is probably safer.

I eventually want to build them a lot that looks like it's made out of the prefab units seen on some Mass Effect human colony worlds, but I'm not entirely sure if that'll work. It'd be so much easier if Sims 4 had ladders, I must admit. What is a Mass Effect build without either ladders or elevators? I mean, really?

Sims 4: Build Mode

There are a few amazing features in Sims 4 build mode, but for the most part, it's build mode, you build, nothing too exciting. So this post will be mostly screenshots. Note that I play on medium graphics for the most part, so the game can look better than this on a better computer.

No octagonal roof, which is something I found myself wishing I'd checked before settling on a design that called for three of them. Oh well, I made do.

Not shown here: You can choose different tiles for each individual roof piece! Finally! I'm debating recolouring the roof of the 'extension' out to the side there.

The curved fences are great, but they require space. The turret upstairs extends into the required space, so I couldn't put one upstairs. I may change the downstairs railings to not be rounded, we'll see.

Plants need watering. Yes, I queued that up for the Sim.

I did find the 'move the entire house' ability very useful, I was able to start building right away, not worrying if it would fit or not. If I needed more room on any side, I just moved the thing around until I could fit everything in.

Note: It's also possible to move around individual rooms, as well as rotate the house or rooms.

When I was done, I spent half an hour just shifting the entire house one square this way, two squares that, trying to figure out where on the lot it worked best. A blessing and a curse, maybe.

I have no idea why it's so dark inside.

The interior is rather sparsely decorated for now, especially the upstairs bedrooms, but I'll work on decorating, bit by bit. This sim now has the Mansion Baron aspiration, and one of the requirements in the first stage of that is to display 15 pieces of art. So that's something I will be working on.

Just your typical 3 bedroom, 6 bathroom sim house, really.

Serrice Ice Brandy

Since I was healing Shepard's scars anyway, I figured I'd drop in on Chakwas and share a drink. I love this scene, it's one of the few times Shepard gets to relax, unwind. Poor guy is under so much pressure.

"Here's to simply being happily drunk!"
"I'll drink to that!"

It's also a nice scene with Chakwas, she really doesn't get much to do. I must admit, I almost never go to sickbay, because I know she never has new lines. In fact, this time, I had started a mission before I remembered 'oh yeah, the scars', and had to come back to the ship to deal with that. But the Normandy just wouldn't be the same without her. (My renegade didn't have her in 3. It was not the same.)

Next up: Zaeed's loyalty mission (maybe - I'll save first and reload if I can't get his loyalty with my meagre paragon points) because I want to see if the Archangel mission, with all those mercs, is any different after doing this mission. Probably not! But I can find out.

I'll be taking Jacob along, because he's got squad incendiary ammo and that seems like a hilarious idea for a refinery mission. And also because I don't have much in the way of options yet, it was Jacob, Miranda, or Mordin.

This is another scheduled post. Don't know how busy the Sims will be keeping me. But I think this is as far ahead as I can get tonight, so this is probably the last scheduled post.

Sims 4: Live Mode

So I've managed to spend the entire day playing the sims, actually playing the sims. I had my household pre-made and ready to pop in there (though I did have to find out how to get them from the CAS demo to the full game) so I spent no time in CAS. I put them on an existing lot, so I haven't explored build mode yet. I was going to, but whoa, the entire day just disappeared.

No screenshots I'm afraid, but they're sims, they look sim-like, nothing particularly groundbreaking here. The sims themselves look great, but they're still just sims.

I moved my Shepard, the one from my most recent posts, and a downloaded Kaidan into a lot, I set them to 'married' in CAS to speed things up, but I don't think I really needed to do that. Anyway, Kaidan got a job as an astronaut, and they adopted a baby girl. She's a teenager now.

I spent a good deal of time controlling the daughter, but Shepard and Kaidan managed to keep themselves alive (and were constantly flirting with one another, aww) and not start any fires, so that's awesome. The daughter on the other hand, she started several fires. Heh.

So, they have these aspirations, it's basically a lifetime wish/goal as in Sims 2 or 3. Sort of a quest-structure like in Sims 3, but with the Sims 2 feature of 'once you complete one, you can choose another', which I personally LOVE. Advancing in jobs and school has a similar Sims 3 quest-structure to it.

The camera controls were a pain, but maybe that's more of a game-whiplash issue, the post before this one was about finally adjusting to Mass Effect controls after Dragon Age controls, so, that's likely. Anyway, I clicked the 'Sims 3 camera' checkbox, and it's all good now.

I picked up the game at 9am, it's now 6pm and I've forgotten to eat all day, whoops. But the game didn't crash or overheat my graphics card once, so that's getting a huge thumbs up from me!

I am a little disappointed I couldn't set the ages to 'very long', I had sims going for hundreds of sim days in 3, but the longest in 4 seems to be about double the lifespan. Still, it's better than no option at all, I guess.

I don't really know where anything is yet, but I'm finding my way around. I'll try and get a build mode review up tomorrow, or maybe over the weekend. If anything else occurs to me, I'll toss it in there.

It's not a perfect game, there are things I'd prefer to be done differently, but it's fun, and that's really all I was hoping for.

"Steering's a bit off."

Or rather, I'm finally getting the hang of it. The movement controls are a bit different in Dragon Age, I kept trying to move Shepard as though he was Hawke, without much success. Very disorienting. But I think I'm remembering how this all works now, hooray.

Here are some random screenshots from this session, including the Aria's couch armour shot that I seem to like taking. It really is the best way to get a view of the full armour, from helmet to boots, in one shot.

Scars appear to be fading, but I think I'll actually use the medbay upgrade to get rid of them this time. This Shepard is a paragon Shepard, but I am impatient, so.

This post was a scheduled post, written up a day in advance. Today (as in, when this post goes live) I expect to be playing the Sims 4, and will probably post my initial thoughts some time in the next few days. Likely tomorrow, but no promises.

Back aboard the Normandy

Not smiling.

Smiling. Yes, this is a Shepard smile.

I wish this wasn't the only time you talked to EDI in this specific location, because I really like having the holographic Normandy in the background. It makes it feel like you're having a conversation with the ship, which is exactly what you are doing.

Here we go again

I decided to see what I'd get if I imported a ME2 save into ME2. Turns out, you keep levels and armour and stuff (he woke up in formal wear) but paragon/renegade is reset to zero. Probably other stuff is reset too, I didn't play very long. It was a late night idea. We'll see!

Face Code: 233.RDL.SG9.H2C.GMP.CBB.N1G.2NN.BB6.6U4.836.5

The face code here is the same as the one I posted not too long ago for ME3, just with adjusted hair/stubble colours.

Use this one for ME2, and 233.RDL.SG9.H2C.GMP.CBB.N1G.2NN.BB6.6U4.833.3 for ME3.

Armour and customisation: still there.

Initial scars: Back. Oh well. They'll fade soon enough.

The name change

So.. I've gone from FayePlus to Player Dave, how about that. My Origin account name is now PlayingAsDave.

There is a reason for this, but it doesn't exactly have to do with gaming, so I'm going to stick a 'read more' jump here, because I'm not sure if it belongs on this blog. Okay? Okay. Read more if you're curious as to why. Otherwise, stay tuned for the same random gaming screenshots and such.

Dragon Age II screenshots

I've been pushing onwards, finished up Dragon Age: Origins, Awakenings, etc, and moved on to Dragon Age II. Which, I must say, I like a whole lot more than Origins. It's just more ... fun. Possibly influenced by starting as a rogue, all that leaping about in combat is kind of silly, but I love it.

I named my character Sassmaster, because of how utterly seriously I was taking this game. Heh. It made me laugh, and I wouldn't change a thing, but my new character - I already finished Sassmaster's story - doesn't have a silly name. (Her dog on the other hand is named Barkspawn.)

Anyway.. Some screenshots of Sassmaster Hawke.

My team. Usually Anders, Varric, and whoever I felt like at the time. Since this one was investigating a crime, I felt Aveline was appropriate. If there wasn't any particular reason for a specific fourth member, I usually took Isabela.

Hawke is the one who looks like he stepped out of an episode of Blackadder II. [L to R: Aveline, Hawke, Anders, Varric.]

I'm really happy with how this face turned out, I must say. I didn't really have a choice about the jaw or mouth, because the sideburns count as facial hair, and you can't edit those if you add facial hair. But anyway. I love the nose, it's just perfect. I wish I had a better profile image to share, but I didn't take many screenshots I'm afraid.

That's a lot of codex...

So, I beat Dragon Age: Origins, and I decide to import my character to the Awakenings expansion. I'm thinking, it's an expansion, it's not going to have as much content as the base game...

I probably should have cropped this one. Click for a readable size.

Literally thousands of new codex entries. I just stared at it for a minute after this, thinking 'those numbers can't be right..'. I still think it's maybe a bug of some kind, inflating the numbers.

Also, my DLC armour didn't import, which is sad, but oh well.

EDIT: Ahh, that's more like it. I thought something was up with that.

That is so much better. I wouldn't mind thousands of codex entries, but it made it a pain to scroll through with even one category expanded, and the thing took forever to load, so.. yeah.

Sim Shepard: Close enough?

Been plugging away at this Sims 4 version of my Shepard, because it's important that I get it right. (Did I mention my self-sim has the perfectionist trait?)

I know it's not there yet, but I'm not sure if I can do better than this.

Actually looking at them side-by-side is helpful, I hadn't really done that until composing this post. Hmm, yeah, I think I need to work on the ears, that shouldn't be a problem. And the jaw and cheeks definitely need work.. or maybe pull the face up a bit more? Or wider? I don't know.. Will play around.

Two things

First thing: The Sims 4 Create A Sim demo has been released! (I found it in the Origin store under demos. It is free.)

Second thing: I may have already downloaded a Kaidan and an Alistair.. Now to spend forever working on turning my Shepard into a sim. And maybe my Warden, because Alistair would be lonely.

If you're curious what they look like as sims, look for 'gemz123' in the sims 4 gallery ingame, they've created every Mass Effect squadmate, and I mean every. Their Garrus is kinda cute. They've also made Dragon Age characters.

I've never actually downloaded a sim to play before... I blame Bioware.

I am glad this was released ahead of time, because I think it's going to take until release to be happy with my Shepard and Warden sims.

I did already make a self-sim, a sim version of me, because it's the first sim I make every game, but I'm not going to upload it. 'I' am more of a test subject to familiarise myself with the controls, so it's a very basic sim that will never leave CAS.

I must say, based on this brief experience, the body shape control is amazing. I can't make an adequate 'me' in any other generation. I am a bit short, but I wouldn't even inflict that on a sim, so I am a-okay with the default height.

Story time

Couple of Dragon Age screenshots.. Subtitles on, but ignore them, they're mostly unimportant. Though I did try to pick the most vague subtitles I could.

"I would rather die than become a ravening, soulless beast. Wouldn't you?"
Warden: "No comment."

Also, barring any amazing armour later on, (it is my first time through, after all, I have no idea what's ahead) this is probably what my Warden and Alistair will be wearing for the rest of the game. I especially love the armour my Warden is wearing.

Look, honestly, if I can make a woman look almost indistinguishable from a man, it's my idea of perfect. I wouldn't even play female characters at all if certain romance options weren't restricted. Mass Effect is the exception, I alternate genders because consecutive Shepards are easier to tell apart when they sound different.

Mass Effect easter egg

Soo, in Dragon Age, I'm working through the quest to get Dwarven allies. I'm working my way through the game, if not as fast as I'd like. (And Alistair got a bit more chatty since the last post, which helps. I was worried.)

Anyway, I just came across a note seemingly written by a dwarf named Shepard, mentioning the effect of mass. I think Shepard was at one point going to be another 'silent' protagonist, as only one person actually speaks in the note. I am very glad that never came to pass, I love my voiced Shepards, male and female.

"Mass will have an effect," he says.
As long as it lifts us out, I figure.
Should have specified "within my lifetime."
"Gives us time to talk", he says.
"How's a dwarf get named Shepard?"
Up yer shaft.
"No really, because blah, blah, blah."

(Enlarge image for the rest of the text.)

So. Dragon Age.

I love it, but.

I love it, but I can't settle on one character, I think I've created six now?

I love it, but I 'hardened' Alistair (toughened him up a bit, made him more of a leader, less of a follower) and now I regret it so much.

I love it, but at times like this I wish I kept old saves.

But, I did get a series of screenshots of Alistair dramatically felling an ogre, so there is that, I guess?

This is from Return to Ostagar, which I believe is DLC, I got the 'all DLC' version of the game. The sword is also from there, and I have the armour too, but he's not strong enough to equip it yet, poor dear.

Aaanyway. I already miss young Alistair, but I can't even say if it was me or the things he's seen that has changed him, really. I guess I should just keep going. "Dig til we hit daylight."

I'm really just treading water until the Sims 4 comes out, and hoping the CAS demo comes out soon... (And if my Kaidan sim looks anything like Kaidan, I will totally share.)