Lantern Light

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Last night went absolutely nothing like I had originally intended.  The initial goal I had in mind was to go home and attempt to pull myself back into a mindset where I could play Final Fantasy XIV.  Instead I hit a few detours along the way the first of which being that shortly after I had finished doing all of the stuff that I need to do when I first get home…  the power went out.  Now I realize this is mostly an irrational fear, but the first thing that always goes through my head is…  did you pay the bill?  I am not sure exactly why I have this fear because we have never actually been disconnected from any utility, but it is still something that happens.  I was already in my “not suitable for public” clothing, but I did stumble outside long enough to notice that all of my neighbors were also lumbering around by flashlight.  I called in the outage and reported it through the menu driven system and then spent the next little bit trying to sort out how to see reported outages without logging into the damned electric company page with an account that I didn’t have.  There is a local facebook group that serves as the closest thing we have to a city wide “water cooler” and my second place was to go check there knowing that there would already be a thread of a hundred or so posts about whatever was going on.  The lights went out around 6 pm and if the group was to be believed the estimated time for the fix was 11:30 pm…  which meant it was about to be a really long night living by lantern light.  It was around this time that I remembered I had the Switch and grabbed it from my office settling into the sofa to play some games.  I had played some Super Mario Odyssey and was about ten minutes into the Octopath Traveler demo when the power was magically restored at roughly 8 pm.

From there I did all of those things I had been avoiding… like opening the fridge to get a drink and settled down to play some Final Fantasy XIV.  Upon logging in I got greeted by friends… roamed around Limsa Lominsa and then promptly logged out because I just did not have it in me to do the group activities I need to do in order to make any semblance of forward momentum.  Instead I popped into Elder Scrolls Online and continued work on Stonefalls.  This zone is like a giant immovable object for me and the sooner I get on the other side of it the better.  It has singlehandedly killed every attempt at playing an Ebonheart Pact character because even though it has gone through a ton of changes since alpha…  it still is not what I would call a good zone.  The weird shape and geometry of the zone makes everything a bigger chore than it should be.  Objectives that might look really close on the map instead require you to backtrack half the way across the zone to find the proper entrance into the region you need to go.  All of this is just the functional reasons…  but there is also the fact that it is bleak.  The quake color palette and the constant smokey haze and falling ash make it not exactly the most visually exciting place to be.  I did however feel like I made a bunch of progress in the zone last night and checked off a bunch of areas.  I am not even sure where I am in the zones main story quest, and if I could change one thing about Elder Scrolls online I would make it so that those primary quests required to move to the next area were somehow highlighted differently in a FFXIV style manner.

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The other thing on my radar is that at the time of taking this screenshot we were roughly 17 hours away from unlocking Monster Hunter World on the PS4.  Granted I have no actual intent of staying up until midnight to play this game, but I do plan on playing Friday night.  This is going to be my first real attempt at playing a Monster Hunter title while it is in the public zeitgeist and I am hoping that by doing so…  I will be able to grok what the fuck is going on.  I’ve attempted the PS Vita version and purchase Generations for the 3DS…  but largely chocked up a lot of my problems to the fact that I am just not much of a handheld gamer.  World however is coming to the PS4 which will allow me to play it on this nifty 43 inch 4k television (even though I don’t have a pro and can’t do the higher resolutions really) and my hope is it will be a much more compelling experience.  I’ve always thought this was the sort of game I could get into if I had the proper introduction, because the core loop of grind random stuff to make yourself stronger to take down big bad monsters is one that I can likely get behind.  I am hoping I can rely on those who have come before like Ashgar and Stormrazor to get me over the adjustment hump.  I am also super excited that Arekkz is devoting a series of videos to easing beginners in.  I most definitely need the assistance.  Needless to say I will be on the PS4 giving it a whirl tomorrow.

2 thoughts on “Lantern Light”

  1. re: ESO Yeah I’ve left feedback on more than one occasion that the main zone stories need to be able to be tracked or differentiated somehow – some people do care about coherent storytelling as well as freedom to explore – hopefully they’ll get round to it one day.

  2. I’ll also pop in to say that one of the things that impedes “getting it” with Monster Hunter, and which has gotten me repeatedly in the past, is trying to solo the whole damn game. It’s highly possible, but it’s also /really boring/ unless you’re super-dedicated to the gear grind. Getting a whole group together is a really good feeling and playstyle (and MHW only has 2 required quests before you can start doing that, although for ‘main story quests’ with cutscenes, there’s some janky stuff required to do them at the same time).

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