Featuring: Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
Tonight we have a second show in a row, which given the state of Bel right now is pretty miraculous. We are down a Kodra for assorted reasons but we have one of our shows where we have only the thinnest of topics and make a show out of them. Bel talks about experiencing how polarizing Army of the Dead is apparently as we discuss the expectations of genre films. From there we talk about Diablo games on the phone and more Mass Effect discussion. We clear the deck of the topics we have had for a while as we go through the limits of accessibility, scaling content and how rough catch up in games can be at time.
Featuring: Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
Tonight we prove that we totally do exist and you get to listen to a very tired Bel. Bel gives a slight explanation of why we did not record the last two weeks and why nothing is certain in the coming weeks either. We talk a bit about how we are in this weird new era of “Must See TV” which is a phrase that only us “olds” will know but Disney is absolutely creating destination television again. From there we talk about the Mass Effect Legendary re-release and how Bel is coming to love Jennifer Hale’s Shepard. We talk a bit about the news coming out for FFXIV Endwalker and how Dark Knights are no longer the TRUE edgelords. Finally we talk a bit about PSO2 New Genesis Beta.
My world is still very much in a fucked up state right now, but occasionally I get home early enough in the evening to play a little bit of something before falling asleep and starting the process all over again. Right now I am leaning heavily on two experiences, one of which I know EXTREMELY well at this point and with the recent release of the “Legendary” edition it Mass Effect 1 has represented the majority of my game time. I’ve played through the game a number of times at this point including playthroughs where I link all three games up together like I am doing right now. I am still in the first title but I am in that spiral of events that leads towards the end right now.
The key differentiator this time however is that I am playing as “FemShep” or the female version of Commander Shepard voiced by the very excellent Jennifer Hale. I opted to go with Vanilla Shepard because if given my druthers I am almost always going to create a red headed character when I am creating female characters. I know from past experiences with the character creator… that it is very easy to create something that looks kinda fucked up in cinematics.. my first Shepard appearance was this way so I thought it safest just to go with what the experts created for me.
The weird part for me right now with this playthrough, is that for the last decade I have been told by friends that I trust and admire… that I chose the wrong Shepard to play in picking the male Mark Meer voiced version. So I had this built up in my head to be this earth shattering experience that was going to change my perspective on the franchise. The truth is… it feels almost exactly the same to me? I notice the better graphics with the Legendary edition and better mechanics, but the voice actor doesn’t seem to really matter that much to me. I still find myself hitting space to speed up the dialog because I can read so much faster than the actor can deliver the dialog. I still have that general feeling of “yeah yeah, lets get back to the fighting” that I did with Mark Meer at the helm.
I’ve also been told that I would appreciate Kaidan Alenko more as a female character… but no he still annoys the fuck out of me. I think I might just hate Raphael Sbarge because I also hate Carth Onasi. Incoming spoilers if you have never played this game… skip the rest of this paragraph. Last night I played through Virmire and I already feel like I chose the wrong choice. Like Ashley Williams is racist as fuck but I take pleasure it telling her to shut the fuck up about it and stop being so horrible when the game gives me the option. Kaidan on the other hand never stops being this wet blanket character that I actively want to push out the airlock, and mistakes basic human decency as me wanting to snuggle up with him. Mass Effect is a game about me hanging out with a bunch of interesting Aliens and as a result I NEVER use any of the human characters in ME1. In ME2 we get Jacob and Jack which are both awesome… but still I mostly run around with a bunch of Aliens.
The Mako is much better than it was in the original release of this game… but the Mako levels are still the worst thing about the experience. Legendary edition significantly helped Mass Effect 1 feeling more in line with the rest of the franchise, but it still feels clunky but a more reasonable version of clunky. Instead of feeling like an odd throwback to an earlier time… it just sorta feels like playing a game from a B Tier studio like Spiders. The pretty is appreciated but I guess there was only so much they could do with the way the game felt and performed mechanically without doing a port to one of the newer engines.
I did apply a field of view mod to the game and you can see the difference between this screenshot and the one earlier. This game defaults to a FOV that is zoomed in way the hell too close and makes me feel claustrophobic. If you are interested the mod supports all three games, which should allow me to have a similar FOV in each of them. My basic takeaway is that I am having a lot of fun playing the game again and experience it all over with a fresh coat of paint. The sub summary is that apparently the voice actor and gender of the protagonist doesn’t matter that much to my overall experience. I couldn’t have a decent beard with “HimShep” so I really didn’t have much attachment to that version of the character or at least no more or less than I have so far with “FemmeShep”. Both were very much me playing someone else in a video game and not me creating a character that represented me.
Good Morning Friends. It has been quite a long time at this point since we last spoke. My world more or less turned upside down on on the 6th of May and I still have yet to really recover from it. This is one of those work crisis sort of situations, but the longer it grinds on the more of my personal sanity it takes with it. As of this morning I will be on fifteen days without a break other than coming home and crashing before getting up and starting it all over again. During this time I have just not been taking any time to sit down and write to you all, and that means last week I missed my first Mixtape Monday in this series. It was at that point that I decided that even if I make no other posts during the week I am going to do this one because the whole act of creating and fine tuning mixtapes is important to me for reasons I can’t fully explain.
For those who are not used to this construct yet, the idea is that I create a Mixtape through Spotify and YouTube playlists and approach it like I would have approached creating a physical Mixtape or burning a physical CD for someone back in the day. Various ideas come about that incubate their way into a musical track list. If you view them collectively you can glean a lot of information about my particular musical tastes, but more likely the specific time period they were shaped by. Once upon a time I was a flannel adorned, baggy jeans wearing, chain wallet having kid that was fully enthralled by the grunge music scene. This more or less hit during late high school and early college and shaped who I thought I wanted to be. While not entirely chronologically accurate, this mixtape is somewhat of a lovesong to the way that music felt.
Flannel and Chain Wallet
Like I said above, these are not all of the songs you are going to instantly associate with the grunge era. There is no Smells like Teen Spirit on this list for example and no Even Flow, but what you do have instead are some songs that were favorites of mine that got significantly less air play. The thing for me is that the grunge feel of music continued far longer than those few years when it was in vogue. So you have The Flys which not traditionally a grunge band is drift compatible with the sound. I was listening to Primus long before I adorned my first flannel, but it still mentally gets wrapped up in this same environment for me. So again this is an interpretation of my feelings about that era of music and less an attempt at a greatest hits collection. I mean there are already plenty of those playlists out there.
Big Empty – Stone Temple Pilots
Come As You Are – Nirvana
Winter Song – Screaming Trees
Got You – The Flys
Backwater – Meat Puppets
Rearviewmirror – Pearl Jam
Would? – Alice in Chains
Jesus Built My Hotrod – Ministry
Jerry Was a Race Car Driver – Primus
Cherub Rock – Smashing Pumpkins
Work for Food – Dramarama
Low – Cracker
December – Collective Soul
Jane Says – Jane’s Addiction
Spotify
YouTube
Tidal
I hope my life settles down a bit and I can maybe just maybe return to regular blogging. In the meantime however since these posts are largely ready to go… I am going to keep doing this thing for now. That is I guess until I run out of playlists to talk about. I hope you are all doing okay out there. I am doing mostly okay but starting to be less okay as this drags on.
