Jedi Fallen Order Archives - Tales of the Aggronaut

Regularly Playing: March 2021 Edition

March 31, 2021 by Belghast

Good Morning Folks! I was realizing this morning just how completely out of date my blog side bar is when it comes to the games that I have been playing regularly. In theory I claim that this is my semi-monthly process of trueing up the sidebar so it represents the sorts of games that I am playing. What actually happens is that I go for large blocks of time without updating this and when that happens massive swings occur. For example the last one of these that I did was in October of 2020 and some stuff has changed. So here goes an attempt at maybe doing these regularly again for a bit. For those not already indoctrinated into the process I divide things up into a few categories:

To Those Remaining – The games that I am still actively playing or at least expect to be playing within the month.
To The New and Returning – The games that I am either dusting off and revisiting or are brand new experiences that I am enjoying.
To Those Departing – The games that I am finally removing from the list for one reason or another.
Ships Passing in the Night – Games that I don’t expect to regularly play but I spent some time with over the month and enjoyed enough to talk about.

To Those Remaining

My sweet sweet Diablo 3, you are rarely ever gone from this list. There is even a new season starting this Friday and I am looking forward to going through the routine of the seasonal grind. This season has a bunch of changes to the game and as a result they sorta gave us a greatest hits collection of sets available through Haedrigs Gift. As a result I am looking at probably starting a Whirlrend Barbarian for this season because those are so stinking fun to play.

I am going to be honest, I am leaving this one on the list more as an aspirational placement than a game I am truly actively playing. I boot it up from time to time and play through a few encounters and then put it to bed for a longer period of time. I hope to get back in and play it more intently because also while we have been spilling truth… I feel a little guilty that I am not really doing much with my PlayStation 5.

This one retains its spot because it is still probably my go to “playing switch from bed” game. The pattern of play just fits spending a few minutes before falling asleep. I am not terribly good at it but I enjoy it mechanically and thematically. This is the only game I have played where I enjoy losing, because it means I am going to get some more story beats.

I am leaving this on the list for reasons of which I am contractually not at liberty to talk about. It comes out in August officially and I am looking forward to that release. I’ve never seen a game that has gone through quite so many changes during its late development cycle as this one. It is going to be interesting to see the state of this game at launch. I have quite a bit of faith in it.

Retro Games – Retro Freak Console, RG350, Retroid, Raspberry Pi 4

Still very much spending a chunk of my time playing games that I grew up with… that are now referred to as Retro games. Still feels really weird to be calling them Retro to be honest. Actually yesterday I literally just got an 8 gb Raspberry Pi 4 model in that I am going to be playing with. That is probably going to become my main emulation device for the short term for anything other than higher end stuff like Cemu that absolutely requires the power of my gaming PC.

To The New and Returning

Putting this one back on the list because I am technically playing it again. I am nowhere near as engaged with it as I would like to be and I am not exactly certain why that is the case. From all accounts this is a really good season but I find myself just unable to get stuck into it very deeply. Since we are trueing things up it is in somewhat regular rotation so it is going to get a spot on the list.

I am experiencing a massive renaissance of Elder Scrolls Online and it has rapidly become my primary game over the past month. While I am mostly leveling alts right now, I am going to return to the normal course of trying to quest my way through all of the content in the game and maybe just maybe be ready for the launch of the next expansion in June. I somehow doubt that is going to be a thing because I have to make it through large blocks of content and I know I will become distracted by other games that spring up along the way.

Another thing that happened since my previous update is that I have returned to Minecraft in a huge way. I spent a lot of time playing solo and even recorded a semi-daily YouTube series on my adventures. Now however I spend my time either popping between my own private Realms world or a closed server run by my friend Zeli. Not playing near as much as I was but I am still popping in and wandering around. There is a stronghold in the nether that I am clearing and trying to set up a dual blaze farm right now so I still have projects that I am plugging away at. Right now I am likely going to wait to re-engage heavily until the new caves update comes out and create a brand new world.

Outriders is the new looter shooter hotness that is shipping tomorrow officially. I played the hell out of the demo and now am looking forward to consuming this game peacefully. I am not really planning on playing it as my primary game because I am super engaged with Elder Scrolls right now, but I am absolutely going to slow grind it. The launch time is just really bad because it overlaps with a bunch of other things going on like the launch of a new Diablo 3 season.

Valheim is freaking great. If you do not already own this game you should pick it up because it is dirt cheap and one hell of a lot of fun. I’ve reached a point of equilibrium with this game at least until new content ships. I had been playing regularly on a server but I have mostly been playing lately on my solo world. When the hearth and home update ships, I might start a new world depending on how deep the changes go. I will likely always keep Beltopia around given that it is set up nicely for crafting and such.

To Those Departing

I have no real idea why I bounced the way that I have from this game. I think partially it might just be that I don’t love “maintenance gaming” where all I am really doing is dailies. However in this game that isn’t even true because they have released a ton of story content since I last played and I never can quite bring myself to come back and play it. There are a lot of things about this game that work so well and then a lot of things that just frustrate me. For example the fact that I feel like I don’t have a reasonable manner in which to level new characters and catch them up to my core party… means that I largely feel like I am stuck always using my core party. Maybe at some point I will return when it ships on the Switch but for now it is a distant memory.

Shadowlands is a bad expansion filled with systems that I am not interested in engaging with. In fact I would probably say that Shadowlands is going to be up there with the worst expansions of all time. I talked about how frustrated I was with Battle for Azeroth, but at least that is an expansion that I actively enjoyed the leveling process. Shadowlands I barely made it to the level cap with one of my characters and couldn’t even manage to stomach a single zone on my alts. I am not exactly sure how things went off the rails in the manner that they did but for now at least I am done with the game. Like I have not talked about it a lot because in truth I am not even sure it is worth talking about it. I miss hanging out with my friends who play the game but I miss nothing about Shadowlands.

Ships Passing in the Night

Unlike most of the internet I have nothing but love for this game. I apparently had a sufficient system to play it and lucked out on not encountering many bugs during my play through. As such I am actively craving more content for it, but throwing it on the “ships” list because I have more or less put the game aside for the moment. When DLC releases I will either play through the DLC on my current play through or start a brand new campaign. I hope the issues surrounding this game do not kill this franchise because I loved it deeply on so many different levels.

Dragon Age Inquisition was one of those games that I had bounced off of so many times in the past and then suddenly was able to play happily. I have found with the hustle and bustle of the end of the year… I crave deep single player experiences. This is one of those games that I played during that period and had a blast. Looking forward to this story continuing.

When this game first released I tried playing it with a controller because it seemed like that was the proper way to play it. I bounced because the game is not terribly good at explaining when you should leave a planet. However over the holiday break I returned to the game and had a blast, this time playing with my more native control scheme of keyboard and mouse. Truly great game and great experience. If you have not played this game you really owe it to yourself to do so, especially if you like Star Wars even in the least bit.

Another game that I have bounced off numerous times is Knights of the Old Republic 2 and for some reason over this break I managed to make my way through it. Like the game is a mess… there is no getting around that but it is a mess that I am happy to have experienced. There is a lot of interesting things going on in this game and knowing now that this released before Fallout New Vegas I can see some of the things that they expanded upon later and made work better in that game. Would I recommend it to someone else? Probably not, but I am still very happy to have experienced it myself.

Summary

The funny thing about this is that I just realized upon writing out this post… that my sidebar was never actually updated from the October edition meaning it was even more out of date than I realized. Now I will hopefully remember to do the thing and actually make the updates once I finish with this post. Here is to also maybe doing this at least once a quarter going forward… if not monthly.

Games of the Year 2020

January 4, 2021 by Belghast

Good Morning Friends! Seeing as this is the first non-aggrochat-syndication post of 2021 for this blog, I though it was a good time to look back on the previous year of gaming. More specifically MY previous year of gaming and talk about some of my favorite experiences. This isn’t a strict top X list, but the order is more or less sorted in a good to phenomenal manner. Lets get started!

The Touryst

This is a curious little game that originally released on the Nintendo Switch, which is sort of a puzzle platformer for lack of a better category. You are a tourist and you have come to visit this island get away, but it turns out there are mysteries to be solved along the way. You end up travelling across multiple islands and unlocking the secret of the temple contained on each. There really isn’t true combat in the game, apart from occasionally hopping on the top of things to stun them. Extremely charming game and also a really interesting technology supporting it. The load times and rendering prowess is a good show piece for the Switch.

Atom RPG

This game plays like you remember the original Fallout playing. Like going back and playing those first two Fallout games is a bit of a challenge at this point, because they end up feeling more than a little kludgy. Atom RPG is Fallout… but if you had set the game in post-apocalyptic Soviet era Russia. There are so many things interesting about this game, namely it gives you a window into the world that was the USSR before the break up and the alternate reality of what might have happened in the event of nuclear war. There is a sequel out that I have yet to play, but eventually I am sure I will.

Streets of Rage 4

I’ve always been a big fan of beat-em-ups and while I was originally super partial to Final Fight, the Sega competitor Streets of Rage left it in the dust with the release of the second outing in that series. Streets of Rage 4 is a project that lovingly recreates the feel of playing a 90s era fighting game, but with modern era graphical design. The artwork is gorgeous, but if you so choose you can downgrade everything into a pixel based equivalent of the original art style. Exceptionally good game, and also plays extremely well on the Nintendo Switch.

Animal Crossing: New Horizon

I had never really played an Animal Crossing game prior to the release of New Horizon, and this game dominated my headspace in a time when I was desperately needing some pleasant escape. This landed right as the pandemic was ramping up, and I even named my island Pandemia because it was my plan to get through the worst of it. Sadly at that point we had no clue how “worst” things were going to get, and as a result I eventually stopped playing the game and have not returned when it reached a point of being a little too “daily quest” for my tastes. I greatly appreciate it filling a role that I desperately needed at a specific time.

Phantasy Star Online 2

While I had gone through some complete nonsense that allowed me to create a Japanese account, I never really spent a lot of time playing it. So when PSO2 released in earnest for North America this year, I grabbed hold with both hands and enjoyed the hell out of it for about a month. I have no clue why exactly I faded away from the game, but I hope to return at some point because it is a fun mix of mindless shooting and loot collection. Additionally it has one of the best gacha systems out there which releases cosmetics at a pretty regular cadence, all of which are also capable of being resold by players. RoboBel probably misses me.

Horizon Zero Dawn

I love Horizon Zero Dawn. It was my game of the year in 2017 when it was originally released, however this year we finally got the PC port and it was so enjoyable for me to revisit this game. Playing HZD with a Mouse and Keyboard is so much better than playing with a clunky old controller. The game finally can be played in the way I hoped it would someday, and it looked amazing with glorious PC 4k graphics. I have written so much over the years about this title and all of those words still stand. One of the best gaming experiences I have ever had and the added precision of the mouse just makes everything better.

Jedi Fallen Order

I realize I just talked quite a bit about this game last week, so probably not much new to say. I played this originally when it first released at the tail end of 2019, but bounced pretty hard when I realized a point where I was uncertain what the game was asking of them. Throughout the entirety of 2020 I had it in the back of my head that I wanted to restart this game and play it instead with a mouse and keyboard. That finally happened over the Christmas break and I sailed through the experience smoothly and this is probably the finest Star Wars game out there. I mean I would even put it up there with KOTOR in the amount that I enjoyed the world building contained within. Very different type of game mind you, but still extremely enjoyable.

Hades

I am not certain that Supergiant can create a bad game. Like… they created a sportsball game and managed to even make me interested enough to play it and enjoy if nothing else the story. Hades is Supergiant taking on the Rogue-Lite genre and crushing it. Not only does the game feel fluid and responsive but it weaves an interesting tale being told a tiny bit at a time as you repeatedly die and start all over again in your attempt to escape the underworld. The interactions you have with the cast of characters aligned to help you in your journey is what makes the entire experience so enjoyable. You don’t mind the deaths because you know it is likely going to unlock at least one interesting tidbit of story along the way.

Death Stranding

If Animal Crossing was the game I thought would get me through the pandemic… Death Stranding was the game that actually helped me come to terms with it. First off you have to understand this is the first Kojima game I have ever played, so I was not quite certain what to expect going into it. I had tried playing Metal Gear games, but my hatred of Stealth Mechanics ended up causing me to bounce almost instantly from them. Death Stranding is set in a world where the eponymous event made it extremely dangerous to live around other human beings. As a result the society is fractured and your mission is to travel across the entirety of the United States (or a very condensed version of it) and link up these disparate islands of humanity so that they can all communicate freely again. It hit home the way we are all isolated in our own homes and leaning super hard on the internet and technologies like Zoom to stay connected in this time when it is similarly dangerous to be around other human beings. The emotional conclusions of the game hit me in the gut like a sledgehammer and I still feel the impact of it today.

Genshin Impact

Every so often a game comes along that transcends the normal gaming experiences and almost becomes a phenomena over night. This happened with Pokemon Go, and to a slightly lesser extent it happened with Genshin Impact. For awhile this game was the thing that everyone was playing and talking about and it all happened for good reason. Genshin has some of the best action roleplaying gameplay out there, but it also comes with a lot of negatives given that this is firmly a Gacha game. You hit some pretty hard walls that can only be solved by time or money spent. While the game gives you serious opportunity to win free character pulls… it also has lead some folks to spend literal tens of thousands of dollars on this game chasing specific characters. If you find yourself susceptible to gambling mechanics… maybe check out Immortals Fenyx Rising instead because it ends up being a very similar experience.

Ghost of Tsushima

While I am seemingly nowhere near beating this game, it has been something I have chewed on for the better part of this year. If I were to create a simple description of this game it would be “exquisitely crafted”. This is a game that lives up to the highest forms of development and everything is polished to a mirror shine. The interactions with combat and the world both feel fluid and interesting, and the story that is being told ducks in and out of the main story and side quests effortlessly adding up to one of the more interesting open world designs I have experienced. My favorite thing about the game is the stand off system, allowing me to stroll into an enemy camp and challenge them to send out their strongest to fight me in a duel. What I like the least are the few missions that force you to play the game from a stealth perspective, which are thankfully only really associated with a single NPC. Now that I have my PS5 I have been back playing the game in earnest and loving every moment of it.

Cyberpunk 2077

If I were going to pick a game of the year for this blog, it would ultimately be Cyberpunk 2077. I realize that this is a deeply controversial game for so many different reasons, but it was also the most fun I have had playing a game all year long. The level of intricacy in world building and storytelling… is unfortunately matched at times by things simply being unfinished. This game likely needed another year to cook before release in order to finish out the systems that were very obviously only stubbed in in order to make the every shifting release window. I’m technically on my second play through now as I am approaching the game from a different origin and already seeing quite a few changes. I hope they keep releasing updates to where this game can at some point be the absolute masterpiece that is The Witcher 3. There is just so much going on here that I worry will be missed for all of the major issues the game has going on. This is a game deserving of your time… if you can play it on a platform where it runs well like the PC. Until that is true for all platforms… maybe give it a pass and pick it up once the discounts start happening.

Games I Missed

I know there are a bunch of games that I for whatever reason never got around to playing. Spiderman and Miles Morales for example… did not play yet but hope to in 2021. You might notice that Shadowlands expansion for World of Warcraft is missing from the list, and while I enjoyed my initial play through I don’t like it enough to hold it up there as one of the best experiences of the year. There are other games that I wanted to talk about like New World, but have not been officially released so it seemed weird putting an Alpha on the list.

What were some of your games of the year? Drop me a line below or of course feel free to contest my opinions.

Jedi Fallen Order Final Thoughts

December 30, 2020 by Belghast

Jedi Fallen Order was technically a game that I talked a bit about when it came out last year at roughly this same time. Prior to the Mandalorian, this game represented the single best piece of fiction set in the Star Wars universe that did not directly involve the main canon of characters. What it represents is a spreading out of the universe and the telling of other tales that just happened to be tangential to the main story through line of the Star Wars setting. I had a lot of fun playing this game in November of 2019, but I wound out stalling out very hard and never quite returning to it to finish things up. At that point I was playing with a controller, which is not my instrument of choice. For the last year I had wanted to restart this experience so that I could get a fresh start and also adapt to my more favored Keyboard and Mouse controls.

That happened over the break and even though this game came out last year… it is probably also going to go on my games of 2020 list because experiencing it with different controls made the experience so much better for me personally. I think pretty much all of my original points hold that this is a Dark Souls inspired game that doesn’t feel like Dark Souls thanks to the variable difficulty slider. I was mostly here for the story and the escapism of feeling like a Jedi, so I played on a lower difficulty setting. If you feel like you want to punish yourself, then you can absolutely crank the slider up to the maximum and start with Dathomir as your first planet and the game will allow you to bash your face against that wall for as long as you care to.

That is one of the major challenges that I have with Jedi Fallen Order is that it isn’t exactly great a messaging what you as the player should be doing. For example as mentioned above you are given a choice of a starting planet of either Zeffo, the correct choice or Dathomir, the masochistic choice. There is a SIGNIFICANT difference in the starting difficulty of both planets, and I personally chose Dathomir this go around because I had some knowledge of the game under my belt and it would allow me to unlock the Dual Saber faster. The thing is… even in doing this… you can only progress so far on Dathomir before you have to switch right back to Bogano because you lack the metroidvanian tools required to progress further at that point.

While playing the game it tells the story of you as Cal Kestis a Jedi Padawan who somehow escaped Order 66, but the emotional and mental toll of doing so damaged your connection to the force. Through interacting with the world you end up remembering bits and pieces of your training allowing you to access the classic Jedi powers like Force Push, Force Pull, and Double Jump as well as encountering a number of equipment upgrades like Rebreathers and Climbing Claws that assist in your traversal of the levels. These abilities are then used to solve puzzles in the same manner that you would have in a game like Zelda as you complete similar “Temples” to unlock the knowledge that you are seeking to fulfill the main quest of the game.

You are also aided by BD-1, a little robot friend that you find on the first planet of the game Bogano. BD-1 is the best companion character that I have seen in a game like this, and as you traverse the world you also improve its abilities to aid you in your challenges. An example is early on BD-1 will help you slide down zip lines, but eventually you find a tractor system for it which allows you to ascend those same lines opening new ways to traverse existing areas. In Star Wars the Robot companions are always the heart of the story, and BD-1 is essentially the “goodest” dog you could have ever encountered. I just sorta wish you could pet it, because it totally deserves head pats.

Another strong point of this game is the extremely solid cast of supporting characters. These characters are patterned after the appearance of the human actors which presents an interesting thought. Now that we are in this era of Disney Plus spinning off so many new shows set in the Star Wars Universe… Jedi Fallen Order could be adapted perfectly to the small screen. Cal Kestis is played by Cameron Monaghan of Shameless and Gotham, and Cere Junda is played by Debra Wilson who if you are old like me you will mostly know from Mad TV. In both cases the digital character is basically just them, and it would be super easy to translate those roles over to physical forms. It would be super interesting to have a oneshot series that takes place between Jedi Fallen Order and whatever the next game is that they are working on.

Maybe even more important than how well acted the main cast of Cal, Cere and Greez are… this game also has a phenomenal cast of antagonists. The best of these include the Second Sister, who is an Inquisitor that is constantly on the hunt for Cal Kestis and crew. Another stand out is the Night Sister that you encounter on Dathomir who is trying to keep you from progressing further on that planet. Both are exceptionally three dimensional characters that manage to be more than just an imposing person with a red lightsaber. Not going to go into much detail because spoilers, but suffice to say that the story takes some interesting turns and earns the adoration I am heaping upon it.

I said earlier that the game is bad at messaging what the player is supposed to do, and I feel like I need to dive into this further for a moment. When I started playing this game last year I hit a wall and that wall was me not understanding that the game was trying to tell me to leave the planet that I was currently on. During the quest you venture to Kashyyyk and help a band of freedom fighters to liberate the Wookies being enslaved there. Immediately following this repatriation you are given a subtle tip that maybe something interesting has happened on another planet… but the game doesn’t come out and tell you to freaking leave. Instead it explains how you would get to the next area of the planet… and I spent hours wandering around trying to figure out how to go down that path. You can’t get there yet and you really do need to leave the planet and go do something else for awhile before that path opens up.

In other ways the game does a really good job of telling you what you can and cannot do. Each Jedi Ability opens up new areas of the game much like a traditional Metroidvania, and these are generally messaged with terrain looking a specific way. This is called out when you first pick up the ability… for example in order to Wall Run, you need a specifically textured section of wall and once you notice this your mind starts to calculate what you should be doing in which sections. Eventually you learn that you can chain together a number of traversal elements which only serves to make you feel more like the Jedi Knight that you are becoming. It is only really when the Story wants you to go somewhere else that maybe it does a poor job of explaining itself.

The entire package however is extremely fun and while the game itself isn’t the longest I have played… it rides this line between being too short and overstaying its welcome. Nothing in the game feels like filler being used to pad the content or force you to jump through a series of hoops to slow down your progress. All of the content you experience is there for a story driven reason and as a result it feels like an extremely solid narrative experience. It doesn’t hurt that all of the set pieces are these epic views from the Star Wars universe as you roam around giant crashed hulks and ancient force user temples.

I went into this game expecting a fun romp that allowed me to pretend I was a Jedi. What I did not expect however was the sheer emotional prowess that the story wields in allowing you to feel like what it must have been to be a Padawan that barely escaped the purge. In fact there are moments within the game that allow you to relive the experience of barely escaping while Order 66 is being carried out. The game actually shows you several different sides of this same event that we are now familiar with thanks to the prequels. In all cases there is a sheer gravity of the action that sticks with you and I have to admit… the game extracted more than one tear from me as I lived through its tale.

Now that we are a year out from its release, you can pretty much pick the game up for around $20 on your platform of choice. If you have ever loved Star Wars at any point in your life… this is money well spent. I can only hope that we see a lot more of this cast of characters, because the game sets a few things up that it never quite delivers on, making me think we have many more adventures in our future. I want more games with the mechanical and emotional gravitas that this game provides.

Games of the Break

December 28, 2020 by Belghast

Good morning friends. When I sat down and decided to take a bit of a break I didn’t expect that a fortnight would pass before I put virtual pen to paper and start posting again. The weirdest thing about the entire experience is that I expected there would be this massive drop off in readership… yet for the most part my data stayed pretty normal. I figured eventually people would give up on me and forget that I existed, but that does not appear to be the case. I am not entirely certain if this means I am returning to my normal daily routine or if I will ultimately modify it slightly to be a little more forgiving.

Whatever the case I guess I am back and functional, but to be honest I am no less stressed now than I was when I ultimately decided to disappear. Part of that last bit might be because today is my first day back to work after having been off for a full week. During that week I allowed myself to get royally out of synchronization with my normal sleep schedule and as a result 5:30 this morning was a painful mess, as was attempting to get to sleep before midnight. Today will be hell but hopefully I readjust quickly to the normal routine.

I spent most of my break hanging out on the sofa remoted into my upstairs machine via Parsec and snuggling with cats. This is a pretty damned good existence if you ask me, and I would happily be on the sofa right now were it not for that whole need to be working thing. I played an excessive amount of Cyberpunk 2077 and love it so much… which seems to be counter to the wider opinion of the game for various valid reasons. I beat the game on one ending and started a second, and as a result I likely have a long form post in my breaking down my thoughts about the game as a whole. This morning is not that post however.

Another thing that I did over the break was to restart Jedi Fallen Order since around this time last year I stalled out on Kashyyyk. I originally played the game with a controller and this time around I decided to make the switch to mouse and keyboard which greatly improved my personal enjoyment. The problem with Jedi Fallen Order is it is not exactly clear in its directions of where you should be going… and when I stalled out the first time it was because I had misunderstood the games subtle hints that it was time for me to leave the planet. I probably have a lot of thoughts to share about this game experience, but again… that this not necessarily this mornings post.

I made an attempt to play Red Dead Redemption II, and this is the point where I have realized that I just don’t like Rockstar Games. I’ve “attempted” to play Grand Theft Auto before, but never really got into it and playing RDR2 made me realize why. GTA and RDR both give you the illusion that the game world is this massive open place for you to wander around in… however the second you start a mission you are forced onto a narrow track essentially closing in the walls of that open world into a fixed corridor where the mission actually takes place. Instead of getting a quest asking you to gather 3 animal pelts, you are instead placed on a specific mission where you and another character go out in the woods together and hunt those animal pelts.

A game like Witcher 3 or even a Farcry game gives you broad objectives and doesn’t much care what order you complete them in or even when you actually get around to them. This allows you to stack up objectives similar to that of an MMORPG and do multiple things while in the same location. This feels way more natural to me than starting a specific mission that has hard constraints on what you can and cannot do during it. This means that if you are on a stealth mission… you have to be stealthy or you meet a fail condition unlike the more open world genre where going loud causes problems… but if you can deal with those problems you don’t have to sneak about. I just think the Rockstar model may not be for me.

Speaking of games that give me a play style I am more comfortable with… I also played a lot of Ghost of Tsushima and realized I am WAY further from the end of this game than I realized. Additionally the PS5 does a much better job of smoothly streaming a game remotely than the base PS4 did. I am nearing the end of Act 1 and there are 3 Acts in total. I’ve been spending most of my time wandering the country side and challenging Mongols to duels. I now have the perk that allows me to take out three encounters at once when I do a Stand Off, which is still one of the coolest mechanics for this sort of game that I have seen. When I realized this was not a game that I would likely be able to wrap up over the break, I returned to my leisurely pace of knocking out a few objectives and then walking away for awhile.

Last but not least… I seem to have fallen back into the nostalgia of Fallout New Vegas. During a lot of my conversation about Cyberpunk 2077, I compared it to this game and as a result it probably isn’t a massive shock that I would ultimately pick it up and start playing again. Now that I am engaged I am more than likely going to complete this playthrough. The hardest part about Fallout New Vegas to be honest is getting all of the mods installed that make this decade old game look fairly viable. You can also blame this video by HBomberguy that triggered all of the emotions and feels.

Finally I leave you all with this video that my friend Cylladora sent me over the break. It is amazing… true… and also sad. I hope you had an excellent break and for those of you still out there, thanks for sticking around. It might be a few weeks while I sort out what my normal pattern is going to look like. I have a bunch of topics for the next bit as I go through all of the end of the gear stuff. I also want to do a deep dive into Cyberpunk 2077 and Jedi Fallen Order after having beaten both recently. So I have some ammunition for several weeks, but when that runs out… I might allow myself another break because it seems to have at least improved my desire to sit down and write.