Insert Joystick Joke Here

We gamers have spent many’a year attempting to break the stereotype of a gamer as a a pale fat dude in his parent’s basement, wearing a headset and corpse camping 13-year-olds until 3 a.m., after which he turns on some tentacular hentai and masturbates furiously while sobbing and snotting in the dark, giving himself a classic case of Cheeto dick.

I mean, some of us don’t even have dicks. Come on, people.

I kid, I kid. But, while it becomes ever more evident that gamers are a diverse collection of individuals, that stereotype of the lonely, sex-starved basement dweller remains.

And Japan is totally not helping.

A few years ago, a Japanese company released the SOM, which seems fairly innocuous when you first see it:

Kind of reminiscent of a microscope in shape/design, this thing does not do science. I cannot stress that enough. This is not a science device.

It’s a wank machine.

And not just a wank machine. Oh no. It’s a video game wank machine. Bundled together with a game named Cross Days, the SOM is supposed to introduce ‘next-gen reality’ to their naughty video game. The machine apparently moves in real time to corresponding onscreen movements at certain points in the game. Essentially, as you fuck something onscreen, the machine fucks you.

But wait, it gets better. Because if that setup looks just a little too… clinical for your masturbatory needs, never fear. The good folks who created the SOM can give you a hand… literally:

Because who hasn’t wanted a creepy doll-hand-fused-to-cylinder gently caressing their dong?

And ladies, the creators of the SOM want you to know that you are valued customers as well. This isn’t just for the gents. There’s a SOM attachment that will piston your lady bits to pleasureville as well:

But Japan wasn’t content with this monstrosity. Oh no. Why make the dick secondary here? Why not let the dick control the entertainment?

Presenting the Ju-C Air, the dick powered controller:

The Ju-C Air (the name makes me giggle every. damn. time) seems to function in a similar fashion to LovePalz (which we’ve covered before), but instead of pleasuring your partner, you’re pleasuring… a digital anime maid. See, the Ju-C Air is bundled with Custom Maid 3D, a game in which you, the “hero”, are told by your estranged grandfather that he’s willing to turn over the reins to his gentleman’s club to you… if you meet certain requirements. You have to join the club as a member, make nice with (which I assume means “make sex with”) the maids in the club, and train up your own maid to service you and the other customers.

…I found a gameplay video with English translations, okay? I was curious.

So, you build your very own maid from, at least what I could see, a truly impressive array of options in terms of appearance and clothing. And you get to set up each sexual encounter with your maid, choosing what services she performs for you. For the record, one of the tabs on this selection screen was marked Perverts, and I find I’m curious what hentai game makers consider perverted. Where’s the line for them?

Now, this is as much as I could really glean from the video, because then the English translation went away and everything was censored, so I went over to their main page. Which, of course, is in Japanese, but I’m gonna guess from the pictures as the bottom that you can special order a pirate lass as well. I’m not sure if that means you expand your gentleman’s club and add on a naught nautical option, or if some down-on-her-luck former ship captain (who can no longer pillage and plunder due to an economic downturn and an inability to afford ship repairs caused her to sell the junker for salvage) wanders in to your club and offers up her salty young booty to your gentlemen customers, but either way, pirate wench.

Now, what nobody’s telling me is whether your dick also controls the cursor I saw moving around on the videos. Dicktwitch, the cursor’s up here, then dicktwitch, the cursor’s down there. Because if so, there are going to be some guys out there who learn some finite fucking dick control, let me tell you.

Oh Etsy, You’re So Sexy

ATTENTION: Standard disclaimer blah blah NSFW blah blah don’t click the links in the presence of children blah blah MAY CONTAIN COCK. Or, at least, cock surrogates. And ponies.

Galleons, Etsy is… well, Etsy is really a mixed bag. There are some truly interesting, unique little shops present on the site, and I’ve found a handful of great items (including my favorite, ever-present-’round-my-neck locket) on their site. But for every one thing I find that I’d like to own, I find 127 other items that range in quality from utter crap to abso-fucking-lutely ridiculous. And occasionally horrifying.

But I think that’s part of what keeps driving me back into the arms of Etsy (along with many of the shady back-alley areas of the web)- morbid curiosity. And it was during one of those random Etsy wanderings that I had an idea.

Etsy is wonderful. And fucking horrible. And everything is on it. So, I knew, I just KNEW, there would be sex toys. Oh yes, my galleons. It’s a sex toy post. I have plumbed the depths of Etsy for you, dear galleons, to find the best (worst) the site has to offer in this arena.

And boy, did Etsy not disappoint.

Carved Bangsticks

Far and away the most popular option in, uh, unique labial lovin’ is the oh-so-finely handcrafted dildo. And not just any ol’ dildo. No, these are special. Sculptures in silicone.

AND YOU HAVE SO MANY CHOICES!

Aliens (both of the traditional and chestbursting varieties), gargoyles, pussy cats, the rotting phalanges (the phrasing of which is reminiscent of this) of zombies, snakes, gnomes… even our old friend, the squildo!

Now, those are all fairly standard sculpted-to-please fare. Hell, we’ve featured similar in some of our sex toy posts in the past. But it just wouldn’t be Etsy if things didn’t get… stranger.

First up, for the geek crowd (what up, my peeps… goddammit Sam, phrasing), the Dark Invader dildo, which is obviously not infringing upon any copyrighted material because the name is totally different:

“Ohhhh, your helmet is SO big!”

While looking more like Rick Moranis’ Dark Helmet than the infamous Darth Vader, this little guy is obviously for the sci fi fans.

But hey, I’m just saying that it bears a passing resemblance to the famous Star Wars character. I mean, he’s not called Darth Vader. The creator isn’t calling him Darth Vader. And any parts of the description that sound like movies quotes? That’s a coincidence. Don’t jump to any conclusions, Etsy staff.

In the same vein, Batz here is obviously not a Batman ripoff. Obviously.

Our next Super Awesome Etsy Find is the Island Explorer:

Butt (hah, COMEDY) this little guy isn’t going to be exploring islands so much as… caverns. Crafted to look like a Polynesian moai, and while I don’t see the appeal of shoving a replica of my (or someone else’s) ancestors in any hole on my body, I guess that’s someone’s idea of a good time. And if so, hey, Etsy’s there for you.

Because Etsy cares about your bum’s ancestor fetish.

And finally, my favorite (and by my favorite I mean the one most like to ruin sex for me for the rest of my life), Tricky Willy:

Tricky Willy might seem innocuous enough, but he disturbs the shit out of me. Perhaps because I imagine the creator of this toy once had a major acid trip that was supposed to end in a blowjob and instead ended in him having a prolonged chat with the cock gnome bouncing in front of his face. Which was probably a hilarious scene, but I worry that, after seeing Tricky Willy, I will never be able to look at a dick again without imagining a unique little face under the corona.

Your Run-of-the-Mill Fuckwands

We may have discussed the dildos carved to look like… well, a variety of strange creatures, but there are plenty of more normal cooch pleasers available on Etsy.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t make fun of them. After all, I’ve got mad mockery skillz, yo.

First, we have the hand crafted wooden models. Smooth, nicely curved, and bearing more than a passing resemblance to a table leg:

Listen galleons, I understand that people get rather creative in the use of common household items as pleasure devices. I do. We’ve all been there. But I can honestly say that I haven’t been sitting around one day, so horny my labia feel like they are ready to Hulk-out of my panties and attack the nearest cock, and thought to myself, “Hey, I could turn all my frustration and Hulk-tendencies onto that there table leg and give myself some sweet, sweet relief from my crotchal woes.” Destroying furniture to get off?

…Okay, well, to be fair, I have done that, but it was accidental. And I got a black eye from it. And… MOVING ON.

Actually, most of the Etsy dildo selection is of the glass variety. I’m never going to be able to overcome my pretty glass objects = pipes mindset, so I always think of smoking pot when I see glass dildos. And then I get the munchies. So it goes.

But this one doesn’t make me think of pot:

THIS one makes me think of sex. Particularly, of sperm. Of procreation. Of “oh sweet jaysus, why is there a giant red sperm in that butt plug?!” It’s like minotaur sperm. Or Satan’s sperm. And it’s called the Wandering Red Shroom. Where the fuck is it wandering, Etsy? I’ve seen this goddamn horror film. Some naïve young girl gets this at a curiosity shop run by some mysterious dark haired woman, and the girl uses it, and suddenly her name is Rosemary and she’s pregnant and, PLOT TWIST, it’s Satan’s. Not me. No thank you, Etsy. That girl always ends up horribly dead or insane/brainwashed to love her little Antichrist.

Fuck that shit.

So, let’s move over to the far less terrifying silicone beasties, shall we? Oh, wait, no. Things are still terrifying over here. Because we have stuff like this little pink number:

Which might look innocuous enough by your standards, but to me, it looks like a goddamn hand plane from a woodshop:

And I’m just not that into putting woodworking tools near my intimate bits, thank you very much. Also off-putting about this product? It comes with this weird user’s diagram, which looks more at home in a textbook than in the bedroom.

I am also a fan of this particular piece, simply for its name. Two times a lady? Yeah, that puppy’s real ladylike.

And if neither of these tickle your fancy, how about you design your own? Oh yeah, don’t be put off by the fact that they kind of look like those water tube toys. It’s part of their, ah, charm.

Paddles and Crops and Whips… OH MY!

Now, when I say Etsy has ‘any paddle or crop you could possibly want’, I don’t mean ‘a wide variety of paddles and crops’, I mean ‘ANY PADDLE OR CROP YOU COULD POSSIBLY WANT’. And if you can’t find exactly what you need, I’ll bet all you’d have to do is contact one of the kindly shop owners and they’d make one to your exact specifications.

Don’t believe me? Then prepare yourselves for a parade of paddles, a cavalcade of crops, a festival of flails, a… oh, you get the idea.

There is a wide array of punishment tools on Etsy, made of anything from yarn to feathers to aluminum to boot soles. From the simple to the ornate, the silly to the elegant. And for all tastes, from the leather lovers to the steampunk crowd to the… well, to the folks looking for something a little more unique.

There are hand painted paddles for all fandoms. Hello Kitty (which makes way too many appearances in the sex toy market, let’s be fair). Portal. The Discworld series. Transformers. Mass Effect. Internet cat memes. Final Fantasy. Legos. A Nightmare on Elm Street. Pacman (those holes… god damn, that’s gotta sting). Super Mario Bros. Nightmare Before Christmas. Weird, swaddled bears. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Game of Thrones. Invader Zim.

And some fandoms are very popular, drawing in multiple shops and a variety of products. For example, the Doctor Who fans. They have TARDIS everything. TARDIS paddle. TARDIS flogger. TARDIS crop. Hell, there’s even a sonic screwdriver crop. But my absolute favorite bit of Doctor Who sex gear is this Dalek paddle:

YOU WILL SUBMIT TO DALEK RULE. WE ARE SUPERIOR. YOU WILL BEND OVER AND SUBMIT. YOU WILL OBEY OR YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED.

But Doctor Who sex toys? Eh, they’re really not so weird. My Little Pony, on the other hand? What the fuck, people?

Yes, there is a complete line of MLP paddles by an Etsy shop. Each lovingly crafted to look like one of the mane (MOAR COMEDY) characters on the beloved children’s show. Because bronies are fucked up.

BUT WAIT. Apparently, there are a lot of people who are fans of both Doctor Who and MLP. There is this whole fandom for Doctor Whooves, some kind of pony version of the good Doctor. I don’t… I can’t… WHAT THE FUCK?!

And so, for those Doctor Whooves fans, here’s your very own paddle of the pony Doctor’s flank. You’re welcome.

Comic book fans have a lot of options (probably thanks to all the comic films hitting theaters over the last ten years), including (but not limited to) Iron Man, Storm, Mystique, Rogue, Harley, and Superman.

For you Star Wars fans, how about a little Imperial justice? And for the rare double dom relationship, a set of floggers that allow you to battle for galactic (and bedroom) dominance every night. You’re a Sith, they’re a Jedi. WHO WILL WIN?

And Trekkies, Etsy didn’t forget about you. Don’t you want this sexy Borg-inspired number? Resistance is futile, baby.

Potter fans, you can reenact all your Snape and Hermione spank fantasies with these gems. The Hogwarts crest paddle. Or, if you’re feeling wicked, a Death Eater paddle. Or how about a crop modeled after Narcissa Malfoy’s wand?

Or you can have a real console war: Sega vs Nintendo. FIGHT!

This is listed as a ‘beautiful aluminum paddle’:

But I’ve seen it before. That is an exact replica of a Dead Island machete:

I don’t really think Dead Island is a sexy-type game, but I guess it does involve a lot of bodily fluids and half-naked people running around on a tropical island, so eh. Go for it, you crazy kids.

And here’s a whole subset of sex tools for people with no sex life: THE WOW NERDS! Pick your side and get a paddle! And because we all know the Horde is the best (for the Horde, motherfuckers), some additional Horde goodness. And finally, a little Dalaran-inspired flogging action. Oh yeah.

Then there’s this, for when you’re feeling like a modern Prometheus.

And this, for when you really need to teach someone a lesson.

And finally, for those who like their sex served up with a side of fear:

…Listen, anyone who’s read Stephen King’s It has a very real, very healthy, very logical fear/aversion to clowns. Don’t judge me.

Wearable Goodness

The sexy section of Etsy is so much more than just sex toys, galleons. It’s got sexy apparel, too! Oh yeah.

Sexy underwear with a pocket to hold the cash after the gentleman pays you? Etsy’s got you covered.

Crocheted strap-on harnesses? Etsy’s got you covered.

Fancy steampunk bondage cuffs? Etsy’s got you covered.

Rainbow dick pendants, to show your love of queers and cocks? Etsy’s got you covered.

And how about shoes with dildo heels for the foot fetishists out there? Etsy’s got you covered here, too- a whole shop of dilettos!

Furniture for Fuckin’

When outfitting a sex dungeon, it’s important to find only the best pieces. You have to look everywhere. Comb the net, search the best shops… and sometimes, go to Etsy.

That’s right. Etsy’s home to your sex dungeon needs. They should really advertise that better.

I mean, look at this fine piece of dungeon furniture, the bondage horse. Ebony stained birch, burgundy faux leather padding, heavy duty hardware, and it folds right up, so you can tuck it out of sight when the in-laws come over.

And how about a sex machine for that sexy lair you’re crafting? A dark walnut stain, 19 inch bar. “Adjustable speeds from slow to OMG!” How can you resist?

But this next piece has to be my favorite. At first glance, it’s your average St. Andrew’s Cross. But this bad boy is a motherfucking transformer!

Sexy dungeon furniture by night, totally vanilla plant pedestal by day. That is some quality sex gear, there- functional and fucktional.

Dirty Decor

It’s not just about sexy furniture, though. Everyone knows that it’s the little touches that really make a house a home. Or a house a sex pad.

Touches like a lovingly embroidered rabbit vibe sampler. Just like grandma used to make.

And what about these artful magnets? Cover your fridge in the genitalia of a young British girl, because even vaginas are classy if they have a British accent.

For the kids’ room, what about these colorful dinosaur wall pieces? What? Even the king of the lizards gets lonely sometimes.

This majestic sculpture shows off your love of both cocks and the black power movement. Or fisting. Black power or fisting.

And for a touch of undersea whimsy (guess I wasn’t the only one who made the connection), this happy little mirror.

But I think my favorite thing is this sculpture, Silver Seduction:

Like a 3D representation of the finest in bathroom stall graffiti, this piece will really bring a ‘filthy truck stop restroom’ vibe to your love shack.

Various and Sundry Other Goodies

In my Etsy wanderings, I came across many things that are, well, sex toys in the very real sense of the word. And so, I’m giving them their own category in this list, because I think some of them are hilarious and I can’t not share them.

You’re welcome.

First up, we have a game called Spin the Wank:

Spin the Wank is a variation on Spin the Bottle, only instead of spinning some bit of glassware, you twirl a little ceramic cock. How fantastic! You can only imagine how the rules of the game change when you switch out bottle for dick. Let’s just say, that’s going to be one hell of a party…

And here’s a little sperm plushie. That is, apparently, signed by the creator? Like, the creator of sperm? I really want this to just have GOD scrawled across the back.

…Yes, I read the description. I know it’s signed by that Bethann woman. My version was better.

What about this 1967 sexometer? I enjoy the fact that ‘sex starved’ is both a sexiness rating AND rates above ‘heavenly’. Sense, this product makes it.

Here’s a Christmas ornament/key chain sculpted to look like a blow up doll. I don’t have a snarky comment for this, I just think it’s funny.

For the well dickerated bathroom, how about some Mr. Penis soap? Though if you’re calling him Mr. Penis, you could at least give the guy a top hat. I mean, honestly.

Now see, these guys know how to make a cock look classy. Those are some sharp dressed dongs right there.

This is probably the best toy on the whole site, both for sheer WTF factor and for the horror factor:

As I’m sure you’ve guessed, this little guy shags his lady when wound up. Deliciously crass. But then you see their faces:

HOLY SHIT. What is… what the… *whimper*

The horror.

Moving on… to decorate your notebooks, love letters, sex toy box, etc., why not get a set of dildo stickers? Add a little naughtiness to everything.

And for when you try a position you really should have stretched before and end up a little sore the next day, here’s a lovely little hot/cold pack to ease the pain. Also, it smells like lavender, like a good cock should.

And finally, we have the prick cushion. And while I could try to come up with something clever to say about it, I think its description is just too good to attempt to top:

This Prick Cushion is one Hot Pink Rod. He rides like a roller coaster, purrs like a kitten and moves like a hot knife slicing through butter.

For scorned lovers, and women with penis envy, a present for a secret spinster sister, the perfect bachelorette gift for the crafty girl who has everything or the pin cushion you will never lose (but hide from your mother-in-law).

Need I say more?

***

I hope you’ve had fun on our tour of Etsy’s sexier side, my galleons. I really do. Because now that we’ve had fun, I’m going to scare the shit out of you by taking you to the darkest area of Etsy.

Welcome to hell, galleons:

WHAT THE FUCK?! What is this shit? Who would put this near their genitals? This is the stuff of nightmares. I will sleep poorly for weeks after seeing this. And you want people to fuck these monstrosities? WHAT?!?!?!

…

…

…

And that’s Etsy for you, galleons.

Cute or Horrifying? You Decide

Now galleons, I’ve been very clear about my feelings regarding sex toys that look like children’s toys (see this if you don’t remember). But, despite my grumpy fist-shaking at people making these bizarre, cutesy fuck toys, they just keep churning them out.

My latest find has me utterly baffled. They are so cute, so childish, that there is no sane person on this fucking planet that should feel comfortable letting these happy little guys anywhere near their genitals.

Galleons, meet the Buxxxor Collection:

I mean… damn. These little guys are not only adorable, they have names.

The little blue guy with the fucking beauty mark (or, as Animaniacs taught me when I was a child, a cutie mark) is an intimate massager…

Okay, wait, time out. Why the fuck do we call things “intimate massagers?” It’s a clit stimulator. That’s what it fucking is. It’s being marketed as a goddamn sex toy, it can at least drop the PG descriptor.

Anyway, the little blue guy (girl?) is Geena. Which… well, frankly, I’m not sure why it’s named Geena.

The pink fella is the one actually being called a clitoral stimulator, despite the fact that it’s shaped like a G-spot (and clitoral) stimulator (see this if you don’t believe me):

Because that fucking makes sense. Its name is Clitt, which is a sufficiently dirty name, I suppose. I maintain that this one should be Geena (G-spot) and the blue guy should be Clitt (for obvious reasons), but hey, I’m just trying to make sense here.

Silly me.

And finally, the yellow bloke is Woody. And he’s basically just your run-of-the-mill fuckstick.

Naming snafus aside, can you honestly imagine letting these little fellas near your lady bits? They are like the little prince guy in Katamari Damacy… is their purpose to roll my vagina up into a ball until I orgasm?

This whole thing makes me intensely uncomfortable. I’m just saying.

Before the Mass Effect 3 Ending Debacle: The Dragon Age 2 Disappointment

I’ve already gone into excruciating detail on my feelings regarding the fan backlash to the ME3 ending, so the fact that, after staunchly defending BioWare’s product, I’m about to turn around here and bitch about the failings of one of their other games might seem a bit hypocritical. Perhaps even worthy of some disdain. I’m going to ask you to roll with me here, galleons. Give me a chance to prove that my criticisms are justified, not just mindless whinging (yes, I think I’m British).

If I fail, you are allowed to mercilessly tear me apart in the comments. I’ll deserve it.

***

I really looked forward to the release of Dragon Age 2. While I didn’t enjoy Dragon Age: Origins as much as my beloved Mass Effect, I was still quite fond of the title. I will acknowledge that there were problems with it (particularly centered around combat), but what made the title so enjoyable was its throwback nature. Origins felt like the high fantasy games I’d grown up with, like Baldur’s Gate (which, given the developer, only makes sense). One hero, with their ragtag band of followers, out to slay the dragon/demon and stop the big nasty evil from overtaking the land. It was full of haughty woodland elves and misguided mages trafficking with demons and underground dwarven cities full of small bearded warriors/smiths. I fought ogres and golems and spiders and dragons and even some giant rats. I traveled with the bastard heir to the throne, the reformed assassin, the kindly healer, the drunk dwarf. It was just classic fun- nothing too new, nothing too special, just a solid, enjoyable game.

So, when DA2 was released, I expected an expansion on the sword-and-sorcery goodness of the first. What I got was… well, it was disappointing. It didn’t feel like the same series at all. And, upon playing it again now, I still feel the same way.

Here’s how DA2 failed me.

The lack of a grand scope/sense of the epic/any solid plot for a good chunk of the game.

It is basically a staple of high fantasy that there is some huge, overarching goal the main characters are striving to complete. Slay the dragon, save the princess, toss a ring into a volcano. You know, that sort of nonsense. In Origins, your character was a Grey Warden, part of a special order of warriors with the job of defeating the rise of the darkspawn (orcish creatures) every few ages (known as a Blight). You and bastard princeling Alistair are the last Grey Wardens, set out to gather a mighty army from the scattered races of Ferelden to march against the darkspawn horde, slay the Archdemon that leads them, and maybe have cake afterwards. Pretty standard fantasy goodness. So, your character travels across the kingdom, aiding the dwarves and elves and mages and men in order to gain their support for the final battle. And, in the end, your army marches to battle, you defeat the Archdemon, and the Blight is over.

Huzzah.

Then the expansion, Awakening, comes out. Your Grey Warden is now working in the province given to the order by the new ruler of Ferelden. You are dealing with increased darkspawn activity, something that shouldn’t happen with the Blight being over and all. You find some talking, weirdly sentient darkspawn who try to get you to help in their plan to free their people from the magical slavery of the Blight, so that the darkspawn race might prosper and eventually work with the rest of the races of the world. You can either agree to help or not, but it sets the stage for some very interesting future developments with the darkspawn.

And then DA2 comes out and… nothing. You aren’t a Grey Warden anymore- in fact, you are a completely different character from who you were in the first game. You are living up in another city-state as a refugee from the events of the first game. You don’t seem to have any more pressing goal than surviving and maybe reclaiming your family estate (which your uncle lost to pay a debt).

…I’m sorry, what the fuck just happened?

Da2 is split into three “acts,” three different years in the city of Kirkwall. Each year has a completely different kind of mini-goal to it, though the “goals” for the last two years are less “goals” and more “situations you accidentally become embroiled in over the course of the year.” If you were to tell me, upon starting the game, what the final battle dealt with, I would have been confused. Hell, you don’t even really meet the two people who become the two final bosses until Act Fucking 3. They have no real presence in your game until the final third of it.

The game just feels woefully cobbled together. Act 1 has you running around trying to scrounge up enough gold to go on this adventuring expedition that will (hopefully) secure your fortune and let your family reclaim their estate. Okay. I can get behind that, I suppose. Then Act 2 rolls around. You have your estate. So…? You kind of just run around doing a bunch of pointless quests because… you want the gold (even though you’re rich)? You want to help people (even if you’re choosing the mega-douche dialogue options)? There’s no fucking motivation for your character’s actions. Eventually, because of a few random quests you’ve gone on, you somehow end up involved in the big qunari (race of big dudes with demon horns who want to convert everyone to their religion/lifestyle or else slaughter them mercilessly)  vs. citizens of Kirkwall fight. You bring an end to it, everyone is happy, you gain a fancy title… Then, Act 3 happens. And, once again, you are kind of slowly, half-assedly dragged into this big war between the mages and the templars.

What. The. Fuck.

Everything feels so pieced together and tacked on. There are a few really interesting, rewarding side quests, but there is no real main quest. It’s not a sandbox, where you kind of build your own game experience, you just go around getting letters and doing jobs for people for seemingly little or no reason. Considering the game is an RPG, this is a major problem for the title.

And the game has next to nothing to do with the events of the first game. You can import your Origins save in, but all it does is influence whether or not a few cameos happen. Nothing that even remotely influences the actual story… because there is no fucking story. It takes one of the small areas of contention in Origins (the templar and mage situation) and eventually blows it the fuck up (literally) after 2/3 of a game full of shuffling your feet and misdirection and tries to pass this off as some grand story.

It’s not. It’s really, really not.

Take Mass Effect (I can’t help but compare the two series because they are both BioWare creations… sorry). Imagine Shepard had managed to defeat the Reapers in the first game. And then, instead of any continuation of the Reaper/Shepard story, the second game has you playing as a survivor of Eden Prime who, I don’t know, becomes a merc and fucks around in spaceland for a bit, eventually ending up involved in some kind of human coup on the Citadel, and finally accidentally ends up hardcore reigniting the human/turian war. You’d have been… disappointed, no? Confused, maybe?

I think the fact that the story from Origins didn’t directly carry over to DA2 would have bothered me less if they hadn’t pulled that “keep your save files, they’re going to matter” bullshit on me. My Origins decisions impacted less than nothing in DA2. Honestly, the idea of having different protagonists having different adventures across the same world is fine and dandy. But don’t bother with having me import a save if it doesn’t mean anything. The Elder Scrolls does it right- they set each game in different provinces (and at different times), you never import a save, you are playing isolated heroes. Lore grows and continues from game to game, but your old characters have no impact. And it totally works. Nobody’s complaining. Play it one way or the other, but don’t do this half-assed import bullshit, BioWare.

I know this is their story and their world and I feel kind of cheap complaining about it when I so harshly judged people for doing the same to the ME3 ending. I feel like I really have less issue with where the story went and more issue with how they got there, painfully limping along until they decided to make a point.

Speaking of the “point”…

The story got WAY too political WAY too fast.

This is a high fantasy series. At least, that’s what it had been touted as. We’ve already discussed some of what one expects when that term is tossed around. And that’s what the first game was.

And then holy shit, DA2 tries to jump into a completely different direction. By Act 3, when the thing finally decides to come up with some semblance of a plot, they’ve decided to just blow the whole mages/templars thing into a full-blown war.

In the Dragon Age world, mages are taken from their families at young ages and locked away in the Circle of Magi, a tower or something in every province where mages live and study under close watch of the templars, guards from the Chantry who are there to make sure the mages toe the line. Throughout history, mages just fucked with shit, calling up demons and using blood magic and making everything fucking awful with their sparkly magics. So, the templars keep them in check, killing the ones who show signs of possession or blood magic dabbling. The mages are essentially imprisoned. If you don’t want to live in the Circle, and you have magic, you are known as an apostate, and templars will kill you or haul you off to the Circle if they catch you using magic out in the world.

So, the mages are bitchy because they are locked in a tower their whole lives with horrible sword-wielding guards breathing down their necks and waiting to run them through, and the templars feel like they have to crack down harder as more and more mages escape/call on forbidden magics to try to escape their prison.

I mean, yeah, it’s a shitty situation. And I feel really bad for the mages.¹ But they go from mild discontent in the first game to full-on claw-your-face-off-with-lightning crazy in the second. And the templars go from being stern guards who at least attempt to be fair to religion-crazed-sword-happy lunatics. It was a situation I’d have been happy to play through and resolve, except that the two factions became so fucking insane that I didn’t want to side with either of them. Kind of just wanted to firebomb the lot and run off with the pirate wench.

Instead of gathering a giant army to face a demonic invasion of the land, I’m playing errand-boy/girl back and forth between these two whiny, completely batshit groups. No matter what I do, I’m about to help someone ignite a giant war across the world between these two factions. Try as I might to minimize the damage, in the end, everything goes to shit. I’m trying to be diplomatic and political when all I want is to go stab stabbity stab a dragon in the eye.

The game is incredibly claustrophobic.

The entire game is set within one city and a few small, surrounding areas. Mostly, it’s just this city. You don’t get to go anywhere else. Hightown. Lowtown. The Docks. The Gallows. Darktown. The coastline around the city. The mountain summit by it. A mine nearby. That’s it. So, you’re just running back and forth between different parts of the city. Again. And again. And again.

You spend the whole time feeling closed in and like you’re going nowhere (which is greatly exacerbated by the lack of cohesive plot). It’s fucking maddening.

Another facet of this is…

HIDEOUS FUCKING MAP RECYCLING

I have no idea who thought this was a good idea, but let me at ’em. I’m gonna bitch slap them so goddamn hard. There are, like, 5 (maybe) different dungeon maps that just keep getting recycled. They’ll close off a section one time, make you run it backwards the next, but it’s the same thing again and again and again.

This is one of the biggest complaints from the fan community. And with good reason. For a game that’s isolated to this one city, you feel like you could go nuts making gorgeous/interesting/complex/unique dungeons to keep things fresh. Instead, you have a handful of small, boring, shitty little maps being used again and again.

By the third time you’re canvassing the same map, you’re ready to strangle someone. By the tenth, you just want to cry in frustration. It’s the worst.

The Stamina/Mana and Cooldown Fuckery

Okay, so you have a stamina bar. That’s fine. You can only use talents until you are out of stamina, with the bigger, more powerful attacks using more stamina.

Or, you have cooldowns on your talents. You use one, then it takes thirty seconds or something for that one to be useable again. The more powerful the attack, the longer the cooldown.

But you don’t have BOTH. This is actually a carry-over issue from Origins. Not only do you have a stamina bar that depletes as you use your talents, but they all have cooldowns. Plus, your heath/stamina/mana potions all have a damn cooldown. It can make it fucking impossible to do anything in intense combat situations.

It would be like having both the weapon overheat system from ME1 and the thermal clips from 2&3. Together. At the same time. Just redundant bullshit making it unnecessarily harder to fight.

The romance options are incredibly one-dimensional.

I know this is a silly concern, but I’ve been spoiled by the ME games. Garrus. Liara. Tali. Thane. Ashley. They are all so interesting, with real personalities and humor and stories. They all feel like real, flawed, wonderful people. So, I expect BioWare to be able to create some really memorable characters like that for me in the Dragon Age games as well. And in Origins, they did. Leliana. Zevran. Alistair. Morrigan. They were all layered, interesting characters.

Then DA2 happens. I have Fenris, the broody elf with the sexy voice who is super emo and tortured because he was a slave and single-mindedly hates magic and mages. There’s Anders, the once-playful healer who is super emo and tortured because he’s an apostate and single-mindedly hates templars. Sebastian, the prince-turned-priest (sort of) with the Scottish accent who is super emo because of his complete, pathetic inability to decide whether he wants to stay a priest or go back to being a prince. Isabela, the skanky pirate wench who, bless her, is just a skanky pirate wench constantly trying to get in your pants. And Merrill, the totally naive elf mage who is actually stupid enough to think blood magic and demons are okay. The characters do not grow or change or have any real depth beyond this.

I forgive Isabela, because her wenching is hilarious. There are various scenes where she’s hitting on everyone and having to go to the healer for her STDs. She’s an unabashed tart. I can’t help but tip my hat to her.

But the rest… god, it makes romancing any of them a fucking chore. I get to the point where I want them all to just shut the fuck up. I’d rather romance the dwarf- he’s the most interesting companion of the lot. I romanced Fenris last go round and if I so much as tried to be a decent human being to a mage, he got pissed.

There’s a scale of friendship/rivalry for each character and you need so much friendship/rivalry to successfully romance one of them. Yes, that’s right, you can romance them as their rival. They hate everything you stand for, but man, then just can’t wait to jump your bones.

Most of the time, rivalmances make no sense. Then again…

Playing as one of the major classes doesn’t make any sense.

I thought about playing a mage on the play-through I just started, but I had to stop because it makes absolutely no sense that Hawke, who gets into fights all over town (including right in front of the templars at the very beginning of the game), could get away with being a fucking mage when the templars supposedly kill/imprison anyone who even smells like a mage. It would be completely unbelievable to play the game as a mage. There’s no way they’d constantly turn a blind eye to you, I’m sorry.

Then again, if I can’t figure out the motivations for my own character’s actions, how can I figure out the motivations for other characters?

***

So, okay, that’s a lot of bitching, I know. And it probably makes you wonder why I’d ever continue playing the game. Thing is, on its own, it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever played. As broken as many aspects of the game feel, there are other areas where it shines. It’s 100% BioWare in that the party banter and much of the dialogue is just great. And you have more varied options in conversations than you do in the ME trilogy- I love that sarcasm option like mad (it makes Hawke a smartass who makes really bad jokes only he/she thinks is funny… sound familiar?).

And I just really, really love slashing things to death with my daggers.

Anyway, unnecessary tirade over. I still maintain I’m not a total hypocrite. I’m allowed to dislike a game and/or portions of it. I’m not going to go around bitching and demanding BioWare change everything to make me happy. I’d like to hope they take some of their failings into account in the future (like never doing the map recycling thing again), but at the end of the day, I’m not going to love every game I play or even every game BioWare puts out. So it goes.

If you don’t buy my “I’m not a hypocrite” logic, I am more than happy to face the full brunt of your rage/disdain. I still am not sure I don’t deserve it.

1 DA2 makes it a little difficult to feel truly sympathetic for the mages’ plight, seeing as 99.9% of the mages you meet either become demon-possessed abominations or use blood magic at the slightest insult. The mages are more likeable in the first game- you meet abominations, sure, but you also meet mages who don’t run around with demons, who feel trapped in the Circle even though they are totally good guys.

In Which an Irrational Fear is Made Rational (This Post Has Nothing to Do With Bunnies, Just So You Know)

Oh galleons, this morning the great and terrible Xbox gods decided to play a most distressing trick upon me, their humble devotee. I stumble in the door from work, exhausted, frustrated, needing a sword-and-sorcery fix like some people need coffee or crack. I turn on my Xbox, wander into the bathroom, and take my contacts out… only to return to the living room to find my screen sporting a message about a disc read error.

What fresh hell is this?!

For those of you who are unaware of my previous Xbox escapades (Xcapades, if you will), I have owned a total of three 360s now. My first was unceremoniously stolen while on loan to a friend. The second suffered a hideous, drawn out death last year that culminated in the dreaded Red Ring of Death. And the first symptom that Xbox the second was going tits up? A disc reading issue.

So, when I walk into the room this morning and find that message on my screen, my blood goes fucking glacial. Not again. You have got to be fucking kidding me. This system is less than a year old, for fuck’s sake.

Then there was a bit where I dash over to the Xbox, muttering “No, no, no,” under my breath like some kind of healing mantra. I’m stroking the thing, caressing it, whispering sweet nothings and pleas as I eject the Dragon Age 2 disc inside it. A cursory glance at the disc reveals nothing, and it had been running just fine the day before, so why on Earth would there be anything wrong with it? No, this was the Xbox. It has to be. My truly terrible luck with technology has struck again.

I ease the DA2 disc back into the Xbox, practically begging the system to work. There is nothing more pathetic than a gamer on their knees in front of their system, all but praying for it to work.

The disc spins.

…

…

…

Nothing happens.

I can feel that bubble of despair/frustration/terror welling up in me. My Xbox is my de-stressing device, my primary source of entertainment, my geeky life’s blood. I can’t be without it again. I just can’t.

The rational side of my brain kicks in slowly, fighting its way to the surface through the sludge of my sadness.

Try a different game, it says. Listlessly, I comply.

The disc spins.

…

…

…

And the game starts right up. No problem at all.

At this point, I’m staring at my system, slack-jawed. What miracle is this? What divine blessing has been bestowed upon my poor console? I take out this disc and insert another.

Another successful read. That must mean…

I examine the DA2 disc closer. From the very center of the disc spreading out to halfway to the center is a very fine crack. Not a scratch, a fucking crack. No wonder the game couldn’t be read- I’m surprised my system managed to read it yesterday.

I’ve always hated the cases DVDs and video games come in. You have to apply just enough pressure to get some of the discs out of their cases that the disc itself bends a bit. I have had a long-held fear I’m going to snap a disc in half with my mannish hands and freakish strength one day.

Turns out my irrational fear was less irrational than I thought. I must have cracked that disc removing it from its stupid case yesterday.

Leave it to She-Ra, right?

Anyway, after a quick trip to the store to purchase a new copy of the game, I am once more on track to make my sarcastic, bearded rogue sex up the broody, tattooed elf with the leg-weakening baritone. Oh yes, this is going to happen:

It can be a lot to take in, I know.

Hur hur.

The Story of Lydia

Oh, Lydia. Even if you’ve never played Skyrim before, chances are you’ve stumbled across some mention of that damned Lydia. Because all of us have our Lydia stories. Our woeful, amusing stories of our love for/irritation with/bizarre attachment to Lydia.

In Skyrim, you can have one follower travel with you across the province. For most players, the first follower you come across is Lydia. If you do the first few steps of the main questline, Jarl Balgruuf names you Thane of his hold and grants you a personal housecarl. Lydia.

When I got Lydia, I had her follow me everywhere. Lydia was like the bitchy, sarcastic, passive-aggressive best friend my character never knew she wanted. I had a habit of imagining her chasing my character around, trying to teach her to act more like the Dragonborn of legend. You know, a lot of “Stop stuffing dragonflies in your mouth, my Thane, and slaughter that dragon attacking the townsfolk” kind of nagging.

Bitch had no respect for my alchemy.

Then, Lydia outlived her usefulness. See, once I’d joined the Companions, I ran off and married the tall, dark, growly-voiced Farkas and started hauling him around with me on my adventures. That left Lydia to mope around my house in Whiterun, slumped sadly at the table, wishing she was out there teaching me how a real Nord woman was supposed to act.

Poor Lydia. All alone in that house for weeks at a time, waiting for me to come back from my adventures to drop a few things off and probably have loud sex with the husband while Lydia stuffed a pillow over her head and tried to pretend like she wasn’t there. And then I’d be off again, and I could just see that puppy-dog sparkle in her eye. Take me with you, that sparkle said.

And every time, I’d saunter out of the house, hulking husband in tow, leaving Lydia alone. Again.

I really did feel bad for the woman. She’d slayed dragons and draugr and bandits with me. She’d been by my side at High Hrothgar, where those old bastards taught me that Nordic yelling magic. And I’d just cast her off. But it seemed wrong to leave my badass warrior husband behind while I traipsed across Skyrim, having adventures and slaying hagravens and slaughtering bunnies (oh, such bunny slaughter there is). So, it was Lydia who had to stay home.

I suggested she take up a hobby. Learn to cook or pop next door to hang out with the blacksmith. Fucking knit.

I found myself a little surprised the first time I returned to my home and went inside to find a strange man exiting while Lydia just looked on. But hey, it’s not like I’d sent a courier ahead to tell her I was coming home. And really, this was more Lydia’s home than mine. She spent more time there, after all. I just owned the place and used it as a place to crash once in a while and as storage for a bunch of cool shit I found on my travels. If she wanted to have a man over, that was her business. I did tell her to pick up a hobby, right?

But after the fifth time I came home to find a different strange man exiting my house, I started to imagine this self-satisfied smirk on Lydia’s face. She was whoring herself out, making a mockery of the Dovahkiin by turning my hard-earned house into a goddamn brothel. Probably tarted herself up in my old armor and pretended to Shout for them, too.

What. A. Tramp.

So, I did the only thing I could do. I left Farkas at home, and invited Lydia out for a trip. Her excitement held a touch of wariness, because she knew I was unhappy with her antics, but I suited her up in some truly magnificent gear and headed out of Whiterun. She followed along behind me, happily swinging her sword, glad to be back out in the world.

We headed to an old ruin, inside of which lay a grand temple. I led the awed Lydia inside, and walked over to Delphine, smiling all the while. Told Delphine I’d found her a new recruit for her little dragon hunting gang of Blades. I could feel Lydia’s stunned stare, the hurt and betrayal in her eyes. Still smiling that same cruel smile, I turned to her and made her swear an oath to the Blades. A pledge to serve the order until she died. A pledge she had to make because I had told her to, and she was sworn to my service. I looked her in the eye, and on my face she could read the truth. The Blades might claim to be dragon fighters, but they never left their sacred little temple. And then I turned and walked out of the temple, leaving Lydia alone with Delphine in the nunnery I’d banished her to.

Nobody fucks with the Dragonborn’s rep. Not even Lydia.

Anyway, my story is nowhere near as funny as this one.

…And nowhere near as disturbing as my friend Ronnie’s. He kept referring to Lydia as his wife and taking her everywhere… until he found out he could actually get married in the game. A few days later, he came in claiming he’d accidentally killed Lydia in the middle of a civil war quest. It was almost believable (those are some big battles and Lydia has a habit of running in front of your sword like it’s her job), but the timing was too good. I called him out on it, but he fervently denied my accusations that he’d murdered Lydia so that he could run off and marry that bloke in Windhelm. For two weeks, he said it was an accident. And for two weeks, I called him a liar.

Finally, in the middle of work one day, he came up to me and said he couldn’t lie any longer. The truth had to come out. He had viciously murdered Lydia so he could be with Caldur. But he still respected Lydia and didn’t want her to be alone in death. So, he dragged her body to a nearby burnt-out shack and made her spoon with the burnt corpse in the house.

What can I say? We’ve all got our Lydia stories.

Training Your “GoldenEye”: The Impact of Video Games on Brain Activity

There’s an ongoing (mostly unsubstantiated) idea that violent video games lead to increased violence in children and adults. There’s no solid, empirical evidence backing up these claims, just circumstantial correlations here and there. Indeed, the purported cases of video games causing increased violence could just as easily be turned around to argue that individuals with dispositions of a certain sort might be more drawn to violent games. And, in either case, the “evidence” does not hold true for all gamers (or even a majority).

And so, while uptight matrons battle pasty-skinned nerds over the moral implications of violent entertainment, few have bothered to really study any other impact of video game play on the brain. We gamers boast that the rapid button clicking and finite joystick control give us superior hand-eye coordination, but is that rooted in scientific fact?

Turns out, a recent study out of the University of Toronto has found a solid link between playing first person shooters and enhanced activity in certain areas of the brain.

A team led by psychology professor Ian Spence had 25 test subjects (individuals who did not play video games) attempt to detect a target object among a sea of distractions in a wide visual field while their brain waves were recorded. Of these 25, 16 went on to play an unidentified FPS for ten total hours (in one or two hour sessions), while the control group of nine played some casual puzzle game for the same amount of time.

After their ten hours were over, all subjects once again performed the visual attention task while their brain waves were recorded.

The results?

Subjects who played the FPS performed far better on their second visual attention task, and their brain waves also displayed significant changes. The control subjects, on the other hand, showed no significant changes in visual attention or brain waves.

“After playing the shooter game, the changes in electrical activity were consistent with brain processes that enhance visual attention and suppress distracting information,” said Sijing Wu, one of Spence’s PhD students.

This is the first solid demonstration that playing video games (even for a mere ten hours) can actually change brain activity. And visual attention, the focus of this particular experiment, is important in one’s day-to-day life, from driving a car to avoiding obstacles when walking through a cluttered or crowded room.

Seems video games do impact the lives of the players, though not through the flipping of a violence switch in their brains.

Obviously, this research requires further study. It will be interesting to see how other types of video games (not just FPSs) impact the brain. Would a sword-and-shield game generate similar activity to a shooter? And what about RTSs? How long does it take the increased visual attention activity to slide back to how it was before, and does regular gaming maintain and/or solidify these changes within the brain? And is there a cap to how much FPS gaming can impact these areas of the brain, or does increased difficulty/variety of games allow one to increase this activity level still further? Does brain activity change between single player gaming and the often more complex task of multiplayer interactions?

Questions, questions. One thing’s for certain: I look forward to seeing us delve deeper into the neuroplastic changes gaming brings about.

…I also volunteer as a test subject.

In Which I Address the Mass Effect 3 Ending Controversy

WARNING: I feel it goes without saying that I’m going to be laying down some solid spoilers for the ME3 endgame here. So, if you haven’t played and have been fastidiously avoiding spoilers, turn your gaze away from this page right the fuck now.

Also, I’m going to ramble like mad and piss everyone off.

Oh, galleons. What with the statement from Bioware released today, I feel like I have to finally write this. Really, ever since finishing Mass Effect 3, I’ve been toying with doing this post. Because, after I emotionally calmed myself after the soul-shattering end to a four-year span of my life, I found I was a little disgruntled with one teensy aspect of the ending. One tiny plot hole that I was having a hard time justifying.

Honestly, when 99.9% of the game is golden, though, it’s hard to be too upset about the last three minutes or so.

And I couldn’t help but wonder if I had missed something. I mean, I was sobbing by that point and helplessly chanting, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry” at the screen as I thought I was essentially destroying everyone I loved in order to save the galaxy as a whole (more on that in a minute)… so, let’s just say there was ample room for me to have missed a moment that explained away that silly plot hole.

It seems I didn’t, and when I turned to the internet looking for the answer, I found a whole slew of people whining about the ending.

So, here goes. Here’s what I have to say about it:

You are all a bunch of pussies.

I actually fucking applauded the fact that Bioware killed Shepard in nearly every ending. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I don’t think Shep should have ever survived. Let’s look at the facts here:

Shep survived not one, but two ridiculous-fuck-situations where she (yes, she) should have died: the Battle for the Citadel and the attack on the Collector base. In fact, Shep did die once. She’s mortal as fuck. And she gets her ass blasted by that Reaper laser right before the Hammer ground team hits the Beam to take them to the Citadel/Crucible. You spend the remainder of the game limping, in a haze of fucking pain. She is seriously injured walking into the final confrontation. God, when they tell her the Crucible isn’t firing and she’s hauling her broken, dying body up to respond… that’s fucking heart-wrenching, no? And it can only be so if we truly believe Shep is mortal and is dying there.

What I’m trying to get at here is that Shepard has been the paragon (pardon the phrase) of humanity throughout this series. She’s creative, she’s tough, she’s tenacious, but she’s human. Her humanity is highlighted even further in ME3 as we really see the psychological toll this war is taking on her and has been for the past few years of her life. She is forced to make tough decisions, I mean the fate of all life in the galaxy level of tough decisions, but she’s not a god. She’s a mortal woman (with a few fancy tech upgrades courtesy of Cerberus, sure). Her very humanity, her spirit, is a combination of both her strength and her frailty. To have her walk away completely unscathed from the final fucking war with a deadly, giant machine race would have been an insult to the character and to the players.

This is a war and you are a soldier. More so than the other two titles, ME3 really brings that home. All these friends you are making? You are dragging them into a fucking war zone with you. Not everyone gets to walk away from this alive. Statistically, that’s impossible. And you, Commander Fucking Shepard, despite being a hell of a soldier, are just as mortal as the rest of them. And really, you are being tossed into the worst places in the war. In that final battle, you are the front fucking line on Hammer team. That you make it to that Beam at all is a goddamn miracle.

Shepard basically had to die to make this whole journey even remotely believable. She was never a god. She was a mortal woman. A badass mortal woman, to be sure, but mortal nonetheless. Her incredibly emotional journey, the loss of so many friends and teammates… how else could this really end? It was always building to this, to that moment of ultimate sacrifice. She was always going to die to save the galaxy. This has always been her destiny. That is why she is the lynchpin of the trilogy, why we play her. Since she first encountered that beacon on Eden Prime, her course has been set. We knew this, deep down. Maybe we didn’t want to believe it, but we knew it. When she dies at the beginning of ME2, we scream, not because she died, but because she died without completing her task, without fulfilling that destiny we know she’s been walking toward.

But, I digress. Suffice to say, despite the fact that Shepard should die to end the trilogy, I feel like people are unwilling to accept it and that’s where a lot of the ME3 backlash lies.

I blame J.K. Rowling for this.

Honestly, the ending of the seventh Harry Potter book, that fucking epilogue, was perhaps one of the most insulting pieces of fan service in recent times. I loathe that the fans are now dictating the story, that writers are cobbling together that “perfect Disney ending” just to appease the whining masses who refuse to experience the honest story, the more somber ending, the bleaker look at how life sometimes works (particularly in times of war). No, we want everyone happy and married and popping out babies and eating cookies.

Now, Harry Potter was geared toward a younger audience, so I suppose you can argue that it needed hope and a happy resolution (though I think that argument is bullshit and half, but that’s an argument for another day). Mass Effect has always been geared toward a mature audience, dammit. Adults don’t get Disney endings, they get the goddamn truth.

Apparently, as Jack Nicholson so famously said, you can’t handle the truth.Because what I’m getting from most comments regarding the ending is people saying it’s “not fair” that Shepard dies, it’s “not fair” that they don’t get a perfect, mindless, generic happy ending to the Reaper threat.

True, a lot of forum comment monkeys are sniveling children (or the emotional equivalent of such), so I shouldn’t be surprised.

Harsh? Maybe. I’m not feeling particularly generous at the moment. I’m feeling irritable.

But, while I feel that most of this backlash is centered around that whole “dead Shep” issue, there are some points being tossed about that I’ll discuss.

The mass relay explosions

In the Arrival DLC pack, we shot a goddamn asteroid into a mass relay and leveled a star system (including a batarian colony). That sucked (not really… batarians are cocks). So, a lot of people are really fucking pissed that the Crucible destroys all the mass relays in the goddamn galaxy, but doesn’t wipe out any star systems as a result.

Were the writers ignoring their own established canon here?

No.

We have to take into account the fact that the mass relays in these two instances were destroyed in very different manners. In Arrival, we hurled that asteroid at the whirling ball of eezo in that mass relay. When that eezo essentially detonated, it fucked that star system up. But the Crucible appears to be using up the eezo in the mass relays it hits to fuel its passage to each subsequent relay. By grossly depleting the eezo in such a manner, we have a much smaller resultant explosion when the relay blows up. Think atomic bomb to conventional bomb here. The star systems would survive that.

Why did we just bring the whole galaxy together if we’re going to rip them apart by destroying the mass relays?

*sigh* Yes, you just spent all those hours making the galaxy play nice so you can bring a massive army to fight the Reaper threat. And yes, destruction of the mass relays means there are now a bunch of essentially stranded alien races in various star systems across the galaxy.

But… how is this such a mind-shattering thing? I think it was perhaps one of the most poignant parts of the ending. In order to “fix” the galaxy and truly break the cycle, we had to wipe the Reapers and all their tech out. That included the mass relays, which were not invented by any galactic race. Essentially, we’d been cheating at space travel this whole time. We had the tech for FTL travel, but we couldn’t jump between star systems in the blink of an eye (it would take many-a year at FTL travel to take a jaunt to another star system). The mass relays let us do that, but at a terrible price- the goddamn Reapers.

It was a fairly subtle commentary on the downfalls of using technology without truly understanding it. The races never really fully understood how the mass relays worked- they were never able to build new ones, now were they? But they blithely used them anyway. That kind of technological advancement of the races was never earned. We cheated. And what this hard reset of the galaxy did was give the races a chance to earn it this go-round. To build and understand and invent and create on our own.

Sir Isaac Newton (the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space) once said, “If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” But we didn’t just stand on their shoulders. We were strolling around on the ground, found a button, pressed it out of curiosity, and were teleported up there. We don’t know how the teleporter works. We don’t even know the giant’s name.

Without coming right out and saying, “THIS IS WHAT WE’RE DOING HERE,” Bioware conveyed that sense of us toppling from grace because we hadn’t earned our place there. Cheat your way to the top, and it eventually comes back to the bite you in the ass. But that doesn’t mean you can’t then try to get back up there… the right way.

And, in the same vein…

But all those turians and quarians will never survive on some of those levo-amino planets! And what about the colonists on more hostile worlds who needed shipments of materials in order to survive?

Yeah… no, they’re probably gonna die. Sorry.

Again, it’s that “needs of the many vs. the needs of the few” dilemma Shep’s been battling with the whole goddamn game. A choice had to be made, and it couldn’t be easy. We couldn’t have a crappy choice where everyone’s fucked and a great choice where everyone’s happy and call that a tough decision. It was a choice between “some will die to save the many” and “everyone fucking dies.” I don’t even feel Bioware has to justify this complaint, because it’s in the same vein as the “oh noes, Shep died” ones.

The ending was too rushed. We got no closure on what happened to the quarians (did they finally get to live outside their suits?) or the krogan (with the genophage cured, did they rebuild their culture?) or…

Blah, blah, blah. This was Shepard’s story. That is all. This wasn’t the entire history and future of the galaxy we were playing. This was one character’s journey through a pivotal moment in galactic history.

I think what some fans wanted was a Dragon Age-esque ending, where there were some text snippets telling you a bit about what happened after you valiantly slaughtered the archdemon. You know, the What-Are-They-Up-To-Now? bits.

Just because this trilogy is over doesn’t mean we’ll never see another game set in this universe. We don’t have to know everything that happened ever in the future. The ending of the game was a galaxy that has been torn apart by war and now has to rebuild. There’s that sliver of hope, though, that they can. Thanks to Shep. It was an emotionally perfect way to end it.

As for the ending being too rushed… maybe it was for some, maybe it wasn’t for others. I felt it was fine. I kind of liked that we never really knew exactly what the Crucible did until the very end, and it wasn’t what we expected. Again, it’s that whole “we’re using tech we don’t understand” dilemma.

And really, the Metal Gear Solid series has the market cornered on 2-hour cutscenes… let’s just leave it that way, yeah?

How did the Crucible accomplish the fusion ending? Space magic?

Okay, one of the possible endings for the game allows you to fuse organic and inorganic life in order to stop the cycle of Reaper violence. But, how can that happen? How can the god child (the Reaper AI or whatever that created the Reapers in the first place as a “tidy” solution to the problem of organics and synthetics killing each other chaotically, that’s been around for aeons and appears to you as the little boy that dies at the very beginning of the game simply because it’s emotionally resonant) fuse the two?

Yep, it’s space magic. Or, rather, Mass Effect‘s version of space magic, which is eezo.

I like that fans get all confused and huffy over this, but have absolutely no qualms with the fact that people perform these crazy ass “space magic” biotic tricks throughout the games. Is it because they were explained?

Guess what- their explanations translate tidily over to the fusion ending. Exposure to eezo was what caused the biotic powers to manifest in the races, because eezo changes a person on a genetic level. The biotic implants just helped folks utilize the powers they now had- they didn’t give them to people. Eezo did that. Like the coolest radiation mutation ever.

Because eezo has the power to rewrite organic genetic code, it could theoretically be used in a targeted fashion to rewrite genetic code to accept inorganic code as well. If fucking Miranda could fuse organics and cybernetics to bring Shep back from the dead, is it really so hard to believe this incredibly advanced AI god child, hanging out in the Citadel and watching/coordinating the cycle time and time again, the thing that create the fucking Reapers in the first place, couldn’t manage to make that eezo wave it sends out fuse man and machine?

It’s a slight stretch of the imagination, but really not much further than we’ve already stretched it. The whole situation calls to mind Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

People are up in arms that Bioware didn’t explain anything in the ending, but they did… they just did so over the course of the last three fucking games, not all at once in the ending. They were anticipating that their fans were intelligent enough to pick up on this.

Sadly, it seems they were mistaken. It’s a damn shame- they didn’t hold our hands through the end of the series because they weren’t going to patronize us, and that’s blowing up in their faces.

What does that say about us, gaming community?

Why are the endings the same for both Paragon and Renegade players? That’s stupid.

I actually think this is one of their more brilliant moves.

My very favorite author, Kevin Brockmeier, has a short story entitled, The Human Soul as a Rube Goldberg Device: A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Story. As the title states, it’s a choose-your-own-adventure style tale, set in a regular day in the life of an average person. Your choices are basic, normal, mundane things. Do you put your book back on the bookshelf or leave it on the arm of the couch? Do you throw away your fountain drink cup or buy a refill? Perfectly boring, normal decisions. Each little thing moves you in a slightly different direction through your day, but there’s only one ending: no matter what you do during the rest of the day, you die of a heart attack.

It’s a clever way to explore the idea of fate, that the universe has some predestined plan for you. No matter what, the character’s fate is sealed.

In a way, Bioware did something similar with the Mass Effect trilogy.

In the first game, whether you Paragon or Renegaded it up only really impacted two things: whether you could convince Saren to shoot himself in the initial fight or had to fight him twice… and whether you killed the Council or not. And really, even if you Paragon the whole goddamn game, you can Renegade kill those Council bitches (I always do). It was less about “your decisions change the ending” and more “your decisions color the game and how people interact with you”.

Game 2. You can gain squad loyalty through either Paragon or Renegade choices and the rest of the squad’s fate lands in who you choose to lead the fire team/be the tech expert and whether you upgraded your ship or not. Again, whether you Paragon or Renegade the rest of the game, you can still choose either option when you are figuring out what to do with the Collector base. It makes no significant impact on the ending at all.

So… why would we expect a sudden shift in the formula now? Because this is the last game? Your Paragon and Renegade decisions decide who you bring to the final battle (fleet-wise)… your war assets. Which impact which decisions you have in the Crucible and whether or not the galaxy survives. But whether you Paragon or Renegade your play-through, you still get the same options at the end. This is the same thing that happened in both previous titles. And what should happen. It’s not Paragon=good, Renegade=evil. They are simply two different paths toward achieving the same ends. One way you’re diplomatic, one way you’re a bit more… aggressive. You charm or you intimidate. You sweet talk or you punch them. Either way, you get a similar outcome.

Like the character in Brokmeier’s short story, Shepard has a fate. She cannot escape that final decision. She’s going to get there no matter what else she does. She can shelve the book or leave it on the couch. She can let that terrorist go or shoot him in the face. In the end, though, all steps will lead toward that one end.

That end where you have to choose.

***

Now, as I mentioned at the start of this post, there is an actual plot hole I can’t seem to resolve (and maybe I’ve just missed something- I plan on replaying the game in the future and seeing if I can’t figure it out).

Situation:

I am part of the Hammer team, the ground team pushing its way through London toward the Beam that will lead to the Citadel so we can open its arms and connect it to the Crucible. As always, I have Garrus with me (as my buddy Tony said, “You only ever have to ask someone who their other squadmate is. Singular. Because you always take Garrus with you. ALWAYS.”), as well as Liara. We’re making our way toward the Beam. Between us and it is a fucking Reaper.

It shoots us. There’s this huge explosion. Shep shakily gets to her feet, severely wounded, and eventually staggers into the Beam. Either Garrus and Liara are dead at this point (GARRUS…. NOOOOOO!) or grievously wounded. There’s still a Reaper hanging out by them. The Normandy is out in space land as part of the Sword team.

Okay. Cut to my decision. My Shep decided to do what she came here to do- she destroyed the Reapers. As such, she really chose to destroy all inorganic life in the galaxy. Goodbye Reapers. Goodbye geth. Goodbye EDI.

You see the eezo wave shoot out from the Crucible… and then you see the Normandy in what appears to be FTL drive (since it’s outpacing the explosion to start), with Joker wildly hitting controls as the wave hits and the ship obviously is being fucked with. You don’t know exactly what’s happening there, but it looks fucking bad. And shit, I just chose to destroy EDI, who we learned early in the game is an essential part of the ship now and couldn’t be removed from the Normandy.

It’s at this point, tears streaming down my face, that the “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry” chant happened, because I’m fairly sure I just destroyed everyone I care about (between Garrus and Liara down on Earth and my crew up in space) in order to save the galaxy. And fucking emotionally eviscerating as that was, god, it was a hell of an ending. I was in awe even as I cried.

Then, you see the Normandy crashed on some garden world in another star system. And out climbs Joker… and Ashley… and Garrus.

Wait… Garrus? What the fuck?

Somehow, in the time it takes Shep to limp through the Citadel, confront the Illusive Man, talk to God Child, and make her choice… the Normandy manages to swoop down into Reaper central, pick up your wounded squadmates, and… do an FTL jump? To, what, avoid a Reaper? Because I’m never going to believe the Normandy would just leave the battle… Joker is a lot of things, but a coward isn’t one of them.

Oh, we also managed to completely patch up your on-the-brink-of-death love interest for you. Even while crashing. Way to go, Chakwas.

Honestly, that whole bit was confusing as hell. Those three minutes or so? I could have done with a bit more explanation, yeah. It didn’t make much sense to me. It felt like the Normandy was forced into an FTL jump with no explanation just so we could let the team survive… but in another system.

…

Yeah, I don’t get it. Joker’s a hell of a pilot, but there’s no way that Reaper by the Beam (not to mention all the other Reapers around Earth) wouldn’t have torn him apart if he’d attempted a rescue operation.

Weirdly enough, I’d probably be okay with the unnecessary crash landing ending if the Earth ground team just didn’t feature at all. They died. So it goes. Everyone else survived, I guess. At least there wouldn’t be such a strange plot hole.

That being said… I really don’t need Bioware to change it. So there was a hiccup there at the end. The rest of the game MORE THAN FUCKING MADE UP FOR IT, and I certainly didn’t walk away feeling cheated. At all.

***

Just because the game didn’t end the way you wanted it to doesn’t make it a bad ending. In fact, that kind of makes it a good ending, doesn’t it? The end was odd only in that, in the four years since I started playing this game, I never expected it to come down to that final decision in the Crucible. But that doesn’t mean it was a bad ending. I commend Bioware for being able to give me something I wasn’t expecting, for striving for a resolution that wasn’t the obvious.

The ending was visceral. It was hard. I didn’t walk away happy, but I definitely walked away satisfied. I was horrified at what I had to do, but by god, I wouldn’t want it any other way. That decision had to be brutal, and they did a great job of making it so. This war was never going to end with a shotgun shell in a Reaper’s face, after all. It had to have a big decision, that giant red button Shep would have to press… with all the requisite strings attached.

Bioware actually did a damn solid job of bringing a lot of the unique elements (Particularly eezo… get it? Elements? I’m funny, dammit) of the series into play in that final bit. It was the culmination of battles and knowledge acquisition, the sum total of everything the player should have learned about the Mass Effect universe and how its rules worked.

I’m sorry that the gaming community has failed the writers, not the other way around. If there were a few flaws in the ending, that is vastly outweighed by the sheer ignorance of those whining about the ending. Bioware gave us the chance to prove we are smart, clever folks. That we don’t need the writers to tell us, step-by-step, what is happening every moment of the game. That we could extrapolate from known information, could use our extensive knowledge of the Mass Effect universe, to easily understand how this could all work out.

I honestly hope the Bioware team doesn’t cave to fan pressure. There’s a line between listening to and learning from the critique of fans and bowing to their demands. Drastically changing the ending would set a dangerous precedent in the gaming world.

Anyway, I’ve prattled on long enough.

Rant over.

Go Play a Video Game

So, sitting in class today, my olfactory system was fucking assaulted by some guy who had apparently liberally doused himself in that cheap Bod body spray. This guy was rivaling that time my friend and I could smell some Axe-soaked douchenozzle nearly a block away (I’m not even kidding about that). ¹ This cloud of Wal-Mart’s cheapest, sickly sweet, cloying monstrosity of a body spray was awful, don’t get me wrong. As a cologne wannabe, it’s atrocious.

And yet, while my eyes were watering and my lungs were burning and my vision was going dark as my brain cells all slowly died of oxygen deprivation, I still felt a tiny, strange fondness for that overpowering aroma currently killing me.

The year was 1997…

It was Christmas, and my folks had oh-so-reluctantly caved into the frenzied begging and pleading of my 10-year-old self and purchased that Nintendo 64 I’d been dying to play for the better part of a year. See, when I was but a wee tot, my parents once interrupted my viewing of an I Dream of Jeannie marathon to excitedly show me the Atari 2600 they’d found hidden away in an old box of things from early in their marriage. My dad plugged the thing in, and after a few minutes, I was holding that clunky old joystick and experiencing Frogger for the very first time.

My parents had no way of knowing the can of worms they’d opened with that.

I played that fucking Atari all the time. I built cakes, I collected luggage, I shot down alien invaders, I got chased by those iconic ghosts. I met Mario for the first time. I shot asteroids.

Eventually, my parents threw the system away. Life resumed in its previous incarnation, but with one major difference- I now knew the joys that video games could give me. At the earliest opportunity, I took my hard-earned recycling money to a yard sale and purchased another Atari system and a crate of games. Still later, my birthday money bought me a Sega Genesis (which still both exists and works- I passed it on to my young cousins years ago, and they’ve since handed it down to our even younger cousins).

But I was always a few (or many) years late on acquiring systems. Which was fine when I was a wee thing, but as I got older and the kids around me started talking about current generation consoles, I started to want them.

1997 was when my parents gave in and fed the little monster they’d created. At the time, my younger brother had little-or-no interest in video games. The N64 would change that. For me, despite having loved video games for years, the N64 (particularly, Ocarina of Time) would cement in me that near-obsessive lust for gaming that is the only real criteria for being a true gamer.

That year, my younger brother received a package of Bod spray from a relative. You know, one of those gifts they pluck out of the generic gift set area of a retail store and give to folks they’ve never bothered to get to know. But my 8-year-old sibling thought this body spray made him manly. Doing his best to puff out his scrawny, nearly concave chest, he spritzed himself with that crap daily.

In one of those peculiarities of memory, the smell of that Bod spray (which, incidentally, hasn’t really changed in the 14 years since this event) is now inextricably tied up with memories of playing Kirby and Zelda for the first time. Every time I smell that shit (which isn’t too often, though more frequently than I would like… which is never), I am hit with this overpowering rush of memory. Of the feel of that bulky gray controller in my hand. Of perching on my mother’s bed because it was one of two televisions in the house and by the strapping son of God, I wasn’t playing that thing in the living room. Of gathering crystal shards and deflecting Deku Nuts and learning the Bolero of Fire for the very first time.

Sitting there in class today, all I wanted was to sheathe the Master Sword, jump on Epona, and ride for Death Mountain.

And yes, Navi, I fucking saw the weird cloud around the mountain. That’s why I’m fucking going there. Shut up, you glowing whore.

1 As a rambly note here to the male community, I’d like to say that women (or other blokes, you know, whatever floats your particular boat… by the by, I wonder if anyone has ever nicknamed their penis “The Boat” just to take advantage of that silly saying… holy shit, somebody do that so that all your sexual partners can enthusiastically sing The Lonely Island’s “I’m On a Boat” whenever they are riding your cock) don’t actually hate the smell of most varieties of Axe. Particularly the sexily named Dark Temptation or that blue one I can’t remember the name of. Phoenix? Anyway, Axe isn’t the problem. It’s how 93% of jockdick bros decide to wear it. You know, the folks that think you need to spray such a liberal coating on every inch of your body that you are shining in an oily, heavily-perfumed mass of lady-snagging man-smell. Guess what? It’s hard for us to find you sexy when we have to wear gas masks to get within ten feet of you for fear of passing the fuck out. Which, I don’t know, maybe that’s your goal? Knock ’em out and drag ’em back to your man den? But you asshats are really ruining it for the tiny sliver of mandom who actually know how to wear Axe properly. Which is a fucking shame, because properly applied Axe smells really fucking good.

The Definitive Xbox 720 E3 Presentation

Galleons, I will probably ramble at you about something later today (I’m attempting to get back to a more regular posting schedule), but for now, I want to share this comment I found when browsing an article about the Xbox 720 and developer statements that the system will be 6 times as powerful as current generation consoles. So, in the words of poster speciman84, I give you:

360 x 6 = XBOX 2160, 2+1+6+0 = 9 (German techno beats began thumping with a robot voice repeating ‘nein, nein, nein, nein, nein.’) Spotlight hits a sweaty shirtless David Hasslehoff and Bill Gates doing the robot to the rhythm of the techno beat. They continue the robot as avant-garde images of exotic animals floating in space wearing Master Chief helmets are projected on the screen; all the while the beat continues thumping, ‘nein, nein, nein, nein, nein.’ Bold lettering fills the screen with the phrase, “All your XBOT are belong to us”. The vivid images and mesmerizing trance become too much for the crowd to handle. David Hasslehoff and Bill Gates begin rolling in a pile of money while laughing uncontrollably as the audience’s eyes began to melt inside their skulls like the finale of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

I actually want this to be a commercial for the system. FOR REALZ.