Play ALL The Games!

You might have noticed from the little list of my activities on the sidebar that I have suddenly started playing three different video games at once. I think my husband has been rubbing off on me. At any time he's got at least two different games going and he'll play a bit here and there when the mood strikes him, switching between games according to his whims (or depending on which one of us has dibs on using Steam, since we share an account). Normally, I start up a game and I play it through to the end, then I start a new game.

Lately I have been trying to hold off on getting too invested in anything because I am getting underway with writing the second draft of my novel. This is my first attempt at writing a second draft, however, and I am finding that it is a different animal entirely from the first draft. This time around, it is not the full-out writing frenzy that I go through in November. Most of the words and ideas are there already. It is just a matter of rearranging them, cleaning them up, adding a bit here and there, and so on. At least, that is how it is going for this specific project. I can think about other stories I've written and imagine how those would be their own beasts as well.

Anyhoo. My point is, abstaining from video games while working on my second draft has turned out to be not nearly as necessary as it was for the first. But at the same time, I also don't want to get so deep into a game that I get too wrapped up in the story and start slacking on what I am supposed to be doing. Keeping up that detachment has turned out to be pretty easy, as it happens, because I've been feeling the pull to replay a few different games of late. So I figured why not just get them all going at once. That way I can do a few missions here in one game and a few missions there in another, whatever feels like the best distraction/break for the moment.

Here's a glimpse of what I've got going on.

Dragon Age II:

My Ebon Hawke (yes, I went there) arrives in Kirkwall with her mother, brother Carter, and Aveline.

Her most current appearance. I figured she needed a new hairdo after a year in Kirkwall.

Dragon Age: Origins:

Finally decided to try the Dalish origin. Here's my Warden Farris Mahariel (on the right) with the oft-mentioned in DAII Tamlen.

Farris giving us a lovely example of the lack of expressions shown by PCs in DA:O while being lectured at by Marethari.

Mass Effect 3:

My Jordana Shepard import from my first play-through of ME and ME2. I tweaked her hair color and makeup a bit.

Here's a shot of her in game, looking pale as all get out. Gotta love how different they look from the character creator to the screen, don't you?

I'm pretty early in all three games still, Hawke is about halfway through Act I doing recruitment missions, my Warden just got to Ostagar and is about to start preparation for the joining ritual, and my Shepard is getting ready to go to Palaven. That gives me three pretty different flavors to choose from when I am in the mood to play. It's kind of nice, although I wonder how long I will be able to keep up juggling them. We'll see, I guess. I feel like it's actually kind of appropriate that I am playing all three of these games while I work on the rewrite, since I found a lot of inspiration from them in regards to secondary characters and place names and such.

As far as progress on the second draft goes, I have read through it and made my notes. Now I am doing a little bit of logistical world-building that likely won't actually appear on the pages but will make the things I need to add in a bit easier for me. After that I just need to outline the major changes for the draft by chapter and then it is time to jump in. My plan/goal is to get the world-building and outline done this week and then two chapters a week after that. Once I've got three or four chapters stockpiled, I'll start posting the new versions here, a chapter a week, on Thursdays.

Yay! I am excited to share this with you guys! After reading it again, I am really proud of what I've got. I still don't know where this story came from, but man, I am happy it dropped in. Hopefully you will enjoy it as well!

With The Good Inevitably Comes The Bad

I know I have mentioned that I have been fighting the urge to replay Dragon Age II a few times in the past week or so. The reason I have been fighting that urge is because I have a huge freaking stack of video games I feel like I should be playing. For instance, I have been playing Epic Mickey and making some decent progress with it. But then I kind of stalled out, and kept finding excuses to avoid playing, all the while hearing the siren song of Dragon Age... I tried forcing myself to play Epic Mickey but that just made it no fun. I remembered that the reason I play video games is to have fun, and there is no one but myself dictating what I play or when. So I decided to compromise a little and instead of firing up a new game of Dragon Age II decided I would finish out my replay of Dragon Age: Origins first and then replay the sequel with my character import from that game.

Quite pleased with my proposed solution, I opened up Dragon Age: Origins on Monday afternoon, hit the "resume" button and...got an error message. What the heck? The message stated that the saved game I wanted to continue contained "premium content" (well, duh, it is the ultimate edition of the game, which includes all of the released downloadable content for the game), and that in order to keep playing the owner of the premium content needed to log in to the EA account linked to said content. Okay. Checked the little bottom corner of the screen and it showed that I was indeed logged in to my EA account. Hmm. Logged out and then back in again, but no go, the game is still telling me to log in. I pulled up my EA account and checked and it still showed I had the game registered. I looked at the "downloadable content" section of the game and it is showing all of my DLC is unauthorized. Again. Sigh.

See, here's what happened. After releasing the last bit of DLC for Dragon Age: Origins, Bioware and/or EA decided to release an ultimate edition that included Dragon Age: Origins, the expansion pack Dragon Age: Origins Awakening, and all of the DLC. We ended up buying that ultimate edition from Steam when it was on sale (even though we already had the game and its expansion pack) because it was actually cheaper than buying all of the DLC separately, and I wanted all of the DLC (and my husband is awesome). Regardless of what platform you buy the ultimate edition of the game for (computer or console) and how you buy it (disc or digital download), the ultimate edition game itself does actually include all of the extra content. When you install the game, you install this content. In order to be able to actually play anything considered "premium" content, however, you still have to then go to EA and register the game with your EA account (you have to create one if you don't already have one, in fact). Then you redeem the code for the "extra" content on the website. After you've done that you have to open up the game and log in to your EA account from the game itself at least once to authorize your premium content. Only then can you finally play that content.

Now, I get why EA did it this way. This is not actually that unusual. They are trying to avoid piracy of their game and of the extra content. I don't think for one second that this attempt to avoid piracy was at all successful, but I get what they were trying to do. The problem is that in doing so, they made playing content one had legally purchased a huge pain in the butt from the get-go. This was compounded by an issue with the Steam version of the game, which, when downloaded, had a timing issue that caused the DLC content not to automatically be authorized when the game is registered. You may remember when I originally got the ultimate edition I griped about the problems I had accessing the stand-alone DLC quests that I wanted to play. A few internet searches and a frustrating afternoon spent on the internet eventually led me to the Bioware forums and I was able to find the reason for my problem as well as a relatively quick and simple fix, and was then able to get on with playing the game, yay!

So imagine my chagrin when I went to resume the game and found that, once more, my DLC had become unauthorized and I couldn't even continue my saved game until I fixed the issue! Clearly it was no longer just a problem with the install. Yet another frustrating afternoon spent searching the internet on Monday led me to discover that after the initial debacle with the Steam version of the game, the bug somehow spread to all PC versions of the game. What is going on here, folks??? Well, it seems that EA was experiencing a problem with their server, at least since last November/December. This problem causes the DLC content (content which is included in this version of the game and shouldn't actually involve any extra steps except maybe perhaps just registering the game) to periodically (and repeatedly) become unauthorized for users who log in to their EA accounts every time they open the game. This is, by the way, the recommended course of action, because it allows you to keep track of your game stats and achievements on your EA site and to compare your different playthroughs, share them with other players, archive your screenshots, etc. There is a little button you can click when you first sign in to your EA account from the game that says "always sign in," and I of course had that clicked. Which means when I went to resume my game, it logged me in to the EA servers, and the EA servers felt it would be a good time to unauthorize all of my DLC. Just for fun, you know.

I tried several steps recommended by the Bioware forums and in other parts of the internet, and eventually did find a solution. This solution involved me editing the actual code of the game. Um. No. That should not be the required solution to make a game just work like it should. I am sorry, that is just wrong. Bleah. There is actually a patch for the game that fixes all of these bugs, apparently, but after I downloaded it and went to run the file, a little pop-up window informed me that this patch was for disc versions of the game only, not for downloaded versions. Sigh. Whatever. I did get it fixed, and finally, finally, I could resume play, yay!

So I resumed my game and imagine my surprise (yet again) when I am looking at the screen and find my character in nothing but her undies, no weapons or clothes. What? Hey, so, I fixed the glitch that caused my DLC to be unauthorized, but a secondary, related glitch had now kicked in. This new glitch causes all of the items you gained from playing the DLC to simply vanish from your inventory (and bodies). At that point, I was willing to forgo a few cool weapons and armor so I could just get on with the game. I found more clothes in my inventory and dressed and armed my character and plowed on. Of course, I was in the Fade when all of this happened, so when I got to Alistair's nightmare to find he had also lost his items, he wasn't technically in my party at that time, meaning I couldn't affect his items. So I had to go through that whole conversation with him in his undies...

Naked Alistair is naked.

It would have been a lot more funny if there hadn't have been so much frustration behind it. So I played a little bit Monday night and quite a bit on Tuesday, and I finished up the Circle of Magi quest and headed back to camp. And found Levi, the guy who I had helped secure Wardens' Keep in one of my DLC quests already completed, still hanging about in camp, even though he should have been back at the keep setting up his new business. Uh oh. Not a good sign. I opened up my journal and it still showed all of the DLC stuff I had played in my completed quests. Okay, that was promising. Then, I opened up the world map, and none of the places I had visited (some of which should still be accessible, all of which should at least be present) and none of them were on the map. None of them. Only DLC location was the one I hadn't played yet.

Grumbling because I had hoped/planned to go back to Wardens' Keep at least at some point, I went to Sulcher's Pass to go ahead and play that DLC through at least. The guy told me to complete the quest I would need to go to a specific place further south and he would mark it on my map. This is a quest that would get me a new companion character I hadn't gotten to play before, so I eagerly opened up my map and...it wasn't there. That glitch that makes all of the DLC items go away? Also makes the DLC related places disappear off the map as well, making them inaccessible. Damn it all to hell.

Some quick research showed me that by continuing to play after the first encounter with the glitch (i.e. naked people), I had killed my already slim chances of recovering the DLC within the game. Unless I was willing to do some more code tweaking, that is. I read the instructions for said tweaking and dude, beyond me.

So. This game is borked. One of the reasons I wanted to do the second playthrough was to get to play all of the in-game DLC. I was only twenty hours in (it's about a hundred hour game). I went ahead and made the executive decision yesterday to just start a new new game. My DLC is authorized and I am not logging back into EA until I finish this playthrough.  Hopefully this will prevent those pesky glitches from thwarting me again. I somehow doubt that at this stage EA is really worried about fixing the glitches with the first Dragon Age game, which is a shame.

Wait, wait, wait, you want me to do what now?

Part of me wants to say that this really isn't worth all of the hassle. Part of me doesn't want to give EA the satisfaction of continuing to play their broken game. But the other part of me...it just really wants to play Dragon Age. What can you do? I decided to start my third character with the same background as number two, though I did tweak her appearance a bit again (I do love playing with the appearance generator). Also, on the plus side, in game two I had already managed to accidentally hook up with Alistair, when I had really intended to pursue another relationship. So now I have a chance to not break his heart, yay! A personal challenge to me will be winning him over as a friend without getting romantic. I don't even know if that's possible, but I'm sure gonna try to find out!

So...yeah. I'm playing Dragon Age again. I know you're shocked and surprised. I just wish such an awesome game didn't come with such ridiculous baggage.

Consider Mine Captured

So I officially gave up on The Force Unleashed over the weekend. Not permanently, mind you, but at least for the time being. Here's the thing. Apparently, the game was originally designed for consoles (think Playstation, XBox, Wii, etc.) and not for PC. But the company that made it wanted to cash in on us PC fans as well and so "ported" the original version into a more PC-friendly format.

I was not actually aware until recently (until I started reading up on on the forthcoming Dragon Age II, in fact) that this is actually a really complicated process. Designing a game for one platform (console or PC) creates all sorts of challenges when making a version for the other platform. Apparently this is the largest reason why there is usually a lag between the release of video games on the original platform and the release of the same game for the other platform. The creators have to decide if it is worth it to go through the trouble to update/change the game play mechanics required to release in the secondary format. This is why it is a huge deal that Bioware is releasing Dragon Age II across all platforms at the same time. There was a lot of work that went into making sure the game play experience was workable across consoles and PCs alike.

The Force Unleashed is a good example of how this complicated process can sometimes go wrong. To use the Force in the game on the PC version, you need to use a combination of keyboard keys and mouse buttons/movements. Most of the moves in the game require a specific series of buttons/keys be pressed in a specific sequence with just the right timing. I think overall the designers did a good job of making this work with a mouse and a keyboard, as opposed to with a singular game controller. But there is one spot where this seems to have failed spectacularly, and that is where I got stuck. Pulling down a star destroyer with the Force is a multi-step process that requires you to be very quick and and to be constantly moving your mouse in addition to pressing buttons and keys. This is rather a challenge when you think about how much room the average computer mouse has to maneuver in. You can only push it up so far before you have to pick it up and move it down to the bottom of your desk and start pushing up again. Unfortunately, this kind of screws up what you are trying to do in the game. Apparently, it is even worse if you have a trackball mouse, which, of course, I have.

So, basically, I have the worst possible computer set up of the PC version of the game, which is at a disadvantage already because this specific move (which is required to move forward in the game) really wasn't designed with a mouse in mind, and wasn't ported very well from console to PC. I spent a goodly amount of time on help-sites and walkthroughs and forums, and tried the tricks and tips they all suggested, but I still could not get that star destroyer out of the sky after multiple attempts. I tried using a different mouse, one without the trackball, but then I ran into the space issue. At this point, I am pretty sure it boils down to two things: I did not level up my character's Force abilities in the best configuration to get past this part quickly, and I am not quick enough to take down the waves of TIE Fighters in between attempts to pull the thing down (allowing it to move out of the required position, which means I waste time repositioning it when I could be pulling it down). To me, this says I just need to start over again and be more conscious of how I level up the next time around. I am going to do that, yes. But not right now. I don't think my hand will forgive me if I were to try.

My warrior elf from Dragon Age: Origins

For now, I am just going to put The Force Unleashed back onto the shelf and move on to the next thing. The next thing being all of the downloadable content for Dragon Age: Origins. Bioware recently(ish) released an "ultimate" edition of the game that included the original game, the expansion pack, and all of the downloadable content. This edition actually cost less than it would cost to purchase all of the DLC separately, and then my husband found it on sale, so he went ahead and bought it a little while ago.

Monday afternoon I decided to break it out, eager to play Witch Hunt, a follow-up adventure to the original game. After about an hour and a half spent wrestling with the game--which was telling me that all of the DLC was installed on my computer but unauthorized (It seems that there was some sort of glitch in the install script of the downloadable digital versions, which included ours since we bought it through Steam. Thankfully the Bioware message boards were quite helpful and once I finally gave them a gander I was able to find a quick and easy fix to get the DLC working. I am actually quite proud of myself for this, truth be told)--I was finally able to fire it up and dive back into Ferelden.

I love this game. It is so incredible. I think my favorite thing about the genre of fantasy is that it is designed to capture the imagination, to take you away to a completely different world where anything is possible. If you had told me even two or three years ago that I would be as enamored with a video game franchise as I am with, say, Stargate, I would have laughed you right out of the building.  But oh my goodness I am. I am not completely sure what turned me on to wanting to play this game, but once I found out about it, oh I wanted in. Before I ever got a copy of the game I found out IDW was doing a tie-in series of comics set in that world and went ahead and subscribed. By the time I finished the first one, I was absolutely determined to get the game as soon as freaking possible. (I had to wait a little while longer, but since I knew I had a birthday coming up, that made it a little bit easier to be patient.)

As soon as I finished playing the game, I hopped online to see if I could find anything about the sequel. I wasn't entirely sure I was correct that one was in development, but was pleasantly surprised to find out that one was, and was in fact due out in March. I preordered it that very night. I have eagerly been following the news about Dragon Age II, drinking in everything I can, bouncing up and down in anticipation. And it is so close now. So close. That is, in fact, why I decided to go ahead and play the DLC now, since it won't be the length of a full game and it will whet my appetite for what is to come in just a few weeks.

So, I started playing Dragon Age again on Monday. If you keep an ear to the geeky grapevine, you might have noticed yesterday when it exploded with the news that Felicia Day, who I adore, announced that she has been working with Bioware to create a six-episode web series set in the Dragon Age world, taking place, in fact, during the events of the new game. Holy frikkin' cow! I spent much of yesterday bouncing in excitement over this news. Felicia Day. And Dragon Age. Together!

There are all sorts of stories about the news. You can read a story about the series here. There's a celebrity gamer profile on Felicia Day here. Felicia blogs about her own thoughts on the project here. Oh, and Bioware now has a blurb about it on the official Dragon Age II site here. Felicia will also be on Jimmy Fallon's talk show tonight with a sneak preview of the new series, score!

In addition to ramping up my excitement for the new game, as well as getting me all giddy about the web series, yesterday's Dragon Age-related news had another little jewel of information for me. There is an official prequel book to the first game. Actually there are two of them. The reviews on Amazon suggest they (both written by the same author, who was one of the story developers on the game) are actually pretty spectacular. Gonna have to pick those up PDQ in order to sate my thirst for all things Dragon Age.

So, um, yeah. If the purpose of epic fantasy is to capture the audience's imagination, I can only say well done, Bioware, well done.