Maybe I Am Nitpicking Here

In the past week I've noticed something going on in the Star Wars expanded universe that bugs me just a bit. It's the usage of the term "alien."

I have been working my way through the comic series Star Wars: Legacy, which is set several hundred years after the original trilogy. It features a descendant of the Skywalker line once more trying to find the balance between the light and dark sides of the Force within himself. It is mostly pretty awesome (or I wouldn't have kept reading it past the first volume).

But the other day I noticed a human commander speaking to someone refer to a third party in the room (a non-human) as an "alien." It was jarring to me, and took me right out of the story for a moment. There were maybe two humans in the room in this scene, and several non-humans, all of different species. It seemed odd to me in a galaxy where no one planet seems to be populated entirely by humans that anyone would refer to someone of another species as an alien. Why not "the Twi'lek" or "the Wookie" instead?

Then yesterday I was checking out a video for a newly announced group quest in the forthcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic, and there it was again. "Its alien builders called it...." (Emphasis mine.)

In thinking back on the original trilogy, and even the prequels, I can't really remember any instances where a human called another non-human character an alien. Maybe I am imagining that. Though I did just watch the entire original trilogy again over Memorial Day weekend. I hesitate to look it up in case I am proven wrong. It just doesn't make sense to me to have humans referring to non-humans as aliens in this particular universe. At best we are millennia away from when humans, on their own homeworld, wherever that might have been, originally set out to explore the galaxy, even in the games.

Heck, even in the games, which definitely had a humanist point of view (since the stories required you to be playing a specific person, your race was set at human), the only instances I can remember of non-humans being referred to as aliens were to make a point of a very specific group of humans who were out for humanity alone. That was there to make a point about the prejudices of a certain group.

It was never used in the way that we humans on the planet Earth use the term. Using it that way, in the context of the Star Wars universe just seems plain wrong to me. I feel like the only time that phrase would be appropriate in such a setting is in the event of encountering something completely new and unknown, and heretofore not experienced by anyone else in the galaxy. Something, in other words, truly alien to the people encountering it--as would be the case for us modern humans from Earth meeting an individual from another planet of another species. (To be fair, the reference in the Star Wars: The Old Republic clip might be such a case, they may have been stating that the builders were some race outside of the galaxy's collective experience, though it didn't come across that way to me from the brief video.)

I don't know, it just bugs me.

Probably I am reading too much into this. I am one of the first people to roll my eyes at those folk who gripe and complain that the aliens shown in various movies, television shows, or books are too humanoid. There are certainly restrictions to the human imagination (not to mention budgetary restrictions on the people who create our entertainment). No matter how out there we think alien life might look, we are hardwired to think of the basic template for sentient life being closely related to our own (or that of a few other species found here on Earth). Of course, I am also one of the first people to get annoyed when a lone human in a story finds himself (or herself) among a new species and starts calling them aliens, when it is that human, in fact, that is the alien in the story. The creatures being encountered may be alien to the human, but they are not, in that context, actually in and of themselves aliens. If that makes any sense at all. Sigh.

Note to self: When writing science fiction, try to avoid stories about non-human, non-Terran based lifeforms, unless you are willing to grapple and/or play with the definition of the word "alien."

Oh My Goodness, WANT!

There are all kinds of crazy awesome things coming out of E3 (a huge video game expo going on this week), but I don't know if anything is going to be able to top this:

It is a brand spanking new cinematic trailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic, Bioware's forthcoming MMORPG. Now, if you stop by this site even a little bit regularly, you know full well I am eagerly anticipating the release of this game (sadly, there's still no release date announcement, but this is not really a surprise).

This video just upped the amount of WANT I have been feeling. Exponentially, in fact.

It just looks SO. FREAKING. COOL. Seriously. Somebody commented on Bioware's post for the trailer that the company that made this should just make a full feature as a companion to the game. I would so not complain if that happened.

I mean, yes, obviously, this is just a trailer to showcase each of the different classes and the combat possibilities of the game, as well as to show off some of the settings and give a bit of story background. It succeeds on all counts with flying colors, by the way. There's no actual game content here, but I am okay with that. Watching this video made me so excited I had to get up afterward and walk around the house for a bit to come back down.

I thought the use of Satele Shan as one of the Jedi in the clip was a nice little touch. She was a main character in one of Bioware's The Old Republic webcomics. They have been releasing a new series once or twice a year to help give us some background into the political situation of the game and to keep up excitement for its release. Satele, aside from being awesome in her own right, is also a descendant of Bastila Shan, who was a primary companion character in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. (The webcomics also do a nice job of bridging the gap between the two KOTOR games and the forthcoming TOR.) I like that Satele appeared to be a Jedi Sentinel, which is the class I have been planning to play in the game. So that was a nice treat all around.

A part of me really, really would like them to at least announce a release date for this game. At the very least so that I can plan my replays of the first two KOTOR games. But I do understand why they are hesitating to do that. They don't want to tell the world they are releasing this game until they know they have everything figured out and working correctly. When they do, they can announce the release date, and that gives them a deadline to allow for one more round of beta-testing and the chance to tweak any issues they might have overlooked.

All accounts of people who have seen this game in action at this stage of development or who have played the beta version are that it is phenomenal. A lot is riding on the success of this game, for both Bioware and the future of MMO games alike, and I completely understand the impetus to get it just right. I am willing to be patient and wait because I know that I will be getting a quality product that will give me untold hours of entertainment and spark my imagination for years to come.

I am willing. I can wait. I can. I will.

But oh man, I really want it now.

Oh Dear

I didn't mean to do it, truly, I didn't. But I couldn't help myself, and now I have been sucked right in. I don't even want to admit how late I stayed up the past two nights. Sigh.

I am talking of course, about the fact that I started a new game of Dragon Age: Origins this weekend. I had played through the demo for Dragon Age II a second time (as a rogue on this go-around, which I think is the way I will go for the full game, I am not too fond of what I have seen for the warrior's skill sets), and I was just about done with the first Dragon Age book (which is fan-fricking-tastic, if you like this game, get the books, they are amazing). I didn't want to start a whole new other game before the sequel's release, but neither did I want to not play anything until then.

So...new game it is. Already I am so hooked. The level of story-telling in this game is just unbelievably deep. I worried last week that Dragon Age might eclipse my love of Stargate. At this point, I don't even think there's a question of that anymore, as much as I hate to say that. Once SGU finishes up its run and there is no new Stargate coming my way, Dragon Age will be free to just continue filling that void. I don't think my love for Stargate will be diminished, but it won't have the opportunity to grow anymore, and if just my brief entry into a second play through of Origins is any indication, my love for Dragon Age is going to grow every time I fire it up. Heck, Family Guy was a rerun last night, but before deleting it from my DVR, I fast forwarded through the entire thing just so I could see the thirty second Dragon Age II commercial that I knew would be airing during the program. Hooked.

This time around I am playing as a human mage, starting out in the Circle of Magii. Even though this origin story starts out by throwing me straight into the Fade, which is the part of the game considered so annoying by most players that there is a mod out there designed to let you just skip the whole Fade quest, I am still enjoying myself immensely. The Fade actually never really bothered me that much, to be honest. Yes, the quest there later on is a bit too long and can get tedious, but I still maintain that the idea behind it is really nifty. Anyhoo, so, completely different character, completely different origin story, just as much fun (if not more) as the first time!

Lyssa, a human mage.

I think part of the reason I am enjoying it a bit more this time is because I am already familiar with the controls and I know how I should be leveling up. Also, once I moved on past the origin story into the main story, I kind of had an idea of what was coming--which means I was more prepared and remembered to do things like stock up on potions and buy a backpack before the camp was destroyed.

Also, I can have a little bit of fun to amuse my inner twelve-year-old. Early on in the main plot, you get three characters added to your party, but two of them are permanently killed off before too long. Knowing this was coming, I opened up my inventory and divested them of all of their armor and weapons so that I could sell it (early times means I could use all of the cash I can get to stock up on supplies). If you take off someone's armor in the game, however, and don't give them something else to wear, they then run around in their underwear. So I was having a field day giggling to myself as these two big burly guys are running around in their burlap skivvies (the undies are not really period accurate, but are amusing, nonetheless), having serious discussions about Serious Things, completely oblivious to the fact that they were almost naked. It was awesome. I tried to find a screenshot for you, so you could see just how ridiculous, but alas, that particular part of the game didn't garner and automatic shot, and I didn't think to take one myself (I have got to get better about that).

I think it is needless to say that I am having fun with this. The only thing that has truly been annoying me is that I kept running into all of these locked chests that I could not freaking open because I am not a rogue and I didn't have my permanent rogue party member yet. Grrr.... It is just frustrating. I am sure there are only a few bucks and some health potions in them, but what if there was some super badass weapon that now I will never get, huh? I finally got Leliana (the first rogue member of your party) yesterday afternoon and immediately went running around unlocking every chest I could find. Oh my goodness, so playing DAII as a rogue. My only regret is that I probably won't get to play this game all the way through, because I know I will want to drop everything and play the sequel next week when I get it. But hopefully I can come back to this afterwards. We shall see.

Saturday morning my husband and I were clearing out the DVR and I saw that I had recorded a gamer show because Felicia Day was on it talking about the Dragon Age webseries she made. My husband joked that I was going to start watching the gamer channel and shows now, and I had to think about it for a moment before disagreeing. Right now, I am not seeking out any new information on games other than from Bioware. They have three big games coming out over the next year that are already going to suck up a good chunk of my non-parenting life (Dragon Age II, Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG, and Mass Effect 3). Add that to the huge pile of games we already have at home that I would like/need to play, and I think that's enough to be going on with, don't you? I have already pretty much signed my soul over to Bioware (the parts of it that I didn't give to my husband and daughter, at least). Unless a game is mentioned on some non-game-specific site I keep up with, then hopefully I won't hear about any of the next new games for a while. I have an obsessive nature, and it would be too easy to just get caught up in trying to play every new game that comes out. I think I'll just try to stick with the franchises I am already lost in for now, that way I can have more time to really enjoy them without just rushing on to the next big thing.