Update On Life And Stuff
The Game Of Thrones Season 7 ending was very satisfying to watch. More or less because it finally gets the show to where it needs to be. There was a reason why back in Season One the first thing we saw was a White Walker hunting down members of the Night's Watch. They have always been the real threat. All of the fighting between pissant houses was never the real conflict of the show. It boils down to one thing, you either fight the dead and their White Walker masters or die.
So what are my predictions heading into Season Eight?
1. Cersei Lannister Will Die: Cersei is very much the lone wolf that will die. She has burned all her bridges, turned everyone that loved her away, and now she is alone. How will her end come? Well Game Of Thrones is big on death scenes. Personally I think she will be killed by Jamie. Perhaps Jamie goes back to King's Landing realizing his sister is the one thing standing in the way of complete victory over the White Walkers. Under the guise of asking Cersei to take him back they go for one last time into the bedroom to enjoy each other. Cersei might even suspect this is the reason Jamie has returned. On a conscious level she may even acknowledge it but on a subconscious level deny it. Love makes people let down their guard and Cersei lets Jamie come into her bed with a knife tucked into his clothes. Jamie does the deed and its done. No need for dramatic tension just quick, impersonal killing. What happens to Jamie afterwards? Well naturally he will die as well. He killed the only person he ever loved, the mother to his children but in ending her life he perhaps atones for the sins of all the wrongdoings he has committed by allowing the world to live on after his sister's death.
2. Jon Vs Daenarys: I would personally reveal Jon's heritage within the first episode of Season Eight. Hit the ground running. Get it out of the way so you can focus on the bigger problem with the White Walkers. Jon will struggle with what this means as will Daenarys. They might set aside this revelation for when they have time to deal with it. For now there is no time. The war of survival is here. Nothing else matters. When the threat is dealt with how that resolves itself is anyone's guess. Personally, I think they should rule jointly with Jon as King and Daenarys as his Queen. They love each other and the best ruler to have is someone who has never desired power and that cannot be Daenarys.
3. The White Walker War: The conflict with the White Walkers has been something always looming on the horizon, the intangible threat that lurked just out of sight but was present enough to be aware of. The war will boil down to one thing, attrition. This means which ever side can sustain the losses the longest. If your the White Walkers you are in the best position to do this since you can raise the dead of the foe's you kill and turn them into undead fodder to throw at the rest of the living. The White Walker invasion will be swift with them claiming much of the territory north of Winterfell. At the rate of sustained losses Westeros will loose. What is needed is a game changer and I don't mean Daenary's dragons. From what was seen in episode six this season is that White Walkers can kill dragons with ease. Simply having Daenary's ride out with her two remaining dragons to do battle with the Night King is stupid. Something that has never been asked in the show is how were the White Walkers defeated the first time round. This is where being a historian in Westeros would be handy. Researching the past will yield the answer. Enter the Azor Ahai, The Prince/Princess That Was Promised, The Last Hero, etc. Whomever ended the war 8,000 years ago will become important again as a piece of information. How this person managed to drive back the White Walkers will be something that those in Westeros, Essos, and all lands beyond will need to search for the answer. Otherwise there is no future in victory for the living just a long cold winter followed by an eternity as an empty shell serving evil. Perhaps what might also be revealed is exactly why the White Walkers even bother to invade. What do they want? That question might equally be important as the show goes on.
Mass Effect: Andromeda Review
(NOTE THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR MASS EFFECT: ANDROMEDA! DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU WANT THE GAME RUINED FOR YOU!!!
The Mass Effect Series is probably the most successful video game series where you forget you are playing a video game but are instead the lead character off on an adventure in a movie you control from the very start. So it is no surprise that Mass Effect has become a household name among gamers and avid science-fiction fans. So when Mass Effect 3 came out in 2012, it was to mark the ending chapter to a story involving Commander Shepard as he tried to stop the imminent arrival of a race of machines that wipes out civilization every 50,000 years called the Reapers. After that series had ended gamers wondered what would be next for the Mass Effect franchise although Bioware remained tight lipped about any possible sequels or other games with standalone characters not relating to Commander Shepard's story. Ever since Mass Effect: Andromeda was announced I waited with a mixture of excitement and nervousness given that this new story takes place some 600 years into the future in a completely different galaxy than our own. I remembered how Mass Effect 3's ending soured gamers with myself being one of them away from the franchise. Although Bioware did go back and fix some of the plot hole's in the ending for Mass Effect 3 it still didn't address the games biggest flaw being the main villain introduced within the last twenty minutes of the game. Even now when I am on my seventh repeat playthrough of Mass Effect 3 it still feels off to me, like a splinter in your mind that won't go away. So when it comes to Mass Effect: Andromeda I reserved my opinions of it until I could actually play the game. I am now over 50% into the game and I have played all of the previous Mass Effect games before this one. So when it comes to what I think about the game know that my opinion is informed.
The Story
The story of Mass Effect: Andromeda is an entirely self contained adventure separate from the story of Commander Shepard and the Reapers. You play as either Scott/Sarah Ryder who are the children of the leader of the Ark Hyperion, a large vessel carrying some 20,000 people on a 600 year journey to colonize the Andromeda Galaxy. Your father on your very first mission to colonize a new "golden" world is killed and you are made the Pathfinder essentially acting as an interstellar Christopher Columbus for those who remain on the Hyperion. On your way to colonize new worlds you encounter a new enemy race called the Kett and their insidious leader the Archon who has his own plans for the Andromeda galaxy. In your journey you pick up a motley crew of various companions such as Peebee, the overly energetic Asari researcher to Jaal, an Angaran soldier. So this game like many of those in the Mass Effect series prioritizes exploring all the worlds you visit and uncover th mystery of the civilizations that once called Andromeda home while fighting against a bigger threat that is also bent on using what you find to their own ends. The game doesn't break any new grounds in terms of the story. It's pretty much the same as the other games in the Mass Effect series, but that isn't a bad thing. If something works and makes the story interesting then don't bother to fix anything. With that being said this game was created to expose new gamers to the Mass Effect series while also giving older fans of the series something new to do in the Mass Effect universe.
While the story isn't unique it has it's drawbacks. One of the common criticisms I have read is that the game takes forever to get into. This is a fair and accurate criticism. The game would have been better if the first eight hours of the story had been streamlined rather than having the main plot quest exist alongside fetch quests from the onset of arriving on the first planet in the game. How I would have made this work is by breaking the story down as follows. Your character wakes up, goes on their first mission where they encounter the Kett, father dies, you become Pathfinder, arrival at the Nexus and are informed of dire situation the Initiative is in, arrival on Eos which due to high radiation levels is uninhabitable, you active the Remnant monoliths and vault to colonize Eos, defeat Kett for good on Eos, then all secondary quests and fetch quests become available. This would allow for the story to take priority and heighten the sense of importance of the colonization efforts that the Initiative has tried rather than have the main plot quest run alongside secondary quests most of which are pointless. You also after making Eos habitable for colonists defeat the Kett once and for all rather than twice which you do in the game. After defeating then I would have all secondary quests open up to you allowing for exploration of the world rather than being limited by where you can go due to high amounts of radiation like you do before activating the monoliths. Andromeda would benefit from streamlining the first bits of the game to make them more enjoyable and less tedious as has been reported by numerous gaming sites.
The Characters
The Mass Effect franchise is known for having characters who feel so real and fleshed out that you come to care about them as if they were people you really knew. Mass Effect: Andromeda is no different. Each of the characters feels like a fully realized person. They all have backstory's that make them who they are and as you progress through the game each of them opens up to you. Personally my favorite characters so far are Vetra Nyx, your turian companion and potential lover, and Peebee, the Asari researcher. While the main cast of characters are great, some of the secondary characters are down right annoying at times or just generally aggravating. This is apparent with characters like Sloane Kelly, the leader of the Exiles on Kadara. She is very rude and gives you no opportunities to get to know her despite she is crucial to settling matters between two different criminal factions. She is basically an Aria ripoff from Mass Effect 2, just less interesting to get to know. Another character named Addison is the director of colonial affairs for the Andromeda Initiative. She works against you at every turn and undermines your authority as the Pathfinder even though she is desperate for your support. She comes off as being rather hollow and uninteresting not to mention robotic but that is due to poor facial animations which I will cover in another section.
The Gameplay
As I am sure that by now everyone has heard about how the characters in the game have broken facial animations that make them seem robotic and creepy or how the game has numerous glitches making the game feel clunky. Unfortunately this is where Andromeda's faults become more apparent. For a game that was in the works for years you would figure that the developers would have spent just a little more time smoothing out the gameplay rather than releasing a buggy game at launch. While some bugs are too be expected Mass Effect: Andromeda would benefit from a patch that lessens the odd facial animations and broken gameplay that sometimes tend to happen. What I have encountered so far is during one conversation with Drack, your Krogan squadmate a double version of himself was present during the conversation my Ryder character had that made me wonder if Drack was having an out of body experience during the conversation. Another thing I encountered as I mentioned above is that talking to Director Addison feels like you are having a conversation with a robot than a character that is supposed to be human. It kinda breaks the illusion of the gaming experience you are having in Mass Effect: Andromeda by making the characters seem more unreal than was intended.
The other bit of clunky game play concerns loot and storage. In the game you have a finite amount of things you can store away in your inventory. After a few hours of playing the game I had accumulated a fair bit amount of loot like different weapons and armor sets. This game would benefit from a loot storage system that is common in other RPG games like Bioware's other title series Dragon Age. Better yet have the system that Mass Effect 3 had where all your weapons and armor sets were stored away on your ship and ready to chose before you head out on your latest mission. That way your inventory would not become overcrowded with five different variations of the same weapon or armor set. Also in regards to this that the other games did better is that in Mass Effect 2 and 3 the armor sets you got in game were the best they could possibly be upon either purchasing them from vendors or if you got the latest DLC pack. In Mass Effect: Andromeda you will usually encounter the same armor set usually starting at level one with level five armor sets being the best you can have. It is somewhat impossible to acquire a full set of the best armor because most of the loot is generated at random upon killing enemies in game. Mass Effect: Andromeda would benefit greatly from implementing what worked well in Mass Effect 3 in regards to weapons and armor that way players would not have to hunt around for the things they want to equip their character with.
Final Impressions
Mass Effect: Andromeda is kind of a mixed bag of same old well worn story tropes combined with clunky gameplay. The game itself shines as an example of the level of passion that game makers have for a franchise. The level of talent invested in the game is undeniable but until the poor facial animations are addressed and the bits of gameplay that feel a little to clunky Andromeda's full potential will not be realized. That being said I recommend getting the game for yourself and determining whether or not it is a worthy addition to the Mass Effect series.
Rogue One: Born From The Star Wars E.U.
It is fair to say that I am looking forward to Rogue One and hope it is a far better film than Episode Seven. Part of this reason has to do with the fact that Rogue One might just be the gritty Star Wars film that incorporates that feeling that the Expanded Universe captured so well. Characters who walk difficult roads forced to make morally ambiguous choices in a galaxy at war. As I watched the various trailers for the film I couldn't help but recognize many familiar faces in them. Characters that were once regarded as canon being brought back in some form again. I am glad if anything from the Expanded Universe survives through the new canon even though Disney cannot claim they are making original stories when they borrow so liberally from older sources. So here are examples of the characters from Rogue One who are just older Expanded Universe characters given new life.
Cassian Andor:
Cassian played by Diego Luna is apparently going to be the official handler for the group of ragtags who steal the Death Star plans from the Empire. Cassian is a kitbash character created from two older Expanded Universe characters. The first being Kyle Katarn, a former Imperial stormtrooper turned mercenary for the Rebel Alliance who actually helped steal the Death Star plans in the Expanded Universe. Andor's look was inspired by Col Serra who created a group called Renegade Squadron made up of various bounty hunters, mercenaries, and smugglers to fight for the Rebel Alliance because they knew that idealists weren't going to win the war but instead they needed people who operated in the seedy depths of the universe to do the dirty work that it would take to win the war. Also kinda sounds like the plot for Rogue One.
Kyle+Col= Cassian
Kyle Katarn
Col Serra
Cassian Andor
Jyn Erso:
Jyn played by Felicity Jones is the main heroine of the new film. Raised on the streets with an extensive criminal history she comes to the attention of the Rebel Alliance who recruit her in order to steal the Death Star plans. Jyn Erso has an immediate connection to Jan Ors, the Rebel Alliance intelligence operator and partner to Kyle Katarn. Hence why I am guessing we will see a romantic development between Jyn and Cassian in the film.
Jyn Erso:
Jan Ors
K-2SO
K-2S0 is the droid member of the group that steals the Death Star plans. Played by Alan Tudyk. He was originally built by the Empire but later joined the Rebel Alliance. K-2SO is another kitback character made up from two different characters. The first being HK-47, the somewhat quirky and sinister meatbag name calling droid from Knights Of The Old Republic who served as Darth Revan's personal assassin droid. The second being PROXY from Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Proxy like K-2SO joined the Rebel Alliance after his master helped create it.
K-2SO
HK-47
PROXY
More proof Rogue One was born from the EU. This time switching focus to locations and planets rather than the cast of the film
Jedha
Jedha is a name of one of the planets that will have a major role to play in the upcoming film. Jedha is an entire world that has played an influencial role in the building of the Jedi Order. Jedha is tied to the Jedi as much of their culture revolves around the legacy the Jedi left for them.
Vaklin
From the EU a similiar planet can be found which is Vaklin. Vaklin was a world that refused to cut ties to the Jedi Order even after Order 66, so Darth Vader himself led an invasion of the world to wipe the memory of the Jedi clean from the world's inhabitants and manipulated it into something ugly. Vaklin also was a brief refuge for Order 66 survivors who led an armed uprising against the Imperial forces once they invaded the planet. It has yet to be seen if Jedha will have a similar history of providing shelter to Order 66 survivors.
Possible Character Theft
Normally this sort of thing doesn't bother me as it has never been a problem before but browsing through the person who commished this piece on the FA I found this.
www.furaffinity.net/view/50903…
Looks eerily similar to my own dragonness character and I am not just talking about them sharing the same name. The coloring, wings, and number of toes on each foot matches my character exactly.
For a reference of my character here is her reference.
Not sure if she is was inspired by my character or a direct copy but usually imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but I am not flattered more disgusted than anything else. Can anyone help me with this problem? Cause I have no idea what I am supposed to do about it.