[Traverse's Scrapbook] Movie Reviews and Mayhem

by **Sal Mander** on January 5th, 2015, 5:51 pm

Can't post it from my phone at work, but the trailer for Mad Max Fury Road looks completely crazy, (in a good way). Loved the original trilogy as a kid, and I'm pretty excited having read some interviews with George Miller about how he approached making this one.

by **Traverse** on January 6th, 2015, 1:12 am

Oh yes that's another one that should be on the list!!

Edit:

by **Sal Mander** on January 6th, 2015, 2:36 am

Trailer #2. Double the crazy

by **Hirem** on January 6th, 2015, 2:59 am

So I'm late to the party here, but I saw your above post about Bioware games and wanted to spread the love.

Dragon Age Inquisition wasn't a return to tradition for the company I love (they're based in my hometown, so it's practically a form of patriotism for me) but it felt exciting and new and epic. It didn't try and cater to any particular branch of fans, but instead paved the way for something Bioware was really passionate about and ended up being all the more brilliant for it. Very happy about the final product, especially the character of the Inquisitor and the game's themes of faith and heroism. The characters I liked most ended up taking me by surprise, including Cassandra, Cole, Cullen, and Solas, all of whom I had written off in the previews but ended up being astounded by in the game proper. Very glad to see the Iron Bull live up to his reputation of being crazy and awesome all at the same time. Even the villain ended up being a show stealer in the scenes he was in, despite the fact that his plans are pretty ineffectual. If anything disturbed me about the game, it was the sense that the MMO-ish design was not something pursued by Bioware itself but instead pushed from on high by EA, who must have seen the success of the Elder Scrolls series and told their resident RPG company to "make more of that". Sure, the environments are gorgeous and fun to move around, but I don't want an emphasis on larger open worlds to remove the charm from the game's side quests and NPCs.

by **Traverse** on January 6th, 2015, 4:27 pm

Late or not Bioware discussion is always welcome in this scrap!! I have talked with a few folks on Miz about Dragon Age and Bioware in general over the past month or so and there's a lot of love to be had for the franchise and company, which is unsurprising, but also awesome to find. I have to agree with your opinion on EA, I see them as the big overhead, the opportunity to seriously fund Bioware games and get them out there and up to snuff graphically etc with other games, but also see them as the big bad corporation. Luckily the main draw to Bioware games are the things that have been attracting fans since Baldur's Gate, so I feel like EA doesn't dare to touch some aspects of Bioware and leaves them to do their own thing to an extent (hopefully).

I have to say I didn't mind the MMORPG elements, but that was mostly because I have that same completionist gene that a lot of gamers have, and the endless inane tasks helped me from soaring through the main questline, and the side character little vignettes right away, giving me sort of a buffer. I was very pleasantly surprised by several of the character archetypes, which I thought I had somehow judged just looking at their little thumbnail pictures before there was anymore information on them (silly me). One little thing I loved about Cole was that even if he's not in your party you get his approval for things as you go about your journey, and I don't know if it is ever explained, but I assumed this was because he probably just tagged along with your Inquisitor wherever you went as his spirity self, which I thought was so cool.

I think my favorite group so far has been Dorian, Bull, and Sera. I knew I would love Cullen, but was very pleasantly surprised by Cassandra, especially that gosh darn hilarious side quest involving Varric (Solas surprised me too, though I have to be honest and say I wasn't that interested in him until after my first play through). I think Bioware really came into their own in so many ways with this game, hitting the nail on the head with so many things while retaining all these aspects that draws folks to their games in the first place.

Without rambling too much more I just cannot wait to see what they plan on doing with the next Mass Effect, I'm crossing my fingers that you'll have the chance to play as a Krogan haha.

by **Traverse** on February 5th, 2015, 1:02 am

So this scrap is going to be a lot of randomness, but all centered around:

A fair amount of people know this, but I always enjoy explaining it, Star Wars was my entrance into roleplaying. It started on Facebook back when I still played the FB games, with Jedi Vs. Sith. It was a pretty simple thing, you could take quizzes, invite friends, and do other little inane things to get Jedi or Sith ranking up, and one day there was this new option in the top that was just a list of all of the planets in the Star Wars Universe and in them was just blank space to post in, no descriptors no nothing. Most became filled rather rapidly with people swearing and claiming this land in the name of the Sith in all caps and highly commednable use of the English language. Not knowing almost anything about the Star Wars universe outside of the movies, I began what was to be a long and prosperous relationship with wookiepedia, and began looking up the planet info of the ones that hadn't been slandered by the dark side. I ended up finding a little abandoned rock called Tholatin that someone had written landing on and driving away a sith troll in a clear descriptive 3rd person narrative. I hastily looked up a race and thus my roleplaying career began in earnest on the blank slate of Facebook.

I have recently jumped head into my love of Star Wars again in the past couple weeks, basically drowning myself in whatever content I can. As a Bioware fan I have played KOTOR, and the nearly identical format done by Obsidian of KOTOR 2, but this go around installed the TSLRCM (the Sith Lord Restored Content Mod) for the second KOTOR which fills in quite a lot of content left out of the half finished game when it was released, and re-played the game, enjoying it almost as much as my first go around. Deciding to branch out a bit I have started playing the Force Unleashed on my PC as well, and while some of the controls are severely lacking, I am thoroughly enjoying myself so far with it.

In addition two of my friends highly laud the Clone Wars animated TV series, and after showing us a 3ish episode section of epic proportions, convinced me to start watching it as well. I would recommend it to any Star Wars fans who are put off by the cartoonish and appearance of it being a children's show, for me its very much like Avatar the Last Airbender, in that despite outward appearances it has very adult thematic elements for what it is. Also I thought it mostly followed Anakin, and though he is a big part of the show, and they make it annoyingly clear that he is becoming Darth Vader, I was happy to learn that most of the show focuses on his apprentice and Obi Won Kenobi, as well as diverging from them and focusing on other characters for episodes and arcs at a time, such as Darth Maul, and his brother's origin story.

It also occurred to me that in my fervor to list all the movies I was excited to see this coming year, I completely forgot the new Star Wars movie which will debuting just before the year is out. Now I haven't read the reactions, but people seem to be freaking out a lot about every little thing they hear about, or see in the teaser trailer, such as the light sabers gaining cross guards, in fact when I wrote the word into google to make sure I was using the right term, the first search result to pop up was 'cross hilt lightsaber', which seems like the most logical thing to put on a giant laser that always lops off limbs, if there had been a few of those in the original series, I feel like more people would still have both of their real hands. I am not sure if the movie will be good, but I am fairly confident in its ability to outshine the prequels, and have my fingers crossed for it.

I think that's enough going on tangents for one day. I'll try to kick my butt into gear and post some movie reviews soon

Safe Travels,

-Traverse

by **Zhol** on February 5th, 2015, 2:05 am

Have you ever played the X-Wing: Alliance game? It's an old game, but it's a really well-loved one, and it's just been made available on Good Old Games for a few dollars. You play as a pilot who gets swept up in the Rebel Alliance, and you eventually end up flying as a pilot during the Battle of Endor. The graphics are very dated, but it's still one of my fondest Star Wars gaming memories.

Also, if you're a fan of the Clone Wars, make sure you check out Star Wars: Rebels if you can. It's a very different style, both visually and in terms of story (it's based heavily on the original Ralph McQuarrie artwork, and it's more of a persistent crew / family in space type story instead of the wide-spanning galactic battles of Clone Wars), but it has that same Avatar quality of being secretly adult-enjoyable, it looks gorgeous, and it manages to capture some of the Original Series charm. It might seem a bit too kid-friendly to start with (but then, so did Clone Wars at the very beginning), but very quickly it gets into some pretty deep stuff about Jedi spirituality and what-not. Also, the astromech droid in it is adorable beyond words!

by **Traverse** on February 6th, 2015, 11:34 pm

Zhol: I will be sure to look into both of those! I make no promises on the X-Wing alliance because I am a shallow shallow person when it comes to older games vs. new fancy graphics, there is clearly a nostalgia thing there for you, which is the same reason why I still enjoy KOTOR so much, but regardless thanks for the star wars suggestions!

I apologize for any sniffling in this video, I just came inside from cold conditions, and in addition I forgot to drop the name Dustin Hoffman in the list of famous people. Regardless here is a movie review!!

28

by **Traverse** on February 13th, 2015, 6:35 pm

There Goes Another Gato

This morning, in fact only a few hours ago, I had the unfortunate task of taking our 15 year old, orange tiger coon cat into the Vet's to be put down. Everyone else was at work or school, so I sat him in my lap until it was time to go to the Vet, and there was faced with the expected diagnosis, and a teary goodbye.

Growing up on a small farm, I became very aware from a pretty young age of the inevitable death of our pets, which save for a few mean instances of animals, is what we consider all of our critters to be, whether cow, chicken, dog, or cat. At one point in my life we had 8 cats at the same time, 2 indoor 6 outdoor, though as of today that number stands at 1 indoor, 1 outdoor. I have loved almost all of these cats in one way or another, but very few of them have had the same place in my heart that Yoda occupied. Despite his age, you could never really tell he was anything apart from a large kitten. He was friendly to any and every person who came by the farm, a bit talktative, and extremely playful. He'd roll on his back to attract your attention, only to latch onto you if any appendage came near his stomach, and loved to 'help' with any farm projects by inserting himself into them whenever possible, always curious as to why all attention wasn't directed toward him. In the images here he is inspecting my Dad's work on a new porch.

I think perhaps his utter lack of energy and life this morning are what hit me harder than normal, as I like to think of myself as able to handle these types of things better than the average individual, but of course its a different matter to hear about it vs. accompanying and staying with your companion until its all over. It has of course put a bit of a damper on what was supposed to be a relaxing time back home spending time with the fam, but I like to imagine that somewhere a kitten is being born that will give someone just as much trouble and enjoyment as Yoda did for us, and that puts a little smile on my face.

I will miss the double pawed bugger, and will try to post a slightly more uplifting post soon, along with some movie reviews, I have 3 movies I really want to talk to you guys about.

As always safe travels,

-Traverse

by **Aventis** on February 13th, 2015, 8:06 pm

Wow... Traverse we don't know each other that well but... I've been there. And if I may say, it sucks. It sucks to lose family. It sucks to lose a pal. I can't say that it's all too easy to get over, as I'm sure you know, but despite not knowing each other I'm here for you. To reiterate, I'm sorry for your loss. I really am. It'll get better.

Happy writing,
Aventis