The dialogue in the second panel isn’t true, not exactly, but it might as well have been. Gabriel told me not to discuss the strip in any detail, and so I wont. Apparently he wants it all to himself, and being almost paralyzed by this novelty I was in no position to refuse him.
It’s perfectly fine with me; that means we can talk about Kingdoms of Amalur, which I had more or less decided wasn’t in the schedule.
That’s worth unpacking, actually: If I determined it wasn’t in my schedule, and my time is in some ways much more plastic, how many others were under the mistaken impression that they could avoid this game without consequence? This is what a demo does, publishers, if you were wondering: sell games to people. Offering a demo creates the first stage of rapport. In effect, it elicits response.
Electronic Arts has done things keyed off of purchase before: they got their “Dead Space” in my “Dragon Age,” to coin a phrase. But tying material benefits for Kingdoms and Mass Effect stuff directly to the demo, which has no cost other than the time you spend with it, and the net widens. There’s even a demo for the PC - the PC, friends! - for whistle-wetting purposes. It’s also a demo that sets you loose after its initial tutorial payload. You don’t have access to everything, but you have forty-five minutes to explore, which is interesting. I’m waiting for the retail game that absorbs my progression from the demo, but I am sometimes called an optimist.
Kingdoms of Amalur is fairly audacious, in that it tries to find a midpoint between Blizzard “lush” and Skyrim “breadth,” with combat that is immediate and kinetic and substantially less SCA. It’s a smart-ass, upstart maneuver that should have resulted in room temperature dogshit, and it didn’t. Check it out.
(CW)TB out.
(instrumental)
After playing so much SW:TOR and really enjoying it I decided to try a Star Wars book. I had given up them a while back after a series of extremely bad books. I ended up grabbing Darth Plagueis. If it had just been incredibly boring I might have stuck it out but it was also stupid. I was listening to an especially lame chapter when the narrator started talking about ancient Sith lords and their lost techniques. One such lord was a sort of ancient necromancer and his name was Darth Andeddu. I don’t care what stupid space way you spell it, the name is pronounced Undead-u. The immortal Sith dude is called Darth Undead. I said “fuck you” out loud in my car and turned the stupid thing off.
I was already not thrilled about Darth Plagueis. I mean why the hell do these Darths feel the need to advertise how evil they are? A good villain does not think he is evil. He thinks he is doing the right thing. That is what makes him so fucking scary. I mean why the hell would anyone deal with someone named Mr. Insidious? Does the Trade Federation really think this guy is gonna honor his deals? If a Sith lord really wanted to mess with people he’d call himself Darth Fruitbasket or something. Then when he shows up with the planet killer gun everyone would be like like “Whoa, what!?”.
If you want to read a really incredible story of a Jedi falling to the Dark Side check out the Legacy of the Force series. Despite Troy Denning attempting to ruin it with every word he writes, the rest of the writing team managed to make a great story. Karen Travis writes a fall to the Dark Side that is actually believable. You really get an idea for how seductive the Dark Side can be and how an honestly good person could give themselves over to it.
It makes me excited for the future of SW:TOR. Imagine a future update in which one of the Jedi story lines involves a brush with the Dark Side and even the ability to fall. Now that would be amazing!
-Gabe out
