Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Goddamn You Half-Antivan Elves Do It To Me Everytime

Reminder that last act Anders was all optimistic about how helpful she would be after she turned down Ser Alrik.

Anyway, let's get over to the Viscount's Keep and check in on Aveline. But on the way in, we encounter an old friend!
No I'm not shopping in the avatar anymore. The joke's fucking dead, guys. Don't ask me to keep doing it.

Yeah, people in the lobby are still standing around asking "when do I get to see the Viscount?" and he's been dead for like 3 years!

Valerie takes this opportunity to practice her cool new signature hand gesture that she learned from Revolver Ocelot.

The only thing you're waxing is your own knob, to elven tranny porn.

What is it you do again? (Besides buy me games on Steam HEYO!)

Damn, the ownage isn't stopping!

Same, but each time I play this game.

Alright, now that we've crushed Branternet Kraken's ego, let's check in on how married life is treating Aveline.
He'd have to be to put up with you.

Spill the deets! Is he a Deep Stalker or a Nug, if you get what Valerie is saying?

Thank Christ, it was bad enough having to listen to it happening.

 Bee Puke

Fuck this. Let's get out of here. As we wander hightown, we're stopped by a bargain basement Puss-in-Boots from Shrek sounding motherfucker.
I fucking hate Antivans SO MUCH.

SO MUCH.

Wow I wonder who that could spoiler it's Zevran

Into some shithole clearing with a tent and a wagon in it?

Fine I'll do whatever you want just stop fucking talking.

Valerie Hawke can only do two things: quip and kill.

Those of you expecting a tense interrogation full of subtle misdirections will be sorely disappointed.

So we head off to the Dalish Shithole on Sundermount.
Well, it is, but you can call me "Valerie". Enchante, madame. May I compliment how beautifully your pigtails offset the Krallice logo tattooed on your face?

But, business before pleasure. Valerie takes the straightforward instead of the flirtatious conversation path. (There is a flirtatious path for this convo.) (You can never talk to this character again in the game.)

Try not to look so fucking smug about it, Christ.

Well, isn't that convenient?

No, but it is something I'd expect from a badly written moron trapped in Ser David Gaider's idiot plot.

She says this like there's anything in this game that could possibly pose a challenge to getting to him.

Why are you complaining man, the quicker this quest is over the better.

And sure enough, we run into a trash mob of darkspawn, including an ogre.
Needless to say, they posed a true challenge to the party.

This is what happens when an ogre explodes, it's perhaps even lazier than what happens when a person explodes. Also note how Valerie is floating a foot off the ground.

So we head inside of a cave full of spiders. Yay. Anyway, look who we run into at the end!
I had to play this fight twice because the first time I was so far ahead of the rest of the party that they got stuck behind the invisible wall that blocks off this area once the Varterral spawns and while it's fully possible to solo it, it'd take longer and thus be more time spent on this terrible game.

Anyway we kill it. Again.
So, this is what Zevran used to look like:


This is what he looks like now:
I hate you.

If by "helped" you mean "was recruited and then never used in the party ever," then yes, you have an accurate description of what happened in my DA:O playthrough.

The Antivan Crows are a society of assassins and smugglers that apparently make up the entirety of the Antivan economy. Let's be clear about this: the Hispanic society as depicted in Thedas is entirely based around crime.

Possibly as a result of the Kansas City incident, it was widely believed in the criminal community that Plissken was dead. This is a running gag in Escape from New York: "I heard you were dead" (an homage to the John Wayne film Big Jake). In Escape from L.A. the recurring joke is changed to "I thought you'd be taller."
That's right folks, not even Escape from New York, Bioware's referencing Escape from LA here.

Zevran's chief storytelling hook is that the Crows are trying to kill him for being an incompetent assassin, despite the fact that everyone they send after him turns up dead. This would lead one to believe that Zevran is in actuality the only competent member of the Crows, past or present.

Hahaha damn! Ice burn!

Zevran doesn't care how hard the boypussy's been plowed. All he needs is a warm hole to stick it in.

The only thing I'm worried about is how much longer this quest is going to take.

So I can take you to Nuncio... or I can take you to Nuncio?

God, I hate you.

Despite Zevran happily saying he'll go to see Nuncio, the only way you can get him to give you the best dagger in the vanilla campaign is to let him go. If it wasn't for that, I would have killed him on the spot.

I hope to never see you again.

Valerie and company head to the wounded coast to catch up with Nuncio and collect their payment for services rendered.
I WONDER HOW THEY'LL TAKE IT?

Except Zevran, apparently.

Speak of the devil!

Technically they haven't even tried to kill me yet.

Don't try to pretend spree killing isn't the only thing that can fill the gaping hole in your life.

I wish.

He doesn't even throw the knife at the guy he's talking to!

Holy SHIT these fuckin faces.

Time to count the money I made from trash mob death.

I guess if you haven't been doing it nonstop for the past 35 hours it isn't quite such a tedious slog.

God I hope not.

14 comments:

  1. "I also have magical swords that float a FUCKING FOOT FROM MY BACK!"

    Seriously, Jesus FUCK Bioware! Having the characters pull their weapons from their ass is better than this shit!

    The worst thing is they only use a few weapon models and then color them differently, it's apparently that hard to create sheaths for them. AND ANOTHER THING! YOU NEVER STRAP LONG SWORDS TO YOUR FUCKING BACK (yes I know that Zevran is using daggers, they are still too long) You can NOT pull that shit out of it's sheath, not without bending over and being ridiculously prone. This is especially ridiculous with Fenris fucking Claymore, he should either rest it on his shoulder, have it TIED there with loose string, or just carry it with a bit of wood on the tip to use as a walking stick.

    Yes this pisses me off, it's FUCKING RIDICULOUS!

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    1. Every time my archer Hawke ends a battle, he uses his powers of divine clipping to rest his bow under the quiver.

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  2. Hey, at least they didn't screw up Zevran's face tattoos. Merrill's tattoo somehow changed between games...is it supposed to? Sort of like Rorschach's mask?

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    1. Oh hey that reminds me. The main defense that Bioware had for changing Merrill from what she was into what she is, is that Merrill didn't actually develop in any way shape or form in the 30 minutes she was in Dragon Age: Origins.

      That's all well and good until you ask the obvious question "So why not just create a new character whole sale?" And this is really the fucking crux of the issue isn't it? If you're going to have a character act so different from who they were, to the point their voice, character design, and everything but a tiny shred of backstory is different... why not just create a whole new character?

      It shocks me that the person who wrote Sten (I can get into why he's a wonderful character), The Landsmeet questline, Loghain and Ser Cauthrien. Somehow managed to shit out Varric (who's at most inoffensive) and Merrill (who's at most horrifically painful)

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    2. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the answer was a lack of editorial control.

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    3. Or too much editorial control. According to FBE (fake as he may be) Mike Laidlaw pretty much called all the shots on DA2, the venom he had to spit about the man, specifically blaming him for- hold on I got some of his stuff right here

      ---
      Post: The reason Hawke and The Warden wont ever meet is because it would make Hawke seem INCREDIBLY incompetent.

      "Hi, I'm the Warden-Commander of Fereldan, I got this position by outright murdering the Archdemon, changing the political landscape of an entire nation, and ending the 5th blight, as well as fighting a Darkspawn Incursion in Amaranthene, killing a Flesh Golem, and having an Old God Baby"

      "Hi I'm Hawke, I stumbled my way around randomly and utterly fucked up everything in Kirkwall, getting every political leader killed and then running from the city. Also my actions, ACT III Spoiler"

      Hawke is an accidental shoved into events anti~mary sue combination. His intentions might be good or bad, but the end result is everything going to shit. The story is fabricated in such a way that even if the player reacts, because of the framed narrative story, NO MATTER WHAT THE PLAYER DOES, it ends in the same thing.

      BioWare and the writers thought it would be an innovation - or it seems. The reality is that DA2 was never supposed to outgrow the confines of Dragon Age : origins expansion state. It was called Dragon Age exodus, dealing with the same problems as DA2 - but with more sense, no ACT III SPOILER bullshit, the qunari conflict either resulting in you being champion or wholeslaughtering everyone in Kirkwall joining the Qunari.

      That was obviously axed. Anders ACT III SPOILER. No SPOILER was to take place. The core party members, Isabela, Varric, Anders and Merril were all there before everything got turned to horseshit.

      Superimposed lack of choices meant that nothing will go the way you want it. DA : Origins had this in reverse.

      The worst thing of it all is that the writers and designers can wave DA2 away as "Varric was lying. It didn't happen that way, this happened!"

      The reason why Hawke and the Warden won't ever meet is it's "fucking hard"(and pricy) to implement - or so the bosses say. I would actually accept the fucking challenge. It's not like the files aren't there, or somesuch. It was fucked up design from the start. The import files should have contained the facial build, outlook, inventory(culled of course). I would be actually surprised if we had to improve the import feature with save slots for both games.

      ---

      They are trying to hadnwave this away, or resolve it in a comic. Morrigan's Godbaby is too much of a plotdevice strong lead - they couldn't make bullshit up with that set of choices leading to the baby.

      We also have to deal with all the other romancefags. Apparently the writers love Leliana [including Gaider] more than Morrigan.

      ---


      It's just plain and simply bad. Gaider communicated the romances of Anders and Fenris were unintentionally alike and they were surprised they wrote so much the same way. Thing is, they were surprised, but laughed it all away, without any attempt at changing it - it is intentional

      ---

      You get the idea, he had a lot to say in a lot of threads, Of course being mostly a programmer (and unconfirmed, and it being 4chan) he was pretty ignorant on most story stuff.

      there was this though

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      DA:O with DA2 combat modded in is impossible. The Toolset and the modders would have to spend a gorillion years to do it, as some stuff are hardcoded in the executable, etc.

      It's impossible to do that. However, having DA:O quality with DA2 combat in the next installment is possible, all things seem to point there, of course, with the same art direction and grafics as DA2. Chances are big, but it might change.

      ---

      See the bad grammar makes me auto-declare this as fake, but I know for a fact pissed off people who just don't give a fuck, especially on a place like 4chan.

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    4. I'm pretty sure the real reason they can't have the Warden meet Hawke is because they completely redid the engine in between games and probably fucked with the character modeling/animation system pretty significantly as well, because I played DA:O on low before realizing my system could handle medium detail and it didn't look anywhere near this bad.

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  3. Another reason to let him go is because we all know that's what's going to have happened in Dragon Age 3, if Bioware survives long enough to actually release it.

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    1. Oh it's not like all of the DA1 party members will be alive by DA2. Wynnes dead, The Warden's been Deep Sixed, Dog wont show up without the Warden but who cares amirite he's just Dog.

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  4. Elfs. The plural of Elf is Elfs.

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    1. Not according to the dictionary.

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    2. Not since Lord of the Rings got famous. True story. The same with dwarves.

      Unless you mean to say little fairy people, usually with wings. Then you use elfs.

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  5. God I hate the Antivans. Whenever they would speak all I could think of was Viktor The Space Car Salesman from Futurama. And here we have the dashboard, inlaid with the beaks of a thousand eagles.

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    1. Ah, jes. It is just ... the luxury edition has so much more eagle. It saddens me to think of you missing out.

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