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Showing results for tags 'mass effect'.
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Spoilers ahead...
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Draft of my SSC9 entry is done; hopefully I'll have time to give it some polish tomorrow and/or Sunday. I could try and revise now, but I've found it always helps to wait a day or two between draft and revision. It's rather different from the previous two fics I've put up; for one thing, it actually follows the perspective of just one character. Imagine that! Still needs a title, though; I always wind up doing those late. In other news, logging plenty of time into Mass Effect 3, though I'm going fairly slowly through the single-player. I'm enjoying it a lot, though there are a few issues I have with the game (coughcoughthatjournalsystemcoughcough). And, of course, schoolwork is schoolwork. Still waiting for more details on the Microsoft internship (I start in June). Regrettably, no further inspiration (all right, no further BZP-rules-friendly inspiration) has struck with regards to Kate Beaton edits. Fear not! Someday my muse will return.
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...not using a VPN to unlock your copy of Mass Effect 3 at 9 AM tomorrow, but rather attending classes until 5 PM and then studying for midterms until 11 PM. (ps: being a responsible member of society sucks)
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I like crossovers. There, I said it. It's a statement that doesn't really reflect well on my personal taste - after all, when most people hear "crossover", their brain translates it to either "cashgrab" or "unspeakably bad fanfiction" depending on the context. (Note: if the context is comics, "continuity nightmare" is also acceptable.) There's not really much I can do to argue against that - for proof of the former, direct yourself to any number of nonsensical promotional crossovers (recent example: Kingdoms of Amalur/Mass Effect), and for the latter you need only look at the great fanfiction site which shall not be named (whose crossover section, it must be said, makes for an excellent time with friends - the goal is to make everyone else scream in agony and horror before you do.) But I like them anyways. Perhaps it's that I like the potential more than the common execution - when you crossover things, you're opening up a whole bevy of interactions and moments that would have been impossible had the series remained separate. If the settings are disparate enough, things can get really interesting - plenty of people joke about Doctor Who and Sherlock sharing an episode (in fact, the concept is common enough that it now goes by "Wholock"), but really, if you stop and think about it, what would that really do to the great detective? Sherlock Holmes is a man of reason, and an incredibly brilliant one at that. If the Doctor came sauntering into his life, I doubt it would take very long for him to detect something amiss about the man with the funny bow tie - and when the truth came out, what then? Oh, true, the Doctor's world still operates on some semblance of logic, but it's a logic that wholly overthrows that of contemporary Earth. We've seen Sherlock work himself to the bone to prove his view of the world is still accurate in "The Hounds of Baskerville", but faced with irrefutable evidence that his world is merely a shade of a galaxy of monsters and miracles, could he adapt? That is the kind of idea that makes me grin, the kind of thing I like to prod with a stick and see how it reacts. Crossovers have so much inherent potential for challenge in them, and challenge drives characters to grow and change and, if you want to be Doylist about it, be entertaining to the readers. This isn't to say crossovers should be all dark, all the time, their only purpose to make a mockery of the characters - on the contrary, we expect characters to flourish in the new settings and make them their own. A few weeks back I wrote a little gag post where, through circumstances unexplained, the Toa Nuva had joined Commander Shepard aboard the Normandy. Sure, you could launch into a diatribe about the morality and acceptability of biomechanical life in a universe threatened by God-machines called the Reapers, but that's no good if you can't also have Joker throw out his one-liner assessments of the Commander's new allies. After all, half the fun of crossovers is, well, that basic appeal of "I like thing A, and I like thing B, so let's try thing A+B and see what happens." Of course, that's a task easier said than done. Crossovers are by their nature a balancing act; include too much of thing A and not enough of thing B, and you get people wondering why even bother to make a crossover at all when you could sub in some original characters and just go ahead and make a new story about thing A. Some degree of self-control is also required; it's very easy to say, "well, we've got thing A+B here now, so let's give thing A+B+C+D a shot!" (Case in point: I above mentioned "Wholock". I now mention its brother "Superwholock" and its cousin "Superwholock-Potter", which I will leave for you to research on your own time.) Some authors try to dodge the problem by avoiding specific characters or explicit crossovers - I'm given to understand that the now-legendary My Little Pony/Fallout crossover fic Fallout Equestria in fact makes no attempt to crossover the two worlds, but rather combines them into a post-apocalyptic wasteland where ponies struggle to survive, the canon characters making no appearances. This can be a valid method, and indeed avoids some of the problems outlined above; the largest concern I have with this approach is that you run the risk of causing the reader to ask, "why not just make this an original story?" if you create too much from whole cloth. (As an aside, I here would like to mention one other type of troublesome crossover: the setting of A with the characters of B, who possibly have assumed the personalities but not the names or appearances of the characters of A. Please avoid this.) In short, then, the crossover is problematic yet fascinating. Done well, it can challenge each of the sources in ways otherwise impossible; done poorly, it causes the reader to ask what the point of the whole thing even is. Perhaps more than other fanwork, it lends itself to quick-and-dirty creations; if we take "A and B have now crossed over" as a given, that alone gives us enough quick material to entertain. But if we put in the effort, there is potential beyond the quick joke; there is the possibility that we can create something with just the right balance of old and new. Anyways, the point is I'm actually partway done planning a fairly serious Mass Effect/Bionicle epic to be written after ME3 comes out and will be making a blog post about that sometime in the near future. But before that, I wanted to type out my thoughts on the genre as a whole and get some discussion from others.
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Shepard: What do you think about the people we're picking up? Joker: Well, about the ones you went out with last... Now, I didn't pay much attention in Sunday school, but I'm pretty sure they said something about watching out for guys who can shoot fire from their hands. Just putting that out there. Gali's great, but are we sure Tali hasn't got a long-lost sister or something? 'Cause I mean with the mask and the name and the switching between "nice" and "unholy terror", I'm seeing a resemblance. Lewa's got this nice Pollyanna thing going, you know? I'm giving it two days before Jack decks him. Just so we're clear, Toa can't have kids, right? 'Cause if Kopaka and Miranda hooked up I'm pretty sure the result would be able to actually scorn a man to death. I kind of get this urge to sing "Hi ho" whenever Onua's around, but I don't think he'd appreciate it. Pohatu's a nice guy, but I can't shake the feeling one of these days he's just going to run straight through the side of the hull. My only problem with Takanuva is that all the jokes about a seven-foot-tall guy made of gold write themselves. what am I doing with my life
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What do we have here? It works! The second time I've bought these. Technically the sixth for ME2 with all the issues I had with it on the PC. It is glorious in HD. I hate saying this because I try not to focus on graphics, but it is going to be hard to go back to the 480p of Skyward Sword now. There are seven more photos of the unboxing, but I don't want to crash anyone's internet, so I'm going to just link the gallery. So yeah, I'm pretty much broke now between the TV, the 360, and all the ME stuff. But I wasn't really planning on spending it on anything else, so I'm not really that upset about it. Also why do I have to register a credit card to redeem the microsoft points code? Because that's kind of inconvenient.
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I am a Biotic God! Fear me! I can smell my greatness!
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Thought I'd go ahead and round up the games I'm looking forward to this year, because I'm procrastinating because I feel like getting a hold on them. So, in order of North American release: Resident Evil Revelations [3DS/February 7th] I'm a big fan of the RE series, and when I heard there'd be a full entry on the 3DS I was hyped. Took them a while to make it (it was announced way back at E3 2010), but the demo they released was pretty darn good, and I'm hearing a lot of good reviews. My big hope is that it's got good replayability like past games. Tales of the Abyss [3DS/February 14th] Although I have a PS2 lying around, I never picked this up when it released, and I hear the 3DS port improves on the original in quite a few ways (mostly load times). The Tales games might be a little overcliche sometimes, but they're still quite enjoyable, and I do have a fondness for handheld RPGs. Mass Effect 3 [PC/March 6th] I am a sucker for Mass Effect. I fell in love with the first game's atmosphere and universe, and the second game (while far from flawless) kept me hooked. Bioware's made some pretty anti-consumer moves recently, and I'm still not happy about the game requiring Origin, but this is day one for me. I really want to finish out Shepard's story, and it looks like gameplay-wise they've made a lot of good decisions. As for multiplayer, well, we'll see how it goes, but I'll probably play it at least some. BioShock Infinite [PC, TBA 2012] Confession time: I never actually finished the first BioShock. Don't ask me why, 'cause I don't really know. But Infinite looks jaw-droppingly good; the setting alone had me sold. Paper Mario 3DS [3DS, TBA 2012] They had me at "Paper Mario is going back to being an RPG." Extreme Escape Adventure: Good People Die [3DS, TBA (Feb. 16, 2012 in Japan)] Ever hear of a little game called 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors? It was a visual novel for the DS that followed a group of characters trapped in the deadly Nonary Game aboard a sinking ship. It was tense, atmospheric, and had some truly wonderful twists and turns near the ending. Good People Die is the sequel, based around the Prisoner's Dilemma, and while it hasn't been announced for US release, it seems likely considering how well 999 sold. Fire Emblem: Awakening [3DS, TBA (April 19, 2012 in Japan)] I'm a big fan of the Fire Emblem games, and this latest entry looks like it's combining a lot of the best parts of recent entries. This hasn't actually been confirmed for a localization yet, but Nintendo seems pretty focused on pushing out 3DS software, so this should have a good shot. Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney [3DS, TBA (2012 in Japan)] I am hyped for this game like you wouldn't believe. I love both of these series, and seeing them in one game - one being written by Shuu Takumi, who gave us the original AA games and Ghost Trick - is crazy exciting. The soundtrack alone will probably be worth the cost of admission. I didn't realize how many of these were 3DS games, but I guess that's what happens when you lack a 360 or PS3. Well, it could use the extra titles, so I can't complain. Anyone else looking forward to any of these?
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Mass Effect 3 Collectior's Edition Has Been Pre-Ordered
Angel Beat posted a blog entry in Star Blogging across the universe
Awww yeah! /)^3^(\ -
Well, what have we here? It's none other than Isara Lenira, my Mass Effect pony. Her cutie mark is the No One Left Behind achievement medal, because she kept everyone alive. She knows biotic fu!
