Kind of a tense, miserable Monday as I'm waiting to see if my dog will be all right or if he needs to go to the vet. Last night he swallowed a pork rib bone whole and it's my fault for letting him get at it. He's kind of an idiot and has a tendency to swallow things whole if he can, but now I'm worried he's going to get a bowel obstruction or that pieces of the bone will splinter off and hurt him. So far so good aside from a little vomit this morning, but if he starts showing some bad symptoms I got to take him to the vet. Friend of mine has a dog that ate squeaker toys on two separate occasions. Both times resulted in bowel obstruction. Her vet bill was over $12,000 dollars for the two visits combined. Thankfully she had pet insurance (her pup is fine btw). So I hope it doesn't come to that with Locke.
Today is also going to be a hot, muggy day so...that will suck as well.
Had the last one-shot session for D&D, which was a rollercoaster of insanity and panic as everything tried to kill me. Mesk threw me onto a rock with a fortress with no support (i.e. no friendlies) and had me interact with NPCs that were either crazy or wanted to kill me...or were crazy before they tried to kill me. Spent a long time trying to pull enough information out of it to piece together a bunch of plot-related timeline stuff, which was thankfully mostly stitched together at the end. I had to go afk a few times, unfortunately one of those times was immediately after I released fluid from a vat and got it all over me. Apparently if I had let that drain, I would have been possessed by a cat.
I know Mesk changed up some of the abilities on the fly as he mentioned one or two instances after we played. There was one part where a dragon was dive-bombing me on a bridge and thankfully I knew that I was about to get ambushed so I burned my free class ability spell to not die. I still got side-swiped by a flying talon, but wasn't grabbed by it thanks to Mesk's edits. I had a huge chance of just dying on that bridge, but I managed to avoid it.
I would say the first half was just exploring and trying to make sense of everything. I think it was because of the afk incident, but I completely missed that the dude in the liquid vat was the dude that the giant peeping eye orb told me about. I think it was getting blasted in the face with the liquid that made me forget. I thought he was in the tower, but it turns out there was something else in there I never got to. The second half was just frantic trying not to die as the entire castle's population tried to kill me. I pissed off some dudes downstairs, then ran upstairs after another dude tried to mind control me, then I ran to the central room where I knew an artifact was and just crossed my fingers that I could use it somehow.
I ended up fighting about...7 regular units, one crazy dude, an alternate version of my deity, a copy of myself, a giant demon and a giant blood monster by myself. So that was a little crazy. I figured it was going to be a timed thing since there was no way I was going to be able to take down the majority of the list above. The only thing that really saved me was this ridiculous aura that did damage any time a creature entered or stayed in it. It required concentration, but lasted up to 10 minutes. I MIGHT have messed this up because I'm not sure if I was hit before or after the aura went up (if I got hit during, the aura would have gone away). I'll have to check the video.
Anyway, all caught up to the start of the campaign, which will start whenever the others are ready. Realistically I can start any time, but it would be good before August as I'll be missing for a good chunk of it. I won't have real internet for 2 weeks unless I can convince my aunt that legit wifi out in the boonies is a good idea. The test sessions have been good for me to getting used to roleplaying more and actually forcing me out of my comfort zone. In one way it was easier when playing with HKS because I was just watching what he did and filling in when I thought it was necessary to step up. In the last two sessions it was just me, which forced me to keep thinking/moving things forward on my own. I have no idea if I'm actually doing any good or not, but Mesk seems to be content as far as I can tell.
The next big test for me will be playing with 4 other players and trying desperately not to make an ass of myself.
Finished Horizon last night, and I'm pleased to say that it was likely the best game I've played in a number of years. It's rare that I encounter a game that has such a consistent tone, fairly well-written dialogue and text, has USEFUL and interesting supporting documents (i.e. the text and voice logs you find), an engaging story, good controls (other than me initially getting roll and crouch mixed up a lot...but that's me not the game), and just an overall creative universe that you can tell the developers put a lot of time, effort and care into. Really the only gripes I had in that game were a few bad voice acted lines, some weird jumpy conversations with NPCs (mostly talking to people in side quests where people pop in, drop out of the air or aren't facing the right direction) and some physics bugs that were more hilarious than anything else. I only managed to get myself stuck in a rocky crevice once and it was easy to get out of with fast travel. Some of the NPCs were oddly shiny as well...like they were coated in a thick layer of sweat. In Nil's case, his chest looked like a Ken doll.
The majority of the characters were interesting. The majority of the character arcs had them learning and thinking about the world in different ways, but they were still the same people. Some of Aloy's motivations and interactions with the world changed and evolved, but her main core objective never changed, even when it made her selfish. I actually really liked this approach because I hate in games when characters just have an abrupt change of heart or have the sudden "redeeming actions" to let them be a good person in the end. People just don't work like that. It's always a process and it takes years to break down what you are and change it (think about it, everyone has that "slap in the face" moment where everything you are and believe is challenged and it shakes you up...but it doesn't immediately change anything). Also helped that Aloy was voiced by Ashly Burch, whom I have a lot of respect for as a voice actor. She also voices Chloe in Life is Strange, which explains why Aloy's voice sounded so familiar to me. I had no idea until the end when I saw the credits 'cause I'm an idiot and can't do a five second Google search.
At any rate, I definitely recommend the game. I burned through about 70-80 hours in a relatively short period of time.
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