It's pretty rare that Gabe and I can just, like… sit down and play games. It's "the cobbler's son," right? But because I'm trying to be humane to myself after the Aus flight I ended up over at his place yesterday afternoon playing Red Dead, which is ridiculous. It's just a ridiculous game. I think they've internalized some troubling ideas about equine health. He asked me if I was gonna grab it when I got home, but I don't know yet. Maybe for the multi. Right now I'm doing something else.

I've been spending almost all my time in Thronebreaker, what I thought was gonna be a string of themed Gwent matches with some choose your own adventure shit in there, but is actually an RPG where the resolution system - it need not be a battle in the classic sense, though that does happen - is a thoroughly considered version of the minigame from Witcher 3.

They're doing exactly what I always want in these situations, which is to say that they're constructing virtuous whorls. You're going to have to forgive a certain amount of this kind of thing right now, as I'm still very tired from the trip for some reason and I always want to eat and sleep at the wrong times but with tremendous urgency. But here's what I mean about the whorls: I really want more connective tissue between the different experiences contained within the parenthesis of... Black Ops 4, just as an example. When you get a level in Call of Duty, it goes "RAONOWN DOWNT, DA BOW NOWNT," and your life improves incrementally. But the three separate games don't really pretend that there's much of a bridge between them. I mentioned this before: Gabriel is actively opposed to this, and I don't even think it is an interesting enough topic for Kiko to even consider. But I like the tension and unification of a universal mechanism that sits atop the sum total of play like a jaunty cap.

So I'm doing whatever I'm doing in Thronebreaker - a puzzle, a battle, choosing the slightly less bad of two nightmare options - and I'm regularly rewarded with stuff for Gwent. Technically, see, Thronebreaker is a standalone card game and it certainly plays like one. But for the enthusiast, this is also a channel to some really interesting cards and livery of various kinds for the straight multiplayer component. These might be entirely distinct types of people playing these two games, generally speaking, but I've got a foot in each; somebody, at least, appreciates their rare dedication to the chimera.

(CW)TB out.