Gabe has no idea what he's missing with his adherence to the Light Side, as anyone who went dark in the original Kotor is aware. I was not prepared for Bioware to allow some of the things I did, or at any rate caused to be done, and I hope with intensity that Obsidian will indulge us to the same degree in our depravities.
I still don't know how I'm supposed to feel about the sequel to Kotor being delivered so soon after the first one. My stated position is that I am "cautiously pleased." I'm not worried about the jump to another developer, which is something I could certainly invest a lot of paranoia in. In about a week, we'll see if my faith in Obsidian will pay dividends, or if - like Troika - they're a cadre of talented individuals with massive ideas for whom technical excellence is an elusive quarry.
I hadn't pre-ordered World of Warcraft, which I recognize was unwise. Typically I respond to shortages at retail with a lot of feral behavior, but I just didn't have it in me. On a lark I walked into the Best Buy across the street, and saw that stock of the game was so high that bored employees had made a kind of fort out of the boxes and seemed prepared to live out their days within them. I carefully removed a section of the rampart and congratulated myself on a surgical shopping experience. I had to re-grout the kitchen that night, something I suggest you energetically avoid, but I was unable to install the game and for a couple days I was largely inured to your plaintive cries.
It is simply true that sometimes we whine about things which are not, strictly speaking, things - or, at any rate, they are not things that merit a sternly phrased online petition. When I heard that there were problems with the launch, I had a hard time even believing it was true - here is a game that had the cleanest beta I've ever been a part of, a beta you could actually play, much as one would an actual videogame. When I heard that servers were, in all seriousness, making you pay to wait in line because they had failed to plan properly we determined that it was well and truly on. Then, over the course of the Thanksgiving Holiday, they doubled their capacity and robbed me of an opportunity make stark, declarative statements. I could make them now, but it just wouldn't be the same. There are still servers down, many at last count, but I don't think it's for lack of trying.
I can't avoid the genre, because I've always had a suspicion there would be a game whose ability to translate my person was so complete, whose mechanisms were so natural that I could just sort of live there instead. Picture a man sipping each milk in the dairy aisle, on the grounds that he will one day come across a mislabeled magical elixir.
(CW)TB out.
loose on an endless spree
