Dragon age (I will misspell many things about the games)

alright, I feel like doing something a little light hearted, so I figured I'd look at the dragon age series in a similar way to my recent looks at assassins creed.  this time I think I can do it without spoilers, but I am going to be discussing some themes and the like.

unlike assassins creed I feel that even in terms of story the two games are on fairly equal terms, though with very different strengths and weaknesses.  I'll go ahead and start with some of the things DA2 did better.  first and foremost would be characterization, while dragon age origins had great characters I believe the characters in DA2 got a lot more time to shine and were noticeably less cliche. the story is also much more focused on the hero, truly letting you feel how Hawke managed to climb from the status of an anonymous refugee (and in my chase apostate dodging the templars) to a hero.

right there is one problem with DA:2 you rise to the ranks of a hero, and the game kinda ends hoping to be picked up in a sequel, to put it simply you see a great view of the rise of the hero but very little of the full hero's journey.  this also makes it to were the scope of the game takes a hit, it wasn't until I was watching some clips from origins that took place in orzimar, and remembered how big that one city felt, and it's not even the only city you visit.  you got a sense that you were trying to save the entire land of fereldan, were in DA2 the town of kirkwall is the only place ever seemingly at risk.

however on a technical level I do think DA2 outperforms the original,  I kinda hate to admit this but while playing the original game I switched the difficulty to easy, not because I was having trouble in the fights, but the fights were so repetitive and samey that I just wanted to speed through them to continue the story. were as the fights in DA2 were much better done, and a little touch I really appreciated as a mage, when it goes to a cut scene to show you taking down a big baddy, it actually has your character acting more inline with their class, and i got to see my mage in cinematic cut scenes summoning fire to kill dragons, rather then watch them suddenly take up a sword.

had to move back in with my dad

it's why I missed last week, and I'm still working on getting settled in (would be going a lot faster but you know the drill) hopefully I'll have something substantial soon.

aliens

ok this is a little thought experiment I had a little while ago, what brought it about was that I was tired of seeing sci fi that always used our concept of male and female (and often even our secondary sexual charecteristcs like breasts) on aliens, it seemed rather arrogant to even in fiction always have sex and gender of creatures from diffrent planets or realities, mirror our concept of sex and gender.  so I wanted to come up with a species that didn't mirror that, further more as I feel is the case with the best sci-fi I wanted to come up with plausible reasons why the creatures took an evolutionary path like I hard rather then just say "this is what their like" so here's what I came up with.

the species is divided into four group,  any member of any group can produce an offspring by mating with any member of any other group.  each group is actually adapted to handle the harsh conditions of one of the four seasons on a planet were the conditions season to season vary so widely that their adaptation is to have most of the species enter a shelter and a period of little activity (similar to hibernation but not quite), while the subset best adapted for the current environment, provides for the rest.  off spring are typically carried by an inactive member of the species unill the baby is born.