Xaviar

http://steamcommunity.com/id/Xaviar21

I've been having fun with this but mostly playing with bots because the quickplays I've been playing never stick together.

I don't voice chat but I'll listen to you and text chat back!

I need to quarry!

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So I went the bottom voidwalker class kind of on my own, and it was nice. Then I read this thread and went on a punching spree.

I.. I don't think this is how it's supposed to be. They're going to nerf this, aren't they?

God I played this SO MUCH on my tiny little 13" tube TV.

Oh my god you guys. I just finished the last book in Anne Bishop's "The Others" series. It starts with Written In Red.

It isn't like a super serious time, or amazingly written, or anything else. It's basically about a girl who works at a post office for some werewolves and vampires. No joke, there are chapters about sorting mail, and chapters about getting ready to leave the apartment in the morning. But they aren't like WoT where it is just dull description.

Sure, not a lot happens, but it is so weirdly compelling that you just don't even know. It has a few darker themes, and occasionally there is some action. But mostly, it is just pleasant lightweight reading that you just keep reading and reading. It's amazing. You should read it. Do it. The audiobooks are also pretty well done if that's your thing.

@ares42: yeah. Even more so. Here is all this crazy stuff that she knows she's been missing and wanting for her whole life, throughout which she has been empowered to do whatever she wants EXCEPT be a part of something. And the reason she can't be a part of something is not and has never been her fault.

And now that she sees it all, gets her first taste, here is a guy that is telling her that there is another thing she can't be a part of because she is a woman (remember she's never been exposed to sexism before) because the sun (which she probably knows more about than he does) is male (which it isn't)

I think the only real reactions to that are angry condescension or depressed acceptance. And I don't think the later fits Aloy very well.

I started thinking about it because the focus translates the trail markers. And then realized it explained the scene (super early) where Rost hands her the bow and the focus says "Bow" and then she repeats, "Bow".

Nobody else can read.

What else is she getting from this thing that she's basically just grown up with?

And it speaks to the scene (after the proving) when she wakes up and can't find the focus. She gets so freaked out.

I mean honestly, if you basically grew up with detective vision, like while your brain is still forming how it on a mechanical/chemical level perceives the world around you, (same as above) you would freak out too if you lost it.

I think it is a super interesting sub-thread that they (at least as far as I am) have been hitting very subtly, and I think it's awesome.

@ares42: Honestly, that actually feels right up Aloy's... Erm... Alley to me. And I feel like it was well earned. As a kid, yeah, she looked up to these people and wanted to join them. Now, there is still an element of that, but it is buried underneath a lot of resentment and pain.

Add to that (and you see this play out in other ways too) the focus that she has basically had since she started forming memories, and it teaching her about the world more than all of her "peers" learned about the world from a more religious and less "factual" basis.

And yeah, she quite often takes a nonchalant and honestly a little condescending tone to the people around her, because how can their worldview be so narrow?

One of the standout examples so far for me being "It's just a door!"

But it comes out in a lot of little ways, and I'm pleased that the writing treated it so well and that her voice actor was able to play to it.

Some of the other characters' writing and VO is more mixed, but I have been very impressed by Aloy.

I don't really play games for challenge. I like to consume interesting new systems. 90% of the time default is the best way to do that, with a few exceptions. (IE, Dead Space seems like its systems were designed with hard in mind, but the the publisher made them scale it back. That might all be conjecture but that's how it felt.)

Adventure Capitalist. And I will probably end up poring several more hundred hours into. And I don't even mean like just leaving it run idle in the background. I'll pull it up on one monitor. Then pull up my steam library on my main monitor looking for what I actually feel like playing. And then just stare at the bars moving for way longer than is probably healthy.