I've seen enough hentai to know where this is going.

At PAX Prime 2011, I geeked out a lot. I played demos for Uncharted 3, Mass Effect 3, and TERA (releasing May 1, incidentally), I slobbered over Geek Chic’s bomb-ass gaming tables (and lamented over how fucking long their wait list is–HIRE MORE PEOPLE), and I discovered the board game, Arkham Horror.

The game is based upon the Cthulhu Mythos detailed in the books of 1920s horror author H.P. Lovecraft. The Wikipedia article rightly categorizes his writing as “weird fiction”. I was making my way through his many short stories and novellas, detailing the lurking horror of antediluvian beings that would devour the world were they to wake, when I came upon an excerpt that well-defines the main theme of Lovecraft’s novels:

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”
– The Call of Cthulhu, 1926

The author himself was a nihilist, writing his works in an era when science was starting to (attempting to) tackle very complex concepts, such as relativity, psychoanalysis, and magnetism. He was also racist, using terms like “negroid” in his works and suggesting that non-whites and/or non-privileged are prone to barbarism.

His novels have inspired many modern horror authors, including Stephen King, and the Cthulhu Mythos he created is very prevalent in popular culture. A connection I geeked out over is his influence on the visual artist H.R. Giger, who titled his book of paintings of “biological macabre” after Lovecraft’s fictional grimoire the Necronomicon. Much of the set design for Ridley Scott’s film Alien was done by Giger and the film overall was directly influenced by Lovecraft’s horror fiction. Perhaps best of all: the Mass Effect 3 demo I mentioned playing at last year’s PAX was the final installment of a game also influenced by Lovecraftian horror: in the Mass Effect series, an ancient, mind-blowingly terrifying race of enormous machines “sleep” in the blackness of intergalactic space to awaken and cull all life in the Milky Way. Sound familiar?

Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos stories often take place in or near the fictional New England city of Arkham, from which–as you guessed it–Arkham Asylum in the Batman comics takes its name. In these stories, characters are traumatized by forbidden knowledge of ancient, immortal, cosmic horrors–a pantheon of deities ever capable of waking. The ancient one Cthulhu is said to be in a death-sleep in a sunken city on Earth.

“In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”
– The Call of Cthulhu, 1926

Some characters struggle against the before-unknown evil legacy of their ancestors, whose sinful pacts with lesser beings from this pantheon have tainted their family or their entire hometown. Others, often scholars, explorers, or scientists (usually based out of Arkham’s Miskatonic University), are nearly driven mad by the discovery of corrupt, abandoned, decadent civilizations.

Pictured is the original game board and an expansion board (of which there are more). Practically all of the card decks are tapped.

Against this rich and admittedly antiquated setting, the board game Arkham Horror allows players to work cooperatively to prevent the awakening of an Ancient One that would devour the world. The game board contains neighborhoods and places within those neighborhoods as well as street areas; e.g. the Miskatonic University area contains  the Science Building, Library, and Administration. Clues are dispersed across town, which players collect in order to complete certain tasks or to re-roll poor dice results. Character cards are drawn, which can be anyone from a drifter to a mobster to a psychic.

The phases of game-play are rather simple, but the rules of combat, of using one’s resources, and of resolving “encounters” get complex very quickly. Every aspect of the game is tracked with various fiddly bits–e.g. blue “brain” tokens track a character’s current sanity, which we keep in a baggie. World events, items, individual encounters, and monsters/characters are detailed on cards that are drawn at random.

A “quick” game of Arkham Horror with four or five players can last four hours.

Here’s a prose version of an example round of play with three players:

Jenny, the Dilettante, arrives at the Train Station of Arkham to find her missing sister, who wrote a rambling letter to Jenny while Jenny was in Paris. Sister Mary, the Nun, is heading into the streets of Arkham from her post at South Church to investigate the possibility of cults and monsters after finding a strange journal on the steps of the church, and which Father Michael hastily and fearfully threw into the fire when she showed it to him. Leo, the Expedition Leader, has arrived at Arkham’s River Docks to confront Dr. Philips, the organizer of his expedition into the Yucatan from which only three of his seven men returned. However, Philips is dead, and all Leo has is the notes of the mad and deceased Dr. Volk, “scribblings with today’s date circled in blood”.

(Here is where players resolve the events on the Mythos Card to start the round.) In Arkham, everyone is dreaming of a sunken city and is haunted by the disturbing images upon waking. Only receiving psychiatric care at Arkham Asylum can quell the near-hysteria. A “gate” rips open in Independence Square, spilling forth monsters into the streets, and a clue can be found at The Unnamable.

(Here is where players move their characters to new locations in order to achieve various objectives.) Jenny heads to the Police Station first, Sister Mary to the Historical Society, and Leo to the Science Building of Miskatonic University. Each of them locates a clue.

(Here is where players drawn “Encounter” cards based on the neighborhood during the next phase of the round. Often, a dice roll is involved to determine success; failure is often accompanied by various penalties.) Jenny convinces Deputy Dingby to share some files with her that are very interesting. She gains a couple more clues. Sister Mary encounters a friendly old professor from Miskatonic University. She spends a gate trophy ”shares her knowledge of how she sealed a gate”, and he introduces himself as Professor Armitage. He joins her as an ally (and the player gets his Ally card). Above Leo’s head in the Unnamable (a house), a ceiling beam buckles and he fails a dice roll is injured.

At its most basic, that is a “round” of play. Very intricate story-telling, isn’t it?

There are a handful of ways to win and many ways to lose. So far, though, whenever we’ve played the game, we’ve managed to either prevent the Ancient One from awakening or defeated it if it does awaken. One of the Ancient Ones is insta-lose, though, if he awakens.

As an author and a fan of horror (not the torture porn that people call “horror” but real horror), I greatly appreciate this board game, even though it takes forever to set up (Fantasy Flight Games should consider adapting it to a game for Microsoft Surface). If you’d like to play, I’d suggest including someone who has thoroughly read the rules or has played the game several times before. If you don’t know anyone, nominate yourself!

Do complex board games like this interest you? Are you a fan of Lovecraftian horror?

In the game of thrones, you either win or you die.

OMG y’all. I was curious about Game of Thrones because the HBO series–some would say gratuitously–suggested that the books contained a lot of murder, sex, and scheming. Also, I love dragons and was told there were dragons. For Christmas, I received the first two novels in George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series. Yes, it’s been a while since Christmas (I’m busy!), but in early April I finished the first book. Only a couple of times did I grind my teeth at the stupidity of the characters, telling myself that they’re only making a rash decision out of grief or a fierce sense of honor. Otherwise, my thoughts boiled down to this:

Everyone in this book has some shitty damned luck.

Other thoughts meandered between how friggin’ young some of these characters are (initially, Daenerys is thirteen while Robb is fourteen) and how everyone solves everything by committing the murder act. It’s an incredibly brutal world, and Martin does not shy away from killing off characters, including major ones.

I feel like I can’t root for anyone because who knows if the author will kill him off? I therefore put myself at an emotional distance from as many characters as I can. I only have a small measure of hope for Daenerys because she seems to have an ace in the hole.

In a literary sense, the first book is written quite well, though Martin could’ve laid off on the name-dropping a little. It’s difficult enough keeping track of like, thirty characters without throwing in some off-screen vassal and his fucked-up family. However, the plot is well-planned and tightly paced with enough character-building to give you a good sense of what a character’s motivation is, even if you don’t like it.

What’s most interesting, though, is how every character’s decision has significant, serious consequences. It’s especially clear with Daenerys, whose relationship with Khal Drogo sets off a chain of events that ends up rippling back to them (I’m trying to be vague and non-spoilery here). Dany’s reaction to an attempt on her life (not a spoiler because everyone is killed or almost killed like, all the time in this book) and the decisions she and the Khal make have significant impact on their lives. A simpler example would involve the consequences Sansa suffers for placing her trust and loyalty in people other than her family.

It’s also evident with Eddard Stark and how he handles his role as the Hand of the King. He makes clear choices that–while honorable–are ultimately devastating, and sometimes no amount of honor can fix something.

I found myself wondering if I’d survive as a character in these books. You have to have a healthy sense of paranoia: “Is there any chance this person is pissed off at me? To what utmost extreme could they do to fuck me over?” You also have to be clever and–sometimes–dishonorable: “I’ll play along for now but I’ll hire someone to kill her in her sleep when the time is right.” If you have allies, don’t let them shoot themselves (or you) in the foot. “No, we’re not going to travel on the main road. That’s stupid.”

Also, they’re probably not your allies. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

As for the HBO series, I felt they did fairly well in adapting the major plot points. However, having read the book while my S.O. has not, I was constantly catching him up on who was talking or why they did something. Certainly the “book is better” argument can apply when it comes to understanding the setting and context.

Speaking of context, the role of women in the books and in the series not only differ from each other in subtle (or not so subtle) ways, but are also strangely both medieval and modern at the same time–perhaps because gender roles haven’t come as far as we might think. Daenerys is made quite aware that Khal Drogo’s men tolerate her only for his sake. Her brother intimidates her and uses her only for his own gain. The Dothraki men freely rape women and call it “honoring” them.

Catelyn Stark is often among men who accept her counsel, but she has no real power of her own–she relies on men’s loyalty to her father or other family in order to gain their assistance. Queen Cersei has some sway, but only because of her rich family.

Also, men of the Night’s Watch. No ladies allowed!

On another part of the “spectrum”, if we want to call it that, Eddard Stark’s youngest daughter Arya rejects the typical role for noblewomen like herself. Daenerys stands up to her brother and begins to believe in her family’s dynasty. Cersei is a deft schemer. Catelyn proves to be very wise, even when it comes to military strategy.

By the end of Game of Thrones, I had the feeling that while a lot seemed to happen, not much was resolved, but the story is weaving together nicely so far. I’m hoping Martin is able to finish the tapestry of his story without any loose or clashing threads.

The Iron Throne

Where do you draw that line? A simple answer would be clear consent, and you’d be exactly right, but for how long can the hero (or heroine) push their counterpart in order to gain that consent? How much pressure can the hero place before it becomes threatening? Those answers are much more relative to the situation and the mindset and preferences of characters in the scene. A young, sheltered (where “sheltered” becomes the metaphor for “virgin”) noblewoman kidnapped by pirates and in the clutches of the captain is a far different situation than a hardened divorced detective who finds herself bombarded by advances from an enigmatic suspect.

An erotica sub-genre, BDSM, often specifically explores dominance and submission, which can include the infliction or reception of pain, bondage, and humiliation. In such stories, which are necessarily qualified on their blurb/buy page, the power dynamic between the stars of the scene is front and center; sometimes, the scene (or entire novel) features one partner’s discovery and exploration of his/her sexuality with the guidance of the other, who will end up pushing the newbie beyond their normal boundaries. In Anne Rice’s Exit to Eden, Elliot explores his particular sexual proclivities during his time with dominatrix Mistress Lisa.

I want to hear your thoughts! Any examples of books (BDSM or otherwise) you’ve read where you felt a tad uncomfortable with a “forced seduction”? Any examples of books that did it very well?

It being 2012, I can’t resist talking about The Apocalypse. (In caps because it’s A Big Deal!) Oh, and mouse-over the links as you go for more snark!

I love zombies as a horror trope/vehicle for world destruction. I therefore loved The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks and his follow-up World War Z, which incidentally is being made into a feature film starring the talented Brad Pitt as a UN reporter who is collecting everyone’s survival stories after a zombie outbreak. Not-so-incidentally, the film premieres on December 21st this year, or the supposed end of the Mayan calendar that has everyone wondering if those Mayans Knew Something. On that note, preparing for The Apocalypse (or at least for one’s ideal survival plan, even if it’s not a financial reality) is a topic guaranteed to ignite animated discussion at one’s geeky parties. More than that, some people make it an actual hobby. More than that, some people take it Super Seriously.

Are you someone that just spouts off what you would do if you could? Do you have a decent emergency kit for “normal” disasters? (You should!) Do you have a more all-encompassing emergency plan, just for fun? Or do you belong on a National Geographic reality show?

If you answered “yes” to the first question only, I’d like to offer up some helpful links to get you started on a more normal emergency kit. FEMA has a great starter list on their site at Ready.gov. The site 72hours.org is also a great source for tips on surviving a three-day emergency. It’s not a bad idea to put a few emergency supplies in the trunk of your car, either (or at the office).

As for longer emergencies, the author of How to Survive 2012 (he’d probably star in his own reality show) offered up his top-100 list of items to store away. One item is “plastic folding water bag or box of condoms (to use as water bag)”. Riiiiiight, for “water”.

At the site LifeHacker, Thorin Klosowski points out that being prepared isn’t just about the items you’d need, but the skills you’d need as well. The article focuses on skills when in an urban environment versus a wilderness environment. (Unrelated: LifeHacker also showed me how to fry eggs inside bell peppers!)

The History Channel's "Life After People" series explores what would happen to the animals, buildings, and possessions humanity left behind were we to disappear suddenly.

One of my favorite things to discuss when it comes to The Apocalypse, however, is the reality of how quickly things would Turn Sour. Various sources around the Internet can tell you how long you’d continue to have power if, overnight, zombies take over and no one shows up to the nearby power plant. Seattle thankfully gets a whopping 87.9% (2010 figures) of its power from hydroelectricity, which requires less human intervention than nuclear plants and coal plants, so we’d have power for days or even weeks. However, “the North American power grid is a classic illustration of a chain being only as strong as its weakest link.” Most estimates I’ve seen online only allow that power would last just one week–and only for a lucky few. A lot of people would lose power after six hours, then more people after twelve hours, then most people after a day.

A sobering thought… An extra pack of batteries sounds like a good idea now, right?

Sheffield caught with the nanny! (Best part of the show, though, was the dry-witted butler.)

I’m about to give away my age here, but my perception of the situation comedy genre was affected by the long-running series of the ’90s. I grew up with sitcoms like Roseanne, Home Improvement, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Murphy Brown, The Drew Carey Show, Frasier, and The Nanny. Once I entered college and, after graduating, lived and worked in Tokyo for nearly four years, I hardly watched TV in the traditional sense. I didn’t have a TV in my dorm room and watching American TV in Japan just couldn’t happen (it was expensive through Tokyo’s version of Comcast, and watching online was effectively blocked because my IP address wasn’t in the States). I therefore missed a lot of good shows in the ’00s.

The Connors really know how to enjoy Halloween.

Quick aside for squealing: I loved the Halloween episodes of Roseanne. Oh, and remember how much we cheered for Fran and Max Sheffield to just hook up already??

I didn’t return to watching sitcoms more regularly–and only thanks to my S.O. and his TiVo subscription–until a couple of years ago. I’ve had people frequently shake their hands at me like they’re holding a basketball for having never seen the “tragically cancelled” Arrested Development. I’ll get around to it!

The gap in cultural experience has given me interesting observations on what the major channels now dish out to its prime time viewers. I now regularly take in How I Met Your Mother (or Friends 2.0), 30 Rock, Parks & Rec, Community and The Office.

Speaking of, I don’t recall in the ’90s any mockumentary-style sitcoms. The US version ofThe Office was a real trendsetter for other similarly styled US sitcoms that later found success (Parks and Recreation, Modern Family). The Office was especially good at humor meant to emphasize awkward situations or socially “off” characters.

I also don’t recall certain devices in ’90s shows that in today’s sitcoms are pretty common. The use of a bleeped curse word to add comedic effect, for example. Also, shows in the ’90s had their “special” episodes meant to address more serious issues like drug addiction or domestic abuse in which a character personally suffers (such as Aunt Jackie being beaten by her husband in Roseanne or Carlton’s bad experience with an amphetamine in Fresh Prince), but it seems that today’s shows will pull an issue from current news and provide an allegorical situation in which the characters have a comedic exploration (e.g., every episode of 30 Rock, or lately in Parks and Rec when it comes to current political wankery).

Just a tiny taste of the very geeky weirdness of "Community".

Two shows I think aren’t getting the recognition (or ratings) they deserve are Parks and Recreation and Community. In Parks and Rec, the eponymous city department for Pawnee, Indiana is run by optimistic Leslie Knope, a woman in love with public service and her community (despite the numerous reminders of how bizarre Pawnee is). Her boss is ironically anti-government and an extreme example of libertarianism. Her co-workers and employees are varying shades of incompetent or apathetic, but it’s so fun to watch them interact that you forget they’re paid to cost-effectively improve the city’s public spaces.

The only way to describe Community is the word “meta”. The show comes up with very convoluted but tightly written episodes that parody film/TV tropes and cliches (and even other currently popular sitcoms). Some memorable episodes include “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas”, the bulk of which was stop-motion animated, “Epidemiology”, in which almost the entire school succumbs to a zombie outbreak, and “Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking”, which brilliantly parodies the above-mentioned mockumentaries. If you’re a true geek, this show is for you because the only thing better than laughing at a good joke is understanding the reference behind it.

I don't--what even...!!

My regularly watched programs obviously aren’t the be-all, end-all of today’s options for sitcoms, so perhaps other shows hearken back to a day when the narrator sometimes started off the show with, “On today’s very special episode of…” How about you? What do you like about the trends in sitcoms lately? Are they more hilarious, or do you just wish they wrote sitcoms like they used to?

So I’m a big fan of video games–I played through Skyrim as a mage over several weeks, I played through ME3 recently as a paragon female Shepard (was just as disappointed with the ending as most everyone else), and am looking forward to Diablo 3 in May of this year. I’ve also racked up a decent Gamerscore on Xbox (over 10k!) playing games like BioWare’s Mass Effect and Square Enix’s Deus Ex. More “socially”, I’m part of an RPG group that meets weekly for a session of Pathfinder. I also regularly patronize Seattle’s theaters.

I am a geek–a nerd–perhaps a mild otaku.

Time travel is a topic that can go any number of places! (Or times! *snerk*) It’s a wonderful plot device in fiction, film, and television, and one could talk about time travel scientifically, philosophically, or in a literary sense. (Mostly I want to talk about a half-naked Michael Biehn, but we’ll get there soon.)

Let’s try a mix of all three. Traveling to the future is what we are constantly doing, but reaching a point in the future without having to experience the interim is possible as part of the concept of time dilation in Einstein’s theory of relativity. The passage of time for an observer traveling at high speed in space (or one in a deeper well of gravity) will seem slower to an observer “at rest”. Some stories have featured protagonists that experience time dilation in a magical sense, wherein they spend a short amount of time in a special place (a palace under the sea or perhaps the realm of fairies) but return home to discover a long interval has passed for everyone else. (Or vice versa!)

Is Ripley a time traveler?

Alternatively, one could also say that someone who awakens in the future has traveled through time, which is an outcome used in many stories, such as Rip Van Winkle. A famous sci-fi example would be Ripley in Aliens, who wakes up over fifty years after the events of the original Alien movie. However, I personally wouldn’t really call that time travel. As for travel to the past–or any kind of “real” time travel–the most common theories involve FTL travel and wormholes. Even given those theories, some major questions still exist. Assuming one is traveling through time from the crust of the Earth, such time travel may also require traveling through space because Earth is not a stationary object. It is rotating as well as hurtling around the sun at 29.8km/s. If one manages to stay in place but shift time around herself, the Earth may very well be in a different part of its orbit when one arrives at her time-destination, which unfortunately places the time traveler in the vacuum of space.

"I have come from the future to save your life--and impregnate you."

Let’s move on to a more delectable topic: time paradoxes. I want to go after one film in particular, and I know everyone is familiar with it. In Terminator, the self-aware AI Skynet that is destined to betray its human creators sometime in the future sends back a single cyborg “terminator” to kill the mother of John Connor, the man who successfully leads a human resistance against it and destroys its defense grids. John sends back one of his own men (Kyle Reese) to protect his mother, who hasn’t even become pregnant with John at that point in time.

If the terminator is successful and prevents John from ever being born, how would Skynet know that it had to send back a terminator in the first place? Even weirder, Kyle Reese gets together with Sarah, meaning he is John’s father. What if John never sent Kyle back? In the first iteration of this timeline before it looped back onto itself, who was John’s father?

If we postulate that a successful termination of Sarah Connor creates an alternate timeline, similar to when Marty McFly returned to 1985 from a botched trip to the future and found his “present” to have been significantly altered, then the original Skynet that sent back the terminator cannot hope to succeed in its mission to retroactively win the war against humans. This theory also means that when Kyle impregnated Sarah, the child they have together would not be the same John Connor. Perhaps not even a boy!

"I came across time for you, Sarah."

And yes, I specifically went looking for a picture of shirtless Michael Biehn. That guy is hot! He’s been in some of the best sci-fi films, too! He was Hicks in Aliens and Coffey in Abyss. (Update: Ridley Scott is throwing a bone to his ravenous fans and releasing an Alien prequel titled Prometheus.) And how drop-dead romantic is this line of his in Terminator: “John Connor gave me a picture of you once. I didn’t know why at the time. You were young, like you are now. I always wondered what you were thinking in that moment. You seemed a little sad, like you were remembering something long gone. I came across time for you, Sarah. I love you. I always have.”

But anyway, it’s not like anyone knows for sure how time works. Perhaps it’s not an inevitable, measured forward flow. Maybe changes to history can happen in one timeline and in the same dimension. Maybe memories are altered, or maybe not!

So many theories exist (and are delightfully explored in print and film) as to how time works and therefore as to how “changeable” history is. What I really love about time travel in fiction, however, is how it allows writers to uniquely convey a concept. For example, someone out of their own time (and place) has a point-of-view no other character can experience unless the writer employs time travel. My own novel Stay With Me explores the strange and terrifying circumstances with which a present-day heroine must cope when transported to 1351 Scotland. A comedic example would be the film Hot Tub Time Machine in which the 40-something time travelers stand agog at the strangeness of their bygone decade of youth, the 1980s.

Hot Tub Time Machine: the 80s was great for movies and music. Not so much for fashion.

Many books and films use time travel to allow their characters to explore past regrets and obtain resolution–possibly to “correct” a regretted decision. Others use it to explore fate/destiny by pitting time travelers against unchangeable and devastating past events, sometimes with the realization that their leap through time is the causality of the event they wish to change. My favorite uses of time travel include Doctor Who, Groundhog Day with Bill Murray, Hermione’s employment of the Time-Turner in Prisoner of Azkaban, the Dagger of Time in Prince of Persia, and the most recent Star Trek film. What a fun way to reboot the franchise! (Although Star Trek is no stranger to the use of time travel in its movies and TV series.)

Some fun links!
A Time Traveler’s Cheatsheet
FTL Neutrinos? Maybe Not.
Carl Sagan on Time Travel

But enough of that! Today, I wanted to ask anyone still peripherally watching this blog what they think about villains. If you’re interested in getting lost on TV Tropes for a few hours, browse their page on the subject to jog your mind. I would love to write a terrifying, brilliant bad guy!

A match made in Hell.

One of the best hero-villain pairings is Batman and Joker, which is written quite well in the recent Dark Knight film by Christopher Nolan. Their set of ideals clash perfectly (an oxymoron, I know), which is why their continual battle is so engrossing. (And seriously, clowns are fucking scary.) It’s Batman’s ideals that prevent him from killing the Joker, and the Joker’s twisted amusement derives from prodding those very ideals, which is why Joker says, “This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. You truly are incorruptible, aren’t you? You won’t kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness. And I won’t kill you because you’re just too much fun.” Nolan did an excellent job of making Joker terrifying and brilliant beyond his ghastly appearance. He tricks an entire heist team into killing each other one at a time. A mob boss that thinks he has successfully put the hit out on Joker is the one about to die (and have his leftover lackeys fight each other with broken pool sticks for the right to live and join Joker’s crew). He even tricks Batman into saving the opposite person in a life-or-death situation. Truly outstanding villain!

Another example of opposing ideals would be Professor X and Magneto. One is practically a pacifist, seeking compromise and understanding while ignoring the futility of such an outcome, whereas the other is a revolutionary, seeking the domination of non-mutants while ignoring the immorality of his violent tactics with a very Machiavellian attitude. The best part of their duality and conflict is that both are at least partially correct and justified. It also means both are too extreme in their views to be anywhere near “fair”. (Interesting how both of these hero-villain pairs are from comic books.)

Anyone else get the same overwhelming sense of sexual tension between these two in the last film?

Who are your favorite villains and why? What is your favorite motivation for a villain? Extra points for linking to TV Tropes!

The game features a rather small number of quests versus games like Mass Effect or Oblivion. Rather than taking on quests in which some guy you’ve just met wishes you to go fetch an irrelevant item for him for a monetary reward, all the objectives in Deus Ex contribute somehow to your character’s overall investigative goal. Also, several of these quests have two or three ways to solve them: some methods are crueler or more criminal than others. In addition, you as a player can choose whether Adam is pacifist or not, which means that except for the three “boss fights” in which you confront the mercenaries that raided the company headquarters, Adam does not kill anyone in the game despite the immense advantage he has with his state-of-the-art augmentations. Subsequently, playing through the game as a pacifist takes longer and requires more patience, which truly tests the player’s resolve and pulls him/her deeper into the game and into Adam.

How much of Adam is left?

Deus Ex affected me emotionally more than most of the other games I’ve played. For people who don’t really game, I feel like they’re missing out on a great experience and hope that if Human Revolution were ever adapted to the silver screen, the same level of pathos is conveyed. Human Revolution also galvanized a discussion in our apartment about what it means to be human and how far medicine and technology can take the human form and identity before changing it into something no longer human anymore.

"I never asked for this" in a much more mundane context.

Yeah, kinda weird. Thankfully, though, in the grand scheme of things, one bug (though major since it freezes the game) is not bad compared to how buggy other games are when released (coughcoughOblivioncoughcough). Speaking of Bethesda games, I’ve just started playing the fifth game in their Elder Scrolls series, entitled Skyrim. Unlike the eight hours it took for me to complete Uncharted 3, which I’ll post about soon as well, Skyrim is a game that can last a really, really long time. Days. Maybe even weeks. Oh and another Assassin’s Creed is being released next week. Gotta love the holiday season!

When you begin Origins, you can choose one of six “origin stories”, each of which has an impact on how you experience the game, including how characters speak to you and even certain plot paths. After you’ve experienced a sort of prologue in which the origin story is played out, you are recruited by Duncan to join the order of the Grey Wardens, an enigmatic and legendary group of warriors who fight against a specific threat: the Blight. Blights are the uprising of Darkspawn from deep within the earth onto the surface (they’re always around, just usually kept at bay by dwarves). You learn through an initiation rite the terrible truth behind becoming a Grey Warden and at a battle between the allied armies of King Cailan and his general/father-in-law Loghain against a horde of Darkspawn, Loghain purposefully quits the battlefield, ensuring defeat and the death of the king. You and another Grey Warden are of the very few survivors (it’s assumed you died, though).

Thus begins your adventure to gather up allies, learn of the truth behind the Darkspawn, and bring justice to Loghain for betraying the king of Fereldan. You travel all over the kingdom, recruiting mages, dwarves, and elves to help you battle and defeat the dragon leader of the Darkspawn known as the Archdemon.

I loved the game. A few things about it weren’t perfect, such as boring combat unless you were a mage (don’t get me started on how tiresome it was to control other party members during battle), but the story itself was enthralling. Decisions you made had significant impact in the game, and more than once, plot revelations surprised me rather than being obvious from a mile away. (And some of them were fucked up).

So, to continue the point of this post, Zach dislikes the plot and characters (as he dislikes most BioWare plots). He feels the plot is as cookie-cutter as all of BioWare’s other plots. To quote him, “In BioWare games, a mysterious evil force is teeming at the edge of civilization, pent on its destruction. You play someone recruited into an elite force who gathers up allies/companions in the first two acts, at the culmination of which you have a confrontation with a political adversary. In the third act, you have the actual battle against the real evil.” As for BioWare characters, “You always have the stodgy/annoying male companion (Alistair in DA, Karth in KOTOR), the whacky inanimate companion (Shale in DA, HK47 in KOTOR), the moralistic older companion (Wynne in DA, Bastila in KOTOR), the overpowered and reckless companion (Anders in DA: Awakening and DA2, Jack in Mass Effect 2), the immoral, callous character (Morrigan in DA, Isabela in DA2, Canderous in KOTOR), etc.”

In addition, Zach appreciates (somewhat) that DA2 attempted to break away from cookie cutter. In it, you play Hawke, a refugee of Ferelden who ends up in the city of Kirkwall. (Though you can play male or female Hawke, I’m going to just use “he”.) After allowing his prodigal, waste-of-space uncle to sell a year of his service to one of two buyers in exchange for allowing his family into the city, the first act follows Hawke’s struggles to make life easier for his family by raising money to join a Deep Roads expedition (and other stuff happens along the way, including the start of rising tensions between the mages and their Templar “oppressors”). The second act involves Hawke’s deepening involvement in the city’s political troubles, one strain of which culminates in a bloody battle between the city guard and the squatting Qunari. The third act involves the second major political struggle: the ethical issue regarding mages, which also culminates in another battle. While there’s no “inanimate” companion in this game, you could still apply the same personality labels to characters in DA2.

I found less satisfaction with the second Dragon Age and felt that a lot of what made the first game fun was taken away. First off, the sense of traveling and discovering almost became a chore in DA2 because with every new act, you had to explore each area of the city anew to find new things sitting there, and I got sick of seeing the same city streets over and over and over again. The Deep Roads expedition was almost the best part of the game. Also, though Loghain was a more compelling villain than the Archdemon in DA1, I found the Darkspawn to be a more credible threat than the ethical circle-jerk in the second game.

Mostly, though, my dissatisfaction boils down to this: in the first game, the Blight is a reoccurring nightmare that punishes humanity for its hubris. The cycle of Darkspawn tunneling through the dark, crushing depths of the earth to awaken the next incarnation of the Archdemon is one that’s unstoppable. Citizens of Thedas that talk of the Blights (whether recent or in ancient history) always speak with a sense of dread, hate, or resigned misery. In the second game, however, a party companion that you know is mentally troubled (seriously, he’s been possessed for fuck’s sake), that you know is fixated on the “freedom of mages” from under Templar control, and that you know has been up to no good forces the Chantry (Templars) and mages into a battle that will ripple across the entire world. Why the hell can’t you punch him out before he blows things up? Why the hell can’t you strangle him in the first act? Why the hell can’t you knock out Grand Cleric Elthina and haul her out of the Kirkwall Chantry in order to save her life?

It’s unfair.

Hell, in the first Dragon Age, you obviously have no control over what Loghain does in the beginning, but you do get to decide who dies in order to kill the Archdemon at the end (if anyone at all). You maybe even prevent future Blights! Why is that kind of control not given in DA2?

Because they want to force a plot point and make DA3.

So much else about DA2 was aggravating. Isabela is a terrible person. So is Anders, for obvious reasons. The gaps of time between acts, as Zach said, “remove agency” and force more plot onto your character. You can’t make an RPG without railroading, but some RPGs hide it better than others, or at least make cut-scene outcomes less frustrating. In DA2, a lot of choices that my character should have control over are made without my consent. It’s one thing if a king has issued me orders or some guy I don’t know somewhere else did a bad thing and the result has this kind of impact on your character’s circumstances, but so much of this game was railroaded not only in a straighter line, but also in a much more obvious way than in DA1. In the first game, you have more options for what kind of person you are as well, not just a male or female version of the same human fleeing to Kirkwall.

Given all my dissatisfaction, though, I still liked the game a lot. I’m just hoping that DA3 is more like DA1.

As for Zach’s opinion of BioWare plots and DA specifically, I’ve already discussed with him that nothing is new under the sun. Archetypes will be recycled for as long as people want to hear stories, but hopefully presented in new ways. The “inanimate” character in Mass Effect 2 is not “whacky” in any way. He’s pretty awesome, actually. Shale has more depth than you’d expect. All of DA’s characters do. And as frustrating as Anders is, you are shown how defeated he is after the horrifying act he commits. He’s a dick, but he’s unique.

And as much as Zach rants about “cookie cutters”, he has to admit that BioWare has galvanized more discussion in our apartment than any other game developer.

A while back, I posted a bit about the first Dragon Age (and its drool-worthy Templar). In Dragon Age 2, which my boyfriend would say I played waaaay too much, the story focuses on Hawke (either male or female according to your preference, though you can customize your own Hawke). Hawke is a citizen of Ferelden, which your Grey Warden from the first game saves from a Blight, but just as the very same Blight has begun, Hawke and his/her family are forced to flee to the city of Kirkwall, where Hawke forges a name for him/herself over several years. His/her story is told by a companion in the game, who is being interrogated by an enigmatic female inquisitor at some point in the future after the events of the game. Clever, right? Both male and female Hawke are good-looking, badass, and can take any of three personality routes in the game, including a mixture of all three. If you need that edge of romance, several companions in the game can be romanced. Probably my favorite was Fenris, a magic-hating elf with a damned sexy voice (follow the link for a scene of a customized female Hawke talking with Fenris).

(Left) The original female Hawke. (Right) Fenris.

A title currently only playable on PS3 is Uncharted (the first game is Drake’s Fortune, the second is Among Thieves, and a third–Drake’s Deception–is coming out this year). Your character is Nathan Drake, a treasure hunter and hunk. A film version of this game is in the works, and though fans of the game were rooting for Nathan Fillion to play the role of Nathan Drake, Mark Wahlberg will be playing the lead instead. I loved these games because the plots of both games take a sharp, jarring turn into LEFT FRIGGIN’ FIELD. I’ll give you an example of how the game blew my mind: in Among Thieves, Nate is following a native through some ice caves in order to track down a clue. The ice caves are a mix of shadow and reflected light, but I pay no mind to this as I shimmy and jump my way across ledges to reach a point higher on the mountain. Then, as I near an exit to the cave, a shadow in the foreground moves, alerting to me to the fact that something is NOT RIGHT. I don’t want to spoil anyone unnecessarily, but let’s just say that my action/adventure suddenly turned into something supernatural. My boyfriend happened to be watching me play and we both went, “OH SHIT!!”

Uncharted is one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever played. The physics of Nate’s movement and the rendering of his clothes and the environment is stunning. His clothes even become soaked if you have him swimming in water (and you can watch his clothes dry once he’s back on land). It’s not some lame effect of water dripping off him, either–the color of his shirt darkens and the trapped water shimmers in the light.

Another game that I am ravenous for is Mass Effect. I played through the first and second games at least four or five times, and Mass Effect 3 is releasing early next year. This game is similar to Dragon Age 2 in that you have a male or female version of your main character, whose name is Shepard, and players can also customize their own version. (Original male Shepard to the left.) Mass Effect is a sci-fi action RPG in which humanity has harnessed alien technology discovered on Mars to propel us out of the solar system and into a violent galactic society. Also like Dragon Age, your Shepard can collect companions and can accomplish story goals either using Good actions (Paragon) or Evil actions (Renegade). Conversation trees let you customize how your Shepard interacts with other characters, and the major decisions you make in the story have a significant impact on how the game ended; when you import a character from ME1 to your ME2 play-through, you get to experience further ramifications of your decisions in ME1.

Mass Effect includes romance options, of course. I have a weakness for Garrus, a Turian alien with a delicious voice. I also really love the voice actress for the female Commander Shepard (pictured right). She’s very convincingly bad-ass. What I loved most about Mass Effect, though, was the very exciting setting. Imagine being able to explore and save the galaxy in a state-of-the-art ship! It’s so much fun, even, that I’m playing through ME2 yet again! Click for a scene of male Shepard reuniting with Garrus in Mass Effect 2.

I can’t not mention Assassin’s Creed at this point. It’s very unique in that it’s a historical sci-fi third-person action game. In present day, a simple bartender named Desmond is kidnapped by the rich and powerful Abstergo Corporation in order to force him to use a machine called the Animus to access his ancestor’s memories and discover lost clues to the location of a powerful object. Historical cities like Jerusalem and Damascus are recreated for you to explore as a 12th-century assassin, who is given missions to learn about and then assassinate targets. Though the first game featured Altaïr, the second and third games’ ancestor is Ezio Auditore da Firenze, an assassin during the Renaissance era. These later games explore Italian cities such as Florence and Rome and go into detail regarding Ezio’s very epic life. In addition, a whole other plot is going on with Desmond in present day! A fourth game featuring Altaïr, Ezio, and Desmond will be released–you guessed it–later this year.

Both of the above images are of Ezio Auditore. He’s ITALIAN, ladies.

Finally, a game releasing next week that I’m squealing over is Deus Ex: Human Revolution, an action RPG which takes place in a somewhat dystopian future. You play Adam Jensen, who amounts to a security agent for a large biotechnology firm. You are wounded early in the game and are forced to become “augmented” by the same biotechnology in order to discover the elaborate reasons behind the attack. Oh, and you are gorgeous.

VERY, VERY GORGEOUS.

Did I mention that you’re gorgeous?

Since I haven’t played the game yet, I obviously can’t say if I love it or not, but based on game-play videos, there’s a good chance that I’ll be as obsessed with it as the other above-mentioned games.

Going back to whether consumers of romance fiction also love video games, I feel that someone could make a ton of money making games as intricate and engrossing as these while emphasizing the romance a little more heavily. If those games could also include more hardcore love scenes (such as the famous one from the first Mass Effect), I’d bet romance fiction readers would be All Over That. I’m crossing my fingers!