Archdemons and Reapers

Good. Fucking. Christ.

Do pardon the expletive, but then again, I never said this blog would be PG did I?

Anyway, I had been playing Dragon Age: Origins up until I realized Mass Effect 3 would be coming out soon. At which point, I abandoned my fight against the Blight, grabbed my M-98 Widow and plowed my way through the rest of Mass Effect 2.

I should explain, the first time I played Mass Effect was on Xbox360. I was young and impulsive and under the influence of painkillers as I had just had my wisdom teeth removed and needed a welcome distraction from the pain. I did not sleep until I had finished both games (okay, that's a downright lie, I slept for about four hours or so between game plays but I finished both games within a week of each other. Nyah).

I had fallen completely in love with the world of Mass Effect, the characters, the environments, hell, I'm one of those weirdos that actually LIKED the Mako. That was one hell of a tank, hardly ever flipped over on me and I loved being able to drive around dozens of alien worlds and appreciate the environments these developers had decided to create for us, the players, because why the fuck not? I will admit looking for minerals and Turian insignias and the Matriarch writings and Salarian ID tags was a bitch and a half to complete, but I did it because somewhere in the back of my mind I knew it would be all worth it just to kick Sovereign's miserable ass. (I also have a slight case of OCD when it comes to really good games.)

When I heard the third installment to the Mass Effect series was on its way, I fangirled like no fangirl had ever fangirled before. Then, I realized that my entire save was on Xbox360. Specifically, my brother's Xbox360. That he had taken with him to college. Needless to say, I was not in a happy mood at that realization and it is a wonder I did not destroy anything within a ten block radius of me.

Now, I have a Macbook Pro. As most people may know, it is possible to boot Windows on a Mac (*gags*). I did so in order to begin my quest to complete Mass Effect and ME2 before the release of ME3. I had a year, it was possible. I immediately bought PC copies of ME1 and ME2, and a copy of Dragon Age: Origins as it was part of a beautiful bundle pack Amazon was offering at the time, three games for the price of one. Unfortunately, I forgot that my Macbook Pro overheats like a motherfucker for no reason (Apple, I love you, but you gotta fix that problem.) so, playing Mass Effect proved a tad difficult when my poor Macbook would decide to heat itself up to the point of possibly melting the motherboard. Thankfully, that never happened. I bought a laptop cooling fan shortly after my first attempt at running Mass Effect on my Mac and though it did help, I found the experience terribly lacking.

Then, as if my silent prayers had been answered, I was provided a monster of a PC to look after and use to my heart's content by a friend of mine (She's doing just fine, btw. I treat her as if she were my own and she is certainly due for a cleaning soon.). This PC, dubbed La Beba, was a freaking god send. I could now play ME1 without suffering from the fear of overheating the machine and with graphics of such quality as to cause tears in my eyes. I was one happy camper. I took it upon myself to buy a 1TB HDD to install into the La Beba to store all of my files in so as to not fill up the 130GB SSD drive it has and so it wouldn't be too difficult to take my files when I would have to return La Beba and build my own monster of a PC (Friend, the time is coming, soon now I will require your assistance in order to build my Monster).

So, I now had ME1, ME2 and Dragon Age: Origins installed on one machine, and it wasn't exploding. My happiness cannot be described and will hardly ever be replicated.

Now, I began anew my ME1 file in order to complete the game. Of course, being the multitasking procrastinating moron I am, I decided to start up DAO as well, just to have it started up. This did not prove to be as detrimental as I may have thought as I didn't have a grand interest in the game at the beginning, my mind filled with space faring thoughts. Of course, my inner fantasy nerd caught whiff of a world filled with magic, demons and dragons and proceeded to lead a revolution against my sci-fi nerd. The battle raged as I found myself switching from ME1 to DAO, back to ME1 and so on and so forth. Eventually, I beat ME1 and then decided to actually take a crack at DAO seeing as I still had a good couple of months before ME3 came out.

Watch out people, here thar be spoilers!



I need to state for the record that it took me three different starts of the DAO storyline to actually get into it as much as I have. I tried doing the Dalish origin twice, finding it lacking somehow and I would never believe that a Dalish would fall for a human (Yes, I wanted to romance Alistair, so sue me) so, I decided to go for the City Elf origin instead. I found that it was certainly more satisfying than the Dalish one as I really enjoyed storming a castle as a FEMALE elf and killing all the soldiers and nobles in my way to save my cousin. Nothing more satisfying than killing off a few dozen racist, rapist bastards to start off an origin story.

After that was all nice and done and the Noble bastard himself had been slain by my female rogue elf's fury, we get to meet Duncan who decides to whisk us off to a night of drinking demon blood and joining a cult. Loads of fun!

I must take a moment to say this: God Damn You Bioware. No game developer should be allowed to make a game that consumes my life as much as you have, especially two different series. I mean, I would understand if both were space odysseys or fantasy epics, but to make me fall in love with a space odyssey AND a fantasy epic AT THE SAME TIME is just plain rude. (It's cool, I still love you guys, just letting you know you are dicks too.)

I get as far as Orzammar to recruit the dwarves after already curing the Arl, securing Redcliffe, recruiting the Mages, and the Dalish elves and suddenly notice that ME3 comes out in a month. Oops. I switched quickly back to ME2 just to plow my way through it while completing all the damn side missions (I did, btw) and have my nice Shepard all the way from ME1 ready to face down the Reaper horde.

Then Bioware goes and releases that fucking demo. I have never been so simultaneously happy and pissed off as I was when I played it. I wasn't pissed because it looked like it was going to be a horrible game, oh no, quite the opposite. It looked like it was going to be the most amazing ending to a game series I had seen in a long long time and there were still two weeks left to wait. I was not amused.

I tried switching back to DAO, I really did, but my heart wasn't in it. I needed to face the Reapers. I needed to save the Galaxy from the greatest threat it has ever faced. I needed to complete my romance with Kaidan (look guys, I romanced him in the first one and I stayed loyal bc dammit it makes for better storytelling. My second playthrough I'm debating romancing Garrus, depends on whether I let Kaidan die or not in the first one. For story purposes, I probably will. But I will say that for Fem Shep, the most emotional romance ending was Kaidan.)

Finally, the day came. The Reaper threat invaded Earth. My Shepard suffered losses and the Reapers were going to pay for every single one. I proceeded to complete it in one week, foregoing sleep and sometimes food. You can read my feelings on the game and ending in my previous post. (I'll probably get to writing a full review on the game at some point, but let's face it I probably never will now that I've actually said/written it.)

I had to take some time off from gaming for a while. ME3 destroyed me completely, I did not sleep while I was making my way through that game and tearing everyone in the Galaxy a new one so they would join me in the fight. I rested for a good two weeks and then decided it was high time I completed DAO.

I honestly can't remember much of what happened from Orzammar up to finally facing the Blight, which I haven't defeated just yet. I just need to express some pretty heavy feelings here. So, to begin:

IT WOULD HAVE BEEN EASIER ON MY EMOTIONS TO PLAY DAO AS A MALE INSTEAD OF A FEMALE. UGH.

For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, you should probably turn away now in case you didn't notice the SPOILERS warning above. Shoo.

For those who do, I'm a female Rogue City Elf. I decided to romance Alistair because he has the best sense of humor out of the lot of them and I'm not interested in Zevran. He looks like he plays for the other side anyway. Now, when it came time to finally face Loghain and call him out on his bullshit I had already gotten the backing of most (save for one asshole) of the council at the Landsmeet. Which means my attempt was successful and I could now battle Loghain. One on one. A Rogue City Elf against a fucking Tank Warrior. Thankfully, I had summoned my Poison Spider before the battle and that lovely little arachnid aided me in the fight from a distance with Poison and webbing. I love being a Ranger Rogue.

Anyway, Loghain defeated, it was time to decide what to do with him. Now, you can kill him on the spot OR you can have him undergo the Joining and aid you in the fight against the Blight. The problem is, if you do this and then decide to not make Alistair king because, let's face it, he's not king material at the moment, he LEAVES THE PARTY FOREVER.

You're alternative in the ruler of Ferelden is Cailan's widow, Anora. She is a grade-A CUNT. Now, I hate using that word, I hardly ever use it and for a GAME CHARACTER to make me describe her as such, is quite a feat in and of itself. Thanks Bioware. She had already betrayed you twice, once when you were RESCUING the bitch from her own insane father by saying that you were trying to kidnap her and AGAIN by siding with insane daddy during the Landsmeet. I did not want to crown this bitch the Queen but dammit I'm not about to have Alistair leave me bc he's King now and doesn't think the world would accept an Elf queen. Of course, I'd be letting him go since I know he's right, but fuck that. Imma complete this game with a lover by my side.

So, after that, and speaking with Riordan to find out that one of us has to die in order to destroy the Archdemon you find Morrigan in your room. With a way out of your predicament. Not that I would have any problem dying to save the world, but if you don't agree to her terms, she leaves the god damn party for good too (FFFUUUUUUUU). So, Morrigan informs you that she could be impregnated by a Grey Warden so that the soul of the Archdemon passes into the unborn fetus and is destroyed without causing harm to the child. Or so she says, I think it's bullshit and she's gonna give birth to a tainted spawn of Satan, but hey, I need her magical dark arts for the fight ahead.

Now, who do you think she needs to get her pregnant?

That's right boys and girls, ALISTAIR! Because Riordan has been under the taint too long. Uh-huh. Sure. Bitch. (I should note that if you did keep Loghain alive, you can have him have the sexy time with Morrigan.)

So, I get the lovely task of convincing the man my character loves to sleep with someone he despises and quite frankly is afraid of. Sorry buddy, you're gonna have to take one for the team. So, he has the most awkward sex in the world and then its OFF TO BATTLE!

I was SO CLOSE to getting to face the Archdemon last night and then, as DAO tends to do apparently, it crashed. RIGHT AS I AM AT THE DOOR TO THE ARCHDEMON!

Granted, it was 1:30am at that point, so I took it as a sign from the Universe to shut off the computer and head to bed since I had work this morning at 8am. That certain didn't stop my alarm from deciding NOT to sound this morning so I was late anyway. But thems are real world problems I'm not about to plague this blog with.

Hopefully, I'll be able to destroy the Archdemon when I get home today. Hopefully.

I'll update the blog later tonight or tomorrow morning if I manage it.

Cheers.