I don't usually put a warning in my blog posts, but I feel I should for this one. Content warning: Discussion of mental illness. Senua's Saga: Hellblade II (SSH2) is a sequel to Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (HSS). When I wrote my post on my top-rated games, I'd forgotten about HSS. I've just edited that post to mention…
Now for a dose of reality Video games are not Barbie dolls. When you start a playthrough, the game offers you a choice of which character you want to play: an Origin character or a character of your own design. That's the character who's supposed to be the protagonist of the story. The game is not designed…
Kill Wyll Let me get this out of the way first: When I'm writing about our attempts to get Wyll out of the picture, I'm writing from an imaginary perspective as a "Wyll-hater", as I was when I role-played the character of Wicked Sandalwood. In reality, I have no antipathy for the character. I have great respect…
What does 8'/2.5 mean? I could no longer play with Real Angela on a game she hosted, but what about a game that I hosted? Real Angela was willing, but she had her own exploration through BG3 and didn't want to spoil that. She said she'd join me for a part of a playthrough I hosted if:…
Confused? I don't blame you. Aside from the opaque nomenclature ("8'/2.5? What does that mean?") the situation behind this playthrough started off tangled and gets more tangled as we go along. On the one hand, it's a story of two friends who would like to occasionally play Baldur's Gate 3 together, but can't do so freely due…
Background: Neil Newbon is the actor who supplied voice, performance capture, and direction for the character of Astarion in Baldur's Gate 3 (among many other roles). I'd planned to get Real Angela a cameo for her birthday. At the last minute, I realized that I'd totally forgotten. I went to the cameo site and put in for…
In the "this probably matters only to Bill" department: Currently, a good chunk of the posts on this site are on Baldur's Gate 3 playthroughs. The sequence of playthroughs, for both me and Real Angela, are complicated enough that it's easy to lose track of what's going on. I've set up a BG3 log spreadsheet. I've added…
Due to various life circumstances, last night was the first time in weeks that I could sit down with A, J, and M to play board games. We played three games. The first two were both Railroad Tiles. We don't often play the same game twice in a single night. Railroad Tiles was a short and fun…
Warning: unlike my previous guest post, where I was trying to be delicate about revealing game information, this one is spoiler city. Spoiler metropolis. This playthrough is called 2/14.5 because it's my second playthrough, and Bill's 14.5th, since he only joined me part of the time I was playing. Characters For this playthrough, my main character was…
Last night, I played Soul Raiders with M and A. As I often do, I forgot to take photos of the game while we were playing it. My usual reaction is to just not write an essay about it. Then I looked at a couple of pictures that M had taken of my cat Shuba as he…