So firstly, one thing I've been working on is some drawing. Probably not super exciting to hear about...but it's been really fun for me, because I've been working on drawing characters from some of my story ideas. Some of these characters have been in my head for years, but I always sucked at drawing, so trying to make anything that looked good just frustrated me. Finally though, I decided to just bang it out and see what happens. And the results haven't been amazing, but I definitely feel like I'm getting better, so that's been really cool. It's kind of the same idea I had with this blog, if you want to do something, just do it. And if it sucks, that's okay, just keep doing it and eventually you'll get better. I don't think I'll ever be at the point where I can pursue being a professional artist, but it should help me when thinking up character designs and whatnot. (EDIT: oh yeah and WHY ARE BRAIDS SO HARD TO DRAW WTF)
Another thing I got up to this week was, somehow, I got inspired to go back and play Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. If you're not familiar, it's a high fantasy action RPG that could pretty accurately be described as like a single player World of Warcraft. Back when it first came out, I was really excited to play it, because I'm a big fan of fantasy, epic RPGs, and the art style looked really cool. When I started playing though, somehow I just wasn't 'getting' the combat. For some reason I just couldn't figure it out and kept dying during bigger encounters. I got so frustrated with it that I decided to just shelf it.
This week, though, I saw someone playing it on a stream on Twitch.tv and decided to give it another chance. This time, I seemed to have a better grasp on the combat, so I was doing much better in that respect. But, despite the awesome art style and fun combat, for some reason...it just fell flat for me. I think maybe I feel like the game is almost too deep. It's kind of hard to explain, but there's just like, a way to level up EVERYTHING. Like, there are so many different tech trees, and different dialogue options, different class, itemization, and crafting options,...and I'm sure that there are some people that would love that, but to me it feels just kind of...unfocused, you know?
I guess it didn't help that when playing, I got a hard-lock while it was saving, and lost about two hours of progress. Maybe if I make it a bit farther in the game I'll find my footing, so hopefully I'll be able to stick it out a bit longer. But I find that problem coming up in more and more games these days, where it seems like developers are trying to cram everything they can into their game, and it ends up the worse for it (depending on your perspective, of course).
One good example of this in my mind is the Assassin's Creed series. I'm one of the few people (maybe the only person?) that liked AC1 better than 2. For me, AC1 was fun because it was such a pure experience. You would sneak/climb around and try to kill your target without killing innocent people - following, y'know, the assassins' CREED. Yeah, there were collectibles, but they could be collected while doing stuff you were doing anyway - climbing around looking for a good path to your target. Then in 2 (and subsequent games) they added all this extra stuff like gear, town building/management, and...sailing? That one especially made me lose my monocle, what the heck is sneaky and assassin-y about sailing a goddamn tallship? I mean I'm sure they're still good games, it's just really bizarre to me the direction that series took.
Anyway, I think that's enough rambling for today. Hope you all have a good weekend and I'll try to be back tomorrow with a better post. I'll leave you with another one of my favourite chill songs.
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