When You Play the Game of Thrones...

... You Win or You Snooze, apparently.  

I’ve been watching the first season of Game of Thrones lately, and my god! Is it boring!

I can’t believe it – I loved these books, and I was sucked in like you would not believe.  How did such a masterpiece fizzle into this show where it’s all talking and naked people? Even some of the big moments – Bran getting pushed out the window, for example – come across as slow and non-essential due to their filming. Instead, the whole plot revolves around Sean Bean as Ned Stark, and he (frankly) does little but make stupid decisions and talk to people about stuff I can’t yet piece together. 

So much goes unsaid in this show! I’ve been watching it with my husband, Bishop, and he has a hard time following it; I am constantly explaining what Ned is thinking because the show just hints at everything.  I spend a fair amount of time confused myself, not only because I read the books in 2011 but also because the show just isn’t written very clearly.  There’s too much subtext and not enough actual text. 

And sure, sexual tension in a show can be super interesting.  It’s just not present in GoT – people are naked almost as an afterthought, just walking around with boobs flapping about.  When there is actual sex, there’s no build-up to it; someone just walks into a room, or the scene changes, and there are people getting it on.  Maybe that’s fascinating to the rest of America, but I much prefer watching the chase and enjoying the act myself, instead of the other way around. 

(Also, as a mini-side-rant, can we please have a warning when a dick is about to make an appearance?? I’m a straight girl, so I am generally okay with them, but that doesn’t mean I want to suddenly encounter one dangling when I thought I was just watching TV.  I’ve taken a very unscientific poll and no guy I can find wants to see that either, so I’m just saying: get rid of the pickle shots. /endrant)

So many people love this show, RAVE about this show! I must be missing something.  I knew going in that it was a medieval fantasy tale with a political mind, but I never guessed I would be so bored. 

Right now, I’m about four episodes in, and I’m having trouble convincing myself to keep going. Some reviews online suggest that it picks up around episodes 5-7, depending on which review you read, so I remain hopeful.  But if this doesn’t pick up by the end of the first season, I guarantee there won’t be a GoT fan writing this blog. 

The Beauty of the Binge

I spent my weekend engaged in what others might classify as a frivolous pursuit: video games.  

Normally, saying I played some video games last weekend wouldn’t be cause for judgment or concern from anyone; it is, after all, one of my major hobbies. 

However, this weekend I spent a near-embarrassing number of hours playing Dragon Age: Inquisition; in a 72 hour period, I spent close to 30 hours parked in front of my computer screen, killing demons and fighting armies. 

And it. Was. GLORIOUS. 

I have never had a binge like this, not even when I re-played Mass Effect last summer while I was off school and had whole weeks without any obligations.  At one point, Monday night at about 7:30, I realized that I’d had the game running since 9:00 that morning, with only a short break to grab lunch dragging me away.  Usually I go to bed around 9:00pm too, since I work out at 5:00am before I go to work; last night, I went to bed at midnight, wired with adrenaline from the boss fight I’d just finished before I could force myself to shut the game down.  (I didn’t make it out of bed for the workout either, for the record – too busy with Dragon Age dreams.)

Inquisition shines as the most engrossing game I’ve ever played. It took me a while to get into it, for sure (see previous post), but now I can’t turn it off.  I lulled myself to sleep replaying boss fight highlights and romance cut scenes in my head, and I realized mid-lecture this morning that I had made a poor decision about who to kill in a big moment the previous evening. The average person, when faced with that realization, might say, “the hell with it, I’m leaving the decision as is.”  Not me.  Even when it means I have to reload about 1-2 hours from where I left off and replay it all, I’m doing it.  I won’t mind re-playing it again – let’s not lie, it’s a 50-60 hour game and I’m probably going to re-start it the moment it’s over anyway. 

It’s such a rich game! The world is wide open for me to explore and do what I want – not Skyrim-wide, don’t let me mislead you – but each area has the potential for hours and hours of play time.  I may even go back before the last mission, a setback of 5-8 hours depending on where I reload, and level up some more, build some more skills and influence before I head into Adamant Fortress.  And the characters, I just love them.  I’m over my lack of good romance options, especially now that I’ve started one and developed a real-life crush on an NPC, and I’ve learned to love those I wasn’t wild about in the first place.  The personal missions are involved both for the characters and for the overall plot, which provides so much depth, and I got to know some of them enough to figure out their hobbies and dark histories.  

Frankly, I’ll probably turn my computer on and get started the moment I get home, letting myself unwind as I fight monsters and mentally let myself off the hook for my brief exercise backslide.

The most beautiful thing? Inquisition still has about 15 hours to go.  And I cannot wait to hit the weekend again.  

Choices, Indeed

I am loving Dragon Age: Inquisition.  The story, the enemies, the characters, all of it.  I restarted a few times to get my Herald looking perfect, and now the plot is in full-swing.  I can do what I want, travel where I want, run down as many or as few fetch-quests as I want... the world is so wide and welcoming, there are so many people to get to know, and so many convoluted plot lines to tease apart! I anticipate something like 50-60 hours of gameplay, I really do.

But so far, I am a little disappointed in my romance options.

In Dragon Age: Origins, I can't say the romance options were overly plentiful.  If you played as a human female Hero of Ferelden, which I did, you could get involved with Alistair, Zevran, or Leliana; that was it.  I didn't want to play as a lesbian (I identify as straight in real life, so I tend to play my characters straight as well), and Zevran really rubbed me the wrong way (no pun intended, haha).  That left Alistair, who became my default romance option.  I didn't have a problem with this, because let's face it, Alistair is SEXY.

He might spend most of the game with a confused look on his face...

... but he's still delicious.  That adorable face + his accent = my heart swoons, every time.

I've written about him before, so I won't bore you.  But suffice it to say that even with basically just the one option in my play-through of Origins, I never once felt cheated.

But now that I've booted up Inquisition (I didn't get more than 5 hours into DA2, so I'm ignoring it)... I'm a little disappointed.  I know there are lots of options, LOTS in fact, but right now... they all kind of suck.

There's Solas, the snooty bald-headed elf mage:

He's interesting, to be sure, and yet I can't muster up a lot of empathy for him yet.  He seems too cold, too removed from my Herald to be a good romance option.

And Varric, the dwarf who never buttons up his shirt, leaving his chest hair spilling out, is the funniest character thus far, and he's not an option according to Bishop, who loved DA2 and said that no one could ever romance Varric.  Not that I would -- the chest hair is a little too much for me.

So my starter companions were out.  How about some of the ones I was picking up as I played?

Oh, you mean Iron Bull, the gigantic qunari with the horns?

Not only would he crush my Herald like a bug (she comes up to about his ever-present nipples), he has horns.  Yes, I'm judging, but come on?? Alistair to him??? No thank you.

If I was still looking for a connection to Alistair, I could go with my Grey Warden companion, Blackwall.  There's just a minor issue with Blackwall: He's old.

I mean, yeah, fine, he's not old like Wynne from Origins, who was in her 80s, but he's certainly not young either.  I dress my heroes down; they're young and fairly attractive, nothing insane but certainly pretty, probably around 30ish.  Blackwall comes across as at least 45-50, which for a Grey Warden is *really* old.  So there's that strike against him.  On top of that, Blackwall is really a downer of a character.  He hasn't cracked a smile or told a joke all game, and I recruited him fairly early.  Every time I go talk to him, he's got some new doom and gloom issue to discuss with the Herald.  Oddly enough, the option to hit on him pops up instantly, so I guess he's who the game wants me to hook up with? So not interested...

Or there's Cullen, my templar advisor:

He seems polite enough, fine, but the fur coat coupled with his arrogant attitude? Look at that smug face!  Again, no thank you.  I find nothing relate-able about Cullen, other than he and Alistair, who appears in a brief mage-related cameo, now have the same haircut. That is not enough of a reason to start a romance with the guy, come on.

If those aren't enough 'options,' there's Dorian, or as I fondly call him, Snidely Whiplash:

I just can't.  I can not.  I laugh every time I see his face! and on top of that, he's unbelievably cocky with really no reason to be.  I leveled him up so he's a pretty bad-ass electricity mage, but before that? He sucked the big one, and then was all bragging like "hey, don't kill anyone without me!" Every time, my Herald is rolling her eyes, going "We aren't killing anyone WITH you either there, Snidely!"  (Update: turns out, Dorian is gay.  You can flirt with him if you're a girl, and he'll flirt right back, but he's definitely gay.  As in, he and Iron Bull are together.  Horny, indeed.)

I'm not sure what I'm going to do.  I thought about trying the lesbian route and flirting with Sera, the rogue elf, but she's so DUMB that I can't make myself do it.  I could learn to deal with the boobs, it's just a game after all, but if I don't want to go talk to her character, nothing's going to happen.

I am now toying with the idea of just flirting with every single character that gives me an option, guy or girl, gay or straight.  Maybe some of these options will get better, or maybe someone will show up who hasn't yet! I'm not giving up hope that my perfect Inquisition love is out there still, waiting for me.