1. First thing’s first – I’m in a much better mood today. We had our house inspection yesterday, and it went far better than we could’ve hoped – the first house’s inspection was an utter disaster, and this inspection was really almost perfect – and basically now we’re just waiting for the bank to hold up their end, and for there to be no more hiccups between now and the closing date. We even got to meet our neighbors, and they’re super-sweet and awesome, which is a huge relief. And so if all goes well – I’m not naive enough to say that nothing could go wrong, but I’m hopeful – we should be moved in to the new digs in the first weekend of August.
1a. It occurs to me, suddenly, that my gamertag for the last howevermany years is going to be out of date. How can I continue to call myself JervoNYC when I’m living in New Jersey? It also occurs to me that I’m gonna be 40 in December and I think it’s safe to say that I no longer give a shit about other people think.
2. The Steam Summer Sale is happening and here’s how out of it I am – I had no idea it had even started until late last night. I’m not particularly going out of my way to check out the deals. Sure I’ve got a bunch of games on my wishlist that are dirt-cheap right now, but I’m so thoroughly consumed by Witcher 3 at the moment that it seems silly to spend money on games that I’m not going to get to for months (not to mention that my PC backlog right now is utterly, ludicrously huge anyway – I’m so, so sorry, Invisible Inc.). If Pillars of Eternity comes down by more than 40%, I might pull the trigger; otherwise I’m going to sit it out.
3. Re: Witcher 3: I’ve played enough of it by now (currently level 22, most likely on my way out of Skellige) to know that I’m never going to 100% it, and I’ve accepted that reality, and it’s totally OK. In the early going, I was doing nearly every sidequest and monster contract and treasure hunt I could get my hands on, and now I’m at the point where I’m at least 7-8 levels above the recommended level for the main story quests, which is maybe not the best way to experience that content, especially as the rewards I get for those quests aren’t necessarily all that hot anymore. All the questing I’ve done so far has been enjoyable, in and of itself; it’s just that the rewards are starting to become less impressive, and that’s solely because I’ve done possibly too much questing. (An additional bummer is that I’ve got a whole bunch of crafting recipes for enhanced items, which are sadly useless since I never found the recipes for the original, vanilla items.)
There are some minor nit-picky tweaks that I’d like to see implemented in future patches, especially when it comes to crafting (which I’m finding myself spending a lot of time doing), such as: if there’s a recipe for something where you currently lack an ingredient (i.e., a silver ingot as part of a sword), but you do have the materials to craft that missing ingredient, you should be able to directly jump to the missing ingredient and craft it and then jump right back to the original recipe. I’m also holding on to, like, a bazillion flowers and monster parts that I’m not sure I’m ever going to need, especially since any alchemy item I craft is auto-replenished after a meditation period; it’d be nice to have the game tell me as much, or at least let me sort my items by relevance.
And while we’re at it, re-loading saves TAKES FOR-FUCKING-EVER.
Still – these are very minor concerns. The overall experience is nothing short of breathtaking. This is the most into a game I’ve felt since probably Red Dead Redemption, and I’m doing my best to savor each and every moment I can with it. You know that feeling where you’re reading a book and you love it so much that you literally can’t put it down, not even when you’re half-asleep? That’s how I’m feeling with Witcher 3. It’s my GOTY and I’ll be very, very impressed if anything can knock it from the top spot before the year’s end.
4. I still kinda can’t believe that E3 is next week. My day job is going to be nuts, and so I’m pessimistic that I’ll be able to follow any of the main press conferences beyond a cursory nod every once in a while. I’m sure my wishlist is the same as yours (i.e., Fallout 4 gameplay footage), and I’m also sure that my dream wishlist (i.e., any news whatsoever about Red Dead 2) will most likely remain a dream. But I’m also becoming more and more wary of E3 and similar events, where the hype is so overwhelming that, at the end of the day, it’s hard to know what I’m actually cheering for, or even why I’m cheering in the first place. Most of what we’re gonna see next week is going to get delayed until 2016 anyway, and a great deal of it will have changed radically between next week’s reveals and the final release code. So I’m going to be looking at next week’s news with a highly cynical eye.
That’s it and that’s all.
Shouts From The Couch 