Darcy Casselman

Dragon Age: Veilguard thoughts

I love a Dragon Age. I love Bioware-style narrative RPGs in general, to be honest. Dragon Age is a bit weird for me as I really don’t like dark fantasy. And, at some level, Dragon Age is trying to be all dark, with blights and demons and slavery and dead bodies strewn everywhere. But it’s it’s also strangely a goofy hang with friends.

I really like the goofy hang with friends part. To the point where I’ll forgive the grimdark. And seeing past the grimdark, I actually came to really like the worldbuilding. I’ve read a bunch of the spin-off novels and I bought the TTRPG (with no real intent of running a game, but I’m all about having RPGs sourcebooks for crap I like.

It’s been a minute since the last Dragon Age game, and Bioware has stumbled a bit since their heyday. I liked Dragon Age: Inquisition well enough. I was kind of looking forward to Veilguard, but put off getting it until I got the Steamdeck. And then it was on sale after Christmas. That gave me enough time to learn that the Internet wasn’t super into Veilguard.

The Internet, as usual, is dumb.

Is there anything very revolutionary here? No. Is it a perfectly serviceable Dragon Age? Yes.

Is the non-binary coming out story wedged into this thing a bit cringe? Yeah, sorry. But it feels sincere. Just wedged in there without a lot of thought to the in-world cultural context. Here’s a bit of criticism from a trans perspective that I will use to replace any criticism I might have. And move on.

It was fun to see parts of Thedas we haven’t seen before. I liked the deep-dive into Dragon Age cosmology we get. I liked my Rook’s northern accent (voiced by Bryony Corrigan). I liked the streamlined loot system and the narrative seemed well-paced. I liked that I got to make out with Scout Harding, although I didn’t feel like the romance aspects of the game were quite up to Dragon Age standards. I did like all my goofy friends, tho. Even the oddly charming necromancer.

Anyways, I just finished the game today, and I had a good time. It’s been years since I’ve gotten this deeply invested in a game.

It’s possible if I’d played Baldur’s Gate III, Veilguard might pale in comparison. That’s the impression I’m getting from the (non-shitty) reviews. But I haven’t played BG3, so I’m quite happy with Veilguard.

A Long-Delayed Podcast Update

A long time ago, I used to keep readers of my blog informed on what podcasts I was listening to. I’m still listening to podcasts. I never stopped!

The last time I did a proper podcast update was 2008 The last time I mentioned podcasts at all was when I bought my first Android phone in 2012.

But first, a player update!

I had to retire my venerable favourite Doggcatcher because it was getting crashy and wasn’t being updated. I’d been using that since 2012. Antennapod does the main thing I want, which is put the podcasts in chronological order, not sorted by series. Your basic river of news, but in audio form. The one thing I haven’t figured out how to do which Doggcatcher did, is delete the episode when I push the skip-to-next-episode button. So I end up with a bunch of undeleted podcasts taking up space if I’m not careful. Otherwise, thumbs up so far. And being open source is nice.

I don’t have a commute anymore, but I’ll put on podcasts when I’m doing the dishes or driving or working on the house or something.

New Year; New Bullets. 2025.

Well, 2025 is the year I turn 50. That feels like a big number.
I got myself a Steamdeck for Christmas. I mean, a combination of Ellen and my parents getting it for me, in what has become creating Christmas gift-giving accounting. But it’s mine now. I like it.
I got the LCD version because I couldn’t really justify an additional $200 for the OLED screen. If I’m missing out, I don’t know it. It’s great.
The house isn’t done yet. We got hung up on bureaucracy, mostly. But we waded through it and we’re out the other side, so things are happening again. That’s nice. I’m fairly confident we’ll actually be able to move in this year. Maybe I’ll post photos. Would you like to see photos?
I started the work to migrate this blog off WordPress and onto (unless I get even more frustrated) 11ty. It’s not as plug-and-play as I would like. But I do think the flexibility it gives me will pay dividends. I guess. I’m not convinced anyone is reading this.
I did turn off comments a long time ago. So it’s not like anyone can tell me otherwise. Hit me up on Mastodon!
Hot on the heals of the Steamdeck, I picked up Dragon Age: Veilguard. I may need a whole post for my thoughts on that. It does feel nice to be rummaging around seedy, blood-stained basements in Thedas again, tho.
I’m not really looking forward to 2025 for reasons you might be able to guess on your own, and probably aren’t looking to me to get into too deeply.
As of May, Ellen and I are living together. Unfortunately, we’re living together in the house her parents are renting that she’s allergic to. That’s not great. But I’m glad we’re together.
The little guy is delightful as ever. Although I did just have to deal with a half-hour tantrum about wanting to keep wearing a very wet diaper. (Yeah, he should be toilet trained by now, but we’ve been holding out till we’re in the new house which will have no carpets).
Doctor Who was mildly disappointing but generally in line with my expectations of Russel’s showrunning. So it’s fine. I like Ncuti as the Doctor. I wish other people wrote for him more. But that’s been true of all Russel’s Doctors.
Star Trek: Lower Decks was pretty much the best.
I had high expectation for The Acolyte and was mildly disappointed (not that I thought it was bad and I’m sad it was cancelled, but I was hoping for a bit more).
The Skeleton Crew is exceeding my expectations, tho. That thing is great.
I guess I mostly watch very old franchise television.
I’d like to find ways to spend more time with friends this year. I’m not going to call that a resolution because calling it that pretty much guarantees I won’t do it out of spite.

Christmas Mixtape 2024

Alternatively: YouTube Music Playlist

It’s that time again! Grab a cup of cocoa, relax and enjoy some festive music to keep you warm on a cold winter night. And strap in, chummer. Maybe we’ll even jack into puterspace between the sleighbells and carol sings. Those flashing lights on rackmounted servers are just as festive as those on snow-covered trees.

Cover image is Christmas Tech Tree by siulzz. Liner notes under the cut.

Playstation Played Out?

There’s been a shift. I can feel it. Things are changing. Nothing will ever be the same.

A very long time ago, I got a Playstation. Actually, my parents got it for me near the end of my university career when I was generally pretty miserable. I played some games. It was fun.

A few years later, I got a PS2. That died, but I got another one. The second one died in the middle of my Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas play-through.

(I vaguely recall finishing that, but I’m not sure how. I didn’t get another PS2, and the PS3 I got didn’t have backwards compatibility. I guess I can play it on my phone now…)

(Second aside, I kinda miss my old blog. I definitely miss friends reading along and chiming in on my nonsense. I turned off comments a long time ago, because ugh, but you can always hmu on mastodon…)

I held off a bit on the PS3 because it was stupid expensive at launch. I asked my parents to buy me one for Christmas when they stripped out PS2 support and dropped the price a bit. (I got them a Wii about the same time…).

I held out about a year before buying a PS4, eventually lured by the call of Dragon Age: Inquisition.

I haven’t bought a PS5 yet. I’ve been kind of assuming there would be an attractive mid-gen hardware refresh like the PS3. Or even a game I just needed to play like the PS4. Neither has really happened. The mid-gen hardware refreshes came out, and they introduced a “slim” model that actually raised the price. Then they just announced the PS5 Pro, which is like $1000 and doesn’t seem to be that much better.

I’ve never been that much of a self-declared “gamer” or anything, but getting a Playstation and playing games on it is something I’ve been doing for a rather long time. And when I switched over to Linux (something like 17 years ago), my whole thing was that it didn’t matter that I couldn’t play games on my computer. I’ve got a Playstation for that.

And Nintendo consoles too, but they’re kind of a different thing in my head.

The interesting thing is now I can actually play games on my computer. I just did a hardware upgrade on my desktop that has the side benefit that games play really nice now.

Valve, as much as I’m not super-keen on their DRM, has been putting a lot of resources into making sure I can play games on my computer. And I’ve got a few hundred games in my Steam library already, without even really trying.

So the conclusion I’m rapidly coming to is maybe I’m not a Playstation guy anymore. (And yeah, it feels like an identity thing). And maybe I’ll just put the money I’d planned to blow on a PS5 towards a Steamdeck instead.

Featured image is 64/365 PlayStation generation by Ninac26