Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Greg's Dragon Age: The Veilguard Journal - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

- Start - Housekeeping - Greg Miller’s Dragon Age Journal (SPOILERS) - Ads Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up everybody? Welcome to the kind of funny games cast for Friday, November 1st, 2024. I'm one of and your only host, Greg Miller. Hello, how are you? I hope you're having a lovely Friday, November 1st, but if I was guessing, it's probably some day in the future for you. Of course, kind of funny games cast is where we come together each and every weekday to talk about the biggest topics in video games, whether they be. previews, reviews, spoiler casts, are just the news we get into it each and every day on Twitch.tv.tv.com slash kind of funny games, YouTube.com slash kind of funny games and under the Kind of Funny Gamescast, podcast banner, wherever you get your podcasts. If you like all the work we do

here as an 11 person, small business, we of course want you to pick up a kind of funny membership over at YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny games or Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny. Of course, with the membership, each and every episode would be ad-free. You'd get the ability to watch our afternoon podcast live as you record them. And of course, course. You get your daily dose of me, Greg Miller. In a one-man show, we call Gregway. No, this isn't a Gregway.

But if you like what I do here, probably over the next hour-ish, you might like it, Gregway. And you should pick up that kind of funny member. We usually get about 20 minutes with me in the car while I answer your questions or get mad at people almost getting hit on the highway. Why wouldn't that man merge the other? You know what? We won't get back into it.

Fucking Andy, you know? I wish it was Andy this time. Of course. We aren't 11-person small business. It's all about live talk shows. If you've already missed some of it, there's a lot going on. First and foremost, of course, it's Extra Life weekend. You know we love Extra Life around here.

A great charity that encourages you to go out and raise money for your local children's miracle network hospital so that the kids and parents who end up going to those hospitals don't have to pay for a thing. You can go to Kindof Funny.com slash Extra Life right now. Join Team Kind of Funny. And, of course, you could then raise money for your local hospital while also supporting our team. We're always happy to get this out in front of people.

It's just about playing video games and raising money. online. Of course, if you're watching live right now, you've already gotten one kind of funny games daily where Tim and Devante ran you through the incredible numbers for Dragon Age on Steam. After this, me and Andy are going to play some more Dragon Age because Greg and Andy are taking you on a magical quest with Nick the dwarf. We're heading into the world of Dragon Age the Vail Guard to satisfy our thirst for gold, power, and maybe even a romancer. 2. The adventure comes in part thanks to our friends at Nvidia G-Force. Our gameplay will be 100% RtX

on, which means beautiful ray-trace graphics over double the frame rate performance with Nvidia DLSS3 while turning all settings up to Ultra and the Nvidia reflex to reduce PC latency allowing actions to be quicker and more responsive while gaming. This is the ultimate way to experience Dragon Age and we'll hope to see you there. Of course, if you're kind of funny member, you can already get a Gregway from me right now about single player DLC and Of course, you exclusively can get MCU in review, Agatha, this afternoon as we return to where it all started.

It'll be up later on YouTube and podcast services. Thank you to our Patreon producers, Delaney Twining, and Carl Jacobs. Today we're brought to you by New World of Turnham and Phasmophobia. But let's begin this show with topic of the show. Tots, dots, dots, dots, dots, dots, dots, dots, dots, dots, dots, dots. Okay. You know it. I know it.

This probably isn't a big reveal for you since there's a headline on this episode. But. What you're getting here is basically a one man, Dragon Age, the Veil Guard, spoiler cast. I use that loosely. We will be doing a spoiler cast next week. Myself, Andy, Snowbike, Mike, sitting down talking about, well, who died in your game? Who'd you save? Who'd you save?

Who'd you do hear? What was that choice? What I'm here to really talk about, of course, is kindof funny.com slash Greg's Journal. You've probably heard me talk about Dragon Age at some point if you're in this episode. Maybe you haven't. But the idea here, ladies gentlemen and NBs, is that while I was playing Dragon Age, I journaled the entire experience. As I've been quick to point out, it is not review notes.

This wasn't me writing down stats and battle percentages or this, that, the other modes, or things I wanted to call it in review. It was mainly me trying to make up for sins of the past. When I gave you my metaphor, re-vantasia thoughts, I brought out my judgment. journal, show you I journal for persona five, and then said that I wish I had journaled for Starfield when I started playing that as a way to, what I've been describing it as, remember my journey by having it on the shelf so that I could look back at any point and remember not only the big things that always stand out to me when I play a big game or a big RPG, but more of the little

decisions and what I was thinking in the moment and what it was like. So it's not so much a review thing, but it's also not so much I'm spoiler casting where I'm going through and talking about like, well this or that and then I went back and replayed this this is meant to be my rook's journey and my thought when I was writing it would be that of course you would get it in your hands and then either while you played have it open and then you could check where I was at the end of my first night or your first night

or what I did in this decision of course there are the chances of spoilers if you do that or when you're done you went back and looked through my thing to see what I did or if you're just like I'm never going to play Dragon Age the Vail Guard what is this game all about there'd be the information here to show show you. And so as the game progressed and we

built towards review, it became a few different things of me wrestling with what Dragon Age is versus what it isn't, what we thought it was. We knew who they were and we let him off the hook. That's a Dennis Green thing Andy would get it if he was here. But it also evolved into just being a journal of what this game is

and where I wanted to go and who my rook was and very much learning from what I did in Starfield and what my journey was there. I think as I said about Starfield, the first, our I ever really role played in, right? Where I really was feeling like, oh, this is this character. And I would do this if I was that character rather than me being like, all right, well,

she's named Kara, she's Supergirl. She'll do the good thing. And we'll just keep going off that way. And then, of course, the way Dragon Age handles its character creator and what happens there was a completely different thing, which leads it to being a different thing and what kind of game it is. So it's all there. And we're going to run through it today, which of course means full spoilers, which is why I am telling you, of course, I doubt you're watching this on day and date.

November 1st is one day removed from Dragon Age launch So I do see people in the live chat Thank you so much for hanging out But I understand if you're seeing this in November, December Way later in the year or far out What I always ask when you watch something like this Is I love knowing our content got somewhere You ever think about how we shoot these voyagers

Out into space They make a gold record, they shoot this fucking thing out there It ping pongs back a signal Eventually it leaves our galaxy We never know what happens to it I love the fact that I shoot out these popes podcasts, and I don't know what happens to him. So when you're listening to this after the fact,

not later today on November 1st, that's not fun. I want you to send me a tweet, a blue sky, a thread. I'm everywhere now. A comment on my Instagram post. I want you to say, that's a pretty pumpkin pie. That's what you send back to me. No context to anything else.

That way if anybody else sees it, they think you're crazy. That's a pretty pumpkin pie, Barrett. It's November. Thanksgiving, Barrett. You know how it. it is. I'm gonna get a pumpkin pie. Anyway, send me that and then I'll know that it got to you later. So yeah, I'm gonna take a sip of water and we're gonna get into this journal. Of course, like I said, you can go to kindoflunny.com slash gregg's journal right now. Get your PDF of my book that I'm about

to read through. You can keep up. You can watch it later, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's free. You know what I mean? So of course, I mean, you know, you can't say you like the color blue. Offline all this. I'm just trying to shut you premiere. Don't try to get me to do other things. You can't, you know, say the sky's blue on Twitter or whatever without getting somebody mad. I was like, I said I'm thinking, it's free. It's a little, oh, how nice of you to give it. I'm like, moron, we put a bunch of shit up for fucking paid money

over on it. That's why I had to call out that it was free. I hate you. So let's go, all right? I'm going to start from the first page you would have, where I wrote you a note. It says, hey, thanks for being interested in my thoughts to want to download this Dragon Age journal. These are not review notes, but rather the chronicle of my

Rook's story. All of our decisions, twists and turns, married with my thoughts on the tail. I hope they keep you company on your Dragon Age the Vailgar journey, a page by page personal spoiler cast. Quote, whatever it takes, Greg Miller, October 30th, 20, 20th. Now here's the thing. It very much is. And then this game co-ops it at the end.

And I wish I could fault it for it, but I fucking loved it. I fucking loved it when they did it. We'll get there. Maybe you don't even get it. Again, this is one of those spoiler cast things. I can't wait to talk to Andy and Mike about it because I do not know how the other half lives. I do not know how the permutations of this game would end, right? Because Mike's like, who died in your game?

And I mentioned, that's not who died in my game. So I know that happens, of course, but whatever. Then we jump right in. You see October 15th, 2024 is when I began my journey. You know, the big thing about Dragon Age, the Veil Guard, is that, and again, what my whole crux of my review was, right? The Wartable says, what's the link? It's kind of funny.com slash Greg's Journal.

go get it, and you can follow along right now with me. The whole hook here is that you really are, you are, but I don't think you are creating your own character, right? You are creating your rook. Everybody calls your character Rook. You can get in there, you can do whatever you want, but you are making a character that has a name so they can call you Rook and everybody's voice and yada, yada, yada. I don't mind that, again, as we play Therlin when I talked about in the review, it really

deviated from what I thought I was going to be doing here in terms of an RPG and what Dragon Age had been before, as I knew. know it as an outsider. This is my first Dragon Age to play to completion. But, you know, again, there's going to be a lot of comparisons to Starfield because you know how much I love that game, and it's the last time I did a big spoiler cast, and it changed how I felt about role-playing in a game, right? So when I jumped into the character creator here, especially after the preview, I knew I was going to go rogue because I'm usually rogue. I just love being a rogue. I think it's a great class. Barrett, this is one of the screenshots I do have, if you want

to toss up O-O-1 here, and I will go through a couple of them. I went in for a long time on appearance. Jen sat next to me. I dug and dug and dug in terms of what I wanted my rook to look like. And for a while I was going with, uh, was something that I feel I default to a lot. And I think I might have one of the default characters, uh, but a redhead here. Maybe I was going to do something like Chapel Rhone. Maybe I was in. I'm playing with freckles. I'm not. I didn't like it. Then I started trying to craft around a hairstyle. I couldn't figure it out. Then I ended up with this face, which is the face I used in my preview, which I was like I liked and I didn't, and I felt a character, I was drawn to that character, right?

Then it was, this is my favorite hairstyle I was able to find in the game as I went in, and I was immediately not off my game, but I'm trying to approach character creation in games like this, whether it be this or Diablo or, you know, whatever, in a different way of trying to come in without a preconceived notion. I want the game to speak to me in terms of what I'm doing and who am I making because I had so much fun in Starfield when I kind of took my hand off the wheel and I'm not not trying to make Greg Miller. I'm not trying to make Taylor Swift. I'm not trying, I'm just going in and letting the game kind of pick where I want to be. I knew I wanted to be rogue because I like being

rogue. This is the face I ended up with, which was very similar to the face I had last time around. Then I ended up being a crow, which I do believe, yeah, is number two there for my screenshots, Barrett. Again, if you're, if you've never played the game, you're going through and what I love about it is picking your appearance, sure, your class, your faction, I don't have the lineage you see it at the top there. It's going to be, you're going to be human. You're going to be elf. Are you going to be dwarf? Etcetera, et cetera, et cetera. Here it was, you know, your faction. I pick crows because they're the assassins, which I super fucking love, right? That's just cool in general. I love

being an assassin, having that kind of thing out there. But I kind of felt like this had a Batman vibe to it. It felt like, okay, cool, this is going on. I'm seeing a lot of garbage trucks and I saw Barrett run out of the room. I'm going to hold one second. We'll hold. We'll hold. We'll see what's happening. Chances are the Internet's crashing. Chances are something's happening. Barrett's run back in the room. still recording, but our station one computer just decided to restart itself.

So we're down on live, but we're still recording. Okay. I'll keep going and show you what do you want me to? Do you want me to kill time here, or do you want me to keep going with the show as is? I'm entertaining on my own. Yeah, you're entertaining on your own. You need three minutes? Yeah, I got three fucking minutes.

I got three fucking minutes. I'm going to do my three minutes stand-up routine, all right? You ever see a mop? Not how I'd fly. If I was, if I was, I see why witches use brooms. Now, I, why did he get all, why do you get all crazy about, I wanted a pretty pumpkin pie? I always say that's a pretty pumpkin pie. You know what I mean?

Why does everybody got to jump over there? Be dirty about it, I guess. I don't know. What happened is just, it's a weird thing to say. You don't call pumpkin pie. It's pretty. And while we're off air, we'll jump into this, all right? We'll jump into this.

When we're getting ready to go live, we're sitting here, the Twitch people can see the standby screen. They see me sitting down. somebody said Greg needs a haircut. Greg is well aware he needs a haircut. Greg also needs a car wash. Greg doesn't have free time. When Greg is in the car, he's driving to work and he has something to do.

When he's in the car after work, he's driving home, and he's got to get home to take care of Ben and Jen. That's what he's got to do. Then when they're all asleep, it's time to play games. Then it's time to go to bed. Then it's time to wake up and do it all over again. So no. Yeah, I know I need a haircut, everybody.

It's bad. I'm hoping now that, I'm hoping, this weekend, I beat the two and a half, two and a fourth, Life is Strange episodes I need with no problem. And then I think I can get a haircut because Jen cuts my hair. But of course, if I get the haircut while I'm at home, I'm not playing a game. I don't want to play the game. You know what I mean?

Especially at night because it would be my free time. You know, you can't cut your hair and watch your toddler. He's going to be into something. You know, Ben's always into something. I'll tell you what. I'm getting bad at negotiating. He's way better at negotiating than me. Where, you know, last night we got home with the Halloween candy.

And it was, he had had a lot of Halloween candy on the street. Okay. I'm just letting the kid go. It's Halloween. What am I going to do? And then we get home. Oh, sorry, back? We're back.

Okay, we get back. And then he was like, I want to eat this blow pop or whatever. And a tootsie pop, tit's pop. I was like, no, you've had it too much. Everybody, we're back. Refresh. We're back. We'll finish this Halloween story and we'll pick up.

But we know, we had a computer restart for no reason in the other room so that screwed everything up we'll get it and then eventually i was like all right fine you can have one lick and he's like i want two and he took two and he just did it and then this morning he grabbed the sucker again i was like you can have one lick before breakfast and he's like i'm gonna have as many goddamn licks as i want i'm like i can't stop this kid because he's just it's just any conversation with ben is one second away from him screaming and crying it's kind of like a conversation with me all right back to the book as i said we stopped off there. I believe we'd like I'll just pick up from the second screenshot we had there,

which is my rook inner crow fashion sense here, right? Again, when I started off, I knew I wanted to be the rogue class. I thought that I would still be a crow. I do think there's a lot of interesting things here when you go through factions. I will tell you that when I roll again, I think I'll be a necromancer. But even then, I don't know, because being a warrior's cool, I'm really enjoying throwing the shield, I mean, you know, on the stream we're doing when we're picking up right after this. And so then I was like, well, do I want, would I make a Wonder Woman? Would I make a Diana of Themiscarra and then her throw the shield? But then she doesn't want to be a neck roommate. It doesn't matter. Cros is what I went with. Again, as I was saying, I love Assassins,

period. I love rogues, usually for how quick their gameplay is. And then the Crows kind of gave a Batman vibe. They give the Assassin's Order vibe, of course, because they are, but then their color scheme gives a real Batman vibe to it. I was like, that's fucking dope. That's fucking clutch. I want to stick with that, right? And then, you know, the backstory that comes next for her here is a conversation about okay you know she defied the order right so if you're unfamiliar with the dragon age and you don't know how it works once you pick this you then of you pick your faction you then pick a you get assigned a backstory right that comes with it the backstory here is assassin extraordinaire when the invaders of treviso took people captive rook was

determined to free the prisoners at any cost i won't read the whole thing to you but the idea here is that you go and save these people, even though the crows don't want you to, and it blows the whole crow thing, and they are like, you know, you're on the bench for this, which then ends with you, getting a full mission to go out here

and help out the one and the only, why I was going to say, well, the veil guard. They're not the veil guard when they do, but of course, Verick, Harding. You know what I'm saying over there, right? So one of the things here

that I think's interesting is you see down there is when you pick your faction, it comes with its own surname, right? So the Riva is what my rook is associated with their name. Barrett, if you want to jump to 04 when you get the chance, the idea there of getting a last name immediately,

and I knew this from preview event, but immediately I was like, oh, this is really interesting for what do I name this character? You still pick a first name, but what am I going to do, right? And so what I did is something I honestly never do, and I use the randomizer button, where already I was like, they're telling me a story. I think it's going to be weird for me to come in and just say,

her name is Jean-Viev, which I usually name or make characters look. my wife, I usually make it Taylor Swift, I usually make a dine of themascara, right? Putting any of those names, but with D. Riva at the end, I was like, that's not going to vibe for me narrative, especially head cannon narrative, right?

So just went, doosh, a bunch of different times. And eventually, Pari came up here, and I was like, you know what? She looks like a pari. I'll take that. And again, putting it on here is all set dressing. Everybody calls a rook. I call a rook. I never at any point, I'm like, she's pari, which, again,

is interesting and works, I think, because again, head canon for me of what this journey would be and where we're going to go, is leaving your old wife behind. She has the backings of a crow, but she's part of the veil guard, right? The crows kicked, didn't kick her out, but put her on the bench, she didn't back her on anything. So for me, she's kind

of like, listen, fuck y'all. Kind of like Batman saying, y'all, fuck this League of Assassin's business. I'm going to go off here and be Batman and do the Gotham thing that way. You can give me one over to 05, Barrett, if that's possible. And I'm trying to keep my eye on you, Barry. So if I, if I ever call for you and you're not there.

Please don't feel like you've got to run back in the room. Take your time getting over here. This is just a fun conversation with my best friends over there. And so you see here where this is pretty much the out. I run, as we go through screenshots, you'll see more. Eventually I put black eye shadow on her to really drive home the Batmanness of wanting her to look like an assassin and a Batman person. But you see, this is basically the kind of suit I'm running with.

I change a hool times and go on and do all this different stuff. But this is what it is there. We'll get back to the notebook here, right? So, one of the things I do is I start doodling in this book a bit, because of course, Dragon Age is hot. This is some hot fucking shit out here. This is a great game, all right? But it's a lot of listening and a lot of talking, which I appreciate. So you see my little soulless drawing there?

I used to be a cartoonist. I don't know if you know this. I did two semesters doing comic strips for the man eater at the great university. Were you ever published? I mean, in the newspaper, yeah. Oh, nice. I mean, for the school paper I drew. Did you have like a regular series?

Yeah. called The Adventures of Gary and Quinn. Gary Pinkel was the football coach. Quinn Snyder was the basketball coach. It was very hot for what it was. People liked it. And then I drew throughout junior high and, well, I drew throughout all of grade school.

And then high schools were it really started to waver a bit. And I became more writing focused. Anyways, I digress. So I tried to doodle in here because I was like, well, I'm doing a journal and I don't want it just to be fucking notes all the time of what's going on in the game. And I was like, what if I do it? I don't feel like I doodle enough in this game.

Usually it's when I fuck up and I left a page blank. by accident. But we'll go see, you'll see some doodles as we go. Anyways, though, so you see a Pari Deriva there, right? The disgraced of a TV and Crow. And then I like, there's, you know, I start jotting down who's in my thing and what's going on. My main thing is I never want to forget names. And when you start jumping into a game, right, I feel like it gets real hard for me

personally to keep track of names, which is why you'll see random-ass names jotted down, even though I don't think I was ever going to forget Verac Harding or Nev, but I put him in there. However, I did like this quote from Solis, right, that you saw yesterday in Andy and I stream. People are always dying. It's what they do. Again, I am not a Dragon Age person. I know Dragon Age through osmosis.

I obviously was working at IGN when they were coming out and people were reviewing them and people were obsessed with them. So like I knew Solis there and I think it's such a cool vibe to see him go to being the villain here as this kicks off. And then to see him describe people that way I thought was a really interesting way of like, yeah, okay. I'm getting what you're all about as you get going, right? Then I have just stuff, yeah, we got loose God, Solis is imprisoned, right? Elginon and Gillian. It's one of those, they say him in the game,

and they make it look so easy. And then I try to say him, I can't do it, right? But then you move on the next page, right? I have my note of Ballara entering in here, right? And then this is one I favorite one. October 15th, 10.09 p.m. I text Andy, such a gorgeous game. I have been around this industry a long time.

I have seen people just want to fucking murder a game plenty of times. They're mad about whatever reason. Maybe it's, I mean, this is a hypothetical, it's a superhero game,

and then for some reason in the sequel, they changed the characters and entire look for no reason whatsoever, and it gets you really mad. You know what I mean? I've seen people get mad about dumb stuff. Of all the hills to die on,

on your hater raid campaign for Dragon Age George, the people are like, oh, this game's ugly. Are you fucking looking at the same video game? Like, you don't like the art style, that's one thing, I guess. This game's utterly gorgeous,

and the lighting is amazing, And I like when we start getting into the necromancer area and the necropolis, holy shit, I just want to live there, which I eventually did by turning my lighthouse into it. I digress. I do have a note here, of course, lip sync bad on PS5 everywhere. I haven't played enough or paid enough attention to the PC one we did yesterday to see if that is something here. But it was one of those things that like, I was watching those. And throughout the entire game, like, hmm, lip sinks don't look good here, right? Oh, Neves time slows clutch. This is, you can see the seeds being planted. I think. think for what I talk about in the review of like, man, I don't remember ever using my companion's powers as much as I did here and having as much fun with it, I guess, if that makes sense. I think a lot of times when I'm talking about, you know, a metaphor slash persona, right?

It's like, oh, well, I need this character's fire because the enemy's weak to it. I need this that. It's not like I'm looking forward to it or I'm getting to compose it the keyboard with it of like, what do I want to use in this situation? This time getting in the bag of the duffy, right? Of like, oh, well, Nev can slow time. Well, that's great if I'm powered up over here. Or I want to use my ultimate and use this. I just got this new ultimate that's like this giant Gatling gun or whatever. What if I do that? And bap, blah, blah, blah, blah. I loved that. And I thought that was a great way. And that's, again, the start of it all here. Right. I want to give you some of the longer ones here, right? So this is 10, October 15th,

204 at 11.06 p.m. Save says I've played two hours. Just finished what I demoed at EA. Stopping here to be in, to be fresh in the AM. That means morning. I want to keep playing. It's a game I'm excited to get 25 hours into. Need more companions. Might increase the difficulty in the morning. Combat feels great, but it's too easy on normal difficulty. Need a better outfit.

Rocking the bloody rogue gear with the Dragon Age 1 art on it. I don't have a screenshot of this. This is one of the ones I think that gets packed in with the Ultimate Edition or whatever, but it's similar to stuff you saw Rook in earlier, but it's got that giant blood dragon on it from Dragon Age, which sounds cool, but I thought again, for a game where I'm talking about progression and my outfit telling a story

and my character, my companion's outfits, wasn't viving with jumping into something that didn't make sense, but it was the one that looked the closest to Batman, so I did it, whatever. I don't vibe with Balaras' perky personality. I wonder off the squad. Flurited with Nev, my sister in Deep V casual wear.

If you haven't seen the Instagram posts I put up that are just my art, There's 20 photos up I put on Instagram. It shows Neves casual outfit. And like my Rook's casual outfit when you're back of the lighthouse also has a nice deep V there. Neves is fucking deep. All right. This woman hates buttons and loves letting her chest out.

And so she's down with that. And I had known Nev a bit from the preview event. And so I was like, okay, I think I'm going to like her. And I was shocked. You'll find out that I didn't like her by the end. But we'll get to that later. move on to October 16th, 2024.

This is 9-11. No joke there, okay? 9-11 a.m. This was a big day because this is the day I took off of coming into the office so I could just play at home for as long as I wanted,

which I think so many people think is the job and it never is, so it's such a treat to be able to sit there and play for eight hours until your eyes hurt. Been playing 11 minutes.

So many in photo mode. Just exploring the Arletheus Arlathan Forest. It's crazy to return to a game. I was looking for this in the review. This is a comment I wanted in the review. It's crazy to return to a game so handcrafted. Every side path has a reward.

Again, I've played so much Starfield recently, right, with the expansion, let alone in the end. The rinse and repeat nature of Starfield buildings and collectibles and I'm hacking things. I don't need to hack because why would I have? Dragon Age, such a joy to, oh, there's the. main thing, I'm going to go that way and that way and I go that way and I find the thing and guess what? Bam, there it is. I got a treasure chest or whatever. And again, these are mats that go into a thing that I never even think about because I have so many by the time I need anything. It was just nice to feel like, man, you can see that when they sat there and planned out these levels.

Again, didn't go for the big open world, didn't go for the ever expansive open world that would just go on and on forever. They went through and we're like, this is what we're going to make and we're going to make it all work. And I think it really sings for it personally. hung up on three people who have been turned into trees by calamity. One is pulling the other into a run while one is reaching back for the third who has fallen. Haunting, period. Frozen in fear, period. What a way to go.

I had screens. I'm not sure if these actually made it into my Instagram post about this because I brought in a new batch of screens for this. But it is, and you'll eventually get the side mission in this forest right, of people who got turned into trees. And yeah, they are sitting there reaching out for each other. And this is, I think, speaks to, again, the depth of the game slash quality storytelling of I got saw all of this and I was like, man, this is so cool that I'm going to sit here and I'm going to take it. My 11 minutes will be in photo mode just taking these photos. And again, if it didn't catch the review, the photo mode is trash.

We need a patch on that. We need a whole bunch of updates on that. We need facial expressions, poses. We need frames. We need filters. I digress though. I used it a lot. And I was so hung up on how cool and unnerving this way.

was, right? But also the fact I find it weird that nobody talked about it. Like nobody was like, oh, this is weird. So I was like, oh, this is just how the forest is. This is just what it is. Okay, fine. And hours, hours later, because of the way I played, I did a mission, a side mission there for a ghost, I think. And then it got revealed that, oh, these people were these people, and this is how it happened to them and dot, and then we had a whole line of conversation and dialogue about it, which I really liked as something that I saw earlier, it had that breadcrumb and was like, I want more of that. I didn't realize they were actually. going to deliver on it, which I thought was pretty cool.

One of my first decisions here, now this is another one from the actual preview we had done, right, was the mayor, if you remember this, right? You eventually get to him. The God promised him gold, right? Our evil elven god. You know, he lured the, lure,

the veil jumpers to get killed, which they did. The city's all fucked because of him, and you're given the choice of, save him or leave him. Now, again, this is where you get into the duffy of, we all have the same coloring book page, what are you going to do with it? What are you going to make yours be? And so I went with leave him. I said leave this guy's fucking ass, right? Uh, quote, his village deserved better is the

one I went with, right? Which was backed by Belar and I was like, all right, Belar, maybe I got you wrong, poo-poohed by Nev. And I'm like, Nev, if you're another one of these Serra, the one of these Sarahs from Starfield, I'm not going to have a thing, you know, I don't care how low your V goes. Uh, but left in behind, just get eaten by wolves or whatever. Which, since we're here, in a spoiler thing, that'll come back later. And I thought that was really cool. They did. But we'll go back. that, right? I jot it down this. Lady Morgan shows up, a voice by Claudia Black, of course. I was like, oh, this, I don't know this character,

and then I don't think she's used that much, so don't even worry about her, right? Just get out of here. But I like this of, they start doing this. Solis was right about the gods. They're the, worst. Quote, we, and then I use the quote from my rook, right, we caused this. It's going to be interesting to talk to people of like, so much of this is, I feel, Oh, fuck, Solis actually, I think Solis was right. I think he did a bad job explaining it to Verrick and the team. I think a lot of people would have died. But I think he's right that less people would have died the way he wanted to do it

than the way we interrupted the thing and fucked it all up, right? So this is a definitive moment from me coming off this where I am like, oh, I am now going to pivot my opinion of this, right? If the game starts, you're the bad guy, you're doing the bad thing. Now we get here, and I think it's interesting that the game presents me with enough information that I'm like, oh, shit, we were in the wrong here. fuck this is on me and I felt as my rook and having the conversations with soulless and other people I started taking the we fuck this up yeah yeah yeah yeah we fuck this up and we got to fix this and we

got to make it right which I thought worked really well for me right now let alone we get into the pages in the 40s but we'll talk about that later you see I highlighted here for the review it's 2024 get out of here with half-ass photo modes all right what are we doing over here uh October 16th 950 a I don't know why I want to just write 950 40 minutes after it doesn't matter. Increased difficulty to underdog. First fight in a long time. So much talking. I love it. So the difficulty here, yeah,

I eventually go up to Underdog, which I will turn down, but we'll get to that when I get to it. Right now for this journal as we go through it, I enjoy the combat so much that I wanted to be challenged, which isn't, I don't want to say isn't my usual MO. I don't want easy games, but I usually think normal is a good balance, whereas this one I was like,

I want to think, a bit more. I want to use these powers. I'm enjoying using my companion's powers like I talked about. So I want to be challenged in a way that makes me do that. And I feel then rewards me for doing so. I have one if you cop down. If you follow my era, right? So much better. I love this combat. And I'm put in there the Lidian ghoul fight of like that was like what I was doing there to find it. Right. Harding getting possessed is cool I put here. The song of the stone, Dagger did something to her. you know, as somebody who doesn't know the Dragon Age world, when I set off to create the character, right,

and was going through, this at the preview event, but my first time with the character creator, and I got to Dwarf, and they were like, oh, well, dwarf can't use magic like that. There's unable to do it. Just that sentence or that note on it,

put that information in my head so that when I met Harding, I was like, oh, well, that's how you are. So then to see her get possessed, to see her get the song of Sown, to see the dagger change something in her. I was like, oh, this is a really cool thing. and again, especially this early in the journal, is the seed to what I think Dragon Age Vailgard does so incredibly well,

which is, hey, here are seven companions, they all have their own companion quest lines, and all of them are really fucking cool. Like, even if you don't like the character, there's going to be a moment in this quest line, you're like, oh, that was fucking cool. I like what they did story-wise there. Dwarf's Children of the Stone.

I flirted with Harding. I put in prison, she's not a problem. Oh, when she thought she was an issue for the thing and getting possessed and whatever, I'm like, you're not a problem. You're actually kind of cute. But I flirt with everybody, I think, to start with, but we'll get there. I have a check in here for my character from Rook Parry, right?

I'm going to go talk to Solis. I feel like, I feel like, I feel, oh, I feel guilty. He was right. Yeah, sorry, on my page, it's even worse with the writing over it. I like how Baird has to translate my own writing. This is worse. Again, right there. You can see me as Rook going off this way or whatever, right?

Um, we have a super chat. Do we have to restart the stream? It's a new stream. That's my problem. Unfortunately, what we're going to have to do probably after this is take both of these streams down and re-upload this to YouTube. That's totally fine. Let me open that one up, though, so I can see that chat because I had the old chat still open. Oh, you hear me talking in there?

Like, oh, does it sound like I'm on old-time radio? Hello, everybody. It's me, Greg Miller. I'm making content with you right now. So I want to jump in here while we're talking about story and what I like and what I don't like. the one, the only, Jessica Hinkle, uh, super chats and says,

I'm very picky about storytelling and quality writing, quality of writing. Greg, you're a Diablo 4 guy. I love Diablo 4th storytelling writing and characters. If Diablo 4 is 10, where is Vailgard in your opinion? If you get to this cool,

if not, no worries. Jessica, we're always going to get to the super chats because we love hanging out and talking to y'all. Um, it's interesting. I don't like Diablo 4's storytelling.

Right? It's my, it's the old joke between me, and Jen of just every fucking side quest is, oh, my beans got stolen by a demon. Can you go get the demon beans? Not the beans. Oh, no, the beans from the demon turned my baby into a demon.

It's like, okay, like, you know, fuck this shit. So for me, this is way better than that. I think it's been interesting to see the criticism of Diablo, or I'm sorry, the criticism of Dragon Age that I feel personally is justified of. Oh, this writing wasn't good or this was cranger, that, blah, blah. And like even with me and Andy talking yesterday, which I forget if we did on streamer off, but he was talking about like,

oh, I actually did roll a veil jumper and the way that started and the dialogue really didn't work for me. And I think it's interesting that maybe your class where you are can then set the tone when you start the game. And I was like, oh, that's interesting

of how you feel it is. For me, I liked it. I thought it was personal. I used Erica as a voice. She's so good. Her performance is so good and personal that I think she carries a lot of it. And again,

I said this in the, the review, I stand by it, even though it's a very weird comparison. I didn't watch the Dungeons and Dragon movie, but the trailers look like a lot of fun. And I feel like this game has that vibe, where it's like, here is a cast of people going off on a D&D mission and there's going to be serious moments. There's going to be funny moments. There's going to be sexy moments. There's going to be spooky moments. Like, but you're, you have this seven person cast that are archetypes or I don't want to say stereotypes, right? But I think like, you know, like, when you meet, Emrick the necromancer, right?

Like, oh, you're a necromancer inspired by Vincent Bryce, got it. Like, got it, okay. And it's like that, I like what they do with that character and those things and those vibes and those themes, that's what I was looking for. But yeah, I like this more than the storytelling of Diablo personally, but I also know that people like Xanth

think Diablo four stories great when in reality it's just, let's follow this fucking wolf with no face while I beat the shit on all these skeletons. Don't forget the beans. Mon demon beans. Let's see. Oh, this is again, this is before I had an outfit I loved, right? Switch to a gold outfit and headband, Wonder Woman-like, which doesn't fit, Rook.

We'll see how long it lasts. It doesn't last long. I'll tell you that. Again, I forget how long it was to get to that one I really liked or get to the next one I really liked. But I always needed to be in these purples and these blues. I needed to feel like I was protecting Gotham. Over here, it's a funny thing of when I write stuff down and then forget, I write it down and I forget how to pronounce it, right? but is it too no and I'm probably getting right is it too no this is I thought this is from

harding if you're here you should in this podcast or video or journal hopefully you're around when she starts talking about it and basically I thought it was so interesting of thinking back personally to interviewing and talking to Aaron Fitzgerald Chia from persona four and when she came on up at noon and she talked about every morning getting up and meditating and I forget what it was, but she meditates with, you know, a hum or something like that. You can go watch the up at noon, give IG in the view. They need it.

No, I'm kidding. They're doing great. But it was this idea of like, this sound you make that centers you and connects you to every thing in the universe, and I'm probably butchering all of it because I don't do it. But, you know, she was meditating and grounding herself. And so for Harding

to talk about is the tune all right? And what this meant to her and the dwarves and them not really remembering what it is and remembering their own history and how important that I was like, damn, I wrote this down because at first off, it was a really beautiful way she put it.

Then it was the idea of like, okay, what does it mean for the narrative? And I think they do cool stuff with that. I'm putting here, right? I vibe with unpacking my room in living Pari's history. It's cool that Verick was one of the people

I saved in the mission that pissed off the crows. So again, as with any game, and any RPG that's done right, but especially a bi-aware one off of Mass Effect, right? The time you want to spend in the glossary, the time you want to spend in the minutia of whatever the game is, is going to benefit you in the end.

And for me to enter in here and be like, I told this on the review, right? But at some point I came upstairs and Jen's like, how's it going? I'm like, it's fucking awesome. I haven't fought anybody in an hour. I've just been talking to people. Love it.

That's what I want out of these kind of games, right? And go to the, you know, you go down to the moor, where it's like none of this will be matter for the quest like objective but I want to ask you questions about what you're talking about. Going into Rook's room and then choosing what a little trinket to put on the shelf and then when you do, she's like, oh yeah,

this is from the time we did X, Y, and Z to get to the point then, right, of like, oh, this reveals how we actually met up with Vara because again, as somebody who liked Vows and Vengeance the podcast that was the narrative one before this, there's no mention of a Rook in any of that, right? that I, unless I totally missed it and I know I need a haircut, don't tell me.

But it was the idea of, oh, this fills in that gap so nicely of, oh, when she got in trouble with the crows for saving those people, she actually saved Verrick. So that's why he got her for this mission and how they met and da-da-da. I'm like, oh, that's fucking cool. I like that idea, right? I box out this note, the elven gods will be drawn in by tyrants and bullies, and I put fun fights ahead.

Because I like that idea, right? of like this even speaks to if you ever heard me pitch my Superman game right where it's like I want the lower level cryptonians from the phantom zone there for me to go fight to get more powerful to go after Zod so for them to come in and yeah anybody who's basically an asshole in this world is going to be drawn to the gods and they'll be like mini bosses like that's fucking cool I like that a lot I really love this game complex characters great story and fun combat you can see I highlighted that again one of the things that's so fun about this journal is being able to look back at the emotions in the moment.

I think you can sit there and remember big moments from any video game you play, but to be able to go into, oh man, what was I feeling at the time? What was this? I loved it so much of how they did this, right? Then I have this starred and written out here, the demon of Varantium, right? My man from the preview and vows and vengeance. Lucanus, of course, all the companions pop up in vows and vengeance. Lucanus, the assassin, the crow that we went to get in the preview.

you thing. This is setting up obviously the mission error here. And you see me, I'm actually blocking it on your screen, but the note right underneath it is. Balara, ride the bench. Because as soon as I get Lucanus, he's in the group the entire time. The entire fucking time. It was him and Nev for a long, long time, until we

get to somebody else we'll get to in the book. I shouldn't spell the book, I guess. You see up in Treviso there, I say I need Crow outfits like these. This is what I'm talking about. As soon as I got here and had the ability to start earning the merch's trust here, right? I was in it. I'm in it.

Let's do all the crow missions we can possibly get. I want to do this. I want to have the coolest outfits possible. Lucanis fucking rocks. Great voice. Cool outfit possessed. Fuck yeah. I am both so in love with them putting a demon in the demon of our ancestry.

Of having him be possessed by spite as we will eventually learn about and know about. I thought that was such a nice move. I am let down. They didn't do more with it. I could have gone for a lot more conversation between them, conversation with the demon taking over they do it towards the end and we'll get to it but it was one of those things man I wish they could have done more

of this I wish they could have done more of this anyways 1159 got the doulas coat don't love the feather shoulders but way more parry than the other of the Wonder Woman outfit again this is where I'm able to finally transition all the way over to being a crow

combat is so satisfying added victory rush off the skill tree kill with a takedown and puts necrotic yeah necrotic on my weapons and I love it. Again, as somebody who's always a sucker for poison,

the idea of having the blades glowing green and I'm poisoning people and putting necro damage on them as I went. It's like, fuck yeah. And I started, you know, going hard on that one, but eventually back off, but do with these things, blah, blah. Back to Lucanus, though. Seeing his demon is rad and does such a great job, diversifying

the companions. Parentheses, demon made me forget how to spell, because there's a lot of bad spellings in the sorry, but everything. Spite is the demon's name. Lucanus is a permanent underlined party member. which is true the entire time. As you turn the page here, Barrett, you'll find out that this is two pages I missed.

I miss these pages, and I don't know what to do with them, I wrote. So I gave a very bad drawing of Pari because I wasn't sure if people with the book would ever understand what my rook look like. And then I put in here, of course, Erica Ishi is the voice of my rook, and she is just utterly fantastic,

and I thought did such a great job with it. Um, I see where I'm going to go, and I'm going to stop the ad here in just a little bit, but not yet, okay? So here we're going to go. The little teases from Verick cutscenes about, quote, they didn't know dot, dot, dot, dot, are really nice for closing a door,

but keeping the thread going. Again, why I love this game is the storytelling. It is the characters, but it's these little moves, right, of, hey, I like that. When you do part of a companion quest, and it ends for now before they'll eventually have, you know, the exclamation mark in an hour, three hours, five hours. You get these little cut scenes from Verac over the, you know,

animatics right of the things where they're like hey this is what's going but they didn't know the bad guy was coming me and he talked about it in the review but i think it's super nice one thing that didn't make in the review here right hey shout out for making my arrows matter uh so many games use arrows as a distraction here they're part of my offense as someone who plays rogue in a lot of games it is that idea that i have been out so many times with my bow and arrow and it does jack shit damage it is to do stuff for puzzles it is to do stuff for distractions the fact that was able to, through the skill tree, level, or not level.

I increase the damage of my arrows, get more arrows, then find bows that had such nice buffs to them. I think the one I'm still using is a legendary that shoots three arrows at one time, so it's just like, da-da-da-da-ta-da. Fuck yeah. Love that. I apologize. At 118, I took a lunch break. I was six hours and 18 minutes

in. Like Lucanus's spite, Harding's power slash voice is such a nice wrinkle. Again, Harding wrestling with her own demons, not as literally, as Lucanus's demons. I liked a lot. Got my crow's rank up, bought Hunter's plumage, and that

is the fucking outfit I've been looking for. Again, I don't know if that's what I had in the screenshot or not. It's been so long, but I'm sure for a while when we start going into it, if you want to jump to like, 0.06 here, Barrett, you see how I start really rocking these outfits and feeling, I'm feeling myself. Rook is feeling herself right there.

At 3.04 p.m. I wrote, After an afternoon, a fucking about, I'm back to the main quest. God I didn't choose the Shadow Dragons as my faction. Quote unquote, the Viper looks lame as shit. Just met him at start of the smuggled relic case story mission. Dude, that guy sucks. All right?

His little tric corner hat. He looks like the most generic dude out of the most generic game. Seven hours and 32 minutes in. Turned off tutorials and hints after it told me how to range attack. After it told me how range attack works. Again, lull. I put here, I'm very much lost in the sauce. I was at this moment feeling the game.

I am still to this day feeling this game. Sorting through screenshots, rolling a new character with Andy, I was like, fuck, I have too many other things to play. I don't want to worry about platinum this right now, but I think I'm going to end up getting back to Rook's story at some point, even though I wasn't sure by the end of this journal.

But we'll talk about that in a second, because right now I'm going to tell you about the kind of funny membership. Of course, over on patreon.com. Or YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. You can pick up the kind of funny membership, and you can get all of our shows ad-free, the ability to watch these shows live or the afternoon podcast,

like today's In Review, Agatha, all along. That's what it was called, right? Yeah. The song's so good and they never play the fucking song. This afternoon lives we recorded, and of course you could get daily doses of me, one man showing like this

in a series we call Gregway. However, you're not using your membership benefits right now, so here's a word from our sponsor. Episodes brought to you by Thasmophobia, the genre-defined horror game is finally out now on consoles. Yes, that's right. The phenomenon that is phasmophobia has finally entered console early access on PS5, PSVR 2, and Xbox series X&S, with full cross-place support across all platforms from day one. Join the already almost 20 million

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is a good look at the outfit I believe I was talking about when I'm saying, got my crow's rank up, bought Hunter's Plumage, and that is the fucking outfit I'm looking for. As you can see, Daverin approves as well, so we're pretty sure about that. Let's jump to, I think, one of the first big moments for me

in Rook's journey where I was like, because there's a lot of capital letters on my thing, and it goes, am I got a romance, Lucanus? We're talking coffee, but way more than coffee, you dig? This is actually the context to 0-06, which I already had you toss up, but where a rook goes dark, complex, and intriguing. Talking about how she likes her coffee,

but she ain't talking about her coffee right now, guys. She's talking about Lucanus. And as you see, I put an ellipsies here. Dot, dot, dot, dot. Yeah, I'm going to fuck this guy. Only one pari has had a spark with. Now, again, we're early on in the game, right? Because things will change.

I'll warn you now. But I like that I go out of my way to be like, only one. Like, you've met three campaigns. is now you ding dong. Anyways. From there I go, Coffee with Crows was a great quest

and a great example of what I want. Characters I dig, dialogue that fleshes them out in choices. Again, I'm a huge loser nerd and I love talking in video games and especially games like this

and I just want to see the character to be characters with each other if you want me to care about the characters. And so the fact that coffee with crows is, and this is one of the missions, if you don't know, is just you go to coffee

with the crows and you talk to them about what's going on in their quest, their companion quest, and this is where you start talking to Lacanus, and it's like, wait a second, now, wait a second, if you want to go that way, which apparently I did, you know what I mean? Now, though, let's start unpacking that some of the stuff, okay? 4.02 p.m. October 16th. Sadly stopping here, but it's been a great day. All I want to do is keep playing, but coffee with crows is a great stopping point for what I want out of these games.

Has me ready to bond more with Lucanus and get back to the main quest. Lucanus is a romance option is interesting. I've never thought of it, but I almost always play as female characters, and then also romance female characters as well, with the exception of Femmchap and Geras. I've never thought about why, but nice to know male options before have just not done it for me, the way Lucanus is doing it.

Really cool character, a great fit for Pari. Worth noting how good these companion quest lines are. They're long, spaced out, interesting, and really add dimension to this cast. excited to do them all. With the Open Zone versus Open World, I worried about how much slash how compelling side content would be. So far, so good.

There's stuff to unpack there, but I believe I unpack it on my own coming up. Maybe. Yes. So I don't, keep that in the hopper for what's going on, all right? 9.24 p.m. Been playing for an hour, maybe more. So easy to get sucked into side quests.

So much good stuff. found out about the tree people I like when I'm discovering my own notes what the fuck I'm talking about tree people before I finally learned about

right and then I have a breakout box here I do not like Balara even with her dead brother Syrian again that's gonna change because the game does

so just go boom I wanted wanted Parry to have a more League of Assassins Batman Crow look tossed black eye makeup and lipstick

on borderline goth but works with her outfit and then I took I'd probably have a screenshot somewhere, but I think my great doodle there of her, my great doodle bear that's right there,

says all you need to say about it. I eventually do remove, yeah, I'll get there in a second. Oh, yeah, I'm gonna get there. Hold on, I'll take that one down and throw back up the journal and show the doodle of Pari, because that's just what she looked like, all right?

See, nailed it, crushed it. It looks like Ria Ripley, but I mean, a poorly drawn one. Anyways, next page is, you know, enter Mavaris, who doesn't even, really matter. Shadow Dragon, end of the shadow memo.

Check in right here for where we are, right? That's the trophy for part five. I'm level 15 and I'm nine hours and 54 minutes in, right? More people don't matter, right? And here it's black lipstick was way too much. I dropped it. So if you don't jump to 008, this is the

final look of what my rook looks like in Dragon Age. This face will be the face I use the rest of the way and I have not changed it since. And I'm very happy with it in terms of what it would be. 10.49 p.m. stopping here tonight. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm 10 hours and 49 minutes into the game, and I'm stopping here tonight at 11 p.m. Wish I could push to midnight, but I can't keep my eyes open.

Maybe a shower will give me juice for portal in bed. For now, closing thoughts, and I put out some bullet points here. In some of this, you've already read on the one and only, kind of funny games cast review, which you should go read it, spoiler free. 10 hours in, I'd give this a 9 out of 10 and say it's my game of the year. It's hitting on every front I want. I feel like I've been looking for this game for a long time. So why a 9 and not a 9-5 or a 10?

Little things. Combat getting clunky in tight spaces. Moving gems? Oh, I see. Moving gems and ancient lasers can feel old, et cetera. This is one of my things where I think a lot of the... Not a lot. Some of the gameplay stuff is so, as I talked about it, PS3 era,

of, oh, I'm moving these lasers to activate that thing and moving this gym here and then, oh, we go and fight in a building and the camera wonks out. As the expert of kind of looking at your writing here, I think it's aligning lasers. Can feel old, not ancient lasers. Ah, thank you.

All tiny things compared to the shit I adore, but important to the review nonetheless. Then another bullet point here. Thought a lot about romancing Lucanus versus romancing in the other games. Although I'm making choices for pari, I don't feel like I'm her. I feel like I'm watching slash reading

slash participating in his story. I think this is thanks to the great acting and cinematography. Compared to Starfield, my character had no voice but the one in my head. My character wasn't on screen talking in cutscenes, etc.

Starfield relied a lot on the theater of the mind. Dragon Age has it all play out for me. As such, I feel like I'm shipping Lucanus and Pari more than me falling for him. It's different from Andresia, L.O.L. This is what I think the first time playing

where I start to put it into words and start to put it in my own head of like, oh, wait, this isn't going to be the, I mean, the naming convention in the front would have been. So, okay,

we're just jumping into this. I don't, I'm not paying, I can't think it through necessarily. Whereas like to be here, like, oh, like,

I'm making these choices, but I'm not making choices in a way like, does it make sense to you what I'm saying? You know what I mean? Like, I'm not, because I, even as Becky and Starfield,

I didn't feel like I was her, but I was playing as her. I was pretending to be here. I was pretending to be here. I was doing these things. Whereas this one I had not less skin in the game, but it was more. What are the permutations, right?

I'm flirting with everybody. I'm doing these things, blah, blah, blah. Interesting. Then I put in here. I think we've covered this, but just for the sake of it, I'll put it all through here, all right? Pari.

It dawned on me that I never wrote down how I ended up with this name. Although I often end up with Taylor Swift, I really do sit down and let the character creator speak to me. I run through faces and hairs looking for something I like. I have no tant. talent for face sculpting, so usually my characters are pretty basic.

Spent a lot of time in Dragon Age trying to find a character. Ended up female, short black hair, very similar to my demo character, a face of one of the presets. After choosing my faction and background, it assigned me the last name, DeRiva. I had thought I was going to call her Lois. Oh, I forgot about that. There you go. I thought I was going to call her Lois.

Yes, for Lois Lane. But once I saw the last name, I knew that I couldn't. So I did what I never do. I randomized a bunch. with them forcing a last name, which I like, it made it feel like this needed to be a new person. No sense tacking on a first name I liked.

Instead, let's create. So we created Pari Deriva. Let's jump over to October 17th, 445. No, 442. Today is a classic example of how hard it is to actually play a game at work. I had on the calendar 1.30 to 3.30 blocked out to play. I got as far as the main menu. Never loaded a save.

It's a combination of events. Xbox coverage running late, a call then having to be pushed, Ben being sent home sick. I was already worried about how far I'd get for a review. 13 days isn't as much as you think it is for a 40 to 60 hour game, but we'll see. On the brighter side, Dragon Age vows and vengeance ended today. I teared up at the final monologue. Hope Nadia and Drayden at least have a reference somewhere in the game. I have not found a reference to them in the game.

Now, of course, there's a lot I did in 50 hours of gameplay, so maybe. Maybe I missed it, but I am hoping for at least a fucking note somewhere. A note somewhere. Help me up, BioWare. So I guess the plan is to pull me off as much content as possible next week. Play as soon as Ben goes to bed. Ignore Jen and see where I can take Pari. There you go.

That was me already wrestling with it. Already seeing the timeline and going, that ain't good. That ain't good for trying to finish this. But we did it, so don't worry, Greg. Here we go. Davern and Asan have joined the party. so far not impressed by them L.O.L.

Gloom Haven. I say Gloom Haven, but it's gloom howler, right? Is a cool villain slash subplot. Oh, maybe that's how they introduce her before they actually get to the gloom howler, though. Daverin, never. Never, never, never, never came around. Didn't, you know, even by the, he's a gray warden.

And I'll be honest with you. When we get to the things where you're sending people off of like, oh, is it going to, you know, people might die on these missions. I would send Davern off like, I hope you die. I hope you don't come back. But this motherfucker came back every time. Here we go. Oh shit, big choice.

I mean, Rathos or Treviso. I'm a fucking crow. Let's go to Treviso, is what I wrote there, of course. Had to go back the home of the crows, just like I did in the preview as well. Then Barrett had to run off, but when he comes back, we'll flip the page there. Oh, no, he left Roger in there. That's what they were chatting about. I see what's up in there.

That dragon fight wasn't fun I put in here. this is a weird one because I want to talk about this stuff, but I'm reading it, and so I don't want to ruin what I talk about later. So let's keep that. That's not worth expanding on right now. We'll get back to that, okay? Keep it up. Low with the Viper being hurt.

Remember how much I hate this fucking Viper guy. I assure you when I saw his bitch ass on a table fucked up from this fight. I was like, you deserve it. Piece of trash. My chapter six trophy popped here. I have another quote in here, another soulless one, right? I have faith in you, rook, period. I don't know why that hit so hard for me.

I have faith in you, Rook. I was like, damn. Like, we're not, again, at this point again, remember, I'm like, I had you wrong. You had the right thing. And so him to be like, I have faith in you, that actually hit me. That actually worked with me, right? Another note here, I'm going to roll a necromancer next time, excited to meet Mercer. Of course, you all know Matt Mercer from Critical Role.

Manfred is the character he plays in this, the little skeleton that runs around with Emric. We meet him, and it's just fucking insane, right? I have it here, October 18th. Emmerich is awesome. Loved him on the show. This is the Dragon Age Vives of Vengeance one. The show, despite not vibing in the preview and meeting him in the game is great. What a cool environment for the necropolis.

The necro stuff is so cool. That green glow on everything. Fucking love it, right? Just fucking love it. Again, the game is great at teasing what's next. Because, of course, whatever I was doing there ends with. The gloaming lantern was going to be coming up there, right? No, we'll just leave.

I'll bring it up later. Don't worry about it. And then an interesting Inquisition contest, or Convo with Harding, right, leads to my take on Solis. Quote, he has a crusade. You can see me again, softening myself on what I think of this one and only solace. I digress them. You look over here, you can see I have a section here called Tweaking New Build Notes. Again, this is not something I do where I go through the skill.

Like, my Diablo characters are a mess. I just do what's fun and don't really worry about figuring it all out, right? Jumping in here, you can see that again, I like combat so much that I wanted to make sure all my stuff was actually working. So I went through all my abilities and wrote down what they were. So you see that area, tool, control, duration. And then I put little checkmark, little dashes next to them there, lines, columns next to them. So I could understand where I should be investing my points. I think this is when I re-roll my points and really start pushing some other stuff in there.

Loved it. Just having such a great thing. You see right there I'm using explosive trap, pilfer, fortunes fury, and fortunes. I can't read my own handwriting on that one. but fortune stuff, right? Pilfer was the one I stuck with forever, where you go, you attack the guy, you come back,

that gives you a health file, you use immediately. Fucking awesome. I went back to Doctown because the Dragon, I'm sorry, went back to Dock Town. Because the Dragon fucked this place up,

the Venetori took it over and I have to rediscover waypoints. Cool. This is 17 hours into the game. This is something I did talk about in the review. This is such a cool thing that I had this big choice, right?

And I went in, made it, and then saved Treviso, right? Come back to Doctown. and it's fucked. The people that were there, the merchants that were there, they're dead,

their shit smashed, it's all gone, right? Then you have to go through and discover the waypoints because everything's different. Then, you know, we'll get to in a second, you know,

nev is different and doesn't feel the same about me in the group anymore. That was all awesome. I needed two or three more. I needed one or two more of those to make a total of three, right? Like,

that is so cool. I would have loved just two more, maybe not that big, right, but just ramifications. We should have had abilities to not have companions or have companions walk away.

I think that would have taken this to an extra level. Like, oh, wow. Immersive, right? There's a quote here, we all need to grow. This is from Hortensia, who I don't remember where the character is, but I like the quote, right? Then I have a quote here from Tosh.

Eat shit, this is not your land when they go out to attack. And I was like, I wrote, Tash is awesome. Tosh is incredible. We're going to talk a lot about Tosh, so I didn't need to get into this. This is where we come back,

that very cool, that Nev has hardened. Raj, if you can throw up JPEG 011. We're looking for the 11. I like that because, again, people know this, I assume from playing it, but some people aren't doing it, right? And there you go. Companion is hardened. Neve is hardened.

After experience the blighted dragon attack in Minrathos, Nev is less trusting and more self-reliant. Her damaging abilities are increased, but she will no longer use supportive abilities and relationship progress is slowed. So fucking cool. And again, I need a two, Or I need one or two more of these.

There should have been another decision, another conversation, another whatever that also led to something like this. Because I would love these permutations of my team because it did fuck me over. It did change the party makeup I would do. Of, all right, cool, I'm going to go do this. I'm going to go into this mission. I'm going to keep with Lacanis. I'm going to do this. But when I'd get there, I'd be like, oh, shit, oh, I don't have a healer.

Or I was going to bring Nev, but I need a healer because I like heels. What can I say? You know what I mean, Bear? Bear, Bear likes being healed. Anyways, I thought that was cool. This is right here where I pop the Part 7 trophy. October 19th, fantastic side mission. The Snake's Nest deal in Docktown.

Memory serves. The Snake's test deal. I mean, I can't believe I didn't write more down why they like that. Why am I trying to keep my note spoiler-free for a spoiler thing, right? Anyways, I think that might be the dad one, right? But maybe not. With the dad in the sun, when the dad's feeding people in town to a demon so he keeps his son alive, fucking awesome.

If that's not this mission, this mission is cool, too, and I forget why. We're one, we're a page ahead there, Barry. Sorry, we're on 23 now. Lords of, more notes for me, Lords of Fortune are Tosh's peoples. Go to October 20th, right? Oh, yeah, Mythal and Solis were definitely doing it. There was a conversation if they were doing it, and people, I'm like, they were fucking, they were fucking it. I've been collecting these wolf statues, but I just started putting them down. Must have missed the whole part. I must have needed the whole party.

Really dig the storytelling. conversation after. This is one I don't know what happened and what happens next. So you go around and you collect the wolf statues and then at some point when I was in the lighthouse, bam, there was all these things put them down and I put them down and then it would play a soulless memory and me and the group would talk around this table about it. And I thought this is awesome. And so then I collect them more wolf statues, but I haven't put them down. So I don't know if it's I have to get a certain number of them. Like you need, oh, once you get six, then you can play some or whatever. I'm excited. I know there's still a trophy attached to it.

So I'm excited to get back and do more because I really liked all of that right there what they were doing. This is a quote from my own character, right? People who have only been one thing will never know how big the world is. I think again, I saw a lot of discourse about this game.

I don't know if you've seen it. People not being happy about Dragon Age Vailgard for a number of reasons. I think it's funny how much the game talks to those people and then also the people who are like, why are people so mean and stupid all the time? People who have only ever and one thing will never know how big the world is.

Well said. Well said. Tosh. I adore. A fantastic character. A fantastic lover. We'll get to that in a second. You get ready for the video.

Don't shake your head at me. No, not yet. Not yet. We're not right on. The video's coming up way later. But whatever. Tosh so amazing and I like this quote. That's just one she throws out,

or they throw out mid-fight. Lucana, say the thing. Like, it's a little thing. And once you get to meet Tosh and you really know Tosh, you've got to put Tosh in your party. They got a lot of stuff going on. They're awesome. And just their little throwaway lines are so good.

But I dare. Emric, the necromancer, is afraid of dying. Manfred, prepping his chair is adorable. Manfred, I would die for. All right? I would die for a manfred. Bear, whenever you get the chance in your back, put on JPE 10,

it just shows pretty much what my life goal in this game is and it's to protect Manfred, okay? Barrett's running. I told you not to run. You didn't have to run, Bear, I'm sorry. But you see Emmerick in the screenshot. It was light jog. I've spent my life exploring the fade and speaking to spirits.

If Rook needs an expert, none are better qualified than me. And then, of course, the thing, promise you'll bring Manfred. That's what I picked. Because this is all about Manfred. And there's going to be a lot. Barry, I know you're never playing the game, so I'm happy you're here to be, we're going to get to some good shit with Manfred. Don't worry about that. He was in the trailers itself.

I was like, that guy looks cool. And I thought, the game does a great job of being like, oh, they're not going to go really far with them. And then they go far with me, like, yeah. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Okay, so only an echo is one of the side missions I did here. And I wrote, I'm a sucker for a side mission where it's all gone wrong already. Loved looking into this family's echo demon. Again, the game does a great job of you take these missions, these little side missions,

and then they start, I think, spiraling out from what seemed like a simple concept of like, what's going on? Did the well just talk to us? And then you get into this shit. I'm like, oh, fuck. shit's insane and awesome. I love this. You see a box here, right? Obviously, a lot of people

axes to grind and ready to hate on stuff and maybe leaks and maybe the new beforehand. I didn't know anything about a lot of this thing. So you see me here start getting the hint of what they're putting down with Tosh. I get it wrong here for the record, but I go, oh shit, is Tosh going to transition in this game? Rad. Because I like to see them start to wrestle with this. But we'll get to what actually happens there.

We'll get there in a second. But when this popped off, I was like, well, that's really cool. here I say man fuck the first warden if you want to go to oh one two that's that's 12 you see me I'm gonna knock the fucking block off this guy first warden fucking sucks I hate him that's all I'm gonna say about him all right fuck I say so then yeah I got it man fuck the first warden and then if you can get a screenshot 12 up I go fuck ballar for being mad I punched his ass out you got to you know what I mean you got to lay some people out you got to get rid of some of these people and this first warden was a thorn in my side for far too long

I'm not sad that I knocked his ass out. The siege at Weisenhouse is the most challenging I've been in the game, constantly low on health and I like it. Again, I'm still playing on the harder difficulty here. And yeah, I think even on the harder difficulty, as we talked about in the review, eventually it comes down to you just got, they just have more health points. And I was like, oh, I could have gone for more than that, but whatever. Going on to page 25, this is the first game in forever where I'm actually using a diverse selection of ally skills.

talked about that. Don't worry about it. But again, healing and vulnerable, blah, blah, blah. So here's where we're going to get... Can you throw up a 012 while you're here? Sorry, Barrett. Just for a second, say people wouldn't see it. Well, I loved this choice of like, what do you want to do?

That's an order word, and you can either, well, I try talking and knock his ass out or say, let's be reasonable. I knock this motherfucker down. You know what I mean? I'm knocking him out like Brett Hart backstage against Vince McMahon. Woo!

Thank you very much. You can go back to the journaling. I write this here and I believe it, but it's interesting, but whatever. This game doesn't do big boss fights well. I reference the first dragon and then the arch demon that you, the Razocel, right? It's just dot, dot, dot, dated, not fun. I still feel they don't do them well,

but eventually I'll talk in this journal about they bring it together. We'll get to, so I want to save that. Keep that in the hopper, all right? These are developing thoughts as they come, right? I like this thing of nice setup on why we can't go after the gods. Everyone's side bullshit, L-O-L. Again, remember, maybe you haven't played, but you guys confront the gods to begin with, and you don't win. And everybody's like, we're distracted by our own bullshit.

And so it's at a choice of you can power through the game and then get there at the end. And if you haven't done the companion stuff, they might get all fucked up and die. Or you can go and do everybody's side mission and put their demons to rest, which I like that a lot. I have here, fuck Davern. You come after Lucanus. You shut the fuck up. I already didn't like Davern. I already thought it was a stick in the mud.

I already thought these great wardens were just bullshit. And so for him to start talking shit to look honest, if I got, I would have kicked this motherfucker out, the lighthouse, you know what I mean? A telling one here. Verrick doesn't seem like he needs this much rest.

When me and Mike got together and talked about it, and for the record, I'm covering it there, but it's 22 hours in. I'm level 27. I just got the trophy for Chapter 8. Me and Mike were like, damn, this guy stays in bed forever.

People are going to be pissed about this. We'll get there. You see up there I have a hero of the VIII, Vailguard, complete the companion quest to focus on the main mission, right? I thought this was a really cool way to do this of, okay, we're going to go through, do all the quests, this will make them more power, and it gives them a little thing in the heel of the Vail Guard. I love that. Okay.

This is my one here. And you can see it by the writing, I'm excited. Okay, I'm all in on Tosh. I like this. Okay. I'm all in on Tosh. She did that TikTok thing where they, and I underline they, because we've made. made the transition here.

Tosh isn't trans. Tosh is non-binary, and you can see it develop in the book as they choose to be they. They pushed me up against the wall and smelled my neck. The neck wasn't the TikTok trend. Anyway, it was hot,

and I told them as much. Barrett, can you please play our, one of only two videos here? I believe it's sex. I saw it called it sex or something like that. The one that says sex in it. Can we hear it? I'm making my choice here.

Perfect. Thank you, Barrett. Sounds like your mother was hard on you. Nah. I think your fingers are just perfect. Yeah. So, are you trying to have sex with me? Hadn't really thought that far ahead.

But maybe? Quick, think about us having sex. That's fucking hot. Damn. So now we need to figure out if it's Cashlock or Tomlock. And those are... Cashlock's just flirting. You look and make jokes.

and maybe think about him for fun. Tomlock is serious. You want to grab that and taste its neck right by the collarbone. So which is it? You can cut it here. You remember the TikTok thing I keep talking about where for a while people would put their hands up together and then the other person will push them up against the wall? Fucking hot as fuck.

That was hot. That was crazy. That was fucking hot. Yeah. And I mean, even without the sexy times, Tosh just an amazing. amazing character in this game. Back to my notes here, sorry. Forget if I've said this, but the things that hold this game back are old game problems.

Cammer getting wonky indoors when fighting. Way people stand when talking. Oh, the crystal puzzles that I keep pitching about. Weird walkoffs as well. I put here a little smiley face where I say, I feel like I'm making this choice a lot. Again, we talked about the choices and dialogue not having that big of an impact, but I kept going for the ha-ha-ha-ha-rook for some reason. this next page is 27

it's where I start track this is more nuts and bolts about it right this is where I'm tracking who the companions are after every companion in their side quest has a person that they're up against right that it's going to build to it that'll eventually

we'll get to your companion rankings and that all becomes big on this one ever but you know I like that I call Lucanus's Zara feud the vampire woman right the gloom howler a Griffin lover and then I put for the Lucanus and Zara one which was worth pointing out

yo this fight was hard she was 32 and i'm 29 in terms of level that's mike talked about this in the review of getting somewhere right and having it be um oh he would walk in and be like oh this is level 40 and i'm level 20 i can't do it this was the only time where i felt like i wasn't balanced uh in terms of oh the i can take this on easily did it won it but again it was there was a bit of uh you know cheesing of hiding around pillars and using all our support skills But again, it worked because I love shit. I don't use it this way. And so suddenly, for not the first time, but maybe in the game, I was using, hey,

Tosh, can you use the invulnerability spell on me rather than attack? I started using them as support and like feeding off of what I was doing, which I really liked or whatever. But again, this is whatever. I don't think that's that interesting. You see over there, I was very happy when Tosh said that they are they. I liked seeing them lean into that. Of course, you know, so many. of the kind of funny audience

are non-binary or trans and I feel like over the years as that for some reason has had to become an issue on the grand scale of things where we're having an election in America where it's a huge part of it for some fucking reason

I have been so blessed to know you non-binary best friends to know you trans best friends in the same way I can think back to the first people I ever met

in the LGBT community right and how impactful that was on me to have these conversations and have people help guide me in terms of how to help

what to do how to be an ally and so I feel like it's so depressing right now to see people struggle and not understand what's happening

and demon you and I hate that that happens for you and I hope that me talking about it in some way helps. I hope that fiction like this on a mainstream AAA platform helps. I hope that movies and literature and everything else is able to give a window in to what this is. And I think that again is another thing that Dragon Age does so well, that fiction does so well. and it's this idea here of it's not coming up here

so I'll repeat myself but it's this idea of Tosh's mother not being super supportive of this and getting to be with Tosh through that and see what that does to her

I hope can be a window and I know I'm being very much roast into best intentions here it won't for a lot of people but seeing those kind of things happen. Hopefully people playing this game and not have already been poisoned by whatever's happening on Twitter or et cetera that they can fall in love or at least like, not even the romantic like we just

did in the game. I mean, just, oh, I really like that character and then see them wrestle with this. Oh, I don't know if I like this non-binary thing. But then it is see it play out and be like, oh, shockingly, this isn't a big fucking deal to support someone I love when they want to go do something that has no effect on me, but makes them feel better. I digress. Oh, and then there's an interesting Tosh choice here. You could forego the romance and embrace her Kunari side, forego the romance, embrace a revane, or commit to an exclusive relationship.

And I said, let's go. Let's go. I started. I was like, let's do it. And I said, oh, we fucking. And then I say, JK, the growl surprised to stop this. Because, of course, you get going, but then fucking monster in the dungeon had to stop everything sucks. I am doing notes here for the arched demon blood,

but we don't need to talk about that. We don't care about that, right? Oh, here, I just had a hell awkward scene with Nev Whisp Hunting. Like, what was the point? This is where you get into an interesting struggle here. I want these experiences, but when I am not connecting with someone like Nev, it's like, okay, well, what the fuck is? Why do we go do this? This is weird.

Ooh, Tosh asked me on a date to her moms. I was going to go to bed. This is me in real life. I was going to go to bed, but this I got to see. And then I said, eh, it was more about the culture than us. Again, they're building to something, which I like, we'll get to eventually. October 22nd, we're back to Isatuna. I'm talking about Titan magic.

Bro, wasn't feeling Yohan-Helan Akos until she got her hand to crawl up her, crawl to her and shoved her and showed her cool eyes. Dope. I assume you played the game, but if not, the necromancer that Emmerich is going up against, right, is bat-shit crazy and awesome right here though where it is that I didn't even realize she didn't have a hand

but then she like the hand that you used to get in she forces to crawl over to her and attaches and then she's got these like fucking crazy eyes and he's like oh shit we're fucking that's pretty cool and again this is what the game does well

I feel of like I'm doing the thing because I want the XP and I want them to be ready for the final mission but oh wait a second this is interesting oh hold on a second this is cool

I put in what her 30 hours in and I ran into my first bug. A demon got stuck under the stairs. Couldn't advance because of it. It'll come into play as you see when we get over there. But let's jump over there. So let's go to a diary entry. It's October 24th.

Feels like forever since I wrote. Have been playing, just not writing. Little sessions at work and on the portal. Today and tomorrow are my big game days at work. One show each day, so hopefully five plus hours on sticks at the office both days. We'll see. Biggest game update is that I dropped the different. from underdog to normal.

It wasn't because it was hard. I was fighting an arch demon, died, and the next attempt, the demon got stuck in the environment. It was the last thing I was going to do before going to bed, so I just dropped it to get through all the ads and get it done before bed.

Thing is, it was more fun. I was more powerful. Turns out the difficulty didn't make enemies smarter IMO. It just made me weaker, gave them more HP. I'm finally doing finishers again, for me on a stick,

or the sticks, click in R, right, do your takedown. When I moved it up to Underdog, I didn't even notice that I just wasn't building Stagger fast enough to do that. Anyway, sorry, back to it. I was just, I just wasn't getting an opportunity on Underdog. Gonna leave it like this for a bit. Just beat two blighted dragons and confronted the gods. Very cool confrontation.

30 hours in, just popped the trophy for part nine. Just ran around the lighthouse picking up personal companion quest, which means it's time for rank those companions! Uh, you'll notice here I talked about the dragon fight, but I didn't say if I, I said a very cool confrontation. I believe it's coming up still when we talk about big bosses. So I'll leave it there. But I do want to still get back to this dragon, big boss stuff I'm talking about. Anyways, in terms of the people I like the most versus, the people I don't like. Uh, number one, Tosh, we're in love, Tomlock. Uh, I wrote she's, but they're great.

They're great, fascinating character. Number two, Lucanus. Uh, I wish they did more with the demon inside of him. Uh, but he's still cool. number three emrick uh whatever thing this guy wants to do i'm in best looking environments again emmerc's just dope like you know what i mean again he's like a vincent price necromancer but again we'll get to a point where it's like oh i like what you're doing over here uh heartings at number four she's nice uh she heals me in fights interested to see her storyline number five ballara honestly annoyed me forever but her brother's storyline gives dimension number six nev she has a really cool setup but has been bland since the choice and then number

seven, Davrin. This dude sucks. One note stick in the mud. You see, I like that I put the little rankings with the arrows of where they went so you could see where they were in my head beforehand. This is a good journal, guys. I did something good here. Then I like this one, too.

Another great quote here from, it's from Tosh, but also their mom. You must struggle with what you are, end quote. I just like that. There's some good stuff in here for how you're feeling most of the time, right? here we go I still don't like fighting dragons

but that high dragon fight was epic I feel like the moment to moment gameplay in combat of Dragon Age is so good right the Perrys which I don't do but the Dodge Rolls the attacks the magic that stuff that when we get in

to the big dragon fights I feel like it's kind of lame of like I got to roll out of the way and then his legs a weak spot so I send everybody to it and then I do it too but then he goes back and then I got to dodge and it's like

but the way they start using them where their palate cleansers to then a big moment I liked and so I don't know how I actually feel

I don't feel the moment to moment gameplay of the dragon fight is interesting but the way it's used as a set piece to then get you to the next thing I like

and I do wonder especially when you look at this this is something I hadn't put together yet I've struggled with what I think about the dragon fights right this is the first one

right, that's after I dropped the difficulty. So I wonder if, again, just giving everything more HP and making me weaker was making me enjoy those fights less. We'll be interested to see on this Andy, the Nick the Dwarf playthrough when we get there if that'll actually work for me or whatever. They introduce the Dragon Queen here, King, sorry, Dragon King here. Oh, and then you have here, just enchanted everything for the first time. Could be cool.

Before options seemed tame. I had not been paying much attention to the enchantment. And so when I finally powered in there, leveled everything up, it started going. It was like, oh, shit, this is actually pretty fucking cool. I love that. Tash's mom thinks I'm not good enough for them, right? You can see you right there? Look, I started to write she and I scratched it out and wrote them.

It's a little progression. You just got to think. And I'm not good at it, but you got to think, right? And I love the, you see there, I have an LOL circled, right? The quote from Tosh, just out of the blue to their mom at the table, right? So dot, dot, dot, I'm non-binary. It just blurts it out, right? It doesn't go well, but that's why we love you, Tosh.

All right? That's why we love you. And I say, yeah, what a way to deliver the news. Then another, you want to get me on, you know, Balara. Didn't like her, too perky, whatever. I said all this, right? But then I was like, oh, her brother's quest is interesting, and it will get more interesting.

We'll talk about it. But you have it right here, right? Is Belara writing smut? Fuck yes, I love these people. I do. I do. Belari came around, all right? And her outfit I have her in?

Very dope. So I'm very into that. right. Okay, Barrett, I have a quote here. It says, nice, and she's also a good kisser. This is the other video I have, if we can play that. I have this in context of, again, how heartwarming I think Tosh is, and how, again, even if you weren't dating them, I think the way they act in battle is so funny in their little interjections. That's it. It's just an errant throwaway line that I appreciate so much there. I just fucking love that. And again, there's so many little things like that, and then it'll be the con. We didn't talk about this in the review at all, actually, I guess. but like when you have your combos,

they will talk to each other and they will, there's like, not a thread to what they're saying, but like, for me, it was Tosh and it was Lucanus pretty much all the time.

And so Tosh was always asking Lucanus about these myths they had heard about the crows or this day. And like, throughout, like, you know, Lucanus by the end is like,

where are you getting this? Like, what is going on? Why would people do this? I fucking love it. Uh, yeah, okay. Inside, Lucanus is mine in prison

My poor little emo boy He blames himself for everything Right But we figure out we have to go save Katrina right Harding in the Titan heart Oh do you choose compassion or anger for Harding I of course choose compassion Rage cannot overcome her heart I wrote

And then I also put it there and highlight it right With the Superman symbol on it We don't let people turn evil I don't know how your conversations went with Harding But when she was so concerned About what was happening and me being worried about it I was very much the line of like Captain America, Superman, like, well, no, we're to do this.

And one of the things is we don't let people turn evil. And I thought that was really great. October 25th, quote from Rook, the first wardens are assholes. And I put, shocking no one, of course, because I hate all these first warden people. Terrible. Terrible.

You know what I got off this one. Oh, I see, I see. Valia's info on the gloom howler is interesting. I like the quest, but not Davern. We get it, Greg. You hate Daffrin. All right. Don't worry about it. Then we have one of the breakouts here, right? Hey, man. Shout out to Bilara's performance. This brother angle is really making me vibe with her. Her meeting with her brother moved to the top of my to-do list in front of Lucanus's mission.

So what I'm saying there in so many words, if it's clunky, because I'm a clunky person, is that I loved what was going on in Balar's mission so much that when I got the next part of it, I was like, I'm heading off on that side, that companion side quest, before I do any of the other companion side quest. Like, it's that good. I have to be a part of that. I love what was going on there, right? And then I have a sad face there for me after Ballaras and Brothers meeting, right? All right.

And there have I not, have I said how good the music is? This music. Again, there's, whatever. You cannot like a game, but there's so many things like, even if you don't like the game, you got to be like, oh, my God, it looks great. And it sounds fucking great, let alone, is right? Anyways, Belarus' mission right into Lucanus' mission, this game is fucking sick. So I'm talking about Belarus mission. I'm talking about Lucanus' side mission.

This game is fucking sick. I put the payoffs, right? Oh, in prison, I chose what to do in Lucanus, as I said, in prison, Ilario's dumbass. And I put, forgive him, so you can try to kill Lucanus again? Fuck that. You go to the clink. You're locked up forever. That's how it's got to be.

Then I said, stopping for game showdown. I'm 37 hours in 38 minutes. Level 40, only two of seven companions are heroes of the veil guard, which means I completed their quests. While I wait for Game Showdown, I wrote this on set right over there. I thought I'd write about feeling really good about the game. I think the looming deadline and the quote, how much more do I have, end quote,

have eaten up a lot of my brain lately. Having Lucanus's quest pay off so well and Ballaras go to another level were great reminders of why I love this game. thinking a lot about scores lately, but happy to feel a bit today. Again, reviewing a game is always interesting. Reviewing a game on a deadline like this and running through something, right, is so challenging and what you're going to do. I think it's easy, you know, in the time you do have to contemplate to get caught up in the nuts bolts, what am I going to say versus being able just to enjoy what was happening there, let alone being able to go back and see what's up, right?

Quote we have here at the top, you have earned the respect of the dread wolf, end quote. Damn, that actually matters to me, lull. Again, this is something that pops up in the little, like, this is what's been happening for where you're on the story and what your decision did or meant to you. That meant a lot to me for some reason, right? Of again, of, like, feeling like I fucked this up. Like, this was very much...

Solace was doing the right thing, and then I got in the way of it and fuck that up. So, like, for him to be like, no, no, no. You have my respect. I was like, that's great. The companion quests are wrapping up so nicely. destroy the lantern at the party Tosh and her mom again her again it's hard to break it

Belara and bro but then I put of course here Fuck the Dragon King RIP What is it? Chathan is I believe how it's pronounced That's Tash's mom right We all know what happens there

But fuck the Dragon King 40 hours in level 42 Three out of seven companion is done there right Then Barrett This is an image I would like you to toss up It's the image in there that's called image I didn't put a number on it, but it's the one that'll say image. But it's a quote right here.

Balar, one last favor. Can you stay with me until it's light? I'm choking up reading that. Of course, this is the end of her quest with her brother and her brother passing away after, you know, of course, coming back to the light, Darth Vader style, right? This one got me. For some reason it reminded me of my son, Ben.

Kind of how at our core were all little kids who don't want to be alone. You know, for me again, like, just the cradling of it. him and you think about like when Ben's not afraid of the dark but he will say he's afraid of something or you're just trying to take care of him trying to take care of a family member trying to take care of whatever it hit me so hard in the same way

it has the exact same heartstrings being pulled as and this is such a reference saving private Ryan there's a and I'm not like a big saving private Ryan person I've seen it once but this scene always stuck with me where one of the soldiers is talking about, they're out at war,

talking about how their mom, I'm getting choked of thinking about this too, I'm just, I'm such an emotional little bitch. Their mom would come to check on them in bed and they would pretend to be asleep rather than have their be an interaction. And so that always, and he then gets choked up.

I don't know why I did that. You know what I mean? And that's always stuck with me of like these little, moments, right, where it's like you feel like a little kid. And in that moment, right, what's that soldier saying? He's talking about how scared he is to never see his mom again or that he didn't give his mom that moment, right? He kept that from her.

And now he regrets that when he's in this, like, what's going to happen? You know, where are we going to go from here? And again, just for this moment, you know, for a character that you've heard me talk how much I did not like when we're talking about, uh, Bawara, right? To get to an end of her companion quest and be like, holy shit. get. Like this is going to stick with me a long time. Good stuff. I chose to keep the elf archive. They deserve to know the good and the bad. That'll make sense if you know what it makes sense. And then if you want to go toss up 026. 026 for me. This is October 26th. I write

Oh fuck. Bring back Manfred or become a litch. Of course, if you've never played the game, if you've played the game, you should know what this is. If you've never played it and aren't going to play. You know, Emrick, the necromancer's, like, goal in life is to become a litch, which means he'd be, you know, he'd die, but he'd be alive eternally and have his powers and his wits and all that stuff. But when Manfred gets killed or, you know, the wisp knocked out of him, uh, because of the mission we're on, he's presented with this choice that he, of course, turns it over to me of, do you bring back Manfred or do you become the witch? And again, I would say most, if not all the choices in this game, I found super

easy of like, whatever, whatever. And this was one where I was like, oh, fuck, like, I like Emmerich so much and know that he wants to be the litch. And I like Manfred so much. And I know how much Manfred and him mean to each other that I did for a second. I write, I write, toughest choice yet in my notes, if you want to go back to my notes. Toughest choice in a highlight. And I go, no man, parentheses, Fred left behind. Bring him back. And then I'm like, one of the things you say as Rook, right, he loved you. And then when he pops back up and they hug. I was like,

and I don't think I give copious notes on it, but like when we get there and Emmerich's like, I think occasionally of what my life as a lich would have been like, but I wouldn't have traded this moment for the world. I'm like, fuck yes,

this game's so fucking good. If you like this kind of game, if you like this kind of thing, and I'll tell you, Greg Miller fucking loves this kind of thing. I digress. The notes go on. I'm putting more stuff out.

Oh, yeah. What is the tunal of the eternal him? Yada, yada. why is Rook doing this? Oh yeah. At someone you're asked in one of the conversations why you're doing this and the choice I picked was because someone has to.

And I was like, that works. I like that. I like that a lot. Then this is something I've seen circulate the internet to be attacked but pulling a brav, quick 10 push-ups to put any quarrel right.

I like that. I thought that was cute. I thought that was a good way to build it and also be like, oh, when you get a pronoun wrong, you don't have to flog yourself to death. you can just like, oh man,

I fucked that up. Sorry. As you see me multiple times throughout this, too. I'm right here. Lowell,

good to see you first warden, you bitch and enjoy that blight. I fucking hated that guy, so I'm not sad that he became a bad guy

in the end. Yeah, here you go. Daverins' loyalty mission was the weakest. I chose to become, let the, uh,

griffens become the sentinels of nature, right? Right here, the Grey Wardens had their chance. I'm never going to, these military, bootlickers get out of here

and I put Asana's dope though so I have no problem with the Griffin for the record Daverins just sucks and then I then you see my up to here I stand corrected Nev was the weakest I put Sorry Alia Who? Who is this person we were going for

I don't give a shit about it is Get out of here Nev Solis equals pride because they said that right This and then I like this quote You deserve happiness right This is talking to the Inquisitor right My Inquisitor is the default inquisitor which meant my inquisitor had fallen in love with Solis, right?

And so I was like, go love Solis, don't worry about it. Again, I don't fully understand who Solis is. We'll get to that. I think it's the next page, but we'll get there. For now, we'll go to October 27th at 8 p.m. The review is tomorrow. Time to finish this. Nev is the only one who isn't hero of the veil guard.

I did her missions, beat the big bads, but no epilogue mission. I assume it's because I sacrificed Minrathos. Probably need to do all the faction quests, but no time. made a save right before the point of no return can come back if need be I wish I had more time which of course I wish I had more time with this game because I would have loved to have done that

but the energy of this podcast you're doing right now of me and Andy starting up the play through yesterday I think I am going to when I don't know because I'm a million reviews to go but I do want to go in and start working on the platinum again anyways though for distraction I was given the choice of Davern or Harding I went with Harding

this is the spoilers for the end here right for blood magic I had a choice of Neve or Belara I chose Belara I'm going and I put a note here going to be strictly uh going Belara strictly because Nev isn't a hero the hero of the veil guard I hadn't completed admissions right so she wasn't top notch otherwise it would have been her and I write holy fucking shit Harding no and you see my little diagram of her getting killed by the tentacles because Harding gets fucking killed in this game and that shit hit that shit hit because I loved Harding Harding's been there the whole time she's my sister

Come on now. So to get here, have her lose, especially when I was like, oh, I'll send, I was like, all of them are here of the veil guard. Clearly, they'll all survive. And then she gets ice. I'm like, ah, fuck. And again, this is part of my whole thing that I've talked about with why I'm hesitant to, or not super excited to go back, is that the game is so much this book, is so much this story that I don't want to go back and save Harding. Like, this is my story. This is my rook's tail.

but I do want the trophy, so we'll see what them. But when will I have time is the other thing, right? Anyways, flipping it over. The Gillenane fight was dope. Great music, great payoff. Again, there you see it as the debut Barrett, whatever it takes from Harding, right? That was Harding's call to action back then,

before she died, then it would be my call to action the rest of the way. Do you think she's a big fan of the MCU movies? I do. I do think, yeah. I think, yeah, I mean, you know what I'm, you know what? Now Ballaro was taken, but is she dead? and then here we go. You see my notes get crazy. Wait, are they sick sensing me?

Verick was dead all along. Holy shit, that makes so much sense. Never saw it coming. And you see the top of the next page. Now, Solis must die. You know what I mean? And I put side note, come on. This game is good.

Like, I was fucking eating here. I was not expecting that. I never thought about it. I thought it was just lazy bio-aware. being like, Ah, Verick's still sleeping. He's still sleeping.

He's still so tired. Of course he's not helping for these missions. And then to get into this dream state thing and find that out, I was like, that's fucking crazy. And I'm going to beat the living fuck out of Solis. I got my, yeah,

Tarolara there for Quinari word for mine, the final mission here where I'm figuring this out, right? I send Emric with the veil jumpers. This is only, this is the only one I'm happy. I'm not happy about. Neves and a hero, Bolero is gone.

I would have sent Nev or Belara with the veil jumpers for magic stuff, but they weren't available, right? Lucanus goes with the crows, of course, to go after the mage. Tosh with the Grey Wardens versus the juggernav, because, of course, Dav and Nev with me, Loll, fuck you two. That's the problem with this. When you got such a great team and two people you don't really like, I got to run with them for this part. I was like, ah, fuck, you know what I mean? I guess I got to go do this one.

The Viper is dead. Who cares, Lull? We all know how much I hate him. Oh, and then I put it in here. Oh, Solis made me see Verrick. Another reason to hate him. The decision for, I sent Davern for this one, for a decision for Solis was it trick or fight?

I said to trick. 1143 credits are rolling. Interested to see where they drop me when this is over. And to jump ahead. Oh, just continue. Boo. I guess, but also I get it. Anyways, thought the final mission here might have been a bit long,

but I can't complain with the feels it gave. Making choices and watching them play out in battle is cool. Again, you make the choice and then you get like the cutscenes of them running in and doing the thing they were supposed to do. And I love the moment of my rook looking out at the group Tosh should be with and not seeing them. And then when they finally see Tosh doing like the and then going in. I was like, fucking it.

Dragon Age of the Veil Guard isn't an RPG as much as it is a choose-your-own adventure. and it's quite good at that, but I don't feel like I was Rook. I feel like I was along for Rook's ride. Like I don't wonder much about the other people. I don't wonder, let me try Lise again. Like I don't wonder much about who other people romanced or who they lost. Clearly, the canon play-through is to do everything, save everyone, unlock every memory, do all the quests. This, that's the story they're telling, and that's a good one.

But here I am with 50 hours under my belt and right back before the big mission. and I'm not motivated to jump back in. My story is over. And that's not bad, but I was expecting endgame trophy cleanup is a post-credit. I'm sorry, I was expecting end game trophy cleanup in a post-credit world. Being here before the ending isn't, my fat fingers can't flip it, isn't as exciting to me. I get it, but I'm also not stoked. We'll marinate on this leading into the games cast.

And here you go. 10.30, October 30th, 2024, 24. The final entry. I'm so glad that I did this journal. I think it really helped me remember how much I loved this ride when I was disappointed to discover Rook's story was over. No post-credits adventures. I get it.

I've made peace with it. But days later, I still don't have the spark to jump back in and platinum the game. Not because it was bad. It was amazing. But because I love the choices I made and I don't want to undo them or act like they didn't happen. Harding died. That mattered to me.

I don't like feeling like there's a true ending I should have been shooting for. we'll see maybe i'll get free time at the end of the year and chase that plat but i had such a fun time with my story i don't know i hope you had fun reading this it's something very different for me a creative writing assignment for a i fuck up my own age forty-one year old man who hasn't written in forever i hope you read along on your own journey or used it to understand why the game worked for me whatever it takes greg mullin what a game uh again i'm still in that place i'm high i'm high on my own supply right now of course of how much I enjoy reading through this and living those moments, how much I'm enjoying playing in there. But even like to go and be like, oh man, I want to play more of it, I'm so like, well, do I want to roll a necromancer, or shield warrior or whatever? Or do I

want to just go and just play my thing, I guess, and see the rest of the side missions and do the rest of the factions and stuff? But that was my rook, so do I leave it all behind? But then what I do everything in platinum? When am I going to have a 50 more hours? You know what I mean? Is platinum me the whole point of it? I don't know. Lots to discuss and figure out internally. But I fucking love this game. And I think

it's incredible. I think there's a lot in there to love. I hope you're enjoying it. I hope you did enjoy it. Of course, remember, there's lots more to talk about it. I put in there like, I don't really care. I do care about Mike and Andy's story. I want to know what they chose and who died and what that happened. And like, especially

to sit here and go through all the notes for what, almost two hours and be like, oh, well, this is how it made me feel. What did it make you guys feel? Well, who did you romance? Did you know about this thing? What parts did you get that you didn't get or how was it different for you? Like, I have questions on that front for sure.

And we'll get into them, of course, on the Kind of Funny Gamescast, spoiler cast for Dragon Age the Veilgard next week. But again, maybe you're watching this way later. And if so, you'll need to search on YouTube or your podcast service of choice. Remember, everybody, this is the Kind of Funny Games cast each and every weekday. We come to you with the biggest topics in video games. It's part of our live talk show run of show. We start every day with Kind of Funny Games daily.

Then we do a games cast. then we stream video games, and then there's often an afternoon podcast. That means right now, I'm going to jump over and go stream more Dragon Age with Andy as we continue Nick the Dwarf's campaign, then MCU and review in the afternoon.

But again, if you're watching this in December, tell me about your pumpkin pie. And remember, until next time, my pleasure to serve you.