The Grouch's Trash Pile [Baldur's Gate 3]

ty! Hopefully my biggest concern tomorrow is staying warm on our visit to the botanical gardens, since it got all chilly again this week.

 

Uh, I guess I should have posted that I'm fine? But I'm fine. It was cold as heck on Friday so our day was cut short to only the greenhouse section, which was a lovely experience even though I was hideously dizzy the whole time (I really should have forced down some more breakfast than milk+protein powder ._.). I took a ton of pictures that I still need to sort through.

I've cleared Baldesion Arsenal four times now - it takes forever to get the 48+ people needed organized and into an instance, but the content is fun and it's great to get other people their first clears. There's achievements for five and ten clears - they don't give anything but fake game points but I'm going for it anyway. It's nothing compared to the 20+ times the friend I run with has cleared it (I swear, they live in there at this point), but still.

It's funny, it's not super hard content, the mechanics are only as hard as maybe some of the more difficult 24-man raids at most, but it is difficult in that it's extremely punishing if you make mistakes, and some of those mistakes risk a raid wipe and a complete end to that run. Deaths are not easy to recover from in there - regular raise spells don't work at all. You have to use an item to give you a reraise ability, but it only works 70% of the time. If you're still on the floor, a healer has to use an item called Sacrifice that, well, sacrifices themself to raise you, and hope that their reraise pops. (And you have to hope there are enough Sacrifices to go around... some healers don't even bring them.) If you're still dead, you have to return to base and are locked out of the dungeon for the rest of that run. Other content you can cheese mechanics to some extent or have healers patch you up, but in BA if you get greedy about uptime or tunnel vision too hard, or get impatient and rush ahead on trash pulls, you're going to get killed. And that's just stuff that if it hits you it just kills you - like I said earlier, not respecting other mechanics can kill other people and potentially wipe the raid.

Anyway! I was super intimidated by all this until that friend encouraged me to join a learning run, and I was still very AHHHH my first few runs, but overall... it's not so bad? You have to be a team player and pay attention, and as a healer main I'm already used to that. Even though I'm a slow learner when it comes to hand-eye coordination stuff, I have enough experience with the game at this point to pick up on stuff fairly quickly (FFXIV is pretty good about building up a visual vocabulary of mechanics so it's more of a puzzle and less brute forcing your way through until you figure it out) and not rely on voice callouts. It's made me feel more like it's okay if I get into harder content on my own, rather than being too timid to try unless a bunch of friends who will be forgiving of my mistakes are with me.

Now I'm downloading Nier: Automata and hoping that it doesn't make me motion sick. It's been ages since I played a hack and slash-ish RPG - I think the last one was Fable III.

 

Nier kicked my ass. I am thoroughly humbled, and playing on easy until further notice. >_>;

I'm also giving up on using a controller until I can get one for smaller hands, because the Xbox 360 controller I have is WAY too chonk for my dainty girl hands, which are now Very Unhappy that I subjected them to two hours of controller use. The right analog stick also has a considerable amount of drift - but inconsistently, like, it was fine up until I got back on-planet and then whoops, my camera kept insisting on pointing toward the floor, no matter what, and constantly trying to adjust it started triggering the ol' motion sickness.

I'm pretty happy that it took that to start up the motion sickness, though - I found a thread with recommended adjustments for people prone to motion sickness and put those in before I even started playing, and they worked like a charm.

There's a mod that allows for better keyboard remapping and some QoL adjustments (like not having to hold down the fire key for your pod - GOD that's annoying) that I'll install, and go from there. I'm pretty agile with keyboard controls anyway, and since it doesn't need a fuckbillion keybinds, unlike FFXIV, I shouldn't have too much of a problem binding everything to keys I can easily access.

 

I use a rock candy Xbox controller on PC and they're really badly designed tbhwy - I legit have goddamned gorilla paws and it makes my hand cramp up something fierce, so I can't imagine what it's like for more delicate peeps.

 

Hey

Spoiler: check out my hot elf

 

Hot elf is hot!

 

He looks like he's mugging for the cover of his new hot singles album.

 

Hey I checked it out and it looks like our servers got grouped in the same data center so I'll be able to come hang out and run stuff with you on my main! I'm booting up the game tonight and finally getting on to use my free play time & try to catch up in story for the expac. I'm Soo far behind x.x

 

HELLO FRIEND!! Please let me know if you want company while running anything!

 

HEY

Nier: Automata is REAL GOOD

 

I have to ask...is it worth putting up with the Fanservice for? I've heard the plot would be right up my alley but certain things just...put me off.

 

Keeping in mind that I'm only on the first route and probably not far into that - so far the only egregious thing I've noticed is 9B's outfit, which the game doesn't remark upon in any way. There's no lame justification for it, she's just... in that outfit, as are the other combat androids. (The meta explanation is that Yoko Taro likes it.) Her combat moves involve a lot of flippy stuff, with the obvious results considering her skirt, but so far I don't remember (keeping in mind my memory isn't great) any uncomfortable framings or creepy shots in cutscenes.

Was there anything else that you were concerned about?

 

I heard there's an achievement for looking up her skirt a certain number of times which made me (That and basically all the fanart that crosses my dash is butt shots) so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. If the cutscenes aren't weirdly voyeuristic or anything, though, that's good to know.

I know a lot of people i follow like it but from an outsider looking at the fanbase it seemed like the appeal *was* the sex appeal, which clashed with what I found about the plot when i went digging, so i was kind of ???

Edit: I hope i didn't come across as trying to put a damper on your enthusiasm at all, I've just had the game recommended to me several times and have been trying to figure out if I would actually enjoy it myself.

 

Don’t worry, you’re good! I had similar concerns until I saw fc friends and a tumblr mutual talk about it a lot and they pretty much only talked about the story.

Like, 9B has a very acrobatic fighting style so her skirt flips up a lot, but so far in game it’s just... a thing. It’s not focused on. ( I have no idea about the achievement since a lot of them are locked, but considering how the camera behaves a person would have to make a CONSIDERABLE effort to get an upskirt shot... which seems incredibly pointless, given her acrobatics! The tone of the achievement texts so far has been kind of sarcastic, so if there is an achievement along those lines, I wouldn’t be surprised if it were a dig at the player.)

I don’t know much about the broader Nier fandom myself. It’s disappointing but not surprising that it’s largely butt shots, considering how many people are Like That about female characters. There’s SO MUCH more interesting about 9B than her butt, ffs (like how socially awkward and emotionally withdrawn she is and how she puts up a front of Perfectly Efficient Soldier, but if someone gets through to her she’s ride or die for them).

 

2B. 9S is her little sidekick.

I'd say that, yes, Automata is definitely worth a look. Thematically it is one of the best I can think of in tackling what it does. Just also Taro as a creator has no damned shame about what he likes and he's actually very equal opportunity about it. It's not just 2B that is sexy eye candy. The males are too. Which I appreciate a lot about Taro and his work. He doesn't shame me or others like me for liking that sort of shit nor does he dumb down his works thematically so that people who just want butts can get it. He gives us both in equal measure.

Also part of why there is so much porn is because Taro publicly announced that he wanted us to make it. He's very open about that and the fact that he thinks that it is fine to be a horny motherfucker. He encourages both sides of his fanbase too and there is actually A Lot Of Discussion on the themes of Automata. We're not just horny idiots. The fanbase is definitely horny and it is fine that it is. You can find the videos and posts and so on about the things that Automata tackles. A lot of them. If you want that sort of content I'd suggest looking at youtube, reddit, or discord servers.

In terms of cutscenes...There are some things that are...interestingly sexual. But they're not like based around 2B's ass. That gets into spoilery territory though. If you're curious about what I think is sexualized in the cutscenes and story I can provide at least some of the things that come up. The ones that I recall. I will also say that these scenes aren't without point. They do have a point thematically.

 

Thanks Aon! I’m think I’m still super early on in the game (just got to pascal’s village) so I don’t have a lot of perspective.

(Idk WHY I can’t remember 2B’s name correctly /o\ I can always remember 9S is her companion’s name but for some reason my mind sticks a 9 on her too.)

Spoiler: One of those semi sexual cutscenes

when mysterious not-an-android hatched from that robot cocoon thing was really interestingly unsettling in general, especially how the camera lingered on him in a way it doesn’t on 2B. That really stood out to me.

This game makes the most of *every* aspect of its storytelling, which really impresses me.

 

I am so! tired! of being sick! BEGONE, COLD!!!!!!!!

 

This has been a shithouse of a month.

Anyway. After being subjected to a bloviating rant about how icky people who 'define their personalities by their sexuality' are in one of the Baldesion Arsenal servers I'm on (apropos of abso-fucking-lutely nothing), I decided to update Oscar's flower crown to be rainbow because I'm nothing if not spiteful.

 

Ah friend I'm sorry, that sucks

I still have a parcel here to get to you! There was some Extreme Fuckery with the town's main Post Office (ie the only one which accepts international parcels over a certain size) and fraud and unpaid tax and it closed down with zero warning, but I think they're working to open it again soon.

Please let me know if there's anything I can get for you?

 

HOLY SHIT???? Incredible. D:

I will let you know! o/