lördag 30 oktober 2010

Vae Victus!

Time to take a stab at another part of the Legacy of Kain mythos, this is going to be hard!

The results of Kain's refusal to sacrifice himself at the end of Blood Omen was that he built a vast empire and took over Nosgoth.

To this end, he...shall we say "recruited" some powerful allies by resurrecting the most powerful Sarafan knights as vampires, to be his lieutenants.

Most important of these was Raziel, a righteous fiend who believed wholeheartedly in the murderous rampage of his priesthood. Raziel infuriated Kain after a time by being the first vampire to sprout wings, and Kain consequently threw him into a watery abyss somewhat resembling the Niagara Falls.

This wouldn't have been such a big deal had it not been for the fact that vampires in Nosgoth can't stand water, and it has the same effect on them as acid.

However, Raziel was saved from the water by, unlikely enough, the Elder God himself. Thus begins Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver.

Armed with a spectral blade attached to his arm, the soul-stealing part of the Reaver, Raziel starts on his quest to hunt down Kain and his lieutenants, encouraged to do so by the Elder God, acting as his great benefactor.

At the end of the game, Raziel faces down Kain in a chamber known as the Chronoplast, which houses a timestreaming device which Kain ultimately uses to evade Raziel.

This concludes Soul Reaver, and leads directly to Soul Reaver 2.

Still not confused enough?

Not to worry, tomorrow is when some serious shit is going down!

Stay tuned!

fredag 29 oktober 2010

The Legacy of Raziel!

Okay, where were we?

Right, the human guardians!

As I mentioned before, there needed to be one additional guardian of all the pillars as well as the Blood Reaver; Janos Audron. Because both the pillars and the Reaver were made by the vampires, this guardian needed to be a vampire. The relevance of this will be explained later.

As the years went by, the humans hunted the vampires, believing them to be demonic beings the sole purpose of which was to terrorize the humans. By the time of the events of Blood Omen, the first game in the series, the vampires were nearly extinct, Vorador being the last, at the hands of a fanatic order of vampire-hunters called the Sarafan.

Some 500 years before Blood Omen, six members of the Circle of Nine were slaughtered by Vorador in response to the Sarafan killing Janos, thinking wrongly it would put an end to all vampires.

Later on, the Hylden managed to corrupt the guardian of Death, Mortanius The Necromancer, and got him to murder the balance guardian, Ariel. Ariel's lover, Nupraptor the Mentalist, was driven to madness by this, and spread his madness to the rest of the members of the Circle, including the newly born balance guardian; Kain.

When he was a young nobleman, Kain was murdered in his hometown. This allowed Mortanius to "help" him by resurrecting him as a vampire. Unaware of it at the time, it was the heart of Janos Audron that Mortanius used to do it.

Kain was then sent on a mission to slay all of the corrupted guardians and recover items of importance from them to use to cleanse the pillars of the corruption. Eventually he found the Blood Reaver, the same sacred weapon forged by Vorador.

During this quest, he came upon the evil conqueror called the Nemesis, who was rapidly spreading from northern Nosgoth. Enlisting the gentle king Ottmar of Willendorf, he tried to stop the Nemesis. They failed utterly, and in the slaughter on Ottmar's forces in the great battle, Kain found the Hourglass of Time, belonging to Moebius the Timestreamer, the guardian of the Pillar of Time.

The hourglass took him back in time, to when the Nemesis was simply a good king known as William the Just. In order to prevent the Nemesis from ever existing, he fought and killed William, who just so happens also carried the Reaver. The paradox created by the two Reavers meeting changed history, so that the Nemesis never existed.

However, when Kain returned to the present, he arrived at the execution of Vorador, carried out by a mob lead by Moebius, who had manipulated Kain all along to get him to kill William, so that Moebius could make him out to be a martyr to motivate people to murder any vampires that remained.

With this act, Kain was left as the last of his kind, making him the guardian of the Reaver, as well as the Balance guardian.

After slaying Moebius, he came back to the Pillars, just as Mortanius the Necromancer killed Anarcrothe the Alchemist. After Mortanius was killed, the Unspoken, a demonic agent of the Hylden, attacked, and was also slain.

This left Kain with a choice; to sacrifice his own life to restore the Pillar of Balance, or refuse, damning the Pillars to eternal decay. If he decided to give up his own life, that would be the ultimate end of the vampire race.

He refused, and went on to build a great empire that spanned all of Nosgoth.

You think all of this is confusing? You have no idea!

Tomorrow, it'll get seriously weird!

torsdag 28 oktober 2010

My apologigiesage!

I know I haven't updated this in the last three days, but they have been rather busy and I have been giving alot of thought to the content of my next line of posts.

So, the topic to be covered is the history of Nosgoth; the gothic styled world of the Legacy of Kain series of videogames.

If you do not enjoy massive spoilers, then stop reading here!

Thousands of years before the first game in the series, there were the ancients. They ruled all of Nosgoth, and worshipped the Elder God. This deity was connected to the so called Wheel of Fate; the cycle of birth, death and rebirth upon which the Elder God fed.

These ancients were blue-skinned and had large feathered dark-gray wings. As they were described in old murals, they were beings of great beauty and magnificence.

Ultimately, however, another race rose up against the Elder God and refused to feed him, leading to a great conflict between them and the ancients. This race, the Hylden, cursed the ancients with a great thirst for blood, transforming them into vampires. While this was a terrible fate for the proud race, the real doom of the curse was that they became immortal and sterile, and were forever cut off from the Wheel of Fate and lost the favour of the Elder God.

A small note; the kind of immortality we are talking about is akin to that of Tolkien's elves; they do not suffer diseases or aging, but they can die through other means, but never be reborn. Many of them also took their own lives in response to being cut off from their god.

Since they could no longer reproduce, one of the ancients, by the name of Janos Audron, decided to turn a human into a vampire for the very first time. This man, named Vorador, helped the vampires by forging the blood-draining weapon called the Reaver.

In the end, the vampires managed to banish the Hylden with the help of the Reaver, and locked them inside a demonic dimension by erecting the Nine Pillars of Nosgoth, and binding guardians to each pillar. The pillars represented the different elements that made up the world; mind, dimension, conflict, nature, energy, time, states, death and balance, the latter being the most important one.

Each of these had its own vampire guardian, but there was one other; the guardian of all of the pillars and the Reaver; Janos Audron.

However, at some point, the humans of Nosgoth rebelled against them, and managed to overthrow them. With the loss of the pillar guardians, humans were chosen at their birth to become the new guardians.

This sets the stage for the coming story, which will be covered further tomorrow!

söndag 24 oktober 2010

All wrapped up!

I must say, being smeared with some sort of oily goo and wrapped in plastic and towels was a...fascinating experience!

Good thing I slept through most of the procedure, or else my claustrophobia would probably have kicked into overdrive.

It was a cozy enough place, the Västerport Spa & Relax; they provided towels, slippers and bathrobes, as well as fresh fruit and lemon water. All of it reminded me of a dungeon, what with the oaken doors and the stone arches all over the place.

lördag 23 oktober 2010

Between together and not!

A night out at the restaurant of our choice has come to an end, and I must say it was quite an enjoyable experience altogether!

Okay, so the pork fillet wasn't all that great, but the beef was excellent, and came bundled with alot of mashed potatoes and various sauteed vegetables, yum!

I'd say Table 20 is a good choice for anyone wanting a nice, but not overly snobbish, restaurant to bring friends or family to!

Oh well, time to go to bed, got a whole session at the spa tomorrow!

fredag 22 oktober 2010

I'm working on my lie!

That's the results of writing and reading the caption on channel 4 at the same time, yes siree!

We just finished watching the latter half of the movie The Jacket, an absolutely absurd story about time travel and straightjackets...darnit, I really need to finish Time Traveler's Wife! At least it has more tits!

Methinks it could be a good idea to quit while I'm ahead on this one, seeing as how I've probably drunk enough to sink a ship!

torsdag 21 oktober 2010

Liberate tutemae ex inferis!

I got some feedback on my blog in the form of an order to make it green, as opposed to pink. Fuck it, says I, I'll keep it pink!

I finished watching the reboot of Friday the 13th yesterday, and I couldn't help but feel the people who died in that movie deserved it! One of them even took a bottle of Lagavulin and drank straight outta the bottle, not fucking cool!

Luckily, he ended up being inverse-garotted by Jason shortly thereafter!

Did you know, by the way, that there are no green mammals? The only one that comes close is the sloth, but it's only green because of the algae that grows in its fur!

tisdag 19 oktober 2010

Got it!

First order of business, I've got another opportunity scheduled for standup; November 5, this time!

Second order of business; I have been told that I should just leave religious people alone and not bother to try and shoot down their beliefs.

I can't be the only one thinking that's somewhat of a weird stance to take. After all, religious people aren't really renowned for their tendency to just leave people alone and not try to change them, are they?

If somebody says to me "Join us or go to hell", then that person has in every way possible relinquished his or her right not to have their faith shot down by me!

So sorry, some religious people can never play the "Let us believe what we want and stop trying to convince us that we are wrong!"-card, because they will never ever honour that when it comes to others!

Fact of the matter is, whatever god christians believe in is a malicious being that wants us to either go to hell or spend eternity groveling before him. Heck, I get bored listening to one bloody sermon for an hour, and eternity of that shit is supposed to be heaven? Gimme a break!

måndag 18 oktober 2010

Oi, it's late!

No time to talk, gotta sleep! More of an update tomorrow!

Oh, and I've signed up for another performance on november fifth, hopefully I'll get a spot!

Good night!

söndag 17 oktober 2010

Penumbra: Black Plague!

I just noticed a rather interesting phenomenon in that game while playing it in the dark in the middle of the night; being a game that encourages you to run and hide from enemies, since you can't defend yourself whatsoever, the scariest part by far is sitting in a corner listening for any trace of whatever monstrosity you don't want to come face to face with.

See, when you do face it down, and it starts running towards you to carve you up, it's no longer as scary, because your mind isn't filling in the blanks anymore, and it's very difficult for the designers of the game to live up to the fright that your mind conjures up.

The best part, and by that I mean the very most terrifying, is when you just hear the monster, or spot it turning a corner, not entirely knowing what it is you are perceiving. There really should be more of that in survival horror games, and less of the old bog standard blowing everything up with a shotgun!

lördag 16 oktober 2010

The road goes ever on and on...

On the bus back home yesterday, something struck me.

No, it wasn't the stench of drunken adolescents puking (Lovely, wouldn't you say?), it was the thought that I'm doing something quite special when I'm doing standup.

See, I've never wanted to be an ordinary guy; I never wanted to be the kind of guy who has an ordinary job until retirement, at which point I kick back until I decay. To say I've always been meant for greatness would be presumptuous of me, but I have always had this idea that I would like to do something...out of the ordinary; entertain people, be seen by scores of people, on a stage, doing something I'm good at, something I have a flair for.

I've only just started it, but it feels like this is what I should be doing! It feels like I'm making an impression, and like it's something I wanna work on. It feels like I'm on the right course! This isn't make belief, this is real!

fredag 15 oktober 2010

Stand up accomplished!

First, I'd like to apologize for missing yesterday's post; I was stuck trying to figure out which jokes to pick all night.

Today, the whole thing went quite well. I can't honestly say I was the card-carrying item, but I sure wasn't the least funny, and alot of my material worked well.

The bits that didn't work were, unsurprisingly, the World of Warcraft stuff and the bit about firemen letting a house burn down. I'll be cutting them from my next performance for sure.

With a bit of tidying up, I think I can come up with something quite excellent for next time.

onsdag 13 oktober 2010

The day draws nearer...

Very soon I shall be standing in front of what will hopefully be a room full of people, trying to make them laugh.

It's not really the thought of doing that in particular that absolutely scares the living shit out of me, it's more the whole idea of preparing for it. Sitting and thinking about which bits will work and which won't, which suits the mood of the room, which I'll know nothing about whatsoever, it all gets on my nerves.

I don't just want to step up and perform, I want to win. Heck, I know it's not a competition, but I wanna leave that night knowing I was THAT guy, that guy who everybody will be remembering as the guy who went in there and rocked the bloody room!

At least I know that I, unlike the audience possibly critically observing what I do, I had the guts to get up on that stage!

tisdag 12 oktober 2010

Busy!

'tis been a busy day today; went shoe-shopping earlier, looking for a pair of training shoes in my size, and failed miserably at it! I guess my next recourse will be ordering some from the interwebs!

After that, it was off to school for a seminar on the book "The Scarlet Letter". An annoying read, on all counts, that perfectly encompassed all the things I hate about puritan society, what with all the ruthlessness, hypocrisy and complete and utter lack of sympathy.

To top it off, I finished my current assignment for next week in Academic Writing, so I feel I have gotten some things done today.

All in all, it's way too late!

måndag 11 oktober 2010

Comedy!

Since I have another chance to try out standup comedy this friday, I'm faced with a number of difficulties in deciding what I should be talking about.

First, what I'm about to talk about needs to be separate from what other comedians have already covered. I have to find my own angle on every issue and topic, which can be quite a challenge. Since I am a big fan of comedy, I have heard thousands of worthy stories that I could retell, probably with pretty good results, but doing so would be unfair, and would make me nothing more than a pretender.

Second, I have to connect properly with the audience. The tricky thing about certain subjects, like politics, is that you need to take a stand that the audience can identify with. If I stand there and start ranting about a specific party or point of view that the audience agrees with, I might lose their support, because they'll interpret it as simple political propaganda.

Third, I have to get the audience going properly. An active audience can really make the show great, and conversely, an inactive audience can make excellent jokes feel like they didn't take off at all. This is why it's so undesirable to be first on the card for the evening; it's entirely up to you to fuse the audience together, get them in the right mood and prep them for the rest of the performances.

Fourth, I'll need abit of luck. Fingers crossed!

söndag 10 oktober 2010

The future!

For some reason, the people around me tend to be quite wary of the future. They worry about the implications of the development of modern technology, and the moral ramifications.

Personally, I'm very optimistic; the quality of our entertainment is higher than ever, we constantly develop new and improved ways to have fun and we have access to it more readily than ever before; the food we eat is of much higher quality than at any earlier point in the history of mankind, we are aware of what we eat and the risk of food poisoning is multitudes lower than two hundred years ago; more work can be done more efficiently faster than before, with greater ease and more flexibly.

All in all, life is getting better and better!

For instance, alot of worry is aimed at the concept of genetically engineered crops. Thing is, it allows us to feed a vastly greater number of people in areas where food is scarce at best, saving millions of lives. Local production of food in areas that are very dry is extremely important, and we really need that to improve their lives and chances of surviving.

The hippies who want to live in the past really get on my tits in a major way in general; asking that over two billion people be allowed to starve to death just so they can satisfy their egotistical mania by having 100% organic food production. I don't know about you, but I'd rather see those two billion people alive than dead from starvation!

Anyway, I'm interested in seeing what we can come up with in the future. Advancement is good, and we should not shy away from it simply because we fear the unknown!

lördag 9 oktober 2010

My apologies!

I should have made an update yesterday, but some things occurred that threw my plans into disarray, so I'll have to ask your forgiveness.

Today I've been on a little visit to my sister's, and her two sons.

Alfred, age six months, is a fountain of happiness and excitement, intent on not only observing everything there is to observe, but also to gnaw on it.

Also, I went for a walk with two of my sister's four goats, something of an odd experience, I must admit. Everything that has been said of the stubbornness of goats is very much true, and I couldn't shake the feeling they were testing me to determine whether or not they could push me around.

His elder brother Vincent, age four, is also a very happy and very cuddly boy, who is incredibly fond of Alfred. It would seem he picked his grandfather to be his big favourite today, not that he didn't spend alot of time playing with me.

Right now, I'm dead tired from all the traveling, but tomorrow I should be back with a more important post.

torsdag 7 oktober 2010

The Story in Gaming Strikes Back!

I felt rather foolish a few hours after I made the first post regarding the interaction between storyline and gameplay. See, though I feel rather ashamed at this, I neglected to mention the two most amazingly fantastic examples of it in the history of modern games.

These two games are the duo of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Fallout 3. The reason why I put the two together is that they are in essence very similar; made by the same company, with the same engine and interaction between characters works in the same way.

What might have caused my forgetting them earlier is that they are such brilliantly magnificent beacons of light in this whole issue, that they just drop right off my radar.

In those two games, you aren't controlling a character; you don't just choose how the character acts, you are that character! You don't feel like you're controlling someone running around a big open world where you can do whatever the hell you want, you are living in that world directly. You go on adventures, explore, kill stuff, make friends, complete quests and have a bloody good time all around! What you do is live, breathe and experience it on your own!

That's all I can do to explain the greatness of those two games. If you only buy two games in your life, get them!

onsdag 6 oktober 2010

Story in gaming!

The subject of today's address; storylines, and the way in which they interact with the gameplay.

Let's get one thing straight right off the bat; I think story in games is very important. I think it's one of those things that can really spoil a game when done poorly, and can really rescue a game from the dung heap when done well.

However, the situation is not as simple as that. Story needs to play nice with the gameplay and the mechanics of the game, or it'll be much less enjoyable. While there are a great many different games that have a very interesting and engaging story, it is often the case that there is an incongruity between it and the way the game plays.

Case in point; Command & Conquer. It is rather heavy in the storyline department, but once a mission starts you're separated from it. The story is something that pops up inbetween building 20 medium tanks and steamrolling the enemy base. While it is incredibly well presented, always in full-motion video with quite a few bigshot stars, it is always confined to the cutscenes.

Fortunately, the further we progress in gaming history, the more games tend to incorporate the story into the gameplay.

What I would hold up as the shining example of this is a small collection of splendid titles:

#1. The Call of Duty-series, and most importantly; Call of Duty 2. The series prides itself in giving an unrelenting and gritty view of warfare, with a considerable emphasis on the characters involved. They are not only set pieces that say a few words inbetween missions, they are your brothers in arms; men you rely on to get through the mission, and people who share the horrors of war with you. When they die, it stings your heart, and when you pull through an unforgiving siege against impossible odds, only three of you surviving, you feel a mixture of pride and sorrow at the result.

#2. Bioshock 1&2. Bioshock does away with the cutscenes entirely in favour of having all the dialogue to your character take place in realtime, most of it in the form of communication directly to the protagonist. The rest of the story comes from log entries found scattered all over the underwater city of Rapture, relaying eerie details about the people in it. However, the story can be seen as somewhat dislocated from the action and shooting, because you never actually come face to face with the ones who are helping you. I find it very immersive, but I can understand people who don't.

#3. Mass Effect 1&2. These two games have more or less set the standard for cinematic gameplay. The dialogue is well written, the animations are superb and you really feel like you have control over what the main character does and says. In addition to that, you form relationships with the various crewmembers and you can even get so far as a romantic subplot with some of them, and I assure you it's much more than the "Gratuitous sex!" that media has trumpeted out about the game.

#4. Silent Hill 2. Silent Hill 2 isn't just gripping and terrifying, it is also completely based on the story; you'll be trapped within the story from start to finish. Seeing as how the gameplay mechanics are bollocks, the story has to be top notch in order to pull the game out of the dirt, and does it ever! Even though you don't pick what the main character says, everything you do will be directly tied into the story.

#5. Strife. Strife is abit of a wild card, all the way from back in 1996. To call it a Doom-clone would be highly unfair, it might be based on the same engine, but it's bigger and better in every way. It defies the technological limitations of its time and incorporates quite a few roleplaying elements. You have conversations with allies and enemies alike, and the game puts your own struggle into a broader perspective; you are part of a movement with droves of other individuals, and your choices affect the outcome of the struggle.

For those interested in a good story to go with their gameplay, you really should try these games out!

tisdag 5 oktober 2010

Mind your own bloody business!

Sitting on the bus a couple of days ago, I had a very disturbing experience with a fellow traveler. Minding my own fucking business, mind you, I was asked if the Nintendo DS, a pink one, that I was playing wasn't made for girls.

Who in the flying fuck gave her the right to pass judgment on that? I did not engage in conversation, I did not indicate in any way whatsoever that I wanted her input, and I sure as hell didn't do anything that could possibly imply that she had any say in the matter!

I'm not the type of person who is overly subtle about my intentions. If I were to be interested in hearing that bitch's opinion, the question I would ask would be something along the lines of "Excuse me, do you think this here Nintendo DS looks abit girly?". Now, I did not pose that question, so I would really appreciate it if nobody took the liberty to answer it!

Just because I sit next to someone on the bus doesn't mean we are friends, it doesn't even mean we are equals. I have nothing but loathing and contempt for such bottom dwelling filth. It's like people saying "If you want my opinion...", STOP! No, I do not bloody want your misinformed and ignorant opinion, because I did not fucking ask for it!

Feel free to ask questions in a social setting, but while traveling on the bus is not a bloody social setting! I'm there because I want to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible, and I do not wish to engage in moronic conversation with people while doing that, especially when I just sit there playing The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, and I'd like to keep doing that rather than talking to such a bonehead!

måndag 4 oktober 2010

Kinda late, but whatever...

Seeing as how I am really late posting this, I shall have to cheat abit, by merely mentioning a couple of things to myself.

1. I shall not buy anymore sweets. It doesn't taste anywhere near as good as it used to, and it's not particularly healthy.

2. I will need to start working on my paper on the causes of the second world war!

3...okay, I'm going to sleep!

söndag 3 oktober 2010

More bus-y-ness!

Had to spend another six hours on a bus today. My god, it's not just the boredom, having borrowed a DS staves off that, it's the damn pain in my knee from sitting still so long!

Add to that, there was a bloody beeping noise for four damn hours! I was ready to kill someone by the time I got off the bus!

Have a big fat exam tomorrow, and have to get up at six, so I'll just say good night right away!

lördag 2 oktober 2010

Spirited Away!

I must say, it is without a doubt one of the strangest movies I have ever seen. It's not overly confusing; what's happening is usually discernible, but the twists and turns are bewilderingly odd and unexpected, it's absolutely impossible to determine ahead of time how things will unfold.

However, it's still a very good one. Just like the other movies from Studio Ghibli it tugs all the heartstrings at the right places, and confuzzled joy regularly follows.

All in all, this has been a fairly active day; we've gone shopping in the city, about 20 minutes walk from here, bought something to convert into a dinner and scouted out some restaurants for our rapidly approaching anniversery in three weeks.

Our attempts at finding a couple of training shoes for me were entirely unsuccesful; I merely had to say the words "Size 49" and they instantly told me "You're screwed!". We had much better luck at finding some jeans, as far as getting one whole pair that actually fit me properly. Though, the point of getting the shoes in the first place is to enable me to exercise properly so that I may lose some weight and a few inches off the waist, with any luck allowing me to squeeze into some other jeans I own.

Embarassingly enough, I had to resort to a walkthrough to get past a particularly tricky puzzle in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, because I was quite simply stuck; nothing I tried seemed to work! But now I'm past that little bump in the road, and I'll be dedicating most of my journey home tomorrow to the venture of finding another place to get stuck!

fredag 1 oktober 2010

A camel through the eye of a needle?

Today I would like to take the opportunity to yet again rant on the subject of religion. My specific gripe this time is heaven.

Heaven has come to be viewed as the most blissful of places, "heavenly" being an adjective describing beauty and delight. But what is heaven really supposed to be like?

If we read Revelations, it is described as a place where the only actions humans really take is to praise god at all times.

This offends me greatly! The thought of me, being a man raised with the ideals and goals of a free citizen, willingly giving all those freedoms up in favour of groveling in the dirt at the feet of a moody, willful and quite clearly maleficient deity is to me absolutely preposterous. We are, after all, talking about the same god that thought it would be the hallmark of a beneficent and sympathetic entity to stone to death disobedient children, homosexuals, witches and to smite with holy wrath a guy who accidentally touched the Ark of the Covenant to stop it from sliding off its carriage into the mud.

I wish I was making this shit up!

Even worse, it's not like this supposed god is giving us much of a choice. Either we spend the rest of eternity in slavery with no free will, or we will be cast down to eternal suffering in a sea of molten sulphur. Thank you very much, oh benevolent one!

All that apologetic bullshit about "Oh, god wants us to make our own choice!" rather rings false, doesn't it, when the options are either slavery or eternal damnation.

Good thing I do not believe in god, because I can't stand the idea of worshipping him in the first place. A good god doesn't let infant children die in an earthquake!