Random Life Updates!

 I actually had a few things on my mind so I couldn’t make a less vague header if I tried but the random doesn’t have a tie-in theme at all…

First up, been crushing Baldur’s Gate 3 since the PS5 early release on September 2nd and it’s been quite some time since I’ve been excited to play a game like this. I didn’t really know what to expect but it has all of the elements of some of my favorite games to grind; the story-shattering consequences of choices you make like Witcher 3, the alchemy and book hoarding of Skyrim (different but reminiscent), the fluent fantasy feel of Dragon Age (the romances, whimsy and sometimes deep darkness; there’s a lot of dabbling BG3 does to remind me of DA throughout) and the turn-based strategy of the pixel graphics days but without the grid based movement, it makes battles feel much more fluid. My main gripes in the battle system are that there are some awkward pauses that feel like it might be frozen, some difficult choosing the topography when moving a character under or on top of an area (I feel there should be a dedicated button or if there is and I’m dumb, it should have appeared in the tutorial tips that I turned on for that reason), and it’s a little too easy to fire at nothing and waste an action when you thought you were in Move mode. There should be a sort of smart mode where it disables actions when targeting a space where it’s pointless to use it. Of course, you should always be able to toggle an action and shoot at nothing if you really want to, but let’s have interfaces that by default do not assume this. Brings to mind Assassin’s Creed where you’re trying to climb buildings and you’re pretty certain you’re angling towards the next jump and grab point when your assassin instead pulls a ‘goodbye cruel world’ jump to his death. In a game like BG3, even on explorer difficulty, a wasted action can be life and death when you’re up again a boss that can waste 2 out of 4 characters in a single turn. Which also is usually a quick end because you’ll waste actions reviving but not full healing them and not actually getting to hit the boss much while scrambling to keep reviving them. But there are some mechanics that, while frustrating, also keep things interesting. If you don’t revive a downed character, they become actual dead. You’ll need to revive them with a res(surection) spell, Revivify scroll or hopefully you got Withers in the ruins near where you begin after the alien ship crashes (you’ll need to get past the sarcophagus and trigger a fight; he’s in the sarcophagus in the room that triggers an undead battle when you find it). I love that you can massively destroy chances to recruit some characters or have to to get other characters to join. It makes characters feel dimensional because, let’s face it, we all have friends we can’t get to like each other and some that just seem to hate each other but can’t help but admire each other once clashing shows they have more in common than they thought. Gale’s a troublemaker and I’ve been keeping him confined to camp after he murdered my whole party with his stinky aura but at the same time, I want to get back to him on another play through. Incidentally while trying to play the good guy, I murdered most of the Emerald Grove people and while I quit that file in a huff of disappointment, I now want to go back to it and use the opportunity to recruit Minthara, since I’ve made my good girl unintentionally evil when I managed to accidentally steal in front of Kagha’s posse and trigger a massacre. This is also where I learned to quick save obsessively before each and every interaction and entry into areas because my impulses prove that good intentions are indeed not always intended and impulses can spell disaster (as well as the crushing realization that your last save was too far back for your liking).

But I didn’t intend this to be a BG3 review or I’d have said as much so I’ll leave it at that and move along.

I keep injuring my damn thumbs trying to craft and get my life together after surgery but I have thumb braces to put on for the worst of it. I stopped taking a multivitamin for women because I don’t need as much iron now that I’m not bleeding. However, I’ve been wiped out since, energy just gone, so I ordered a senior multivitamin with high B12 so I can get energy and immune and brain levels back up again. You never realize how well things were working until you stop.

Which kind of puts exercising on the back burner because my attempts at cleaning house have tired me way faster than usual so it’s pretty obvious I’m not going to do well with anything else. I woke up exhausted today and after attempting to clean and getting further wiped out, I downed my nighttime allergy pills and magnesium and hoping I’ll just fall back asleep in the next couple of hours. Sleep has been garbage since I quit the multivitamin too. I need to not do that again.

I’ll eventually get back to writing and doing more but already I’ve been doing much more than the years before, so I’m not keen on going into overdrive just to do EVERYTHING again. I don’t need to do everything; I just need to keep doing what’s doable and hoping that includes things that I had to leave half-finished. I do still like to adopt new things; we can’t adhere to old plans only when they constraint us far from the impulse of inspiration. Always leave room for those.