Venturing where no player has ventured before.....

When I play video games I have a habit of doing whatevertheheckIwant. Isn't that how it's supposed to be done? I like taking the shortest cuts everywhere and venturing away from the roads and climbing rocks and mountains that I think I'm probably not supposed to but clearly that doesn't stop me because I do what I want.

Sometimes though, it puts me in awkward situations where I swim too far in the water and it tells me "you can't go there because you are in the middle of video game nowhere." Sometimes I jump above a cave and think "Hey, that looks like an interesting spot, there's a hole above the cave, maybe I'll find buried treasure ABOVE the cave instead of IN the cave because that is all kinds of sensical."

That last bit is a true story (well actually so was the first one but it happened in Skyrim and I already blogged about that HERE). But this time, thanks to PS4 magic, I can SAVE screenshots and take videos when I do stupid shit instead of of taking a picture of the stupid shit with my phone! THE MAGIC OF TECHNOLOGY!

This is what it looked like when I climbed and jumped and climbed and jumped and then fell in a hole......and I couldn't get myself out of it.....

This is what it looked like when I wanted to try to get out:

SIGH, so I guess this is how it's going to be huh? I think my favorite part is that I somehow think that there is going to be SOMETHING worth looking and searching for in this weird mountainous void. Whatever......

Dragon Age Profiler: Jasper the badass Elf

I don't think I've talked about my character much.

Most people who know me understand my love of elves and their often misunderstood lives in the forest. Generally elves are moody and really sneaky, things I'd like to believe I'm good at in real life. 

After my long stint in Skyrim as being the sneakiest bitch around who killed any bad monster thing with one hit of my fancy elvish arrow I thought I'd keep things semi consistent. 

Most of my D&D characters have all been rogues because I like to be able to steal things and live on the edge so given that I am not good with surprises, Jasper the Elf Rogue Archer was born. 

She's been through some things: with a scar on her face and white hair, also being through some crazy hole in the world and now having some green electric shit coming out of her hand and tattooed face, you know she's going to dominate Thedas. 

All in all, she could easily fuck shit up....and is pretty serious about it.

Rifts in the drywall

Today I am on double duty. I think my real life handy person skills have leveled up. Between painting trim and filling holes big and small I'm also shooting arrows at crazy rebels and closing rifts with some green lightning from my hand. 

In real life I am seriously awesome. I actually feel like I'm attacking this house painting hole fixing scenario like a really badass craftsman whose weapon of choice happens to be a drywall knife and edging brush. Bard/crafty crafter?

Here is the hole before:

Much like all of the rifts I've encountered in the Hinterlands, there is a lot of mess to clean up. Also a lot of repetitiveness. In between drywalling coats (disrupting the rift) I decided to pick up the bow and deliver some flowers. Also medicine. Also some bad news that lovers have died. I'm not all sunshine and lollipops you know. 

Oh now back to fighting off rift monsters (sanding the drywall hole I filled) 

And back to our regularly scheduled programming of inquisition influence spreading. 

I'm doing a really good job of spreading the word of the inquisition. I feel like maybe Josephine has all the connections and whatnot but I'm pretty diplomatic myself. I haven't really tried to rustle anyone's feathers yet or be completely outrageous but I'll get there don't worry. 

Because it's Christmas vacation and both that guy I live with and I have time off we've been fighting over who gets to play. He is playing a much different dragonage than me. I did a lot of catching up that just needed to be done before carrying on with the good bits. 

Closing the rifts on the outskirts and being "chosen" is really like real life. I'm chosen to do house renovations because I'm an elf rogue archer crafter handy person and that guy I date doesn't like to get dirty in real life. 

So here I am, closing real life rifts and making things look like they bately ever happened. You're welcome. 

Inquisition: The Intro

I have been away for a looooooooong time. I tried playing Dragon Age Origins on XBox and then we sold the XBox. So.....

A few things I was expecting about the intro to Inquisition:

• me waking up in some weird place
• me being captured of some sort like in ALL the games I've ever played
• me looking BADASS (as usual)
• some sexual tension

did Inquisition deliver? YOU BETTA BELIEB IT DUDE. ALL of those things happened.

There was darkness. There was me deciding I wanted to look like a white haired rogue archer elf with sweet face tattoos (sigh, I wish I didn't have to be professional in real life).  Some lady cried for help. I was mistaken for a bad guy. I was handcuffed. Some ridiculously short hairy chested man with a crossbow made some sexual jokes to the lady who handcuffed me. In hindsight, I guess he's a dwarf. His name is Varric. 

This is me and my peeps of the inquisition. 

REGARDLESS, it's clear I'm on a mission now that the Holy Chantry is all messed up and there are no more religious leaders around until they appoint a new one.  Let me tell you, I already want to punch one of the Chancellor's in the face. Like I might actually get up off the couch and punch the TV (wait.........who am I kidding, I'm not going to get up off the couch....).

Does this not look like a dude you'd feel fully satisfied punching in the face?

I fully don't understand the fighting mechanisms in this game. You can be ALL the people in your group of people who follow you, so what they're telling me is that I have to worry about not only MY own upgrades and levelling and making decisions based on me being awesome and fucking shit up, but I have to make them for ALL of my party members too?  This is sounding like a lot of work.

Also, when we're in a fight, I can SLOW MOTION that shit down and FREEZE TIME BECAUSE I"M A WIZARD, HARRY! (wait, no...I'm an Elf Rogue Archer.....so how does that make sense?). So I'm an Elf Rogue Archer Wizard who can freeze time and my soul jumps from party member to party member telling them exactly where I want them to go and who I want them to shoot and then I can press the R2 pad and make them slowly progress and do the things I asked them to do IN SLOW MOTION BABY.

I know you're dying to know how I've managed in combat so far: the answer is pretty well. Although I might have put the hairy chested doesn't wear armour because he's too good looking dwarf in some trees somewhere by accident so all his crossbowing didn't really do anything, and I might have used my bow while standing right in front of most of the ghouls I was fighting and then wondered what the blue stuff was floating around me until I remembered that there was an actual WIZARD in my group who can heal you....as long as they're far away.....and not getting shot at.....like when you slow motion put them right in the heart of combat.

I think I get it now.

I'm baaaaaaaaaaack....

Hey, did you forget about me?  You know, that hilarious girl who filled your computer screens with funny anecdotes about me playing a totally fictional fantasy role playing game that had nothing to do with real life?

Oh, of course you didn't.  You've been flooding me with e-mails and messages saying "HEY, you should replay skyrim and write about it again" or "Have you been playing ESO?" or "you're an idiot for a) playing video games and b) writing about it" (that last one is a shout out to my girl LT, who I'd never be allowed to date because she has a strict rule about dating people who have played D&D).

Regardless, as excited as I thought I would be to start playing ESO, I got bored.  Fast.  I was part of the BETA testing a few times and there were a lot of bugs.  I never really got into it. I wasn't into the storyline. I felt like I was doing ALL the things I was doing in skyrim...and that was lame.

SPEAKING OF, I actually have the DLC for skyrim that I've been meaning to finish but I have a life now. Sort of. More on that later.....because today.....I went out and bought one of the most anticipated games of the year (for people who like that sort of thing)...

AWE YIS!

So stay tuned.....I have wednesdays off and guess what I'll be doing?

On News and Thieving

I got SO BAD at this and I apologize.  Not to sound conceited or anything (although, my family used to tell me "of all the conceit in our family, I think Jessica got most of it" - thanks for boosting it guys), but I re-read my blog sometimes and I think I'm HILARIOUS.  Mostly because I have context and during the sometimes 5 hour stints of me playing Skyrim I am in a constant state of inner laughter.  Regardless of all that, it's among one of the main reasons I actually play this shit.

This is something I wrote MONTHS ago.....and I thought it was still fairly true today and fitting for this post:

WOWZA.  I have been playing this game for TWO MONTHS and I'm not even CLOSE to finishing.  I think I mentioned this before but I think I average about 10 hours of playing a week, so let's approximate and say that I've spent 72 hours Climbing in people's windows and snatching their people up (don't forget to hide your kids and hide your wife....and your husband...because I'm pickpocketing ERRY-ONE out there).  That is THREE WHOLE DAYS of my life spent helping the citizens of Skyrim and basically saving their asses left right and center.
Without me, who would have taken Meridia's Beacon from the clutches of the evil Falmer in Shimmermist Cave?  Who would have Spread the Love of Mara around Skyrim? 

Me, waiting in line for the Keynote at PAX Prime West in Seattle

And may I add that my playing time has amounted to at least 5 days now?  and I haven't even played for two whole months because I've been in other countries where video games like STARCRAFT and LEAGUE OF LEGENDS are a big deal (neither of which I understand the fascination of in the slightest).


A lot has happened since the days of old as I become more than the girlfriend who plays one video game (which happens to be THE video game), and closer to the girl who starts to play Dungeons and Dragons with a regular D&D group and plays multiple video games and goes to video gaming conventions.  WUT!  Apparently it's been in me all along and I'm not ashamed.

Regardless of my newly attained video game prowess, I want to talk to you a little bit about my favorite questline in Skyrim.  Do you want to guess before I tell it to you?!?!?!  huh? Do ya? No?  Well you're no fun.

It's the Thieves Guild Questline.  You guys it is SO MUCH FUN, and intriguing, and ghostly, and, in my opinion, the best thought-out.  The last time I talked about my adventures in thiefdom was in this post of yore where I disclosed that Maven Blackbriar was the largest (and really only) client and that SOME SNEAKY MOM (or just person.....we had yet to find out) was slowly trying to shut her down and close her out of business.  For instance, the Goldenglow Estate where Maven got all her honey from for her Meadery was going to no longer supply it to her! WHAT THE EFF, so I warned the owner by burning down some bee hives and sneaking into the estate to find an interesting letter with a curious symbol on it.  Very curious indeed.

Maven asks to speak to me DIRECTLY, which, you guys, is SCARY because she's an intense lady who has waaaayyyy too much power over the peeps of Riften, and she wants to talk to ME.  Like I said, I'm a popular gal who gets invited to parties and the such and whatnot.  I talk to Maven like a civilized adult and she tells me that her competition up at the Hunningbrew Meadery outside of Whiterun somehow got a shitload of money and is in direct competition with Blackbriar Meadery.  Apparently she doesn't take to competition too well (as we've realized with the event I like to call "The Burning of the Bees") and she wants me to do something about it.

As if I have a choice, I agree to helping her out for a pretty sum and head to Whiterun to execute the plan.  Right now Hunningbrew has a skeever infestation (which I will agree is a thousand times worse than something like a cockroach or silverfish infestation).  I'm to find the nest and apply the poison said nest.  In doing so, I also have access to the brewing pots for the Mead and will put some gross shit in them to make the Mead taste disgusting and dirty so that when it gets tested by some eager investors they will drink the yuck and condemn the Hunningbrew dude and his mead therefore turning them towards the Blackbriar Meadery instead.  It's a pretty brilliant plan if you ask me, and, as you can imagine, worked like a charm, aside from the weird wizardy dude named Hamelyn that I met in the cave by the skeever nest who was batshit crazy forging a skeever army because he was upset about some people "wronging" him.  Give me a break.  I had to pull out some magic there and literally fire his ass so I could get to the nest and kill the skeevers.  What a pain in my backside.  I also stole a promissory note that contained the SAME symbol as that of the one found in Goldenglow Estate......curiouser and curiouser.

Regardless of all this, one common link is this dude name Gulum-Ei who often helps with thieves guild-y type things so I follow him to where he is actually sometimes stealing goods from the guild which by the way is an ass hole move, and I confront him about what all this is about.  He reveals to me that the person behind all this hullabaloo is a lady named KARLIAH.  At this point, the name means absolutely nothing to me, it's like, that moment where I *should* have some sort of jaw-dropping awe-ish reaction, but because I have no idea who the fuck he's talking about I'm like aiight and peace the scene.

Heading back to the thieves guild, I find out Karliah was a previous member of the guild, very close to both Mercer and the old guildmaster Gallus.  She also was the person who purportedly KILLED Gallus and now is planning on doing the same to Mercer Frey.  In other words, this sneaky lady is trying to shut down the thieves guild for good with her skeeving ways  and we're all not too happy about that.

So what are we going to do now? track her down? feed her to the wolves? cast a spell?  My questions were more like: what on earth does this chick have to gain from killing all these people?  Why would she resurface now after all this time?  Why am I the one who keeps getting chosen for all these high profile thieves guild quests when there are other people who are pretty high up in the seniority bit that might like some fame?

Want the answers?  CHECK BACK NEXT TIME BECAUSE THIS BLOG POST IS TOO FUCKING LONG.  I love you, but seriously all this typing is giving me a hand cramp.  UNTIL NEXT TIME, don't let anyone steal your sweet rolls.

Did ya miss me?

Let me just say that somehow over the course of a few months I regained some sort of a social/working life and have since ignored my duties of posting all of the exciting adventures I've had.  Did you miss me?  I kind of missed this.

A sneak peak into the catching up I will do now that school is done and I am back to being unemployed for the time being:

• I killed some skeevers and poisoned some beer and framed a dude.
• There are a million conspiracies against ALL the different groups in Skyrim.
• I became a prominent landowner in almost every town.
• I am a poet, likeable to shakespeare.
• I "listen" very carefully.
• Skyrim is glitchy as shit, but still it's super fun?
• There is a fucking CASTLE IN THE SKY.
• A lot of homeboys/girls want to marry me (who can blame them?)
• The time I turned green and became a cow.
• Plants sing songs and come in crimson colours!
• Mediating civil wars is NOT all it's cracked up to be.
• I'm still not fucking done the game......

This isn't even the half of it.  

My friend Laurel is going to disown me, but I love this shit.

Stay tuned!  same bat time, same bat channel.