Been playing a ton more Divinity : Original Sin 2. And dying a lot.
Hence YWDAL. That stands for You Will Die A Lot. I’ve noticed that there are some games where dying fairly often is just part of the game and there is no real way to avoid it, especially when you first start out, so you just have to get used to it.
And I am sure there are people for whom that is a dealbreaker. In fact, I am doubly sure because I used to be one of them. When I was a more depressed and therefore ill individual, I couldn’t handle any game where failure is an integral part of the experience and would avoid games like that while complaining bitterly about it being too hard.
While also being too proud to play on easy mode. Ironic.
And that was such a “loser” attitude. There were a lot of games I might have not just enjoyed but profited from on a personal level if I had just stuck around long enough to learn to play them.
Don’t ask for specific examples. This isn’t that kind of article.
Luckily, I am stronger and saner and healthier now, and so I can play YWDAL type games and call upon my innate bloody minded stubbornness to keep me in the game long enough to learn it.
For example, I am slowly getting better at DOS2. It’s been a bit of a steep learning curve because the turn based combat has a lot of complex dynamics that are new to me and I seem to learn them one at a time, so it’s taking a while.
And part of it is just a matter of learning the terrain. I wasted a whole bunch of time this morning trying to do fights that were way beyond my team’s capabilities merely because I went through the first door I found instead of looking around the previous floor where I was supposed to go.
That stubbornness cuts both ways. If I had been less focused on trying to win impossible fights, I would have thought to check out the rest of the previous floor sooner and saved myself a lot of aggravation.
Tunnel vision. It’s a chronic problem for us deep focus types.
So is wandering off the point. What was I talking about again?
Oh right. YWDAL games.
Obviously, persisting despite failing a lot pertains to a hell of a lot more than video games. In order to get good at anything, you have to endure being bad at it at first. Life cannot be lived on easy mode.
But a lot of us who are former “gifted” kids fall into the trap of comparing everything to how easy things were for us in school compared to the other kids and never getting the clue update that says “No, that was then, and this is now, and now you have to try harder to get the same results. ”
Even if we do realize this, it’s all too easy to declare that to be (somehow) unfair and refuse to change, instead opting to refuse to try until the world (somehow) goes back to being that easy again.
Not gonna happen. Grow the fuck up.
Working on it.
More after the break.
And we’re off! Lets see if I can finish blogging before we leave for Subway.
Honestly, my odds are 50/50 at best.
Been playing more DOS2, of course. Turned out that other way I thought I could go ended abruptly in a locked hatch that only opens from the other side. Bummer.
On the other hand, I got past the room full of killer dogs by using a red rubber ball, which was cute AF. And I thought I would have to fight this super nasty wizard called The Flenser next, but yay. I could sneak right past him.
And the next door led to the outside world, and freedom! Of a sort.
I’m in the middle of a nasty swamp with undead all around me, but still. it’s nice for me and my party to breathe free again.
Still have those collars that block our special powers on, though. Those are going to have to go. Some of these special powers sound pretty cool.
Like my can summon a wolf with his soul. How cool is that?
Also found out I had a resurrection scroll I had forgotten about, so I was able to raise my pal Fane the “Eternal” from the dead.
Even though he’s undead. And from a race called the Eternals. He can still die.
Bit of a ripoff there, if you ask me. But I suppose an unkillable character would muck up the game balance a wee bit.
After reviving Fane the So Called Eternal, I immediately dismissed him in favour of adding a dwarf called Beast to the party as a thief.
You see, you can’t dismiss a dead character from your party because the only way to dismiss a character is to talk to them and barring a seance, I can’t talk to the dead.
So I revived Fane only to tell him to please fuck off now, thanks buh-bye.
Which means my party lacks a full time mage now. But Fane wasn’t really pulling his weight anyhow. His magic was okay but not great.
And now we have a thief to pick locks and backstab people.
101 words to go. Time to put the pedal to the metal.
They have this thing in the game where if you meet up with any of the six main characters and decide you want them in your party, you get to pick what class they are.
Which kind of makes class seem meaningless and arbitrary. Apparently, in this world,. anyone can do any job, but they only get to pick once.
Each character has a “correct” class in the sense that it’s the class they have when you meet them. So far, everyone is the “wrong” class except Fane.
And I kicked him out.
It’s a dog’s life in this army, that’s for sure.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.