More or less.
Finished the major overarching plotline of Assassin’s Creed : Odyssey just now.
Man, what a game. According to Steam, I have played it for slightly more than 150 hours so far. And I am not quite done yet.
To get the final ending, I had to defeat the Minotaur (aka the OG Taurus), the Cyclops (there’s only one in this game), the Sphinx (who followed tradition and tore herself to pieces when I answered all her riddles), and finally the Medusa.
After defeating each one, I retrieved an artifact created by the Precursors, or “Isa”, who are some Clarke level alien race who built Atlantis and irresponsibly left behind a bunch of way too powerful artifacts and build these sanctums (sancta?) full of impressively brutalist geometry and such.
What is it with alien races building everything out of pyramids and spheres and shit, anyway? How come you never see an alien base or ship that’s decorated with comfy furniture and bookshelves and a nice throw or two to warm things up a bit?
Not alien (or alienating) enough, I suppose. After all, they are supposed to be impressively enigmatic and far, far more advanced than us.
Which apparently means a lot of bare stone and the Platonic solids. I guess it shows just how impenetrable Geometry is for most people.
But I dunno. I suppose if someone from ancient Greece was transported to our time, they might be somewhat freaked out by all our very regular rectangular buildings and of course by cars and computer and such.
Yet I am pretty sure it could be made to make sense to him or her. They didn’t have cares but they had chariots. A rectangular building with rectangular rooms is not all that different from what the Greeks had.
Computers would be tricky to get over, I suppose. Call it magic book?
My point, and I do have one, is that an advanced alien race would not necessarily be completely opaque to us, like in Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke.
In fact, it was when reading a sequel to that story that I came to the conclusion that above a certain level science fiction can’t help but turn into religion.
After all, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
I think that we can’t help but imagine sufficiently advanced aliens as gods, even when that doesn’t necessarily make any sense.
Basically, there’s two kinds of really advanced alien races : just like us with better gadgets, and space gods.
This is what comes of trying to imagine the unimaginable, I suppose. The truth is that, almost by definition, we have no idea what an advanced creature would say or do because we would have to be that advanced to think of it.
I think that makes sense.
But it’s a slippery problem because go back to the mid to late 19th century and you will see that much of what they had then is just a more primitive version of what we have now. Not everything, but a lot of things.
So you could probably get an intelligent 19th century to understand the basics of modern life, although the culture shock would be enormous.
Anyhow, where was I? Oh right, Assassin’s Creed : Odyssey.
I finished the big plotline, but I still want to finish assassinating all the members of the Cult of Kosmos. That’s the original evil cult trying to control the Greek world in the main plotline of the game. I pierced the heart of the cult and shut down all their evil plans, but there’s still like fifteen members of the cult out there up to no good, and I plan to exterminate every one of those motherfuckers.
After that, I will probably start a new game, but I won’t get far in it before my interest in the game completely dies.
That’s kind of how it goes for me. I lose interest in a game when I know what will happen next. I am a very plot driven dude. That’s why I write them well.
Maybe I’ll start putting my mad writing skills to use.
More after the break.
On being productive
I came across a sobering set of facts recently.
Men commit suicide in much larger numbers than women.
In general, women are more likely to attempt suicide but men are far more likely to succeed, often due to a difference in methods.
You’re a lot more likely to survive swallowing a bottle of pills than jumping off a bridge.
And someone did a simply massive longitudinal study[1] examining the reasons why so many men take their own lives.
And the biggest factor was, essentially, failure. These men felt like they were failures, or losers, and that is literally the worst thing a man can be in terms of society and status.
Worse than being a wimp. Worse than being a coward. Worse than being an animal.
Being a loser is a total negation of your value as a human being if you’re a man. And when that is how you feel, suicide may seem like the only solution.
Take it from one who knows.
Because the massive mountain I have yet to find a way to climb is feeling like I am a total loser for being 51 and never having had a job or a boyfriend or my own place to live or pretty much any other of the usual signs that you have become an adult.
Ergo I am not one, and that’s beyond pathetic when you are 51, and the worst part is, it’s the kind of pathetic that only gets worse with time.
With every birthday, I become an even bigger loser. Yay me.
Now I can see these beliefs of mine from the outside. I know that from a detached but sympathetic point of view, they are unfair, unhealthy, and just plain wrong.
I know that other people do not see me that way.
But that iceberg of shame and self-loathing still looms enormous on my horizon and I can’t seem to find a way around it.
I can’t seem to convince myself either that I am not a loser, or that being a loser is not that bad after all.
And while I am not suicidal, if my Titanic ever does sink, I know exactly which iceberg will have done it to me.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.