#or maps that are at least just not mind numbingly stupid

[sieglinde-freud]

i want to keep playing black eagles but everytime i open three houses i open it to the gautier inheritance and by god that map is just so. terrible. and then i turn off the game. unfortunately linhardt and lysithea have not learned warp yet so i just have to play it. the worst map ever. who ever designed this, 5000 curses upon ye. FUCK YOU

[pixel-cat-1]

I just finished The Outer Worlds

I don’t really ever use this blog for more than reblogging stuff, so this is probably coming out of left field for anyone who follows me, but as you see in the title, I beat The Outer Worlds not a couple of minutes ago. I have some thoughts I’d like to talk about while their fresh, and this is as good a place as any to do that lol

So, what did I think of it? Overall, I think The Outer Worlds is okay game that ultimately fails to meet up in many regards to not only Obsidian’s golden child, Fallout New Vegas, but in some departments even regular ass Bethesda games from years ago. And that’s honestly such a shame, because TOW had so much goddamn potential and yet I finished it and felt practically nothing for the entire last level and final ending sequence.

The main issue I think is that ultimately speaking, TOW doesn’t necessarily do anything different from any other RPG I can think of, and it doesn’t do anything like that super well. 

For example, the combat’s good on a technical level. The controls and mechanics are fun to use (especially the dodge system), but the enemies tend to either range from “complete curb stomp bitch babies” to “bullet sponge that’ll kill me so fast I won’t even know what happened.” Most fights weren’t particularly engaging, and I was basically handicapping myself but not using the companion abilities for about 75% of the game (I don’t know why I never tried pressing the d-pad buttons, but yet again, when I can just shoot shit and huff an inhaler, I didn’t need to think too hard). The disparity of how difficult the game can be is often confusing, and I was more often limited because of my ammo count more so than my ability to play the game.

The RP aspects can be good at times. There are plenty of skill checks that reward you for being a smart little egg, and a part of RPG’s I like is being able to avoid combat and make people happy, and generally make myself useful, so that was fairly fun. Overall the dialogue options and the performances by most VA’s left me not feeling like I was being hindered in acting and responding to situations how I’d like, so at the very least, that didn’t let me down.

The music was overall enjoyable, although very forgettable, and sometimes a bit all over the place: there’s Western-y guitar ambient tracks, also some more techno-y ones? Elevator music that sounds like they got it from a royalty free website. This kinda wish-washyness ties into multiple issues I had with the game I’ll get into further on.

The graphics are good, which isn’t necessarily shocking anymore because every game looks good. There are some aesthetic choices I liked, that being things like the Art Deco style architecture and advertisements from the loading screens. Terra 2 is gorgeous as all hell, with the skybox being particularly amazing (I’ve often fantasized about Earth having rings, so this partially fulfills that fantasy). Monarch is overall also very well done, with making it look and feel like a hostile shithole with ravenous wildlife. The looming gas giant overheard also does a good job of making me feel dread, which is about as much of that feeling I ever got. However, the game never really maintains a distinct “style”, rather it collages a bunch of them at once. Because for all the aesthetic of the Art Deco style that they do for cities like Byzantium. there’s like 10 levels/areas that are just generic as all hell “sci-fi space shit” that you’ve seen before. And then there’s Scylla, which is so fucking boring in design I don’t know why it’s even in the game.

This creates an issue where it’s like they wanted to make the game look Bioshock, but some people wanted something out of Mass Effect. But some people played Borderlands, and wanted to go for the wacky space bandit and hostile environment feel. But they also wanted to stick it to Bethesda, so they made is vaguely look like a Fallout game as well. It’s hard to describe in text, so I’m just gonna post these and show it best I can

^ It looks like space Bioshock here

^ And here it reminds me more of Borderlands than anything else (it’s a lot easier to see if you look at it from the ground, rip)

Scylla is literally just a rock. As far as I can tell, you could probably fucking avoid the damn thing if you avoid side quests. There’s fucking nothing there. Just enemies, a few side quest things, an empty town and a giant terraformer thingy that’s interesting to look at for like 4 seconds. And despite what you’d think, no, there is no low gravity. That would’ve at least made this place have some interesting gimmick or mechanic, but no. It’s just a fucking dumping ground for side quests. God. Fucking. Damnit.

All science-y buildings just look like this for the most part across all levels. It’s not bad, just very generic and same-y.

The Groundbreaker’s fairly interesting, until you realize that all it is is essentially a giant corridor front to back. Actually, scratch that, it’s two corridors! One of which is this Back Bays area overrun with criminals. How do you get to this clearly dangerous and isolated part of the ship? Well a fucking elevator smack dab in the middle of the pavilion of course! So anyone can just go up or down into this apparent no man’s land part of the ship by literally going into it via an elevator. Dear god.

^Monarch definitely has one of the best looking environments in the game, tied with Terra 2 down below

But what absolutely fucks the game overall is despite how much effort they put into making everything look nice (regardless if you actually like it or not), the overall level design in terms of function and whatnot? Mind numbingly boring.

All levels are really small maps with (at most) a handful of major buildings or towns depending on the scale, and the rest is just a bunch of abandoned buildings with some enemies, or a crashed ship or something. There's just...nothing going on with half of these dungeons.

Also the vast majority of buildings have a “Quarantine” sign out front or is locked in some capacity, which means you could have 4-5 buildings in a random batch of them along a road, but only 2 you can explore. And since all the fucking interiors across multiple planets look the exact same, it leads to an incredible feeling of sameiness in a game that has you running around an entire solar system. How the fuck even??? I’d argue fucking Fallout 3 handled this better. At least there was more to do! More overall dungeons and levels! Did I miss something? Am I just fucking stupid and I missed the all the good shit?

Combine this with the wish-washy aesthetics and music, it leads to an incredible feeling of not really knowing what to make of things. You’ll just be sprinting around, shooting all the red things on the compass just to get it over with by Monarch. And when you realize that LMG’s are just...the best weapons in the game as far as I could tell, and there’s no real downsize to them, you’ll just fucking run around gunning everything down while some forgettable track plays in the background until some enemy with a weirdly large health bar forces you to think for a bit before you get back to running around and shooting shit again. 

Despite this though? I still overall enjoyed the combat. I liked running around and becoming the 4th Horseman. Plus with the mechanics overall being fun to use, it wasn’t really that bad. But I can’t say on an objective level I think it’s good for a game to feel like that. Because despite how heavy handed I’m being right now (and will be throughout the rest of this impromptu review), I don’t hate this game. 

Sound design is overall very good. Guns make satisfying shooty shooty bang bang noises, and as I said before, the VA’s are overall very good all around. Parvati stands out as the most interesting character to listen to in general. She has a lot of informal speech patterns that makes her distinct, and is generally a treat to listen talk. At worst, you get a character like Nyoka, who doesn’t sound bad by any real means, but for a lot of her dialogue, I felt they should’ve slowed it down and focused on getting her emotions down. But it certainly wasn’t bad.

Storywise? This game wasn’t particularly interesting. I’m gonna put the keep reading thing here because I want to avoid spoilers for anyone who hasn’t played yet and cares about them. Long story short, I think the game was good, but very disappointing given what it could have been. I enjoyed myself for the most part, but often found the lack of anything super special to really hold it back from achieving something I think the gaming industry needed in an era of, ironically enough, hyper greedy corporations with no morals to speak of.

So, what did I think of the story? And I guess by extension, the side quests. Overall, I think the main story was...not very good. There was a lot of good stuff inbetween though, and a lot of side quests and little things definitely were enjoyable. But the plot is just not nearly as engaging as it should be. Given how short it was though, that might’ve been a mercy.

The story, as roughly as I can summarize is, is that you’re a colonist frozen on the colony ship “Hope.” It’s been adrift for 70 years, but you’re woken up by a guy named Phineas Welles (he’s basically Doc Brown, but nicer). The Board (which consists of the 10 companies who own and run the colony/solar system) try to stop him, but they fail, and you’re escape podded onto Terra 2, near a dying town called Edgewater. The pod accidentally kills the contact you were to meet, so now you’re gonna steal his ship and use it to do shit basically.

Along the way, you pick up a ragtag band of miscreants and general shitheads and kill a lot of people and wildlife in a quest to stop the corrupt Board from running the colony harder into the dirt than they already have. It’s very by the numbers, more or less. I guess.

The immediate issue is that, despite being able to join the Board and betray Phineas if you want, there’s absolutely no fucking reason to do that. Not a single goddamn reason, other than for the evulz. This creates an issue where I feel no reason to deviate from the Phineas side of the story. And I know what someone might be thinking “But Pixel! The Board is supposed to be evil!” And I am absolutely aware of that. But the thing is, so was Caesar’s Legion in Fallout New Vegas. And yet, that faction is often considered just as interesting and compelling a faction for the game as the NCR or Mr. House. People will, to this day, still argue over who had the best idea for solving the Wasteland’s issues. Because despite how evil the Legion is, they still had very valid points about the NCR and how horribly corrupt and bloated it was. And there was absolutely an argument to be made about how safe they made their lands for those under their ownership. Stuff like that that makes you actually consider and think about whether or not you're actually making the right choices for the whole of the New Vegas wasteland, and by extension the rest of the Western part of America.

Here? There’s no contest. There is no necessary evils. There is no good reason the Board does anything. No logic, no reason. All they can do is fuck shit up even more, and that makes them such a boring, vague antagonist that there was never a moment in my mind I actually considered working for them. Any potential moments they had to sway me or dashed aside by them constantly proving how they could never actually fix the problems they made. And if that was the intention? Then Obsidian fucked up.

People remember the villains that raise a point a hell of a lot more than they do villains that are just evil for the sake of it (there are obviously exceptions, for an RPG? you need a compelling villain). And that’s why no one will remember this game in a decade. It pales so hard in comparison to New Vegas, it’s not even funny. It’s on par with Fallout 3, at best. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing if the whole point of this game was to make a statement against an increasingly morally bankrupt Bethesda.

Let’s look at, per se, Skyrim. Paarthurnax was a supporting character with an interesting backstory: he’s Alduin’s brother, who is the main antagonist. He is a dragon that secludes himself on the top of the tallest mountain in Skyrim, who meditates and focuses on suppressing his inherit evil dragon nature. Despite this nature, he chooses to be good. And he asks a very compelling question.

"What is better? To be born good or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?”

In a single sentence, Skyrim asked a more though provoking question than the entirely of The Outer Worlds. And if you played F:NV, then it’s probably weird to hear that, because F:NV was full of moral and philosophical quandaries. So where did it all go?

The thing is, people forget that the Obsidian that made F:NV is dead and gone. The actual people who made that game have all moved on from that company. This is the child trying to replicate the success of it’s parents, without entirely understanding exactly what the parent did to achieve what it achieved.

The biggest difference between F:NV and TOW is that F:NV really forces you to think. TOW just doesn’t require that, at all. 

Phineas good, Board bad. No thinking required.

I think the real warning sign is at the beginning of the game as well. Edgewater, the first town in the game, is dying. People are leaving and the town's also dealing with a disease epidemic. The town’s leader’s answer? Cut off power to the deserters, and force them to work harder despite the fact the town’s basically dying because of the overworking and disease. Despite the fact there’s not even enough medicine to heal everyone, and they have to play favorites with who lives and who dies.

What the fuck logic is this? Why would I ever choose that?

The only other choice, unless I missed a compromise solution (which I would’ve wanted) is to route power to the deserters and finish off the town more or less. The deserters wouldn’t take in everyone though, so a lot of people would die anyways. But even then, she’s still clearly the more competent leader. There’s not a goddamn contest. 

It just continues like that the whole game. I rarely had to think about who I’d side with. because the solution is obvious. The literal only reason I’d side with the corporations is if I was being evil, nothing else.

The best the story gets is when you need to make a compromise on Monarch between MSI (a corporation who got the boot from the Board) and the Iconoclasts (Religious people who are anti corporation). If you work with the second in command of the Iconoclasts, you can depose their extremist, dipshit leader and work out a truce. Which is good! It rewards the player for this too, when these factions come to help in the final level of the game (and when you see specific characters you could save helping out, that also make it feel like your decisions had an impact). You see the two factions...standing next to eachother, which isn’t much, but it’s about as much change you see in the game.

Which is also another thing that TOW fails to accomplish: a sense of longevity with my decisions leads to me feeling that, despite making the right choices, nothing really changes. 

Going back to Edgewater, you’d think after a while, I’d come back and the town would be entirely gone or something, right? 

Nope.

Some NPC’s stood outside the factory forever, as did some guards. There weren’t any lights on. That’s about it.

Well, certainly the Deserters must give me more quests to help out, which can lead to me establishing them and helping them help the Edgewaterers, right?

No. Very quickly you realize there’s very little do or talk about with NPC’s after you do monumental decisions. The only functional difference is an opinion slider, which is another imitation from F:NV that means fuck all. The only in game things it affects is: a) The prices of venders of that factions

b) Whether or not that faction will shoot you on site.

That’s it as far as I noticed. The best idea they had, that being that factions can love you, but also fear you just doesn’t do anything. As far as I could tell, at least.

I’d love to be wrong, because I was so excited to see what would happen to entire settlements and after I helped them. After I made important decisions that’d change the face of the colony. And I felt so disappointing when it became apparent little actually mattered. 

The companion sidequests aren’t too much better. The pacing is so weird, sometimes, depending on how available certain planets are. Parvati’s was especially jarring, despite it being the best written by far.

It basically is you helping her get with an engineer chick from the Groundbreaker. It’s pretty adorable overall, and without a doubt has some of the better writing character wise, but the pacing was so fucking weird. It initially starts with you getting Parvati to talk to her about engineering stuff. They say they’ll email and stuff about engineering stuff. which is neat. So I run around, finish up all the side quests on the ship as I can, then head back to my own ship. I did not go back to my ship at all during this. 

When I come back, Parvati immediately tells me that she and the engineer, Junlei, have been messaging and getting flirty and now she has a crush and it’s just like “Dude, were you texting her while we murdered all those bugs in the engine?”

It’s doubly funny as well, because Obsidian wanted to avoid the player having romanceable characters. Which makes about as much sense as you think. Once source said the reason was that they wanted you to focus on roleplay, and not trying to bang anyone you found hot (okay?). Another just said they weren’t ready for it. And I believe it. As much as I think romance would’ve been another good thing to add depth to this game, I bet you they’d have fucked it up. It’s just funny. Even Fallout 4 had pretty acceptable romances.

Granted the system was fucking basically “Kill shit together until you wanna bang” but fuck, it was something! It also doesn’t help there’s a bunch of cuties all over this game: Huxley stands out as an adorable muffin who becomes a generic NPC at the end of the MSI/Iconoclast questline, despite the fact you can even repair her journal terminal with zero indication at you can do it, which is good! Let me just do things to be nice! But she literally just sits there after you rescue her with a few dialogue options which goes away after the peace deal, and it's so fucking frustrating that I want to enjoy the characters more, but none of them seem to have more than a paragraph's worth of depth to them and it's so sad.

Even the companions are like this. At the beginning I’d try and talk with Parvati about anything, but the only dialogue options would be about getting her out of the party, and that’s it. I can’t ask her what she thinks of things, or of the current quest/situation. There’s such a weird lack of depth in a weird amount of areas, that it felt almost worse than playing a Bethesda game.

I think the penultimate disappointment of the game is, fittingly, the final level, Tartarus. Which is fitting, because it feels very hellish. Not the planet mind you, or the prison which it takes place in, but just the complete lack of anything super special. It’s just the same kind of environments you’ve already run through, but bigger and with more bullet sponge bad guys. Which is funny, because jumping around and killing an army on a purple hell planet that has perpetual lightning storms would’ve been sick as fuck, but nah, gotta run around on Scylla instead of anywhere else compelling.

In my playthrough, MSI, the Groundbreaker, and the Iconoclasts came to help me deal with all the fucking goons, which was mostly cool because I didn’t have to deal with the tediousness of killing every last one of corporate goon myself.

This is about as big of an impact your decisions come to as far as I’ve noticed. Which isn’t saying much.

You meet the Chairman of the Board here, by the way. I just shot him and kept moving. shrugs

There’s also a last minute villain in this Sophia person, who is also apparently on the Board? It’d help if there was a list of the Board people, which could’ve been on a terminal somewhere. Maybe I’m dumb and never found it, which is plausible. 

The final boss fight, (I hesitate to call it that) is just somewhat large robot. It’s a bullet sponge with respawning combat drones flying everywhere and they’re very annoying. I died once after around 10 minutes of fighting, then using Parvati and Felix’s (he’s another companion, he’s also okay I guess) combat abilities I knocked it down and layed into the robot’s weak spot. He died very quickly.

So depending on how you do it, the final fucking boss is either stupidly hard or mind numbingly easy. I don’t know which is worse.

So you go past the dead robot, gun down Sophia in one shot, and save Phineas. You basically become the leader of Halcyon, there’s a F:NV-esque slideshow and commentary about your actions that somehow is worse that New Vegas’s, credits roll, and you sit there thinking “That’s it? That’s really it?”

Yeah, that’s it. 

It’s such a let down, especially because this was supposed to be Fallout New Vegas’s spiritual successor. But all it does it make me want to play that game instead of this one.Which is probably what you should do regardless if you pick this game up or not.

There’s a bunch of other mechanics and stuff I never brought up. There’s technically a character customization screen, but you literally only see your character in the select menu, and there’s no third person. There’s a barber in Edgewater who’s also a doctor, and yet you can’t even get a haircut from him (again, failing to match up to even Fallout 3). 

There’s these Mods you can put on armor and guns, and you find them by the bucket full so you’ll always have those. Just get an aim stabilizing one for an LMG and you’ll be fine. You can also tinker your armor and weapons, making them stronger if you spend credits on it (why not the armor and weapon parts, I’ll never fucking know). You can repair your stuff at a workbench, which is advisable. Just take all the weapons and armor you pick up, take it apart for parts, and never worry about it again. You’ll get money from quests, so buying those parts is meaningless and a waste of money

There’s also hacking and stealth and stuff. Stealth is such a non...thing in the game. There’s no silencers, but since all enemies decided to put cotton into their ears, there’ll be plenty of times I shoot someone, and a guy ten feet away heard fucking nothing. Plus there’s this disguise mechanic where you pick up ID guards and get a hologram disguise that wears out as you walk (passing speech check from suspicious guards restores it), so it’s not like sneaking around was ever a priority. Just put your points into the speech. Stealth is a dump stat more or less. 

Oh yeah, Parvati’s an ace lesbian. Which is nice that they handled that way in a non-dipshit way (you can also identify as ace in certain dialogue with her in her companion questline, which is funny considering they never let you fuck anyways, so it’s weird that you even have the choice). My only complaint is that they should’ve put this representation in a better game. 

What’s funny is that, despite everything, I don’t even hate this game. I feel a remarkable numbness, followed by a desire for something better. I spent about a week burning through it? If I had more free time, I could’ve finished it sooner probably. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it. It was pretty fun for what it was, but knowing that this is somehow supposed to match up to what F:NV was is sad, and a sign of how bad the gaming industry had fallen. 

The only difference here is that unlike the Outer Worlds, I can’t purge the rot of the gaming industry with a haelstrom of plasma bullets.

Would I recommend this game? I guess. There’s still some fun to be had, but don’t expect anything too major or interesting. Get it on sale, it;s not worth $60 right now. There’s apparently DLC coming out for it eventually? I might play it, and I might post an update to this review, or make a seperate post for that eventually. Depends on how well this one does? Or if the DLC makes me feel enough emotion to type something out like this in 2 straight hours.

[view-from-a-warm-place]

039 // What a life.

Distractions X: “Stupid Jaywalking Game, Part IV″

This weblog is still alive, if you could call it living. I apologize once again for not updating, but my reason is at least a good one?

In the past few weeks, I have been able to actually take my jaywalking simulator from being an unattractive and ineffective traffic-themed screensaver and turned it into an actual, playable, though mind-numbingly basic, “game.”

Here is an itemized list of the things I have added since I wrote last: (It is a bit on the long side so I will break the post here for easier scrollin’...)

 - A user-controlled pedestrian with whom players may beat the mean streets of Traffic Town. Players may walk, run, or sneak. Running depletes stamina which only recovers while standing (rapid recovery) or walking (modest recovery). Exhausting your stamina entirely places the player in an.. uh.. exhausted state where they move very slowly, stamina recovery is hampered, and running is not possible until their stamina is fully recovered. 

 - Pop-up objective destinations to travel to. Why? To collect points, of course.

 - Power ups which put a bit more spring in your step. There are several kinds.

 - Map decorations to liven up the city and more importantly get in your way. Some block you, others are just for looks. Still working out the scale of things.

 - Vehicles now have big, bright signals to make it more obvious when they are stopping or turning, because the eight pixel brake and turn lights on the sprite was obviously not going to cut it.

 - Buildings and vehicles now have blocking maps which players cannot pass through. Pedestrians who strike or are struck by vehicles may respond in one of three ways: Repelled, when the Vehicle is moving very slowly or (more likely) the player bumps into one which has stopped, they stop without harm. It is rude though so try not to. Glancing blows occur when the vehicle strikes a pedestrian but at a modest speed and when the pedestrian-vehicle-interface area shallow. The struck pedestrian is knocked back a short way and instantly loses all of their stamina. Do not let this happen in the middle of a busy road. Death occurs when a vehicle strikes a pedestrian clean and true, and at a decidedly non-survivable speed. Next time, cross at the corner.

 - A rather cumbersome heads-up display that I still need to work out some more details with. It includes a stamina bar, life counter for each of up to two players, score readouts for those players, a timer that tells you how much time is left or for how long you have been playing, and a very useful mini map that shows you the city and where you are in it. The map also has a bunch of fancy radar functions that display vehicles, power-ups, and blocked areas. On harder modes, less data is shown. Strangely, the map does not show the streets themselves yet. Hm.

 - Maps now scroll and move with the player, allowing them to be larger than the window the game is played on (which is good because Python is not really built for big windows).

My next goal I think is to make at least two or three decently-sized maps and maybe a level editor. The editor is a bit of a stretch since it represents a lot of work and probably not a huge return, but I still have to revise the way Intersections work and so it may become easy after those revisions. Depending on how that goes, I may even try to make a thing that generates random maps. On this element, breaths should not be held. 

I ought to have an animation for you, of the game itself, in my next post. Please look forward to it! <3

[lunaraen]

"Were you ever going to tell me?" w/ Axel and whoever else?

There’s something jarring aboutbeing cheered on by people who used to mock or ignore them.

It’s even worse when they ask foran autograph, practically begging, and the first and sometimes only memoryOlivia has of them is them snickering at her when they thought she couldn’thear them.

At least they haven’t had to dealwith the Ocelots at all, in any form. Being picked on by Aiden would be somesort of return to normalcy, poor and unwelcome as it would be, and him askingfor her autograph would probably be enough to make her die laughing.

(The last she saw any of them waswhen Lukas had been at the first ceremony, and he hadn’t stuck around for long.Olivia’s not sure where he went, but he can take of himself.)

It’s not that the attention’s bador anything, but it’s so different from what she’s used to. It’s just anotherlittle thing that sticks out, that stays in the back of her mind and remindsher that everything’s different now. She’s working side by side with Ellegaardthese days, for Notch’s sake. Well, okay, maybe it’s more that she makessuggestions Ellegaard doesn’t like and usually ends up fetching items forEllegaard’s original idea instead, but it’s the thought that counts.

And despite the order not beinganything close to what they said they were, Ellegaard’s still in charge ofRedstonia and as creative as ever, if only because one thing the command blockcouldn’t give her is her skill with redstone —actually, Olivia’s not sure aboutthat, because it seemed like there was nothing the command block couldn’t do,but she’s not going to try and stir up more anger at Ellegaard— and nobody’sstupid enough to try and chase away the most brilliant engineer of their time.

There’ll never be anyone as goodas Ellegaard, especially when they have her pathetic excuse for an apprenticeto compare her to. Olivia doesn’t mind that none of them trust her, not really,if only because she hasn’t done anything to show that she’s a good or halfwaydecent inventor, and even Ellegaard hardly seems to know what to do with herhalf the time.

(Her reaction to Olivia leavingto help set things up in the new temple had been almost entirely blank beforeshe’d simply shrugged. She didn’t say anything about it, and she didn’t haveto. They both knew she wouldn’t miss anything.)

Olivia sighs as she tugs on oneof her ponytails, setting the pencil aside as she stares down at the blueprint,redstone smudges staining the corners and a splatter left on the paper fromwhere her hand had been. The lamps that line the room make for good lighting,but right now the light keeps glinting off of little parts of machines in thecorner of her eye. She’s got everything set up, even if nothing’s reallyrunning yet, and at least the basement’s cool enough that when she gets themstarted, nothing should overheat. There are no windows in the little section ofit she claimed as her workshop, but there don’t need to be. There’ll be plentyof heat from the machines, and light’s not an issue.

It’s the first relaxing daythey’ve had since the whole thing began, because mind-numbingly long tripswhere she constantly flips between worrying and being bored out of her minddon’t count, and since she woke up there’s been a persistent throbbing in herhead that only finally disappeared less than an hour ago while even swallowing is stillenough to make her throat ache.

There are still so many littlethings that need tweaking and adjusting, parts of the city, because that’s whatthe sleepy little town’s become as more and more people move and settle nearthe Order of the Stone, that Jesse will probably want to modify again and willneed help working on because Jesse’s never happy with whatever they do and Olivia’spartly convinced that it’s the only way Jesse’s trying to stay grounded that’sworking at all.

What she needs to do is stopprocrastinating and actually finish something, even if that something is apointless little project that’s going to be redone anyway.

When she gets to the door,though, she finds Axel coming down the stairs, glancing around.

She spends half a secondwondering why she didn’t hear him arrive before remembering that there’s no oneto greet him upstairs.

(Not that something like that usuallystops Axel from making a loud entrance, but it doesn’t help.)

Jesse’s trying to help Ivorsettle in a new home, being the only one who wanted to, and Petra’s eitherworking with the guards or out trading again. She’s been all over the placelately, except for at the temple because she doesn’t really seem to knowexactly how to handle dealing with Jesse and Olivia when nobody’s life is atstake and when they don’t want to buy something from her.

The last time Axel was even atthe temple, it might not have been more than some designs on paper and a holein the ground.

And she can’t actually rememberthe last time she saw him, because surprise, surprise, it turns out Ellegaardand Magnus didn’t want their cities to be too close together and ended uphaving them on opposite ends of the map, but the smile she gives lasts for allof about two seconds before she narrows her eyes.

She’s tired, but she’s not blind,and she’s pretty sure he’s limping.

It’s a good thing she’s got afirst aid kit. Somewhere. She’s sure it’s under one invention or other, but atleast she has it.

Getting Axel to actually sit downand let her look at it’s harder than it should be, but they’re equally stubbornand Olivia has the advantage of not constantly fidgeting to try and takepressure off of her leg.

What she finds is a nasty splotchon his leg, parts of it waxy and other parts entirely brown, the skin around itbright red and certain areas looking like hardened skin that’s been peeled off,almost like a scab that’s been torn open and left to hang off the tiny bit ofskin that’s still attached to his leg. The most interesting part of it is themiddle, equally splotchy but with bits of pink skin that look almost completelyuntouched.

If anything, it looks like hetried to take a health potion way too late, though she’s not going to bother toask where he got it. She knows he’s not going to tell her, or is going to comeup with some silly story that isn’t the truth at all.

The scary part is that it meansthe injury is old enough that a potion could be taken too late, and it’s madescarier by the fact that, the more she looks at him, the more Olivia realizeshow pale and clammy he is.

(And she knows he was planning onjust finding and snatching a kit himself. He wouldn’t ask for it, and the wayhe stiffened when he saw her made it clear he thought she was either with Jesseor back in Redstonia.)

“Were you ever going to tellme?” Olivia glances up at him as she leaves the pants leg rolled up.“Or anybody else?”

“Nah, I was just gonna letit rot off.” The eye roll should be a good sign, but it’s weak. “It’snot that big of a deal.”

“Axel, you can’t just brushoff something like this.”

“Right.” Another eyeroll and an attempt to straighten up that ends with him slumping in his chair,steadying himself by putting a hand on her desk. “How do your handsfeel?”

Olivia gives him a flat lookbefore opening the kit.

They don’t and he knows it. Shecan’t feel them.

Redstone’s a tricky thing. Whilethe ore buzzes and vibrates, pure redstone dust has a lot more of a kick whenit’s charged, and Olivia’s accidentally activated redstone while still holdingit plenty of times before.

On the bright side, if there’ssomething else wrong with her hands, she’ll probably never know it. At thispoint, there’s no reason to wear gloves, and even if her handwriting gets a bitshaky, or a lot shaky, at times, her hands work well enough that she can stilluse redstone.

“Don’t change thesubject.” Olivia frowns at the wound as she picks up and opens a small tubeof cream, and as she starts to lightly apply it, her grip on his ankle, a goodfew inches below the burn but only just below a much smaller and paler scar,tightens for a moment as Axel tries to jerk away. In most cases, it wouldn’t bea problem for him, but he doesn’t keep trying to pull away. “I’m surprisednobody in Boom Town made this worse, the way they’re all fighting each otherjust to fight you.”

Not that she doesn’t doubt that’show he got it in the first place, if only because she doesn’t know where elsehe’d get a nasty burn, but he doesn’t even bother to reply and she’s remindedthat he’s trying to be the king of a city full of maniacs— not that he doesn’tfit in with them and seem to be enjoying the title plenty, but even a littleburn could be made infinitely worse in a place run by mayhem and madness.

“Axel.”

“…maybe it wasn’t that reda while ago, but it’s not like I paid that much attention.”

Olivia swears she can feel a verydull ache in the back of her skull, slowly but steadily crawling back.

“Axel.”

“What?” He frowns asshe raises an eyebrow. “Seriously, relax. It doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah, right.” Olivia setsthe tube back down before pulling out a bit of wool and a strip of gauze. “That’s why I’mdoing this right now, right?”

“Hey, you’re the one whowanted to do it.”

Yep, there’s that headache again.

[the-given-life]

Amsterdam Experience p1

I always wanted to visit this city called Amsterdam, And I just did. Weeks I spent there, but to be honest I don’t feel like I enjoyed all my time there. Why? Well, bad company I guess. I came with a friend of mine, a friend that I thought would be cool but turns out that he has a lot of bad traits and mind-numbingly annoying. I hate him now for ruining this trip I don’t think I can be friends with him anymore. I came from Saudi Arabia and all the things I have seen in amsterdam are life changing. I never been outside Saudi Arabia, and when I first landed in Amsterdam it was the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my entire life. I felt like this could be the case with my friend but alas, I quickly discovered how much of a negative person he is. Why I will never be friends with him again? Well, to start he is the most laziest person I have seen, he just wants to sit at home drink and watch Netflix, forcing me to go out alone, how does he not realize that he is in Amsterdam and there are a lot things we can do instead of sitting at home? Fun things we can go out have a fucking ice cream at least! I’m got very tired of him ordering a large pizza and chicken wings and fucking chocolate lava cake and devour that whole giant greasy meal all by him self. He is overweight and makes fun of people who are bigger than him, what the fuck is that about? Why doesn’t he look at himself? Second thing is he is such an asshole. When we first came here he said we should try all the legal drugs that Amsterdam offers, I was ok with that until he showed me how much of a coward he is. When we got to the smart-shop in Amsterdam which is a place that sells shrooms and salvia and other kinds of crazy shit like herbal xtc!! When we are there he keeps telling “should take this? Should we take that? Should try these?”. I know I only wanted to try mushrooms because I wasn’t interested in all the other drugs. However I ended up buying a lot shit that was super expensive I paid over 100 Euro’s there. When we got home he completely changed. He was too afraid to try anything. I had to give a speech in how we are here for short time, I HAD TO SAY YOLO FOR FUCK SAKE!! Just trying to convince him to try, and I did persuade him to try salvia but he didn’t do anything else other than shrooms and salvia. Do you know how I convinced him to try shrooms? Well he wanted to but he didn’t say anything until I tried it first. Yeah he is such a bitch that he waits for me to try first and even when I was tripping he did not let me enjoy it at all if the mushrooms didn’t make me feel so good I would have beat his ass. What did he do? Well imagine that you are tripping hard like you are seeing some weird ass visuals and there is this toddler who keeps who wouldn’t stop asking stupid questions and keeps laughing at you constantly. I swear I had a panic attack and a big fucking anger wave mid trip, I felt like I was going insane and I couldn’t stop the trip, didn’t have any orange juice or anything which would have helped stop the trip. So there I am literally going insane and the person who supposedly my friend is the reason and laughing at me. He has 0 confidence and every time he sees an attractive girl or catches me staring at a girl for a brief second, he immediately tells “go talk to her” every goddamn girl that passes by is like “go talk to her” And I keep telling him why don’t you talk to her he replies with “ you’re boring”. I feel like I brought a child with me not a friend. A very annoying fucking gaping asshole toddler. Every time we go out he walks way ahead me like he is running a marathon. Doesn’t he understand that I have the maps and know way we need to go? I feel like I should keep him on a leash or something! And when we are going to a specific place he keeps going everywhere else other than the place we set to go altho we were on our way! But the worst is now here, he is very close minded and not charismatic at all. Whenever we sit someplace to relax before we get to walking again he says nothing at all he keeps quite and doesn’t talk, he only talks when we are home and he only talks negative shit. No matter what I try to open a convo he gives the very littlest interaction. Fuck this guy. I am done talking about him now I will write another blog about my Amsterdam Experience that will not include my shitty friend. I will only talk about the thing I tried and how I felt about them completely honestly. Probably do it tomorrow. Until then Goodbye