RPG Tourist

Recently I listed off all the Assassin’s Creed games I am playing concurrently despite the fact I have never played a game from the franchise before. I’ve completed Origin’s main story missions and the Hidden Ones DLC and have now moved on to Odyssey. Seeing that Odyssey rolls Black Flag and Origins together with a heap of Witcher 3, I may never have to return to any of those games. It depends on how long Ubisoft spews content. Right now Odyssey looks like a completionist’s nightmare but forturnately I am not one of those. Ubisoft has taken a really interesting turn with Origins and Odyssey. They have moved away from multiplayer completely to single player with limited shared social features and mostly cosmetic microtransactions. Even loot boxes can be purchased with ingame currency. No luring children towards controversial forms of gambling here. No siree. Origin’s stand alone discovery mode goes even further to buff up video games’ tarnished reputation. This looks like...

We’ve finished both seasons of Westworld. By the end of season one, William’s hat is definitely black. We also learned that we have been following William’s story on two separate timelines and nothing is as it seems especially the ever menacing Robert Ford. Once the AI characters achieved self awareness the discomforting violence became incessant. The series began to feel much less like a video game and more like the sci-fi horror film that spawned it. The message is clear this time though. Corporations are evil. By the end of season two there were hardly any redeeming characters left and there were only five or six maybe to begin with. The multiple timelines became so incoherent I needed to consult an online wiki. But due to the nature of the technology will any character truly die? We did get treated to some philosophical questions. Are the AI really autonomous? Just when we think they are the puppet master reappears. Hector is the only AI character that ever becomes unbound...