Replaying the Classics - Mass Effect 3

In May of this year I began this series Replaying the Classics by replaying Mass Effect 2. Immediately thereafter I was confronted by the question of whether or not I would also replay Mass Effect 3. I kind of wanted to, but it would have been a substantial time commitment and there were quite a few other games that I felt a stronger desire to replay, so I put it to the side. As I got closer to my departure for Asia it became clear that I wouldn’t have time to complete it before leaving and as I published the Vanquish edition of Replaying the Classics in August it looked like it just wasn’t going to happen. When I got back from Asia, however, I started to feel this urge to replay Mass Effect 3, like I had an obligation to do so. Somehow I needed to replay this game before I could move forward and start playing games that had come out more recently. Leaving it behind was no longer an option. Thus I fired up the PS3 and began my ascent of the final mountain in this first season of Replaying the Classics. If you’ve not read my Replaying the Classics entry on Mass Effect 2 I highly recommend doing so before going any further, but if you’re up to date then let’s take a seat in our comfy chairs one more time while I tell you about Mass Effect 3.

Thoughts and Prayers

Whenever a terrible event occurs it’s common for people who are not closely tied to the event to convey their sympathy by saying their thoughts and prayers are with the victims of whatever happened. In recent times this expression has come under increased criticism. Particularly online, I’ve seen more and more people becoming upset whenever “thoughts and prayers” is used and raging about how useless thoughts and prayers are. I’ve been thinking about this phenomenon and in my mind it makes complete sense. Our society is becoming increasingly secular and materialistic, so its no wonder people are putting less and less stock in thoughts and prayers. If the material universe really is all that there is, then thoughts and prayers truly are worthless. All you are doing is bouncing around electrical impulses in your brain or speaking words that disappear into the air. You’re doing nothing to help the victims of the tragedy—perhaps even less than nothing. In that light, the rage against “thoughts and prayers” is completely understandable.

Personally I would disagree with the people trashing “thoughts and prayers.” Even if the secular materialistic assumption of the nature of the universe is true, thinking and praying about a tragic event can help people focus their minds on that event and it may spur them on to find ways to help, and might even be the catalyst to coming up with ways to prevent future tragedies. On top of that, if the secular materialist assumption of the universe is false, then thoughts and prayers could have massive potential. Indeed, if a person is not able to aid another person in trouble, then thoughts and prayers might be the best thing they can do for them.

In thinking about the fuss over “thoughts and prayers” I’m reminded of a conversation I had with a friend many years ago about prayer and the existence of God. We both agreed that if God does not exist then prayer is possibly the stupidest thing we do, but if God does exist then prayer is possibly the most powerful thing we do. We are either wasting our breath, or we are talking to the divine sovereign of the universe.

I’ve upgraded to the PS4 Pro

Back in June of this year I wrote about how I was thinking of upgrading from my PS4 to a PS4 Pro. This month I finally pulled the trigger and made the purchase. It took me awhile to get around to backing up my data from the PS4 and transferring it over to the PS4 Pro, but it’s done now and I stand ready to get back into serious gaming sometime after I return to Colorado. True, I still don’t have a 4K HDR TV yet, which I’ll need to truly experience all that the PS4 Pro has to offer, but my plan is to buy one at some point in the first half of 2018. When that day comes I’ll have another tech milestone to commemorate.

Video Game Prices

The standard new-release price of AAA video games in America has been stuck at $60.00 for over a decade now despite both the increased costs of video game development and the normal process of inflation. Before the start of the PS4/Xbox One/Nintendo Switch console generation I had been wondering if perhaps the price of games would go up to $70.00 but instead they’ve stayed put where they are. As a consumer I like this as it means games are effectively cheaper to buy than they’ve ever been, but as a gamer I’m a little concerned about what this might mean for the industry. Personally I’d be ok with the standard price of AAA games going up to $70.00 to account changes that have happened over the last ten years (and if means a reduction or elimination of microtransactions in AAA games). Another possibility I would be amenable to is a broader spectrum of game prices. Some games like GTA could easily justify a price of $80 or even $100 given the sheer amount of content they deliver, while other smaller games could be released at $30 or $40 or whatever is appropriate.

Back Home Again

I’m back at my parents’ house for a week to spend Christmas with the family. Other than helping my parents with various things and seeing one or two friends there’s not a lot to do here. Hopefully I can use this time to be extra productive on important projects like the new website, a certain upcoming blog post, and my work of fiction. Being home somehow brings out my really lazy side, however, so it will be a struggle to actually get things done.

Net Neutrality

Like many people, I’m concerned about the FCC’s recent repeal of Net Neutrality rules. That said, I do wonder if maybe people are going a bit overboard in their predictions of how dire our Internet situations are going to be. All the wailing and gnashing of teeth reminds me of what happened when Trump won the presidential election and people were acting like all of America had suddenly transformed into a version of early 1900s Alabama. Yes, bad things could happen from the repeal of Net Neutrality, but I don’t think it will be quite the apocalypse that people are predicting. Our online lives may become harder, but we’ll survive, and if things really do go down the drain maybe we can find a way to get Net Neutrality reinstated.

Christmas Lists

My family has a practice where everyone submits suggestions for gifts they would like to receive for Christmas. You aren’t guaranteed to get everything on it, but you know you’ll get at least a few things and it saves everyone the trouble of trying to figure out what to get for each other.

When I was young, I loved making my Christmas List. There were so many toys, games, and other things I wanted. In fact, the hard part of making the list was selecting what exactly to put on the list since drafting a full page of stuff would be seen as being greedy.

These days, creating a Christmas List is really hard. This is partly because my desire (and available storage space) for possessions has dramatically shrunk since I was a kid, and partly because some of the few things I want these days are expensive and I’m not going to ask my family to pay for anything like that. One of the other things that makes creating Christmas Lists hard for me is that my gaming hobby, which should be a veritable fountain of Christmas List suggestions, is off-limits. I don’t know why, but I can’t bring myself to ask my family to get me video games for Christmas. Years ago I put a game on my list and got it on Christmas, but I felt so guilty about it that I resolved never to do it again. Am I secretly ashamed of my passion for playing and writing about video games? If so, maybe I should put a game on this year’s list to try to put a dent in that mental wall.

At the time of my writing this post I’m in the middle of agonizing over this year’s Christmas List. I should have tried to make one prior to Black Friday so my family could take advantage of any sales on stuff I wanted but it’s been really hard to think up stuff for it. Hopefully by the time you’re reading this I’ve been able to come up with something suitable to send out to my family.

Re: Do you need to be good at video games to write or talk about them professionally?

You know what? I’m having second thoughts about last Friday’s post and I take back the part about having an affinity for games to discuss them professionally. You don’t need to be a gamer or even like video games to say something about them. If there’s anything we’ve learned from Anita Sarkeesian it’s that you can be a charlatan peddling half-truths and still professionally talk about video games.

In fact, you don’t even have to be good at writing or talking to discuss games, or have meaningful or coherent thoughts on them. Heck, look at what I do on this website!

Do you need to be good at video games to write or talk about them professionally?

That’s a question that’s existed in the background for a long time in the video games world. Earlier this year the question was brought back to the forefront by events surrounding the game Cuphead. In particular, a viral video of a games journalist having a very hard time completing Cuphead’s tutorial reinvigorated the debate over the relationship between a person’s skill in gaming and their ability to speak about it on a professional level. Like so many other things I write about, I’m late to this party and it’s no longer a hot topic, but I’ve been wanting to publish my own opinion on it since the most recent ruckus erupted and now I’m finally getting around to it.

Do you need to be good at video games to write or talk about them professionally? My answer to that question is no, and let me explain my line of thinking on this. In my opinion you don’t need to be good at video games to write or talk about them professionally, you just need to have an affinity for gaming and be good at writing or talking. You might not be good at specific genres of video games, or even video games in general, but if you’re passionate about them, have something worthwhile to say, and are able to communicate your message well then by all means I would think that you can discuss video games professionally. One of my favorite gaming personalities summed up a lot of my thoughts earlier this month with the tweet below:

But wait, what if you’re really bad at video games, to the point where you have difficulty finishing a game of average difficulty? Even then I would say that you could still write or talk about video games, though you might be more limited in what you can discuss. Perhaps you got stuck at a certain point in a game and couldn’t finish it. In that case you can write or talk about what you experienced—just be up front and honest about not getting to the end. Obviously you couldn’t give a game a comprehensive review, but you could still have something meaningful to say about the chunk of the game you completed. If it’s interesting, then put your thoughts out there and don’t worry about your relative skill in gaming.

The Collapse of NeoGaf

Yesterday I wrote about the torrent of sexual misconduct allegations that rushed through the gaming community and took down many people. One of those persons was Tyler Malka, the owner of NeoGaf. I might have visited NeoGaf once, but otherwise I avoided it like the plague due to its reputation for spewing forth some of the most vile and vitriolic online behavior in the gaming world. NeoGaf collapsed not long after Tyler Malka was accused of sexual assault, which is notable due to his supposed commitment to stamping out misogyny in gaming, and normally I’d let the death of a website go without comment but for NeoGaf I make an exception. Seeing a place as contemptible as NeoGaf go up in flames was undeniably satisfying. True, there will always be hate and harassment online, and the remnants of NeoGaf have started a new website that might turn out to be even worse than NeoGaf, but for once we got to see a bastion of wickedness destroyed.

Male Feminist Allies (and Gamergate)

Author’s Note: Apologies in advance for the memes. I realize some might see them as mean but I find them rather fitting in the context of today’s post.

-----------------------

The same wildfire of sexual harassment and assault allegations that blazed through Hollywood and Washington also scorched the gaming world. A fast, sudden torrent of accusations saw a number of persons in the gaming community forced out of their jobs or livelihoods and ushered into the status of social pariahs. The hits just kept coming, and there was even a period of about two weeks where it seemed that not a single day went by without at least one person being exposed for their sexual misdeeds.

Being on vacation in Asia during peak accusation season, I wasn’t able to keep up with events as much as I would have liked, but there was one thing that really stood out to me as I tried to follow along via Twitter. I couldn’t help but notice the sheer number of Males Feminist Allies and members of the anti-Gamergate community who were being accused. Men who had spent years virtue signaling their commitment to uplifting women and proclaiming the misogyny of Gamergate were now being exposed as sex predators. As several Internet commentators put it, the witch hunters had become witches, hunted. Day after day, more and more of them were outed, and soon I was waking up each morning wondering who was the latest target of accusations. Perhaps the most incredible thing to watch during the whole season of allegations was how proponents of the “listen and believe” movement were trying to make exceptions for themselves and their friends when they were the ones being accused of sexual misconduct. The very monster they had been feeding was now eating them alive. Had there not been terrible misdeeds committed that were leading to all these accusations it would have been funny in a really messed up way to watch the massacre.

It’s been a few weeks since I noticed any big accusations in the gaming world, so perhaps the storm is over, for now. Should another one blow up, however, I have a sneaking suspicion that we’ll see more “allies” revealed not to be allies at all.

They both should go

Author's Note: This post was written prior to the outcome of the Alabama election.

------------------

There haven’t been as many politicians as entertainers who have been caught up in sexual misconduct scandals, but two big ones are currently prominent in the spotlight: (now former) Democratic Senator Al Franken and Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore. Both have had credible sexual misconduct allegations made against them, and in the case of Al Franken we have photographic proof of one of his misdeeds. Recently the Democratic Party finally threw Al Franken under the bus in what appears to be a political maneuver to gain the moral high ground and make Republicans look bad for not doing the same to Roy Moore. Time will tell whether or not this strategy works.

Personally, I think both of these men should go. I realize that I’m probably in the minority for having this opinion, but I believe character is an integral part of a person’s qualifications for leadership. When a person has multiple credible sexual misconduct accusations made against them it speaks volumes to their character and in my view makes them unfit to hold high public office. The Democrats were right to pressure Al Franken into resigning, though their motives are very suspect given how long it took them to get around to doing it. Republicans ought to do the same to Roy Moore and demand he withdraw from the Senate race. These men cannot be our leaders. Had they confessed and repented of their deeds back when they first happened then we could be talking today about giving them a second chance, but right now they are unqualified.

As an addition at the end here, let me also say how disgusting it was in the early days of the controversies to read people trying to defend Al Franken and Roy Moore on purely political grounds. The line of reasoning seems to be that pushing them out will set a bad precedent and could potentially hurt either the Democratic or Republican Party in a really bad way in the future. Both Al Franken and Roy Moore come from states that are pretty safe bets for their respective parties, but what if a senator from a swing state gets forced out and the party loses a crucial vote for their legislation? Never mind the women who have been hurt or the blatant hypocrisy that will be committed—the party comes before principles.

Harvey Weinstein and the Entertainment Industry

Back in October the American movie industry was rocked by a slew of allegations of sexual harassment and assault that were made by multiple actresses against film mogul Harvey Weinstein. Within just a few weeks Harvey Weinstein’s professional career was left in utter ruins and the turmoil surrounding him was only just the beginning of the storm. Since Harvey Weinstein’s fall, dozens of other men from various parts of the entertainment industry, the press, and the political world have been fired, resigned, or put under intense scrutiny due to the wave of sexual harassment and assault accusations that has swept the country. The purging flame is still burning and I suspect we’ve got awhile longer before it dies down.

As I’ve watched all this drama unfold, a question that’s been running through my mind is whether anyone is honestly surprised by it. In particularly I wonder if anyone is shocked that most of the allegations seem to be coming out of the entertainment industry. It’s no secret that the entertainment industry has been morally bankrupt for a long time and I think a lot of us had suspected that stuff like this was rampant behind the scenes, and now we’re starting to get the proof. Part of me is hopeful that the tsunami of sexual harassment and assault allegations will wash away the filth and make the entertainment industry a more upright and respectable place, but another part of me is extremely pessimistic and thinks that the entertainment industry fundamentally rotten at its core and will never really change. Indeed, another part of me thinks we haven’t even seen the worst allegations come out yet.

Why can’t we have both conversations?

Whenever there’s an Islamic terrorist attack in America there’s a general unwillingness by much of the political Left to discuss the inherent role of Islamic ideology in the attacks. Likewise, whenever there’s a mass shooting by a non-Muslim there’s a general unwillingness by much of the political Right to discuss gun violence in America. My question is why can’t we have both conversations? These are both important topics and I don’t think we’re doing ourselves any favors by pretending that there’s nothing to say about them. Let’s have both the Right and the Left compromise, granting each other a serious conversation about one important issue in exchange for having a serious conversation about the other. In the process the truth will rise to the surface and we’ll all be better for it.

“But wait,” you say, “the other side is hateful and/or stupid. We can’t give a platform to something like that.” Ok, there might be persons in both camps who could be called either of those things, but if the other side truly is as bigoted and/or moronic as you believe, then you have nothing to fear from them talking. All you have to do is wait. Given enough time to talk, an idiot and/or a hater will expose themselves for what they truly are and will see their influence rapidly diminish. So let each side talk. If those railing about Islam are just idiotic Islamaphobic bigots then let them make their case and just watch as they hang themselves with their own words. In the same manner, if those persons screaming about gun violence are just stupid haters of liberty then allow them to take the podium and sit back while they embarrass themselves into irrelevance. After they’re done babbling their nonsense your side can walk up, easily refute their bad arguments, and sit back down knowing the other side came out of this exposed for fools they are while your side is vindicated. Again, you have nothing to fear from letting the other side talk, and you have nothing to lose but a little time. And hey, doing so might be your best chance to show them the truth and change their mind or maybe they’ll show you the truth and change your mind. Wouldn’t you want to know if you’re wrong?

When you can put up your Christmas decorations

Ok, so this isn't a current event but I felt I needed to publish this sooner rather than later. I love Christmas, but I don’t like how each year it seems like Christmas-related decorating and commercialization are started earlier. If I were some sort of absolute monarch I’d decree that it was illegal to put up Christmas stuffs until 8:00am of the day after Thanksgiving. Christmas stuffs would have to come down by the end of the first full week of January (this rule would exist solely to stop people from being sneaky and being able to have Christmas decorations up prior to Thanksgiving by never taking them down during the prior year). Yes, Christmas is wonderful, but its “season” must have its proper place on the calendar, and that place is not prior to Thanksgiving.

Would I like to see Trump impeached?

If you’ve been reading this blog for about the past two years you know I’m no fan of Donald Trump, primarily due to his character, or to be more accurate, his lack of character. I didn’t like him when he was a contender for the Republican nomination, I didn’t like him as a candidate for the presidency, and I don’t like him now as the President of the United States. Even though I consider myself a little right of center on the political spectrum I wouldn’t mind seeing him impeached and replaced with Mike Pence. I realize that a lot of people have issues with Mike Pence, but I think everyone would agree that he’s a much more stable, predictable, and honorable man than Donald Trump. Actually, now that I think of it, I’d be willing to bet that a fair number of Republicans would be ok with this too, since Mike Pence, unlike Donald Trump, is an actual Republican.

Are the dominos starting to fall?

Much of the political Left and the mainstream media have been unrelenting over the past year in their quest to get Donald Trump removed from office. Despite their best efforts however, Trump is still safely the President of the United States. I don’t see Trump getting impeached anytime in the foreseeable future, but there have been a few smaller developments that maybe indicate that we’re seeing the first dominos starting to fall. Maybe.

Four of Trump’s former associates have now gone down. Two of them—former campaign manager Paul Manafort and former campaign aide Rick Gates—have been indicted. The other two—former national security advisor Michael Flynn and former foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos—have plead guilty to lying to the FBI about their communications with Russian officials. All of them had their ties to Trump severed prior to their indictments or plea bargains, so we can’t say any current member of the Trump Administration has been taken down, but perhaps whatever information they give to Robert Mueller’s investigation will lead to some significant charges in the future. Or maybe it won’t. It’s still too early to say. Special investigations like the one we have going on now take a long time to produce anything big, and it could be years before the investigation wraps up. There’s also a very real possibility that the investigation will take down members of Trump’s administration, but not Trump himself. To my knowledge there’s currently no evidence that Trump has done anything worthy of impeachment. Maybe that will change tomorrow or next month with a bombshell announcement that changes everything, but I wouldn’t count on it. In the meantime, those screaming for Trump to be removed from office better learn to be patient and not get their hopes up too much.

Catching up on news and events

I’ve been writing exclusively about my trip to Asia since September and a lot has happened in the world since that time. Originally I had planned on devoting a single week to writing about topics of interest to me that have transpired in the last two to three months but I think I’m going to need a little more than a week to do that, so I’m not placing any sort of time restrictions on these catch-up writing pieces. Starting tomorrow I’ll be publishing on things I missed while writing about Asia and I’ll stop when I feel satisfied.

Asia 2017 Finale

For all of November I’ve been sharing stories from my trip to Asia, but now that we have transitioned to December I feel that it’s time to call an official end to #Asia2017. I could keep sharing little tidbits from Japan and Korea through to the end of the year about the journey but a man can only keep living in the past for so long, and it’s time for me to leave the subject behind, at least for the foreseeable future. With that said, today I though I’d share some final details on my trip that I don’t believe have been mentioned yet.

Let’s start with the route of my journey. Back in June of this year I published a writing piece with what my itinerary was looking like at the time. My actual route turned out a little different though some parts were similar to the original idea. Below is a map with some poorly drawn arrows to help visualize where I went. I’ve colored coded the lines to help make the route easier to follow. Start with the blue lines, and then follow the green lines, then the red lines, and finally the yellow line.

Click to enlarge

Written out, the route was:

Tokyo & Kamakura —> Nikko & Lake Chuzenji —> Hakodate & Onuma Park —> Sapporo & Otaru —> Kanazawa —> Kyoto —> Osaka & Nara —> Hiroshima & Himeji —> Miyajima —> Nagasaki —> Itoshima —> Fukuoka —> Seoul & the DMZ —> Busan —> Jeju Island —> Busan (again) —> Tokyo (again)

The journey was six week long, and my goal was to keep the total cost of the trip to under $5,000. Before and during my time in Asia I kept a very meticulous record of all my spending and last weekend I finally got around to tallying up all my expenses. The final costs of #Asia2017 was….

$4,766.82

Now, the actual final cost is probably a little higher or a little lower than that due to changes in the exchange rate of the Japanese Yen and Korean Won, but I don’t think it’s significantly higher or lower. I was actually a little surprised when I got that final number because while I was overseas it felt like I was spending a lot of money and I had a bad feeling that I was going to go over my budget goal, but it would seem my fears were unwarranted.

The so-called language barrier didn’t prove to be that big of a problem for me. Part of that had to do with the fact that I’m not the type to strike up conversations with strangers, but another part was that I have the advantage of being a native English speaker and English is currently a common second language in that part of the world. While in both Japan and Korea I came across a lot of dual-language signs and audio announcements and the little bits of Japanese and Korean I knew were enough to get me through most situations. When my feeble language skills failed, the Google Translate app on my phone worked surprisingly well, especially the microphone feature which allowed me to speak English into my phone and have a Japanese or Korean translation come out.

Since returning to America I’ve had people ask me if I’d like to travel again to Japan and/or Korea. The answer is a definite yes. I wouldn’t consider myself any sort of japanophile or koreanophile, but I did enjoy my times in both Japan and Korea and would like to see more of each country. Money, of course, is always the greatest restriction and I don’t see a return trip to either country within at least the next year or two, but one day I’d like to return. Some things like Tokyo and Seoul I’d want to see again, but there’s also so much that I didn’t have time to experience this time around. My Suica card (for the Tokyo metro) is valid for ten years and has a little bit of money left on it, plus I have a 1,000 yen bill (and a few Korean coins) that I didn’t use before leaving Asia, so I sort of have a down-payment for the next journey. One day I’ll return. Count on it.

--------------------

And with that the stories from Asia 2017 are officially concluded. On Monday I’ll return to my normal inane ramblings. Hope you enjoyed the ride.