Well, it's been a while, hasn't it? Getting back into the swing of things here's a few game fandom thoughts I've had for the past few weeks:
Starfield ended up being a disappointment for many due to various issues, and hilariously enough, I was in the middle of a completionist playthrough of Mass Effect: Andromeda when reviews began coming out, and all I could think was that several of the complaints about Starfield mirrored the design and features of MEA (chiefly, loading screens to get off and on planets, stilted NPC animations during interactions, et cetera). MEA also seems to have done better than Starfield in some ways (planetside vehicle for exploration, more handcrafted locations and so on).
Baldur's Gate 3 feels like next-gen Dragon Age: Origins and I love it for that, but it also makes me wonder what is going on with Dreadwolf (and to a lesser extent, the next Mass Effect). I hope it will be at least as good, but development seems to be... slow on both Bioware franchises given the early announcement trailers... (seriously, the one thing EA and Maxis does right with Sims 4 is that there is a short time between announcement trailers and full trailers and releases).
The next The Sims 4 expansion is rumored to be about becoming a landlord (well, it is a young adult wish-fulfillment sim at this point) and rent and whatnot, and I wonder just how different it will be from the earlier roommates system (similarly to how the ranch hand is a reskinned butler)... I hope we will be able to build our own apartments and duplexes with it (perhaps divide existing lots into smaller lots for more moved in households?), but TS4 EPs have been so underwhelming as of late even relatively speaking for TS4 that I'm not holding my breath.
So we now have a full list of items in CAS and BB of TS4: Horse Ranch, and nearly all the hairstyles are very similar to hairs of previous packs (I previously called out the side-braid for being an updated version of a Get Together braid, but the chin-length swept back hair looks a lot like hairs from City Living and Growing Together, the shoulder length with bangs/fringe looks like one I think we got in Snowy Escape, and so on and so forth). We got even more cowboy hats and boots (after base game and Strangerville) and so on...
I guess we also have confirmation of unicorns (or at least the ability to put horns on horses).
On the BB side I’m very disappointed that we’re not getting rocking horses or hobby horses (horse head on a stick) for the toddlers and children. Or a merry-go-round. Or a mechanical bull. Or... Yeah, lots of missed opportunities.
And Gameplay-wise I am not holding my breath for equestrian after school activities/part-time jobs either, even though they should be easy to implement as rabbit holes (after school activity: pony club/riding school/whatever/part-time job: groom/stablehand?), and I haven’t yet heard anything about any careers being included (trainer, jockey, stable manager, etc). But who knows, maybe they’ll surprise us?
As a simmer and former horse-obsessed girl, I guess I should talk a bit about it.
First, when I heard that they would do a “Horse Ranch” expansion pack, I first thought “welp, that should be a game pack” and secondly that the theme would either be boring American world again (wild west) and reuse plants and other things from Oasis Springs (base game) and possibly even Strangerville (the game pack) or Australian outback (marginally more interesting), since we haven’t any Australian world yet and those two are the only two possible themes with “ranch” in the title. I put my money on the boring option, since it would allow them to reuse assets even though it is an expansion pack (and they did, several of the plants are very familiar in the trailer). Aaand I was right.
Second, I like Native American rep, but I do not believe for a second EAxis cares about any minority rep, given that we have Louisiana and Arizona and American suburbs in the base game with no NA rep, not even added in an SDX patch.
Third, the side-braid is just an updated version of the Get Together side-braid. It will be interesting if they begin updating old EPs’ hairs after the base game and it ends up looking near identical...
Fourth, goats and sheep should have been in Cottage Living (as should horses, unicorns and fairies).
Fifth, even when trained to an expert level of riding, the sim in the trailer refuses to hold the reins properly (reins should be between thumb and index finger, and between ring finger and little finger, not like a toddler holding sporks and banging the ends against a table).
Sixth, nectar making to lure those with TS3:World Adventures nostalgia, instead of, y’know, putting it in My Wedding Stories where it would make sense (on the other hand, maybe EAxis is making fun of the high alcoholic rates among Native Americans? Yes, I am reaching, but they put a bisexual woman leaving a man at the altar for another woman in MWS! I no longer give them the benefit of the doubt, and even if the connection never occurred to them, it is awfully strange to put the alcoholic game mechanic in the same pack as their first NA rep in TS4 when they had many, many other packs and base game to introduce both in separately. It’s awful optics, in any case).
Seventh, no mechanical bull to ride. No rocking horse to be seen to be used by children/toddlers. Lets hope that they’re holding back unicorns as surprise, hm? But how they’re going to get unicorns to fit into this world rather than the lush greenery of Cottage Living will be interesting...
Well, that’s my immediate negative reactions out of the way.
Here’s the thing, this is a game pack with a few extras added (nectar making, goats, sheep) that should have been in other packs, and those extras are not enough to tip it over into an expansion (that’s supposed to affect everyone’s gameplay in all/most worlds in some way). If it was a game pack, it would be a nice game pack from what the trailer has shown us with a few out-of-the-left-field elements thrown in (nectar making).
Like, lets say that you only get the Base Game and Horse Ranch, but you don’t want to have horses in a dusty old wild west, but in the lush greenery of Willow Creek.
Sage Estates are pretty much the only lots that are large enough to accommodate a stable, paddock and house without being cramped. Sage Estates is also a TINY neighborhood. Like, imagine trying to ride around there? Yeah.
They should fix it by making larger parts of the neighborhoods playable and routed (Foundry Cove in Willow Creek, for example, has that whole street beyond the main road that’s out-of-bounds) through an update, but given how they haven’t been able to update for swimable waters where there should be swimable waters (Granite Falls, Forgotten Hollow etc.) it might be impossible to update the neighborhoods at all (possibly because it would break existing saves/not apply to saves).
Eh, I’ve collected all the packs of The Sims since TS1 (including all the Worlds from TS3′s store), and I have collected the whole of TS4 up to now (including Grim’s guitar), so I’ll probably buy it, but this reinforces my decision not to get The Sims 5 at all, never mind any DLC. They’ve just completely destroyed any good will that the previous three iterations built up with me, and that was A LOT of good will.
I’ll just mod TS4 extensively once the updates are done and I wont have to worry about mods breaking and destroying my saves (I’m still modding it now, just more conservatively with a few mods that either leave no trace if removed, or that are regularly updated after every patch).
Welp, got forced off Origin to the buggy EA App that not only fails to detect my installed games (or my entire library) every time I use it for the first time of every day (if it lets me log in), but when I fully quit it (not just minimize it), it leaves a background process running that I must manually quit as well (or any restart of the app to fix the issue wont work).
Could we maybe not get a beta launcher (and that is being generous) for games we’ve spent a lot of money on, please?
With all the new lot types and whatnot that Game Packs and Stuff Packs has added at this point to The Sims 4, wouldn’t it be nice if the devs made a new blank world based on Oasis Springs in the same way that Newcrest is based on Willow Creek?
Additionally, in a hypothetical Get to Work refresh (it really, really needs it IMO, especially when it bugs out due to having a scenario running, and aliens need to be brought up to date with the other supernaturals), to make an Oasis Springs equivalent to Magnolia Promenade?
Also, the next Expansion Pack really should have a Windenburg-sized world (27 lots! Copperdale and Henford-on-Bagley only have 12, so yeah, expansion pack worlds have definitely been shrinking) after all the small worlds we’ve been getting.
But speaking of refreshes and more lots in worlds, San Myshuno needs a refresh quite badly. There should be apartments on more of the floors/storeys (pick your English) than one per building (all the multi-level floors belong to the same apartments, so no dice). There should also be basement apartments IMO.
Really, an EP world should not have less than 20-30 lots in it, and if it is a metropolitan world, bump it up to 40-50 or something, counting special lots such as high schools and chalet gardens, since players cannot add more lots to their games like in TS2 and TS3.
Additionally, Forgotten Hollow needs a refresh. It is too empty and nothing to attract plasma*ahem*sims for the resident vampires, maybe add slides (children need slides in TS4!) and swings (do we even have any base game ones?) and whatnot to a playground in the town square or something, on top of adding more stuff for adults than chess sets (playgrounds add to the creepy vibe). I would also want a chance of ghosts spawning by the graveyard (beside Vlad’s house) at midnight to make the world feel more unique (imagine ghost children playing in the playground at night...).
Vacation worlds (Granite Falls and Selvadorada), now when rentals are all over the place, should have residential neighborhoods added to them. Heck, one of the Refresh promo sims (Kurt Lumberjackson) is said to have grown up in Granite Falls! Amusement park worlds such as Batuu is fine as a vacation only, but Granite Falls and Selvadorada are meant to be tourist destinations with residents in them!
Oh, and if they insist on selling Kits, they should make World Kits a thing, since they’ve given up on Gameplay Kits. It would also make the Kits feel less that cobbled together assets that weren’t ready for a Pack release (I’m looking at you Laundry Day/Bust the Dust, Country Kitchen/Country Living, Décor to the Max/Paranormal, Blooming Rooms/Eco Lifestyle and Little Campers/Werewolves). Heck, since they would be $4.99, those worlds should be plenty of lots (at least 20-30). But don’t do it before Oasis Springs get a free “Newcrest”, and don’t just recycle assets from existing worlds in the World Kits.
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So, I show up today on this site and the above appears as a pop up over the dashboard with the only button that works is “I Agree” while the rest of the options, which would help me shut off tracking cookies as per GDPR, gets the above text.
So eventually I clicked on “I Agree” thinking that I could fix it in my Privacy settings, only to get the above again.
So the Goth makeover has dropped into The Sims 4, and my hunch that they made that new basegame hair for Bella was right.
Unfortunately, my hunch when I heard that only the Goths had been made over was also proven right: They didn’t bother with Likes/Dislikes, Relationships or Sentiments or whatever. Just the appearances of the Goths, which is very on brand for The Sims 4 (the width and prettiness of an ocean, but the depths of a mud puddle).
First things first: Alexander’s skintone shouldn’t have been changed. Only Bella’s and Cassandra’s should have been darkened. Also, he looks bad when aged up. Cassandra’s outfits are also pretty bad, as is her make up, and then there’s that pink lipgloss on one of the outfits that sticks out like a sore thumb. Mortimer is the best of the lot and he’s pretty bad (I hate his new mustache and he should be mostly dressed in black and have different outfits instead of doing the Vlad copypaste thing and...).
Then we have Bella’s boobs. People are praising Bella’s makeover because she has a thicker waist and smaller boobs, and thus a less cartoonish appearance, though the entire art style of the game is cartoonish.
Here’s the thing: I would praise them for her boob reduction if I believed they did it because Bella in the previous games didn’t have big bazoongas. But they didn’t.
They reduced Bella’s breasts simply because the dress they put her in has a (probably mesh) glitch that causes a jagged corner to poke out beneath the boobs when they are larger.
And yes, they put the most iconic sim in the franchise in that dress and didn’t fix the glitchy dress!
Stop and think about that for a minute before you praise them for making Bella “more realistic”. They literally did it so that they wouldn’t have to fix the effing dress.
And I know that because all my makeovers of Bella has put her in that dress, and every single time I have to reduce her boobs to make the glitch go away.
Also, Bella, Cassandra and Alexander’s skintones are soooo gray that I’m not entirely sure why they picked that particular hue given the common complaint about skintones in TS4 being gray and/or washed out.
So, guess who has binged a lot of Mass Effect fan fiction and found a common thread that annoys me a little bit across nearly every fic that mentions it.
Mass Effect canon since the first game: Medical gel, or “medi-gel” is a gel containing anesthetics and promotes clotting and whatnot. It covers wounds and seals them against infections and water by curing into a hard layer that needs ultrasound to open later by medics for real treatment. It was created by humanity and is technically extremely illegal according to Citadel laws on genetic modifications, but it is yet another case of humanity getting special exclusions from the laws (like how they weren’t exiled like the quarians after Revelation and the Luna training facility and every other time they’ve messed with AI).
Mass Effect fanon: Medi-gel is created by [insert alien race here, most probably salarians] and humanity could never. And humanity’s inability to invent medi-gel is proof of how humans are the primitives of the galaxy!
Mass Effect canon: Has humanity invent medi-gel, cure every single illness and ailment in their species, brings a person back to life from being spaced and burnt up in an atmosphere upon entry and hitting the ground. The most advanced hospital on the Citadel is Huerta Memorial, a hospital built by humans named after a human president.
Mass Effect fanon: *ignores all that* Huerta was there before humanity! Humanity has brought nothing to the galactic table and asks for everything! Also, Udina is a meaniehead who should shut up and be grateful for the Council’s scraps, not advocate for the people who elected him to represent them and their interests... A military man chosen because a single soldier likes him as an ambassador would be so much better than a democratically elected diplomat!
Me: Did we play the same games? Am I the alien here and missing something?
But really, the medi-gel attribution is what annoys me the most, probably because it’s been there as humanity’s thing since ME1. Like, let humanity have their galactic niche as healers in the same way asari are sanctimonious diplomats, salarians are mad scientists and turians are inflexible soldiers!
Y’know, sitting down and working out all the loyalties of the characters in Skyrim for possible fic reveals a lot of things I haven’t seen online discussions of.
Such as that Thane Bryling of Solitude seems to be one of Ulfric’s sympathetic spies committing treason by relaying info back to the Stormcloaks. My evidence?
One, in the cut quest when Jarl Elisif is assassinated, she is replaced by Thane Erikur for the Imperials and by Thane Bryling if the Stormcloaks take over Solitude.
Two, Bryling’s employee, Sorli the Builder, replaces Jarl Idgrod Ravencrone as Jarl of Morthal if the Stormcloaks take over (really, a random mining forewoman ends up being jarl? Maybe because Bryling vouches for her...).
Three, in addition to being a thane resident of Solitude’s court, she is also the secret lover of the Steward of Solitude, Falk Firebeard, and that gives her access to a lot of info regular thanes wouldn’t get access to. Bryling is also afraid that Erikur (her Imperial counterpart) should find out about them and force Falk to resign as steward, which would cut Bryling off from that useful flow of information.
Four, in her own words: “Many condemn the Stormcloaks, but I refuse. There is honor in fighting for what you believe.” and “This godsforsaken war is dividing our people and destroying our land.” So she already believes the Stormcloaks to be in the right (or at least, honorable, after Ulfric killed her jarl and high king), the same Stormcloaks to started the war, but also wants the war to end because she believes that it is bad. Translated, that means that she wants the Stormcloaks to win ASAP and unite Skyrim under Ulfric’s rule. So she has the motivation to turn traitor against her jarl.
Yeah, while not completely conclusive, she seems to be one of the best candidates of being one of Ulfric’s informants unconnected to the Thalmor (there seems to be a few who had access to privileged information until Tullius showed up with his own commanders).
I’m also thinking that there were lots of story-lines cut in this game even beyond the known cut quests... Like this set-up is ripe for some political intrigue that would make the Speechcraft tree (and learning at the Bard’s College) relevant game mechanics as the Dragonborn is tasked with finding out leaks in the Solitude court...
Legend has it there is an evil spirit trapped in the Sessho-seki stone, so what happens now that the stone is broken?
Predictions of dark forces being unleashed by an evil vixen hung over social media in Japan on Monday after a famous volcanic rock said to kill anyone who comes into contact with it was found split in two.
According to the mythology surrounding the Sessho-seki, or killing stone, the object contains the transformed corpse of Tamamo-no-Mae, a beautiful woman … Legend has it that her true identity was an evil nine-tailed fox whose spirit is embedded in the hunk of lava, located in an area of Tochigi.
Shepard is 29 years old when s/he’s evaluated by Nihlus, and given that Saren was a war veteran at around 18-19 years old (and thus would have been had lots of experiences to impart as a mentor at a younger age than most, and would have qualified as a Spectre at a younger age than most; Saren is already a well established Spectre when he is 28 years old in Revelation, and he recruited Avitus Rix in Andromeda to the Spectres, and Avitus retired after 15 years of Spectre service before that after the events in ME1 due to Sarenreign’s actions, so yeah, Saren is young for someone of his position as the seeming premier Spectre in the galaxy, at least for a turian) I’m guessing Nihlus is not so far off from Saren’s age in ME1; something like 35-40 years old (Nihlus also had that run-in with Samara, didn’t he? And if memory serves correctly, it didn’t sound like a recent “just before Eden Prime”-run-in, so he would have been a Spectre for a while on solo missions able to go toe-to-toe with an Asari Justicar matriarch and forcing her to fold, on top of being of enough seniority to be entrusted with evaluating humanity’s first Spectre).
But really, this is Nihlus’ timeline as far as we know: Father dies before he is 16 years old and Nihlus is sent for the mandatory military service turians do by his mother against his will. He becomes an extremely gifted soldier, but with an attitude that doesn’t fit in. He goes through three squads until he meets Saren who become his mentor, and after that Nihlus becomes a Spectre, at some point runs into Samara and outsmarts her code, gains enough clout with the Council to become the evaluator of humanity’s first Spectre.
Simply because Nihlus is also talented, I like to think he is on the lower end of my estimate, around 35-38 years old. So, around 5-10 years older than Shepard.
Saren simply looks older than he is because he’s was born a barefaced biotic (both being stigmatized in turian culture, thus stressful upbringing likely with bullying and/or being ostracized) and has been worked to the bone since he was 18 years old by the Turian Hierarchy, Citadel Council and Sovereign, gone to war, killed his only family to save the galaxy, had most of his body modified by a brainwashing Cthulhu machine/geth minions and so on (even the artwork of the less synthetic model they wanted to use for Saren before his geth implants, he looks older than most turians we know are likely the same age or older, like Adrien Victus or Venari Pallin, and the cover art of Revelations when he is 28 years old also makes him look older than many turians). Or at least that’s my headcanon given what we see him go through in canon…
Minor correction - Saren is 26 during ME: Revelation. You’re thinking of Anderson! Anderson is 28 (b. 2137) and Saren is 26 (b. 2139) when he’s evaluating him. Which is all kinds of funny to me.
2165 (Revelation) - 2139 (Saren) = 26.
When I’m doing fanfic stuff I always take it as “Anderson was the first Spectre candidate Saren was asked to evaluate” … because I think that’s hilarious and clearly at the time he had enough years of experience to be an evaluator (about 5-6 years as a Spectre).
From a writing perspective I think it’s interesting that he could potentially meet/evaluate Nihlus the year after.
Youngest that evaluation could POSSIBLY start is 18-19 for Nihlus (since Saren is canonically the youngest and was appointed Spectre when he was 20).
If we take that as a hard limit and say “youngest Nihlus could have made Spectre is 21″ … then that gives us the “upper bound” for ages (the smallest possible age gap).
Nihlus was born NO EARLIER than 2140 (aka: 43 at the Shakedown, year 2183, with Saren age 44).
Other age gaps are possible, just if you assume Avitus Rix served exactly 15 years as a Spectre … Saren started training him in 2168. Which doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for him to train Nihlus!
It’d have to have been between 2165 (the year Saren rejected Anderson as a candidate in Revelation) and 2166 if Nihlus was Saren’s first real trainee. Otherwise, Saren is occupied sometime in 2168 when Avitus starts training.
Assuming a current Spectre only has one “trainee” at a time and, like Nihlus, Avitus had Saren as a Spectre mentor.
I don’t expect Nihlus would have succeeded very long in the regular military (according to canon), so I have tended to place him as Saren’s first trainee (and a more experienced Spectre than Avitus, since he’s supposed to be “decorated” by the time you meet him).
So you either get older!Nihlus (started training between 2165-2166 and was 21 or older when he finished training) or younger!Nihlus (who started training after Avitus in 2171 and was 21 or older when he finished training).
This roughly gives you birthdates between 2140 (earliest possible year, Nihlus would be 25 in 2165 at the OLDEST POSSIBLE in this training scenario) - and 2146 (19) at the youngest possible birthdate … for the “Nihlus was trained before Avitus” and became a Spectre at 21 scenario.
So birthdates between 2140-2146 in the “Nihlus was trained before Avitus” timeframe. He’d be between 43 and 37 on Eden Prime (2183).
And then possible birthdates between in the “Nihlus was trained after Avitus” timeframe. The youngest he could possibly be (if he was trained immediately after Avitus from 2170-2172) … would be 21 in 2172. Birthdate of 2151. In this scenario, he’d be 32 on Eden Prime.
I do a lot of handwaving but Nihlus and Saren are probably an age gap of somewhere between 1-12 years in canon (Nihlus born somewhere between 2140-2151).
… yes I know all of the above is confusing. But if you want to take Shepard’s age as the floor for “youngest possible age for Nihlus to be” (b. 2154) … then this is pretty much as good as you’re going to get. ALAS.
Whoops. In my defense, I will say that I was being distracted by another problem (when did Archos become Chora’s Den...) in the timeline as I had played ME1 just before reading Revelation, and, well, we get this conversation by a middle-aged human woman and a salarian in his twenties (since their lifespan ends at around 40 years old and he is too young to be elderly [aka 33-35+ years, I would guess for a salarian senior citizen] and too old to be adolescent) in the game:
Salarian Man: I went fairly often when it was still the Archos.
Human Woman: Yeah, ever since Fist took over, I don't go anymore.
Salarian Man: It seems like all the best lounges are being replaced by places like Chora's Den.
But Anderson, in Revelation that takes place about 18 years before ME1, is trying to drown his divorce at Chora’s Den... So... 2-5 year old salarian toddler/child/tadpole going fairly often to a drinking lounge in the lower wards? Then there’s how they talk about the change to Chora’s Den as if it was a heck of a lot more recent than 18+ years ago? Yeah, I spent that entire chapter squinting at the words and then going back into the game to check that my memory wasn’t failing me, because I was writing the beginning of a fic that begins in Archos, but apparently it was already Chora’s Den by then according to Revelation... But not according to the salarian in the game? Unless it literally became Chora’s Den the year that Anderson was there?
Yes, it’s minor, but it is yet another Mass Effect timeline contradiction/problem. Alongside ages (many characters, from Ashley Williams to Steven Hackett, are younger than they should be for either their backstories or their appearances, without explanation except, maybe, that someone in Hackett’s position is aging rapidly due to stress of being an Alliance Admiral or something, but that doesn’t explain how Ash enlisted before 18 years old, when that’s supposedly the age limit for enlistment in the Alliance? Everyone and everything seems to need at least 5-50 years tacked on in this timeline, except the asari and krogan who needs centuries taken off their lifespans to explain how they forgot the protheans in a mere 50 generations; 50 generations ago for us would land us approx in the year 770 AD, aka King Charlemagne is hanging around and becoming the ancestor of all of Europe, given how the asari seem to like to record and remember history... Heck, we only know that they become matriarchs at 1000 years old and that they live longer, so for all we know, there are matriarchs whose grandmothers used to hang with protheans in their maiden days and procreatingembracing eternity with them...).
Though I wonder if, by the time of Revelation being written, they had ironed out all the salarian facts (like lifespans and cultures and biologies), since one of the rare female salarians we see in the series acts like a hacker for a lowly Alliance soldier (albeit sussing out that she’s being paid by the top of the Alliance) and doling out extranet info when salarians keep their females cloistered on their worlds unless under exceptional circumstances and there’s no mention of the hacker being rare (as a female, or even rarer as a female acting beyond the salarian worlds, or rarer than that; a female salarian acting beyond the salarian worlds for another species that isn’t even a Council species) for her species... One would think it remarkable enough to mention when introducing her in the book...
Shepard is 29 years old when s/he’s evaluated by Nihlus, and given that Saren was a war veteran at around 18-19 years old (and thus would have been had lots of experiences to impart as a mentor at a younger age than most, and would have qualified as a Spectre at a younger age than most; Saren is already a well established Spectre when he is 28 years old in Revelation, and he recruited Avitus Rix in Andromeda to the Spectres, and Avitus retired after 15 years of Spectre service before that after the events in ME1 due to Sarenreign’s actions, so yeah, Saren is young for someone of his position as the seeming premier Spectre in the galaxy, at least for a turian) I’m guessing Nihlus is not so far off from Saren’s age in ME1; something like 35-40 years old (Nihlus also had that run-in with Samara, didn’t he? And if memory serves correctly, it didn’t sound like a recent “just before Eden Prime”-run-in, so he would have been a Spectre for a while on solo missions able to go toe-to-toe with an Asari Justicar matriarch and forcing her to fold, on top of being of enough seniority to be entrusted with evaluating humanity’s first Spectre).
But really, this is Nihlus’ timeline as far as we know: Father dies before he is 16 years old and Nihlus is sent for the mandatory military service turians do by his mother against his will. He becomes an extremely gifted soldier, but with an attitude that doesn’t fit in. He goes through three squads until he meets Saren who become his mentor, and after that Nihlus becomes a Spectre, at some point runs into Samara and outsmarts her code, gains enough clout with the Council to become the evaluator of humanity’s first Spectre.
Simply because Nihlus is also talented, I like to think he is on the lower end of my estimate, around 35-38 years old. So, around 5-10 years older than Shepard.
Saren simply looks older than he is because he’s was born a barefaced biotic (both being stigmatized in turian culture, thus stressful upbringing likely with bullying and/or being ostracized) and has been worked to the bone since he was 18 years old by the Turian Hierarchy, Citadel Council and Sovereign, gone to war, killed his only family to save the galaxy, had most of his body modified by a brainwashing Cthulhu machine/geth minions and so on (even the artwork of the less synthetic model they wanted to use for Saren before his geth implants, he looks older than most turians we know are likely the same age or older, like Adrien Victus or Venari Pallin, and the cover art of Revelations when he is 28 years old also makes him look older than many turians). Or at least that’s my headcanon given what we see him go through in canon...
Widowed Goddess/Queens and Missed Opportunities...
While General Tullius is a hundred times more competent than 95% of Skyrim’s NPCs or so, there is one glaring mistake he makes as a military governor (though he would have to convince High Queen Elisif to get onboard, which shouldn’t be too difficult):
He does not restore Old Nord Faith to Skyrim (which is not outlawed, and perfectly compatible with being Imperial), and use it as propaganda against Ulfric and his Stormcloaks.
If you are familiar with the Old Nord myths about Shor/Lorkhan’s death, I am just going to summarize it as this:
For those less versed in Elder Scrolls mythology: Shor was the God of Men who made sure the mortal world was created, he was later killed by the Elven gods Trinimac and Auri-El atop the Adamantine Tower in the Dawn Era, and Kyne, his widow, became the chief deity of Mankind according to Nord folklore (not Alduin/Akatosh or Ysmir/Talos!).
It’s like the perfect base for pro-Elisif propaganda (Kyne is the beloved mother goddess of the Nords who breathed them to life atop the Throat of the World and bestowed them Voices and made them hardy against the cold), that would also undercut Ulfric’s claims of restoring the TrueNordFaith(TM)... And it would make getting Whiterun on the Imperial side with the Temple of Kynareth, Gildergreen, Skyforge and windy plains a bit of a Big Deal to prop up the Elisif-Kyne connection...
Yes, this would religiously fracture the Nords a bit away from Imperial Cult (which is an evolved hybrid of Nordic and Ayleidic faiths, though both those faiths recognized the other), but it would be less of a schism than between Hammerfell and the Empire, and not at all unbridgeable.
It also would have given the Old Nord Faith a spotlight in its homeland instead of being tucked away in a shack with an old man...
Seriously, this game had sooo many missed opportunities...
So... With all the squeeing over the My Wedding Stories trailer, I feel kinda bad that the first reaction I had to the wedding story shown in the trailer was, “well, that’s kinda biphobic, right? It’s iffy at the very least...”
If you haven’t seen the trailer, it’s basically a woman and man getting engaged, the bride makes her friend maid-of-honor (moh) or something (and thus brings her moh to all the wedding planning stuff, if she’s not the moh, this is even more egregious since groom isn’t bringing a mere friend/guest to these things, and apparently has no best man available, so we already have bride and not-moh being emotionally enmeshed in ways that no one else is in the trailer), bride and groom has a few disagreements about cake and flowers, moh comforts bride after an argument, bride clearly falls in love with her right then and there, but instead of immediately breaking her engagement, has her wedding with groom at the altar, and the bisexual bride grabs the moh and kisses her.
And the groom is shown to be a stoked wedding guest at bride and moh’s wedding afterwards.
For those who don’t know: Bi people are stereotyped and assumed to either be homosexual people in the closet (going from male love interest to female, in this case), or to be chronically dissatisfied in monogamous relationships since they “want both” (and thus will cheat, either emotionally or physically, just like the bride in the trailer who did both), and even to be promiscuous with little to regard for their partners (like leaving someone they’ve promised monogamy to on the altar while publicly humiliating them by making out with another sim...). This biphobia is prevalent in BOTH straight and gay dating scenes, and while screwing with relationships is a honored tradition in The Sims franchise, the way they told this story feels a bit iffy to me...
It also perpetuates the myth that betrayed spouses have to be happy for their cheating partners because of the sexual organs/genders of the promoted side pieces because they need to celebrate the cheaters being their authentic selves (even in Sims Nation, where there is no LGBTphobia, apparently), which have been used in real life not to just to shit on betrayed spouses and their relationships (often calling them “not real” because of the hidden identity of the cheater when they were very real to the betrayed spouse), but also to invalidate LGBT orientations as “not a real betrayal” (see any straight guy exclaiming how hot it is when his bisexual girlfriend makes out with other girls in a supposedly monogamous relationship).
Oh well, at least the nail art is sparkly, there are more wedding dresses and possible slow dancing (squee!).
I was ready to squee over the lighter, graying brown hair in one of the photos, but then I remembered the disclaimer in the beginning of the trailer saying that not all images are representative of what we’re getting... I so hoped that the rest of the hair colors would get graying versions (like the medium brown and black we already have) not tied to hairstyles (looking at you, Nifty Knitting), and perhaps some kind of aging thing going on (Sims at halfway point through the Adult stage getting gray hairs, anyone?).
Regardless of my iffiness with the trailer, I’m tentatively looking forward to this pack and crossing my fingers for a relationships overhaul to make the gameplay more engaging, since this is a game pack after all and not a wedding stuff pack.
I really should stop looking at Mass Effect meta discussions because they just make me mad because inevitably, there will be people trying to justify the geth’s genocide of the quarians in which less than 1% of quarians survived.
Here’s another statistic for you: On Earth, 1.8%-2% of the human population is less than 1 year old every year. There are 4-5 births in progress every second.
Quarians before the genocide should have had comparable numbers, if not an even larger percentage of babies since they are more advanced and spreading across the galaxy in colonies and having robots doing their heavy labor and whatnot and being at peace as a Citadel species in a somewhat of a golden age.
If literally every single surviving quarian was an infant born that same year...
...Then the geth literally killed 50% of the quarian infant population born that year alone, alongside all the toddlers, children, preteens, adolescents, elderly, infirm, mothers in labor, et cetera.
And we all know that the surviving quarians were not all infants and newborns, since someone would have to take care of them and drive the spaceships.
Yes, suuure, the geth were totally just eliminating threats to their existence! /s (Yes, that’s an actual argument, alongside “they didn’t know any better and thought all quarians were threats!” which means that they are supposedly intelligent enough that shutting them down would be a genocide, but so unintelligent that they cannot compute the difference in threat level between a baby and a grown up soldier.)
If the ME writers wanted an actual gray morality/nuanced conflict, 60+% of the quarians would have survived (since that would erase all their active and inactive military members, if they had the largest possible military compared to population size, but lets face it, they aren’t turians, their military was probs something like 5% active, 10% active+inactive at the most, so 90+% of their population should have survived), but instead we are left with less than 1%.
