In addition to the previous blogs, re: Commander Shepard and Ashley Williams, and as I had been quite specific in other characters' posts, I feel it remiss of me not to mention the actors who voice them.
The female Commander Shepard is voiced by Canadian, Jennifer Hale, a big voice acting name in the gaming industry these days and often used by BioWare for various characters in their franchises. As an Englishman, I will say she does a great clipped English accent as Rosalind Lutece in Bioshock: Infinite, and I was thoroughly flabbergasted when her name went past in the credits. Jen gives Shepard the agency and urgency needed for a woman charged with saving the galaxy, spitting fire in Renegade mode, defiant as a Paragon, and enough to rouse anyone's spirit when she gives rhetoric to the troops. My top Shepard moment is a bitter-sweet one, being the speech if you choose to refuse the Citadel's choices and ultimately allow the Reapers to win.
"I fight for freedom; mine and everyone's. I fight for the right to choose our own fate. And if I die, I'll know I died doing everything I could to stop you, and I'll die free."
And as love interest, I love Liara's bit after that.
Another name we see a lot in recent gaming titles is Kimberly Brooks, and the voice of Ashley Williams. From Oracle (Barbara) in the Arkham series, to 'grunt #2' in XCom: Enemy Unknown, to Daisy Fitzroy in Bioshock: Infinite, Kimberly's voice has become instantly recognisable no matter the role. I suspect it's the ever-so slight lispy rasp that she has, which is not to criticise but merely observe and I would say part of her charm. She does a grand job of keeping the balance of gung-ho marine and learned intellectual right.
Saturday, 9 May 2015
Friday, 8 May 2015
And Shepard makes three (Girl Squad!)
https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stoob/works
Commander Shepard.
Just the name stirs the soul for a fan like myself. Though to define who or what Commander Shepard is as a character whose gender and psyche are chosen by the player, it is different for all. From Shepard's birthplace and upbringing, to his or her achievements and hardships in life, and ultimately the fine minutia of the interactions in-game, we all have different highlights and memories of the Hero of the Citadel. But this piece about my Shepard, Commander Verity Shepard.
Verity Shepard was raised by her parents on the off-world human colony of Mindoir. However, the galaxy is not at peace and the colony is attacked by slavers, killing all who oppose them, including young Verity's parents. She is briefly enslaved but rescued by the Earth Systems Alliance Navy, no doubt sparking her desire to sign up and put right that which is wrong. Later in her career in the fleet, she loses her whole squad to a wild Thresher Maw on the planet of Akuze, a massive and dangerous creature never encountered by humans before; it turns out later in the game that this was a set-up by the dark ops group Cerberus to study the creature's fierceness and the squad's ability to combat it; Cerberus' sick experiments are quite a feature of the game. Surviving adversity as the sole survivor of Akuze, Shepard is put forward for N7 training and quickly becomes the poster-girl of the Alliance. That's pretty much where we come in, and the start of the first instalment of Mass Effect and what can be considered 'canon' for that origin.
One of the unique features of a BioWare title is their morality systems. In Star Wars The Old Republic, it is much easier to define the scale: the light side to the dark, thank you, George, job's a good'un, In Mass Effect, they chose Paragon to Renegade and as arbitrary labels go they did suffice quite nicely. Are you aiming to inspire and to do good through your endeavours? Or are you willing to do anything it takes to get the job done and be damned the consequence?
As you can probably already imagine due to her purposefully, pious name, Verity leaned towards Paragon, In the context of the game, Verity Shepard is what is termed a 'Mary Sue'; a character so without flaw they are beyond suspension of disbelief, in that I chose every Paragon action without choosing any Renegade where possible. Role play is role play, and it made more sense for me that the good Doctor T'Soni would be more inclined to fall for a character like this than a bad-ass. And as I've mentioned Liara, we must come back to Ashley. Girl Squad! Ha!
The Girl Squad thing was funny/peculiar. It originally comes from Dexter's Laboratory, when DeeDee and her two friends start an investigation team because of suspicious activity in the neighbourhood, calling themselves, yes, Girl Squad with a Charlie's Angels type title screen. When I was playing ME1 a lot, and had Liara and Ashley in tow, the Girl Squad always used to pop into my head. That it went into the fic was a spur of the moment thing. I'd written the first time they sound off their names, nearly didn't post it because to be honest, it is quite silly even if not beyond the realms of possibility. It went in. Some commented they enjoyed it, and the Girl Squad they remained. The Girl Squad been a fun feature to use in their interactions, as they jibe and taunt one another. If I'm honest, when I used it in the last chapter of 'Blue', I did have a little gulp myself. Despite its silliness, it is the trios bond.
While the in-game Verity Shepard and her adventures are the basis for my fan fic Shepard, I did have to concede some darkness for her. As I said above, in the context of the game, full Paragon is fine but in reality, it doesn't make for interesting writing. The first piece I ever posted explored this very thing, where Shepard had killed Shiala on Feros and Liara confronts her over it, knowing that Shiala may not have been totally lost to indoctrination. From that piece I began to build my fic Shepard's character; a dark side that sometimes lashes out even if well intentioned, and the occasional loss of control due to it.
I could bang on for ages, hence ending up writing fan fic, so I'll leave it there, except to say that while my trilogy sequel 'The Damned' is slow in progress right now, their story isn't over just yet.
Commander Shepard.
Just the name stirs the soul for a fan like myself. Though to define who or what Commander Shepard is as a character whose gender and psyche are chosen by the player, it is different for all. From Shepard's birthplace and upbringing, to his or her achievements and hardships in life, and ultimately the fine minutia of the interactions in-game, we all have different highlights and memories of the Hero of the Citadel. But this piece about my Shepard, Commander Verity Shepard.
Verity Shepard was raised by her parents on the off-world human colony of Mindoir. However, the galaxy is not at peace and the colony is attacked by slavers, killing all who oppose them, including young Verity's parents. She is briefly enslaved but rescued by the Earth Systems Alliance Navy, no doubt sparking her desire to sign up and put right that which is wrong. Later in her career in the fleet, she loses her whole squad to a wild Thresher Maw on the planet of Akuze, a massive and dangerous creature never encountered by humans before; it turns out later in the game that this was a set-up by the dark ops group Cerberus to study the creature's fierceness and the squad's ability to combat it; Cerberus' sick experiments are quite a feature of the game. Surviving adversity as the sole survivor of Akuze, Shepard is put forward for N7 training and quickly becomes the poster-girl of the Alliance. That's pretty much where we come in, and the start of the first instalment of Mass Effect and what can be considered 'canon' for that origin.
One of the unique features of a BioWare title is their morality systems. In Star Wars The Old Republic, it is much easier to define the scale: the light side to the dark, thank you, George, job's a good'un, In Mass Effect, they chose Paragon to Renegade and as arbitrary labels go they did suffice quite nicely. Are you aiming to inspire and to do good through your endeavours? Or are you willing to do anything it takes to get the job done and be damned the consequence?
As you can probably already imagine due to her purposefully, pious name, Verity leaned towards Paragon, In the context of the game, Verity Shepard is what is termed a 'Mary Sue'; a character so without flaw they are beyond suspension of disbelief, in that I chose every Paragon action without choosing any Renegade where possible. Role play is role play, and it made more sense for me that the good Doctor T'Soni would be more inclined to fall for a character like this than a bad-ass. And as I've mentioned Liara, we must come back to Ashley. Girl Squad! Ha!
The Girl Squad thing was funny/peculiar. It originally comes from Dexter's Laboratory, when DeeDee and her two friends start an investigation team because of suspicious activity in the neighbourhood, calling themselves, yes, Girl Squad with a Charlie's Angels type title screen. When I was playing ME1 a lot, and had Liara and Ashley in tow, the Girl Squad always used to pop into my head. That it went into the fic was a spur of the moment thing. I'd written the first time they sound off their names, nearly didn't post it because to be honest, it is quite silly even if not beyond the realms of possibility. It went in. Some commented they enjoyed it, and the Girl Squad they remained. The Girl Squad been a fun feature to use in their interactions, as they jibe and taunt one another. If I'm honest, when I used it in the last chapter of 'Blue', I did have a little gulp myself. Despite its silliness, it is the trios bond.
While the in-game Verity Shepard and her adventures are the basis for my fan fic Shepard, I did have to concede some darkness for her. As I said above, in the context of the game, full Paragon is fine but in reality, it doesn't make for interesting writing. The first piece I ever posted explored this very thing, where Shepard had killed Shiala on Feros and Liara confronts her over it, knowing that Shiala may not have been totally lost to indoctrination. From that piece I began to build my fic Shepard's character; a dark side that sometimes lashes out even if well intentioned, and the occasional loss of control due to it.
I could bang on for ages, hence ending up writing fan fic, so I'll leave it there, except to say that while my trilogy sequel 'The Damned' is slow in progress right now, their story isn't over just yet.
Thursday, 7 May 2015
Ashley Williams (Mass Effect)
Ashley got a lot 'bad press'. The reasons are usually two-fold:
1. She made the 'dog' analogy.
2. She said she couldn't tell the aliens from the animals when on the Presidium.
As such, she was labelled 'bigot'. While the second is less forgiveable, even if said facetiously or tongue in cheek, the first is just philosophy and not an uncommon concept. For those who don't know, Ashley says that if you're running from a bear, you'd sacrifice your dog to get away, implying that the Council races would sacrifice the humans in a heartbeat for their own benefit and vice versa. A cynical view, but not without base or merit. Remember of course, that Ashley is very well read, and is always citing passages from great works so it would be fair to say that she is not being rash.
I would personally call her a 'traditionalist', due to her faith. The various faiths of Earth must have had pause for thought when they discovered we are not alone in the galaxy, the idea that God deals only in humans would be ludicrous. But by tradition, and familiarity, many would have continued with their own doctrine and ceremony long after and for those very reasons: tradition and familiarity.
The alien/animal thing? We all say facetious things we don't really mean when we think no-one is listening but unfortunately for Ash, there were a few million of us listening.
But that's all only one small part of Ashley Williams.
Eldest of four sisters, and having a tradition of military service in the family, Ashley joined the Earth Systems Alliance Navy as a ground combatant. However, the Williams family name is tarnished in the military, due to her grandfather, General Williams' surrender of the Shanxi outpost in the First Contact War with the turians and despite that being decades earlier, her rise through the ranks is slow and impeded because of it, still only being Gunnery Chief when we meet her in Mass Effect 1. Her family, her duty, and her honour are what keep her going, and she never flinches at any of them.
In a lighter moment during a conversation with Shepard, Williams says she should ask Liara about her sex life, due to the common misconception that asari are promiscuous due to their reproductive habits (able to mate with any species). Shepard, if you choose to say so, advises that's probably not a good idea as Liara's new to the humans and wouldn't appreciate the attention (already noticing Liara's reserved nature but I digress). "No fun, Commander!" is the response from Ashley, and it's that tiny sliver I take much of my Ashley from for my musings. The older sister who would tease her siblings, jibe them about their boyfriends but with affection. As her own father was often away, also a military man, Ashley says she did a lot to help bring them up as well.
I did find it a little disappointing that some couldn't see beyond their initial assessment, as there's a lot more to the now Spectre Ashley Williams than just a few off-hand comments.
NB: 'Kaiden'. That's as much as the he is able to get from me. I never did a play through where Ashley didn't survive Virmire. Sorry!
1. She made the 'dog' analogy.
2. She said she couldn't tell the aliens from the animals when on the Presidium.
As such, she was labelled 'bigot'. While the second is less forgiveable, even if said facetiously or tongue in cheek, the first is just philosophy and not an uncommon concept. For those who don't know, Ashley says that if you're running from a bear, you'd sacrifice your dog to get away, implying that the Council races would sacrifice the humans in a heartbeat for their own benefit and vice versa. A cynical view, but not without base or merit. Remember of course, that Ashley is very well read, and is always citing passages from great works so it would be fair to say that she is not being rash.
I would personally call her a 'traditionalist', due to her faith. The various faiths of Earth must have had pause for thought when they discovered we are not alone in the galaxy, the idea that God deals only in humans would be ludicrous. But by tradition, and familiarity, many would have continued with their own doctrine and ceremony long after and for those very reasons: tradition and familiarity.
The alien/animal thing? We all say facetious things we don't really mean when we think no-one is listening but unfortunately for Ash, there were a few million of us listening.
But that's all only one small part of Ashley Williams.
Eldest of four sisters, and having a tradition of military service in the family, Ashley joined the Earth Systems Alliance Navy as a ground combatant. However, the Williams family name is tarnished in the military, due to her grandfather, General Williams' surrender of the Shanxi outpost in the First Contact War with the turians and despite that being decades earlier, her rise through the ranks is slow and impeded because of it, still only being Gunnery Chief when we meet her in Mass Effect 1. Her family, her duty, and her honour are what keep her going, and she never flinches at any of them.
In a lighter moment during a conversation with Shepard, Williams says she should ask Liara about her sex life, due to the common misconception that asari are promiscuous due to their reproductive habits (able to mate with any species). Shepard, if you choose to say so, advises that's probably not a good idea as Liara's new to the humans and wouldn't appreciate the attention (already noticing Liara's reserved nature but I digress). "No fun, Commander!" is the response from Ashley, and it's that tiny sliver I take much of my Ashley from for my musings. The older sister who would tease her siblings, jibe them about their boyfriends but with affection. As her own father was often away, also a military man, Ashley says she did a lot to help bring them up as well.
I did find it a little disappointing that some couldn't see beyond their initial assessment, as there's a lot more to the now Spectre Ashley Williams than just a few off-hand comments.
NB: 'Kaiden'. That's as much as the he is able to get from me. I never did a play through where Ashley didn't survive Virmire. Sorry!
Wednesday, 6 May 2015
XCOM: Enemy Unknown
https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stoob/works
Much like the original however, a sense of 'attachment' for your soldiers forms, as they go through the missions, getting stronger each time and getting out alive. Losing an experienced soldier in the field is not only damaging to the operation as whole, as that expertise is needed to help keep others alive too and prevent them from panicking, but pangs that they'd come so far only to be killed by some snit of a Sectoid. Each soldier is given a generated full name and once experienced enough, a nickname, which only adds to the attachment. Nicknames like 'Thunder', 'Hex', or 'Rhino', typical grunt nicknames but they are combat experienced soldiers so it's to be expected.
So my pondering has been around how the reserved and usually focussed research specialist, Doctor Vahlen might interact with these 'grunts'. We don't get much to go on from the game, it's not very 'character' based, though from some research of my own, many of the devs wanted Doctors Vahlen and Chen to be married and even created an elaborate model for a wedding ring that was never used. I don't have any issues with the marriage idea but I personally don't go with this, not for what I want to muse. Firaxis themselves have said that no-one is wrong as it doesn't say either way in-game.
Friday, 1 May 2015
My tuppence worth or two cents (Valve, Bethesda and mods)
Obviously, my writing life also revolves around my gaming life so forgive me the indulgence.
So, the dust is settling around the ill-judged move to start a pay for mods model for Skyrim on the Steam Workshop. Well that firmly puts my stake in the ground. I think that neither Valve nor Bethesda thought it through properly and in the initial announcement that paid mods were no longer being continued they said as much, so fair play to them for that. Out of all this, the already fragile community itself suffered most. One of the cries on the Steam Community Forums was that there was no initial dialogue with the users about it. This makes me laugh. The response and backlash on the forums shows exactly why Valve would be reluctant to open up such a channel with the users, the immaturity knew no bounds and was for the most party utterly vacuous and without anything meaningful to say, usually filled with memes, videos, bigotry and expletives. * slow clap *
However, that said, and obviously would be in my interest, I'm not totally against the idea of amateur creatives being able to make a few quid. I've a few of NPC mods on nexus, and initially would have considered upping my game to maybe jump in if it seemed to be working out alright for the modders. If only it were that simple, eh? After this moment of fancy, and after thinking it through a bit more and reading up on some of the real sources of actual modders invited into the initial launch, the current style of modding is too much of a 'shitty mess' for it to be so cut and dried. There's so many shared resources being used, tools created by other modders, shared textures, meshes, the whole kaboodle, because everyone is just doing if for the love of it and is happy for others to make use of it and thus extend the life of the game and their notoriety into the bargain. So who gets paid? Does the guy who made the skin textures you used for your follower mod need paying? The possibility of mods being downloaded from a free site like Nexus or the other place(...), to then sell on Steam was another issue that there was little in place to challenge or avoid that possibility, And then with what turned out to be a meagre percentage of the total for the modder (25%), what about the supporting talent, like voice actors, artists, musicians, story and dialogue writers, and so on?
In short, my opinion would be that the modders themselves need to organise before this can really be attempted in earnest, and treat what is a hobby now as a business, with agreements over assets between themselves in place. We are hoping, however, that this has not been so bad for the community that Bethesda pulls support for mods completely in future titles such as the impending Fallout 4, which they have been very supportive of thus far, providing the Creation Kit for Skyrim and letting us run riot.
'Gaben will provide' Book of Steam 1:14
So, the dust is settling around the ill-judged move to start a pay for mods model for Skyrim on the Steam Workshop. Well that firmly puts my stake in the ground. I think that neither Valve nor Bethesda thought it through properly and in the initial announcement that paid mods were no longer being continued they said as much, so fair play to them for that. Out of all this, the already fragile community itself suffered most. One of the cries on the Steam Community Forums was that there was no initial dialogue with the users about it. This makes me laugh. The response and backlash on the forums shows exactly why Valve would be reluctant to open up such a channel with the users, the immaturity knew no bounds and was for the most party utterly vacuous and without anything meaningful to say, usually filled with memes, videos, bigotry and expletives. * slow clap *
However, that said, and obviously would be in my interest, I'm not totally against the idea of amateur creatives being able to make a few quid. I've a few of NPC mods on nexus, and initially would have considered upping my game to maybe jump in if it seemed to be working out alright for the modders. If only it were that simple, eh? After this moment of fancy, and after thinking it through a bit more and reading up on some of the real sources of actual modders invited into the initial launch, the current style of modding is too much of a 'shitty mess' for it to be so cut and dried. There's so many shared resources being used, tools created by other modders, shared textures, meshes, the whole kaboodle, because everyone is just doing if for the love of it and is happy for others to make use of it and thus extend the life of the game and their notoriety into the bargain. So who gets paid? Does the guy who made the skin textures you used for your follower mod need paying? The possibility of mods being downloaded from a free site like Nexus or the other place(...), to then sell on Steam was another issue that there was little in place to challenge or avoid that possibility, And then with what turned out to be a meagre percentage of the total for the modder (25%), what about the supporting talent, like voice actors, artists, musicians, story and dialogue writers, and so on?
In short, my opinion would be that the modders themselves need to organise before this can really be attempted in earnest, and treat what is a hobby now as a business, with agreements over assets between themselves in place. We are hoping, however, that this has not been so bad for the community that Bethesda pulls support for mods completely in future titles such as the impending Fallout 4, which they have been very supportive of thus far, providing the Creation Kit for Skyrim and letting us run riot.
'Gaben will provide' Book of Steam 1:14
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