It’s funny. I’m not a holdiay person or a traditional person by any means, but I cannot escape the trappings of societal beliefs surrounding certain days. New Year’s Day is one of those. I don’t know why as intellectually, I know January 1st is just another day. I don’t feel like a birthday is a big day, so why do I put so much importance on the first day of the new year? It’s just the same as the old year, really. It’s not as if there is some big change on the day itself.
Saying this, I do want to do the goal a month thing. It has to be big enough that I’m not going to shrug it off, but it can’t be so big, it’ll be impossible for me to complete.
Before I get to it, let’s talk about Elden Ring a bit more. That’s what I ended the last post on, and, let’s face it–it’s the game I obsessed over for much of last year. I probably will play it more this year as there are a few things I had’nt done before, but not much. I am looking forward to Armored Core 6, but I’m curious to see what FromSoft will be doing with it.
Let’s talk about Malenia some more. She is in an optional section that is really difficult to access in the first place. You have to light these three beacons or something like that in an optional ‘town’–which, in and of itself isn’t that bad. But, this is the town of the Black Knife Assassins, and–a little-known fact: the BLack Knife Assassins are all women. I love this. There is always a faction in the From games that is made of women. In the Souls series, it’s the butchers. In Bloodborne, it’s….ah….OK, this is not a thing in BB, apparently. Of course I looked it up. In Sekiro, it’s the Sunken Valley Clan. They are all women, including the two mini-bosses, Snake Eyes Shirafuji and Snake Eyes Shirahagi. They are badass shooters who are really hard. The enemies, I mean. The mini-bosses are…not fun. And also optional.
In Elden Ring, it’s the Black Knife Assassins. They are insanely hard, and they are invisible until you’re right up in their grill. There is a torch that can reveal them, but that means not having a shield. I mean, you can equip it in your weapon hand, but then you can’t attack them, obviously. Or maybe you can, but it’s not going to do that much damage. They do an incredible amount of damage themselves, and they do bleed, which will quickly build up and take a chunk of health at a go. One weapon I used for a time was the Black Knife, it’s a dagger that does bleed damage and you have to beat a really difficult Black Knife Assassin in the Altus Plateau to get it. It’s fast and does loads of damage, though.
Black Knife Tiche is the Spirit Summon you can get by defeating Black Knife Ringleader Alecto. She is Tiche’s mother, which is tragic in a way. You find her in the Ringleader Evergaol, which, by the way, is one of the genius inventions in this game. I have talked about how much I dislike the caves and catacombs. The evergaols, on the other hand, I like. They are jails (gaol is the old-timey British word for jail) that house the spirits of important and significant people. And, as is implied in the name, ‘ever’ means forever. So these are bad, bad people who have been imprisoned forever. You cannot summon in them (except for an NPC questline exception), so it’s just you against the boss. And they always get a boss bar. You have to get Tiche’s ashes to get the plat (and you need a huge amount of focus to even use the spirit summon), and some people think she’s the best one. I don’t agree. but she’s a close second or third. I found out something really cool about Latenna, the one who dances with wolves. When you find her as an NPC, she is sitting next to her slewn great wolf. It’s a touching scene, and after a bunch of things you have to do, she gives you her Spirit Summon.
If you use her Spirit Summon around wolves, she can ride one. I think this is fantastic. I have never seen it except in videos, but I think it’s a cool little touch.
Oh, look. I’m prattling on about Elden Ring again. In abrupt turn, the first two months of the new year are going to be for setting up my computer room so I can do video and maybe even stream. I want to make it a true computer office, rather than just the place where my desktop resides.
I have two monitors, a beefy machine, a gaming keyboard, and shitty speakers. I need to upgrade my speaker game. Seriously. I also need a microphone, a camera, and whatever other peripherals. I need to set up a website for my YouTube channel, too. I will be leaning on my brother to help me out with this, but I’m not worried because I am his therapist and he is my IT guy.
When I had to get my desktop assembled in ten days so I could play Elden Ring, my brother got me set for life. Or at least the next ten years. I may have to upgrade my graphics card and add more memory, but that’s not a big deal.
I have my idea for what kinds of videos I want to make. It’s funny. I think I’ve mentioned that I’ve been watching a bunch of reaction videos, and I included one from MrLboyd because he’s one of my faves. Natural reactions, but nothing overdone. Plus, this one was just fantastic when he realized what was going on.
The thing I noticed is that so many people overreact. I know, I know, that’s the name of the game, but the ones I like are the ones who are emotive, but genuine. I will do a whole post on this at another time, but let me just say that it feels so fakey to me.
The way it works is that people send requests to the YouTuber (via PayPal or Patreon or the comments of another video), and the YouTuber watches whatever is requested and reacts. Some will stop the video frequently and comment whereas others will hold it until the end. This is a huge area of content, and my own spin will be, ah, unusual.