So I went to the Dragon Age 2 site to download the demo. I’m too busy to actually play the game, but, you know… Dragon Age. I got through the age verification thing by lying and telling it I was still 30. Stupid thing believed me. You know, if we’re going to expect these age verification things to work we need to stop teaching math in schools. I’m just saying, if we continue to recklessly teach our children to subtract one number from another, then they’ll be able to figure out how to lie to a website about their age. If that happens, then children of absent, uninvolved, and apathetic parents will be able to access violent videogames. Imagine the damage those kids will experience. I mean, the damage from the game, not the damage from having screwed up parents. Hang on. What were we talking about again?
Oh yeah. Dragon Age 2. Right. Thanks.
So anyway, I was on the website when I saw this:
A menu option labeled Felicia Day. What is this for?
INT. BOB'S HOUSE, DAY
BOB is sitting at his computer when he hears a KNOCK at the door. He answers it, and FELICIA DAY is standing there.
BOB:
Wow! Felicia Day! It's really you!
FELICIA DAY:
(Annoyed) Yeah. Hi.
BOB:
Awesome.
FELICIA DAY:
So what did you want?
BOB:
Want? I don't...
FELICIA DAY:
Yeah. Why did you send for me?
BOB:
Send for you? I didn't.
(BOB looks around, confused.)
FELICIA DAY:
So you didn't click the Felicia Day button on the Dragon Age 2 site?
BOB:
Oh yeah! I remember doing that.
FELICIA DAY:
Okay then. What do you need? Just make it quick. I'm supposed to be in LA to do this TV show this afternoon.
BOB:
I don't really need anything. I just wanted to know what the button did.
FELICIA DAY:
You didn't know what it did? Don't you think the label "Felicia Day" was a bit of a giveaway? What did you think it would do? Send for Nathan Fillion?
BOB:
Well, I don't need anything. I guess I shouldn't have clicked it.
FELICIA DAY:
I was in the middle of something, asshole.
BOB:
Sorry.
INT. BOB'S OFFICE, NIGHT
BOB is using his computer again. He's writing an apology to FELICIA DAY. He goes to the File menu to save his work, and the menu options are: NEW, Open, SAVE, SAVE AS, NATHAN FILLION, and EXIT.
BOB:
Ohh. I wonder what that does?
END
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How to Forum
Dear people of the internet: Please stop doing these horrible idiotic things when you talk to each other.
At first I thought it was a holiday or something, like Martin Luther King Day.
I wouldn’t mind celebrating Felicia Day.
We could celebrate it with Fellatio! That’s only a few letters off!
I blame Rutskarn for infecting me with Punitis. But since there was a sophisticated age check up top, I’m sure this is completely fine!
I would agree with you, but I imagine Felicia Day might take offense at that.
You’re a weird dude sometimes, Shamus Young. You should know by now that the internet doesn’t work like that.
On a related note I keep clicking the link on your site hoping they’ll deliver a Chocolate Hammer to drive in these Fondant Nails I have lying around, but all I ever get are blog entries about old computer games.
I’m just here to buy dice.
Felicai Day has worked with Bioware to create a Dragon Age webseries which will be released later this year.
I assume the link will connect to the episodes when they are released.
Right on, Phaezen. I love that Shamus went through all of that writing when a quick Google search for Felicia Day + Bioware would have probably revealed the truth of it all.
Still… good times!
Or, Shamus knew that, but decided to run with his amusing little scenario for our entertainment anyway.
Or, he’s practicing screenwriting form for that other project he can’t talk about yet.
Certainly the probable explanation, but much like winking to the audience on a Broadway stage, too much subtlety in this case makes it look like Shamus doesn’t get out on the internet much. ;)
Then why is the link called Felicia Day and not Felicia Day’s DA webseries? Or just DA Webseries?
Because people are far more likely to click on a link that just says “Felicia Day”.
Even if the menu item is utterly uninformative and actually misleading?
Cool. Then how about we rename ‘Save as…’ to ‘hot chick’. Cuts out the need to have to ask any particular woman for name rights and it might reduce the amount of work lost to people not saving regularly.
I mean if context and meaning are optional…
Sorry, not meant to be an attack, though in hindsight it sounds like one (hence the sorry), just trying to vent my confusion as to who thought this was a good idea.
And make the “hold on a sec, this program is saving some data” thing flash a hot chick for however long it’s saving.
Be able to set (in options) to hot guy.
YOU MAY BE A GENIUS, SIR.
If that’s what makes a genius I want to be dumber :P I was hoping it would sound like the terrible idea that it is…
Incidents of large amounts of Average Joe’s work lost in the ether because of power cuts would be reduced to a minimum. Genius!
I was expecting a button of Felicia so I could click it to celebrate the day.
Ha! Well done.
Great, Shamus- now you’ve stooped to a new low, and I’ll be daydreaming about Felicia all Day.
As for your short script above? Remember Rule 34 next time you get an idea, ok? Please?
Obvious Exits are: North, South, and Dennis.
> go dennis
If you check the her blog, Felicia Day actually links the new Dragon Age Redemption trailer. Looks like this is a live-action Dragon Age.
http://feliciaday.com/blog
I thought I had a crush on Felicia Day before I watched the trailer, but now I KNOW I do.
I think she’d be cool to hang out with. I don’t presuppose any need for attraction.
I kinda liked her until I saw her trailer and she was wearing the push up corset of cleavage. Female armor in the first game didn’t look anything like that. It was good proper armor which minimizes not adds enough to become a hindrance in combat.
coughcoughMorrigan
Actually I put Morrigan in full armor and she looked well protected.
I suppose if Felicia Day showed up at my door unannounced I’d sputter incoherently, too.
Seconded. In my most suave and debonair manner, my intellectually stimulating diatribe would be a resounding, “Aurroooo? Arurururuaaaauuuuuuuuhhhh….” Of course, then my paranoia would surface, and I would thrash about madly looking for the camera and whoever it was that punked me (and I’m looking at you, Malcolm Reynolds).
(Apparently attempting to make links ate my post, if it appears please disregard this one.)
Just in case you haven’t ran into a certain event:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/7/28/
http://www.penny-arcade.com/2008/9/1/
(Third paragraph.)
Step 1: Felicia Day shows up at your door.
Step 2: Sputter incoherently.
Step 3: Nathan Fillion steals your wallet.
He might just be trying to raise money. If this is what he was up to, all he had to do was ask….
Help Nathan buy Firefly
Even CNN gets in on the act
Five days worth of work
Oh hell yes, this is the best idea the internet’s ever had.
Damn you, Shamus. Now I can’t stop clicking the damned link.
Shamus, you bad man! I don’t have enough time to try the DA2 demo yet either so when I clicked your “read more of this stuff” link, I was hoping you’d give me your first impressions of the it. That way I’d have a pre-thought opinion spoon-fed to me so that my work in forming my own opinions would be minimal. Damn yooooooooouuuuuuuu!
I thought I had enough time to try the Demo, and I was wrong. Everytime I expected it to end it just kept going. I’m still not through it.
Seriously? It’s barely an hour long if you don’t skip any cutscenes. I guess it’s around 20 minutes long if you mash the escape key.
An hour long demo is a surprising thing in this day and age, at least for me.
Edit: went back and checked and I was right at the end however.
Impression of Dragon Age 2, based off the demo: Seems pretty much like Dragon Age, though with “flashy combat action” added on.
Nothing radically different about it, which already takes it a step up from ME2. It’s got the radial-wheel dialogue thing, though, and no longer a silent protagonist, so there might be less room for variety in defining your character.
One day, scientists will discover a means of summoning Felicia Day at-will, with all the ease of a mouse click & all the delightful repurcussions of a slash fic. And on that day, the heavens shall rejoice as the world is united in exaltation of the glory that has been acheived. With the Rapture upon them & Apotheosis looming nigh, those few who remain that can withstand Feliciapocalypse will cry out in despair.
And Summer Glau shall answer them.
I enjoy telling those age verification things I’m in my 80s, even though I’m like 19.
I’m still waiting for an age gate to say “Your not 90 years old, smartass. Try again.” Or something like that when I say I’m born in 1910.
Maybe I’ll make my own age gate that does that. With blackjack, and hookers!
On second thought, forget the age gate.
I saw that happen, once. I can’t remember the site, but I just span the mouse wheel, clicked a random year, and it ended up being something in the 1800s, or something. It kicked me back to the same screen, with a message like “Yeah right, Grandpa. Try again.”
I invariably pick January 1 on those things, and usually the earliest year it has available (typically 1900), although sometimes I’ll just scroll down a random distance and pick whichever one I can click easiest.
I often wonder what the point of these things is. Most especially on sites that I’m actually logged into and that actually know my real birthday.
As I understand it, legal obligations, so when you see horrible stuff you can’t sue them for showing it to you. giantbomb.com just puts a dropdown defaulted to 20 so you can just click play as usual when they have to, which is pretty awesome :)
Dragon Age! I played that. Of course, by “played that” I’m referring to the tabletop RPG, but it’s almost the same thing. Right…?
Oh yeah, I’m oldschool.
Does that say in-game unlocks for playing the demo? Really? I mean, I like demos and think there should be more of them. But an in-game unlock for the demo? “You can only play the full game if you do this scavenger hunt”
It’s actually a bonus if ONE MILLION downloads of the demo happen.
No, you also unlock a weapon-DLC if you finish the DLC. And yes, that is kind of stupid.
Though not as stupid as the people that were going haywire on the bioware forums until the moderators put of a stop to it because of all the different pre-order boni for different stores. Dear Ao, people’s fetish’esque obsession with getting every single useless pre-order item borders on the scary. Why would you pre-order yet again for just one stupid ring?! Why?!
Because geeks like to collect and hoard things.
FYI, Felicia Day is a hardcore RPG fan, since way back.
http://www.ultimaaiera.com/blog/ultima-has-a-friend-in-felicia-day/
And she gets to wearz teh elf eerz.
And back to the Demo, it was… hmm… They locked out the inventory screen! And I think the fighting is a tad TOO slashy slashy voosh.
And I wanted a rogue with a single weapon fencing style, duel wielding is so trite.
The demo is pretty decent, in the sense that you get to see if DA2 runs on your computer, and if you like the core functions..
There are some things to remember before composing an unholy post of le rantiness about sell-out bioware devs, mind:
1) The balancing in demo is pretty old (the whole build is several months old, actually), and has been re-tweaked since then (to generally be harder/more balanced).
2) While you can run the demo in DX11 mode (and it looks better), it’s not finished – generally, dx11 mode on the demo may result in a lot lower performance without cause and on weaker systems, crashing. Again, all that is fixed in the actual retail game.
Too many people are ignoring the above and just complaining about how the game is ‘teh failz’ and so on >.>
Annyway, just wanted to say that I played it, liked the stuff they have done to graphics (good upgrade from DA:O, imo), didn’t see much difference in combat (played same way as in origins, pausing every time I needed to let off an ability or, well, manage something), the new animations – I’m indifferent to them (mages got a good upgrade, warriors aren’t bad, rogues are way too flighty though), the UI is quite bare – but it down’t bother me much, and the dreaded ‘mass effect conversation wheel’ is something I actually like.
Oh, and the voice actors for all Hawkes and companions seem really good – so even those who hated Mark Meer’s performance in MEs won’t have to worry about how the DA2’s player chars are :)
Good points all. Although I found the male Hawke’s voice a bit over heroic, seemed a bit off-puting. I did like the way female Hawke delivered the sarcastic/joke lines.
I think the thing that’s most impressive, but that few people will even notice, are the subtle tweaks between the PC and console versions that make them play out very differently despite few overt differences. (Or so I’m told. I wanted to check out the Mac version, but alas, no demo.)
What BUGS me though, is that at a key moment (it should be obvious which one) I wasn’t allowed to break down, cry, or in any other way act like a human freaking being.
If you would have, a certain big lump of muscles would have done to you the same he did to your sibling, mind.
That’s another thing people are harping upon, actually – they claim that moment is stale and has no emotional impact, there are no movie-style lamentations etc… I don’t see how they would have any place, given that the big bad is still right there, and that has the initial focus and attention – he certainly won’t wait for everyone to express their sorrow in 5-minute monologues. Time to mourn will come after the shock, but first things first, you know :)
“they claim that moment is stale and has no emotional impact”
They say that because this is a character we just met barely 5 minutes ago.
That said; I’m old fashioned enough concerning violence against women that seeing Bethany get ogre-stomped got a “oh… dear” out of me. Seeing Carver get smashed though got not even that.
It’s off course a wait and see how it will play out in the full game’s story. But right now the sibling’s death serves no real purpose beyond conveying: “This is an ogre! Shit just got real, son!”
No no, not then. After the fight. I get that the moment it happens, you’re kind of busy. But there’s a scene afterwards, and you can’t even get weepy? Really?
So they essentially pulled a Fable.
Where your apparently close family member/significant other dies right at the beginning, when you barely know who they even are(chances are you don’t even know their damn names).
I think “subtle” is the wrong word to describe the differences between the PC and console versions. “Major” tweaks might be better.
The Xbox has console style combat. Press A to kill things. Press other buttons for special powers. Very immediate, very action oriented, in the trenches style. Everything a console gamer could hope for.
On the PC, DA2 is straight up overhead tactical RPG. Overhead view, pausing combat, auto-attack, taskbar full of powers. Looks to be a perfect evolution of what was started with DA:O. Which is, appropriately enough, what I as a PC gamer wanted.
In many ways, Bioware has mechanically made two different games, even more so than DA:O. Impressive not just for the effort, but from the apparent success..
Well that explains a lot. Here I’d heard all about how they were taking the combat in drastic new directions, and then played it only to find basically the same thing, but better, from Origins. This is not a complaint a course.
“On the PC, DA2 is straight up overhead tactical RPG. Overhead view, pausing combat, auto-attack, taskbar full of powers.”
When you talk about overhead view, you mean that it will be in the complete game, or you meant what is already in the demo?
Because in the demo it felt more like a third person behind-the-shoulders camera than an overhead view, i would have liked to pull back the camera much more than what it allowed me.
By the way, Shamus, will you share with us your opinion on the demo when you have the time to play it? i’d be curious to hear your thoughts about it.
Is this a troll?
I am now furiously searching for the Neil Patrick Harris button. My fiancée will love me forever if I can summon Neil Patrick Harris to her. Or marry Neil. But he’s not interested in women, so I think I’m safe.
Depends entirely on whether you are Neil’s type.
Neil’s partner is way, way more attractive than I am, and can cook. I have no chance.
Post a link if you find the NPH button. I need someone to rehearse lines and dance numbers with me.
And somewhere in LA a cold shiver went down Felicia Day’s spine. It almost felt as if simultaneously millions of geeks were fantasizing about how magical it could be if they clicked the Felicia Day button. “I sense a great disturbance in the Force…” she muttered.
“What was that?” replied Nathan Fillion.
“Sorry. Guess a goose stepped over my grave,” she responded perkily.
Nathan smiled warmly, showing off unnaturally white, even teeth “Oh, hey, by the way, Bob asked me to return your cell phone…”
So what happens if Felicia Day presses the Felicia Day button? Time travelling Felicia Day? Universe explodes? Felicia Day clones? Universe implodes? Robot duplicate Felicia Day?
This potential loophole must be explored!
If she clicks the Felicia Day button, it drops her into a universe entirely populated by John Malkovich.
I Felicia Day clicks Felicia Day, people everywhere will stop googleing google.
Facebook buttons are that universal now that I looked for the like button on this post. I guess I’ll have to post it manually. :)
Age gates are a trap for the ‘Think of the children!’ types.
Either A:
The kid tells the truth and isn’t let in.
or B:
The kid lies and gets what they were going there in the first place for. In the event that their disaproving parrent notices this the owners of the item can point out that the kid would not have gotten the item had they not LIED about their age. Maybe if they had taught the kid right and wrong they wouldn’t be such a liar liar pants on fire.
“Ohh. I wonder what that does?”
This works best if you read it in the voice of DeeDee, from Dexter’s Lab.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfj0sRiEqx4
I was so happy when I found out Cartoon Network is re-broadcasting Dexter’s Lab.
Ah, memories…
As an English-teacher-in-training, I’d just like to complement Shamus on how natural that dialogue sounded. The “Awesome” line in particular struck me as about the only thing someone could really say when finding Felicia Day at your door for no apparent reason. (Well, a few other lines came to mind, but nothing an intelligent, married man who respected women would say :-P)
Also, click the Nathan Fillion button! Offer to play Ninja Ropes with him before he leaves. Might make a friend.
Yeah, I lie to those things on general principle at the moment. and because it’s easier to scroll back to the 30s and click a random date than go to the trouble of selecting my real one and having to pay attention and stuff.
Thanks a lot, Shamus. Now I just had to go there and click that button just to check if it actually DOES summon Felicia Day…
What is so awesome about you guys is that you have my sense of humor and notice the EXACT same things wrong with games or about life in general… I did the same double-take when I saw Felicia Day there as well… and then my thoughts went something like this:
The dumbing down of computer games
Appealing to the masses
1 Race choice vs. 3 so that we can have voice-over…
Pretty soon Arnold will be out repping for ME3…
As an aside, what do people think of Bioware’s new ethos on character creation? Having decided that character creation screens are overly complex and can turn off gamers before they even begin, Bioware is now customarily finding ways to have play begin BEFORE the customization screen.
I find it quite clever, but there’s only so many ways to do it. I can think of one more after ME2’s helmet trick and DA2’s legendary trick, but after that…
I actually dislike that. ME2’s in particular was just one not particularly well done unskippable cutscene. It wasn’t a tutorial (that came after). It added little plot information that couldn’t have been in a (skippable!) cutscene and it just makes it that much harder to play around with the character creation tool.
Also, this unskippable pregame itself also had an annoying amount of cutscenes that I couldn’t figure out how to skip…
If getting players invested in the game before the character generation screen was the goal, that was one massive backfire.
I thought it was rather clever, and a great way to draw the player into the game. Then again, I DID play ME1, and so I was already invested in and familiar with all of the characters shown in the introduction as well as the destruction of the Normandy.
Except, what was it really? You got to hold down the walk button for a bit and make two conversation choices, neither of which made any difference.
If this had been the tutorial (maybe add a locked door, shoot apart some wreckage pieces etc?) there’d have been a point. Look at the opening of KOTOR2, that was a neat way to kick off the game and it was skippable.
All the M2 one added was the ability for the player to grief the game by playing bumpy with the floating chairs for hours on end before moving on to rescuing joker. Fun, maybe. A useful way to introduce a game? Nope.
A “Felicia Day” button? what in the blazes is the use of that? They’ve already got a preview/trailer of their Dragon Age series thing, why not say ‘Web Series Trailer/Preview’?
Though I am biased due to not considering Mz. Day nearly as good an actress as a lot of internet denizens seem to, I fail to see how she’d be much of a draw for the show. Are the writers BioWare hires just Firefly fans?
Shamus, GET BACK TO WORK! /whipcrack :P
But seriously though, you should be fine. The demo only takes about 40 mins to an hour to complete, and it’s pretty limited. Unless you want to play through it multiple times to get a feel for how the different character classes play out.
For the record, I think I would click on “Nathan Fillion” before I clicked on “Felicia Day”. What does it say about me? (Except that I had to look up Felicia Day in wikipedia when I read this post.)