We’re playing through a whole bunch of awesome games with stories that were memorable and inspiring to us, starting with Knights of the Old Republic II. We’ll discuss it section by section as we go, and we’d love to have you guys play along and add your thoughts. This week, we played through the corporate intrigue-laden section on Telos. Read on for our thoughts!
I think it says a lot about me that nothing inspires nostalgia in my adult self like watching aliens get punched in the face.
I grew up on Dragonball Z. It was everything the action-obsessed preteen boy I was wanted in a cartoon: Grown men screaming, shooting energy blasts at each other, and just generally beating the tar out of anything that moved with no-brainer plots as the backdrop. It’s like animated pro-wrestling, but instead of title belts and avenging folding chair ambushes, the fate of the universe is at stake. As T.J. so aptly points out, “It’s really dumb, but you can’t help but love it.”
On my first day of editing class in grad school, the professor asked everyone what their favorite movie was. There were a lot of Citizen Kane fans and anything-Scorsese answers. To a man, everyone listed heavy dramas and art films. And then there was me. I said my favorite movie was Transformers (yes, the 2007 Michael Bay version). My professor looked so disappointed. Now, before you throw the book at me and stop reading in disgust, hear me out. I think we’ve developed an extremely strange attitude towards movies, and in my opinion, it’s killing the fun of film.
We’re playing through a whole bunch of awesome games with stories that were memorable and inspiring to us, starting with Knights of the Old Republic II. We’ll discuss it section by section as we go, and we’d love to have you guys play along and add your thoughts. This week, we played the opening segment on Peragus. Read on for our thoughts!
In case you missed it, we’re replaying Knights of the Old Republic II as the first part in a series on excellent games with stories that were memorable and inspiring to us. We invite you to play along, and this weekend is your last chance to finish the Peragus segment and send us your comments before we discuss it on Monday, August 17. D.M. and T.J. have created two, fairly different Jedi Exiles. We’d like to introduce you to them below.
Man, Geralt gets all the girls. Hard to resent him, though. When you live a life as bleak and bloody as his, you can’t begrudge him even a little bit of sunshine and happiness.
That’s what stands out the most as you wander around CD Projekt Red’s open world epic: the Northern Realms are not a happy place. Everywhere you look, there’s war, there’s famine, there’re monsters, and there’re angry people looking to beat you up with sharp objects because of some combination of the above. Calling The Witcher III beautiful would be only be correct aesthetically, and that’s part of what makes it such an amazing experience. Here is a fantasy world that is seriously dark, and you’ve been thrown into the middle of its darkest hour. It’s fun, but it ain’t happy.
We’re not a news site, but we often like to react to the news around our favorite games and other media. That’s what this column is about. Today, massive Warcraft lore nerd T.J. Hafer (he’s basically second in line behind Red Shirt Guy) reacts to today’s announcement of the latest World of Warcraft expansion, Legion, at Gamescom in Germany.
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The sixth expansion for World of Warcraft has been announced, and it’s focusing on the Burning Legion. Long-time Warcraft fans like myself might find this odd, considering the Legion has already been defeated in the War of the Ancients. And again in Warcraft 3. And again in World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. But thanks to all the weird time travel shit that happened in Warlords of Draenor, they’re back for what Blizzard is quick to describe as their most significant invasion of Azeroth yet. Also, Illidan is back from the dead for some reason.
Yeah, Warcraft has basically turned into a comic book universe where cool characters never actually stay dead. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
When you’ve got a dream to take your family (or yourself) to Wally World (or a raunchy summer comedy at 10 o’clock in the evening), never let that go. Or let it go just once, because you’re tired and the weekend is better for seeing movies anyway.
Advice taken, Mr. Griswold.
The original Vacation, starring Chevy Chase as the earnest and oafish Clark Griswold and Beverly D’Angelo as his excellent straight woman wife, Helen, is, quite frankly, one of the best comedy films in the history of American cinema. The saga of the Griswold clan as they travel through 2,000 miles of existential hell is still, to this day, laugh out loud funny (and that computer Clark plans their trip with? Watching that scene on Blu-Ray in 2015 is a bit of a mind melter). It is that classic which the new Vacation, borrowing the same title, seeks to both pay tribute to and emulate.
It succeeds, but only partially, on both counts.
Today, we’re excited to introduce Loresworn Order Plays. Throughout the year, we’ll be playing through a whole bunch of awesome games with stories that were memorable and inspiring to us. We’ll discuss them section by section as we go, and we’d love to have you guys play along and add your thoughts.
Our first game is Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. You can currently get it on Steam for $10.
You will need a couple of free mods to follow along with us…
Marvel’s Phase 2 has come to a close, not with the subplot-stuffed Whedon spectacle of Avengers: Age of Ultron, but with a quirky action comedy where Paul Rudd rides on a bug. With clever writing, clear and believable character motivations, and a desire to take itself just seriously enough that the titular character doesn’t become a Deadpool-caliber walking joke, Ant Man hits the mark of quality we’ve come to expect from Marvel Studios. It just doesn’t go very far beyond that.
Hello everyone. My name is T.J., and it is my great honor to be the first to welcome you to the home of The Loresworn Order. You can read more about us by clicking “The Order” up in the navbar, but in short, this is a creative collaboration put together by some very good friends and myself. We’ve each taken a crack at producing content on someone else’s terms and under someone else’s banner. Now, we’re ready to make our own rules and carry our own standard.
The Loresworn Short Story Challenge is a regular column in which a member of our team presents another with a writing prompt, or one is chosen from the community. In this edition, D.M. puts a supernatural spin on two of the most notorious assassins in American history.
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“Useless, useless…”
For years, the plebeians would kick around the meaning of that statement. Most agreed that I was lamenting my own grand failure; that despite putting a bullet in the head of the President of the United States, John Wilkes Booth failed to save his beloved Confederacy. They were wrong. My disappointment in the callow American was very real. I had always maintained that the cause of the South was just, was righteous.
Many advance critics were suggesting that the one phrase to describe the Amy Schumer/Judd Apatow summer super comedy should be “feminist gold”. Finally, everyone’s favorite snarky lady comic had her moment on the silver screen. If I had to pick one phrase, it would be “long”.
