I realize that I’ve already posted about Dragon Age Origins recently but there is something of great note I discovered a few days ago – there is a playable dog character. That’s right, take a gander at my new pup Bronx.
He’s a playable, levelable character just like any of the others. I named him after Bronx from the show Gargoyles. It’s kinda fitting since they are both about the same shape and look fierce but are really sweet pups. He’s mostly tan colored but this is right after the battle in which he joined the group so he’s still got blood on him – he is a war dog after all.
Only Fable II came this close to character perfection but was just a hair off the mark. I vowed to uncover every war dog quest and level him to the utmost without delay. My strategy for playing just became much easier, no more storyline just for progressions sake. My strategy now will be, “How does this help Bronx?”
I can now forgive BioWare for letting you switch paths in Mass Effect 2 – I have a new puppy!
Dragon Age Origins [BioWare]
SLINGERS from Mike Sizemore on Vimeo.
It’s got circa-1960s style and spaceships. It’s got con artists in black-tie formal wear and holographic roulette wheels. It’s got a classic casino heist storyline and a self-aware pistol with a sense of humor. It’s got women in cocktail dresses…and one who changes out of hers into a spacesuit in an airlock. Slingers has all the anachronistic juxtaposition a sci-fi fan could hope for in a TV show, and it promises to return a level of playfulness to gritty, naturalistic sci-fi that we haven’t seen since the days of Firefly. If this all sounds too good to be true, it’s probably because it isn’t…yet.
Part of the Xmas loot this year was Dragon Age Origins for XBox 360. Both my brother and I got a copy and spent the day after playing it up. After spending about 8 hours with the title I can say without fear of contradiction that Bioware is becoming my favorite developer. Oh, and did I mention the chick in the above image is voiced by Claudia Black? Yeah, hotness.
My introduction to Simon Pegg was via Shaun of the Dead, which I first watched around Halloween last year for our ’08 GWC special. And, of course, I saw him in Trek 11 (or one, depending on how you’re counting.) But my first real Simon Pegg experience came over the last week or so as Audra and I made our way through his 1999 series Spaced. Pegg co-wrote space with his co-star Jessica Stevenson, and it’s awesome — a real tribute to the geek lifestyle (and what it’s like to have a family of friends).
I’ve got Hot Fuzz on my Netflix list and can’t wait to check it out, too. But I noticed that Pegg and his ex-flat-mate/eternal-TV-sidekick Nick Frost co-wrote a movie that’s apparently pushing through production right now. It’s called Paul, and it’s the story of two sci-fi geeks who detour their post Comic-Con road trip through Area 51 “where they come across an alien named Paul.”
Having seen the two-hour premier of the new SyFy series Stargate Universe, I am stoked for what looks like another well-crafted, action-filled sci-fi drama. As we’ve seen in shows like Battlestar Galactica, established actors can bring the skill and gravitas required for a good dramatic series — in this case, Robert Carlyle (The Full Monty, Eragon), Lou Diamond Phillips (La Bamba, Stand and Deliver, Young Guns), and a host of experienced television actors.
Compared to previous Stargate series, SG-U‘s serious and gritty style stands out, more reminiscent of BSG than of the campy humor and geeky in-jokes we’ve come to love, particularly in SG-1. We get colored filters that make the world look gray and inhospitable, and we get shaky cameras. Most importantly we get realistic characters who hook up in the storage closets and people who get wounded (and killed) in action in a way that feels more true-to-life than say, the way Star Trek: Voyager scrubs the deck clean of pesky casualties and carpet stains only moments after an explosion decimates the crew.
Our own Mr. Lister, Sir — great forum name, BTW — discovered today that Hulu added the complete Robotech: Macross Saga to their full-episode lineup. That’s great news for any of you who (like me) haven’t seen all of it and don’t have the cash to go out and buy all the DVDs.
I first saw Macross Saga when it aired in spurts on the local PBS channel about the time I was in early high school. Since the episodes didn’t air in order — and I was unlikely to catch ‘em in order even when they did — my initial Macross experience felt like jumping into a deep lake to learn to swim. Each episode brought new characters, new story, and new cultural differences I completely failed to get.
You’d think I’d hate it, right? Wrong! There’s something truly magic about struggling to understand, reaching into whatever well you’ve got of sci-fi history and culture to get a grip on what you’re watching. I loved it right from the start — even though I still don’t grasp the whole story. Macross also represented one of the few opportunities available in those pre-zillion-cable-channel (and most importantly pre-internet) days to see something culturally different.
We’ve been waiting for it. We’ve marked our calendars and counted the months for the Battlestar Galactica tele-movie, The Plan. Sometime in June SyFy president Dave Howe mentioned it would air in November. However, now the network says The Plan will not air in 2009.
This should come as no surprise.
The 2009 Creative Arts Emmy winners were announced Saturday, September twelfth in Los Angeles.
Please join in congratulating a few old friends in their Emmy win! So say we all!
For Outstanding Sound Editing in a Series
Battlestar Galactica • Daybreak (Part 2) • Syfy • R&D TV in association with Universal Cable Productions
Daniel Colman, Supervising Sound Editor / Sound Designer
Jack Levy, Supervising Sound Editor
Vince Balunas, Dialogue/ADR Editor
Sam Lewis, Sound Effects Editor
Michael Baber, Music Editor
Doug Maddik, Foley Artist
Rick Partlow, Foley Artist
Complete List of Creative Arts Emmys Noms and Winners
The sci-fi film/television production community is surprisingly close knit. Everyone seems to know everyone else, and it would be difficult to come up with two movies or shows that couldn’t be connected “six degrees of separation”-style. With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that a lot of sci-fi contains nods to other works in the genre. One of my favorite things to do when rewatching sci-fi is to keep my eyes peeled for robots/ships/props/etc. from other TV shows or movies to make cameo appearances. And believe it or not, it’s actually pretty common. Allow me to be your guide as we take a look at sci-fi past and present to explore some of the coolest — and some of the most well hidden – of these appearances.
Kaywinnit Lee Frye, a.k.a. Kaylee. Beloved mechanic for the ship Serenity. Mal’s girl Friday with an attitude. I think we all love Kaylee in our own way — but is she a good role model? One definition of the term is “a person whose behavior in a particular role is imitated by others.” Do parents want their daughters to behave like Kaylee? Should young adults imitate her? A more in-depth look at Kaylee should answer this question.
NCSoft announced on Friday that it will be opening up the beta version of their new MMORPG, Aion, on September 6th for a one-week period before the game is finalized for their release version, which comes out September 22nd. If you pre-order your copy of Aion now, you can get a two-day head start on gameplay beginning on September 20th. NCSoft’s press release states:
Aion’s Open Beta Test featuring version 1.5 will take place 6-13th September and will include numerous Western enhancements, including improvements to Aion’s innovative character customization with a host of Western styles, as well as new zones, instances, skills, quests and continued game balancing and improvements. Open Beta will retain a level cap for both Elyos and Asmodians characters at 30 allowing players to focus on getting to the same level so they can explore the lands of Atreia together, as well as the Abyss.
If you wish to try the closed beta client to fight the celestial war as one of the four classes on Atreia, you can download the client from FilePlanet (you have to be a registered member of their service) or from GamersHell. This is a six-gigabyte file, so plan your download accordingly!
If you happened to miss Virtuality‘s premiere on FOX, it wouldn’t surprise me. If not for the GWC hivemind, I would have. In my opinion, it wasn’t promoted very well. Far be it for me to question the marketing decisions of a highly successful network — but they dropped the ball.
Created by Ronald D. Moore and Michael Taylor, Virtuality is set aboard the Phaeton on a ten-year journey to explore the nearby star system Epsilon Eridani. A corporation known as the Consortium partially funds the project via a Reality TV show called Edge of Never: Life on the Phaeton which chronicles the experiences of the 12-person crew. Months after leaving Earth they are informed that their planet will become inhospitable within the next 100 years, thus changing the priorities of the mission from exploration to the survival of the human race.
GWCers on Flickr
Recent Blog Comments
on #42: Juan Chooses a Tablet { Looking forward to the reasoning behind the Ipad, in a similar position but so far I can't justify the price + data contract despite a... } – May 09, 4:26 PM
on #321: Avengers Pt. 4, Thor { First off - it is great to be back. I have been away for a couple years. I was listening during the original run of... } – Apr 24, 7:23 PM
on #28: Nyan Nyan Nyan Nyan Nyan (Cat) { I would like at least one episode where Audra doesn't try to "beat" along with the intro. It gets old. Thanks. } – Apr 21, 12:50 PM
on #31: Sight Unseen { The episode commentaries seem to becoming less about the show and more about everything else. You guys get off track easy, and tend to stay... } – Apr 04, 11:19 PM
on #37: Draw Something/360 Cloud Sync Fail { I was sick too! You and I might be carrying around each others germs. } – Mar 29, 6:39 AM