Lim-Dûl
Self-Ejected
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2022
- Messages
- 388
Green Mandarin's
Drugs kill.I apologize in advance for my verbosity. I haven't posted here since August last year, so almost a full year ago. During that time I would occasionally load up Grimoire and mess around in the Library, and a few times (three) I actually managed to start the game and wander around a bit, getting through a dozen or so encounters and exploring the forest and one of the dungeons. My intention was to fully immerse myself in this game and commit to completing it because of how much I adore Wizardry 7 and the work of D.W. Bradley, but for a number of reasons I would only play for one session and then too much time would pass to where when I managed to regain the desire to try playing it again I'd have to start over, my enthusiasm a recurrent cycle of ephemera.
Truth be told my relationship with gaming over the past year and more has been very strained despite my efforts, a consequence of several factors (mainly severe depression and addiction recovery, I've been clean from heroin since 2014 but still struggle with the association I'd made habitual of necessitating chemical ardor for my two strongest interests, gaming and reading history) and as such I've only superficially played any games throughout the duration of this extended phase of dysphoria. Elden Ring is the only game in well over a year that has managed to captivate me, and I basically played it inside and out within a month of release to the point where I'll need quite a lengthy break before I'll be able to pick it up again. Souls games, while I sincerely love each of them, aren't my favorite kinds of RPGs but the so-called 'renaissance' wave of RPGs hasn't produced any games that are even remotely comparable to their predecessors for me, and so for a long time I've mainly been content to replay games from the past and to explore the many that I missed for systems I never owned, like the Atari ST or Amiga.
I have installed instances of Morrowind, Stalker: Anomaly, Fallout: New Vegas, and Fallout 4 backed up and preset to run through MO2 with hundreds of mods, a process for each game that was built up over many years as the respective mod communities grew, and yet I barely touch them anymore because I most certainly burned myself out and unfortunately all of my regular "old reliables" (such as the first two Fallout games, Daggerfall, Planescape: Torment, Arcanum, Wizardry 6 and 7, Darklands, Might & Magic 3 through 8, non-Enhanced Editions of Baldur's Gate and its sequel, the usual suspects) are similarly too familiar, memorized too thoroughly and for too long I've been unable to fall back on them. So then there is my licensed copy of LaunchBox, which I have on my gaming laptop and on my phone, which has a library of over 23,000 games for consoles, computers and handhelds ranging from Commodore 64 through to PlayStation 3 (for Demon Souls), some of which are (near)complete sets such as for the Amiga, Atari Jaguar, Super Nintendo, MSX and MSX2, and then the two biggest sets are a recent MAME set and a "light" install of ExoDOS with just under 800 DOS games actually installed. This setup is a literal dream come true from back in my childhood when I used to daydream and try to envision what gaming would be like in the future, back when the original Nintendo was a fairly recent thing, and no doubt I have had fun reading the forums here, or the CRPG book, discovering all kinds of fascinating games I'd never even heard of and being able to access them at a moments notice through ExoDOS or from GOG, &c.
Yet nothing really grabbed me, despite how much I enjoy the discovery of games and experiencing DOS and Amiga era graphics or even Apple ][ and the like, I just wasn't finding myself genuinely engaged so beyond a few short-lived attempts at forcing myself to get over my negative attitude and hypercritical disposition (no doubt I'm my own worst enemy) I really haven't played very much over this period. Every time I would open up my GOG or Steam libraries though, I would see Grimoire in the list and think to myself how I really ought to get on it in a serious way, but was constantly holding off because I didn't want my poor mood and miserable attitude to ruin a game that I anticipated to be the only experience comparable to Wizardry 7 available, possibly ever, while so much time had elapsed since I'd had the mechanics and complexities of Wizardry at hand that I felt the need to put it off until I felt "ready" to take on what I assumed was going to be a laborious task of reading through the minutiae of a manual and getting to grips with an overwhelming system.
Recently however, I finally determined for myself that I was just going to try it, and to build my party without the foreknowledge of min-maxing attributes and to approach the game as an open adventure, just like I would have as a child. My OCD tends to plague my enjoyment of open world and choice-heavy RPGs because I struggle to resist the urge to look up the outcome of every decision that arises, to make sure that I'm exploring the environments "in order" so that I don't miss out on important NPCs or items, and so I forced myself to adopt a state of mind whereby I just ignore those impulses to the best of my ability. And so far I have been, and am enjoying this game immensely.
However I wanted to post here because I'm not simply enjoying the game, I am entirely enthralled with it as a whole, and have not felt this way about a game in a very, very long time. It is everything I'd hoped for and so much more. The graphics in their way are gorgeous and recall childhood reveries that I cherish, just simply looking at the environments while moving through them fills my imagination with visions and elicits a sense of wonder and curiosity that games of recent years simply do not recreate. Grimoire is a remarkable game in many ways, and easily one of the best I've played all around, I am inclined to include it in my own personal pantheon right up there along with Wizardry 6 and 7 and the other masterpieces. It is reminiscent in a sense of awesome gaming experiences of the past like the Eye of the Beholder series, Lands of Lore, Anvil of Dawn, Dungeon Master, FRUA, World of Xeen, all those kinds of classic dungeon crawlers, but the turn-based combat system in this case is a much more preferable design and really facilitates the addictive nature of the combat encounters, which I never find myself irritated by. Watching each characters skills and abilities grow little by little through use makes each encounter a welcome interruption of the exploration, and although I love breaking out the graph paper or Grid Cartographer the automap and quest journal are critical tools that I greatly appreciate, because it enables me to load the game up on my laptop disconnected from my widescreen monitor and kick back in bed comfortably to play it with just the laptops touchpad and keys. I cannot wait to have more time to explore the game thoroughly and experience everything it has to offer, and reading the manual is in itself entertaining and interesting. So, thank you very much Cleve for producing a game the likes of which may never be seen again, a true successor to my favorite Wizardry which is also one of my all-time favorite games. It is a marvel of congruency in which the numerous visual and mechanical elements compound each other to deliver an intangible experience that is far greater than the sum of its parts. I've posted in some other threads in your hosted subforum about my excitement for whatever you intend to release next, and now even more eagerly await any news on future titles. Your game has reinvigorated my tempered enthusiasm for what has otherwise been among my greatest passions and for this I simply cannot express my gratitude adequately.
Indeed, they do. Heroin addiction has taken the life of most of my friends, including my cousin who has been my lifelong best friend from our infancy right up until he died at 32 years old. Four people I considered my best friends that weren't family related to me also died, over a period of about 16 years; my first friend to die from it overdosed when we were 16, by which age I'd already developed a problem. Another died a few years later, a guy I'd known since we were 6 years old, it was in fact his father who brought home a copy of Zelda: A Link to the Past for Super Nintendo that in its own way led me to RPGs, and just last year his fucking sister died although it was non-drug related but probably more than any other her loss was one I felt immensely, overwhelmed by the utter indifference of Nature. Not to mention she was so funny and cool and stunningly gorgeous, with long curly blonde hair, huge bright blue eyes, &c. Then there are the dozen or so people I was friendly with but not ultra close with, and several other people I'd become friendly with in recovery at a methadone clinic who later relapsed and died (one of them had lost his left arm but had been clean for years, was doing fantastic for someone in sober recovery, but something distressed him and hit himself and dropped dead on the spot).Drugs kill.
My friend is dead because of drugs.
The only fucking DRUG you need is Grimoire. Play the shit out of it and feel that same euphoria that needle gave you, brother.
Cleve is the dealer, and the Briarpatch Woods is the juice.
Thank you for reading my length post, Cleve. It is awesome to be able to express my gratitude in a forum that you frequent and know that you read it, I just think its so cool. I most certainly will put a review recommendation up on Steam, it is the least I could do. I've actually never left a review on Steam before! I share my account with my family so perhaps my girlfriend or children have, but for me it will be a first. Speaking of, I was playing Grimoire late at night recently and my daughter was sitting next to me watching me play on the laptop as I started a new party, and she loved the presentation and art style; we were laughing together saying how the gargoyles look like our dog and she loved Little Rosy, we couldn't get over just how many key words she responded to. Such an awesome game Cleve, there is just nothing like it and I can ONLY compare it to those classics because your game is, as far as I'm aware, the only game that truly compares in every regard. There are a few other relatively recent games that capture some of the magic, like Legend of Amberland, or Swords and Sorcery - Underworld, maybe a few others and they are all very cool, but Grimoire is the only one that makes me feel like Wizardry 7 does, and to me that game is the pinnacle of RPGs.Thanks for comparing Grimoire to the classics, much appreciated. Please put a review up on the Steam site, Grimoire is still barely 1 point below positive rating and it wouldn't take much to push it back up again.
It certainly helps, no doubt about it. I've experienced anhedonia persistently for almost a decade now, hoping desperately that it was a temporary phase, a symptom of post-withdrawal that would diminish with time. My God, how naive was I! Instead it became drastically worse, peaking for me about 5 years into recovery, the midst of which coincided with the first lockdowns in 2020. It finally relented to some degree but I feel as if I've done so much damage to my neurology that I may never recover in this capacity. Granted there are several other contributing issues, dysthymia being the greatest causal factor, but luckily I've the disposition to maintain and function without recourse to SSRIs and the like. It is a terrible way to live but the knowledge of the blame resting solely on me lessens the burden somewhat, and as it has let off somewhat this past year and I begin to be able to find enjoyment in something like Grimoire things have gotten significantly better for me upstairs. I feel very sorry for people for whom there is no outlet or relief, I cannot imagine the suffering.Grimoire: So good, that it cures opioid-induced anhedonia!
I hope it gets better for you. Goddamn.Having gone through the system(s) (both medical and criminal justice) I'm afraid I'm unable to escape that kind of unwanted attention; I have a violent felony record (one that is utter bullshit), misdemeanor drug charges from my youth, a profile from a Methadone clinic, hospital records, state psyche records, the state where I was convicted even has my blood sample for which I had to drive 12 hours to and from once I was out on parole, and probably yet others I don't even recall. And compared with many of the people I used with, I was a lightweight. Some of my old friends now deceased must have had veritable tomes composed on their behalf, and most of them didn't even make it past 35.
Unfortunately for me, the desperation of addiction has led me to encounter situations unfavorable to my sovereignty and privacy, and likewise to divulge precisely the kind of information that you are cautioning people never to share. I've always intuitively understood not to ever share thoughts of suicide regardless of how insignificant the drive, because a verbal acknowledgement of such is all that is required by law for you to be temporarily restrained. Other than my addiction, I've foolishly acknowledged a general depression, but in the moment it just seemed natural as relevant to my addiction. Talking to people in the medical field about psychological troubles, and talking with people in the criminal justice field about absolutely anything at all, are two things I learned not to do the hard way. The main reason I was even convicted is because I said "yes" to one simple, highly deceptive question that I was manipulated into acknowledging in the affirmative during an interrogation with two detectives from the police station. I was terrified, confused, far from home, starving, sleep-deprived from laying on a cold cell floor surrounded by an endless parade of arrested individuals in varying degrees of trouble, and entering into withdrawals, and being so young and naive I consented to the questioning. When you are genuinely innocent, you don't think like a criminal, and here I thought that by showing my compliance and willingness to talk that I would obviate my innocence and the whole thing would be cleared up and I'd be allowed to leave. If only I'd known then how truly awful the police can be..
But we learn from our mistakes, if we have any intelligence whatsoever, and I evidently had to endure being wrung through the prison industrial complex in order to learn quite a few things. In retrospect it has taught me a great deal, from recognizing the moment-to-moment preciousness and volatility of freedom from incarceration, to the acute awareness that mankind is just an animal species and in many respects much lower. I learned to never, ever speak with the police without a self-appointed lawyer present, and to withhold any and every bit of information concerning what will be perceived to be psychologically aberrant ideations or feelings from anybody, and I mean by that everybody unless you are prepared to live with the ramifications of having that trust betrayed. It is in our human nature to lie, and to talk, so you have to assume that every word that you speak or type is going to be repeated regardless of with whom you are sharing. Be it your lifelong best friend, your own parents, your wife or husband and your children, it doesn't matter who because it goes against our nature to keep quiet, otherwise it wouldn't be considered a matter of virtue and honor to refrain from doing so. Everything you say and do ought to be kept within reasonable boundaries of what you personally deem to be acceptable consequences should an unwelcome party become privy to those words and behaviors. It took numerous betrayals of the closest sort before I had it permanently branded in my head to think before speaking. What should be considered common sense is instead regarded as paranoia, and part of the reason why for so many, myself included this is not instinctively our default mode but instead must be learned.
I think you're also correct to say that meaningful computer games and especially CRPGs are among the healthiest hobbies we can have, because they do not have the immediate nor the delayed negative effects that so many other escapist diversions have. As you said, you come away from a well-written game enriched, and I've had video games lead me to discover interests only tangentially related that were of great benefit. In fact the other day I was replaying Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, a game I'd played back when it was new on my now busted PlayStation 4, now I'm playing it on my gaming laptop and since its been over 5 years I'd forgotten the majority of what the game involves, but I was blown away for the second time when on first loading it throws up a quote by Emil Cioran about inhabiting a language instead of a nation. Regardless of what anyone thinks of that game or its creator, that may lead some attentive players who've never heard of him to look into who Cioran is, the way other games have led me to similar intellectual, even spiritual discoveries. Emil Cioran is among the biggest intellectual and artistic influences on me and to find a piece of his work as a relatively obscure and supremely pessimistic writer in a mainstream popular video game blew me away.
Like reading, a well-written video game exposes us to new intellectual pursuits, new ideas we'd not before encountered, and new vocabulary to expand our lexicon. But because the reading done in a video game is done in parallel to the player agency of interaction on multiple levels including the narrative, it compounds the impression that new terminology makes on us and reinforces the potential for it to be retained. It is misfortunate that the overwhelming majority of video games are utter garbage that negatively influence the population and exacerbate latent pathologies, but this is the case for every and any artistic medium. The few gems that exist are sound treatment for those seeking refuge from the monstrous grotesquery of modernity.
The world is a profoundly strange place, and getting stranger with every passing moment. A Short History of Decay was my introduction to Cioran, a book I immediately felt attracted to on discovering it upon a friends bookshelf, and later discovering his fondness for Mircea Eliade in his Anathemas and Admirations endeared him to me even more. I went on to read many of his books that have English translations and found in his enthusiasm for Bach's music, to where he held it to signal the only proof of the existence of a creator, a kindred thinker. As an aphorist he is second to none and despite his focus on the vulgarities and absurdities that arose across the two world wars there is yet a timelessness to his views, or rather there are recurrent phases of civilization during which his views are again become germane. I'm not particularly interested in the far-right politics and sympathies for the Iron Guard he held in his youth, nor those of Eliade for that matter, but then I'm not more than superficially interested in politics anyway; for me only the matters of spirit are of significant concern and this is where Cioran is so important, especially so his writings on insomnia.Holy crap... seeing Emil Cioran in a discussion with Cleve is like seeing an UFO. I never thought this day would come. Only on the Codex, I guess. Carry on. Carry on.
Its very kind of you to say, and I sincerely appreciate the sentiment, but my life has gotten remarkably better, even to a point that I am now in a position to where my heart breaks for the misfortunate who either lost or are unable to find the stability and sense of belonging that I've been mercifully gifted. Everything I wrote about is from my past and enough time has elapsed to where I can hardly recognize myself in many of those situations. I've been clean since 2014 and have custody of both my son and my daughter and live with my daughters mother (my son has a different mother, with whom I separated while awaiting my trial) and we have a great family life together. Having been abused physically and psychologically as a hypersensitive child desperate for communication, I feel that I've developed an attitude and an approach to parenting that balances the mercurial space between the role of a father and that of a friend without recourse to even mildly abusive behaviors nor the overcompensation of spoiling, and while my small family has its share of problems we are overall very happy and maintain healthy relationships. The looming specter of relapse forever haunts my skies and almost certainly always will, but after 8 years I find myself able to maintain my sobriety relatively comfortably in the acknowledgement of my responsibilities as a provider and comforter with all of that is expected of me. Other than addiction my felony conviction is the greatest obstacle to my capacity for growth but fortunately I've found ways to circumvent some of the things I'm barred from. Today I see myself as just another person trying to get by and raise my family, no longer the self-destructive misanthrope ever seeking anesthetization, and I look to innocuous activities like gaming or reading to find pleasure, rare as it may be. Coming home to greet my kids and catch my dog who leaps with joy at my presence and later to sit back and play Grimoire or other games I enjoy is an infinitely more fulfilling existence than the one I'd subjected myself to for too much of my life.I hope it gets better for you. Goddamn.