The Confederate Flag and Gay Marriage

So recently this picture popped up on my Facebook feed, and it seemed way too accurate:

Now, I'm from a northeastern state, so it struck me as pretty odd that the recent Confederate Flag controversy struck so close to home.  I knew that the SCOTUS ruling would cause a lot of ruckus, but the flag still shocked me.  I just wanted to give my two cents on each of these major issues.

First off, lets talk about the Confederate Flag.  I would advocate everyone to forget what they 'learned' in grade school about the Civil War and do some modern research... I know I certainly had to in order to get an educated opinion on the matter.  I found a great article from PBS that talks about some of the more unknown history of the flag.  If you don't want to read it, I'll give a summary of the most important points (in my opinion) here.
1) The 'Stars and Bars' was never the official flag of the Confederacy

Very much contrary to popular belief, this flag was never the official flag of the Confederate States of America.  It was designed by a North Carolina politician (William Miles) who was an avid advocate for slavery, actually calling it a 'divine institution.'  The flag was used by the Virginia Army in the war.  All flags are symbols, and based on the mindset of the creator, as well as some more info that will be stated below, it is not so insane to consider the flag to be a racist emblem.

2) Slavery was, in fact, an extremely important factor in the secession
In grade school, I was taught that the Civil War was not about slavery, but rather about states' rights.  This is about 40% correct.  If you look at the secession documents written and presented by South Carolina, Georgia, Texas, and Mississippi (some of the biggest players in the CSA), each of them mention slavery as one of, if not the top, reason for secession.  Yes, you could argue they left for their rights to keep slavery legal, but that argument gets to the same point: the states seceded so that they could continue to oppress a minority based on race.  Fighting for you right to oppress someone else does not justify the fight itself.

3) Sure, only a minority of Southerners had slavers... but it doesn't matter
The biggest argument I heard in grade school, and that I see now, is that the war wasn't for slavery only the richest of the rich in the South had slaves, not the troops.  This argument is such a non-sequitur.  It doesn't matter who had what number of slaves, or lack thereof.  Wars have always been fought for political reasons, funded by the richest of the rich.  As can be seen from secession letters, the main political driving force was slavery, and that, sadly, is what causes the Civil War.

4) The flag became a major symbol of the anti-desegregation movement in the 1940s
Perhaps the largest reason the flag today is seen as a symbol of racial hate is due to the Dixiecrat party in the 1940s who used it as a rallying point of the anti-desegregation movement.  This shouldn't take much explanation, but just by the very nature of the movement it became of symbol of racism.

Ok, now those points are out.  Now for what I think it means.  Basically, it would be totally ignorant to act as if the flag was just a symbol of 'southern pride' or a memorial to Confederate soldiers.  Ignoring a major part of the flag's creation, history, and purpose just makes people seems uneducated.  You cannot possibly stand there and act like the flag is a good symbol.  Even if you follow the argument that it represents the fight for states' rights, the main fight it fought was for slavery, and institution that is the purist antithesis of liberty.  That being said, I am still a Libertarian who respects private rights.  If you want to fly that flag above your home, on your car, or somewhere else that you own, be my guest.  Just don't act surprised when people get offended, look at you sideways, or react with something other than pride.  You have the right to your opinion, but not the right to make everyone else conform to it.
On the opposite side, this flag as no business whatsoever flying over any government building.  It is a symbol of rebellion.  It is a symbol of oppression.  It has no place in civilized society.  I would never advocate a governmental entity forcing a private citizen to take down the flag, but the government itself should never fly it.  You don't see a shwastika over Berlin, or the hammer and sickle over Moscow.  It is a built-in fight when a government promotes a flag of a former version of itself, or of an enemy.

Now, on to the gay marriage part!
This one should be shorter.  Let's talk about Obergefell v. Hodges.  Or, as most people know it as, the gay marriage case.  Simply put, this case was a direct overruling of Baker v. Nelson, and now does not allow for a state to deny a marriage license to a couple because they are gay.  It does not require a church or other religious entity to perform a marriage.  Let me repeat that.  It does not require a church or other religious entity to perform a marriage.  Get it?  Good.  This case, while being hailed as a massive victory for the LGBT community, ultimately just sets up for a longer road of fights.  Don't get me wrong, I very much agree with the court's decision.  The state should have no say in who is or isn't allowed to get married.  Only now, the floodgates are open to all kinds of potential issues.  I know it's slippery slope logic, but even Justice Roberts said in the dissent that we are now open to court arguments about marriages with multiple partners.  The same logic that applies to the Obergefell v. Hodges case can be applied to that just as well.  I simply fear that now someone will sue a church that refuses to let them and their same-sex couple get married.  I am not religious, but I do care about rights.  If this case came to court and they ruled in favor of the couple, we could have real problems on our hands.  But for now, this is not the issue.  I see so many people on social media acting like its the end of days, and that the government is squishing their religious freedom.  No.  They are not.  Get over yourself.  As I said above regarding the flag, you have the right to your opinion, but not the right to make everyone else conform to it.

My Brilliant Backwards-Compatible Idea

So I have been a big fan of Sony gaming consoles for years now.  I have been loyal to them almost entirely, minus I think a 9 month spell with the original Xbox, since the original PlayStation.  So, me being a loyal Sony customer, it broke my heart when I learned that the PS4 was not going to be backwards compatible at all.  I thought, "Why Sony?  I spent almost 8 years and hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on the PS3, why can't you just give me that?"  Regardless, being the Sony fan I am, I had to get the PS4.  So, I sold off all my PS3 stuff, including the system, to pick up a brand-spanking new White PS4 Destiny bundle.  Now, I haven't played Destiny in ages, but the white system itself looked cool enough, so I had to pick it up.
So that's me about 6 months ago, last November.  I also picked up Dragon Age: Inquisition and a bunch of other games.  But, there was a whole in my heart I couldn't fill... the gaps left from the last 3 Sony consoles.  Then, I had a brilliant idea.

I had just put a new terabyte hard drive in my PS4, since games nowadays take up far to much space.  Doing that, I took out the 500GB drive.  I then remembered that the original 20GB PS3 was fully backwards compatible with all PS2 and PS1 games.  I saw through Game Stop that I could pick one up for $100.  I decided to go with it.  I went to Game Stop and picked up the console, and threw the 500GB drive in it.  Now, I lost my first PS3, which was made in the same line as the one I just picked up to the Yellow Light of Death.  The YLOD is caused by the processors overheating, expanding, and breaking their connection to the motherboard.  This isn't helped by the fact that Sony uses really cheap thermal paste, which is the heat transfer medium that takes the heat from the thermal plates on the processor and puts it in the heat sink, which is then expelled by the fan.  In my research, I saw that the best ways to try and prevent the YLOD from occurring is to replace the thermal paste and buy a 19-blade fan as opposed to the 15-blade fan that most PS3's have in them.  So I bought the paste (not the fan), and found a tutorial that showed me how to take it all apart.

I was pretty scared while doing it, but thankfully everything seems to be going OK.  When I took it apart, I saw that my model already has the 19 blade fan, so good thing I didn't buy that!  I also purchased an external fan attachment, so hopefully nothing will cause this sucker to overheat.  I'm hoping to enjoy this backwards compatible, enhanced beauty for at least 3 years, but we'll see what happens!  For now, back to some Bethesda wonderfulness with Fallout 3, Skyrim, and Oblivion!

Fallout 4 - Return to the Wastes

My dreams for the last 7 years have finally come to fruition.  Fallout 4, amid all the rumors and speculation, has finally been confirmed by Bethesda!  I 'fangirled' out when I saw the countdown on Bethesda's website, and the fact that this game even exists and will be at E3 this year makes me extremely happy.  I played the crap out of Fallout 3.  I made probably 6/7 different characters, and just did something a little different each time.  Whether I played as a pompous jerk that blew up Megaton and lived in Tenpenny Tower, killing all the ghouls in a mass extinction, or as a wonderful Brotherhood of Steel paragon who stepped up for the small guy, I did something a little differently each time to see how the Capital Wasteland would react, and I was not disappointed.  Plus, with some wonderful DLC that finally made it to PS3, my playtime was increased even more.  It was great exploring Point Lookout.  The Pitt struck close to home since I'm from Pittsburgh.  Mothership Zeta was just zany enough to be fun.  And Operation: Anchorage... well I abused the crap out of that glitch to bring the items with infinite health over to the regular game.  And Broken Steel, well, any DLC that extends the game and raises the initial level cap is fine by me!

Now, I just want to post some thoughts, hopes, and dreams I have for Fallout 4.

1)  Please, please, please bring back V.A.T.S!
The Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System.  V.A.T.S was an amazing implementation into Fallout 3.  While it would be ignorant to state that it wasn't just in the game to please the purists from Fallout and Fallout 2, it fit in wonderfully in a full RPG.  I would really like to see it return in Fallout 4, as it would be a great breath of fresh air compared to the typical 'run-and-gun' aspects of modern games.

2)  Skip over the 'Skyrim-stylings' of side quests
A great thing Bethesda gave us in Skyrim was Radiant AI.  You could never do everything in the game, because the game would keep generating random quests for you.  While in theory this sounds great, in reality it got fairly boring.  They ended up being fetch quests or kill quests, with no real ramifications for the game.  In Fallout 3, it was possible to play through every quest, but they tended to all tell a little story.  Maybe they were sad, or maybe they were typical tongue-in-the-cheek Fallout style, but they told a story.

3)  Please don't put in vehicles.
I don't feel that vehicles really belong in the Fallout universe.  A lot of games now are like, 'look, our sequel is amazing because it has vehicles!'  I don't think it really fits, and it shouldn't be there IMO.

4)  Improve the graphics a bit.
I've never really been one to worry so much about graphics.  I even went back just last summer and bought Oblivion years later just to play it, and the version on the PS3 looked mostly comical.  But the ending scene of the trailer, the main character looked about on par with what I had seen in Fallout 3 already.  Hopefully, it will improve.

5)  Support all three consoles the same.
With both Fallout and The Elder Scrolls series, Bethesda has a clear history of favoring Microsoft.  I just hope they treat the PS4 and PC versions the same, which would only make sense since more people have PS4's that Xbones.

Alright, that's all I have now.  Looking forward to Fallout's visit to E3 in a little over a week!

Race, Gender, and Other 'Discrimination' in the Fantasy Genre

Look, I'm all for equality.  Racism, sexism, and things of the like are just stupid.  But really, it never helps the case when people keep bringing it up offensively towards things that are not trying to take a stand on the matter.  Right now, I'm taking about the fantasy genre.  I have a solid feeling that my opinions here are not going to sit with some readers, but oh well.
Fantasy games come in all shapes and sizes, with different content matter.  Some games, like Dragon Age Inquisition and The Elder Scrolls Series, make their own world totally from scratch.  In these games, it is not uncommon to see what most would call an ideal society, with people of all genders, sexual orientations, and races working together.  That kind of world is what ours should strive to be.  In DA: I, you can be a black female lesbian (going off of the Pitch Perfect 2 character) and be accepted as the leader of the Inquisition and as a hero uniting Thedas.  It is a wonderful thing to behold.  Unfortunately, the real world, and real history do not reflect this egalitarian mindset, and their are plenty of fantasy settings out there that want to show a more realistic version of ourselves.

First, lets look at literature.  Two of my favorite fantasy authors, J.R.R. Tolkien and George R.R. Martin.  In Tolkien's magnum opus, The Lord of the Rings, you will be hard-pressed to find any 'minority' characters.  Everyone is white and straight.  Tolkien's world aims to reflect more realistic fantasy, which sound like an oxymoron.  However, it just means that it is more realistic and familiar to us because it reflects aspects from our real history.    Tolkien made some powerful female figures, which is a breath of fresh air.  Martin's masterwork, A Song of Ice and Fire, presents a scary-accurate representation of Middle Ages Europe.  A patriarchal society where marriages are arranged, most women are treated as pieces of meat, and while there are other races that have significance, they are from across the sea from a totally different land.  This reflection is the more accurate, and therefore the most unsettling to people.  My thought is this:  It.  Happened.  Get over it.  Martin is reflecting our historical perspectives of other genders and races for all to see.  If you can't get over someone portraying what actually happened in a light that isn't being sympathetic (like the media nowadays), then just stop watching it and ruining it for everyone else who appreciates the art.  Martin himself said that he aimed to create a reflection of medieval Europe, and adding too much that wasn't in that time broke the realism.

Now video games.  A lot of people recently have been complaining about The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which I posted about a few days before.  It is still and amazing game.  The setting for the game is clearly a version of medieval Scandinavia, which again did not have much to do with other races (of skin color).  In fact, the game does address the race issue through the interactions of the 'nonhumans' and mages.  But people aren't satisfied.  They still call it racist.  Well, if you want to build the demographic of a fantasy world, build your own game.

I am not a racist, sexist, or anything of the like.  I believe that we need to live and let live.  To paraphrase a line from The Avengers: Age of Ultron, we need to not be so worried about law and order and what we feel is right, but rather to just focus on living.  So-called 'activists' that call for games to have more diversity annoy me.  If you want to influence the world that has been created for a fantasy, then go get involved with whoever is morphing that world.  Stop critiquing their amazing efforts because it doesn't 100% fall in line with your opinion, and do something about it.  If you aren't going to, then just appreciate the beauty of the world they created.  Whether it be an ideal society like DA: I or The Elder Scrolls, or a reflection of our own, appreciate the masterful work put behind it, and stop raising a fuss over something as books or video games when there are far more productive activist events you could be putting yourself to.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Why It's Probably One of The Most Addicting Games Ever

I would like to consider myself fairly interested in the fantasy-open-world game genre.  I started with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.  I became addicted almost right away.  It was the first game that really showed me what games could do in an open world setting.  I easily put over 600 hours through 5 different characters in the game, and I truly embraced the aspect of Role Playing.  I would play as a true paragon of the Fighter's Guild, or as a rough and tough assassin of the Dark Brotherhood.  It was truly a breath of fresh air from the extremely linear, but still good, games from the past.  Then I got on board with Fallout 3.  It was probably even more amazing than Oblivion  to me.  The post-apocalyptic wasteland setting mixed with 1950's American Culture frozen in time was just so interesting and captivating.  I also put a crapload of hours into Skyrim and the original Fallout and Fallout 2.


That being said, I feel The Witcher 3 is better.

Source: GameSpot

The Witcher is an interesting universe.  I had never played any of the prequels, so I really never knew anything about the world.  I actually only bought the game because I was longing for a strong open-world experience on next-gen (the loss of my PS3 and all the games when I traded them in hit me pretty hard).  I had played Dragon Age: Inquisition and loved it, but it too was just a bit too linear for my taste.  I didn't have a problem with the combat system, but I know a lot of people thought it was too clunky for consoles.  The story-telling, I thought, was pretty superb, as BioWare has always been good with that (i.e. the Mass Effect series, which I also adamantly played).  Video games have moved beyond just your average shoot-em-ups (albeit they still exist, I'm looking at you Call of Duty and Destiny) and have moved on to telling epic stories than can pan out almost any way you want.  While some truly open world games like Oblivion and Skyrim will let you do almost anything you want, the story itself suffers for it.  Say what you will about them, the storylines as a whole were extremely weak.

The Witcher 3 does not have this problem.

Every single quest that I have done has involved an intricate story that felt like it was scripted out, thought out, and executed with precision.  Almost every other game I have played has had countless quests where the objective is to 'go to place x and kill/collect y number of thing z,'  While those kinds of quests can be fun, they often lack in substance.  There is typically no reasoning behind why you are doing it, or if there is reason, it tends to be fairly weak.  In The Witcher, this has yet to happen.  I bought the game almost exactly a week ago and I have put almost 50 hours into it so far, and not a single quest I have done follows this formula.  Every one has had an intricate backstory that can be traced to a larger, in-world problem.  The quests are often so well-written that you don't even realize you have put an hour or two into them.  While it could probably stand to have a little less 'witcher sensing,' which is basically the Detective Mode from the recent Batman games, they still tend to be interesting and involved.  Just last night I started playing at 6:30PM, and had to pull myself away from it 5 hours later because I had things I needed to do before bed.  It is so well-put together, I really can't describe it here.  The quests make it so addictive that it is just amazing.

The main characters in The Witcher 3

However, like every game out there it does have its flaws.  Combat to me was tricky to get a hold of.  I am used to games like Borderlands 2 where your character will go exactly where you want him to with no hesitation.  Geralt in The Witcher is not like this.  He feels like a human.  While that is an amazing feat from a programming perspective, it is also kind of annoying at first.  It is like we are controlling ourselves with puppet strings but have all the limitations of real life to think about.  He can't just do a 180 degree turn on the spot, it takes time.  His actions are not instantaneous, you need to think about what he is actually doing and how it will chain to what you want him to do.  From what I have heard, it is a lot like the character control in the Bloodborne and Dark Souls games.  Combat is unforgiving, and you quickly learn you have to be defensive.  I have jumped between difficulty levels quite a few times for fights I just couldn't win, but that's mostly because I had a hard time getting used to the combat, of which there is quite a bit.

Other than that, and the few generic complaints that plague every massive open-world game, like reused assets and the like, my biggest complaint is Roach.  Roach is the name that Geralt gives to every horse he has ever owned (which probably makes it easier for the emotionless witcher to remember), and he is one dumb creature.  Honestly, his controlling is pretty bad.  Maybe I just don't like the feel of a realistic horse, or maybe I just don't know how a horse is meant to feel, but I do not like it.  If you are in an open plain, then yeah galloping across the land is easy, but god forbid you ever need to navigate with Roach, it is really hard to do.

Those two complaints aside, I wish that I wasn't taking summer classes so that I could play this game more.  After the first few slow missions, the game picks up extremely quickly.  While its a shame the game starts so slowly, it had to be done to ease the newbies to the universe, like myself.  I strongly recommend this game to anyone who is even remotely a fan of open-world games.  Give it some time.  At first, I wasn't sure if I even liked the game.  Then, after I forced myself to spend about 3 hours with it, I feel in love.  Just as much as Geralt with the smell of lilac and gooseberries.

If you can only pick up one game for the next few months, I'd strongly recommend it be The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.  It might not be perfect, but its the closest I've seen to it in a very long while.