Time to Loot Journal: October 2023

Just realised I hadn’t mentioned this here yet. A month or two or maybe three ago, I started in a new job. Same company, but managing an entirely new (to me) portfolio of products, with a substantially different type of customer base to where I’ve been for the past few years. At first, I was somewhat against making the change. I liked — a great deal — the team I was working with, and some long-term projects I’d been across were (finally) nearing fruition.

Not to mention, when the opportunity was first presented to me, I had only recently returned to work after my mother’s passing and the general advice around such times is: Don’t make big life-changing decisions.

So, on the first day when asked: It was a categoric and instant ‘No’. That was it. No more thought to be given. Dust off hands, and walk away.

Or so I thought.

Sleeping-brain had other ideas, and I awoke with a bit of a grumble and went on to ask for more information. There were some important programmes of work to get started with, interesting problems to solve, and perhaps ultimately what got me — new things to learn.

However many months it has now been on, I’m glad I made the call to change.

They say that sometimes change is better than a holiday, and at least in this case, that has proven true. Felt somewhat re-energised by it all and the new work to get stuck into.¹

Real life aside though, what about… Games!

How did I go with my goals?

Gaming Goals

Goals for October 2023

• Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon — Defeat Balteus
  Despite what I said about being unsure where to fit this in, I’d still like to give it a shot!

• Starfield — Complete the Main Story Path
  Time to zoom! I acknowledged in one of the Chronicle posts that my attention was starting to wander and finishing was becoming a now-or-never type deal. There is a very real chance that if I don’t shift tack to focus more (if not quite exclusively) on the main story, it will become yet another Bethesda game where I’ve never completed the main story. I’d like to avoid that if possible, even if it isn’t the best story out there!

Well, I did one of my goals. I made Starfield the first Bethesda game I’ve finished the main story of since Fallout: New Vegas. And I suppose that isn’t even really a Bethesda game, as that was Obsidian. So uh… Probably since Oblivion then?

Not to say I haven’t put 100’s of hours into the more recent titles, I just don’t often finish the main story offerings. At the start of the Starfield Chronicles, I did envision the series lasting longer. I thought the side content if nothing else, would ensure that. But while certainly I could have, well… I just wasn’t interested. Not yet. Hopefully in the future when modders get their hands on the game?

My final thoughts I’ve already been over though.

As for Armored Core VI; well… I’ve had to acknowledge that has gone somewhere deeper into the backlog where I’m not currently inclined to follow.

No slight on the game itself, but almost as an inverse, it seems destined (for now) to join one of the very few (modern) FromSoftware titles that I haven’t finished.

Goals for November 2023

In October, I picked up both Lies of P and Lords of the Fallen (2023).

From what little amounts of each game I had seen, I expected to like Lords of the Fallen better, but honestly… Lies of P has utterly taken me. Lords of the Fallen hasn’t even really gotten a look in yet, nor do I expect it will until I’m done with this one. When I first heard people start to say that Lies of P was the best non-FromSoftware Soulslike, and approaching the quality we might expect of a Bloodborne 2, I thought it was ridiculous hyperbolic nonsense.

And it still might be, I haven’t finished it nor even given it an exceptional number of hours yet. I’ve been playing it for 30m-1hr in a go before bed as a wind-down game. (I know, I KNOW. I wouldn’t normally call a Soulslike much of a ‘wind down’ game, but this is off the back of some Call of Duty Modern Warfare II with friends, so relatively it works.)

I’m not yet feeling any great pressure to push beyond those sorts of windows, but only because I know it is also a relatively shorter more condensed game and I’m quite keen to savour it.

All to say…

I don’t think I want to set finishing Lies of P this month, and it’s hard to set a specific target goal without looking ahead and spoiling things, so…

• Lies of P — Play for at least a further 10 hours over the month of November.
  Which I expect will put me somewhere approaching the halfway mark (of a main story run) by the time I get there.

• The Talos Principle 2 — Complete through to at least the first ‘tower’.
  My mind still absolutely rebels against the fact that the first Talos Principle came out 9 years ago. I just really can’t fathom it. But a sequel is coming, tomorrow in fact. Likely ‘today’ by the time you read this. And it looks great.

Games Played October 2023

Fortnite probably needs a bit of context there. I haven’t touched it in a very long time. Very much not my bag; especially not since the hard pivot right in the early days away from the Survive the World mode into the battle royale it has become.

…But…

My youngest son currently enjoys it, and it is something we can play together now that we’re starting to allow him into online games a little more.

And you know what?

At least in No Build mode, the modern Fortnight game… It’s not as bad as I had it in my head.

Ah boy… I predicted a heavier month of gaming, which did come true… But I predicted it on the basis of Cities: Skylines 2, and, uh- nope. It just isn’t ready.

I don’t think it will be this month, either. December? Maybe! But we’ll have to see.

Jumping back into multiplayer with friends again has certainly helped though, and only wasn’t higher as I didn’t really kick into that until later in the month.

This month we’ll see Modern Warfare III come out, and I’m kinda excited for the Zombies open world mode. Fingers crossed it doesn’t disappoint!!

1. It probably doesn’t hurt that I did have an actual holiday in there as well, but I do think the change did more for me than the break.