Alright, so this will be a rather large post today. My last update was end of July, and then I was on vacation, so today’s will encompass all of August and first week of September. Lots to share, including my first impressions of Starfield.

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Wrapped up Need for Speed Unbound:

The writing was actually pretty funny in the final act. They make Fast and Furious jokes, and actually said “Need for Speed”:

Overall the game was ok. A little grindy with the constant cop chases, and I was irritated in the beginning when I was making very small amounts of money after races, and by the end, you just make stupid money. I guess because the S cars have more expensive upgrade parts and the final buy-in is higher, but still. By the last week, I was maybe only doing one or two races per day/night cycle because I was so tired of getting chased by cops, and just wanted the story done.

After NFS was done. I had a week or so to kill until Starfield released, so I got Immortals of Aveum, which is an EA FPS High Fantasy magic spell casting game. Pretty decent over-all. But I wanted a palette cleanser before I jumped into Starfield, and nothing else in my queue interested me at the time. And I wanted something that would be a relatively quick completion. Below, the female character is Zendara. She’d be fun to draw.

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In the art studio I’ve been busy. As I mentioned in the last post, I was playing Exoprimal quite a bit, and had the Vigilant class design stuck in my head and needed to draw it:

Then the Blue Beetle movie came out, so I draw Blue Beetle – but didn’t see the movie:

Made a little bit of progress on the colour wheel challenge. Re-did female Riddler, and added Catwoman. 3 more colours left, Purple, Pink, and Red. Purple I think I will do Neo-Joker, Pink will be Two-Face, and Red will be Rose Wilson, daughter of Deathstroke:

Then I got some inspiration by Cammy’s new Street Fighter outfit. She’s chopped off her hair, but the jacket she now wears has this long belt that kind of mimics the long ponytail she used to have, which is a pretty cool design:

After Cammy, I thought, since Drawtober / Inktober is around the corner, that I should get a head start. Populate a list of characters and start sketching them out, so that in October, I can flesh them out, ink and maybe add a splash of colour. But this way it will take a lot of the stress away if the base is already done. So far I have Dove, Zatanna, Spiral, and Fire & Ice. Definitely off a good start. Hopefully I can have 31 ready for October. Having time off this month will help.

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Comics for the week of Aug 2:

Comics for the week of Aug 19:

Comics for the week of Aug 24:

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Alright, the point of this one-sided conversation we’ve all been waiting for: Starfield. A review, of sorts, in progress.

Starfield will be the first Bethesda Game Studios game that I’ve tried, in earnest. I’ve tried Fallout 4 before, for about an hour or so. Got killed by big bugs in the wasteland. Couldn’t wrap my head around the slow-motion gun aiming. Called it quits. Was never really interested in the Elder Scrolls games or setting as I tend to gravitate to sci-fi over fantasy (although I did play Bioware’s Dragon Age Inquisition). But guns and spaceships are more my style, and I did like Bioware’s Mass Effect series, so I have high hopes for Starfield, even though RPG is usually not my first choice.

But so far I am liking it. I appreciate that you can diverge off the main quest and focus on other activities like Faction Missions or other side-quests. I initially started down the main quest, but after arriving in New Atlantis, and meeting the Constellation group, and acquiring Sarah as a companion, she brought me to the UC Vanguard headquarters to discuss a rumour of one of the next artifacts. But mid discussion with the Commander, he had a dialogue option about enrolling into the UC Vanguard services. So I did, and was then whisked away on a side adventure involving Xenowarfare. I guess those weird artifacts will have to wait.

I’m playing on the PC which has been ok so far. I have an RTX 3080 and it handles it decently at 4k, 35-40fps. It defaulted to Ultra settings. But I think I could get more out of it after adjusting some shadow/reflection/particle settings. See if I can get those FPS up. Haven’t tried it on the Xbox Series X. Likely won’t.

Visually the game is both very good looking and also kind of meh, depending on the environment. But I guess with a game this large, it can’t be all amazing. Overall though, very pretty. And it has an in-game photo mode, so that’s a bonus.

I’m not deep into the game yet, but I have time off work for the next few weeks, so by the time my next update roles around I should have more in-game photos and new stories to tell. I’m also thinking about the whole role-playing aspect, and considering doing a short story or Captain’s Log journal, similar to what I did with The Division.

Until then, Above and Beyond.

iRogan
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