Better Red Dead Late than Red Dead Never

I finally finished the first Red Dead Redemption last night, after nearly two months. I had focused pretty much entirely on the missions, not caring enough for the way the game plays to do anything optional.

My final impression of the game is that the better writing at the end of the game really sticks out in people's minds, and makes them willing to overlook some of the other hack-level stuff through the middle of the game, and the awful, kludgey way that the game feels to play.

That, and it's a pretty nice and big open world to ride around on your horse. I'm not incredibly eager to play the sequel, but I probably will at some point.

Diablo III Again

Blizzard went and re-released Diablo III on the Switch this time, and I had to pick it up. It's a pretty near flawless port of the PC experience, re-tooled for enjoyment using a controller. I have been having a great time playing it, already having reached level 70 with a Witch Doctor, and having now moved on to Paragon levels and working on the challenges for the current limited-time season event.

I'm not sure there is much more to add, other than the game continues to be great. It's really cemented itself in my all-time favorite and most played lists over the last 6 years or more. I still have yet to delve much into Hardcore mode, though. It just seems like a waste. I do want to get one character to max level that way, though, eventually.

Heresy Winding Down

I've been reading through the most recent Horus Heresy releases, the anthology Heralds of the Siege, and the two novellas Dreadwing and Spear of Ultramar. A common theme to all of these tales is the wrapping up of loose and hanging threads in the overall saga, as the remaining works in the series will focus on the climactic Siege of Terra.

Heralds of the Siege was full of short stories acting as catch-up or parting shots for many disparate factions throughout the galaxy, and then toward the end a lot of preparation and vigilance from the parties on Terra awaiting the coming of the Warmaster and his legions. A couple of these stories literally end with Horus' fleet having appeared on the edge of the Solar system.

Dreadwing and Spear of Ultramar show the Dark Angels and Ultramarines legions, respectively, after the events of the novel Ruinstorm, and explain why it is that neither legion was to be on Terra for the big final act of the war. The Lion was convinced he would be too late anyway, and wanted to burn as much of what he presumed was now Horus's galaxy as he could on the way to the Throneworld. Guilliman, it appears (I have only begun Spear), will be delayed due to the stalwart last stand of a small band of Iron Warriors determined to bloody and occupy him even to their own eventual deaths at Perturabo's order.

The Plague War

Guy Haley's follow-up to the book that launched the new era of Warhammer 40,000, Dark Imperium, entitled Plague War, is out, and I have finished it.

It is definitely the middle part of a trilogy. While Guilliman has a face-off with his fallen brother Mortarion at the end of the book, and interesting barbs are traded, they are prevented from coming to blows, with the promise of a meeting on the planet Iax to come in the final book. Elsewhere a Primaris marine comes to finally feel at home in his new chapter, the Novamarines, who lose their chapter master in single combat with Typhus aboard the star fort Galatan. The Death Guard aboard are routed, though, allowing the massive space bastion to fire down on the remaining forces of Nurgle on the surface of Parmenio, and forcing a retreat and handing victory to the forces of the Imperium.

Here we also see Guilliman railing against the Imperial Cult as he has before, but eventually deciding that dismissing it out of hand again would be repeating his worst mistake from the age before the Horus Heresy, and resolving to read his wayard brother Lorgar's earlier work, the Lectitio Divinitatus.

I am very excited to see where the story goes from here, and how the Primarch and Imperial Regent manages to synthesize the warring ideologies of the secular Imperium and the cult of the God-Emperor.

Into Mexico

I have played very little in the last few weeks, and only Red Dead Redemption to speak of.

I have made it through the first portion of the game and through the sequence that everyone raves about, the ride into Mexico, where a song (not the score) plays. Apparently that really did something for most of the people who remember the game, but I found it extremely underwhelming. Maybe it's that I was expecting something great, or maybe it's just that it's not all that special of an event on its face, and its just that it is memorable for how singular a moment it is in the game, which is usually pretty understated in the way the world is presented when it's just the world on display, and not presenting you with some broad approximation of a tired Western movie trope.

I'm fairly underwhelmed with the whole of what is on offer in Red Dead Redemption, but its world is pretty impressive. By which I mean the environment exclusively. The denizens are your typical Rockstar hackery, and the play mechanics your typical Rockstar garbage fire. I think I'll keep playing it for the time being, though. Until something breaks the camel's back or I finish it.