Shale is available with all retail copies of DA - but you have to enter a code to download him. Edit! I'm a fool, as some non-fools have observed - I had presumed he was the same as the Warden's Keep DLC, as the store pages are careful to only mention him in regard to the collector's edition. Shale is only available to people who paid for the Collector's Edition of DA, around £10 more than the standard. There's a wider issue here, which we'll probably get into it a post of its own. You absolutely have to include him in your party - except, to bring up the big problem I foreshadowed earlier, you probably can't. His abilities are splendid, too - lobbing boulders, a pair of Hellboy fists, or turning into a frozen obelisk that mega-buffs the rest of the party. He's the NPC I'd choose to have a romance with, but it rather seems he's not equipped for it.Įvidently, he's a parody of/homage to the sort of Queer Eye For The Straight Guy figure that's become a mainstay of popular culture, and maybe there'd be some discomfort about Bioware playing to broad stereotypes - except for the fact he's clearly the best, most likeable and enthusiastically written character in the game. He's also beguiling childlike - there's a great conversation between him and Leilana about shoes, him having essentially never heard of them before but loving the idea, and nervously suggesting what colour he'd prefer. Of course, he's immensely likeable about it, off in his own little world rather than frowning about Darkspawn. He's prissy, he's concerned that his gemstones (a neat way of applying weapon and armour upgrades) don't complement each other and he regards the rest of the party as really rather grubby. Is that an insulting way of putting it? It's not intended as such, certainly. A few words in, the shock of his non-golemnity overcome, I listened to what he said and how he said it, and I realised what he was. What is it with this game and its thin voices? Oh, wait. Another clipped English voice, reedy and weak, not the big, booming, stony golem-voice I'd expected. When Shale first spoke, after I'd completed a quest to earn the magic rod and codeword necessary to wake him from a long, petrified slumber in the centre of a human village, I sighed before he even finished his sentence. This article contained embedded media which can no longer be displayed. Plus, he's pathologically afraid of birds. Maybe it's lazy, but it's hard to disagree with someone who ritually suggests solving moral dilemmas by stomping everyone involved into paste. He's also cheerfully homicidal, as was HK-47, and killed his master, as did HK-47. Which is why he's the most welcome presence in the game. He's its Rosencratz & Guildenstein, its Deadpool - creeping as close as the broadly po-faced dark fantasy comes to breaking the fourth wall. As KOTOR's psycho-C3PO was, Shale is the guy who doesn't quite fit the tone of the game, because he doesn't take anything seriously. Shale is HK-47 through-and-through, and, I suspect, very self-consciously so on Bioware's part. Even more ideally, Alistair and Morrigan would get it on, as their constant, comedy bickering very much evokes sexual tension. (I'm not, but because of him wish I was - I'd much rather flirt against his cheery put-downs than Morrigan's snide oh-I'm-bit-naughty-me line. That very much extends to its party members - for instance, Alistair isn't KOTOR's drippy Carth in as much he's someone you can bear to have a conversation with, but he's still the first guy you recruit, the one with the heart of gold and the key love interest if you're playing a woman. It's really not, but it gets the point across). Then I met Shale, the golem - almost immediately the game's bright, dazzling star.īioware tend to revisit a lot of themes and structures in their games (if this was snappier and funnier, it'd have been worth a post. Could I really make it through a couple of dozen hours with these ciphers, these stereotypes, these appalling cod-Euro accents? (Though, seriously, I like Alistair a lot). As for wide-eyed, pseudo-French bard Leilana - well, my cat could read those lines better than her. Facetious holy warrior Alistair had a nice line in comic deflections, but arch sorceress Morrigan seemed a textbook line in sneery, sultry know-it-alls (though I'm sure there are many stings to be found in her self-confident tale) and, while the dog was sort of cute, it wasn't exactly chatty. Sure, I was having fun, but my party, the people I was travelling with, were pretty dry. My first few hours with Bioware's latest had more worried I wasn't going to be entertained. Danger! Danger! This contains a few minor, character-specific spoilers - but nothing to do with DA's main plot.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |