ZOMG MASS EFFECT 3

So I've been playing Mass Effect 3 pretty solidly for the last few days. And I LOVE it. I get the feeling it is going to smash my heart into a million pieces by the end, there's a lot more melancholy reflections on death and the nature of war and sacrifice and less sexy romance and silliness. But it has pretty much everything I wanted to see that hadn't been explicitly ruled out beforehand (like Tali being into girls ;_;). I got stuck on a mission early on and found myself bitterly wishing for cheats...only to realise I was playing on normal difficulty! The rest of the game has been quite doable on easy, the combat is fun and moderately varied (not the waves of identical bad guys in identical locations there was in Dragon Age 2). The gameplay is very much like ME2, but the music and plot/style is more like ME1. It's effectively epic and intense.

In general they've done great job of tying together all the choices and relationships from the previous two games. When you bump into an old friend it FEELS like bumping into an old friend (I wish there were more "hug old friend" paragon interrupts) Lots of moments when choices you made a game and a half ago have sometimes really major effects that tie together into an epic and satisfying ongoing story. I am REALLY curious to see where it goes next.
( mild romance spoilers )

ANYWAY. Since I'm not trying to start any new romances (or rekindle any old ones), and haven't bonded all that much with the new characters, (though I do like them), I'm enjoying just talking to people because I like them and find them interesting rather than because I want to Make Them Like Me or gain points or something. I'm mostly focussed on saving the galaxy, which feels like what I should be focussed on! ME2 felt a bit random, going around making lots of friends without a very complex story arc underpinning it.

NO SPOILERS IN THE COMMENTS. Not even vague ones. Not even for stuff you're sure I've seen. I will make a spoilery post when I am done, and we can have a spoileriffic conversation then.

Also, lesbian vampires

The other thing I've been working on for the last few days (especially whenever Cam is home and snags the PC to play ME3 himself) is a totally tasteful and understated lesbian vampire romance sim (I came up with the title :D). I'm doing backgrounds and some of the writing, the other people are all very talented and throwing ideas and art concrit back and forth in skype chat has been really fun (occasionally frustrating when we have differences of opinion, but mostly fun)

Of course, this project having started in Homestuck fandom, they're all TINY ADORABLE CHILDREN (eg, aged between 15 and 22) but they're more mature and motivated than many older people I have known. I don't know if we'll actually get it finished, but I hope so. It's nice hanging out in a realtime fannish social situation that's so comfortably queer.