Category Archives: Games

Age of Empires: Definitive Edition Thoughts

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This week saw the long-awaited release of the Age of Empires Definitive Edition, a full HD remaster of one of the greatest classics of the real-time strategy genre. Age of Empires was one of the defining games of my childhood, so of course I jumped in immediately.

A Hittite town in Age of Empires: Definitive EditionIt’s a solid remake. Graphically, it’s a huge improvement. It may not exactly look top of the line, but it does look pretty damn good.

Unlike Blizzard’s bitterly disappointing StarCraft remaster, AoE:DE also polishes the clunkier aspects of the old game, as well. Attack-move is now an option, as are unit queues and an idle villager button.

The enemy AI seems slightly improved, too, though it can be a bit wonky at times. For the most part, it’s surprisingly smart and challenging — I’ve even seen the computer stutter-step ranged units — but it does have some hiccups. Enemy units have a tendency to freeze and wait to die when confronted with a wall.

To be honest, I would have liked a few more tweaks. The ability to re-seed farms automatically would have been nice, and unit pathing still leaves much to be desired. Still, I recognize it’s a difficult balance to strike. You don’t want to change too much.

Beyond those small changes, this is Age of Empires. If you played in the 90s, you’ll still recognize this as the game you know and love. All the civilizations, every campaign mission, every unit, every song on the soundtrack… it’s all there, almost exactly as you remember it.

Even the wololo.

in Age of Empires: Definitive Edition

Oh, my beloved elephant archers. How I missed you.

That said…

I feel kind of bad saying anything negative about the Definitive Edition, because it’s pretty much everything that a video game remaster should be, but I must admit it hasn’t stoked my passion as much as I expected it to.

Maybe it’s that I’m having a busy period in my life right now and can’t focus on video games as well as usual, but I think maybe it’s just hard to get too excited about what is still fundamentally a twenty year old game I’ve already sunk dozens — if not hundreds — of hours into.

Well, if nothing else, I got a few hours of fun out of it, and I don’t regret buying it. If anything I’d recommend it, especially if you never played AoE back in the day. Quality RTS games really need to be supported these days.

Fan Fiction: The Light Sith Code

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If you ask me, one of the most fun things you can do in SWTOR is play a light side Sith. You’re a true chaotic good hero: passionate, free-spirited, and valiant, fighting to bring positive change to the world.

My warrior practicing lightsaber technique in Star Wars: The Old RepublicIt gets me to thinking sometimes what would happen if, in the long term, Jaesa actually succeeded in her mission and led some light side reformation of the Sith. Not turning them into Jedi, but accentuating the more positive aspects of Sith philosophy to create a new order of people who use their passion to bring freedom to the galaxy.

Because when you think about it, there’s a lot of good in the fundamental philosophy of the Sith. I certainly think it has more redeeming aspects than the dehumanizing Jedi Code.

All this got me thinking about what a Light Sith Code would be like. How would their philosophy look if they tweaked it to accent the positive traits of Sith ideology — freedom, embracing one’s humanity, self-empowerment — while discarding the more problematic elements.

This is what I came up with:

Peace is fleeting; passion is eternal

Through passion, we gain knowledge

With knowledge, we take action

Through action, we bring justice

With justice, our chains are broken

The Force shall free us all

The first line was the trickiest. “Peace is a lie” is the most obviously dangerous part of the original Sith Code, though even there arguments could be made that it is still a positive message.

I’m not the biggest fan of the inquisitor class story in SWTOR, but one of my favourite moments in that game is a conversation where the inquisitor and Ashara discuss Sith philosophy, and especially the “peace is a lie” segment. The conclusion they come to is that it doesn’t necessarily decry peace, but only illustrate that peace is not a means unto itself. You don’t make the world a better place by sitting under a tree waiting for enlightenment.

My Sith inquisitor in Star Wars: The Old RepublicMy challenge then was to illustrate this in just one line. I’m not sure I did as good a job as I could have, but generally the idea is that peace is admirable, but ephemeral, and we must instead rely on our passions — our convictions — to guide us in an ever-changing universe.

Beyond that, I also appropriated the one part of the Jedi Code I actually like — the veneration of knowledge over ignorance — and wrote it in first person plural, rather than singular, to counteract the tendency toward selfishness that tends to run through Sith ideology.

I know many Star Wars fans will say that “light Sith,” or any Sith that aren’t evil, is an oxymoron and a contradiction of Star Wars lore, and I freely grant they may be right. But I think it’s a lot more interesting to view the Jedi and Sith as both flawed, with pros and cons on both sides, and at least in the context of SWTOR — the only Star Wars I much care about — light side Sith are definitely a thing.

And really this is just for my own amusement anyhow.