Unintelligent Design

Since someone's added a few of Saturday's highlights to YouTube...

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This weekend was ijw's stag do. Relatively civilised. Not that much alcohol - at least not for me - and nothing exruciatingly painful. Not even the paintball. Although some of the 70s disco music came close...
( Stag night stuff, comedy club stuff and odd ramblings about Oxford goth club venues... )

So, I'm spending a certain amount of time playing a Japanese small-squad battle game, Valkyria Chronicles, on the PS3. It's set in an alternate history, with Europe divided between two major powers and caught up in a war in 1935.

Our heroes and heroines are part of the militia raised to defend the country of Gallia (an area better known to Asterix fans as 'Gaul' - Gallia's the latin name, apparently).

Four or five of the soldiers have crucial roles in the story. There are a few dozen more characters who fill the rest of your squad, though - you can have a maximum of twenty but, unike our heroes, they can be killed and replaced. They have well defined personalities, though - each one has their own look and their own voice actor / dialogue, as well as some unique traits.

Much to my surprise, a couple of them aren't straight. One of the anti-tank team, Jann, has the 'fancies men' trait (i.e. gets a confidence boost in combat when trying to show off for nearby male colleagues) - and the voiceover is, well, a little flamboyant to say the least. And the one female engineer I've recruited, Dallas, is (perhaps unsurprisingly) a lesbian (with the 'fancies women' trait and accompanying dialogue).

The trait logic does, unfortunately, mean that they each work poorly with the opposite gender - they actively don't like MOTOS. *sigh*

But, still... it's not a major plot point. It's not treated as a joke (although some of Jann's lines are a little corny) - and Jann just happens to be the most efficient soldier in his role (except for the major characters), so players are likely to use him as part of their squad.

Google finds a couple of sites that accuses the game of sneaking homosexuality into our children's lives yadda yadda yadda... but that's all. It's not exactly attracted media attention, despite some good reviews for the game..

Tomorrow, I may actually give in and purchase a new scanner. If so, there are a lot of old photos that may rapidly make their way onto the Internet...

Y'know, I'm going to steal a Neil Gaiman quote via geekchick , since it says this much better than I could:

...I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you'll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you'll make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind.