From what I can gather from the outrage on various websites, one scene is really getting the anti-woke keyboard warriors upset… in a conversation you can mis-gender another character and thus perform 10 press ups by way of penance… this seems to be a step too far, forcing pronouns on people, it’s practically the first sign of the apocalypse.

Now I have no issue with this… except… am I forced to mis-gender the character, in that the line of dialogue will be said no matter what choice I make in the conversation?

At time I writing I’ve not hit this part of the game, or if I have then I managed to totally avoid the erroneous comment… but my only issue would be if there is no way of avoiding the error… when posting online I try to be extra careful of using he/she when I don’t know the person I’m referring to, so would feel that this could also be part of the game, yes you can make the mistake of assuming their gender, but you can also avoid it by carefully choosing your words.

This will probably get a mention when I reach that part of the game… or not as the case may be.

November 6^th

I have reached the start of the storyline where everything kicks off as a companion character talks about how they don’t feel comfortable performing their assigned gender role… and because my character isn’t a total jerk, I’ve been supportive of them… rather tellingly the option for this is not on the first set of dialogue options you’re offered here, hiding in the lower “Other” options for a response.

I’ve also learnt that, the “offending” clip doesn’t feature your character as the person who mis-genders… still not got that far, but at this point it seems like a lot of fuss over something relatively small.

November 10^th

I’m now 50 hours in, and no mis-gendering has occurred, whether I’ve missed the scene by not playing like an arsehole and triggering it, or whether it’s that I rarely have the 2 characters together in my party… I don’t know… and I’m not bothering to find out.

I’m close to the end game, at least as far as companion quests go… 4 of the 7 have reached the end of their story arc, only 1 has had the “epilogue” scene where the relevant Achievement/Trophy pops for completing it fully… of the 3 yet to finish we’re talking a single quest away from the end.

What has popped are the Trophies for killing all the High Dragon’s, and visiting every location in the game… the Platinum is a possibility, with the only potentially tricky Trophy being for upgrading items to Max Level… I need another 17 collectibles (presuming they only offer 50 points each, some from fully levelled up stores have been seen to give 100 points) to level up the upgrade station to do that.

The rest seem possible, there are guides out there for the ancient magic locations I’ve yet to find, and beyond that most are story related and hard to miss unless I mess up big time.

Trying to avoid recency bias, but this is easily one of the best games I’ve played all year, don’t let any of the Youtubers complaining about “woke” affect any decisions you have over picking this up, it’s a fun game… if you have issues with other people being included, by way of a character having an artificial limb, or not feeling happy playing to a perceived stereotype, then that’s your problem… nobody else’s.

Story wise there have been 2 confrontations with 1 of the Elven Gods… both well handled, the last one leading me to believe something drastic has happened with the 1 you’ve twice injured to varying degrees… and that they have been injured, even though they escaped, has had the sort of effect you’d expect on your team… it no longer looks such a daunting task to take them down.

November 11^th

Arse! The quest for the Platinum has hit a bit of a hitch… there is only one really missable Trophy/Achievement in the game, and I’ve missed it… and I have no save file before that part, and, if you use a decision autosave, any before the one you load are instantly deleted, so if you pick the wrong one, they’re gone… I learnt this the hard way.

There is a conversation many hours in where you talk to another Elven God who was betrayed and killed by the others, you need her essence to help you in the battles ahead, if you can persuade her to give it to you then you get a Trophy/Achievement… if you take it by force and kill her Dragon incarnation in combat, you get the essence but not the Trophy/Achievement… I can mainline the story to this point, but need to find 5 of the Dog Statues scattered around the landscape in order to be able to trigger that scene.

Maybe over Christmas as a break from the shovelware I intend to binge on.

I have managed to upgrade the caretaker to the point where I have now unlocked the Trophy for maxing out my equipment… it’s not just levelling up an item to level 10, you have to have unlocked all the abilities for those items as well.

Several more companion quests have come to an end, the full end, with 1 of the remaining 3 reaching its conclusion… main quest wise I’ve not touched it since I completed the last Part, there are other things to do, like go drinking with characters, watching other companions start a relationship with another… I’ll get there soon enough.

November 12^th

The main quest awaits… after a couple of oddities.

First up I complete Emmrich’s story line but nothing unlocks… later, when for some reason I couldn’t interact with anything I restart the game from scratch and I’m welcomed with 2 unlocks for Emmrich and the end of the Crows story line.

I do witness the infamous “press ups” scene and can’t help but wonder what the fuss was all about… huge fuss over something tiny, but I guess the sad acts complaining about it are used to that… but it kicked in at the 55 hour mark, lasted less than 2 minutes and still these losers and semi-literate f-wits are getting upset… they have my pity.

In fact, all the companion quest lines have been completed, as have all the faction quest lines... of the 10 Trophies left to unlock 4 are story related, 3 others seem related to the end game and 1 is for completing all the Alters in the game, and I have just 1 of those left according to the map so that’s what I’m doing next.

For some reason I’m still picking up collectibles when I see them, even though I don’t need them now, up to 151 of the 182 in the game… not sure how many will be left to find considering that I’ve visited every area in the game already, but with the final 3 chapters waiting my attention there may be a couple of new locations introduced for a one off.