New Horizons?
Here we are. No idea what to really talk about. Doing this on a whim. So anyhow. New expansion Dawntrail is right around the corner. I am both excited and disheartened by it. Excited because I get to explore a whole area and continue the Main Scenario Quests. The sad part is that I sort’ve gotten hooked onto another game at the moment.
To be more specific its called Sky: Children of the Light. It was originally a mobile game from the folks that made Journey however they recently made a PC port somewhere around in April. I took interest of the game around that time but completely forgotten about it because of Helldivers 2 (Its a pretty fun game.) After the whole Sony debacle I decided to take a break from Helldivers and looked around for some “Casual” or more calming games. I had a couple friends play Palia, but to be quite honest I’m a bit concerned for the longevity of the game plus it wasn’t really sticking with me. I could just play Stardew Valley if I wanted a more farming experience.
Anyhow, as I was sitting uncertain about Palia. I looked at my wishlist and remembered that Sky was a thing.
Before I go off talking about my initial impressions of the game. Lets talk about why I was even interested in the first place.
For starters, it was a novel idea for me. I never had played Journey or games like it before. Secondly, it was a social game that geared more towards “Expressions” (Emotes) over just pure chatting. Initially, I thought you couldn’t talk to people at all, but there are a few ways. Lastly, because it was a social game. I thought it might not be a bad idea to try and make new friends. Heck it would be interesting to be able to interact with people outside of the United States. (Its more likely than you might think.)
So lets move on from the reasons and onto how I came to appreciate the game.
Let me be honest. The moment that I came to discover that there’s a “Sky Kingdom” and people fly around in capes. I thought to myself. “I gotta have sky people in my story now!” and the third revision of my story begins once more. Its a bit hard to talk about my first impressions of the game at this moment since its been over a month now from installing it. What I will say is that the social aspect of the game is weird.
Weird in that its hard to communicate via emotes. Especially when you are lacking in a lot of them. The only real ways to communicate with people are through public benches (which have a timer before needing to refresh them), player objects and unlocking the chat feature with person. You are also limited by how many friends you can have. (I think its roughly 150) The game is also in general very archaic with its user interface and is almost a battle sometimes. However once you look past all of the odd quirks and bugs this game has. Its an enjoyable experience.
I would never recommend this game to people if they have no desire in the social aspects. Its really the main driving force to play this game on the daily. Moving on from that though. Have I made any friends in this game after the course of a month?
Well I guess one person so far. Its kind’ve hard to set the standard as to whom you would consider a friend in this game. I’ve only really spoken to one or two people so far. The first person I had spoken with was apparently from Vietnam.
I’ll be honest. Never expected to encounter someone from there before. In fact, I didn’t realized that they couldn’t speak english early on till they mentioned about translation issues. In hindsight it does make a bit sense as to why. Primarily due to the fact that I’m usually up till 3-5 in the morning. Of course the moment I realized that they didn’t speak english. I immediately started looking into what language they did speak.
One of the core problems about learning a language is well. Having people to talk to with it. I mentioned in the past about my desire to learn german quite some time ago. One of the biggest questions I had to myself was, “Was there even anyone that I can talk to?”. Without having a reason to talk someone stilted my growth in learning german. Now the question becomes. Should I delve back into german or try something new with vietnamese? I won’t deny that I have been investing time into learning about vietnamese. However I’m somewhat concerned about whether or not I can achieve anything with it.
Its been a dream of mine to learn another language possibly more, but they are really hard to learn. To achieve any level of fluency with either german or vietnamese will take years. The only benefit with vietnamese is that I can talk to someone with that language. Plus it has made me realize how little I know about Southeast Asia countries. It could give me further excuse to learn more of the histroy from those areas. Possibly another excuse to revise my story…
I have no idea in the end. Anyhow, lets talk about Dawntrail and my only real concern.
As mentioned before I’m quite excited with the upcoming expansion. The only problem is that I’ve been playing Sky alot as of late. I’ve spent over 100 hours in a single month alone. This was the case with FFXIV for a while. Now I need to balance the two somehow. The only real difference is that I can talk to people in Sky where as I don’t have really anyone to talk to in FFXIV. I do have a couple friends but we haven’t been on the same time schedule as of late. This doesn’t even account for the fact that the alpha testing for Ashes of Creation is around the corner as well. (Also Earth Defense Force 6)
This year has too much going on for me. Maybe I should get back into the swing of things with this blog to help keep me sane. No idea. Its going to be an interesting ride to say the least. For what I will say about Sky. Its a bit bittersweet knowing that the folks I’m interacting with today may never show up tomorrow and vice-versa. Probably the most I’ve ever interacted with someone that isn’t from North America or Europe. (Excluding that one time when I made my first online friend from Japan.)
So I’ve never really done this before, but lets try to show some video clips from both Sky and Helldivers 2. This will also be the first time I’ll ever reveal my voice in this blog. Yay… Not that it would matter all that much. Also, if anyone ever expects me to reveal my face. Good luck. (Maybe if I become some successful published author or something.)
Helldivers 2 Clips
Sky: Children of the Light
I could honestly add so much more, but I shall refrain. Maybe I’ll post a few more over the course of time with future posts. Now I shall give no guarantees as to when, but I’m confident to make another at some point.
Oh yeah I should apologize for the poor quality. I had rendered these videos to try to fit under the 50mb limit for Discord. So that I can share them to a bunch of other friends. Don’t want to spend hours finding the originals and editing again.
I think thats about all I have to say for today. I hope you folks have a good day/night!