4 Reasons to Hate Sebastian Vael

1. Varric Doesn't Like Him.
   
   This may sound petty, but Varric likes everybody. This is a guy who pays off thugs to keep them away from two not very self aware apostates, who plays cards with an elf who hates everyone. Plus Varric is the best character in the game, and the narrator. Aveline also doesn't like him, and while she doesn't have Varric's fandom clout, throughout the game she's generally pretty fair and even handed. The only one who does really like Sebastian is Fenris, and that's mainly because Sebastian shares his view on magi.
   
   
2. The Evangelising
   
   Almost everyone in the game evangelises for their cause, fairly relentlessly. What marks Sebastian out is his willingness to exploit trauma in others in order to convert them to 'The Maker'. He smugly tells his 'friend' Fenris - who has been enslaved, abused and traumatised - that the Maker must have helped him escape. He's also not very good at it. He gets stumped by Merrill when she asks him some basic questions about what the Chantry does. While it has been implied she isn't as ditsy as she seems, that's still pretty telling.
   
   
3. The Lack of Perspective
   
   Aveline: The entitled types are always trouble.
   Sebastian: In that case, I'm glad I don't count myself as one.
   Aveline: They never do.
   
   He thinks his choice to be a Chantry brother is the same as Anders' being born a mage. To repeat; he thinks choosing to be a priest - when he could leave any time he likes - is the same as being born a mage and as a result facing compulsory lifelong imprisonment, with the consequences for leaving being tranquility, execution or torture. Not to mention the sexual, physical and mental abuse Templars routinely subject mages to.
   
4. The Hypocrisy
   
   
   
   
   Sebastian absolutely positively will NOT break his vows... you know unless he realllly wants to. Which he does when he goes after his family's murderers, an act of revenge explicitly forbidden by the beliefs he claims to hold so dear. Oh and if the finale of DA2 doesn't go his way, he wants to 'avenge' his kindly and nonviolent - if lazy and totally culpable - mentor by razing a city to the ground due to the actions of one man. He's no better than Meredith.

The only silver lining here is that a random 'prince' turning up in Starkhaven is likely to be dispatched fairly quickly by whoever has been ruling the city for the past decade. If he even gets there of course - Hawke and her / his companions aren't exactly wilting flowers, Zevran the master assassin owes Hawke a favour, and Aveline's guardsmen would be hardly likely to let Sebastian Vael go raise an army in order to commit genocide against Kirkwall. 

Top 3 WTF Bioware Moments (Spoilers)

1. Mass Effect 3 : The Ending
   
   
   
   The starchild. The triple coloured ending, swiped almost verbatim from Deus Ex. The gaping plot holes that had to be fixed with special DLC. The lack of closure. The ridiculous tale of 'The Shepard'. If this were a school paper, the game would be an A+ downgraded to a D- purely due to the last ten minutes.


2. Dragon Age 2 : The Ending
   
   
   
   For goodness sake. It was just ridiculous. Anders spends the whole of Awakening flirting, playing with kittens and healing people. He spends DA2 being romantic, tortured, and healing people; also rescuing frightened teenagers from rapey, murderous templars. Then he blows up the Chantry. For no apparent reason. He's my favourite character (apart from Varric) and I think he's pretty justified... it just makes no sense.


3. Dragon Age Origins:Alistair at the Landsmeet
   
   
   You spend the whole game with Alistair. He's cheerful, funny, and either adorable or suave depending on your in game choices. He's a fantastic character, by far the upgrade to Mass Effect's Kaidan, and becomes really interesting. Then throws a hissy fit when you suggest sparing Loghain. Like a real, toddler style tantrum. Nm that it means acquiring an extra Grey Warden, an extra person to potentially sacrifice themselves, and a guy that pretty much beat out the Orlesians single handedly - Alistair doesn't like it. 

Mass Effect Deception

What the actual. I got this book from the library, because i'm obsessed with Mass Effect. It was awful. A reasonably okay storyline but with filler and poor writing that had me itching to get out a black marker pen (last time I had this was when I read Shelters of Stone. I now pretend that book wasn't written).

Rubbish fan fiction with little to recommend it. The prose was bad, Anderson acted out of character, it was moralistic, which is pretty out of tune with the Mass Effect morality (which is either pragmatic or somewhat Old Testament). A kid murders a guy who kills his girlfriend and Kahlee & Anderson are all 'tut tut, naughty boy' about it. Yeah... because Anderson and Shepard neer kill anyone, and certainly not for reenge (Kai Leng, for example, one of the most satisfying kills in any game I'e eer played).

I'm not the only one - Penny Arcade lampooned it -

And fans more dedicated than I compiled a Google doc about the errors in Mass Effect Deception.

My Favourites:

• Quarians don't wear Environ suits.
• A homosexual character is suddenly a heterosexual character.
• Kai Leng (an extreme racist) is shown flirting with aliens. 
• Singularity makes people explode.
• Cerberus have a PR department.
• After breaking into Anderson's apartment Kai Leng eats some cereal, then clears up after himself. It just made no sense. 

The author engages in a lot of 'Telling Not Showing' - a rookie mistake that would get you marked down in a creative writing course. If I had submitted this during my degree my professor would have called me in for a word.

It feels like Dietz tossed this off (pun intended) in an afternoon. While chugging beer. And watching the football.

Dawnguard DLC for Skyrim

I've completed Dawnguard as a vamp, and am now trying to do it as a Dawnguard. Love it. It's Shivering Isles worthy and totally worth the money (take note Bioware, because I'm yet to say that about ANY Mass Effect DLC).

Spoilers under cut.

How To Fix The Open Tray Error on Xbox 360

Xbox 360 Wireless Controller (Photo credit: ChipperMist)

I read about a million suggestions on how to fix this, most of which included hitting the x-box. I tried a few of these and none worked. Then I found a tutorial that suggested deleting all your DLC. (You can re-download it for free).

I deleted all the DLC on my X-Box 360, then cleared the cache and rebooted. Opened and closed the tray a couple of times and it was working again.

Which means I don't hafta fork out £69+ for a new console.

Liberal Bioware

Great, humourus take on the religious right's fury at Mass Effect:

"They allow same-sex romance and preach multinational cooperation as the "good" methodology, and the one that asserts your own military muscle/divine mandate while saying f-you to the rest of the diplomatic community is the "bad" methodology. The wholesome conservative family values woman (Ash) onboard is portrayed as a racist, religious bitch, and the bisexual liberal (Kaidan) is a calm, mild-mannered gentleman. They prop up false gods like "Athame" and "Kalahira" and make no mandate for the player to stop and worship the one true God of Earth. And most importantly, they not only let you sleep outside your species, they wrote the alien romances to be more favorable, when they should have had only human options as God intended. What part of this series isn't left-wing propaganda? Not that I don't love every minute of it (save the last ten). lol :D"

Hearthfire

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