Recovery takes many forms

So whilst I haven’t been playing WoW recently (and have decided that I need to wait until I hand in my final piece of coursework at the end of May before re-subscribing), I have been doing other things.

One of the few pieces of useful advice I was given after I was diagnosed with Post-natal Depression was to try and get out as much as possible. So we have been all over the place exploring castles,

Edzell Castle in the sunshine

looking at neolithic ruins and geocaching. Essentially trying to spend as much time out in the fresh air as humanly possible and I  must admit it’s working. My son adores being in the woods and on beaches and I look surprisingly suntanned.

I have been dabbling with some games though as it still rains quite a lot. Dragon Age Inquisition is still on-going although I’m struggling to get back into the story. There is no denying how beautiful it is but I’m just finding something lacking, perhaps because they’ve got rid of all the Mage Towers.

I dived back into Hearthstone too and finally no doubt years after everyone else I beat a certain spider.

 

Then because we visited Doune Castle recently which doubles for Castle Leoch in Outlander, I’ve started reading the book with a view to possibly watching the series once I’m finished. Given the “mind fog” I’ve been in since my son’s arrival I hadn’t actually heard of either the book or the TV series until I got talking to the lovely Historic Scotland ladies as well as some American tourists who didn’t recognize the Catullus quote on the “Outlander” merchandise and thought that “basia” must mean “love”.

I briefly contemplated pretending to being much smarter than I actually am before admitting that I first came across “da mi basia mille, deinde centum” whilst reading Jilly Cooper of all people. Fair enough I was only 10 or so at the time but still.

My final piece of coursework for the University course I’m doing is handed in 10 days time and then the plan is to resubscribe and attack the Toybox list with a view to completing as much as possible before Legion goes live. I think we are going to pre-order so I’ll also be figuring out what character I want to use the boost on as well as deciding if I’m going with my Priest or not.

For the TL;DR, I’ve recovered about as much as I’m going to (still slightly mad) and I’m back, excited about Demons, changes to the PvP system and nursing a desire to slaughter things.

Dragon Age Inquisition – First Thoughts

Santa came early to the Harpy household this year bringing with him a copy of Dragon Age Inquisition. It’s a joint present and as we have with both incarnations of the game, we’re playing together sharing the decision making and taking it in turns to pilot our way around the stunningly beautiful map.

Naturally we’re playing a Mage as we have in every other incarnation of the game and spent around an hour playing with the character creation screen.

Visually the game has blown me away, it’s far too easy to stand around admiring the way the light falls through the leaves or the little details dotted around.

What has really sold me though is the scale of the game, we’ve played for around eight hours but haven’t really achieved anything at all. From puzzles, to little quests just to be kind along with the main story lines, the scope is immense.

My favourite thing so far however is this:

It might turn more like a  tank than a horse but the level of detail is amazing, from the difference in your position depending on your speed to the individual hairs making up the tail.