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( DW7/WO blather, under the cut )

TV commentary:

Game of Thrones- Interesting season finale. ( spoiler cut )

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So I knew the Rock of Ages movie was going to differ from the musical since the nemesis seems to be Catherine Zeta Jones playing some sort of prudish lady with an anti-Rock agenda rather than German developers. Which, whatever, I don't think it changes things too much, someone's still trying to shut down the club.

However, looking at the track listing of the soundtrack, its curious that "I Want to Know What Love is" is done by Tom Cruise and Malin Akerman, rather than Julianne Hough. Cruise plays Stacee Jax and Julianne plays Sherrie, but Malin plays a totally new character. Anyways, in the musical, the main character Drew is playing it way too slow with Sherrie, so she assumes he's not interested, and sleeps with Stacee since he's this big rock star interested in her during "I Want To Know What Love Is". Stacee has the club owner fire her immediately afterwards, because he's a dick and doesn't want her hanging around now that he's done with her. And Drew finds out and is pissed and blows her off when she runs to him for comfort, causing her to become a stripper, while he in turn, hurt at the betrayal decides to sell out and become a corporate creation after taking over for Stacee when he is unable to do the big show.

So Sherrie sleeping with Stacey is like the primary cause of conflict between the protagonist and his love interest and sets them on their paths for the second act. But if Cruise is doing this song with Akerman, does that mean he doesn't sleep with Sherrie, which how does that work then? I mean, CZJ as the antagonist is fine as I said, since her goal is still the same as the musical's original antagonist. But the blow-up between Sherrie and Drew is the main conflict of the play, caused by her sleeping with Cruise's character, so if she doesn't do that then what causes the conflict? Because from the other track listings, she still becomes a stripper, and he still sells out. Did the movie think the audiences would not look kindly on Sherrie for sleeping with Stacee, so they changed it so she doesn't, and maybe she still gets fired and thus has to resort to stripping, but Drew still thinks she slept with Stacee, when he really slept with Malin Akerman's character?

It is also interesting though that they did add songs to the movie they didn't have in the original, like Jukebox Hero, I Love Rock and Roll, Pour Some Sugar On Me, Rock You Like a Hurricane. Oh, and I just noticed they don't have "Oh Sherrie" on the soundtrack! That was the whole point of naming the girl in it Sherrie! I'm curious to see this movie now just to see how much it differs from the original. But the fact that there are different songs on the soundtrack at least gives me an excuse to get it. And take the number of versions of "Don't Stop Believin'" on my ipod to 8. (The original, the Glee pilot version, the Glee regionals version, the Glee concert version, a couple of other cover versions, then both versions of Rock of Ages)

(no subject)

Decided to say frak it and jump to WO3 rather than finish up the little minor stuff in DW because I couldn't wait. As I said before, you start with Ma Chao, Sima Zhao, and Hanbei Takenaka. Basically, at the start, a new enemy has arisen, Hydra, and killed all the big heroes except for those three. They futilely try to take it out in one last stand, but fail. They're saved right as they're about to die by a spirt named Kaguya. She transports them back to the past and gives them a chance to revisit past battles and save their allies from getting killed.

So its an interesting conceit, to unlock characters by re-doing past conflicts to save allies (or not getting into unnecessary conflicts with potential allies). They do start unlocking fast though, with 120+ characters I guess they have to. Leveling up is simple though, just kill stuff, and you also earn "growth points" for completing levels which you can distribute amongst all the characters as xp. Unlike DW7, there's no skills to buy so it is just a simple level up system for the characters.

Weapons are a different matter entirely though, its the same system as the original WO where you get weapons from defeating officers (or buy them from the weapons dealer) and you can fuse them together. I think everyone has 6 weapons (or rather, 6 weapon classes, since you can put all sorts of traits on them), 4 normal weapons and 2 specials. The pain in the ass though is that you can gain proficiency in a weapon by using it a bunch, and once you max that out, you get an attack bonus. But I think that's by weapon, not weapon class. So it seems like there's a lot of inefficiency going on because the weapon you use while leveling up may not be the best weapon you can get ever, but it is prolly your workhorse.

For example, most of my characters are using their second weapons currently. I've been basically fusing what I have, not really paying attention to what I'm putting in the slots, as anything is good right now. But I hate wasting "time" on getting good with these weapons when I'm just going to dump them later for something better. Well, its not that I'm trying to get good with them, more like I hate I'm basically "earning xp" on getting good with that specific weapon which will be useless later.

In any case, there's definitely no shortage of things to do in this game.