Monthly Archives: September 2011

DRAGON QUEST X ONLINE: RISE OF THE FIVE TRIBES

Over on Tor.com, I’ve blogged at some length about the recent announcement of Dragon Quest X Online: Rise of the Five Tribes, the next iteration in the long-running series, and the first to take the series seriously online. I’m not terribly happy with the decision, nor are a lot of other fans:

Having first discovered Dragon Quest with the eighth entry, Journey of the Cursed King, and subsequently completing many of the earlier entries (thanks, in part, to the Nintendo DS remakes of Dragon Quest IV, V, and VI), my reaction to Dragon Quest IX’s shift to a more social game was mixed. I missed the pre-defined characters and found the multiplayer (even when played locally with a friend) to be unnecessary. To me, Dragon Quest has always been an escape, a world to lose myself in for a few hours every week. If I want to play with friends, I load up World of Warcraft or invite them over to play Mario Kart. Like a troubled teenager, my enthusiasm for Dragon Quest X Online: Rise of the Five Tribes is having trouble finding it’s identity; I find myself at once perplexed by this evolution, and drooling for more Dragon Quest. It does sound like people will be able to play offline, with a party filled with computer-controlled NPCs, which might be some consolation for anti-social dicks like me, but, really what’s a long-time fan have to do to get a more traditional adventure?

Check out the whole article about Dragon Quest X Online: Rise of the Five Tribes on Tor.com. What do you think about the announcement?

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Via Blastr, created by Lucy Kinsley:
The entire HARRY POTTER saga in one image

I could stare at this all day. Like many of you, I recently watched the eighth (sorta) and final Harry Potter film and my nostalgia for the series just skyrocketed. It’s great fun to be able to re-live the series through this fun image. The artist did a wonderful job of capturing the irreverence and charm of Rowling’s characters and magical setting.

Click on the image to see it in all it’s glory, be warned, though, it’s *huge*.

THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE by Stephen King

I still don’t think we need another Dark Tower novel, but… holy wow. Beautiful.

EDIT: Courtesy Suvudu, we now have a synopsis!

For readers new to The Dark Tower, THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE is a stand-alone novel, and a wonderful introduction to the series. It is a story within a story, which features both the younger and older gunslinger Roland on his quest to find the Dark Tower. Fans of the existing seven books in the series will also delight in discovering what happened to Roland and his ka tet between the time they leave the Emerald City and arrive at the outskirts of Calla Bryn Sturgis.

This Russian Doll of a novel, a story within a story, within a story, visits Mid-World’s last gunslinger, Roland Deschain, and his ka-tet as a ferocious storm halts their progress along the Path of the Beam. (The novel can be placed between Dark Tower IV and Dark Tower V.) Roland tells a tale from his early days as a gunslinger, in the guilt ridden year following his mother’s death. Sent by his father to investigate evidence of a murderous shape shifter, a “skin man,” Roland takes charge of Bill Streeter, a brave but terrified boy who is the sole surviving witness to the beast’s most recent slaughter. Roland, himself only a teenager, calms the boy by reciting a story from the Book of Eld that his mother used to read to him at bedtime, “The Wind through the Keyhole.” “A person’s never too old for stories,” he says to Bill. “Man and boy, girl and woman, we live for them.” And stories like these, they live for us.

As Wizard & Glass (the best volume of the series) was also a story-within-a-story… I’m kinda even more intrigued now.