One of the games I’m currently looking forward to is Guild Wars 2. I’ve been a fan of ‘Guild Wars’ since it was released back in 2005. Before that I never played a MMORPG or CORPG (as Guild Wars calls itself) before in my life. After playing ‘Guild Wars’ I really started to like the genre and as the years went by I have played it on a casual and very intensive basis.

In 2007 ArenaNet announced they were working on ‘Guild Wars 2′. In 2009 it was announced the game would not see a release in late 2010, but in 2011. I’m impatiently waiting for the game to come out and I’m really excited about the footage & information that has already been released. ArenaNet plans to take ‘Guild Wars 2′ to a whole new level, I’m definitely looking forward to explore Tyria again.

MMO Manifesto

In ArenaNet’s MMO Manifesto you can see some exclusive footage of the upcoming ‘Guild Wars 2′ and also hear which direction the developers want to take the game and the MMO genre in general.

Guild Wars 2 is developed by ArenaNet and published by NCsoft

Inception (2010) is an American science fiction action film written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan known from the movie ‘The Dark Knight’ (2008). After the movie debuted on July 7th in the cinema it received critical acclaim. It took some time before I was able to catch it in the cinema. Yesterday I was finally able to watch in the cinema, now it’s time for a review!

Plot

The story of ‘Inception’ revolves around Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) who is specialized in an interesting type of theft. Cobb is able to extract information from people when they are asleep by infiltrating the subconscious. It is a popular form of corporate espionage.

When Cobb and his team are trying to get information from wealthy business man Saito (Ken Watanabe) and the plan backfires, Saito makes him an interesting offer. Saito wants Cobb to work for him instead and plant an idea in to the mind of his business rival Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy). If Cobb succeeds Saito will be able to reunite him with his children. For some tragic reason Cobb is not able to see them anymore. Desperate to be reunited with his family Cobb takes up the offer from Saito and assembles a team.

Is it really possible to plant an idea in the mind rather than extract it from the mind? Cobb sure thinks it is possible. But it’s definitely not as easy as he expected, especially when a seemingly unstoppable enemy crosses Cobb’s plans.

Thoughts

I went to see ‘Inception’ with an open mind, I didn’t even read the plot details before watching it. I only heard a few details, but looking back these details didn’t even give me a clear view of what the movie was about. The movie totally blew me away! Even though the movie lasted for about 2 hours and 28 minutes it had great pacing and never left me bored.

What I really like about ‘Inception’ is that the story isn’t really hard to get into, but it introduces some interesting concepts which makes us wanna think about it. The movie raises questions such as: “What if we are able to actively engage our dreams?” and “How do we know what is real around us?”. The movie made me reflect on how I live my life and how I want to live my life. If we could live our perfect lives while dreaming and technology made this possible, what would happen? Is this good or bad?

Even if dreaming in ‘Inception’ still looks a bit sci-fi, there are already people trying to make active choices in dreams and try to influence the dreams they are having. If we would apply this to virtual worlds… would people get stuck there when they are living their perfect lives? Or, would they be inspired and go back to their ‘real lives’? Would they know what is ‘real’ and what is ‘unreal’? What is ‘real’ anyway?

Next to raising some (philosophical) questions ‘Inception’ is also a perfect action movie. I loved the layered events and the way time was applied to the different levels of a dream. If you think ‘related storylines in one movie’ were interesting, ‘Inception’ takes ‘at the same time events’ to a whole new level. And seriously the concept of ‘an IDEA being the most resilient parasite’ – simply brilliant!

Verdict

Inception (2010) is definitely a movie you just have to watch. It probably is one of the strongest if not the strongest movie that has been released this year. It has everything you need: great story, great action AND it stimulates your mind!

Inception is distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures

One of the things I love to do is retelling the story of my favorite videogames. Especially to people who are interested in the story, but do not have the time or means to play the original videogame. When I noticed people actually enjoyed listening to the story of the videogames I liked to play, it inspired me to start a new blogpost series on elocutio .nu named ‘Chronicles‘.

In essence it’s much the same as a ‘videogame diary’ where I will work through a videogame step-by-step using chapters. I will also be using screenshots and video’s when possible. The first game I will be retelling the story of is Dragon Age: Origins (!) . Because players can customize their ‘player character’, choose different ‘origins’ and choose how to interact with various events and NPC‘s my story will be somewhat different to those who have also played the videogame.

Prelude

Chapters

Here you can find the links to the various chapters of the ‘Dragon Age: Origins’ story.

Chapter 1 : The Beginning
Chapter 2 : The Joining
Chapter 3 : The Battle at Ostagar

E3 Trailer

I’m really excited the story will take place in Rome and that there is a multiplayer option. I never played any multiplayer games on my PlayStation 3 before, but I’m eager to try!

Limited Codex Edition

The game is set for a release on November 16th, 2010 and of course I decided to pre-order the special Limited Codex Edition (below) which contains a lot of nice goodies such as a Renaissance Collector Chest, a codex, a bonus DVD and soundtrack, ingame extra’s & much more.

As soon as I have received the game I will do another First Thought review and of course a special unboxing on My YouTube Channel !

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is developed & published by Ubisoft