26. A false start in Baldur's Gate 3
I.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is out on the PlayStation 5. My girlfriend and I were really looking forward to it, because co-op games you can play together on the sofa barely exist (there is still nothing better than It Takes Two). So finally we could get to work. It seemed so perfect: a massive fantasy adventure to discover. Dungeons and Dragons, but on TV. So we set off into the world — me as a Paladin with a royal beard, her as a half-elf with dragon scales.
After ten hours we abandoned our adventure. Not because the game is bad, because truly: it is extraordinary. Every situation has multiple solutions, dialogues can go off the rails in more ways than you could possibly imagine, and in every corner of the world there is something to find. I don’t think I’ve played many RPGs that went this deep and offered this much freedom. It is a joy. But only if you play solo.
The couch co-op mostly became a frustrating affair. The overview disappears with split-screen, conversations with characters overlap, you miss more than you experience, and you constantly run into glitches and bugs. It took us about ten hours to carefully admit to each other that our new dream co-op game had turned into something of a nightmare.
Now we take turns playing our solo campaigns and enjoy them much more. It turns out that beneath the aimless chaos of our joint sessions lies an extremely rich game that thrives best when you play it at your own pace.
II.
Over the past few weeks I have been watching the comedy documentary series How to with John Wilson on HBO Max. It is one of the best TV shows I have watched lately. There are three seasons in total, each with six half-hour episodes. You can get through it in no time.
New Yorker John Wilson turns out to be a brilliant video maker with a fantastic observational eye and the talent to make something special out of topics that others would pass by with a shrug. In his essays he addresses questions such as ‘how do you give a tip?’, ‘how do you put up scaffolding?’ and ‘how do you track your package?’. You mostly hear the voice of John Wilson, who has a witty visual for almost every line — something you can interpret in more than one way. It’s very clever, but you have to see it to understand it.
That also goes for the way his subjects constantly veer off course. In one episode, Wilson tries to understand sports fans, but it ends up becoming a wonderful portrait of vacuum cleaner enthusiasts. Often the How to titles are nothing more than hooks for fresh (witty) musings about people and life by a maker who . ‘How to make risotto’ is a love letter to his elderly landlord, but equally a document of the early days of the coronavirus period. Because in New York too there were endless queues at the supermarket checkout.
And how does Wilson always end up in these bizarre situations? Going by the footage, it’s all coincidence. He is working on a topic, then picks up the trail of something else. And he always ends up at a gathering of people who are passionate about some niche. One of my favourite episodes is about the Mandela effect, in which people remember things differently from how they actually were. Or are our memories actually correct and have we ended up in a parallel universe?
Wilson himself also treads the thin line between fact and fiction. And you still can’t quite figure out how he managed to make this. Every episode is worth watching. Just watch it!
III.
My holiday is over and I immediately headed to The Hague to visit T-Mobile. Eh, Odido. Outside the headquarters the new logo had been stuck over the old one with what looked like a black rubbish bag. The day before, the T-Mobile shops had closed for a refit. NU.nl readers immediately assumed the worst: ‘Is T-Mobile bankrupt?’.
Nothing of the sort — the company now has a different name. Odido. Apparently it means nothing, if you take director Søren Abildgaard at his word. The name had been kept secret for a long time but leaked just before the announcement. Rival KPN immediately launched a page on its website explaining what the word Odido supposedly means. It caused much hilarity, because KPN had quickly grabbed a good spot in Google with that article. So when T-Mobile/Odido made its announcement, KPN was already at the top.
Odido, then. The first reactions on social media were, unsurprisingly, mocking. Childish name, people wrote. Sounds like okido and like the 7UP mascot Fido Dido. I read some of those reactions to Abildgaard and he wasn’t too fazed. People are attached to what they know and just need time to adjust, he says. Seems fair enough to me. Read the interview on NU.nl.
PS.
A new film from Studio Ghibli is always cause for celebration. And The Boy and The Heron is also by 82-year-old grandmaster Hayao Miyazaki. He has said this is still not his last.
The new album by James Blake is called Playing Robots Into Heaven. It took a bit of getting used to, but I am now hooked on the songs. More experimental, more electronic, slightly less room for the tender touch. This is largely a dancefloor record. There is also a gorgeous Beautiful sample (from Pharrell and Snoop Dogg) in I Want You To Know.
YouTuber Ryan Trahan visited a number of restaurants in the United States with horror reviews on Yelp. The goal: to find the beauty in them anyway and leave a genuine five-star review.
Danny Masterson (from That 70s Show) is going to prison for at least thirty years after being found guilty of raping two women. Things got a bit strange after the verdict when it emerged that a number of cast members had sent a letter to the judge. Actors Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis describe Masterson in it as a role model and good friend.
That did not go down well with fans. So Kutcher and Kunis recorded an apology video. “We support all victims of sexual violence”, they say. “The letters were intended for the judge, to describe the person we have known for 25 years. Not to undermine statements from victims or to retraumatise them.”
Joan Baez says goodbye to her audience after sixty years in the documentary I Am A Noise. We follow Baez during her final tour and look back on her life. “Dylan broke my heart.”
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