Beware Bioware! Contents May Be Addictive!

We’ve all been there.  Sometimes you just get obsessed with a game… but sometimes, idiots like myself take things a little further than your average obsessive gamer.

You buy the game on a whim. Then you play it. Soon, you’ve bought all the downloadable content, including spending real money on items to make your avatar look a little bit more like the character in the game.

Then you get jealous of your avatar, (the cow) and wish that you had a T-Shirt like she does.  So you go to the website and buy the T-Shirt.  Then you get another one, because they have to ship them from America or Canada, and there’s a flat postage fee – so really you’ll be saving money by buying more than one.  While you’re there you might as well get a lithograph – it wasn’t the one that you wanted as that one has already sold out.  And it’s better to have at least one limited edition lithograph than none at all.

That’s what happened with Mass Effect.  And continued to happen with Mass Effect 2.  Did I need the special edition with the making of DVD and at book in a steel tin?  In one way, no – I haven’t really used much of the stuff that came with the special edition, in another way – I needed it so much that to not have it would have been the missing jigsaw piece of my soul… and also, it was just so shiny!

I have the avatar clothes and tiny remote control Mako.  I have the T-Shirts.  The cap. The art book signed by everyone at Bioware, I even have a handmade Commander Shepard Cerberus uniform.  And I also have a tattoo of the renegade star symbol on my right shoulder – because I never use that damn paragon button… and I never intend to…

The only reason I didn’t get more Mass Effect stuff is that a load of it has the stupid generic male Shepard on it – unlike my cool, hard as nails, scarred as Two Face, cool as liquid nitrogen female Shepard – and the really cool T-shirts don’t come in women’s sizes! Why can’t they get off their asses and make the renegade star or the Normandy ‘This Is How I Roll Tee’ to fit a Fran.  They get a choice of 11 T-shirts, and I get four! Three of those are just different colours of the same logo! Damn you boobs!  Damn you! You’re standing between me and my T-Shirts!

Needless to say, I got it pretty bad.  I even got tempted to buy the Bioware travel mug, even though I’m not really that keen on hot drinks! Then someone suggested that I try Dragon Age: Origins.  Oh dear. It was also by BioWare, it was also an action RPG, full of blood, gore, and metal body armour – and at the time it was only £20 brand new.  To be honest, I bought it as much for the free Mass Effect 2 armor as I did the game itself.  It sat on the shelf unplayed for a few weeks, while I was getting sucked into World at Warcraft.

Now, I am irrevocably hooked.  I have clocked over 70 hours of game time in a couple of months, and that doesn’t even factor in the number of times I’ve gone back to previous game saves because I don’t like the way the plot was working out.  At work, the people talk about the character Alistair like he’s my actual boyfriend – although the ‘I Heart Alistair’ T-shirt with the heart replaced by a blood dragon, and my desktop wallpaper of him in a heart from the achievement unlock don’t help things.

I’ve just started on Dragon Age: Awakenings, and I still have some DLC to go – but I’m starting to get the panic and fear that the game will run out before long – so to ration myself by going back to the original game to play through the different classes. But with the confirmation of Dragon Age 2 on the way, I am safe in the knowledge that I only have to wait until next year for the next game. Though I will be waiting patiently for the first trailer which is released next month.

My love of Bioware is so great that I actually got another, much larger tattoo – a Griffon, which is the crest of the Grey Wardens – and in a few weeks I am getting the cutest ickle bearded dragon too, which I will name Morrigan after the sexy witch character from the game.

But most shocking, most surprising, and most indicative that things have gone too far – I have actually bought Dragon Age books.  That’s right, not even book – books! And I even intend to read them – just after another hour or six of playing with Alistair!  I don’t care what you say – Alistair loves me! <3