January 13, 2009: Knothole Island Releases

Today is the release day for the Knothole Island Downloadable Content (DLC) for Fable 2 on the XBOX 360.  This was supposed to have released around Christmas but was delayed so those of us who have been waiting for it have been on pins and needles waiting to be able to play it for ourselves.

Liesl turned over again today, twice in a row!  She still surprises herself when she does it and is not happy.  She always cries after flipping herself over.

Work was pretty busy this morning.  Then at lunch I took over the television in the living room and started playing Knothole Island!  I played all through my lunch and then got a chance here and there during the afternoon to play for a few minutes and then at the end of the day was able to wrap up the final quest.  One afternoon, two and a half hours of in-game time, and the Knothole Island quests are complete.  I still have on of the ten hidden books yet to find and I just need a little time to go out and look for it.

I enjoyed the new content but am disappointed in how short it is overall.  I wish that the area was a little larger, had more buildings, maybe had quests that kick in after playing for a while longer or only for the more advanced players or something.  All of the material in it is pretty simple and does not include very much storyline.  It seems like some more could have been done with it.  Perhaps there will be a future expansion that will add more to this region.  As it is it really does feel like an addendum to the rest of the game and does not integrate too cleanly with it.

After work was over, Dominica and I spent the evening taking care of Liesl and Oreo while watching the end of the first season of the Dick Van Dyke Show. What a classic show that is.  Liesl starts her fussy time around six thirty or so, around the time that I finish working, so we spend most of the evening trying to keep her happy.  I come up from the basement and we put on some family viewing (Dominica watches the shows that I don’t like to watch during the day while I work like Bones, Dead Like Me, etc. – mostly shows about dead people actually) and then she starts dinner which always seems to take two or three hours because either Liesl or Oreo needs attention almost continuously all evening so she can never spend more than ten minutes on anything in particular.

We had been hoping to be able to run to the store to get some paper storage bins (plastic bins designed to store organized paper) but never had a chance to do it.  So Dominica is thinking that she is going to make an attempt to go do that tomorrow around lunch time when Liesl takes her early nap.

We have our mail keys in our possession now.  We are now able to check our own mail again.  Now we just need to actually do it.

Knothole Island

The Knothole Island downloadable content expansion for Fable 2 on the XBOX 360 released today.  This is the first additional content available for Fable 2.

Knothole Island contains one new region for Fable 2 expanding the game from thirteen to fourteen regions.  The region contains three new quests and many new items for the player to collect.  Knothole Island does not contain any additional gargoyles or silver keys but it does have its own collectable item, Knothole Island History books of which there are ten to find throughout the region.  Knothole Island also adds one hundred additional achievement points bringing the game total to eleven hundred.  The additional achievement points come in the form of three distinct achievements: fifty points for completing all three Knothole Island themed quests, twenty-five for collecting all ten books and twenty-five for obtaining all of the curiosities in the specialty shop in town.  The village of Knothole Island also has several additional houses and shops in which you are free to invest as well.

I began playing Knothole Island almost as soon as the download became available.  The additional content took me approximately two and a half hours to complete so the size is rather disappointing for the ten dollar price of admission, but for desperate Fable fans it is a highly anticipated addition.

Knothole Island is definitely a beautiful addition to the world of Albion.  My favourite feature of the new content is the innovative weather control system at the center of the plot driving the new quests.  The addition of the weather patterns adds a unique way of expanding the layout of the single region to feel larger.  It also adds more “scenery” than you would normally experience in the single region.  Exploring the Knothole Island region under drought, flood and freezing conditions is very interesting and extremely well done.  The planning that went into the layout of the region is quite impressive.

Each Knothole Island quest involves its own unique dungeon.  The dungeons are not really as impressive as many of the dungeons in the core Fable 2 quests.  The overuse of the lock-disc mechanism as the key to forward momentum at almost every moment within the dungeons is frustrating and boring.  Some additional variety would have been nice.  Some of the lock-disc tasks are extremely simple to figure out but difficult to execute.  Not a fun combination.

Overall the new content is enjoyable and a nice addition to the existing content.  I feel that the new content will work best for players who have not yet completed the main quest in Fable 2 or for players who have not yet started playing Fable 2.  Having the additional content mixed in with the rest of the game would make for a nice break from the rest of the game from time to time and give the player time to make use of the additional items that are only available in Knothole Island.

Playing these quests after having completing Fable 2, though, makes them extremely easy.  The new plot and content does not feel connected to the rest of Albion and almost feels as if you have left the game to go into a separate mini-game somewhere.  This effect is magnified by playing all of Knothole Island at one time without mixing it into the rest of the content.

Knothole Island contains some neat innovations, beautiful scenery and some interesting new content.  The downsides are that it is short, some of the dungeons are tedious and the integration into the Fable 2 universe is not as good as it might have been.  Serious Fable 2 fans definitley want to partake of the content but more casual players may want to save their money until Knothole Island is made part of the standard content (similar to Fable: The Lost Chapters) as it is bound to do in the future.

I am looking forward to additional downloadable content from Lionhead Studios for Fable II.  I really hope that future content will involve expansions to the main storyline or an intersting arc that expands the known Albion regions.

January 12, 2009: Liesl Turned Over

Today is a big day in baby Liesl world.  Today she turned herself over for the very first time!  I was not there to see it, of course, as I was in the basement office working.  Liesl’s awake time is during the day so her most active moments happen while I am working.  I heard Dominica cheering and guessed what had happened.  Liesl is doing really well.

Oreo is contuining to feel better and better.  He is not happy about the continuing bland diet but he is happy and healthy again.

I found out the exciting news today that Fable 2: Knothole Island downloadable content is going to be released tomorrow (Tues, Jan 13th.)  I am so excited.  I have been looking forward to this for a month or more.  I will be getting that the moment that it releases for sure.  It is going to be 800 Live Point on XBOX Live which is exactly $10, I believe.  There are patches and some extra content available for free to anyone with Fable 2 too so don’t forget to check out the DLC even if you don’t plan to buy the expansion.

Work was fairly busy today.  Nothing abnormal.

At the end of the day, just before the post office closed, I ran down to the Beach Shopping Center to mail out some letters, warranty cards and to return a Netflix disc.  I swung into GameStop to check out the used game deals.  I ended up coming home with Mass Effect and Grand Theft Auto IV, both used and both for the XBOX 360.

This evening, Dominica and I watched College Road Trip, the G-rated Disney movie with Raven-Symone.  It was cute.  Nothing special.  Raven is always enjoyable.

I set up the XBOX 360 in the basement and got it set up to be online for the first time.  That worked pretty well.  I got it installed with the latest updates, set up an XBOX Live profile for myself and made sure that everything was ready for tomorrow’s release of Knothole Island.  I have the 360 hooked up to the 16″ Westinghouse LCD that I have in the basement at the moment until we get it mounted in the kitchen.

January 11, 2009: Katie Meets Liesl

Today was our one and only sleep in late day for the week.  With yesterday being a full work day just like any other I really needed the rest today.

We got up and it was straight to “prep for guest” mode.  Dominica got Liesl into a state where I could then take care of her (i.e. fed) and then she made a quick dash for the grocery store.  I attempted to take a shower but ended up taking a call from Oreo’s vet in Peekskill who was calling to follow up on Oreo’s condition.

We are really impressed that Oreo’s vet called us on a Sunday with his updated blood work results and to see how he was doing.  I don’t think that we have ever had a vet that would follow up over the weekend on a patient.  We are extremely happy to report that Oreo is much improved this morning.  Yesterday was a big improvement and then this morning he is a happy, excited dog looking to play and eat and spend time with us.  He is almost back to normal from his appearance.

Then it was back to the shower and then time to take care of Liesl before getting paged out.  I was stuck working for the office when Katie arrived.  This is her second trip to Peekskill to see us and the first one since we really moved into the house and since Liesl has arrived.  Dominica returned from the store just a few minutes after Katie arrived.

Katie hung out with us from about noonish until early evening.  She was a big help helping Dominica do some cleaning, especially in the kitchen, and then the two of them cooked a big dinner.  I ended up being paged over and over again throughout the day.  All in all I worked most of a normal day today.  Not much of a relaxing weekend for me.  I ended up missing dinner and only half got to eat with the girls after they had done so much work to prepare dinner.

In between pages I managed to get the Nintendo Wii hooked up in the living room.  We have not had it hooked up since we packed it for the move and since then we have gotten the Wii Fit and have not yet tried it.  Katie has never played a Wii before so we wanted her to check it out.  The Wii really looks awful on the 52″ LCD.

I had to work almost the entire time that Katie was visiting but at least she and Dominica got to spend some time together and a lot of house cleaning was completed too.  I can see Katie when I am working in the city so it is much more important for her to get to see Dominica.

Katie left around sixish and Dominica and I did some Wii online shopping.  We got Dr. Mario Online so that we can play against her family online.  We also got The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the Virtual Console.  OoT is Dominica’s all time favourite game and even though I owned it back in the day on the N64 in 1998 I never really played it as it didn’t seem to be fun at all.  A lot of that was because it was promoted by the press as an RPG and it is not at all an RPG but a very prototypical action-adventure game which left me extremely disappointed.  Now, with all of the hype that it has received over the years, I decided to give it another go.

January 10, 2009: Oreo Is Much Improved

I went to bed around seven last night and was asleep before seven thirty.  Oreo came in and slept with me for a little while at the foot of the bed.

Dominica woke me up at ten because Oreo was laying in the middle of the upstairs hallway and was not willing to move.  He had not eaten his dinner and was very obviously extremely ill.  I tried taking him for a walk and he tried but was having a really hard time getting around.  So we decided that he needed to go to the emergency room at the hospital in Bedford Hills.

We were out the door before ten thirty having already called and prepped the hospital that we were coming.  It takes roughly half an hour to get out to Bedford Hills from Peekskill.  We arrived just before eleven.  Only Oreo and I went to the hospital as Dominica needed to stay home and take care of Liesl as well as to cook Oreo’s stew so that he would have good food again as soon as we needed it.

Oreo’s stay at the hospital ended up taking a pretty long time.  We didn’t get to leave the hospital until one thirty in the morning and boy were we tired.  Only a little less than three hours of sleep for me in two days and he has not had much sleep either.

The final verdict, after more blood work, was that Oreo is dehydrated now and has developed pancreatitis which is causing additional problems.  They have him a fluid treatment to help “jump start” his system but he is off food until tomorrow and then only light and bland food for several days.  He is not going to like this.  But, most importantly, they think that he is going to be okay.  He needs time to rest and to work the food out of his system.

So we got home around two in the morning.  Oreo seemed a little better even by the time that we got home.  The extra fluids must be helping already.

Oreo and I went straight to bed.  Dominica was up for a while longer taking care of Liesl and cooking for Oreo.  I have to be up before eight tomorrow morning which is going to be exceptionally painful.

I got up at a quarter till eight this morning.  I felt awful.  I didn’t fall asleep for a long time last night and my night was very restless.  I figure that I got a total of less than five hours if even more than four plus the slightly less than three that I got earlier.  So in two night’s I have gotten about seven to seven and a half hours of sleep.  Enough to function but not enough to feel good at all.

I got right to work by eight.  I ended up not getting the files from the team that I was supporting and was unable to do any work for a while.  Oreo got up just minutes after me and followed me down to the basement so that he could sleep on his Star Wars pillow by my side.  That is a good sign.  Previously he felt that he was unable to go up and down the stairs on his own.  A partial night’s sleep and the fluids must be helping.  I brought down a water dish for him so that he would have one down stairs too.  He has one on the main floor and in our bedroom but I wanted to make sure that he was encouraged to drink as much water as possible.

My morning work ended up being a much larger project than I had anticipated. I was working for about fifty minutes when my virtual desktop as well as my primary desktop got cut off from me due to a massive network outage on Wall Street.  So very quickly my morning turned from a small installation process and some routine patching into a pretty major endeavor just to be able to work let alone to do the scheduled work let alone to deal with the major outage.  Not that I deal directly with network outages but they do impact me and I need to be available when they happen.

I ended up working an entire day today making it a full six day week.  I can’t complain as we really need the money with Oreo’s surprise six hundred dollar day at the vet’s yesterday.  We really appreciate that I am able to get overtime.  It really makes a difference for us.

The new television set arrived mid-afternoon.  It was delivered via a minivan and it took two movers to bring it in to the house.  This thing is huge.  I didn’t get a chance to hook it up until pretty late in the evening.

The first thing that we popped in to test on the new 52″ Samsung LCD was Fable II on the XBOX 360.  We set the 360 to 1080p and were completely wowed by Fable II.  Having completed the game already going back and seeing it on this monitor at full resolution was really something.  It looked like a completely different game!  There is so much detail that we hadn’t seen before.  Very impressive both for the TV and for the game.  Now I am sorry that I played it before getting the new set.  The game is so much more gorgeous than I had realized.  At least when the Knothole Island downloadable content arrives in a week or two I will have this to play it on.

For the time being we have moved the Samsung on the floor in front of the fireplace below the Westinghouse 32″ that is mounted on the wall.  The Samsung is going to take its place at some point but I am not able to wall mount it by myself so we just have to wait until someone is here who can help me.  The TV is just too large for me to be able to lift like that all alone.

Oreo improved throughout the day.  He is definitely feeling much better today.  He is not happy at all about his bland food diet.  He can’t wait to be back on real food again later in the week.

I have a bunch of work that needed my attention today so I spent a lot of time in the basement catching up on Active Directory management issues and other problems.  My plan had been to go to bed quite early, maybe as early as seven, but that didn’t happen at all and I did not even quite make it by eleven.

Katie is coming up to Peekskill sometime tomorrow morning.  She has not had a chance to meet Liesl yet.  Katie has seen the new house but not since we moved any of our furniture in.  She came up to see the house during the time when we had first gotten it but had not moved in yet.