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Donna: Avenger of Blood with the canon ending. Shot in black and white!

Other Worlds, one of the first AGS games I played.

But I have to agree with the consensus that the Chzo Mythos is long overdue for a film adaptation!
Weren't there also talks of The Cat Lady becoming a film?

I've been a huge fan of Channel Awesome for years, it's saddening and horrifying to hear this. My thoughts go out to his wife and the CA team.

Yep, on normal difficulty. Heh, debating sliding it to Easy!

Last chapter, final showdown...and Fenrir keeps mauling me. I have a Warrior totally leveled up and with Balmung no less! How is this thing slicing me open without fail like a baked potato no matter what?! It's just impossible to defeat and worse yet I can't use any potions.

Thanks!! How did I miss that item in the shop?

I never would've thought of the fox solution! Heh.

Stuck on some sidequests playing as Warrior and discovered a funny bug...

The Haugbui

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How do I get the vase for the haugbui's ashes? Because when I tried to use a flask on the ashes, it said it wasn't big enough. What do I need to give Eitri? I gave him "cat's footfall" earlier but have no idea how to find any of the other mystical items...I thought "sinew of a bear" meant something from the Gulon which led me to discover a funny glitch: I went back to its (still-headless) corpse, used my sword on it, and ended up with ANOTHER Gulon head haha.

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Getting Your Stuff Back from Thrivaldi

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If I go to Thrivaldi's cave at midday and use the mirror, he moves over but nothing can get me to the sack-- she's got no stealth/lurking whatsoever so that's not possible, tried climbing, no dice, can't throw daggers at him...gah!

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And what can you do with the strand of your own hair? I saw something in the dialog about Loki's tricks, but did not come across anything yet calling for it. Is it just a red herring?

I would rather be taxed and provided with adequate health care than be taxed because I can't afford inadequate health care.

Totally concur. Hey, my taxes pay for wars I don't agree with, politicians' salaries when a majority of them have vast incomes from other sources, said politicians' state cars and Cadillac Plan health insurance while my neighbors go bankrupt from medical bills, corporate welfare for large businesses who fucked themselves while small businesses are FOREVER hung out to dry...and all of us working stiffs who make less than $110K/year get really burned on paying for Social Security. Which was promised to our grandparents as tax-free money but that was a lie, and which our generation isn't even going to benefit from when we're old (all while we're not going to have the defined-benefit pension plans that many of our grandparents had, either.)

I'd MUCH rather have my taxes go to universal healthcare than many of the things my hard-earned money gets pissed away on.

The bill was not devastating, but awful enough to make me realize that if I were ever hit by a car or got appendicitis, anything requiring actual surgery, I'd be royally fucked, so, time to suck it up.

Yep. I debated dropping my COBRA because of how much the payments were killing me, until I got into a pit-related accident at a show in late 2011 (head injury.) I didn't require surgery, but all my scans, exams, and hospital admission fees would've cost over $20,000 at that fucking toilet North Central. My insurance picked up most of the tab, I paid less than $1,500 when all was said and done.
What clinched it for me was when my father was diagnosed with colon cancer. All his treatments would've literally cost over $1M, and my family is not the frigging Waltons. After that, I swore up and down I'd continue to pay for the plan as painful as it was.

We need universal healthcare like yesterday!

There must be something else about the USA, income and expenses, that I don't know much about.

Living expenses simply outweigh income in most parts of the US today. And nope, it's not just happening to students subletting in a nice part of town to go to school-- it's happening to people in their thirties and forties who have gotten screwed out of work, securing full-time work, getting hit with expenses and debts.

I've lived in NYC a majority of my life, and housing is the first major expense to come to mind: The days of a person who isn't filthy rich being able to seriously afford living in most parts of Manhattan have gone the way of the dinosaurs. But it was still always more expensive than the other boros-- once upon a time, you went to Brooklyn or Queens to find affordable housing if you were too scared to come to my home turf, the Bronx (which always had the cheapest housing and still does.) And those apartments would be reasonably priced and somewhat proportional to your income-- it was barely 7 years ago, you could get a 1-bedroom apartment in a decent neighborhood for $750/month. You could live by yourself in BK or Queens for well under $1,000/month and if you had roommates, paying well under $600/month was not uncommon.

Cue the housing bubble bursting, followed by all the local natural disasters and shitty payouts from FEMA and homeowners' insurance making people want to rent til they die (and/or just leaving them with no place to live regardless.) What happens when supply decreases but demand doesn't? Prices shoot up. You now can't get even a shitty studio in the SOUTH BRONX for less than $1,000/month! I've got rent control and feel so grateful for it. And this problem isn't just in NYC-- it's in NJ, and even in PA where living expenses are so low compared to here, all these apartments smaller than mine and with none of the convenience are demanding such high rents. Rent alone basically comprises 50-60% of a person's post-tax income, if not even more than that-- but 50% is used as the guideline by many realtors and landlords where I live.

If you're in the city proper like myself, public transit is awesome and affordable. If you're not but close to the city, it's tough but doable to get by without a car. Anywhere that ISN'T a major city (speaking for most parts of the Northeast at least), it's virtually impossible since the US is very car-centric. Insurance is expensive and so is gas, and paying off a decent car or constantly repairing a clunker also isn't cheap.

A lot of young people are also trapped with student loans-- and it's not even just young people, hell my sister has co-workers in their fifties who are still paying them off. The student loan problem in this country is a whole other diatribe of mine which I honestly think is maybe 25% the students' faults, but 75% of the problem is definitely institutional and governmental. Those things are basically heavy, shifting ankle bracelets because unlike normal loans where you have an amortization schedule and it's just "Pay this amount on X of the month" the sharks who issue student loans can charge you interest-only for months on end, basically ensuring you never pay down the principal. Then if you're on an income-based repayment plan, you get penalized the second your income goes up or if you get married and your spouse has a decent income. If you choose deferment, that puppy just puts you in a pit of interest that gets more and more impossible to climb out of.

So between all the above coupled with our lovely for-profit healthcare system...then it comes to incomes being at all-time low because of hiring freezes, HR dipshits creating useless barriers between employers and job seekers, jobs being outsourced or automated, mass layoffs to artificially increase earnings per share to please shareholders, and severe levels of both unemployment AND underemployment. Expenses increase and increase but wages have stagnated if not stopped altogether for many people.

That is why many people are already broke before even factoring in the ACA individual mandate.

It seems like you can't decide if healthcare is a right or a luxury.

That would aptly sum it up. Most people get it in their heads that you have to "deserve" healthcare. Namely, "If you don't have insurance then you're not working hard enough to deserve it" or some bullshit like that.

Because that line of thinking is horribly flawed. I mean, do the Walton children deserve their healthcare when they so didn't actually earn their billions? While the hardest workers I know are fucking poor and working two or more jobs to try to make ends meet. The for-profit healthcare system is just that-- driven by shareholders, not medical professionals. Then there's many doctors who've happily adopted the for-profit model and they care more about getting paid than they do about actually making patients better (which correct me if I'm wrong, but don't doctors in the UK get bonuses for how many patients whose health problems actually get better/eliminated? I know NHS has its problems, but they're nothing compared to the American death panels believe me.)

And the privileged who think Medicaid is sufficient for the working poor live in a fantasy world. There is not a gap, but a canyon if you make too much money to go on Medicaid but not enough to afford health insurance through one of these exchanges, before even getting into what's in store for you care-wise if you're on Medicaid.

I also think that healthcare should not be dependent on what you do for a living-- read: your employer, or if you are self-employed and just can't afford insurance. I say this not just as a business owner but also as someone who has been in the latter boat, and had coverage issues once I did have a plan. I had been told by many that I didn't deserve healthcare because I "didn't have a real job". I'm sure many of us in the game development field have heard that noise (which can get fucked with a capital F and no lube.) Well, when you're on an employer-sponsored plan you sign over the rights to your life. Your employer can ask you any number of privacy-violating questions, fire you if they think you're going to raise the premiums in any way, and/or the plan they choose can stick you with shitty doctors. They can choose plans that match THEIR beliefs and not yours, like refusal to cover contraceptives or mental health services.
Then on the other side of the coin? Health plans are a huge financial and legal jungle to administer even if the amount of covered employees is small. They cost a LOT of money, and most small employers simply can't afford it. Large employers can, but whine about the cost the most...and engage in practices like just hiring more bodies to make up for all the people they deliberately put under 35 hours a week to avoid the 35+ hour-and-you-must-provide-insurance mandate, or laying off workers then putting them on a 1099 basis to avoid paying for it. ACA was also supposed to help with insurance just not being feasible if you're self-employed/contract worker. But once again, they don't think about how inconsistent self-employment is when you can make $5,000 in a month then have absolute zilch come in the next two whilst getting eaten by expenses, and making health insurance payments has to take a backseat to keeping a roof over your head.

It's a twisted system that badly needs to be reformed.

I've mostly been in favor of ACA until I saw how much it's going to utterly screw the generation below mine, and people who simply can't afford it.

I'm in NY so we still have an active exchange that was not affected by the shutdown and was one of the first exchanges to go up when October 1 was nearing. Hell, I was REALLY glad to get a plan that literally slashed what I had been paying for an overpriced COBRA plan in half.

But then I looked at the Bronze plans, read: the bus crash plans available in NY. Holy hell. They're about $150 less per month than the Gold plan I selected; but that coverage difference is so stark...my plan has only a $600 deductible. Vision and dental is included. A freakin gym membership counts towards the deductible, and if you have 50+ visits in 6 months you get $100. Nothing is in percents as far as surgeries and hospital admissions go-- everything is all dollar-amount copays. But the bus crash plan has an utterly ridiculous deductible, higher copays, and hospital admissions have an 80-20 cost-share. My Gold plan is a Cadillac Plan compared to it. All because of a freakin $150 difference. Assuming one could even afford that bus crash plan to start with, an extra $150 per month is a major obstacle when you're poor if not just impossible. I've been there myself. That $95 is most definitely a poverty tax. Making poor people pay $300/month they don't really have for a shitty bus crash plan is NOT going to solve our healthcare problem. And that stark difference, once again...basically one deserves such supreme care and that good of a deal if they can afford it in the first place? Gah! Yeah, I worked hard to get out of poverty but I had luck on my side too (see below.) The stark differences between those two plans is a canyon; a canyon many don't have the means to get over.

And a lot of my peers and the next younger generation are going to be utterly screwed by this because they can't afford it. Not when they're paying off student loans, and ridiculously inflated rents. I'm a debt-free individual with rent control who now has a decent income-- I am rare, and the only person I know out of MANY folks from various walks of life who is benefiting from NY's exchange. I find that incredibly sad. My pure LUCK in having rent control is what made my health insurance payments possible-- why should access to healthcare be dependent on luck? And not every young person has the option to just go on their parents' insurance assuming that even IS an option, as politicians on both sides choose to ignore generational poverty. (Luck coming into play once again.)

ACA had good intent, but this individual mandate was written by people who have not had to live in the real world where most people can't afford a few hundred bucks here and there per month. Health insurance is also a huge scam at the heart of it-- you pay and pay into the damn thing and almost never see any benefit then if you DO get hit by a bus, you still have to pay that deductible. Unless we adopt a single-payer system like the rest of the civilized world, sadly health insurance IS needed even if you're supposedly young and healthy. I don't go to the doctor often but I got into two serious accidents in barely a 6-month span between late 2011 and early 2012; a head injury then I almost broke my hip in a climbing accident. If I didn't have health insurance, I'd be head over my ass in debt from just ONE of those incidents...medical bill induced bankruptcy is a serious problem in this country and destroys peoples' lives. But the problem lies not in people lacking insurance, but the existence of for-profit healthcare period.

Hmm, I'll have to take a look once the shutdown is over-- the SS-4 form hadn't been updated in forever and a vast majority of tax pros don't even use it anymore because getting an EIN for a client is done in a snap these days (it's the one thing the IRS actually did right!) If they've now started to take that into account, it would definitely save the digital publishing world a LOT of headaches and costs.

ITINs are still necessary for other situations, such as if you plan on holding a bank account in the US or some employers may require it even if you're on a contract basis. In the event you'd still need to obtain one, you'd need to get an apostille from the US embassy, which has to get submitted to the IRS with a completed W-7 and a tax return. I've taken care of a lot of ITIN apps by mail this way, but the catch is the tax return part: even if you just file a blank 1040NR, it'll get returned.

I firmly believe that process was rigged by firms with heavy international clientele who just wanted more consultation fees. Logic would dictate you could still apply for an ITIN if you're just *anticipating* US-sourced income by showing some proof of it, but the payer already has to start withholding 30% of your income at the default rate, *then* you file a tax return with the W-7 and apostille to get the money back.

The foreign sole proprietor election probably wouldn't work for certain activities (like the banking one), but it looks like it could be a viable solution for royalty income (opposed to personal services.)

I am an Enrolled Agent who has extensive experience with tax treaties (particularly US-UK, US-Australia, and US-Israel.) And yes, I'm Himalaya's CFO so I'm used to dealing with this stuff regularly.

I'd be happy to help you out with your tax issue and getting an ITIN. I can tell you from almost a decade of experience with ITIN Ops that you will NOT get an answer calling them; ITIN Ops doesn't even pick up anymore at the non-public phone number that only representatives like EAs, CPAs, and tax attorneys can use. And now that we've had a federal shutdown? Cue all of my colleagues freaking out because they now can't get ahold of ANYONE. It used to be that there'd just be a really long wait for that particular branch but you'd eventually get someone, but now that's just a myth after all the budget cuts.

Just some thoughts about getting an EIN vs. an ITIN, do you plan on starting a business entity in the US like an LLC, sole proprietorship, or corporation? Because that's what an EIN is for, and you could end up getting into a ton of administrative burden that comes with having an entity in general, not to mention that you'd be considered a foreign officer. It's still an option, but definitely something worth thinking about.

And stupidly, you can't just file for an ITIN without showing some US-sourced income first (ie, filing a 1040NR tax return with it.) Logic would dictate you should be able to file for one without it. But you can't, or else you'll be wasting a lot of time and money getting the app sent back and forth. I always wanted to find the bright bag of falling hammers who made this rule; I'm pretty sure it was all a conspiracy to keep certain firms' billings high.

Meantime, feel free to PM me as I'd be happy to help out an AGS mainstay.

Yes, yes a thousand times yes! That soundtrack ruled. I'd happily buy it as a DRM-free download.

Thanks for the awesome final installment! It's sad to think that this is the last chapter, though, as I'll miss Ben's adventures

By the way (ending and series spoiler alert),

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I might've misunderstood a comment made by a character in a previous installment, as I ended up incorrectly assuming that Alice had some kind of important role to play involving a 'twist' e.g. not being quite 'human', having sinister ulterior motives, etc.. Oh well. I still appreciate the sweet ending with Ben, Alice and Ben Jr!

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I pondered the same thing, thinking it would be one of the big reveals. Although

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I think Marcus Wilkins is the "traitor" in Pennsylvania that Zortherus alludes to. But I wonder if there was an aborted arc with Alice here, either by itself or tying with Zortherus. She says in a previous game (6th I think) that she had ancestry in Smailholm...though it could imply she's a descendant of Mary Blaine? There was a gravestone that said Wilkins on it in the cemetery in Smailholm...

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I too am sad it's the final chapter. I'm going to try for the other 3 endings, I got the Downer Ending first followed by what I guess is the canon happy ending.

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But perhaps Ben could come out of retirement with Ben Jr. in a future installment?

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Squee!! Can't wait to play this! What an awesome thing to wake up to.

I just finished the game-- holy crap, it was AMAZING.

Hands down, Donna: AoB has one of the best-- if not THE best-- stories I've seen in all the games I've played this year. It seriously gripped more than most adventure games of all calibers I've played, period.

There were a few puzzles and design bits that threw me off a little,

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I totally cheated using Wikipedia for the La Bookery quiz, and had to hit the skip commands for the sound-based puzzles because both my speakers and my hearing suck...thanks for thinking of the hearing-impaired to get around that!

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but otherwise I felt it had the perfect level of challenge. Love the soundtrack too-- the songs fit perfectly.

The tone and atmosphere were set impeccably, and Donna made for a refreshing protagonist whose pain and anger you can feel

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which makes the longer, and I'm guessing canon, ending grip you even harder. It's a bittersweet but satisfying ending, that also makes a nice departure from the classic happy endings and pyrrhic victory endings.

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It was also so awesome to see how much attention was paid to detail, like Donna talking to items, getting different reactions showing your items to people...in today's TL;DR world, this is such a precious rarity in a good game!

I'll stop here because I can't praise enough. Awesome job!

I'm just compelled to know more about why voices wouldn't be required for some players.

I know this would be the minority among today's gamers, but some just prefer to imagine a voice however they want to and would get dismayed when a sequel or reboot comes out and the voice ends up being different from their vision.

If someone is deaf/can't hear too well I guess VO wouldn't be a big priority either.

I'm into mostly punk and hardcore but like a lot of crossover, thrash, and death metal. Some of my favorite metal bands have to be Testament, Carnivore, Type O Negative (class of their own), Arch Enemy, Deceased, and Death but I also happen to adore Satyricon and Blind Guardian (from when they were a speed metal band in the 80's, though I do like their ballad-y stuff.)

I've always considered Leeway and DRI to be the bands that bridge the gap for the music scenes I live in.

Have you played Metal Dead? It didn't have the death metal in-jokes I was hoping for, but I got a few chuckles out of it.

Squee!! It's been a long time coming!

One thing I liked about the old games was that I could imagine how the voices sounded in my head. As VO became expected, I found that I liked it better if I could click through dialog I found grating (I don't like not being able to click through text I already read.)

It can really add a whole new dimension to a game, but can take away from it if not cast well.