Call Me Superficial...

...but I would pre-order DA:I for its visuals alone. It rains in Thedas! It can be nighttime elsewhere, other than in camp! And did you see that veil tear? I'm so glad they decided to retire their in-house engine and go with Frostbite 3.

DA:O has sold 4.48 million units to date, while DAII has sold 2.29 million units. Even though I am fairly new to gaming, I shall hazard a prediction that DA:I will exceed sales of DA:O.

On an entirely unrelated note, today marks the two-year anniversary of the release of ME3. Two years later and, instead of remembering all the good things about ME3, my immediate visceral response to this realisation is something akin to grief. Frostbite 3 notwithstanding, now that John Dombrow and Chris Hepler have left, I'm not sure stunning visuals will be enough for me to reinvest in the franchise.

This is terrible.

I blame Chris Hepler, who was responsible for the Galaxy Map and, ostensibly, for naming most of the planets. And yes, I did read all his painstakingly detailed planetary descriptions. This particular fiasco came about after several visits to the Elcor homeworld. I, therefore, bestow the dubious honour of dedicating this to Mr. Hepler: I simply had to write the lyrics down to get the song out of my head. Forgive me.

Argos Rho
(Sung to the tune of “Kokomo” by the Beach Boys)

Dekuuna, Omega
Ooo I wanna take ya to
Tevura, Tuchanka
Cruisin’ in a tomka
Sylsalto, Trategos,
Baby why don’t we coast
Omega...

One jump from Sha-adow Sea
There’s a place called Argos Rho
That’s where you wanna go to get away from it all
Fossils in the sand
Kakliosaur skull on planet scan
We’ll be falling in love
While in orbit, we won’t need to land
Down in Argos Rho

Chorus:
Dekuuna, Omega
Ooo I wanna take ya to
Tevura, Tuchanka
Cruisin’ in a tomka
Sylsalto, Trategos,
Baby why don’t we coast
Down to Argos Rho
We’ll get there fast and then we’ll take it slow
That's where we wanna go
Way down to Argos Rho

I’m such a geek-- blame Mass Effect’s mystique...

At light velocity
Or even faster, if that’s your speed,
By and by we’ll defy a little bit of gravity
Afternoon delight
Cocktails in mid-spaceflight
Your sunset-coloured eyes
Give me a Drellian contact high
As we fly through Argos Rho

Solu Paolis, I wanna catch a glimpse

[Exuberant saxophone solo]

Everybody knows
A cluster just like Argos Rho
Now if you wanna go
And get away from it all
Go down to Argos Rho

Chorus

The systems are comprised mostly of gas or ice giants and uninhabitable planets, anyway.