PAX East: Day 3
Today, I waited in lines for about 5 hours total. Luckily they were all good lines for good things. The first of these lines was the line to play the Path of Exile 2 demo. This line took a little under 2 hours for me to get through for what I found out was a 45 minute long demo of the game. I was delighted by my time playing the demo, finding the game to be genuinely challenging. The new features like the dodge roll and the attack-moving felt really good and natural while I was playing the demo. I have a feeling that come this Friday, when Path of Exile: Necropolis comes out, I’m going to be missing both of these features. I only managed to get passed the first boss in my time in the demo, but I was particularly excited by the miniscule quantities of loot being dropped. For those unaware, Path of Exile, in its current state, has a problem with there being far too much loot, to the point where you need basically an external program to filter it for you. The fact that Path of Exile 2 drops so little by contrast is very exciting.
The next long line I waited in (other than for lunch, being the most crowded day of the week) was for the Um, Actually panel with Ify Nwadiwe and Brian David Gilbert. If you’re unaware, Um, Actually is a show on the streaming service Dropout. The show involves a host reading out some fact from a piece of popular or nerd culture. The catch is there’s something wrong about the fact he’s reading. The goal of the players is to figure out what’s wrong about what he just said and correcting it, prefacing the whole correction with the phrase “Um, actually…”. This line ended up being nearly an hour and a half for me. I knew this panel was going to be incredibly popular, given the panelists, so I decided I would show up to line up basically right as the panel preceding it let out. This ended up being a great decision because I ended up very near to the front of a 700+ person line trying to get in to see Ify and Brian. During this panel, they talked about the recent change Um, Actually has gone through, with Ify taking over the host role from Mike Trapp and Brian taking the role as fact checker. They talked about the changes they made to the currently airing season 9 to make it more how they want the show to be without completely up-ending the personality of it. They showed off some exclusive first looks at next week’s episode and played a short little game as well, using some unused questions from the current season for the purpose.
The final line I stood in today was a little impromptu one after the panel. No one had planned for this, but around 50 of the people who attended the panel, including myself, gathered with the intent to meet Ify and Brian. The enforcers moved us to an out of the way location and sure enough, they showed up a little bit later. This line was the shortest for me today, at just about an hour, but it felt like no time at all. All the people in this line were delightful. As each person or group reached the front to meet Ify and Brian, the people behind them graciously offered to hold the camera for them to take their picture. Without. Fail. Ify and Brian took the time to have a quick conversation with each and every person in that line as they reached the front, take pictures with them, sign things, and even give out hugs, which I received one from each of them. Meeting them both was a surreal, bizarre, and wholesome experience that I will not soon forget. While I thanked them for their time, I only wish that in my anxious state I remembered to thank them both for al the laughs they’ve given me over the years.
