owlmoose | Monday Media Musings: February 2026 highlights

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33: I wanted to love this game, but the most I could muster up was an appreciation for its artistry, world-building, and ambition. Too much of the story was left clouded, hidden behind impossible bosses, and character motivations kept opaque to preserve surprises for the audience. Major spoilers: I can appreciate that the script wanted to keep the players -- as well as Lune and Sciel -- in the dark about Mielle and Verso's true origins and motivations. But the end result of that was to keep all the characters at arms length, from each other and from us, and made it more difficult for me to invest in them. I really hated that half the camp dialogue was people deliberately being mysterious at each other, and I especially hated that so much of their interactions were elided with text description. On top of that, T and I both found the combat difficult in an unsatisfying way, and having to learn not just entirely different skill trees but power-up mechanisms for every character felt unnecessary. Eventually we turned the difficulty level down, which helped, but in the end it felt like we were just slogging through the final battles to get to the ending and be done with it. Disappointing.

Plur1bus: Like many folks, I was eagerly anticipating this one, based on my love for Rhea Seehorn in Better Call Saul, and it lived up to that expectation -- although in other ways I wasn't sure what to expect, and it certainly kept me guessing throughout. It's hard to say much without spoilers, so I'll limit my thoughts here to being just generally impressed by it, and blown away by Seehorn's performance, and also by Karolina Wydra, who played Zosia, a tough role on several levels. Excited to see where it goes!

The 2026 Winter Olympics: Despite all the problems, I do still love the Olympics -- getting to watch and learn about different sports, witness joy and heartbreak and feats of incredible athleticism, following developing storylines and experience the unexpected. I dipped in and out of a lot of events, but I ended up spending the most time on curling. T is a fan -- it's perhaps the only Olympic sport that he'll actively sit down and watch with me -- and because the athletes are all miked, you can hear them discussing strategy with each other, which is really interesting. I also caught some figure skating; in particular, the men's and women's free programs were fascinating case studies in the folly of expectations, and I genuinely loved watching the two gold medal winners put in the performances of their lives.