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"May your roads lead you to warm sands."
Sep. 16th, 2019 03:30 pmSo, because I am once again the living embodiment of slowpoke.jpg, and also because EB Games recently had a sale on second-hand Switch games, I am finally playing Skyrim eight years after everyone else.
I am enjoying it a lot more than either Morrowind or Oblivion, as witnessed by the fact that I'm more than thirty hours in and haven't quit out of boredom yet. While I know there are Old Skool Bethesda fans who complain it was dumbed down compared to previous Elder Scrolls titles, I think it plays to their strengths a lot more. While it's still weak on the stuff I enjoy most about RPGs - story and character interaction - at least the stuff it does well is done really well. Which is to say: environmental storytelling and giving players room to create their own stories.
(My favourite example of emergent narrative so far: I'm trying to sneak into a building and there a half a dozen guards between me and the door, too many for me to take them all out silently. I am wondering what the hell to do when a dragon swoops down from the sky and starts eating them, giving me the opening I need to get through the door. Thanks, dragon!)
Naturally I am playing a Khajit stealth archer, because why not choose all the obvious best options? I have discovered that Khajit are a lot like cats, in that they are graceful and deadly one minute and the next they are accidentally falling off things and knocking stuff over, then pretending that nothing happened. (Every time I destroy a display table, a shop owner asks me 'why are you doing that???' as if I have a reason other than poor command of the thumb sticks.)
Drawing on the wisdom of years of other people playing this game, I have decided that roleplaying in Skyrim is as much about what you don't do as what you do. So I have decided not to become Thane of everywhere and the head of every Guild and the owner of every house. I have also decided not to do crimes unless there is a solid quest-related reason, so no Thieve's Guild or Assassin's Guild for me. And no College because my Dragonborn is not much of a mage, and no Companions because she's not much of a warrior, and no civil war on either side because she doesn't care about a bunch of humans fighting with each otehr Instead, she has joined ... the Bard's College! (It's OK, I'm going to have her join the Dawnguard, too. Just as soon as I stop being distracted by a million other quests.)
Anyway, here are the other things I am planning for her to do:
1. Finish building and furnishing Lakeview Manor.
2. Kill at least one of every monster in the land.
3. Finish all the Daedric quests. (Look, my girl doesn't mean to keep consorting with Daedra. She just picked up this weird orb in a dungeon this one time, and got a cool sword out of it, and then she wanted to help a talking dog, and ... somehow this seems to keep happening?)
4. Get to at least Level 50. (I know it's theoretically possible to level forever, but by that point I should have all the perks I really want plus a few more for luck.)
5. Kill Alduin, I guess? It would be pretty pointless to build and furnish a whole house if a dragon was going to eat everything in the world, so I suppose I should deal with it at some point.
I am enjoying it a lot more than either Morrowind or Oblivion, as witnessed by the fact that I'm more than thirty hours in and haven't quit out of boredom yet. While I know there are Old Skool Bethesda fans who complain it was dumbed down compared to previous Elder Scrolls titles, I think it plays to their strengths a lot more. While it's still weak on the stuff I enjoy most about RPGs - story and character interaction - at least the stuff it does well is done really well. Which is to say: environmental storytelling and giving players room to create their own stories.
(My favourite example of emergent narrative so far: I'm trying to sneak into a building and there a half a dozen guards between me and the door, too many for me to take them all out silently. I am wondering what the hell to do when a dragon swoops down from the sky and starts eating them, giving me the opening I need to get through the door. Thanks, dragon!)
Naturally I am playing a Khajit stealth archer, because why not choose all the obvious best options? I have discovered that Khajit are a lot like cats, in that they are graceful and deadly one minute and the next they are accidentally falling off things and knocking stuff over, then pretending that nothing happened. (Every time I destroy a display table, a shop owner asks me 'why are you doing that???' as if I have a reason other than poor command of the thumb sticks.)
Drawing on the wisdom of years of other people playing this game, I have decided that roleplaying in Skyrim is as much about what you don't do as what you do. So I have decided not to become Thane of everywhere and the head of every Guild and the owner of every house. I have also decided not to do crimes unless there is a solid quest-related reason, so no Thieve's Guild or Assassin's Guild for me. And no College because my Dragonborn is not much of a mage, and no Companions because she's not much of a warrior, and no civil war on either side because she doesn't care about a bunch of humans fighting with each otehr Instead, she has joined ... the Bard's College! (It's OK, I'm going to have her join the Dawnguard, too. Just as soon as I stop being distracted by a million other quests.)
Anyway, here are the other things I am planning for her to do:
1. Finish building and furnishing Lakeview Manor.
2. Kill at least one of every monster in the land.
3. Finish all the Daedric quests. (Look, my girl doesn't mean to keep consorting with Daedra. She just picked up this weird orb in a dungeon this one time, and got a cool sword out of it, and then she wanted to help a talking dog, and ... somehow this seems to keep happening?)
4. Get to at least Level 50. (I know it's theoretically possible to level forever, but by that point I should have all the perks I really want plus a few more for luck.)
5. Kill Alduin, I guess? It would be pretty pointless to build and furnish a whole house if a dragon was going to eat everything in the world, so I suppose I should deal with it at some point.