I bought my first console when the SegaMegadrive was the cutting edge. Pixels fighting pixels against a backround of hmm, more pixels. I mean, okay, it was fun, but a very imediate - take it out, put it away - kinda fun. Final Fantasy 7 on the playstation was probably the first game I remember feeling sad when one of the npc characters - you know which one, Aeris I think - died a surprise death.
I usually buy two games a year, a little puritan you might think, until you remember I've a full time job, a wife and two young kids whom I cannot ignore for more than five minutes at a stretch without someone asking me to do something - whether it be putting cream on knees, or fixing the sink. This year it's been Fallout New Vegas (last Winter), and now Skyrim. I'm a fool for a good RPG. The biggest difference with Skyrim is the graphics. Fallout is graphically great, but aesthetically appalling. Endless plains of fucked up burning junk. Skyrim is a beautiful construction. Hell, given a choice, I'd live there. At any rate, it's the first game that's prompted me to take screenshots as mementoes.
To whit, a quick travelogue of my 10 days in Skyrim: (And btw. click for full size, as some of them are worth it).
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| I dressed like a hippy and bought my first house. |
I started out being resolutely good. Well, reasonably good. I didn't kill anyone who wasn't actively trying to cut my balls off with something pointy, or wasn't part of a quest. I was helpful, trustworthy and overwhelmingly nice. Eventually I bought a house in Whiterun, which is just about the first big city you run across in the game. I trolled around the local caves and caverns with a crappy sword in one hand, and a low-level spell in the other, hoovering up anything even remotely valuble like some kind of materialist tornado. Bills to pay, furniture to buy, you know how it is. (An RPG with furniture..? Another first).
I blame two things for my slow descent into evil. The first was this guy:
I know he looks fairly harmless, but he's a preacher. And he preaches. The same damn bullshit everyday on the dot, allll day. Blah-blah-blah top volume, right across from my peaceful abode. And I have to come home to this..? So in a moment of weakness, I waited for him to go home after a hard day's shouting, picked his lock and murdered him in his bed, and snuck home quietly. I had a sleep, and woke in the morning to find the guards completely oblivious to my henious act of the previous night. Phew. I walked past the monument and savoured the silence.
The second thing that pushed me toward the path of evil was buying a bow. Trouble with bows are they are too damn easy. They make you sneak and, as you get better at both, you become completely lethal at a distance. For example: One dead dragon.
The game kinda pushes you toward them, dragons fly, and tend to toast you on the wing, so the only chance you have to bring them down is with a bow. I mean, okay, you can wait for them to land and whallop them with a sword, but they tend to land waaaaay-oveeeerr-theeeere - and by the time you've run to within striking range they've either (a) buggered off, or (b) you've run out of sufficient puff to do any more than cough and hold onto your knees.
Anyway. Many tens of hours, and many, many more dead, arrow-peppered corpses later, I realised something:
Normally in video games, this wouldn't be a problem. I mean, I've become a mass-murderer in pretty much every video game I've ever played. If you stacked every virtual corpse I've made in the years I've been playing they'd probably reach the moon. Who cares, they're only pixels.
But Skyrim's the first game also where the Npcs are well-enough rendered graphically, to trigger the uncanny-valley response. They have their little lives: they get up, go to work, comment on stuff that's happening, argue with each other, eat dinner, lock their doors, and go to sleep. Even the bandits in the towers, fort and camps have routines, that say stuff like, "when I retire I'm gonna buy me an island..."
And they'd become so easy to kill. It got to the point where I was so good at stealth that they'd be pushing my crouched-form along with their knees while still searching for me - without noticing I was there at all. The first they knew about me was the arrow suddenly projecting from their rib-cage. I started feeling sorry for them, and started trying not to kill them - which was incidentally quite difficult sometimes lol.
I comforted my itching conscience with the fact I'd not killed anyone (erm - except that priest) who hadn't had a weapon in their hands, and hadn't stolen so much as a penny. Positively angelic by video-game standards. Then I got drunk and everything went sideways.
I got into some drinking game in a pub in Whiterun. Then the screen went blank and I found myself in a temple with an irate women scolding me for messing up the place. She gets me to go bring her a girl to be their new high-priest. I exit the temple and zip off to some village in the boonies, convince a mother and father that leaving their daughter in the care of a heavily-armed stranger was the good-parenting thing to do, and set off back to Markath with the cute litte "are we there yet..?" girl in tow. On the way through the city we get accosted by some guard who wants help.
Before I know it I'm in this haunted house, with no way out, and a homicidal guard on my ass. With the little girl still standing next to me saying "Gee - I'm so looking forward to the temple." So I killed the guy before he could harm her. (Looking back, this was probably where I should have realised I was playing too much). Anyway, to cut a long story short, the quest I'd inadvertantly started just got worse. I had to lure a priest (priests again argh) onto the dais above for some horrible elder god type being. No other "free the priest and fight the God" options like I'd been hoping for, just a "beat the priest half to death with this special evil mace, and then after he's sold his soul, beat him all the way to death." option. A little inflexible of the game creators I thought.
This experience weighed heavily upon me. I sought redemption.
It came quickly in the form of cannibals. I wiped them all out this time, rather than having to join them, and saved the priest (what is it with them..?) they'd been planning to have for dinner - thwarting their evil God's plans. I felt new and clean and shiny.
Then while I was in a house in Winterhold, after a quick "sell all the crap in my inventory for money" session in the markets there, I met a little boy doing some kind of ritual. He wanted me to kill a nasty old lady who ran an orphanage. I wasn't into killing old ladies, especially after my recent close shave with being evil, but hell, I went to check her out anyway. Curiousity etc.
And she was evil. She was nasty. No-one had a single good thing to say about her. So, out of sympathy for the plight of the poor children under her care and with only a slight wobble of conscience, I snuck up behind and gave her arrow-to-back-of head behavioural therapy. Jubilant children, smiles all round. Good job.
Until I woke up in an abandoned shack and found out I was being recruited into a bunch of assassins.
A bit of a step back I admit. I thought I'd play along for a while, discover their base, then slaughter the lot of them. Unfortunately, I ended up killing the emperor, after piling up a whole other bunch of corpses prior. It was the job see - matched my skill set to a tee. And the money, what with that house I wanted to buy, and all that training... Expensive. You know how it is...
I'd fallen from grace. I did reclaim some honour by slaughtering a whole bunch of evil satan-worshippers halfway up a mountain, who wanted me to bring one of my nice, trusting followers up there to sacrifice to their nameless god. Ironically however, what with my bow and sneaking and everything, I shot then all in the back of the head without them ever seeing me, which impressed said nameless god so much they offered me the same deal anyway, with the promise of some really cool armour to wear if I did it...
I was also really sick of wearing the same damn black robe all the time... And along with the house I'd bought in Marketh there came this bloke/servant/bodyguard - who sat in the living room with big arms, and for some reason wanted to marry me... He didn't fit with the decor.
So... He got the chop, I got the armour. Everyone's a winner. Ebony chainmail complete with special effects. Sneaky-assassin-wise, I'd hit the top of my game. Nothing in Skyrim was safe. Not giants, not mammoths, not dragons. I was the top predator, with the small proviso that they didn't see me first, or catch me without my rings on. But I still felt dirty.
I was determined to turn over a new leaf. So I stopped with the assassin stuff, and got married.
Ah Lydia. Not a very original choice of bride apparently, but she was there for me in my hour of moral need. A straight up, sword in one hand, shield in the other, face to face with your enemy kinda girl. Pretty much my opposite - in short, I admired her... purity. And she cooked. And she looked good in some armour I'd ripped off the back of a werewolf earlier in my travels, better than me at any rate.
We sorted out the mundane stuff like decorationg the house in Whiterun, stored my incredibly bloated inventory in the various chests and bookshelves around the place - and then got down to some serious dungeoneering together.
We tramped around Skyrim and met some strange characters:
Killed the odd Dragon together:
The only fly in the ointment was, without my sneaky tactics, and a bow, I sucked. One to one, I got my ass handed to me every time, by everyone. A bit of a downer, especially because I was high level, and training skills wasn't so easy anymore. So I became a Smith. And an Enchanter of objects, and an Alchemist. All skills I'd previously pooh-poohed as a little effete.
Another long story shortened - I learned the secret of the Alchemist/Enchanting loop, and went a bit crazy:
To make up for my lack of skill I made some super-weapons. A sword, a bow, and a pair of gloves that meant anything I created as a blacksmith instantly made me into God.
Pangs of conscience again. I sold all my god-potions at rock-bottom prices, and I threw my super-weapons and trinkets off the tops of random mountains with my eyes shut. Naked and bereft of any items other than those I'd smithed before I learnt the evil alchemy loop, I buckled down and learned how to swing a sword the hard way. I'm sure my artificial wife respected me for it.
We were happy, we were rich. But there was something missing. We were bored. I blamed her really. Even though we were married, and had spent hours and hours of quality time together; had become property owners, not to mention getting her her own business (which she somehow managed to run even while hacking the eyeballs out of everything in sight) all these things - she refused to take off her pants.
And she was right - I found I couldn't take off my pants either. The horror.
Luckily, this being the net, and the net being full of hormonal nerds without real girlfirends and too much time on their hairy little hands, a solution was available. A little hacking later and me and Lydia went on a second, more... X-rated honeymoon.
It got so bad that soon she was never wearing anything at all, wherever we went. Even with dragons. Nothing could convince her to put on anything resembling armor.
But, as anyone in a long term relationship can tell you, there comes a point where constant nudity becomes a burden rather than the initial pleasure it once was. The cake comes to need a little icing before you can eat it again. So...
After that problem was solved, it was pretty much all downhill. By this time, I was level 59 - a bit long in the tooth by RPG standards. I trolled through the remaining quests, looking for serious opponents, but didn't really find any, even the last dragon, whatever his name was, died rather quickly, without any more strategy required other than the less than interesting 'get him down and hit him with your sword' variety - don't think I even had to quaff a health potion.
My big responsibilities over I tried to hunt down the Assassins and the Theives guild, to put a permanent end to their tyranny. But the damned game wouldn't let me. I'd cut them down, burn them, fill them full of arrows - nope, they'd just fall to one knee, breath heavily for a while, and then get back up again, as if having all their organs mashed into pulp was nothing very special at all. I even broke my vow, and went back to the Alchemy table to create a bow that would paralyze anything it hit for 251,357 seconds. I headed out, thinking "Okay you fuckers, I can't kill you, but I'm gonna put you all into a persistant vegetative state."
(Again, I should have realised I had played far too much by this point).
In short, that didn't work either. Okay, they'd all be on the floor, stiff as boards with no chance of getting up till next century - game-time-wise - and I'd leave them to it. Then go home, have a bit of a kip and go back to check on them the next day. What happened..? There they all were, sitting about, right as rain, laughing at me.
Bastards. I gave up then. Went home, kissed Lydia goodbye and left. She understood, and gave me a home-cooked meal to see me on my way.
All in all, playing Skyrim was the best time I've ever had on the PC. 250 hours well, if a little nerdily, spent. I guess I'll visit the place from time to time, when my son's finished having a go (nude patches removed I hasten to add, and evil quests hacked and locked secretly Mwa-ha-ha).
I leave you with this, my final Skyrim lunacy - a comedy video I cobbled together, though how I did it I don't really wish to relate or remember.
Thanks for reading.
I blame two things for my slow descent into evil. The first was this guy:
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| I tried to explain the theistic fallacies, but he wouldn't listen. |
I know he looks fairly harmless, but he's a preacher. And he preaches. The same damn bullshit everyday on the dot, allll day. Blah-blah-blah top volume, right across from my peaceful abode. And I have to come home to this..? So in a moment of weakness, I waited for him to go home after a hard day's shouting, picked his lock and murdered him in his bed, and snuck home quietly. I had a sleep, and woke in the morning to find the guards completely oblivious to my henious act of the previous night. Phew. I walked past the monument and savoured the silence.
The second thing that pushed me toward the path of evil was buying a bow. Trouble with bows are they are too damn easy. They make you sneak and, as you get better at both, you become completely lethal at a distance. For example: One dead dragon.
 |
| Dragon Vs. Bow - dragon loses. |
Anyway. Many tens of hours, and many, many more dead, arrow-peppered corpses later, I realised something:
 | |
| I realized I'd become a mass murderer. |
But Skyrim's the first game also where the Npcs are well-enough rendered graphically, to trigger the uncanny-valley response. They have their little lives: they get up, go to work, comment on stuff that's happening, argue with each other, eat dinner, lock their doors, and go to sleep. Even the bandits in the towers, fort and camps have routines, that say stuff like, "when I retire I'm gonna buy me an island..."
And they'd become so easy to kill. It got to the point where I was so good at stealth that they'd be pushing my crouched-form along with their knees while still searching for me - without noticing I was there at all. The first they knew about me was the arrow suddenly projecting from their rib-cage. I started feeling sorry for them, and started trying not to kill them - which was incidentally quite difficult sometimes lol.
I comforted my itching conscience with the fact I'd not killed anyone (erm - except that priest) who hadn't had a weapon in their hands, and hadn't stolen so much as a penny. Positively angelic by video-game standards. Then I got drunk and everything went sideways.
I got into some drinking game in a pub in Whiterun. Then the screen went blank and I found myself in a temple with an irate women scolding me for messing up the place. She gets me to go bring her a girl to be their new high-priest. I exit the temple and zip off to some village in the boonies, convince a mother and father that leaving their daughter in the care of a heavily-armed stranger was the good-parenting thing to do, and set off back to Markath with the cute litte "are we there yet..?" girl in tow. On the way through the city we get accosted by some guard who wants help.
Before I know it I'm in this haunted house, with no way out, and a homicidal guard on my ass. With the little girl still standing next to me saying "Gee - I'm so looking forward to the temple." So I killed the guy before he could harm her. (Looking back, this was probably where I should have realised I was playing too much). Anyway, to cut a long story short, the quest I'd inadvertantly started just got worse. I had to lure a priest (priests again argh) onto the dais above for some horrible elder god type being. No other "free the priest and fight the God" options like I'd been hoping for, just a "beat the priest half to death with this special evil mace, and then after he's sold his soul, beat him all the way to death." option. A little inflexible of the game creators I thought.
This experience weighed heavily upon me. I sought redemption.
It came quickly in the form of cannibals. I wiped them all out this time, rather than having to join them, and saved the priest (what is it with them..?) they'd been planning to have for dinner - thwarting their evil God's plans. I felt new and clean and shiny.
Then while I was in a house in Winterhold, after a quick "sell all the crap in my inventory for money" session in the markets there, I met a little boy doing some kind of ritual. He wanted me to kill a nasty old lady who ran an orphanage. I wasn't into killing old ladies, especially after my recent close shave with being evil, but hell, I went to check her out anyway. Curiousity etc.
And she was evil. She was nasty. No-one had a single good thing to say about her. So, out of sympathy for the plight of the poor children under her care and with only a slight wobble of conscience, I snuck up behind and gave her arrow-to-back-of head behavioural therapy. Jubilant children, smiles all round. Good job.
Until I woke up in an abandoned shack and found out I was being recruited into a bunch of assassins.
 |
| Evil Assassin mode. |
I'd fallen from grace. I did reclaim some honour by slaughtering a whole bunch of evil satan-worshippers halfway up a mountain, who wanted me to bring one of my nice, trusting followers up there to sacrifice to their nameless god. Ironically however, what with my bow and sneaking and everything, I shot then all in the back of the head without them ever seeing me, which impressed said nameless god so much they offered me the same deal anyway, with the promise of some really cool armour to wear if I did it...
I was also really sick of wearing the same damn black robe all the time... And along with the house I'd bought in Marketh there came this bloke/servant/bodyguard - who sat in the living room with big arms, and for some reason wanted to marry me... He didn't fit with the decor.
So... He got the chop, I got the armour. Everyone's a winner. Ebony chainmail complete with special effects. Sneaky-assassin-wise, I'd hit the top of my game. Nothing in Skyrim was safe. Not giants, not mammoths, not dragons. I was the top predator, with the small proviso that they didn't see me first, or catch me without my rings on. But I still felt dirty.
I was determined to turn over a new leaf. So I stopped with the assassin stuff, and got married.
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| She cooks, she carries heavy stuff, she kills things with a sword. |
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| The Happy Couple |
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| Bonnie and Clyde with swords. |
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| That rare friendly giant. |
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| It's okay husband, I know you tried to help... |
Another long story shortened - I learned the secret of the Alchemist/Enchanting loop, and went a bit crazy:
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| Notice the damage on that bow... |
Pangs of conscience again. I sold all my god-potions at rock-bottom prices, and I threw my super-weapons and trinkets off the tops of random mountains with my eyes shut. Naked and bereft of any items other than those I'd smithed before I learnt the evil alchemy loop, I buckled down and learned how to swing a sword the hard way. I'm sure my artificial wife respected me for it.
 |
| I finally stopped killing people from an unfriendly distance, and got up close and personal, which I think is healthier. |
"For God's sake, I have saved your life a thousand times and invested in your shop to the tune of a gazillion gold-pieces TAKE OFF YOUR GODDAMN PANTS."
"I..."
"WHAT..? WHAT IS IT FOR CHRIST'S SAKE..? ARE YOU A MAN IN DISGUISE..?"
"No."
"THEN WHAT IS IT..? IS IT ME..? WAS IT THAT WHOLE SWORD THING..?"
"I can't."
"What do you mean 'you can't' - you just, take...them...off..."
"THEY ARE WELDED ON OKAY..? I HAVE NO GENITALS - AND NEITHER DO YOU!!!."
And she was right - I found I couldn't take off my pants either. The horror.
Luckily, this being the net, and the net being full of hormonal nerds without real girlfirends and too much time on their hairy little hands, a solution was available. A little hacking later and me and Lydia went on a second, more... X-rated honeymoon.
 |
| Hot-tubbing Skyrim-style. |
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| "You promise not to facebook this right..?" |
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| "See husband..? I told you I could kill it in the nude." |
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| Finally we compromised on something more practical. |
My big responsibilities over I tried to hunt down the Assassins and the Theives guild, to put a permanent end to their tyranny. But the damned game wouldn't let me. I'd cut them down, burn them, fill them full of arrows - nope, they'd just fall to one knee, breath heavily for a while, and then get back up again, as if having all their organs mashed into pulp was nothing very special at all. I even broke my vow, and went back to the Alchemy table to create a bow that would paralyze anything it hit for 251,357 seconds. I headed out, thinking "Okay you fuckers, I can't kill you, but I'm gonna put you all into a persistant vegetative state."
(Again, I should have realised I had played far too much by this point).
In short, that didn't work either. Okay, they'd all be on the floor, stiff as boards with no chance of getting up till next century - game-time-wise - and I'd leave them to it. Then go home, have a bit of a kip and go back to check on them the next day. What happened..? There they all were, sitting about, right as rain, laughing at me.
Bastards. I gave up then. Went home, kissed Lydia goodbye and left. She understood, and gave me a home-cooked meal to see me on my way.
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| I started a career as a street-entertainer - pulling wheelies on my horse. |
All in all, playing Skyrim was the best time I've ever had on the PC. 250 hours well, if a little nerdily, spent. I guess I'll visit the place from time to time, when my son's finished having a go (nude patches removed I hasten to add, and evil quests hacked and locked secretly Mwa-ha-ha).
I leave you with this, my final Skyrim lunacy - a comedy video I cobbled together, though how I did it I don't really wish to relate or remember.
Thanks for reading.
