How do you Skyrim?

As I'm watching my wife play Skyrim its quite obvious that we're playing almost two totally different games. Let's see what I mean by this shall we?

The Wife

Jess is playing a Nord (viking/native to Skyrim) woman who excels at stealth and sneaking, light armor and lock picking (she's in the Thieves Guild BTW)...who's also a werewolf. She basically playing Catwoman mixed with some anger management issues when she wolfs out. When it comes to how she plays, she's very cautious when entering into almost every area of the game. She is 98% in the crouch/stealth mode. And she's good at it too. I've seen her in a combat with a companion of hers and the enemy ran right past her (she was crouching) and went into melee with her companion. Heck the enemy backed into her and didn't notice her....until she planted her war axe into his spine with a sneak attack.

For me its sometimes interesting to watch this but I have to admit its boring as all hell most of the times as she slowly, stealthily moves around the world. But that's how she wants to play. She wants to be the invisible assailant and it works for her.

Not me.

My Character

I'm an Orc Battlemage. I specialize in Heavy Armor, Conjuration & Destruction magics (with a dash of Restoration to heal me up), I do crazy damage with one handed weapons and can tank through most areas making as much of a ruckus as possible. No much is left standing in my way when I'm finished clearing out an area. Between summoning elemental beings to aid me in combat to launching a lighting bolt while hacking down a dragon in melee it sure feels good to be a war machine. I also have a fairly high lock picking skill and am reliable with my uses of Thu'ums (draconic shouts of power). My personal favorite is Marked for Death which erodes the targets armor rating away first then drains their life force. Makes them weaker for my axe to chop them down. I'm also in charge of The Dark Brotherhood (assassins guild) and Arch Mage of the College of Winterhold. I guess that means I have a PHD in magic and murder.

And I love it.

I love how we come to different solutions to problems we've encountered on quests. I love that how we experience the game is totally different from one play through to the next. This game is quiet possibly the closest to playing an 'Old School RPG' that you'll find. And I don't mean video game RPG, I mean table top RPG like 1st Ed D&D. Its very freeing that the player can choose his or her own path and play at your own pace.

Currently Jess is blazing through the Theives Guild quest line and The Companions quest line. She's also doing alot of side missions and exploring the towns and cities in a way that I don't. She's the champion of the people doing all sorts of side quests for those in need.

I'm advancing in the main storyline and doing the Daedric quests for the heck of it....and the achievement. I'm an achievement whore remember. Its immense fun.

So my question to the readers is what experiences in Skyrim are you having. In the comments write about your character, memorable encounter, whatever that makes your game of Skyrim unique from mine. I'd love to hear your stories.

Review: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim -or- My wife is cheating on me with a fucking X360 game.

I kid, I kid.   Maybe....


Anyways this is the titanic fifth installment of Bethesda's long running PC series turned into a console series with part 3 Morrowind. Is this game worth playing? Is it worth losing contact with all friends, family, kids, pets, job, school, etc., for the next foreseeable four months. Hell yes it is. Is it worth possibly giving up sex to enjoy killing dragons?

No. Never. Poontang is *always* better than video games. And if you disagree, well, I guess its because you must be banging a corpse or something. But I digress....


Lets just get this over with right now. I'm having to compete for time to play this game with my wife. She apparently can turn into a video game zombie as fast as I can with the latest AAA title. Her selections are more limited than mine, because I'm an achievement whore an play almost everything, so RPGs are her addiction. I've also noticed she got snippy with me when she found out I had 40 more gamer score in Skyrim than her. She actually sounded pissed off that I was getting to see more of this game than her! Don't worry gang, she quickly (read: two massive 8+ hour marathons) beat the shit out of my score. But I do get the system back after she goes to bed.....and the war will continue.

Ok, I'm off track here. The meat and potatoes of this game isn't the main storyline about the return of the dragons to the world. Its about the freedom to play this game however you feel you want to play it. And Bethesda does that very very well. I can see where they learned from their mistakes from Oblivion and corrected them ( for example every enemy in the game doesn't level up with you so a damn mountain lion can't kill your level 50 heavy armor warrior....hated that in Oblivion) and they also took some of the cooler play tweaks from Fallout 3 and applied them here. Heck, they refined them here. Lock picking is more Fallout style than Oblivion. It works better.

Character creation is just bliss too. If you play around with the creator enough you can make practically any type of character your heart desires. You start by manufacturing your look but how you play determines what you want to be. There are no character classes. You want to excel at doing something, lets say smithing, well the more you keep doing it the better you get at it. And the more you improve your skills you will eventually level your character which grants a boost in Health, Stamina or Magicka as well as a perk. Perks are similar to Fallout 3 but not as limiting. I don't think limiting is the best choice for that statement yet I can't find another way to say it. Perks give you boosts and bonuses to the skills you want to improve. You can also hold onto a perk selection for later when you reach the requirements for one you really want. I like that choice.

So how does the game look?

Beautiful!

The graphics are excellent. Its a vast improvement over previous Elder Scrolls entries and the more recent Fallout series. From the changes in weather to how the rivers flow, to the animations of the people and monsters.....they done good here!

Speaking of people. It was well known that the people you encounter in the prior games looked...well....'off'. Like "I took a doody in my pants" off. 'Tethered Swimming for gym class' off. Well they don't look bad anymore. They look much better!



Boobies!

 See? Dramatic improvement. Even the enemies of the game look this good.



Burn you fucking Ice Troll! I hate Ice Trolls!


And I will say that while the enemies don't scale in difficulty with your level progression Bethesda has put some beasties in this game that will kick your ass all over the place. Yes you will be a bad ass and murder bandits and wolves and giant spiders at higher levels.....but then you run into the terrors of Skyrim. No, not the dragons.....

"Its Mr. Honey Badger to you little man!"

The giants are the total bad asses of the realm. I've watched them beat the shit out of dragons, while on fire, and then go rampaging into a bandit stronghold for a murder spree just because one farted in their direction. The giants are uncaring beasts. They will kill you. Alot. And they don't give a damn what you do to them cause they won't stop.


I will also mention that the sound design is great, the score is epic, the voice acting is great. It has to be when Max Von Sydow (The Exorcist, Dune, The Seventh Seal, Ice Pirates...yeah no shit) is in the cast. So is Christopher Plummer, Joan Allen and Wonder Woman herself Lynda Carter.

The game also handles well. I don't have any problems with the control set up. Everything is really responsive with the only lag really showing up when the game auto saves. Speaking of that the game will do that frequently but it is highly advised you save multiple times of your own accord so if you screw up doing something you can go back and try again without losing a ton of progress.

I also have to give props to Bethesda for getting all of this content on 1 disc. One. Uno. The game is streaming info in the background constantly and its pretty damn smooth. I can only guess which dark force they struck a deal with to accomplish it.

So I have to say this is a worthwhile game. Its worth a purchase. Don't GameFly this. BUY it! Its a no brainer that you won't regret. But there is one glaring problem I have with the game.....

...getting my wife to stop playing and go to bed so I can get another crack at terrorizing the country side with my Orc Battle-Mage member of The Dark Brotherhood assassin's guild.

And in a single instance....I'm a widower.

My wife has actually been sick for a few days now. It hasn't been something worth talking about as I felt it was not needed to spread amongst friends and family unless it got worse. Last night my wife was very ill; worse I've seen yet and I told her to take today off to rest and re cooperate. She took my advice to heart and decided to stay home and rest.


This morning after getting dressed I went out to get some breakfast for us and to do some shopping. That was around 930am. By 11am this morning my wife was gone. I got back from shopping and she just slipped away. I lost her.......




.....to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

That was part of the shopping this morning; to pick up her copy of Skyrim as the Gamestop opened at 10am. And it wasn't the regular edition either. Oh no dear readers, it was the Collector's Edition. Have I mentioned how much my wife loves playing Elder Scrolls games?

The box was frigging huge! Its around a two foot by two foot cube. Its got the game, making of DVD, fold out map of Skyrim, a leather bound art book (which is just amazing....the art is inspiring) and its got the big honking statue of the dragon Alduin the World Eater.

She has had a fever most of the day. As of my writing she is feeling better. But as sick as she was she was drawn to Skyrim like a crack-head going after a case of RedBalls. I could see her eyes glaze over when I got home with the game. Her nose was red from it running, she was flush in the face as well but I could see the wheels turning in her eyes thinking about what type of character she wanted to create and how she wanted to experience the game.

The plan was I pick up the game while she was at work and she can play it when she got home. I'd take care of dinner. Well that changed as she got legitimately ill (I can vouch for the fever, congestion and other earmarks of 'the ick') and now she's been such a good trooper playing her game today. I honestly believe that nothing short of the world ending could stop her from playing this game.

And she's been smiling all day. That to me is worth every penny I hid away to pay this off and get this for her. I know she loves things like this. As the release date has been approaching the mere mention of Skyrim to her has her giddily bouncing around squealing 'DRAGONS!'. I love my wife.

I've also learned an important lesson in this too. I now know what it feels like to be a gaming widow. I'll be better in the future I promise (Mass Effect 3 is exempt from this though...).