Video Games: Skyrim

There isn't too much about Skyrim as a whole that hasn't already been said, so I'm going to be very short about my general thoughts.

This was the second serious game I've ever played. Before this point, I had always exclusively played platformers on the DS and its ancestors. Some would argue that those were serious games, but I don't feel that way. Mostly because it ended there. I got Yoshi's Island, and I played it over and over again when I was bored. I wasn't interested in any other games.

Before Skyrim, I thought $60 on a game was insane. I was like: "Nope, not happening." With the combination of a random Steam sale knocking it down $20, and the fact that I had a friend who absolutely adored the game, I decided to try it. After realizing that, between the games and the dlcs, I'd spent about $85, and I had played 600 hours, I'd spent .14 cents per hour I changed my mind about that.

There are a lot of things about Bethesda games I really enjoy that apply to Skyrim. Bethesda's games encourage you to build your own experience, create your own story. Sure, there is a plot. There are quests. But you're free to ignore them. As I mentioned with Dishonored, you are welcome to determine your own play style. Plus, in Skyrim you can create your own character down to the bone. I like rpg games, and especially ones where you set up your own character, rather than the game doing it for you.

So, instead of talking about the game as a whole, which is largely impossible for Skyrim, I'm going to talk about questlines.

Dragon-killer: 7/10

The main quest. I rather like the main quest, but I do have one glaring issue with it: you cannot tell Delphine and Esburn to go fuck themselves. Sure, you could never talk to them again, but without mods, when they tell you to kill Paarthurnax, you can't tell them: "I'm the fucking dragonborn. You need me. I can just walk away and leave you to die, so shape the hell up."

Otherwise, I have no issues with the main quest. I have a lot of fun with it, from invading the Thalmor embassy to defeating Alduin. 

Civil War: 9/10

Yes, I actually like the civil war quest better than the main quest. I like it for the thought put into it. As it has also been done to death, let me just quickly reiterate one thing: When one of the leaders can be compared to Hitler and to George Washington, clearly a lot of thought and work was put into it. The fact that people have been so divided over Stormcloaks vs Imperials is a good thing. 

This quest encourages repeat playthroughs just so you can play both sides, but I remember thinking I didn't want to touch the Stormcloaks. Finally, one playthrough I did, and I really enjoyed it. It felt like the Stormcloaks were more rewarding, for some reason. 

I like how gray the morality is. No matter which side you pick, parts of Skyrim will be better for it, and parts of Skyrim will be worse, with the thanes being replaced not always being better than their predecessors. 

Companions: 4/10

One of the things I enjoy about Bethesda games is how smart the game is to how you play. Like in Dishonored, Skyrim has bits and pieces of this. However, the companions is where it falls flat.

Even if you have travelled across Skyrim and killed everything hostile from Riverwood to Windhelm, when you approach the companions your accomplishments will never be noticed. Farkas will still exclaim he's never heard of you, which wouldn't be too big of a deal in a setting where news doesn't travel fast... except you literally save Whiterun from a dragon. 

You think he would have paid attention to that.

It's also greatly satisfying to avoid Whiterun until you have done some levelling up, so you can sneak in and kill the giant for them, which I don't think the game wanted you to be able to do. (I've only ever been able to do it as an archer, because if I get close enough to get a swing at it, it will already be dead.)

Companions is the first quest you come across that shows one of the issues I have with Skyrim's faction quest lines: You usually become the leader of the quest-line by the end. 

I know it sounds like I totally hate this quest-line, but I don't. Kodlak, and his journal, save the quest-line. The werewolf thing doesn't hurt either. 

Dark Brotherhood: 10/10 

Out of the two Elder Scrolls games I've played, the dark brotherhood was the best quest-line in both of them. Admittedly, the Skyrim quest-line was worse than the Oblivion, but I honestly wonder how they could have topped some of the Oblivion Dark Brotherhood quests. (Getting locked into a house, and having to set up everyone else's death while making it look like you're not involved? AWESOME.) 

The quest-line is well written, with amazing characters. The ending of it is very visceral and painful. Spoiler ends at next bold. When Astrid performed the black sacrament on herself, even after all she'd done, my execution of her was a healing spell.

...yes, my character was that bad at healing spells.

Thieves' Guild: 6.5/10

I don't know why I don't like this quest-line too much. It isn't bad. It's quite solid, in fact, and the nightingale armor is the coolest armor in the game. The characters aren't bad, and the storyline isn't bad. 

It isn't Maven Black-Briar, whom I love to hate. The end of the quest-line is fantastic. I like how the side-quests encourage you to go out into the entire world, and you have to do more than a handful to advance. It also does feel like you earned becoming the boss this time. But out of the 600 hours I've spent in Skyrim, I have only played the Thieves' Guild quest-line once.

Once.

Dawnguard: 5/10

I got Dawnguard because the Oblivion DLCs really added a lot to the game, and Dawnguard didn't disappoint. I've done the Dawnguard quest-line twice. The snow-elf quest-line is the best part of it, and it was one of the things I remember mentioning in a conversation with someone about what I wanted out of Skyrim DLCs: looking into what happened to the Falmer. 

That said, the Dawnguard quest is alright. Not bad, not good. Serana is one of the best followers in the game, if only because they were aware you would likely spend a lot of time with her, even if you didn't  regularly have followers, and thus spent a lot of time on her AI and lines.

I think Dawnguard might have been more fun if you could have secretly been a vampire working for the Dawnguard. Sure, you can secretly be a werewolf, but it's just not as much fun. 

That, and feeling like your initial decision really didn't matter. No matter which side you choose, the end is the same. (Unlike the civil war quest, where the 'end boss' is different depending on your side.) 

I also want to give it props for the soul-cairn: Creepy stuff. I stopped using black soul gems after seeing it, and that's saying something.

Hearthfire DLC: 5/10

The hearthfire DLC appealed to me, in that I spend hours in Skyrim arranging my sword collection (not a euphemism), but I can see how it wouldn't appeal to a lot of people. I wish you had the ability to make the houses even bigger, by adding all the wings, but I understand why it was the way it was. I also wish it offered more customization; if you decide not to put in a table there's a clearly empty spot where the table should have been, and the place feels empty without it. 

Though considering Skyrim's physics engine, perhaps it's best I ignore that wish.

I will acknowledge that modded houses have done better, and the child and marriage mechanic wasn't too solid to begin with, but it was only $5 full-price. I'm not going to scream rip-off.

Dragonborn: 7/10

I am angry this was the last DLC for Skyrim, seeing as my list wasn't done. (For DLCs I wanted one on the Thalmor, one on the Snow-Elves, and one on the Dwarves, at the very least.) That said, this was a great final addition to Skyrim. (Though I do wish all the armors added in with Dragonborn had a weapon-set to go with them.) 

Meeting the first dragonborn is creepy, fighting him is creepier. The decisions aren't quite black or white, and it brought back Hermaeus Mora, giving him a proper Daedric quest. (His quest in vanilla skyrim was the weakest of all the Daedric quests.) 

Skyrim was my first big game. It hasn't been the greatest game I've played, or the one that will stick with me forever, but it will always have a place in my heart.

Now make Fallout 4, Bethesda. 

Video Games: Dishonored

I've been taking a break from TV over-saturation (don't worry, I found some very shitty tv shows to review as well, plus of course I'm reviewing Netflix's "Orange is the New Black.") to kill everything everywhere.

That's the point of video games, right?

I have some major problems with Dishonored. I think it's clumsy, judgemental, and not sure of what it wants to be, and too short.

So why can't I stop playing it? I'm 27 hours in. I've played the game twice over, and I have yet to play the DLCs! (I was only 5 hours in when I decided the DLCs were worth buying, if only due to the Steam sale and the fact that the game was clearly wrapping up.)

Why do I like the game? First off, I'm a sucker for stealth. I like playing Skryim as an archer-assassin, Fallout as a sniper, and the Batman Arkham games as Batman. Dishonored gets a big win for that. I like the setting; scratch that, I LOVE the setting. I'm not a huge historical anything fan, but the steampunk elements really appealed to me. The plot really interests me, though I do agree with Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation that Corvo should have been more: "Wait a minute! I didn't kill her!" It might not have done any good, but it was a lot harder to swallow Corvo just taking being accused of killing his implied lover. I love open worlds that encourage me to climb on the rooftops. I love how the game encourages you to figure out your own way through the game, and is fairly smart about it. I remember having quite the shock the first time one of the guards found the body of another guard, and immediately began looking for me. The AI pays attention to what you do in the environment, and that's fantastic.

However, the longer I play the game, the more it rubs me the wrong way about a few things. As I said, it was very judgemental.

I don't mind games that have a morality meter, and as hamfisted as this game is about its, Dishonored probably has one of the better-done morality meters. (I would call Fallout New Vegas as the best, but this is a close second.) I like games where the game pays attention to you: it really adds to the immersion. The more people you kill, alarms you raise, and attention you gather, the harder and darker the game gets. You are a marker  for the game's place on the Sliding Scale of Idealism vs Cynicism. If you don't kill anybody, or barely kill anybody, the game is fairly light. (The achievement for completing the game with low chaos, which is how the game keeps track of how many people you kill, is called "Just Dark Enough/") Emily, the only child in the base game, is the most stark example: in a low chaos run she is called Emily the Wise, but in a high chaos run her last words in the game are: "The others are all dead, aren't they? Good. I was always gonna have them killed anyway."

For the most part, the game's reaction to how you play makes sense. The more people you kill, the more food for the plague rats, and the worse the plague gets. The exception the game doesn't account for being if you get the ability to make bodies disappear after you kill them. The more trouble you make, the more guards will be around, and the more people will be on alert for you. As you are heavily implied to be Emily's father, and that Emily knows this, it makes sense that she would take her sense of morality from you.

I also think it's neat how the dialogue changes based on how you play the game. If you complete the prologue of the game without being seen or killing anybody, you will overhear guards comment in later levels about how you were a ghost. If you complete the prologue inversely, by killing anything that moves, you will overhear guards say things like: "How many people did he kill on his way out of there?" and imply there was no way you couldn't have not killed the empress. I don't even mind how, the more vicious you are, the more desperate the people are at the end of the game. It makes sense: by this point they know you're coming, and they know you will show no mercy.

I don't know how I feel about you representing the hope of the city, however. The scene that comes to mind occurs in the High Overseer level. You come across three overseers, and what happens depends on your chaos level.

In low chaos: one of the overseers is showing symptoms of the plague. They beg the other two to kill them so they can't spread it. They do, but apologetically.
In high chaos: one of the overseers is showing symptoms of the plague. They are accused of trying to hide it, and brutally murdered by the other two overseers.

It's too early in the game for you to have a true effect on the city, and the people in it. They don't know your end game. They don't even know you're coming, but the game is still paying attention. And it has the eye of your grandmother: antiquated and judgemental. (That's how your grandmother is, right? Right.)

The morality system encourages the stealth, yes. The biggest problem I have with it is: if you are encouraged to not kill anybody, even within the plot of the game (you are able to find a non-lethal way of taking out every single person you need to in the game if you are paying attention) why does the game hand you twenty ways to kill someone? You always have a sword in your right hand, and if you play the game like the game wants you to you are never going to use it. You are still stuck with the sword, however. You can't switch it out for another ability, or anything like that.

By being given a grenade, mine, sword, two lethal and one non-lethal variant of crossbows, and a gun as weapons, along with the ability to summon plague rats to eat someone alive, the ability to possess someone and make them leap to their death (and quickly unpossess them so you don't die with them) and do things such as stop time as someone shoots at you, possess them and move them into their own bullet so they die, the game is slyly giving you a knowing wink and going: "Come on. I know you want to! I won't judge (I totally will.)" If you sneak above a guard, it will tell you if you press x, it'll just kill that guy for you. And of course, they create a whole sophisticated combat system they encourage you not to use. (The sword fighting is awesome, and you can one-shot kill people if you fight a chain of them, and upgrade an ability.)

If you take the 'kill everything' route, the game is incredibly gorey. There's a bit of psychopathic satisfaction in knowing you can decapitate someone and carry their head around that section of the level as a good luck charm. The game always slows down when you kill a target, so you can enjoy the view of your character throwing a sword in their neck.

On top of all that, while sneaking around, you will more than once find signs of humanity in your victims. It is an odd thing to complain about, yes, that you will witness guards talking about getting married, or hear about their affairs, but the game seems confused on even that. The heart mechanic, a very interesting and creepy piece of equipment that tells you the secret story behind everyone, has generic lines for guards. You can hear a guard talking to a maid about how they should just run away together, point the heart at him, and hear: "He always eats well, even as his wife and child grow thin."

On top of all that, one of the studios involved in making the game is called: "Revenge Solves Everything." The game just needs to tell me where it stands: am I a bastard for stabbing that guy, or not?

I am not denying that Dishonored is a fun game, or that you can do very fun things with it. Here's a guy who sets everything up as a horrible accident, for example. I just think if somebody had sat down in the planning stages and cleared up where the game is on just murderizing everything, it would have been an amazing game.