#I need to actually look into Skyrim magic system though because all I know is dragonborn the thives guild and that yeet speel I guess

[diassch]

Was taking a quick look under the Azula tag looking for crossover reincarnation fics because I remembered a really good one(wanted to see if there was any other similar uploaded since I last checked) and thought about Azula being reincarnated into the Skyrim universe as an Alfiq Khajiit

[thegrunkiest]

Not gonna lie, returning to Skyrim over the past few days has reminded me of just how much I hope TES VI does factions like they did in Oblivion.

!Some critical ranting of Skyrim/positive rambling of Oblivion ahead!

I’m saying this after I started trying to immerse myself in the College of Winterhold, at last, after installing some good magic mods. But I just couldn’t. I couldn’t really care less about this Eye of Magnus or why the Psijic Order wants to talk with me specifically. I couldn’t care about stopping Ancano I can hardly remember what even happens in the questline aside from go into ruin, find orb, go into basement, talk to an aura, go to a ruin, beat up a skeleton dragon and something after that.

This is the same issue I���ve personally had with the Companions, and to a lesser extent, the Thieves Guild. I legit only remember the Companions as “the guild that gives you lycanthropy”. Thieves Guild is a little better, as I do distinctly remember a few of the characters and their quests could get quite creative. I never felt particularly invested however.

So why exactly do I (and possibly some of you) think Skyrim’s factions don’t work, and that they should look back on Oblivion when creating questlines for the next games? For me personally, it boils down to two components: the state of affairs, and sense of progression.

Sense of Progression

I’ll start with the simplest one first. Let’s use the College as an example again, comparing it to the Mage’s Guild of Oblivion. What do you do to gain entry to the College? Cast the requested novice/apprentice level spell (or alternatively, shout if you’re a Dragonborn or just schmooze if you, for some reason, already have 100 in speech). In Oblivion? You have to gain a recommendation from each of the individual chapters by completing a quest unique to each quild hall, which involve a little more work than simply casting a spell.

Alright, alright, so what do we do once we’re in? At the College, we engage in a little lesson with our many (see: three) fellow students. Cool (it’s also our only magic lesson from what I recall - great education system!). Then we’re immediately thrust into the questline, with no real or necessary deviations from the main subject regarding the Eye of Magnus. Then guess what - you’ve become Arch Mage!... wait what? I thought I just joined not too long ago?...

I find it hard to feel good about gaining the leadership role, despite me having just stopped a potentially devastating crisis to earn it, because I never felt more than a junior beforehand. This is how Oblivion does it right with its ranking system in my opinion. While I admit I might have chosen a bad example to draw from, as the Mage’s Guild quests also heavily concerns the main threat in at least some way, but what personally makes it more immersive for me is the fact you’re promoted whilst you’re playing - even to the point you’re being passed onto a different superior for more daring assignments! This is where the little things really count.

Then there’s the Thieves Guild. Unless there’s some backstory I’m glancing over, I don’t see why the Thieves Guild of Skyrim couldn’t have shared the same ranking system as the Oblivion branch, if no one else. In Oblivion, you can only initiate the quests after you’ve passed a certain threshold of fencing stolen goods, something that encourages you to actually be a thief to progress as a thief. I’m not just going from Pickpocket to Gray Fox, as I feel I am from an initiate to Nightingale/Guildmaster in Skyrim; you have various titles you earn in between.

If I had to summarize the point I’m trying to make - I’ll use Oblivion’s Dark Brotherhood. Arguably one of the most popular questlines in TES. Now, could you imagine an Oblivion Dark Brotherhood without Whodunit?, The Assassinated Man, Permanent Retirement, etc. - just axe those unrelated quests in favor of focusing on rooting out the Traitor. No promotions, just primarily finding ways to stop a person who, probably, has killed assassins much more seasoned than you! A deadly threat! Why? Because you’re you! And you obviously deserve to become the Listener after being a Murderer the whole questline.

Which leads me into my next point....

State of Affairs

Skyrim’s questlines seem to have a fixation on factions that are destitute and/or are on the brink of extinction. Business is dry with the Thieves Guild; in the Dark Brotherhood, all but the Falkreath sanctuary is destroyed and the Old Ways are abandoned; the Companions are struggling with the lycanthropy that plagues its strongest members; the College of Winterhold have little reputation in quite an anti-magic province; hell, even the Blades, who were previously slaughtered and run into hiding. The Dawnguard factions I feel are an exception (a reason I like that DLC so much), as the Dawnguard can excuse its low wealth and reputation with the fact that it was just reformed, and the Volkihar Clan have, for all I know, have just been... existing, in the shadows.

Admittedly, Oblivion also has a bit of a running theme among its faction - stable and well-organized factions plagued by a specific threat. The Blades have their Oblivion Crisis, the DB with their traitor ordeal, the Mage’s Guild with the necromancers/Mannimarco, the Fighter’s Guild with the Blackwood Company, Court of Madness with Jyggalag.

The reason why I prefer Oblivion’s guilds over Skyrim, I suppose, is related to my personal problem of power fantasy. Skyrim is a big old power fantasy. You’re the Dragonborn, the chosen one, the Hero of prophecy. So obviously you need to be the savior of each guild, right? You have to be the one the Night Mother deems Listener; the one the Psijics talk to; the one Nocturnal makes a Nightingale.

One might say it’s more realistic that way though, as it adds to Skyrim’s aesthetic of a darker, more unstable time with the Civil War and return of dragons. That’s a fair point. But did 90% of the guilds have to be restricted to poor little groups? Surely the Companions could’ve had other bases in some of the cities somehow, or the Thieves Guild have another hideout in, say Solitude?

You could argue you’re also chosen in Oblivion, sure. But while Uriel saw you in his dreams, you’re place as HoK wasn’t in part due to a superpower, either. I felt I was closing the Oblivion gates because my characters were who they were. You aren’t the only one who can enter Oblivion gates, but you were determined and skilled enough to make it through to the end. While in the factions, you were, for the most part, a newbie working through the ranks until eventually, you’re trusted to confront the threat. In Skyrim it feels less like organizations, and more like ragtag groups that were waiting for you to come in and fix them.

Coupled with the sense progression, this makes experiencing Oblivion’s factions much more organic and satisfying - in my opinion. That’s what’s most important. I’m not ragging on anyone who likes Skyrim’s factions, and I still love Skyrim despite my endless complaints. I understand I may have missed a few points (like the Civil War and Arena), and the ones I made could be disputed.

TL;DR: Skyrim’s fondness for power fantasy and the lack of ranks makes its faction questlines less immersive and more forced, whereas in Oblivion climbing ranks as a sort-of average joe feels organic and more rewarding. This is just my opinion. I don’t hate Skyrim. You’re free to agree or disagree and add to the discussion.

[leahazel]

More about my morally-grey heroines and their messed-up relationships

I wanted to elaborate on this post I wrote about D&F and BFS, but it turns out that adding readmore links to reblogs is a PITA, and I just now that this is gonna turn into a fucking novelette. 

So here we go.

Time to go into some detail about this!

Let’s define our terms:

“Decline and Fall” is my 120K+ series of loosely chronological, interconnected short fics, set in a tiny fandom for a visual novel that’s been in alpha development since 2015. For the record, the word count disincludes unfinished drafts, and stories that I’m holding back because they’re based on canon spoilers.

“Blood from Stone“ is my 100K unfinished Skyrim WIP, which began as a response to a kink meme prompt, and is not so much a rarepair as a non-existent one.

Both of these stories centrally feature young female protagonists and their sexual relationship with a much older man. Both heroines are... “grey” to say the least.

Let’s compare our fandoms, shall we?

Skyrim is a juggernaut fandom for a super-popular RPG which is part of a 30-yo franchise. The setting is moderately dark and casually sprinkled with murder cults, cannibalism, secret police death squads, and the prison industrial complex. The player character can be a thief and a murderer and everyone just learns to be okay with it because the only alternative is a fiery apocalypse. They also rob graves for the lulz.

Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem is a pinkie-toe-sized fandom for a hybrid RPG and dating sim where attractive young people flirt and date for the purpose of brokering world peace. The setting is one where you can actually broker world peace effectively. The player character can perpetrate a fair amount of proxy violence, but maintaining a good reputation dishonestly is legitimately difficult.

Now, let’s compare our heroines:

Corinne is a 24-year-old bounty hunter who became a folk hero, a soldier, and a cult assassin. She’s living alone and working for a living since she was 18. She’s never been in love, but she’s had multiple sexual and romantic relationships in the past. I deliberately wrote her as being very sexually confident and self-assured. She also has combat training, magical training, her special Dragonborn powers, and an incalculable amount of social clout. By every metric, she’s a powerful character. Though she can talk her way out of a tight spot (all my favorite characters can), she can also fight her way out.

Verity is (at the beginning of D&F) not yet 18 years old. She’s a princess from a very conservative kingdom who was raised to become a barter bride in a diplomatic marriage. The values that were passed to her were duty, tradition, and absolute obedience. Her primary skills are social, charisma, eloquence, and persuasion. Then she was dropped into the deep water of a diplomatic summit and had the weight of future history put on her shoulders, without ever having been taught how to make her own decisions or live with her regret.

To sum up, we have one hyper-competent, confident, and independent badass, universally recognized as powerful and dangerous, and then we have someone who’s basically a deconstruction of a traditional fantasy princess.

Okay, what about the more specific setting within the game world?

BFS is set in Markarth, arguably the most corrupt city in Skyrim, and the site of a localized war, on top of the 2-3 other wars that Skyrim has going on. The city is controlled by the cartel-like Silver-Blood family, and their enemies are swiftly and brutally eliminated. The rule of law is a joke. When the player character arrives at Markarth, they witness a chain or murders and are drawn into a conspiracy that sees them sentenced to life in prison for a crime they didn’t commit. The ruling elite suppress the native underclass by a variety of inventive methods. The roads into the city are controlled by the remnants of a violent but failed uprising, and this uprising is actually the origin story of Skyrim’s entire civil war storyline.

D&F is set in Revaire, explicitly the most violently war-torn of the seven kingdoms. Once the epicenter of a conquering empire, it was a country full of arts and culture, until a bloody coup slaughtered the entire royal line and instituted a new and more brutal regime. The new regime is on shaky grounds and foresighted people predict its imminent fall to rebel forces. So much, so canon. In D&F, I made a point of developing the new royals and their small coterie of supporters, as well as illustrating their constant struggle to conceal how widely reviled they are by the populace, and most of the former nobility. Their apathy to the plight of the common people is underscored in contrast to Verity’s compassion, which is ridiculed as a sentimental feminine affectation.

I’m attracted to certain themes, as you might have noticed.

Now, we get to talk about love interests.

Thongvor Silver-Blood is rather anemically characterized in Skyrim’s canon, so much of the information that I include in BFS is inferred. From his limited number of dialogues in the game, we know that he’s politically ambitious, a Stormcloak supporter, easily angered, and that he has one legitimate friend in the city. Like most Skyrim characters of his age bracket, he served in the Great War. He’s defined by his relationship to his generational cohort. In BFS, he’s def8ined in contrast to his brother. Thonar is comfortable being thought of as a villain. Thongvor still needs to believe that he’s the good guy. And I’m gonna get more into that in later chapters, too.

As a love interest, he’s initially in awe of Corinne, and always genuinely adoring, but more than a little jealous and possessive. BFS is not a story about love redeeming bad men (don’t get me started), but Thongvor shows different sides of his personality to different people, and the side that Corinne gets to see is much nicer than what most people do.

Hyperion Asper is a character of my own devising, whose existence in 7KPP canon is purely implied. We know his children, Jarrod and Gisette, and we knew that he organized a coup to seize the throne. I posit him as a tyrant and unrepentant child-killer (not directly stated in D&F, at least not yet). He’s ruthless and manipulative and his sole purpose is maintaining a sense of personal power. I structured him as the bad example that Jarrod tries -- and fails -- to live up to.

As a love interest... look, he’s a man who’s cheating on his wife with his son’s wife. He seduces Verity and manipulates her, and takes a special delight in pushing her buttons. All his compliments to her are mean-spirited and back-handed. He’s also jealous and possessive... which is especially pathetic, since he’s jealous of his own son, whom Verity doesn’t even like. His rage is a constant implied undercurrent in the narrative.

And the relationship dynamics themselves?

Corinne kisses Thongvor, proposes marriage to him, and then sleeps with him before riding off into mortal danger. She’s fond and affectionate, but she shies away from intense emotions, whether negative or positive. Since they spend most of their time apart, their marriage has been defined by Thongvor yearning like a sailor’s wife, while Corinne ran around doing violence and crime. They only just had their first fight. It will change when they get to spend some more significant time together... but on the whole, their marriage is fairly happy, and the emotional dynamic favors Corinne -- so far. It’s not a pure gender reversal, but that element is definitely dominant.

Hyperion starts seducing Verity on their very first meeting, and relies on a combination of magnetic attraction and Verity’s inexperience in life to keep her coming back, against her better judgment. Their relationship is mutually defined by a combination of attraction and resentment of that attraction. The danger of the situation is an essential element, to the point where it’s hard to imagine their affair would survive without it. It’s a puzzle and a battle, a source of fascination but not of comfort. There’s lust involved, and curiosity, but not a shred of love or even like. The closest thing to genuine affection is when Verity briefly imagines that there could be a version of Hyperion she actually liked, cobbled from his various, hidden good qualities. Any trappings of a genuine relationship are deliberately discordant.

I have tried, more than once, to imagine an alternate universe in which these two could be happy. It can’t be done. they are a study in dysfunction.

So where’s the similarity, with all these differences outlined?

Corinne’s choice to marry into the Silver-Blood family makes her complicit in their rule of the Reach, corrupt and reactionary as it is. Her reluctance to accept being called by their name reflects a reluctance to confront unpleasant truths that’s fundamental to her character. Choosing to be one of them affects and will continue to affect how other people see her, mostly negatively, and mostly without her being aware of it. Being Thongvor’s wife has gained her enemies. The fact that she doesn’t share his more reactionary views is something that they’ve both chosen to elegantly ignore, but the rest of the world won’t be so generous.

Verity’s choice to marry into the Revaire royal family makes her complicit in their violence against the forces rebelling against them, albeit in a more subtle way. Her personal dislike of Jarrod and the fact that their marriage was purely political will not absolve her in anyone’s eyes. Neither will her compassionate and charitable character, which can only be seen as a fig leaf to the Revaire royals’ general brutality. She has lost at least one good friend -- who will never see her the same way, since she chose to throw her lot in with his enemies. She will go down in history as an Asper wife -- but if she’s lucky, not just as that.

Both Corinne and Verity choose to accept some of the violence of the system that they live under, in order to serve their own lofty, long-term goals. Both of them are more image-driven than they care to admit, and though they are genuinely caring and compassionate, they will readily sacrifice compassion in service on their goals. They are queens (or queen-like figures), one-degree-of-separation members of the ruling class, implicated but not directly in control.

And their relationships serve to highlight what they are willing to accept, even though it goes against their conscience.

Is there a conclusion to be drawn here?

Sort of. I want to write about power, compromise and complicity. For whatever reason, it turns out that yw/om relationships are... a really good vehicle for exploring that. I can’t really explain why that is, just yet. I just... have had these thoughts floating, unstructured, in my head for months on end. I needed to get them out on paper, and give them some semblance of order.

I don’t even know why anyone but me would read this, as long and meandering as it is. But having it accessible might be of use to me.

[irandrura]

The Elder Scrolls - a disclaimer and rant

I am going to make some posts about The Elder Scrolls, and in particular, its background, setting, and characters. That means that a disclaimer is probably necessary.

Here’s the tl;dr version: yes, I know about the lore. Please trust me when I say that I was really super into it about a decade and a half ago, and I’ve kept an eye on it since. I have read the Michael Kirkbride forum posts. I have read C0DA, The Seven Fights of the Aldudagga, Sermon Zero, the Loveletter from the Fifth Era, and so on. I know the forum roleplays like The Trial of Vivec. I know that Ayrenn is really a time-travelling mining robot from outer space. I think all the stuff I just referenced varies widely in quality, opinions quite reasonably differ on it, and it’s frequently at odds with what’s actually depicted in the games, but at any rate, I promise that I know it.

So when I go on and talk about Psijics – I know, all right? I know. I am choosing to engage with the setting on a level that focuses more on characters, human stories, and, well, the narratives of the games. The TES apocrypha is interesting, but of limited relevance to the things I’m interested in. There are many valid ways to enjoy TES. Okay?

Now, the longer part:

If you haven’t played TES, and… actually, scratch that, for like 90% of people who’ve played TES, none of the above needed to be said. The thing is, when you play a TES game, it is a fairly straightforward elves-and-wizards-and-dragons fantasy setting in the D&D mould. Indeed, the earliest versions of it, back in the 90s, were based on a D&D campaign. So there’s relatively little surprising about it, and “it’s like D&D” will carry you most of the way towards understanding it.

However, TES games are also renowned for containing lots of in-game books you can read, which are often some of the most striking and evocative parts of the games. These are supplemented by a large library of apocrypha: often unofficial material, posted by developers (and ex-developers) on the internet. The most infamous of these writers is Michael Kirkbride, who has some… very unusual tastes and interests, but there are a range of other names as well. In any case, the result is that TES has an ‘expanded universe’ composed of these non-canonical writings. Often canonical texts in-game hint at some of this vast, unofficial hinterland, and sometimes ideas invented in the apocrypha sneak back into the games themselves.

Further, the apocrypha often hints at what seems to be a very different setting to the one directly experienced in the games: one that’s less about warriors and wizards and adventure and more one about divine magic, transcendence, myth, and meaning. The descriptions often seem to be somewhat at odds. This can best be demonstrated with some examples.

For instance, here is Michael Kirkbride’s description of a High Elf warship, written before any game had depicted the High Elf homeland:

Made of crystal and solidified sunlight, with wings though they do not fly, and prows that elongate into swirling Sun-Birds, and gem-encrusted mini-trebuchets fit for sailing which fire pure aetheric fire, and banners, banners, banners, listing their ancestors all the way back to the Dawn.

This is Old Mary at Water.

 You will immediately notice two things. The first is that this sounds really cool. Some of it you need some context to parse (the old elven homeland is called ‘Aldmeris’, hence ‘Old Mary’ as a mocking nickname given by its foes; the High Elves believe that they are literally, genealogically descended from the spirits that created the world at the Dawn), but even so, man, that warship sounds awesome. This Kirkbride guy can write. The second thing, though, is that it is extremely unclear what any of this even means. Given that descriptions… what does this ship look like? Try to picture it! What the heck does ‘crystal and solidified sunlight’ look like? How exactly does a trebuchet throw fire? What?

You might then go on to play a video game where the High Elves are taking part in a war to conquer the continent. If you’re like me, you’re probably keen to see one of these fabled warships. But then it turns out that in-game, High Elf ships look… like this. Or like this.

(Indeed, the High Elves are often a good example of this. An earlier written text, in a pamphlet enclosed with the video game Redguard, described the elven capital of Alinor as “made from glass or insect wings” or “a hypnotic swirl of ramparts and impossibly high towers, designed to catch the light of the sun and break it into its component colours”. Needless to say, should you visit it in a game, it does not look like that.)

After a while, you start to notice that there is very little connection between the world implied by the apocrypha and the world experienced in the games. Kirkbride says that the “closest mythical model” for the ancient knight Pelinal “would be Gilgamesh, with a dash of T-800 thrown in, and a full-serving of brain-fracture slaughterhouse antinomial Kill(3) functions stuck in his hand or head”, and says “Pelinal was and is an insane collective swarmfoam war-fractal from the future”. Indeed in Kirkbride’s descriptions Pelinal seems to have been an ultraviolent schizophrenic who led a wild, genocidal band of anti-elven warriors, was very definitely gay, and who had only a red, gaping hole where his heart ought to be (which in turn is a reference to the missing heart of the creator-trickster deity Lorkhan, whom Pelinal was in part a mortal incarnation of). You might find that really cool or you might find it banal, but there’s no denying that it’s extremely different to the Pelinal whose ghost you can meet in-game. The apocryphal Pelinal is a mad butcher whose closest mythic model, contra Kirkbride, actually seems to be Achilles; the game Pelinal is a straightforwardly sympathetic chivalric knight. This is complicated somewhat by the in-game books being written by Kirkbride and therefore being gonzo bananas insane, so the ‘canon’, such as it is, is unclear – but at any rate it is impossible to deny that there’s an incongruity.

I could go on with examples for a long time. I haven’t even mentioned the most famous – the 1st edition PGE description of Cyrodiil compared to what it actually looks like in Oblivion – or more recent ones, like the gulf between Alduin the mythic dragon who will consume the world and indeed time itself in its terrible jaws and the frankly quite underwhelming beastie you fight in Skyrim. The point I’m making is that there are effectively two TES settings: one relatively down-to-earth, immersive, and depicted in great detail in the video games, and one that’s this absurd mash-up of magic and science fiction and whatever psychedelics Michael Kirkbride has been taking this week.

I write this long disclaimer because it has been my experience discussing TES in the past that people who are mostly interested in the former – in the relatively grounded setting experience in the games – sometimes run into an elitist attitude from people who are interested in the latter. Sometimes fans of the apocrypha can come on much too strong, or gatekeep the idea of being a fan of ‘TES lore’. Any sentence that starts with “actually, in the lore…” is practically guaranteed to go on to be awful.

My point is not that the apocryphal TES is bad. As I hinted above, in my opinion its quality varies extremely widely: there are things that Kirkbride has written that I think are pretty cool (I unironically love the Aldudagga) and there are things he’s written that I think are indulgent tripe (C0DA stands out). Ultimately it’s all about what you enjoy, and I would never try to tell anyone that they shouldn’t have fun reading or speculating about or debating the zaniness of some of these texts. Indeed, as far as online fandoms and video game fan fiction goes, TES probably has the most fruitful ‘expanded universe’ that I’ve ever seen, and I think that’s wonderful. Kirkbride himself has said that “it’s really all interactive fiction, and that should mean something to everyone” and “TES should be Open Source”, which is a position I wholeheartedly endorse – and does a lot to take the edges off some of the worse things he’s said.

Rather, my point is that everyone should enjoy what they feel most interested in, or most able to enjoy. Further, I argue that there is absolutely nothing wrong – and for that matter absolutely nothing less intelligent or less intellectual – about a person preferring to engage with the version of TES most clearly depicted in the video games. Part of this might be defensiveness on my part, because in my opinion what TES has always done best is a nuanced depiction of cultural conflict: this is particularly the case in Morrowind and Skyrim, and ESO’s better expansions tend to deal in this area as well. As such I take relatively little interest in the metaphysical content of much of the apocrypha. For me, Shor, say, is most interesting as the protagonist of several conflicting cultural narratives, rather than as a metaphysical essence.

I would also argue that the most recent game content has taken a good approach by going out of its way to legitimise a range of possible approaches to the setting. The latest chapter of ESO, Greymoor, includes a system where the player can dig up ancient artifacts, and a number of NPC scholars will comment on them for you. This allows the game to indicate in-character scholarly disagreement over issues fans have previously debated. One item shows disagreement over whether the mythical character Morihaus was literally a bull, or a minotaur, or whether he was a human allegorically referred to as a bull. Another one points to disagreement over the possibility of magical spaceships: apocryphal materials have referred to ‘Sunbirds of Alinor’, ‘Reman Mananauts’, etc., as sorts of magical astronauts, but that seems so ridiculous given what we’ve seen in the games as to be easily discounted. I like items like this in-game because they seem to say to players, “It’s okay to disagree over questions like this – no one is doing TES wrong.”

That said, I am reasonably positive that I’m in the minority here, because I am in the camp that usually says that legends exaggerate, and so Morihaus probably wasn’t a bull and magical spaceships don’t exist. This is not a popular position. My reason, of course, is that I think tales are more likely to grow in the telling rather than shrink, and I have a dozen of what I think are hard-to-deny examples of this happening in TES (e.g. heroic narratives of the War of Betony are very different to the grubby reality you uncover in Daggerfall, or Tiber Septim is almost certainly from Alcaire rather than Atmora). However, this means that I openly take an opposite methodology to Michael Kirkbride. Kirkbride was once asked by a forum poster whether some in-game writings are exaggerated. His reply was: “I prefer, "It is very possible, as is the case throughout this magical world, that some of the exaggerated claims made about some subjects pale in comparison to the Monkey Truth. ZOMGWTFGIANTFEATHEREDFLUTYRANTS."”

Needless to say, I find this implausible, and it means that, for example, I interpret the Remanada as an obvious piece of propaganda, inventing a story about Alessia’s ghost in order to retroactively explain why Reman, probably born the son of a hill chieftain with zero connection to the previous dynasty, really has imperial blood. This is a very different but in my opinion more historically plausible take than Kirkbride’s, who has a naked thirteen year old Reman standing atop his harem and slaughtering recalcitrant followers.

I’m not saying that my approach is objectively correct. It’s all fiction – and as Kirkbride said, TES is open source. The only thing that matters is what you the reader, player, or interpreter find the most interesting. For me, that means generally favouring what is seen in the games over the developer apocrypha, which I can take or leave.

At any rate.

I’m going to go on and make some more fannish posts about stuff in ESO that I liked.

Just… if it’s relevant, be aware that I am familiar with the zany stuff. Some of it I like, a lot of it I don’t like, and I feel no obligation to use it if I don’t like it.

There. Disclaimer over.

[mahvaladara]

Can I have all for Apollo? (the 40 ask ^^) and if you want too, Anika too 😘

I went in game just to take this picture. Spoilers bellow, be warned.

For Anika and Apollo

1. How does your character sleep? Peacefully, fitfully? What position do they sleep in? What is their typical bedding like?

Apollo: 

Mostly dreamless. He has insomnia, and has a hard time getting to sleep, he tends to check on his brother often, as their rooms are side by side, he can hear when Arlo is having a particularly bad night and that interferes with his sleep.  When he dreams it’s nightmares. His bedding is blue, obviously, fluffy and cool.

Anika:

She’s a heavy sleeper and goes to sleep quickly. She has a lot of blankets and is a blanket hoarder, she’s also a little spoon. Since her mother passed away she has a lot easier time sleeping, I guess her worries have evaporated, even if she feels someone else’s worries now.

2. Does your oc have dreams or nightmares? What are they like? Is there a recurring one?

Apollo:

His nightmares often involve a much worse outcome of the “accident”, usually it ends with Arlo’s death. Though Arlo’s survival was not without it’s consequences, in his nightmares they always fail to save him, and he often dies. Another variant of the dream has Arlo surviving and killing Apollo, telling him all those painful words they throw at one another like jabs and jokes despite the fact that they really can’t stand eachother. 

Anika:

Her nightmares are actually strange. Though this has never happened to her, she often has nightmares of being chased and raped. She hasn’t told her father, nor Apollo about it. She has these types of dreams because she fears being manipulated and controled once more, like she has been in the past.

3. How easy to annoy is your oc? Do they have common pet-peeves or are they stoic in response to everything? What is their reaction if the source doesn’t stop?

Apollo:

As a kid, Apollo was pretty easy to annoy, currently he has a lot more patience. He’s a smart kid, so his biggest annoyance is flat out stupidity. people who try to debunk scientific facts like anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers and supernatural deniers will have him fuming. 

Arlo also annoyed him, he used to believe Arlo was an asshole, a racist and a stupid idiot. But kids grow up. Arlo still annoys him, but because he doesn’t want to keep living.

Anika:

She’s pretty hard to annoy, but a pet peeve of her would be chewing with your mouth open. Like, close your mouth, you gross pig, no one needs to know what the fuck you’re digesting.

4. How does your oc view housework? Do they absolutely hate it? Do they enjoy having their surroundings neat and tidy or do they not notice?

Anika: 

She enjoys having her surroundings clean and tidy, but she has had and does have a maid who cleans up her house everyday. But she does well in Domestic Economics and is not the type to try and shoehorn her duties when it’s her class’s week to clean their floor.

Apollo:

He likes organization and tidyness, so he cleans up pretty well and is comfortable with doing chores. Arlo annoys him on this, as Arlo barely ever cleans up after himself, he usually yells at Arlo over it, but then he feels guilty as he knows why Arlo is like this. 

5.Your oc has to make something for an art exhibition. What would they make? How terrible is it? Would they enjoy making it?

Apollo:

He’s go for a more scientific exhibihit. Probably do something related with stars and the solar system. He’d actually be pretty good at it, Apollo is a bit of a natural genius and is usually “good at everything”.

Anika:

An acrilyc painting, stylized art. She likes painting women, usually black women, and especially faces, spcifically stylesed with a french animation touch to it, like if DC met japanese manga. She’s not amazing at it, not as good as her own mother who was a great artist, but she’s pretty good. 

6. What is your oc’s vocabulary like? Does it match the way they talk? How would you describe their speech?

Apollo:

He does not swear unless extreme emotions are at hand. As a kid he used to curse, but as a teen he doesn’t feel the need to.

Anika:

Proper, but this time associated with her education and status. She tends to look the way she talks and her vocabulary is posh and very proper. She’s as “british” as you get when it comes to her speech. 

7. How would you describe your oc’s voice? Do they have an accent? Do you have any voice claims for them?

Apollo and Arlo (Bonus):

For this one I have to compare Apollo to Arlo. Apollo’s voice is very sweet, calm and mellowed. He tends to speak more mature and it shows in his voice. As a kid he had a high pitch, tended to sound like a little girl, but when he hit puberty, he hit pubery. His voice is like the VA Aranas, from Skyrim’s interesting NPCs. He speaks much like Valgus if Valgus was more temperamental: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-3Jo_zoiJs

Arlo as a kid had the same voice as Apollo, but tended to talk brasher which made his voice even more annoying and high pitched. After his accident, when puberty hit, his voice became much more raspier and deeper than Apollo’s. He doesn’t speak much so he has a “smoker’s voice”. Arlo sounds like Fenris from Dragon Age: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXKcBAwSpzo

Anika: 

Her voice is very open and clear. She tends to slurr her words, which makes Arlo refer to her as “mouthbreather”. She kinda sounds like Gal Gadot if she spoke like Kristen Stewart.

8. Is your oc more likely to follow instructions exactly, throw them out and figure it out on their own, or make it all up? What are the results like?

Apollo:

Apollo always follows the instructions to the word, and usually it turns out exactly as instructed. If the instructions are wrong, it’ll turn out wrong too. He’s pretty good at it though, and you can bet he’ll put an IKEA shelf together.

Anika:

Anika is a bit 50/50. She mixes a bit of instructions with instinct. Usually she gets off pretty well.

9. Is your oc afraid of touch or do they actively seek it out? Is there a reason for this? What are the exceptions?

Apollo:

He’s pretty positive to touch, and actually seeks it. The person he most enjoys touching and being touched by is, without a doubt is Anika. It’s more than sharing a heart, they are just compatible.

Anika:

Anika is a bit more privy to touch. Her parents were never particularly affectionate with her, and she is ticklish. The exception is Apollo and her mother, when she was alive. She enjoys Apollo’s touch, and she enjoys touching him. 

10. How is your oc about medical care? Do they avoid any form of healthcare that they can, do they seek it out over every little scrape? Do they treat their injuries/illness all by themselves?

Apollo:

Apollo does seek doctors, he actually wishes to study to become a doctor. It’s an objective of his, so he is a strong supporter of the healthcare system.

Anika: 

She hates hospitals as much as the next person who has had a chronically and terminally ill family member. But if she’s really hurt and can’t fix it herself with magic, she does go to doctors.

11. How competitive is your oc? Is every little task something that they can win, or are they just in competitions for the fun of it? Is there anyone they’re most competitive with?

Apollo:

He is very competitive, and he is competitive with everyone, especially Arlo, though these days Arlo proves little of a challenge. Apollo is very skilled, and he works very hard to be so, he’s a natural born genius, and he’s also very responsible and determined, which helps. He always has to win and when he doesn’t, it upsets him. He’s bad dealing with frustration, something Arlo beats him to. The only two things he looses at are being the oldest, Arlo is older than him by two minutes, and magic. In raw power, Arlo can wipe the floor with Apollo’s arse.

Anika:

Anika has never been competitive. As an only child she’s never had reasons to be best at anything as she was the only one. As long as she worked hard and had good grades, all was good with her parents, So, most competitions are for the fun of it.

12. How skilled at lying is your oc? How frequently do they lie? For what reason? What situations would be the exception?

Apollo: 

He is a terrible liar. He couldn’t lie for the life of him, so he usually doesn’t. He’s pretty honest with everything, and only lies when trying to protect someone.

Anika:

She’s a good liar, so and so. She couldn’t trick a skilled detective, but she’s good enough at lies to get herself off the hook and get her way.

13 . What is your oc’s immune system like? Are they invincible to illness, or are they compromised completely from the slightest of dirt?

Apollo: 

Pretty good. Apollo, like his father, is immune to most illnesses, virus basically brush through him like the flu, though he does get sick on occasion. He however is blind as a bat, and without contacts or glasses all he sees are blotches of colour.

Anika:

She has always had a tough immune system. Probably because she has spent a lot of time in hospitals with her mom, she’s caught all type of bugs, and these days is pretty tough to most of them.

14. Does your oc do anything “just for the aesthetic”? Or are they completely practical in everything?

Apollo:

He wears contacts just for the aesthetic, but also because as he plays football, it’s safer if he uses contacts instead of his glasses. His glasses would be much more practical though, as his contacts don’t have the strength he needs, and they don’t have the colour correction his glasses do for his color blindness.

Anika:

That nose ring, anything that makes her look “witchy”. And she does wear box braids just for the aesthetic.

15. If you had to choose a single object to act as a symbol for your oc, what would it be? Why?

Apollo:

A stetoscope. He’s a doctor, a magical doctor but still a doctor. Though he dreams to be a doctor and prefers to aid and heal those around him.

Anika:

A star wand. She’s a spellcaster, one who enjoys using her magic to grant wishes, both her own and those of those around her.

16. If your oc could only eat one thing for the rest of their life (while miraculously not suffering from malnutrition), what would it be? Does this match their favourite food?

Apollo:

Pizza. It’s his favourite food.

Anika:

Ice-cream. Though not her favourite food, the amount of flavors and ways you can eat ice-cream pleases her.

17. How prepared is your oc? Ready for the worst no matter what, or completely lost in every situation? Would they have a medkit when it was needed? Would they have an umbrella if it rains?

Apollo: 

Super prepared. Now more than ever. He’s always ready for the very worse situation. That’s why he’s the “mom” friend.

Anika:

50/50. She usually gets ready for a bad outcome, but she’s not the type to walk around with an umbrella if the weather forecast said it would be sunny.

18. How charitable is your oc? Or are they more stingy with their resources and money?

Apollo:

Apollo is stingy. He does give away things if he really doesn’t need them anymore, and he’s usually careful so when he gives something away it’s practically new, but giving money is a no. 

Anika:

She is charitable, but much like Apollo, she’s more into giving away needed goods like food, meds and clothes, and not so much money. In the middle of a crisys you’d see her volunteering and giving away tons of food and first need goods, but don’t expect her to donate money anytime soon, even if it’s for a cause she believes in.

19. If someone was describing your oc to someone who had never met them, what distinguishing features would they mention? How would one identify your oc in a crowd?

Anika: Apollo is that tall black haired with sharp green eyes. He is will be wearing blue, he always does. He might be wearing glasses if he’s out of contacts. He stands out, tall like a pole.

Apollo: Black girl, black hair, sometimes braids her curls, has the most beautiful black eyes you have ever seen. Always wears yellow or violet. Loves highwaisted everything. She’s always wearing these star earrings, impossible not to spot her in a crowd. Her eyes are like the core of a star, they’re beautiful.

19. Does your oc have any pleasure that embarrasses them so they keep it secret? Or are they open about all the things they enjoy?

Apollo:

Yoga. He does yoga, in leggings. He won’t admit he likes it, and if you ask he’ll deny it. But he likes yoga.

Anika:

Three words. Rainbow, Unicorn, Onesie. It’s fluffy, it’s colourful, she loves it, but won’t be caught dead wearing it publically and if you ever catch her, she’ll deny it.

20. What is your oc’s stamina like? Would they be able to run a marathon, or not run at all? What about walking/another physical activity? How are they with exercise in general?

Apollo:

Has energy to spare. Plays in the school football team, plays basket and jogs regularly. He could run a marathon and has great grades at Gym class. 

Anika:

A-okay. She likes football, could probably score well at the mile. Not a marathon fan and doesn’t like running, but does well enough at exercise.

21. How long can your oc stay focused on one task before they get bored? Do they constantly have to switch things up or do they hyperfocus? What sort of things is it the opposite for?

Apollo:

Apollo can focus pretty well at tasks. He doesn’t hyperfocus and sometimes needs to switch things up a bit so he doesn’t bore, but can focus pretty well at the task at hand. Unlike Arlo, he has no attention span issues.

Anika: 

She can stay focused at anything related with magic and art, usually hiperfocuses at easal as it’s her go to stuff. Movies and television bores her and she can’t watch a movie all the way to the end, same with books. Though she enjoys reading, it’s very hard for a story to hold her longer than a few chapters.

22. What is the most annoying sound to your oc? What’s the most pleasant? Is there any reason?

Apollo: 

Dogs barking. Like his father and brother, he is not a dog fan, so he hates the sound of dogs barking or howling.

He finds the sound of birds very soothing.

Anika:

The sound of someone chewing drives her up a wall. She hates it. 

Much like Apollo she enjoys the sound of birds and leaves rustling.

23. What smells bring back specific memories to your oc? What are those memories like?

Apollo:

The scent of earth and plants always remind him off his dad and their garden. Flowers too.

The scent of blood and flesh reminds him of the accident.

Anika:

The scent of lavender reminds her of her mother, the same with the scent of antiseptic. The later more specifically reminds her of her mother’s illness.

24. How jumpy or easily spooked is your oc? Do they have a fight or flight reflex to being startled, or are they never startled at all?

Apollo:

He isn’t easy to spook, but hearing people yelling puts him on high alert. A yell would activate his fight or flight/heal or kill response. But again, he’s very alert, so he isn’t easy to startle. Mom friend.

Anika:

Also not particularly easy to startle. You can’t exactly spook her with silly things. But lightening and fire do startle her and scare her, especially after the accident, as lightning and fire are Arlo’s main magical elements. If she gets scared her fight and flight reflex is very present and her first reaction is to run and then fight.

25. How polite is your oc? Do they do everything with the utmost courtesy, or do they completely refuse to say please and thank you?

Apollo:

He’s pretty polite. He doesn’t do everything with the utmost courtesy, but he does have his manners. At first contact he is always polite, but if you behave rudely towards him, he’ll answer in the same coin, though he rarely swears.

Anika: 

Anika is always polite and proper. She doesn’t easily bend to insults, she is used to them, so she always answers with courtesy. She finds proper ways of making things clear to those being complete assholes.

26. How flexible is your oc? Can they touch their toes or do they have trouble just sitting down because of how stiff they are?

Apollo: Very flexible. He does yoga to calm himself, as he is terrible at dealing with frustration and he has a bad temper. So he can bend pretty well anywhere.

Anika: She is also quite flexible. As a young girl, she used to do ballet before her mother got sick and as she enjoys sports, she never really lost that flexibility.

27. What is your oc’s typical walking like? Do they speed-walk everywhere, do they take quick short steps or long paces? On their tiptoe, the sides or heels of their feet? How loud are their footsteps?

Apollo: Long quick steps. He’s tall so he does take very long steps, but he also is loud. He has heavy and loud footsteps, as if he’s always in a hurry.

Anika: Her steps are shorter, but also loud and quick.

28. If your oc was in a video game, what would their idle animation be? (When the player stays still for too long, the animation that plays.)

Apollo: He’d be shifting weight between his heels and he’d be crossing his arms and looking around annoyed that he’s standing around doing nothing.

Anika: She’d be putting her hand on her waist and shifting weight, checking her nails and hand back to waist.

29. What topics does your oc know the most about? Are these obvious or would these be surprising to others?

Apollo: This one a bit unfair because Apollo is a natural born genius and that boy knows a bit of everything. It’s annoying at times.

Anika: She knows a lot about magic and art. She even knows more about magic and art than most people you know. It’s actually debated rather or not she should become a sage, for all her skill and ability.

30. What time of day is your oc most awake? What about most tired? Do they get up at the same time every morning without need of an alarm, or is their sleep schedule all over the place?

Apollo: He’s pretty much a morning person and always gets up at 7 am straight regardless of tiredness degree.

Anika: She’s more of a night-owl and likes to laze in bed in the morning. She’s the type to wake up and spend at least 15 minutes in bed awake getting mentally ready to get up.

31. What five ingredients would you throw into a cauldron to make a potion based on your oc? How would you cook/mix them? What would the potion do?

Apollo: Batteries, gray cat, an Oxford compedium of medecine, a beaker, a football.

Anika: A unicorn, a magic wand, a fantasy book, balett shoes, an easal.

32. Describe your oc’s favourite environment. Urban or rural? Wild or controlled? What’s the climate like?

Apollo: He likes cities. Large cities full of people, the noise of cars and sirens in the background and the sound of people talking. He loves libraries as much as he loves stadiums, this is why he loves cities, because you have a bit of everything.

Anika: She has lived on the countryside her whole life, so that’s what she is used to. She enjoys the quiet and the fresh air, 

33. What would someone blackmail your oc with? Would they be successful in getting what they wanted?

Apollo: His siblings and Anika. You could blackmail Apollo with things related with the wellbeing of Arlo, Syra or Anika and he’d do whatever you wanted. But that’s pretty much it. It’s hard to find other dirt on Apollo as he tends to be a “model” citizen and he’s too smart to let trail when he isn’t.

But with the wellbeing of his family, you’d be garanteed to get your way.

Anika: Once her mother and it was used to get their way. Currently depends, threatening her with Apollo could get your way, also threatening to reveal to her father what she and Apollo truly did that got her mother killed and nearly killed Arlo would also get your way, thankfully only three people know the truth, and that’s her, Apollo and Arlo and they’d rather keep that skeleton burried.

34. How easily does your oc get attached to things? Does everything have a sentimental value to them, or do they see nothing as more valuable than its practical use? What about with people/animals?

Anika:

She doesn’t get attached to things. She has always been pretty well off in life, so material goods is not something she ever struggled with. The only objects she’s very attached to are her nose piercing, Apollo gifted her, and her easal that used to belong to her mother. 

As for people, Anika is very attached to the people she considers important, same with animals. She doesn’t like loosing people and has a certain dificulty with loss. 

Apollo:

Apollo is stingy, so of course he is attached to objects. With him, any object he aquires must last as long as it’s decribed in it’s run time. He doesn’t like sharing and holds everything he owns as valuable.

As for people and animals. Apollo is less attached to people, he can shut people off his life with an extreme ease. Despite being very popular and loved by his class , his true friends are reduced. Despite feeling an extreme devotion and brotherly love for Arlo, Apollo doesn’t actually consider Arlo his friend. 

35. How stubborn is your oc? Are they easily convinced of the opposite opinion, do they not agree but let it happen anyways? Or do they cause conflicts with their inability to budge in their decisions?

Apollo:

A natural born genius and leader, so he is often right on what he says as right. If you’re denying facts he will not step down from his opinion or his decision if he is sure he is right. But as a genius he actually can be quite reasonable and accept opposing positions as long as they make sense.

Anika:

Not stubborn at all. She likes to hear all points of a decision or opinion and will respect opposing positions. When coming to decisions, she usually prefers to make informed decisions, so she often waits until she has all sides of the coin known. 

36. How much has your oc traveled? Why is this? Would they like to travel more? Or are they perfectly fine with staying home?

Apollo: 

Not particularly well traveled. He has traveled to a parallel universe, but he’s been bound to a specific locations of this universe. Outside from this, only a student outing to Granite Falls.

He’d like to travel more. He wants to visit Mt Komorebi when he’s financially stable.

Anika:

Quite well traveled as a kid. Went to Oasis Springs, Del Sol Valley, Sulani and even mt Komerobi.

She likes traveling, but she’s perfectly fine staying at home.

37. What signs tell that your oc is nervous? Do they fidget, is it in their expression or the way they say things? Or are they very skilled at hiding it?

Apollo: It’s easy to see when he gets nervous, as his temper flares. He usually starts talking louder as if to get heard and he frowns profusely if nervous. He also fidgets his feet around and nervous taps. It’s clear in his expression.

Anika: When nervous she pulls on her lower lip repeatedly. 

38. How superstitious your oc? Do they end up following them ‘just in case’? Or are superstitions incredibly important to your oc? What are some that they believe? What about the ones they don’t?

Apollo: Is not supersticious at all. His scientific and magical knowledge is too great for him to actually believe in supersticions. One supersticion he has however is that after 2:30 am nothing good happens. So because of this supersticion, when he’s on a night out, he usually returns home around 2, 2:30, but never stays past it.

Anika: Anika does believe in some supersticions. Namely the friday the thirteenth being a day of renewal and strong magic. 2020 being an unlucky number and black cats being the best familiars.

39. Are there any habits your oc has picked up from people around them? Do they know where they’re from? Does your oc try to stop themselves from doing it?

Apollo: He has picked Anika’s way of speach and expressions. He doesn’t stop himself from doing it.

Anika: She hasn’t really picked any habit from anyone. She’s pretty much her own self.

[grimsae]

Simmer- Get To Know

Tagged by the lovely: @ohsosims ❤️

Languages you speak: English & some Spanish

Are you a mermaid: Ummm no, what would make you think that?!

Your Playstyle: 42% Gameplay, 10% screenshots, 35% build mode, 6% in CAS, 7% trying to storytell but fail.

Your Simself Picture:

Stories or Gameplay, builds, lookbooks, edits or cc: I mainly just post edits of my Sims or some gameplay. I would LOVE to make storytelling posts (with subtitles and all of that) but I don’t know where to start & if anyone really would want to read that. Like there is story in all my Sims but I just don’t know if y’all would want to read that. But these challenges have been really fun to do! I wanna do more lookbooks though! Custom Content I’m still trying to work with but I’m struggling a little bit but soon I’ll have some for y’all!:)

Your favorite age state: I honestly enjoy them all but I wish I could do more for elders! I can’t wait for knitting!

Your favorite season: Autumn

Your favorite holiday: So in my game I have a holiday called “Summer Farewell” it happens on the last day of Summer & the day consist of chill vibes. Drinking, playing outside, swimming, bbq, fireworks, hanging with friends & family & chilling around a bonfire. It’s super chill & I honestly look forward to it. Maybe I should post more about it soon!

How was your day: It was okay. Work sucked ass. Being understaffed all the time & working with a fake ass coworker is so draining. But it got better when I got home because I played some Skyrim. Then went out to eat with my mom at Five Guys then bought myself a memorory foam bed topper from Bed Bath & Beyond. So I slept amazing last night. Now it’s Saturday & I plan on not leaving the house!

Your favorite career: Ummm that’s kinda hard because I always choose freelance careers in game because I love how your sim can stay home & just work. But it gets a little monotonous at times. I also love the teacher & administrative careers that came with Discover University!

Your favorite aspiration: I love the geeky ones, like collecting stuff & I love the family aspirations!

Your favorite EP, SP or GP: this is so hard ugh. For favorite EP it’s either Discover University or Get Together. Favorite GP is Parenthood but also Strangerville because it’s actually pretty great! Favorite SP is extremely tied between Tiny Living & Moschino for the build & buy items!

How old is your Simblr: it will be hitting one year old soon! I’ve always wanted to make one but never did. But I finally just made one. I used to blog about my sims on Amino but that community was toxic and their ways were extremely toxic & stupid. So it pushed me to make a Simblr & I loved it ever since. You can go on Amino actually and still see my posts. STORYTELLING POSTS!

Have you woohooed: Ummmmmmmmmmmm not on my conservative Christian blog😚💅🏼

Your favorite skill: Gardening

The size of your mods folder: Not that bad actually, just 15 GB!

Your 3 favorite mods: Wicked Whims, McCommand Center & Andrews Pose Player

Your interests (other than the sims): I love to play video games, I’m a huge gamer. I also love to travel. Even if it’s to a small town in the middle of nowhere, I just love to see new places. I live in Texas so any chance I get to travel around, I’m always excited for it. I also love to write stories & songs. Then last I love to cook, so I’m always watching Food Network to see what ideas I can get to create in the kitchen.

Your favorite Sim (picture if possible): that is so hard because all of my sims that I post on here are my babies. So I can’t just pick one. But my favorites would have to be between Kade, Zephan & Tobias.

Which Sims games have you played (including mobile games): The Sims, The Sims 2, The Sims 2 on GameCube & the Strangetown one for PSP. Urbz on PS2 & on Gameboy. The Sims 2 Castaway. The Sims 3 on PC & PS3. SimCity 3,4,5(ew). I have never touched the mobile games & I never got to play TS3 Medeival :(

Propose a crazy scheme: Omg I know this is crazy but wouldn’t it be amazing if our Sims could own multiple homes, basically house flip & rent them out to other sims. Get that money, or let their children that are trying to move out, live in those homes. Or how crazy would it be if the roommate system wasn’t just from Discover University but was BASEGAME. DEAR LORD.

Best part of Simblr: Seeing the crazy talent & passion that simmers pour into this game. Seeing them tell awesome stories & sharing their amazing CC! Also seeing people form friendships over this game is pretty magical.

Worst part of Simblr: Seeing blog who put so much effort & work into their posts & blogs and seeing no one appreciate it. Also the bitches behind anon leaving hateful messages.

What other games you play: Stardew Valley, Skyrim, The Elder Scrolls Online, Minecraft, Pokemon, The Legend of Zelda, Cities Skylines, RDR2 & a lot more.

For the fun: Stardew Valley

For the thrills or for the need to kill assholes: RDR2 & Skyrim maybe some GTA5.

Are you single: VERY VERY lol

I tag: @himbosims @katmk36 @gremlinsims @geeky-simz @thatonebrobo @invisisim @kalissimsblog @quinnterestingsims @nougat-sims & at anyone else who wants to participate!❤️ if I missed you I’m sorry but please participate!

[elysiumwaits]

Hey! For the 100 ways to say I love you prompts, I’d love to see what you’d do with no. 89 - “I noticed.” For Sterek, Stucky or Merthur, whichever speaks to you. Thank you!😊

I went with Merthur. I shot for 500 words and ended up with 1200 instead, which is pretty par for the course for me. Also, I don’t know anything about marriage or relationship customs in Camelot so I made it all up. 

In which it suddenly occurs to Arthur that, in this day and age, he is allowed to love Merlin the way he wants to.

Your Warming Smile on AO3

Rated G, no real warnings apply, but tags are: Arthur Comes Back, Love Confessions, Marriage Proposals, Fluff, Light Angst, Discussions of Past Relationships, Past Gwen/Arthur

Arthur adjusts to modern life with all the grace of a toddler learning how to use a spoon. That is to say, it’s a necessary thing, but it’s painful for everyone involved thanks to the mess and general frustration. It helps that he’s actually a remarkably smart and competent person, despite all that Merlin’s ever said otherwise, so he adapts to the new structures of society very quickly, even if it takes a little longer to get him to understand things like electricity or the merits of cars over horses. 

He likes the iPhone Merlin gets him, especially after Merlin puts all of the Angry Birds games on it. Once Merlin teaches him how to use Wikipedia and YouTube, Merlin’s job of explaining how things work is pretty well done. Arthur will still ask him to explain certain things, but for the most part, they both figure out rather quickly that the Internet has far more patience for explanation than Merlin does. 

It’s after Merlin’s gotten home from the shops, bags in hand, when Arthur follows him into the kitchen, phone in hand. Merlin’s not bothered - sometimes Arthur watches something and needs some context, or finds a gaming channel and mistakes it for actual events (honestly, it was a little heartbreaking telling Arthur that Skyrim was not a real place). Besides, after centuries being alone, Merlin is finding it hard to balance time-with-Arthur and time-without-Arthur because, if given the choice, he’d never have any time-without-Arthur at all. 

“Men can marry each other?” is what Arthur says, though, instead of any of the questions Merlin was expecting. 

Merlin very carefully doesn’t drop the milk. They’ve talked about it in passing, and Arthur’s never been a bigot, even back in Camelot when it wasn’t something that was necessarily talked about openly. People were gay, of course, people have always been gay, but it was never mentioned, just… accepted. Arthur had mentioned a couple of nobles who had married, produced a single heir, and then spent the rest of their natural lives enjoying time with their ‘best friends’ instead. 

In this day and age, Merlin had simply told Arthur it was more openly accepted now, that couples like that were at least not illegal anymore, even if they did face such things as violence and bigotry. All Arthur had said was that ‘no one should be hunted for loving someone, that’s absurd,’ with a strange look on his face. Merlin had quickly changed the subject, after that, not wanting to remind Arthur of Guinivere or anyone else they’d lost.

All this to say that Merlin really has no idea where the intensity in Arthur’s expression is coming from. 

“Yes?” Merlin says as he puts the milk in the fridge. “And women can marry women? It’s a fairly recent development, actually, I think.” He screws up his nose and tries to think - time is strange for an immortal sorcerer after all. He doesn’t think getting into the spectrums of gender and sexuality will do any good here either, so he’ll probably leave that for another day. “Let’s see, homosexuality was decriminalized here in the late 1960s, and then marriage was made legal, what, five years ago? I told you it wasn’t illegal anymore, Arthur.”

“It wasn’t illegal in Camelot.” Arthur waves the phone, and just generally looks bewilderingly upset. “Magic was! Divorce was… not illegal, but hard. Adultery was illegal.”

Merlin puts the rest of the bags on the counter - there’s nothing cold in them, they’ll keep - and turns to give Arthur a confused look. “I really don’t know where you’re going with this. Marriage laws haven’t really applied to me, so I haven’t paid much attention.”

“I was already married by the time I figured it out!” 

“Figured what out?” 

Arthur takes a deep breath and shoves the phone in his pocket. “I noticed, Merlin.”

“You’re not making any sense.” Merlin shakes his head a little, goes to head past Arthur and back into the living room to take off his jacket. 

As he passes, though, Arthur grabs him by the arm and drags him back those few steps, until Merlin is once again against the counter. This time, though, Arthur’s got him trapped by bracing his hands on the countertop on either side of Merlin. He could shove Arthur out of the way easily enough, of course, they’re both long-past thinking Merlin is harmless or weak. 

“I noticed,” Arthur says, quiet and intense. “But I was married, and I loved her, too. Not… not the way she loved Lancelot, or the way that I felt about… but I still made vows.”

Merlin swallows as he realizes all at once what Arthur is talking about. “I never…” he trails off, looks everywhere but Arthur’s face. “I never expected anything from you, I never would have wanted you to be unfaithful. I wouldn’t have asked that of you. I wouldn’t have done that to Gwen.”

“Did you know, though? Did I ever…” Arthur places his fingers on Merlin’s chin, tilts Merlin’s face back so that he’s looking at Arthur once more. “Merlin, tell me you haven’t gone all this time thinking that I didn’t… that your feelings were unrequited.”

Merlin did enough lying back in Camelot, he says, and so he won’t lie to Arthur now. It’s damn tempting, though. “I didn’t let myself think about it for a long time, certainly not while you were alive. It didn’t seem fair to either of us to dwell on it. Your friendship was enough for me.”

“You’re a better man than I ever was or will ever be.” Arthur still sounds distressed, but his hand is still on Merlin’s jaw. “What about now, Merlin? Have all the years… changed anything?”

Merlin is struck dumb for a moment. Arthur looks like Merlin’s never seen him, an almost desperate longing in his eyes, and Merlin wonders about Arthur noticing all those centuries ago. What had he seen? Every little act of love Merlin had done? A light in Merlin’s eye? Every single moment that Merlin had forced himself not to read too much into?

“No,” he finally manages to choke out. “No, you idiot, of course nothing’s changed. I still love you, I always will.” 

Arthur nods, slowly at first like he’s thinking, and then once more, decisively. Merlin’s still not sure how they got here from whatever article or video Arthur had stumbled onto, but he finds he doesn’t much care when Arthur suddenly surges forward and kisses him, like he’s been waiting to do it forever, like he’s never wanted anything more. 

“You’ll marry me, right?” Arthur asks once he’s kissed Merlin within an inch of his life, until Merlin was practically begging for oxygen or mercy or for Arthur to never stop. 

“I’m not sure either of us technically exist in the legal system here,” Merlin says, breathless. “And it’s awfully rude of you to propose without a ring.”

“We’ll do one of those Druid weddings.” It sounds like a promise when Arthur says it. “You’re a Druid, right? I’ll get a ring.”

“I don’t know if I can officiate my own wedding!” Merlin laughs, head spinning. “What are you talking about? We’re living the rest of our immortal lives together, I don’t think an official marriage is going to do much to change that.”

Arthur snorts, but there’s an insufferably pleased twinkle in his eye. “Well, excuse me, I’ll try to reign in my feelings of devotion,” he says, and presses another quick kiss to Merlin’s lips. He pulls away again, and adds, seriously, “I love you.”

“I noticed,” Merlin says with a cheeky grin, and Arthur rolls his eyes before leaning in to kiss him again.

[trans-corvo]

Steam rec List (AKA great games not a lot of people might know about that are currently on sale on Steam)

As of 7/7/19, until 20/7/19

·         Arx Fatalis (2002) - $5.49 (currently $2.74)

Arkane Studios’ first game, a post-apocalyptic fantasy about an underground city. Like all Arkane games it has a large variety of possible playstyles, each making for a completely different experience. Is bogged down by a weird and slightly unintuitive UI, but once you get past it, is genuinely a ton of fun to play. It also has the best magic system I’ve seen in a game – if you can get it to work. Downloading the fan-built Arx-Libertalis mod is pretty much a must to get the game to run on modern computers. Takes about 20-25 hours to beat.

·         Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (2006) - $9.99 (currently $2.49)

Arkane Studios’ second game, pretty much a proto-Dishonored in terms of controls and animations. As such it can be a little tougher to control, but still familiar (though the stealth system isn’t nearly as good.) Uses the source engine for tons of whacky physics hijinks. Very goofy/cheesy, but still a lot of fun. (The game is probably most famous for it’s melee attack, a kick which will send most enemies into orbit. Like I said, very goofy)

·         Echo (2017) - 27.99$ (currently $13.99)

Beautiful sci-fi game from ULTRA ULTRA, looks like it would melt your computer, but ran shockingly well for me. Has a fascinating story/world and smooth, intuitive gameplay with an interesting hook. A very unique experience. Takes about 6-8 hours to finish

·         Islanders (2019) - $6.69 (currently $5.01)

Fun little minimalist city builder (for lack of a better word.) Has a cute little low-poly art style and a pretty score. Excellent for relaxation.  

·         The Long Dark (2014) - $33.99 (currently $8.49)

Survival game from Canadian developer Hinterland Studio. Takes place in the Canadian north after a societal collapse and a shifting of Earth’s magnetic field (because apparently one apocalypse scenario wasn’t enough.) Has both a sandbox survival mode and an ongoing episodic story mode featuring Jennifer Hale and Mark Meer. There’s a difficulty slider that allows you to toggle between hardcore survival and a relatively peaceful exploration. It also has a nice art-style and much more beauty/character than a lot of its peers.

·         Northgard (2018) - $33.99 (currently $16.99)

A Viking story with mix of real-time strategy and city building from Shiro Games. Has a sandbox mode and a pretty good story mode, cute art style, and some genuinely fun characters (including a couple queer characters.)

·         Pathologic 2 (2019) - $39.99 (currently $31.99)

Don’t let the “2” fool you, this isn’t really a sequel so much as it is a remake of the original Pathologic from Russian developer Ice Pick Lodge (but this time with an English translation that doesn’t render it almost unplayable!) Very much an immersive sim that doesn’t hold your hand, even with the decent translation it’s still very much a difficult game, but one that’s worth the struggle. Has an amazing story about a small russian town in the early 20th century that is stricken with an unusual and deadly plague, it also has this fascinating lore based off nomadic cultures of the Russian Steppe. It’s a wholly unique gaming experience that I cannot recommend highly enough.

·         Pillars of Eternity (2015) - $32.99 (currently $19.79)

Classic high-fantasy RPG from Obsidian Entertainment, directed by Josh Sawyer, the same man who directed Fallout: New Vegas. Good art, good story, good characters, good everything. It’s a longer game, taking about 30-40 hours to beat.  

·         Remember Me (2010) - $29.99 (currently $5.99)

Made by DontNod Entertainment, the same studio that made Life is strange, and has a similar episodic format. It’s a cyberpunk thriller about a world where people are able to alter their memories. Doesn’t place the same emphasis on decision making as LiS, instead being more of a combat focused action type game with a few puzzles thrown in. It has a beautiful art design and excellent world building. Relatively short, taking about 6-8 hours to beat

·         Sunless Sea (2015) - $20.99 (currently $10.49)

A strategy RPG by Failbetter Games which builds on top of their mobile game “Fallen London.” In it, you play as the captain of a ship tasked with exploring the underground sea of it’s strange steampunk/cosmic horror world. Graphically simple, with most of it’s story being told through text. Very quirky and rather addictive. Has excellent queer content, including the ability to make your captain trans and non-binary, as well as being able to choose the gender of your significant other.  

·         Thief: Deadly Shadows (2004) - $9.99 (currently $1.09)

The third game in the Thief series and the final before the reboot, though you don’t really need to play the first two before this one (I’ve heard they’re good, but haven’t yet had the chance to play them.) It’s just modern enough that the controls and graphics aren’t too clumsy. The Thief series was a huge influence for Dishonored and if you enjoy Dishonored (especially the stealth), you’ll probably have fun with this. Also, the main character is voiced by Stephen Russell, the man who voiced Corvo in Dishonored 2, not to mention several dozen Bethesda npcs such as Mercer Frey, Codsworth, Nick Valentine, and pretty much every sleazy merchant in Skyrim. Takes about 15-25 hours to beat.

·         The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (2014) - $21.99 (currently $4.39)

A puzzle/walking simulator game from developer The Astronauts about a paranormal detective who arrives in a mostly deserted small town to investigate the disappearance of a young boy. Practically dripping with eerie atmosphere, it’s an excellent little horror/thriller with a gripping mystery. Relatively short, taking about 6-8 hours to beat

............................

I haven’t played enough of these three give much of a review, but what I did play and what I heard was very good

·         Tyranny (2016) - $33.99 (currently $16.99)

Made by Obsidian around the same time as Pillars of Eternity and has virtually identical art style and gameplay. Is a high fantasy RPG about an evil empire that has nearly enveloped the entire world, with you playing as an agent of said empire, tasked with carrying out the words of it’s godlike ruler.

·         SOMA (2015) - $32.99 (currently $4.94)

Made by Frictional Games, the studio that made Amnesia: The Dark Descent; though mildly less scary and with a much stronger story which follows a man who wakes up one day in a strange base on the ocean floor long after the fall of mankind. Manages to be both terrifying and deeply sad at the same time.

·         Tacoma (2017) - $21.99 (currently $9.79)

Made by Fullbright, the studio that made Gone Home. I actually know relatively little about this one aside from it being a sci-fi narrative about the crew of a space station in 2088. It has also apparently got that good queer content.

[wigshewrote]

The only reason that I’ve ever owned any sort of gaming console was to play the Pokemon games. Any other game that I played on those systems was likely to fill time between Pokemon games. Now, I can sink a decent amount of time into a Pokemon game, but once I defeat the Elite Four and complete the post game story, there’s really not much to keep me hooked and that game ends up collecting dust after a couple of weeks. 

I very rarely get a reason to keep playing that game, that’s why my number one hope for all new games is a substantial post-game. The ideal post-game in my mind is something like Gen 2 and their remakes. We got two whole regions to explore! It’s like a I got two games in one! But even that can only keep me entertained for so long before it gets set aside as I get ready for the next game. 

Enter Sword and Shield. A divisive entry into the Pokemon series to say the least. I looked forward to these games just for being new content--even though they also lacked some previous content. My main hope, as always, was some in depth post game. 

When the game was released, I was blown away before I even got to the post game. The Wild Area by itself gave me so much content to enjoy AND it gave me something I didn’t realize I wanted from a Pokemon game--a movable camera. It was odd, but I found myself plowing through the story so I could unlock new parts of the Wild Area and spend hours at a time there. 

When I finally got to the actually post game it was... fine. It was kooky and interesting but overall just fine. The characters introduced in the postgame made it stand out, but it felt far more linear than your usual Pokemon game main quest. You would think that’d I be disappointed in Sword and Shield for this post game, however, the Wild Area has been a nice stand-in to keep me coming back for a bit longer. All of these different promoted raid have been enough to keep me interested this long. They had a promoted raid event that made four hard to obtain Pokemon forms easier to get. A weeks later, they added another hard to get Pokemon form to that roster. During the December holidays they ran a third promoted event, and a fourth promoted event during New Years. I can’t say there’s a lot that’s new but at least something to keep this game from gather dust too soon.

Even with changing promoted raids, the game as is wouldn’t keep my attention much longer--though long enough to keep it satisfying. Before the release, though, I was already hoping for DLC. I don’t play many other console games but it always felt like the big games on consoles always got DLC! Skyrim and Fallout, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, even Mario Odyssey and the Mario and Rabbids games got DLC. So maybe Pokemon would too! Maybe right when I got bored with the games, they’d give me something to look forward to a few months later. Hot dang did they deliver! I’m barely ready to put the game down and Game Freak just said, “Don’t worry! More is on their way!”

This isn’t “buy a new cartridge to play a game that 95% like the previous game with 5% new content.” This is $30 for two new areas with a staggered release. That right there addressed my main concern about buying games--that eventually I’ll put it down and won’t pick it up again. Pokemon just delayed that aspect by almost a whole year. I can see me finally getting tuckered out by what’s in Sword and Shield by March, but when summer comes around I’m going to be stoked to play it again because of the DLC released in June. When will I put it down next? Who knows? Because the second part of the DLC is coming sometime this Fall and who knows when I’ll put it down again after that.

Unfortunately, there are grumps again, and I don’t get it. Did those other games get complaints for introducing DLC? Is it because it was announced so close to the games’ release? There are complaints that these aspects should have been included in the original release and that there are old Pokemon being added behind a paywall, but I just don’t get these complaints. I understand that not every Pokemon player plays the games for the same reason I do, but don’t we all want a reason to keep playing? If the Isles of Armor and Crowned Tundra was included in the initial release, then I certainly would be done with them by now. I logged 250+ hours into the games as is, 45 of that was to complete the main story. Even if there were included in the original release, wouldn’t you want something new to do at some point? I’m glad to have staggered release of gameplay to keep the game in my hands. 

As for the Pokemon behind a “paywall,” I’m just unimpressed by that argument. Sure, the easiest way to get these Pokemon is by getting the DLC, the second easiest probably getting a Pokemon Home subscription, and at the worst, trade for them! I mean, boy howdy, I feel like Pokemon was fairly upfront about that fact. Once each wave of the DLC is available, the Pokemon reintroduced in that wave will be available to obtain without the DLC. Each game has their own amount of unobtainable Pokemon, that can eventually be obtained through trading. It wasn’t the best but it was manageable. If these Pokemon are considered behind a paywall, then version exclusives should be considered behind a paywall too!

Old Pokemon being added in waves has me excited for a different reason though. Think about the implications of competitive Pokemon! In an older Pokemon generation, the meta would likely remain stagnant until the release of the next game. There might be some minor shake-ups no and again with the release of mythical Pokemon and suddenly available hidden abilities, but would hardly see the amount of change that Magic: the Gathering might see over the course of a year. Magic releases four sets a year. Their meta gets to adjust that frequently. Releasing Pokemon in waves is incredible. Dragapults and Galarian Darmanitans are running rampant. Will a returning Pokemon in June come in and decimate those two from the meta? What will the meta look like in the fall when Crowned Tundra comes out. This is what Pokemon needed to spice up their competitive scene! Especially right after they introduced so many aspects in Sword and Shield to make entering the competitive scene much less daunting.

We can’t even start preparing for the next competitive scene! Sure we can guess what will return--we already know of a few making a comeback--but we also know there’s going to plenty of new Pokemon and forms as well! Sure Blissey is returning, an OU favorite as a Special Wall, but will a new Pokemon or Galarian form change that? Who knows! What’s going to fall out of OU? What’s going to barely stay in that tier? Could a Pokemon already in game rise to OU as an unexpected check to one yet to be added? There’s so much to anticipate here! So much can change between now and then.

All of this is to say, what is there not be excited for? Does DLC typically invoke such ire? Isn’t it nice to have a game that will get you to keep picking it up and playing without it getting tedious? I admit that there’s an amount of content that a game should have initially before introducing DLC. But for another $30, isn’t it nice to have something to keep me playing throughout the year?

[jace-the-writer-guy]

A dream game of mine

These are the ideas I often come up with for a dream game, and it just combines so many elements from different things I've played or watched videos of into one huge and crazy thing that would be amazing to see and play. It's pretty much a pipe dream in this lifetime of mine but I can't help but imagine it. So without anymore stalling, here's all my ramblings about it.

I would just really love a game like Skyrim is, but just... more. Like Skyrim has a bunch of the adventure/exploration elements I love in a game, but I didn't think it had enough diversity in scenery and it all felt cold because of the part of the world it was set in.

I would love a game that was like Elder Scrolls Online in size with all the different provinces you can go to with all that land to explore between the snowy areas, desert areas, and forest/jungle areas and all the settlements that would be scattered throughout. And all the scenery in that game was beautiful to me. And along with that, add the crafting/blacksmithing stuff from ESO too, because that was the main thing I did when I played the game. I created everything I used from different swords and armor.

And speaking of swords and armor, I'd love the game to have what ESO does, which was have there be different styles of weapons and armor you can craft after you read the plans or whatever for it. Like a steel sword can be one style, or you can craft it in another style but it would have the same stats, just a different look. Same with armor too. Or a greatsword could be more on the skinny side, or you could make it be a massive weapon like what the Buster Sword is.

Whatever weapons you favorite will be visible on your character and you can choose where you want something specifically placed. For example, a Ranger could have their bow across their chest and back and their quiver of arrows at their back either behind either shoulder or at their waist, or on their thigh while they have a dagger on one hip and a sword on the other. You can't have too many weapons on your body though. There would be a weapon wheel you can bring up that lets you choose between what weapons you have favorited.

The weapons and armor would be highly customizable too. Like with armor, you could mix and match different pieces or furs to make something unique to you, and for weapons you could add different accessories to them like jeweled hilts or carved bow shafts.

As for the exploration, I think it would be a phenomenal thing to focus on in a fantasy game. With so many environments like what I mentioned above with forests to snowy areas, there can be some absolute magic to be discovered like beautiful lakes or ponds, or something like my Heaven's Clearing area I created in my RWBY AU. Mountainous areas with waterfalls cascading down the rocks? Giant trees in a gorgeously lush forest with a treehouse village? A snowy village deep within the mountains? An ancient and run down fortress in a canyon with only one small valley to access it? Sprawling cave systems in the mountains? Tropical beaches? A beautiful oasis hidden in the middle of a vast desert? Explore and you can find stuff like this and more.

Examples of the sights you could see. I don't know the artists sadly. I found these all on Reddit at r/imaginarylandscapes)

And if and when you find this stuff? Build there if you want! It could be like Fallout 76 with the C.A.M.P. thing, but you have such an extreme amount of freedom to build kind of like in Minecraft, and have the building be like a mix between Minecraft, 7 Days to Die, and Ark. Build what you want from a nice, cozy little cabin in the woods, or a big estate on the mountainside with the waterfalls going under the house. Make it as big and as grand, or as small and as cozy as you want it to be with loads of decoration stuff you can build, and with different variations to the decorations. Different styles of beds, candles, wardrobes, chests, doors, windows, whatever. Just give unmatched variety. And of course for all of them, you would have to go out and find the materials, like for a simple cabin you would have to go out and either buy the lumber, or cut it down yourself. Or if you want to just dig into the side of a hill or mountain and mold your home from there, you absolutely can, given you have the equipment to dig it all out. Or you could just be a nomad and camp around anywhere you wanted while you travel and not be held down to one place.

Character customization would let you be able to make the character you want for a fantasy game like this is in my imagination. Loads of different hairstyles, body types, eye/hair/skin colors, customize your height to be the size of a Goliath (in D&D) or a gnome and so on. Pick from a variety of races from human, different races of elves, dwarves, halflings gnomes, goliaths, orcs and tabaxis', mix races, and more. And in game, you can really pick any type of clothing/armor style you want from even more choices. And along with that, you can of course pick different classes for your character to be from a fighter/warrior, to a ranger, to a magic user, to a bard, or whatever. You pick your skills from a huge list of stuff for each class and you go around and do what you want to do as that character. And like with Dragon's Dogma (one of my favorite games), you can change your class instead of being tied into one class at really any point in the game that you felt like. And you can multiclass too and combine any two classes you want to try.

Magic in the game would be more... magical. Like you start out with basic spells if you're one of the magic using classes with sorcerers getting a bit more, but it all starts out as just looking very dull. And when you train and level up your magical abilities and find new spells out of the huge selection of them in the game, the magic gets more and more bright, vivid, colorful, vibrant, and flashy too so you can actually see the results of all the levels you poured into your magic.

It wouldn't just be exploration though, considering weapons, armor, and magic would be in the game. There would be so many different jobs and ways to make gold to choose from, and there would be multiple long running quests you could accept that would be like something from D&D. And a thing for that is that the game can either be single player and you can pick a party of NPCs to join you through your adventures, or you could switch it over to multiplayer and invite a few of your friends in to explore the world together or do these quests and split the rewards from both the journey itself and the reward for completing the quests. The questscan have different styles, like serious ones and some where there can be some fun, like a Borderlands mission.

And as something in between these quests, you could have different jobs you can choose from like I mentioned. You can start your own mine or lumber yard to sell ores, precious gems, or wood to anyone (NPC or player) that wants/needs it. You can do guard duty for someone, you could scout an area out for any dangers for someone wanting to build a house or for military, or chart out unknown parts of the world and draw a map of it (provided you take a cartography skill) and sell them to people. You could even just be a simple hunter and hunt game to provide meat and pelts for yourself and for trade. Or be a bard and make some music between more somber songs or uplifting ones, or ones where you just tell the tales of events that have happened in the game. And for that, the game would have a huge score of music. And there would be bounty hunting quests as well, and sometimes they can lead into something more.

You have the choice between if you want to be a combat focused character or a trader/craftsman focused character or something along those lines. In single player, you could hire an NPC bodyguard and they would be extremely competent (unlike the referees in WWE games :p) in battles in order to protect you. Or in multiplayer, your friends could provide your protection while you create trade routes or gather materials, or explore the world for treasures. And it could be the other way around with you being the bodyguard and your friend being the one you're protecting too.

Choose your own backstory from a huge list of options. You could have a backstory as a simple farmer, a guard, a soldier, a trader, a blacksmith, a mercenary, or a craftsman to name a few. Each backstory comes with a specific set of gear depending on the backstory and an area of the world you start out with and in. Like a mercenary would start with light armor and a battle axe, having just completed a job in the colder regions so you would have fur cloaks and armor or you could have just completed a job in a more tropical spot of the world.

And romance too! You could have your character romance any NPC in the game no matter if they're male or female, unless they're already married. Or if you want to do a bit more, romance them both! Start a family with them, and hire bodyguards to protect them while you're out adventuring, if your spouse doesn't have any combat skills of course. Or hire bodyguards anyway to secure your childrens' safety.

See a dog you want to adopt? Adopt it! Same with cats or any other animal you might see up for adoption or for sale from somewhere. Each province have different kinds of pets you can get, so traveling the world for your perfect hunting/travel buddy or housemate may be something to do. And you can name your pet too. Or you could even capture and tame a wolf or tiger or something in the wild too if you wanted. Also, you can pet your pets. Give them attention!

For travel, you could either carry the bare essentials on your character and just walk either alone or with a companion by your side, or you could save your gold for a horse or go tame a wild one to ride through the world. And on top of that, you can buy different types of wagons to carry all the things you need to set up a larger camp for yourself or for your companions. Larger wagons mean the need for an extra horse. And you can also buy or craft accessories for your horse and wagons, like different saddles or canopies respectively.

And also for travel across the seas, you can either pay for passage on a ship or save up gold to buy your own and hire your own crew to go on voyages. Along with that, one thing you could do is become a pirate if you chose to in case you didn't want to just spend your days on land, or become a trade vessel to transport goods from place to place, or you could even just have it become a passenger ship and take gold to take people across the sea. Search for buried treasure and pillage other ships as a pirate, or discover an island to claim for yourself and your friends.

One thing that would be in the game would be hunting, from small game all the way up to dragons. The hunting is something I enjoy so much in Red Dead Online that I would love to see it in a game like this with so many animals and creatures. Of course there would be stuff like boars, deer, bears, and animals like that but there would also be fantasy creatures to try to hunt, and the biggest, baddest, most difficult, and most rewarding would be dragons if you chose to hunt them. But you could just stick to hunting normal animals too, because that can be very rewarding in its own way like with what I said before about hunting. And of course, you could go fishing at one of the many rivers, streams, ponds, or lakes in the game too.

There would be two separate modes you could do between a more casual experience or something more hardcore. The casual mode would be that you don't have to worry about eating, drinking, sleeping, or worrying about temperature to survive while the survival mode would include all those things, plus the need to watch out for poisons, venom, or diseases or anything like that so players can enjoy the game how they want to enjoy it.

One thing about the game is that there is single player and multiplayer of course, but the multiplayer would have private servers and public ones for if you only wanted to play with friends, or if you wanted to take it online and interact with a bunch of other players. And on top of that, there would be separate servers for players who only want to have a peaceful time with other players where they can't attack each other at all, and servers where PvP is fully on for the players that want the danger of dealing with other players that want to take them out so there aren't those types of people in the same servers. Choose your server, choose your experience.

Another thing that would be a part of the game is full, unrestricted mod support. Create mods for the game to craft it into something truly special either with different weapons, armors, spells, quests, races, or anything. Download any mod you want at your discretion, no matter what it is. And the mod support would span all platforms the game is on with absolutely no restrictions regardless of platform or the content of the mods.

To make the game even more special, you can create a new character at any time you want, and your previous character will still be wondering the world while you're starting anew. And if you end up finding your other character, you can form a team with them and easily switch back and forth between the two. That would make it possible to create your own adventuring party rather than hire NPCs or relying on your friends. Or, you can just have your characters be completely separate. And if you wanted to, you could possibly romance your own characters if you can't find the right NPC in the huge world.

The hud would be something very simple, with a health and energy/mana meter, a mini map, and radar. Each thing here can be toggled on or off so you could just have your health and energy/mana showing while turning off the radar and map, or you could have it all be turned off to have nothing on your screen for a more immersive experience. You can switch between third and first person to increase that even more.

Basically what I want is some huge fantasy exploration/adventure/action/RPG, something so huge with so many things to do that it has such an immense amount of playability and replayability. Something set in an hugely detailed and gorgeous world with multiple large provinces/climates/biomes. It would take an insane amount of time to try to explore every little part of the world, along with completing all the quests. And there would never really be a shortage of quests because they would keep being added every once in a while to the game through free updates, along with the ones added through mods.

That's all I have to share about this huge, crazy, borderline impossible dream game of mine right now. I might add more to it if/when I think of more. I hope you all enjoyed the read if you decided to read it. I'd love to hear what you guys think, and I'd love to hear your own ideas if you have them.

[rinaris-skyrim]

2. Tweaks

I wish I had a better category name for these. These are small changes, some of them atmospheric, some of them just nice to have. They don’t change anything terribly significant about the game, just add some flavor here, an item there, a little immersive utility yonder.

---

A Matter of Time

In-game clock widget. Useful for checking to see when shops should be open, checking the phases of the moons if you’re a werewolf, figuring out if it’ll be dark soon. Just a gem. [link]

Aime’s Craftable Lockpicks

WISOTT - What it says on the tin. One iron ingot equals five lockpicks. No more complicated than that. [link]

Alchemist’s Journal

More for roleplaying purposes than anything. A simple book, craftable at a tanning rack, that lists ingredient effects as you discover them. [link]

Atlas Map Markers - Updated

The original Atlas Map Markers is brilliant, adding map markers for most things in Skyrim you might want on your map — the smaller camps, shops, shrines out in the wilderness, interesting spots, landmarks, whatnot. Kryptopyr updated it with an mod configuration menu. You’ll need the original [here], and then install Kryptopyr’s update [here] over it (”merge” option in Mod Organizer).

Better Stealing

A somewhat controversial tweak, one I’m not sure works well for balance, especially given various perk overhauls and other mods that allow multiple ways for you to offload stolen goods. However, I always found it stupid that shopkeepers would preternaturally “know” what was stolen and what wasn’t. This makes it simple: if it’s relatively inexpensive and no one sees you take it, it won’t be marked as “stolen” in your inventory (though the owners might still send some thugs after you after the fact, once they realize it’s missing!). Simple SKSE plugin. [link]

CS Soul Fragments to Soul Gems

Finally a use for all of those “Soul Gem Fragments” you find out in ruins or in random barrels! “Polish” the fragments with a linen rag at a forge, then combine them to make empty soul gems of the size you desire. You can also “smash” soul gems to reforge one large gem into several smaller ones, if you prefer, or combine smaller ones into larger gems. Why was this not in the base game? [link]

Dark Brotherhood for Good Guys

Why do I want this mod for a group that’s all about playing a murdering edgelord? Well, basically, because not all Brotherhood members are edgy dark edgelords, and usually when people want someone murdered, it’s for a reason. This gives you a somewhat different perspective on the Brotherhood and their victims: information, backstories, the philosophy of Sithis as morally neutral chaos instead of pure evil. I tend to play on the good-ish side of things, and I love reading and lore, so I like this. Add to taste. Be sure to merge the base mod with the provided hotfix. [link]

Dragon Wall Wisdom - Readable Dragon Walls

You’re the Dragonborn, right? Learning the dragon language, right? Gifted with an understanding of the dragon tongue and preternatural knowledge, right? Then you should really be able to read these dragon wall inscriptions in the game. This offers funny, quirky, and sometimes just downright mundane translations for these ancient arcane inscriptions. SHBITBG - Should have been in the base game. [link]

EK_RingLimiter

You have ten fingers. Why only one ring? This allows you to wear more — though for balance reasons I recommend sticking with the default of two, or perhaps four. Something something about magical auras interfering if the trinkets are worn too close to one another. ;) [link]

Even Better Quest Objectives

The default in-game journal is rather pathetic. It rarely gives you your motivations, or even a text version of where you’re supposed to go next. I very much miss Morrowind’s journal, where every conversation and relevant tidbit was recorded. This helps. [link]

Farmers Sell Produce

Seriously, again, why wasn’t this in the base game? It’s close to necessary if you’re going to use a needs mod, or something that uses produce to create medicines for diseases. Assuming, of course, you’re not inclined to go rampaging across farmers’ carefully-tended fields. [link]

Faster Transform - To Werewolf and VampireLord

Just a nice tweak. Again, time is valuable, it’s nice not to have quite such a large window in which I’m being wailed on by enemies, and I like the more monstrous touch. The middle option - only half the vanilla time to transform - is recommended for realism and balance reasons. [link]

Female Vampires Have Fangs

One of the very few purely aesthetic changes here. All vampires should have fangs. (I’m gay. Fangs hot.) [link]

Harvest Overhaul

Find it stupid you only get one flower from that whole patch of mountain flowers? Yeah, me too. This fixes that. [link]

iHUD - Immersive HUD

Neatly stows away the status bars when you don’t need them (when they’re full and you’re not in combat). Also hides the compass, because how does your character preternaturally know there’s this thing that way if they can’t see it? [link]

Immersive Dragons

Just gives dragons a larger wingspan so they can maybe actually lift themselves into the air. Another aesthetics tweak, with the goal of immersion. [link]

Jaxonz Lights Please

Incredibly useful for those using magical lighting. This maps both Candlelight and Magelight to hotkeys, removing the need to constantly switch spells. It also means you can easily toggle Candlelight on and off like a lantern or torch. Works well with mods that affect lighting and darkness, which I do. [link]

Jaxonz Map Markers

The best custom map marker mod I’ve found. Want to keep track of... well, anything? Ore deposits, NPCs, followers, your horse, that little camp... This is it! Uses the game’s built-in quest and quest objective system for map markers. Super easy to use. [link]

Kryptopyr’s Clothing and Clutter Fixes

This maybe should have gone in the “Fixes” post, but it’s... not quite “just” fixes. “Hooded robes” are separated into hoods and robes for mixing and matching, some NPCs clothing is changed to be more lore-friendly, alongside some behind-the-scenes fixes like weight adjustments. Optional, officially. [link]

Kryptopyr’s Weapon and Armor Fixes Remade

This also maybe should have gone in the “Fixes” post, but again, it’s a bit more of an overhaul, adjusting weights of things and armor scaling for consistency. Required for Kryptopyr’s great crafting overhaul, CCOR, so we definitely want this. [link]

Learn Alchemy From Recipes

WISOTT. Reading a recipe “discovers” those ingredient effects for you. Again, why was this not in the original game? [link]

Living Takes Time

I’ll be honest, I deactivate most of the features of this mod, except for “training takes time” and “reading takes time” (and increases speech skill). Crafting takes time just gets onerous, especially in the early game when you need all this gear and your bandoliers and you have needs you need to fill... And blocking the inventory or magic menu during combat is just... no. Still, the mod itself adds some nice functionality, and it can be fully tweaked to taste. If you’re using an alternate spell learning mod, be sure to set the “spell learning” time to zero. [link]

Mortal Enemies - De-Aimbot Your Foes

Once an enemy has started an attack, they’re locked into that direction and attack. This makes you able to dodge or move out of range of the attack, and they can no longer hit you anyways. They move slower when aiming or channeling as well. No instant pivots, and two-handed weapons feel heavier than one-handed ones. All in all, it makes combat feel more realistic, and allows them to miss you if you’re clever. But beware! These changes apply to you, too! [link]

No Psychic Lock Knowledge

WISOTT. You don’t somehow magically know how hard a lock is going to be just by looking at it. You just try to pick it, like... you actually would if you decide to pick a lock. [link]

No Silver at Jorrvaskr

Because a group of warriors whose upper echelons are all werewolves would totally be eating off silver. Not. [link] (in the optional files section)

Non-Exploitable Crossbow Reloading

Allows you to reload crossbows on your own time, by pressing the fire button, before firing again, without messing with your equipped ammunition. Simple and lovely. [link]

People Are Strangers

You don’t somehow magically know the names of people before you talk to them! I personally favor the “race” variant, just because... less generic, and I can usually see if someone is a Wood Elf or an Argonian anyways, but you can adjust the “stranger” label to taste. [link]

Point the Way

Roads actually have more signposts to direct people to the smaller towns as well as the large cities, and have them at more junctions. Signs also point the right way. Especially helpful along some of the more windy roads. No need to puzzle things out on your map quite so much. [link]

Realistic Capacity

Without a bag, you can only carry as much as you can feasibly wear, really. It’s that simple. This mod dynamically adjusts your capacity and allows for the armor you’re wearing and a few different weapons, e.g. a bow, a one-handed weapon, a shield, a knife or two, making those effectively weightless, and assume pockets for some meager supplies, but aside from that — backpacks and bags are mandatory. Makes things harder for a packrat like me, but it does make me think. [link]

Realistic Humanoid Movement Speed

This one takes a bit of the sting out of Realistic Capacity. Movement speed is adjusted to feel more realistic overall — you walk faster, jog more slowly (when sneaking, too), and don’t sprint like a gazelle. Take the optional horse speed modifier file to also add more value to horses: they walk and gallop faster as well now, in addition to their other benefits. [link]

Realistic Nights

Wondering why torches and night eye were even added to the game? Annoyed at how, well, bright the nights are? Put an end to that! Darker nights make light sources actually useful, and provides a good reason for sneaky types to actually consider the day/night cycle. Light adjusted based on the moons, snow reflecting night, and various other factors for an even better experience. [link]

Run For Your Lives

NPCs who are not guards or warriors run inside and hide from both dragons and vampire attacks. Like anyone with any sense of self-preservation would. I mean, I guess Nords don’t exactly revere self-preservation, but... this just seems more sensible to me, especially if we’re talking little old ladies armed with a steel dagger. [link]

SCRR - Skyrim Coin Replacer Redux

“Modern” Septims have no business deep in ancient Nordic burial mounds or Dwemer ruins. The Stormcloaks aren’t too ecstatic about Imperial money, either, and are creating their own silver currency, though gold is gold. Now silver Haralds are found in barrows, and ebony Dumacs in Dwemer ruins. All can be be melted down to ingots of their respective metals, or traded with merchants for “regular” currency. This adds massively to immersion, not to mention offering a supply of useful materials for smithing. [link]

Sleep Tight

Simple change that makes NPCs change into robes or clothes for sleeping, instead of going to bed in that hard iron armor (though for balance reasons, and modesty, people still wear chest armor). Accordingly, they’ll also take more damage if you can catch them unawares. [link]

Take Notes - Journal of the Dragonborn

I love this. I love this so so much. The ability to write a custom journal from in the game, and export it if I want to, adds so much to roleplaying. It means I can create a proper backstory, examine character motivations, process events of the game through my character’s lens, and record it all for myself later. Just, magnificent. Get it. You won’t regret it. [link]

The Choice is Yours - Fewer Forced Quests - Improved Dialogue Options

WISOTT. Just talking to someone doesn’t automatically add a quest to your inventory. You can turn an offer down or defer an errand until later. Some things a character just wouldn’t want to do. Now that’s not cluttering up your journal. Again, SHBITBG - should have been in the base game. [link]

Timing is Everything - Quest Delay and Timing Control

This allows you to space out the steps of the main quest as seems realistic (e.g. NPCs taking some time for research), as well as control when (at which level) various quests will start. There are also a few other tweaks to be found, such as Meridia’s Beacon not responding to vampires, werewolves randomly attacking, and Thalmor ignoring you unless certain quest conditions are fulfilled, instead of attack squads simply triggering at a certain level. [link]

TK Dodge

Gives you the ability to quickly sideroll and dodge a blow. Makes light armors a lot more viable in close combat, and plays nicely with Mortal Enemies. [link]

Trade and Barter

A fantastic mod that adjusts prices, merchant gold, and other parameters around trading based on race, faction alliance, personal relationships, location, and more. Highly customizable, highly compatible, brilliant. [link]

TravelMounts

You need to have a horse in order to be able to fast travel. Offers more of a reason to drop that 1000 gold, and this small tweak makes it feel much more immersive (after all, a rider can outrun and avoid many things someone on foot can’t). [link]

Truly Absorb Dragon Souls

For every dragon you kill and dragon soul you absorb, you get just that little bit stronger, gain a little more magicka, health, stamina, movement speed, carry weight, shout cooldown, armor, and magic resist. Set the amount gained for each dragon soul on install; I recommend medium to low values for each gain, just to offer longevity. [link]

Understandable Draugrs

In the vein of “Dragon Wall Wisdom,” you can now understand the draugr when they yell at you in a fight. Just adds the English translation in parentheses to the end of the subtitled Dragon language dialogue. Now your Dragonborn will be able to understand what’s being constantly shouted at them, even if it isn’t anything particularly nice or uplifting. [link]

Wearable Lanterns

No need to constantly toggle between a torch and a shield, or fight blind in a dark ruin. Just hook a lantern to your belt, that can easily be toggled on and off (and also automatically put out when you sneak, if you’re That Sort™). Incredibly nifty and useful. [link]

---

...I’m sure I’ll be adding to this later. I’m sure, honestly. Maybe with an “optional tweaks” post, too, that are very much a preference thing. Or, y’know, just reblog myself. That might actually be the best option.

[yslanam]

Okay, rank the DA games from least to most favorite and say why. :3

Oh, boy. This got long, so I’m putting it under a cut.

3. Inquisition

I hate the combat so much. Nearly ragequit within 5 minutes trying to figure out how to attack enemies. (Turns out you have to hold down a button for basic attacks.) It feels to me like they tried to combine their old combat style with something like Skyrim that’s more single-player, do-a-thing-for-each-attack style. It feels so tedious. They removed tactics almost entirely, and that was my favorite part of combat. Look, Bioware, if I wanted to play Skyrim-style combat, I’d just play Skyrim. Give me the tactics back!

I also dislike the crafting system and I’m tired of getting ambushed by bears that don’t even give me any experience while I’m trying to actually get somewhere.

Story-wise, I enjoyed it a lot, but I think it suffers from a couple major things:

trying to position Templars and mages as equally moral/equally flawed, which felt more strained to me than in DA2

retconning the elves to make them equally responsible for their own oppression

making absolutely vile characters but presenting them in-game as if they’re totally innocent

not giving as much conversational leeway to object to people or express religious opinions other than Andrastianism

needs more women as companions!

For me, the highlight of this game was the Solas/Lavellan romance because, wow, I got sucker-punched with all the conflicted feels.

2. DA2

I’m one of the very few people who likes the crunchiness of DAO’s combat and skills, so in some ways DA2 was a step down from that. On the bright side, I think they did a good job streamlining everything while still giving the player plenty of control. It felt easier to effectively combo or chain abilities. And there were more tactics options, which was super cool!

Biggest combat/mechanics complaint: give me back unlimited stealth! How am I supposed to disable all the traps when I run out of stealth in the middle of the room???

Side note: there were some weird retcons that threw me for a loop the first time I played. When did the Qunari get horns? Why is Anders talking like blood magic = possession? So that was unfortunate.

I love that the story is centered around a single city and a group of friends just living their lives and getting into shenanigans that slowly spiral into something much bigger. I love all the characters and I want them all to move into Hawke’s mansion and be a family, regardless of who you romance.

Their banter is a little more barbed than DAO’s, which is disappointing. Sometimes companions say things that are way out of line and don’t feel true to character, so I do wish that was smoothed out more, or at the very least that those comments could be constructively addressed in later banters. I know all these people are friends with Hawke, but I want them to be friends with each other, too.

Overall, very good. Just needs more friendship juice!

1. Origins

My tried and true favorite.

Yes, I enjoy all the nitpicky ability stacking and tactics choices and deciding between various character builds. Combat is like a puzzle and I love solving it. Get murdered by mabari or golems or your own ghost party? Reload and rotate that rubik’s cube to find another angle! So satisfying.

(I love the Fade quest for the same reason. Puzzle!)

The main narrative is simple but solid, and the various origins can add so much variation to how your character thinks about and reacts to things that it’s easy to replay. Plus, the companions really shine. (Except for Oghren. I hate him and he’s not invited to anything.) I get so invested in watching them grow and making them happy. Pretty sure I cried when Morrigan said how much she treasured the Warden’s friendship.

Big downsides: Orzammar and the Deep Roads. Even though it’s just a game, they feel suffocating.

Special shoutout to Origins for giving me Alistair, the best character in anything ever.

[a-shrieking-cloud-of-bats]

okay so long breakdown of my experience with Morrowind as a starter I first tried to play the game last year, fumbled it, repeated that a few times, before dropping it for a while and eventually coming back to it the past few days and running through it! Ran a Nord, Heavy Armor, Warrior, used almost no non scroll magic, notably used them to deal with locks, used divine intervention once during that one Baar Dau bit in the main story, probably a handful of other scroll usages for random junk. I also didn’t do the expacs and I haven’t played Oblivion in a while so I’m trying to avoid in depth comparisons to it. I’ll start off by saying I did enjoy it overall, and while I don’t think it stole my Favorite TES Award,  it definitely left a mark, and I think my favorite bit of it was the main quest, the tone was just something I liked more then the other two TES games and all in all the whole mysterious diseases angle felt a bit more urgent then more nebulous threats like demons and dragons. Additionally, the plot conceptually I think is just a lot more fun to think about rather then “x is attacking!”, and I think the things like ash creature ambushes and ominous dreams helped that feeling a lot. All in all I feel it was a bit better handled to boot, and I particularly liked the whole “your cover story for being in the blades is that you’re an adventurer because they’re all over the place, you’d blend in, and you’re gonna need to be fighting anyway so you might as well develop that skillset”, since it allowed for explicit breaks in the main quest line where he’d tell you to go do other stuff for a while and “keep your cover story up to date” while he did research or whatever. Added to the settling, added to the plot, added a reason to go faff around in a dungeon and maybe find something cool. Maybe. We’ll get to that.

But the cover story thing is super appreciated because it’s an issue I frequently ran into in other games where it just never really felt like you had a stopping point in the main quest line, if you were playing as if you were legitimately concerned with the status of the main quest. Like, with Skyrim you start out. . . -escape from Helgen -go down to Riverwood with whoever -they tell you Riverwood’s in potential danger so you go up and talk to the jarl -he tells you to help with his investigations of the dragons (if you’re playing a bit more apathetic of a character this could potentially be a time to step out but let’s assume a sort’ve “lawful good” here) - you go down to bleak falls barrow, come back - a dragon attacks the tower, you go investigate and fight it - End Scene; and even then I think it wouldn’t be a stretch to feel like you had to answer the summons, and that goes through a very long road trip, a dungeon, and a dragon fight before you get to a solid “I need to do things, go outside and play” style stopping point. and after all that you’re like.... an hour or two into the game? It’s not absurd but it’s quite a bit compared to silt stridering over to Balmora and getting told to go have fun, and it’s not a game breaking thing, obviously the player doesn’t absolutely have to be told to stop doing main quest stuff, but it was a nice touch that I liked. At any rate I liked the main quest, but I think the thing I was most impressed with was the travel. I went into Morrowind thinking I was going to hate wandering around 24/7 and paying fees and so on and so forth but actually it felt pretty great after a while! I came out of Morrowind preferring the “carriage” system rather then the fast travel system, just because getting more mobility options and strength in that category was interesting to me. Given that I was playing the least mobile “class” in the game; heavy armor weighs a lot which slows your ground speed (I think) and weakens your jumping, with no magic and no knowledge of how to get propylon indices working, I think that’s pretty glowing praise. I also liked the way enchanted gear worked in Morrowind, where there are usable artifacts and passive artifacts, passive artifacts just give you the boost, and usable artifacts are purposely triggered to get an effect and slowly recharge over time, which is a game changer. I know I don’t really use enchanted weapons in Skyrim because it’s not that big a boost and juggling soul gems and soul traps is a pain in the butt, but if they recharged over time I might be more inclined. Again, a nice little thing the game does differently. The graphics were wildly better then I expected, and I think the game is an excellent example of restrictions creating a unique and good looking style in some cases. The polygonal models really add a lot to the fairly eerie main quest backdrop and pretty hostile game world overall, and ultimately the game just sort’ve creates its’ own aesthetic and it’s super good despite being very obviously dated. The entire inside the ghost fence part of the end game was spooky as hell and felt very climactic despite the landscape looking like something that came out of 3D Studio Max circa 1990. And on a side note, Diyavath Fir’s tower and the Corprusarium were a really cool dungeon concept and I’m very surprised the whole “sequential treasure chests with keys in them that eventually lead to a prize” thing hasn’t been done again since IIRC. With all the praise out of the way, let’s get to stuff I was more neutral on or outright disliked (there’s surprisingly little of the latter, by the way). To start off, I felt gear progression felt super weird. I started out by buying a full set of steel armor and an iron long sword and I didn’t get an upgrade until like, halfway through my playtime, so like, two days total, and my long sword went un-upgraded even longer. After a while I found a silver long sword and about an hour after that I found a daedric katana and suddenly the game was basically over past that point because I was 2 shotting everything that wasn’t a higher end ash creature or daedra. It felt very spotty, it wasn’t a game changer or anything, and to be fair once the armor upgrades started going, that progression didn’t feel too bad either (though my shield did get upgraded from steel to daedric). Not a huge deal, but it was a thing. The end game quest line where you’re re-uniting the tribes and houses is a huge chore and also holds the only two escort missions in the game which I don’t think is a co-incidence. I liked the house quests more initially since they were more tightly packed in and had fast travel options around. . . buuuut they quickly became a gold count check. Having to get confirmation from councilors that, by their own mention, wouldn’t be necessary, was also obnoxious, though I didn’t mind that as much, as the whole declaring a war leader thing is a big deal and I can believe that from a plot standpoint. Still didn’t like it. I am aware I could’ve skipped all this with reputation, and that’s fair, but I still think as a quest line it’s a bit much; though I dunno how I’d fix it without banging up the plot significantly, to be fair. All the side quests I did were pretty bland. Lotta “go here, clear this dungeon, come back get x gold”, some “go here, fetch y guy, bring him back, get z gold”. Sometimes you didn’t even get rewarded, though the reputation system makes up for that. I ended up stopping about halfway into House Redoran because the quests were, by and large, just dungeon clear quests and I was vastly more interested in the main quest. It’s something I might take more interest in on a second play through. You can end up trivializing combat very quickly, which was probably a part of why I didn’t end up liking the end game so much. Part of that’s my fault; athletics and acrobatics were minor skills, it basically put me on a timer, and some people like the “I’m level 20 and I can crush anything in the game like a walnut” thing, which is fair. I did end up finishing it at about level 23, and I’ve heard scaling stops at 20, so that’s about right to be fair. Though I’ve also heard Dagoth Ur scales up to 35? It sure didn’t feel like it, and overall it kind’ve made the whole lead up into Dagoth’s big moment a bit of an anticlimax, I hit him like six times for the fight and I got most of the heart fiddling done before he brought me to half. A big part of why I even almost died was because I didn’t realize I had to run back over the bridge. Though that all might be a side effect of running a heavy armor warrior, IIRC they’re pretty easy, but I also did surprisingly little side stuff. It just sorta feels like if you do anything other then the main quest you’ll trivialize the final stages of it, and if you do the main quest you trivialize the extra stuff? It’s a bit of an odd problem to solve and it seems like they’ve still not gotten it quite right, to be fair. I’m trying to think of stuff I outright hated and really all I can think of is the fact that NPCs stand in “one NPC wide” hallways and doorways like it’s their job. A not insignificant part of why I gave up on Redoran is because getting through under-skar was hell because of all the guards just shuffling around on rope bridges and staring at me anytime I got anywhere near them while they clogged up the road. But yeah, overall had a good time and I probably played the least complex character type, so that’s definitely a good sign. I look forward to playing it again and playing with magic more; already thinking on an acrobat like, athletics/acrobatics/whatever magic school does jump/move speed boosts character and getting a bit more into the setting with it, eventually. I definitely get why people love the game so much and while I don’t think I hooked into it quite as hard I admit I haven’t played something quite like it before, between the aesthetics and mechanics either, and admittedly most of my complaints were half complaints, so that’s definitely not a bad track record. Will definitely play again at some point.

[missingno]

🔥 Pokémon and/or The Elder Scrolls?

This got. Really long.

Pokémon:

… Wow gen VII was a train wreck. I’m all for redeemable villains, but the problem presented was that neither Guz/ma nor Lusa were actually redeemable. Guz is noted repeatedly by his own grunts to be violent, one straight up calling him a bully, and is implied to have a pretty fucking terrible temper to the point he shatters bottles and destroys the house they’re hanging out in?? Like the grunts say that was his doing? His grunts are straight up afraid of him. He’s not very nice to you, the player either. I dunno, maybe I’m too biased because he reminds me of someone in my life but he seems way too horrible to be… Redeemed. Nor was there really any effort to show him changing… like he’s just suddenly “nice” now. At least with Archie and Maxie they were already pretty friendly to the protagonists and weren’t as threatening.

All of this criticism is two fold for Lusa. The problem is, Lusa is an INCREDIBLE villain. But GF for some reason doesn’t actually want her to be one? Sorry GF, but no, I’m actually not gonna be pleased by you redeeming a woman who abused her children. She says Lillie became beautiful and now we’re supposed to think she’s all good now? I can’t believe GF, the same company who gave us N and Ghet, are for some reason going “psyche, child abuse is okay if it’s your mom!!” They never even gave us a good fucking REASON for her acting the way she did!! Was she possessed by the Beasts?? Was she poisoned?? She was fucked up way before she fused with the jellyfish, so how the fuck does that justify her manipulating and emotionally abusing her children to the point that one runs away??? Like, Looker and Anabel are perfectly fine, so why is her contact poisoning her but not them??? WHY MAKE LILLIE HELP HER??? LILLIE, WHO WAS FUCKED UP FOR YEARS????? “Mother, you’re terrible!” to suddenly fucking off to go heal her mom because she’s “still my mom uwuwuwuwu”. That’s just such an UNBELIEVABLY BAD TAKE for a kids game to give to children. Kids with abusive moms owe said mothers FUCK ALL. There’s no justification for child abuse and it was such an unbelievably bad take I can’t believe this is from the same franchise that gave us a pretty good fukin’ take with N. She’s such a great villain, because she really makes me hate her and want to destroy her, but the game is more interested in making here a uwu mIsUnDeRsToOd BaBy than actually giving us a good villain. Who is, by the way, the only thing close to a female villain in this franchise.

Also the Ultra Beasts and Mega Evolutions are stupid but that’s just my onion there. Why are these aliens cooler than like… the OTHER aliens we have…? Like we have aliens already. Also why can some Pokémon evolve even MORE???

Also Sycamore can suck my dick but that one is absolutely because I think he’s annoying and not for any legitimate criticism.

For the Elder Scrolls:

… Todd…

I’ll start with Morrowind, since that’s where any self-respecting TES fan starts.

I’m joking, apparently Daggerfall is pretty good. I just never played it.

Anyways, Morrowind is conceptually good. I like… A lot of aspects about it. But here’s my HUGE beef with Morrowind: I work for the Imperials, yeah? And the Imperials are against slavery, yes? And House Telvanni practices slavery, mhm? So uhhhhh… WHY IS THE TWIN LAMPS QUEST NOT A MAIN QUESTLINE QUEST? WHY CAN I JOIN HOUSE TELVANNI? I DIDN’T because “slavery = bad” is an incredibly cold take at this fucking point but uhhhh hey Bethesda? What the fuck? Morrowind has a good storyline but that little fact about it kind of makes my skin crawl since it’s… So vile… I do the Twin Lamps questline of course but the fact that it’s an optional sidequest is very off-putting to me.

Plus Morrowind’s combat system sucks ass, but that definitely takes the backroads to you know. Slavery.

10/10 story but 0/10 game for letting people be slave owners because what the fuck.

Did you know Oblivion had their actors read their lines alphabetically? If you played Oblivion, you would. 

Shivering Isles is good, but both Oblivion and Skyrim suffer from the side quests being better than the main quests. In Oblivion’s Thieves Guild you have to STEAL AN ELDER SCROLL!!! Like how COOL is that!!!! Way better than the main quest where you just. Watch your buddy Martin. A lot of Oblivion’s quests feel like there could’ve been... So much more. For example, the Deep Ones. That could’ve been a really interesting quest but instead... It feels like it ended before it really began. The Mage’s Guild is just you being a hired thug for some magicians who barely teach you magic before promoting you, and the boss fight with Mannimarco is... So terrible. This man is a lich, almost a GOD, arguably BECOMES a god, and when you meet him he looks like a bitch in a dumbass Halloween costume. They did my boy Manni SO dirty. This is the KING OF WORMS and he’s treated like he’s just a bandit you have to kill and not, you know, the Necromancer’s Moon, the King of Worms, the GOD of necromancers, the man who tricked a Daedric Prince and almost got away with it. The Dark Brotherhood questline is good though, as is the Thieves’ Guild one.

Skyrim is as wide as an ocean and deep as a lake, I feel. A lot of the storylines feel half-baked. Again, the DB and TG are good questlines, but everything else feels a little... Less put together, and even those two suffer a lot. I hate the radiant quest system of post Hail Sithis! DB a lot... Mother, I am the Listener, the leader of the Black Hand, why am I the one who has to kill Idiot Farmer #3486 on a farm? I killed the EMPEROR, MOTHER! Have some respect for your favorite child! Seriously though, why can’t I pawn off these quests to the two new recruits, or to Nazir and Babette? Also why don’t the new recruits get names? Also why can’t I marry Nazir (please Todd I love him). 

Now, I don’t mind the radiant quests for the TG as much, to be honest, mostly because they’re optional and I can quit them. Plus, I like Vex and Delvin, so it makes me pretty happy to turn in quests to them. But goddamn WHYYYY do I need to go through so. Many. Fucking. RUINS?! I hate dwemer ruins with a passion, and I haaaaaaate that Blindsighted forces you to go through one. Also, somehow, the two trained thieves with my manage to alert the fucking falmer of our presence so I have to go save their asses because I’m the only healer. Also also why... Why can’t I marry Brynjolf... You give me a man who says “lad” enough to rival me, and then I can’t gently kiss his cheek?

Also the Nightingale Hall looks like shit even after you finish the quests. Which is stupid.

Also FUCK the main quest.

[tanadrin]

I think I’m starting to understand the difference in philosophies that underlies the two kinds of video game RPG better. I think of them as the Bethesda and the BioWare RPG, but more accurate terms would be the simulationist and the character-driven RPG. Which is not to say that the two categories are exclusive--they’re different points on a spectrum. The extreme simulationist RPG would be Dwarf Fortress’s Adventure Mode, where the entire world is procedurally generated ex nihilo, including attempts to procedurally generate things like history and politics and whole systems of magic. I’m not sure what the opposite would be--maybe something like the original Mass Effect, whose levels are quite cloistered, or the first Deus Ex, where you’re playing a character who is extremely defined as a person, but you still get to choose how the plot unfolds.

Each has aspects I like. I like that in character-driven games I have a strong narrative I get to operate within, and I get to make choices which affect the emotional outcome of the game. Bethesda games lack that, because for all the influence that in theory you have over the world, the ultimate outcome is usually always the same: Mehrunes Dagon is defeated, Alduin is killed, you’re sitting on a pile of treasure. What outcomes you do control tend to be binary yes/no levers (did you do the College of Winterhold quests? Congrats, you can add “Archmage” to your extremely long list of titles an honors), and moving through the game’s programmatic implementation of the plot feels more lack racking up Steam achievements than anything else.

Buuuut the price you pay for actually feeling like you inhabit these worlds is feeling like the worlds themselves are pretty two-dimensional. Skyrim was the first RPG I played where I felt a strong sense of place, like even though the experience was mediated by a computer screen and a mouse and keyboard, I could imagine what it would be like to stand on the road outside Riverwood and feel the cool breeze and look up and the foggy mountains. At the time I thought it was just the (then) shiny new graphics, but I bought Morrowind the other day just for fun, and I don’t think it is--I think placeness is just a thing Bethesda excels at in their games, because they pay close attention to it like BioWare does to characters. Morrowind’s graphics are much more primitive than Skyrim’s, but Vvardenfell definitely still has many of the same qualities Skyrim does in that respect, even with its blocky character models and super-short draw distance.

(Also, playing a little Morrowind has made me appreciate just how much the Dragonborn DLC is a love letter to Morrowind fans, which is neat.)

Are the two approaches compatible? Like, is one side of the spectrum necessarily exclusive of the other? I think they might be. The problem with the simulationist world (and this is a problem STA:GOB2:DF(AM) has in spades) is that you run the risk of a world a million miles wide and a millimeter deep (see also Elite: Dangerous, and No Man’s Sky reportedly but I haven’t played it myself), but Tarn Adams’ extreme fetish for procedural generation simply throws into relief the problem of a lot of these games, which is that random is not actually a substitute for complex, and even conceptually sophisticated Perlin noise is still just... noise. Utterly interchangeable. You can generate a million Dwarf Fortress worlds, and they’ll all be superficially identical.

Even a world like Daggerfall’s, which is the size of Great Britain, is mostly nothing. And it turns out (as fast travel and compass markers have shown us) that for most people, working your way over miles of empty country road and hunting for quest objectives is not the fun part of epic fantasy narratives, which is why most epic fantasy narratives... skip those parts.

(Tangent 1: I understand the impulse to huge fantasy worlds in video games, and I think it’s a positive one, mostly. Theme parks don’t feel real, which is why Azeroth has no sense of place. It could--it has some wonderfully atmospheric zones--but everything about the placement of NPCs and the way you interact with the world screams animatronic Presidents, Disneyland with the Burning Legion, so it lacks... worldlikeness. The problem with big, detailed, simulationist worlds is that if you’re inhabiting them from a pedestrian’s viewpoint, 99.5% of all that is going to go to waste. Either you will fast-travel past it or it will be Desert Bus With Dragons, but honestly, you don’t need to simulate weather fronts and biomes and a realistic medieval economy if all you’re doing is trying to assemble the Staff of Chaos so you can whack Jagar Tharn over the head with it. As soon as your viewpoint becomes even a little bit more elevated, though, that stuff is interesting, and even important. The fact that every merchant in Spira will buy your stuff for exactly one half the price you sell it for is an irrelevant triviality if all you ever see is one merchant’s storefront at a time. But as soon as you begin to piece together anything like a bigger picture, the world needs to make sense. I would combine this observation with the fact that no matter how important you become to the world of Skyrim, you never actually wield any political or administrative authority. Sure, nobody wants to play Dean of the College of Winterhold or have to spend half their time playing Skyrim marking freshers’ essays on the elementary principles of transmutation, but it’s also weird that you can be one of Skyrim’s foremost property owners, thane of nine holds, political counselor of the High King, and you can’t get a guard to so much as hold your horse for you while you pop into the blacksmith’s. A game where accomplishment actually translates into political authority is a game where the worldbuilder’s urge to detail every element of the life-cycle of the lesser mana stoat becomes a little more important, if, say, you need to manage the mana stoat farmers. Although that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate nods towards believability--Skyrim’s tiny-ass farms that couldn’t feed a family of four in a wintry climate, much less a tenth of a goddamn continent, are a major failure on that point. Visual believability is important. Noteworthy here also is landscape architecture: one reason Skyrim does well at placeness is that it feels reasonable, even though it’s a geographical absurdity. Something like the world of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, where even the “plains” regions are wacky moonscapes designed to maximize walking time, so as to substitute boredom for size, are failures in level design.)

(Tangent 2: I once had the idea for a fantasy film or comic book that involved all the usual players: a Scheming Villain, a Terrible Macguffin of Power, a band of Plucky Heroes, romance, war, intrigue, excitement, etc. Except all the big, exciting moments would be entirely implied; the actual story told would be of all the quiet moments between the battles and confrontations and tragic death scenes. The sitting around the campfire singing songs. The tossing and turning on hard ground or in lumpy, unfamiliar beds. The quiet conversation or the anxious exchange of looks before a battle. The moments of reflection or subtle self-doubt before committing to a course of action that could save or doom the world. I don’t actually know if it would make for an interesting story, but I think it would be a lot of fun to write.)

Bethesda for its part is firmly committed to the tabula rasa silent protagonist, and I think that’s a mistake. I don’t think you increase player agency in a world where your protagonist must remain mute, I think you only highlight the disconnect. I may be unusual here, but one of the things I love most about BioWare games, and which makes me feel most embedded in their plots and connected to their characters, is the fact I get to hear both sides of the conversation, and how I choose to respond has a lasting effect on the kind of person the other characters seem to understand me to be. That feels much more interesting to me that the cipher that moves through Bethesda worlds, about which little can be known, because little can be specified. Yes, such a cipher can have any history you want, but only because such a cipher can have no substantive history--so, like the details of a procedurally generated world, the history of such a protagonist, their motivations and intent, is rendered trivial. And for escapist fantasy, where part of the goal is to not be trivial, but to be important, vital even, I think that’s a failure. Unless your goal is to, like, RP a cabbage merchant, in which case--success!

What I really want, what I really feel is a seriously under-appreciated possibility in video game RPGs, is an open world with some of the simulationist aspects, but built around, or laid on top of, a strong central plot skeleton. One with rich character interaction and consequential, emotional choices (and no, Dawnguard does not qualify), and I think the payoff would be that we are so used to vast worlds that are ultimately quite shallow that even a few substantive concessions in this direction would feel like we had suddenly discovered benthic depths.

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Uhm... Steph you do know that WoW isn't pay to win? I mean sure you need a subscription and the current expansion... But unless you don't want any extras like pets or "horses" you grind. That's wow like it always was. And the expansions usually contain stuff way more than "new horses" whole new story whole new zones quests and leveling. You do sound like you know nothing about it but please for the love of God. Don't judge it based on your low experience. It is indeed good (1)

You just don't know it yet. The cinematics blizzard recently made plus ingame cutscenes are one of the most amazing things I've ever seen next to detroit: Become human. The story is so well done and it really captures you with the tiny little details they placed in their world like charming funny little creatures talking very high and asking shit like "ahh you're so tall" or something like that. One guy who wasn't in the original story and wasn't planned said something along the lines: (2)

(referencing this post)

... Okay, I’m not sure if you realized you did it, but the second you added “Uhm” to the beginning of this ask, it turned into a rude “I know better than you, you stupid person” ask into a mansplaining blurb that my eyes just glazed over and took 10 times for me to read it all without rolling my eyes.  The second half of your ask you’re a civilized person who looks like you want to discuss, which is the only reason why I’m giving this any attention.

Plus it looks like there was supposed to be a third part but it never came in, so apologies, that’s why I never posted if if there was a third piece; I waited about an hour and I never saw anything, so here we are.

But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you didn’t know, and didn’t read what I wrote, because I SPECIFICALLY STATED later on:

[...] World of Warcraft: looks like good fun but I’m not really into Online games, and over the years I’ve HEARD that it’s become more about microtransactions (don’t know for certain)

Meaning I wasn’t SURE if it was or not, just I was told by people, and I am seeing now that they must have meant because they wanted flaming horses or swords or whatever. What I do know for certain is it is a subscription-based game you HAVE to play online, and what if I don’t WANT to play online? And again, it’s about the physical with me. I think that’s why I like the tabletop version because I love the detail that people put into their figures and the boards (though I may be thinking of Magic... My sister’s partner has both

Anyway, I am here to say: I am SORRY. I made a presumption based on what I’ve been told rather than doing 2 seconds of research before commenting. But It still doesn’t change my feelings on subscription-based mmo’s. I don’t like mmo’s, and I’m sorry if that bothers anyone. We’re all allowed to like what we like. It LOOKS LIKE FUN THOUGH, and if they made a Skyrim-like version of the game where I don’t have to have my system online to play it, and there’s an actual game ending but has a tonne of side quests that I can clock.... *checks Skyrim playtime* 302 hours on and still not finish the main story, then sign me up, I’ll take it. I’d seriously buy it in a heartbeat. I like feeling like I’ve finished a game, rather than working towards a never-ending goal... I get enough of that at my actual job XD

Anyway, Nonny, I’m not cross with you. Truth, I know nothing about this game aside from second hand accounts from people, and I am sorry.