I'm... Dragonborn!

I know I have not been posting. It's been weeks! I'm sorry! It's just... but... I'm dragonborn! And the taste of dragon souls is just delicious. Even if a bear decides to charge me while I'm happily sucking up a dragon soul and mauls me in my low HP state.

Skyrim is the first of the Elder Scrolls series that I've had the pleasure to play. The game is fantastic. I'm level (EDIT!) 17 and have begun to avoid the main story line quest. There is so much to explore, so much to collect and create. It fulfills all the things I would like in a single player RPG: slaughtering things, constant ego stroking, making things, hoarding things, and shouting things to death. I always respected the power of voice, so how much cooler can it get? Not much!

I promise I will not put any spoilers in this post. My fellow Skyrim addicts know I've been pretty bitchy and whiny about spoilers. I made my own channel that I could hide in when folks would start talking about the game, even about the equipment they find. Technically, that is not a spoiler, but lalalalalaaaa I just don't wanna know alalalalalalalaaaa...

The game is (almost)endless. Just the perks section is this circle of possible main categories, and each category then has an entire tree of its own, unlocked by category level and also by getting the preceding perks of that tree. You can find perk details here on a wiki page, if you want to see the perks and haven't got the game yourself. While you're leveling up, there is a main mission tree, but also tons, absolute TONS, of side quests, misc missions, locations to explore on the map, respawning dungeons and things to kill and destroy. Everywhere you go, you can pick up respawning ingredients to brew pots, hunt for food and materials to craft gear. You can explore endlessly, and I'm sure that was the intent.

NPC interactions are generally a bit predictable, but I have had some VERY pleasant surprises. During one mission (not going to say which or what), you enter the rendezvous point and overhear your mission giver talking to some others about you. While the other are yakking on about how they predict you'll be complete crap and never make it to the rendezvous, he turns around and basically says, "Oh yeah? Well look what we have here!" I know its programmed for when you enter, but its a great touch and immersion points are deserved. Plus, see my previous mention of ego stroking. The game basically strokes your ego the entire time and we all need that from time to time! (Is it sad that it makes me happy to be awesome and envied and respected in a game? I mean... I'm dragonborn! I deserve it!)

On the PC, the game is just stunning. I am able to run it on ultra with the crossfire enabled, but I do still get frame freezes if I try to give myself whiplash. I have not seen it on console, but my prediction is it just is not going to look as good. If you have a console, feel free to send me some screenshot links to prove me wrong, but I really just can not see how it can be matched. Anyway, did I mention the game is stunning? Facial features are ridiculously smooth, the stuff that doesn't matter are gracefully lower quality so your eyes can focus on the stuff that you can actually interact with. I love that! Instead of making it extremely obvious 'outline-it-in-neon-and-make-it-glow', the game gives more focus to elements you can interact with. Immersion +1point. Salmon jump over the crests of waterfalls, which was a sweet thing I noticed that actually caught my attention. How detailed is that!? I spent a good minute just watching these salmon swimming and leaping against the current.

Finding missions isn't really difficult. You can expect to be able to pick up at least a couple of missions from any npc location you go to. I have a hefty stack of side quests already and I haven't really been actively trying to pick them all up. This is probably the most mechanical part of the game, you can walk up to the npc equivalents of every town and expect to get missions from them. Some people will walk past you and complain about this or that, and if you really want to, you can stop and talk to them. Though some just want more alcohol. Typical.

I haven't really gotten that far (I'm level (EDIT)17 still!) so I'm sure I will encounter plenty of new things to slap around, or get slapped about by, soon enough. So far, the combat has been generally challenging. I've died plenty of times and had to run from a good few fights in the beginning. The sneak mechanic is a very cool and lets you gauge how alerted the enemy is to your presence. You can expect to find the usual encounter mechanics, aka, enter a large open room, step forward, and trigger things that want to axe you. See a room of goodies, walk forward, and get slammed in the face by a grid of spikes. That sort of thing. A few bosses I have encountered have probably been above my level, skill level and player capabilities, but I've been able to cheat the game a bit and get myself into difficult/impossible to get to positions in order to poke them to death with arrows. To date, my record is 112 arrows for one boss. No, there really was no other way for me to kill him.

You get your own house(s). You can even get it decorated for you and there is so much storage space! The bookshelves don't store a ton of books, but of the books you can store, it arranges them on the shelf for you. But I've still dozens of books that sit in a chest somewhere. I collect them for when I'm bored and want to read the contents. Some of the books actually can be helpful (and long winded) tips for your in game encounters. My only complaint about the house is its pretty much impossible to decorate it yourself without the contents of your home flinging themselves in random directions every time you turn around. I can't count how many times I've put that jumpy bit of seared slaughterfish back on that kitchen plate. I'm not eating that.

Obligatory summary on my play style. I have not been planning my perks or really picking anything in particular to skill in. I assign points in whatever I enjoy using and choose perks from point to point. I might regret it in the end if I'm not powerful enough, but I'm not worried about that until it happens! My perks usually go into conjuration, restoration and destruction. My combat begins with conjuration and maybe a bit of destruction if the fight is particularly tough. Otherwise I run around macing everything. Generally on a boss/dragon fight, I will lay down an atronach, put a few poisoned arrows into my target if I have the chance to, charge up to it while it is (hopefully) distracted with my atronach and give it dual poisoned maces to the face. Stamina drained, I circle back to using destruction/restoration until I sink my mana, then frantically start sucking down potions/food so I can do it all over again. Typically the end of a dragon fight involves me macing it to death. Of course, this also often ends in the dragon getting a nifty cinematic kill move involving my lifeless body being thrown around in its jaws.

Tomorrow is my last day of work before the Thanksgiving weekend. If I don't manage to clock at least 40 hours on Skyrim during this holiday, I'm going to be sad. EDIT: Opps. Apparently I'm level 17 still. Not 19... Eh...