Wednesday 29 January 2014

So... Skyrim

It may be sufficient to simply say that I downloaded a mod to make a character marriable and then decided to not use that mod because the marriage dialog wasn't in character enough.

Video games that give you choices usually don't give you many choices.  When you sit across the table from people and play a roleplaying game you have a very wide variety of options, but video games are necessarily limited by what the designers imagined for you.  Sometimes a physics engine can allow novel solutions, but one area where you really don't find novel solutions is dialog.

So while Skyrim does often present me with choices that I don't like that much, I've actually been very impressed with how well they've allowed me to feel like I am making real decisions despite the fact that I am choosing one of two preset sentences from a list.

At any rate, I found myself really playing a character that I developed as I went through the game.  I started a second game and I'm alternating between the two different playthroughs.  This lets me play different combat styles, but it also lets me make different choices in how to approach the game.  I might start a third game soon just to do a stealth game.

I ended up paying $36 for Skyrim, but since it looks like I'll probably literally play it for 300 hours, I feel like that's probably a reasonable deal.  Steam really encourages me to wait for massive sales, but sometimes it's just better to get good things.

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