Flashback: [ES5] Must've had some Bad Grain or Something

Another of my Flashback series - here's a post from way back in November last year. Skyrim was fresh and now, and there was nought for a boy to do other than intentionally cause the merciless slaughter of poultry.

If you cast frenzy on a chicken he will attack you for no damage and, as long as they didn't see you cast the spell, the locals will fly to your aid and pummel the poor bird to death with whatever they can find.

It's a funny ol' game.

EDIT!



Must have had some REALLY bad grain!

[Skyrim] Mod my Mount

y fancy-pants new computer was installed at the weekend. And what better way to put it through its paces than to crank Skyrim’s graphics settings up to max and throw myself back into the life as the Dragonborne? As part of my upgrade I wiped my hard drive and my saved games along with it, so I started again similar my previous “bard” class (unarmoured, speechcraft, blade, bow, sneak and illusion) except with the speechcraft element removed and replaced by enchanting.


This time around I decided to enhance my experience with mods. I don’t tend to play the ones which add the “Greatsword of Uber-Pwnage!” or ones which spawn Mammoth-Hide Armour in the centre of Whiterun, I always feel like those kind of mods detract from the immersion as they tend to come with stilted dialogue, somewhat unrefined graphics and awkward or non-existent voice acting.

Instead, I tend to go for mods which enhance my experience or add little features to make the game more realistic or balanced, such as the Sounds of Skyrim mods I downloaded on Monday. This nifty little mod adds over 90 extra sounds to dungeons, caves, forts and other little adventurer’s playgrounds. The sounds are tailored to the enemy found in the dungeon (distant screeches for Falmer-filled Dwemer Ruins, skittering bats and eerie echoes for vampire caves, or clanks and creaking gates for lonely old forts) and seamlessly blend into the background noise of the dungeon as a whole.

I did embed a nice little video here, but it was far too big and it went over the right hand menu. So click this link to YouTube for a little looksie!


Another example is a simple little mod called "Dynamic Merchants" which alters the way you interact with the various vendors around the world. The more you visit a specific merchant, the better off they will be – with more gold for trade and different items available to those you really favour. What this means is that instead of thinking “oh hell, I’ll just go to the nearest black-market Khajit salesman – who cares if he smells of Skooma and has blood under his fingernails? I can’t be arsed to walk back to Whiterun” you actually make the effort to speak to the same vendor almost every time (I tend to favour the general supplies in Whiterun and Riverwatch, and the smith in Riften) because you’re able to get the most out of them.

If you’ve been playing the Elder Scrolls games since Morrowind (or earlier) you’ll know that installing player made mods can be a bit of a picky process: extracting the files to the right locations, making sure you overwrite where appropriate and that confirming that it doesn’t conflict with any of the other hundreds of mods you might have running at any one time. This process was somewhat simplified by later programs such as Wrye Bash and others which managed the mods for you, but it still required a bit of micro-management. With the latest game being supported by the Steam Workshop, most of these problems are eliminated. Downloading, installing and keeping up to date with mods is as simple as clicking “Subscribe”. Each time you load the game, Steam automatically checks for updates to the mods and makes changes where appropriate. The upshot is that I find myself trying mods out left, right and centre – because I know that I don’t have to keep a tab on them like I had to for Morrowind and Oblivion.

Player-made mods are as integral to the Elder Scrolls experience as dark elves, dungeons and daedric skullduggery. I can’t imagine playing one of the series without eventually delving into the murky depths of the modding community. The Steam Workshop is an absolute god-send, and frankly I’m flabbergasted by how easy it all is – if you’re still playing Vanilla, I suggest you try at least one or two of the top mods, when it’s this easy, there really is no excuse.

[ES5] Must have had some bad grain or something...

If you cast frenzy on a chicken he will attack you for no damage and, as long as they didn't see you cast the spell, the locals will fly to your aid and pummel the poor bird to death with whatever they can find.

It's a funny ol' game.

[ES5] The Inevitability of Getting Ahead of the Curve

One of the things about Bethesda games is that feeling when you hit level 50 or so and no matter how high you bump that difficulty you seem to cut through nasties like a flaming Shish-ka-bob through guar-butter. I’m nearing that point at level 18 in Skyrim.
I haven’t bumped the slider up by much yet, maybe about 10-15% since it started getting really easy. I’m hoping to crank it up to 100% difficulty before I start hitting max level on skills.

My build of Heavy Armour + Block + One Handed Weapons + Enchanting + Smithing + Alchemy does make me rather overpowered. My exquisitely smithed heavy armour plate not stopping you? Oh well, I’ll pop a health potion. Casting fireballs, eh? Good job my armour is enchanted with magic resistance!

Any weapon or armour I pick up can be almost immediately smithed into a “superior” or “exquisite” version – giving me greater damage/armour. I can then toddle off to Whiterun’s resident court-wizard, buy a grand soul gem and stick a fire enchantment or magic resistance on it for extra oomph.

Admittedly, I do still struggle a little with mages. My orc, unlike my breton, doesn’t have any inherent magical resistance so has been toasted many a time, but I’m hoping that very soon I’ll be able to pick up the +50% elemental resistance with my shield raised perk and turn myself into a walking talking killing machine.

Couple my suped-up gear with the vast number of stews I’ve cooked which gift me nearly infinite stamina and I can pretty much shield-bash my way through dungeons, laughing maniacally as eyeballs and spinal cords fly past my grizzled maw. Fus-Ro-Da’ing my merry way into the center of an angry bandit camp is particularly enjoyable – watching as their lifeless bodies clatter against their flimsily constructed log-walls – and nothing compares to the feeling of reacting to their cries of “I’ll get you!” and “this is the last mistake you’ll ever make!” by turning their heads into volleyballs with one swift swing of my blade and hurling them into a lake, still wearing their expression of confusion and regret.

I think I had a point to this post, but got kind of lost in the gloriously bloody mess of it all.

[ES5] Early Skyrim Tips

I’ve put together a few little tips I’ve picked up from my first *checks* OMG 28 hours, on Skyrim. The list is by no means exhaustive, so if you’d like to drop any of your own tips in the comments section I’d be much obliged!


1) If you are playing a character that uses a shield, utilise the Shield Bash attack. Hold down the block button and then hold the attack button to smash your shield in the face of the enemy. It interrupts attacks and spells – even on larger enemies such as dragons. At later stages, you can unlock a perk which slows time if you are blocking when an enemy power attacks – allowing you to smash them in the face, causing them to stagger and putting you on the front foot to unleash a barrage of power attacks and quick slices. Once you reach a rhythm you can cycle attacks, shouts and bashes to keep your foe constantly reeling.

2) Bind weapons and spells to your number keys. This is a feature which I feared hadn’t made the trip from Oblivion to Skyrim, until @KingStGreibach educated me. Oddly, you can only bind weapons from the favourites menu. So, hit F over an item in your inventory to add it to your favourites, then in your favourites menu, hit the number you wish to bind it to. It is useful for easily switching between spells, bows and melee weapons if you have a large and unwieldy favourites list like I do. Unfortunately, it can be a little difficult to juggle which items are going into which hand and it would be so much simpler if we could hit 1 on two different weapons to create a weapon set (waiting eagerly for the mod). I believe you can bind weapons to your D-pad on the consoles too.

3) Listen to your locks. Just as in Fallout 3, when you are playing the little lockpicking minigame the clunking and shifting sounds of the bolts isn’t random – there is a specific sound which is made when you hit the sweet spot. It sounds like all of the bolts shifting up at once, but not falling down again. That’s when you should turn. It takes time to learn, and it can be very frustrating, but eventually you’ll find that you can identify the correct spot pretty quickly and save yourself a lot of picks and time (and torn out hair).

4) Read the expensive books. There is several novels’ worth of literature in Skyrim, however, you can identify which tomes will rank up your skills by looking at their prices. Usually anything above about 20 gold will contain a nice little bump to one of your skills. That’s not to say you shouldn’t read the other, more budget-priced, books: some will start quest lines, others add map markers or give clues to the whereabouts of hidden treasure.

5) Use your Clairvoyance. I’ve found that one of the most useful spells to use is the Illusion spell “Clairvoyance” – especially in dark and winding caves where you can see the exit is somewhere west, but you’ve got 3 different paths you could potentially take. Cast this spell and a magical aura spreads out in front of you and snakes its way towards your destination. Even for a non-magical character this can be extremely useful especially in the early stages of the game. It may eat your magicka but you can cast it for just a couple of seconds to give yourself an idea of where to head next.

6) Stay rested. Resting in a bed before adventuring will give you the “Well rested” bonus and give you a boost to your exp gain. Plus, who likes adventuring in the dark - get to bed, fool!

7) Elemental magics have different effects. Fire magic deals the most base damage, and tends to cause the foe to burn for longer after the spell is cast. Ice drains stamina, and is good for stopping your enemy from unleashing power attacks. Lightning drains magicka, so is good for taking down mages. The same goes for elemental enchantments on weapons.

8) Finally, DO NOT shoot the chickens. You’ll have to pay a fine. Seriously.

[ES5] Skyrim Review: Arnold Dracunegger!

It's a little early for a proper review, but the amount of hours I've clocked on Skyrim since it plopped through my letterbox midday Friday kind of rules out me calling it a "first impressions" so here it is - my pseudoreview of Skyrim.

Plot + Sidequests
Dragons. Of course. You can't go two steps this financial year without bumping into a knapsack full of dragons. Hey, can you pass me the salt? - oh, I'm sorry, there's a dragon in the way. Must be because of the Chinese new year.

As usual, you are "the one". In fact, you turn out to be "the one" in a lot of senses. I'm working through a particular guild's storyline and it turns out that not only am I "the one" in terms of being the Dragonborne but I'm also "the one" in terms of being the only person to whom a particularly crispy dead lady will talk. The main story, so far at least, is fairly standard fantasy fare. Dragons bad, kill dragons, use your new found powers to find and kill big badass dragon. Game over.
Well, I say that, I'm not actually far enough through the story to see if Bethesda have thrown in some insane plot twists. I've been far too distracted by the typically bewildering number of side-quests, dungeons, bandit holes, castles, forts, dwemer ruins and guild plots in which to get embroiled.

In Skyrim, as soon as you walk through the city gates there is a scene being played out in front of you. When I entered one city I was witness to a brutal murder, another and I watched as two burly nords bullied a local dark elf, another and a traitor was being brutally beheaded. There is always something happening and something to do. Oblivion had much the same thing, although it felt a bit more structured - you always knew that every town would have a mages guild, fighters guild and a thieves guild, and there would be various little quests to pick up about town but usually you had to go looking for them.

It was a little odd not to be directed straight towards a guild hall. I'd started a sneaky light armoured bowman so I knew I'd be straight off to join the thieves guild, but it was ages before I even knew how to find them and even when I did find out (on a tooltip during one of the loading screens) their base was in a far flung city and it took me a good half an hour to walk there (this was before I discovered the handy horse-and-cart fast travel system). When I eventually could start the thieves guild storyline I wasn't disappointed, I even got to a particularly spectacular part where, having battled with an invisible foe atop a gigantic statue of an elf, I had to find my way out of an Aladdin-esque cave of wonder as it quickly filled with water. And that wasn't even the final quest! When this amount of effort is put into what is essentially a side quest, you know you're on to a winner.


Graphics and Audio
It's a beautiful game, there's no ignoring it. The landscapes are fantastic - at first I worried that the almost constant snow I was experiencing once I got out into the world would obscure the beautiful sweeping landscapes which were so abundant in Oblivion, but once I started to explore and the snowstorm lessened, the vast world spread out ahead of me. One interesting thing to note is their use of light - it really is fantastic, and creates some pretty epic dungeon moments. They've obviously taken a lot of time to get it just right, even to the point of having your eyes take time to adjust to different lighting conditions. I can't really appropriately describe what Skryim is like, so here's a couple of screenshots:

By the way, with that last image - I'd avoid that area if I were you, unless you have an army in tow, of course. Nuff said.

The audio, similarly, is fantastic. They've put together a really beautiful score and it adds to the whole ambiance of every dungeon, sweeping valley or murky castle hall. The ambient sound audio is also excellent, I hurry away from swinging blade traps because the swoosh and slice of those flying axes is almost deafening. I hear most enemies before I see them, particularly howling wolves and the cries of an angry dragon.

I do have one small question though: where on earth did they get the accents for the nords from? You can be speaking to one guy and he will sound like Count Dracula whereas the next will be Arnold Schwarzenegger, one second you're talking to a guy with a Glaswegian bark and the next guy sounds like the Swedish chef from the muppets. It's not a bit issue, just amusing that they've managed to squeeze a linguistic span which traverses almost a whole continent into just one country.

Gameplay
The combat in Skryim has been greatly improved over Oblivion. Magic and physical attacks can now be used simultaneously as you can add different weapons and items to each hand (ie, you could dual wield swords, or have a fire spell in your left and a dagger in your right, you can even dual wield different magic spells and combine their effects). It really adds a new element into designing your character - am I a noble sword and board paladin? Am I a crazy dual axe wielding orc beserker? Am I a wizened old mage with a staff and a lightning bolt spell? Personally I went for the "shoot you in the eye with an arrow from about a mile away and hide" route, and it works pretty well. They've also added in slo-mo killing moves, which add a whole new cinematic feel to close-combat.

What is also quite nice to see is that they've made a concerted effort to introduce the puzzle element back into the game. Whilst, admittedly, most of your adventuring is going to hinge on your combat ability, there is plenty for the sneaky thieves and those who like a good puzzle to get their teeth into. The enhanced menu system really helps here, as you are able to open up your inventory and manipulate every single item in the game. This means that Bethesda can put little puzzles and clues onto an item if they wish - such as the image below (SPOILER btw!) where you have to examine the item in your inventory to learn the combination for the locked door.

Leveling has changed a lot - every action you undertake increases a skill and each time you do this it gives a little exp towards your next level. With the new Fallout 3 style perk system I really look forward to every level I'm able to attain. It adds a nice little bonus for the work you've put in. Plus, with a couple of the perks I've picked up, it means I can slow down time like in the Matrix! Swwweeeeeeettt!

Alright, let's wrap it up:
It's a beautiful game and if you were thinking about getting it then my opinions won't sway you in the matter at all. In fact, from what I can gather almost every person on the planet has a copy of this game by now: my Steam friends list was jam packed with people playing it over the weekend (I myself have almost hit 24 hours which is both depressing and inspiring in almost equal measure).

When I got to Friday evening (having clocked in a good few hours by then) I was starting to question whether Bethesda had made any real advancements from Oblivion, but having played it like a crazed crack addict since then, I can confirm that Skyrim outstrips its predecessor by quite a way and the differences become more apparent the longer you play. Graphics are sharper, audio is richer, gameplay and combat is more varied and interesting, and whilst the plot seems fairly fantasy-standard there are so many side-plots that you will be engaged for months. In many ways its is familiar fare for Elder Scrolls veterans, but it adds so many little tweaks and unusual little changes that you can't help but consume it like Brian Blessed at a wedding reception buffet.

Milestones - How can I make Time Faster?

The next big game milestone for me is Batman: Arkham City and that's not until October. That's right - OCTOBER! What on Earth am I going to do till then?

And it's true - when it rains, it pours. November sees Uncharted 3 (still working my way through the first game, but it's a lot of fun and I'll probably eventually get this), Modern Warfare 3, Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Saint's Row the Third and, of course, Skyrim. That's going to be one hell of a month.
Ultimately, Skyrim will probably win out and dominate my November, December and pretty much every waking second until Guild Wars 2.

The only problem with this is that I'll be missing out on so many other nuggets of hot fried gold which are on offer.