Category: Elder Scrolls

and the retraction

So look, the Mod selling seems like a good idea.  I don’t think it’s particularly bad or evil–that’s a natural extension of the Steam Workshop and people put hundreds of hours into their mods that we enjoy and would likely push some cash to.  The people that made the original game legally need to get paid in this situation too, and Steam itself.  Seems all logical, but I can see where things would go terribly wrong, and did.  Now that the gaming internet (at least the lords and masters of the glorious race of PC gamers) exploded with vitriol over the IMPLEMENTATION of money for Mods on Steam and the retraction has happened quickly.  I think if they work on the implementation, this may actually work out fine.

The thing that this should teach us is this:

1) Valve isn’t evil.  And if they don’t have more money than they know what to do with already, I’d be absolutely shocked.

2) Bethesda isn’t evil.  They are in a much more tenuous position than Valve, so they need to make money.  One bad Elder Scrolls (which I don’t think could happen based on what I know about the company), not including the MMO, could tank their studio.  These guys have to squeeze the lemon as hard as they can to even survive.  They just need to watch out for stooping to Zynga style shit…

3) We matter as consumers.  As shitty people saying shit on the shitty internet we really don’t, but since we, of the GLORIOUS RACE of PC GAMERS are consumers of everything steam, voting with our money or the threat of it his a huge incentive not to collectively piss us off.

My simple solution?  Put a DONATE button on mods and the original software developer and steam take a single, small cut each transaction.  Will people still steal other people’s mods? Probably, but it solves a major problem just slapping a donate button on there.

Xmas vacation!!!

Have a Kathy Ireland Christmas

As of last night I am officially on Xmas vacation. This means GAMING. I got in a game of Agricola and Dreamblade last night with my buddy JP who has the pleasure of having worked quite a large chunk of the last few years on that little game we call Skyrim.  I pumped him for information which he was happy to give since the game was OUT– a far cry from last year when we couldn’t get him to say anything about this new ES game.

It looks like we’re going to get in on the most vicious of all games during the off week: Republic of Rome and try out the new fangled (not that it hasn’t been out for awhile) Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd edition.  What’s more, a big game of Cosmic Encounter is in the works as well.  I promise to post something stupid every day about what ever sort of nerd crap we are all doing.  I know I will be trying to plow through my beastmen army, but I started getting an interest again in EPIC 40K and pulled out all that old stuff to give it a painting improvement before hopefully getting in a game. If anyone wants to read a run down of the sad epic (pun intended) of this failed game: read here.   It wasn’t because it was not a great design, it was because no one would give it a chance that played the old version.

As for useless and redundant blog posts, I also want to give a run down of 2011’s games that were great and those that were disappointments. We have had the greatest deluge of AAA class titles in human history this Fall, and there just won’t be a year like this for probably another decade.. but I digress. Vacation. Nerdery. Drinking. Yes!

SKYRIMMED!

The Dark elves look far better in Skyrim than oblivion, though that hat doesn't match too good.

It’s finally out!  Only a few hours in and it’s showing it’s quality in the combat, systems and graphics.  The metacritic score speaks for itself at ninety SIX.   While I liked Oblivion a lot, especially the Shivering Isles expansion (that just had excellent writing throughout) I felt Morrowind was the stronger game– though certainly not technically nor graphically– heck modders were able to make far better PC/NPC heads than Bethesda did back then, and by far better I really mean it,  so my hope with Skyrim is that it tops Morrowind by far.

Here is a tweak guide for PC users:  http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=27073178#item_27073178.  Big thing is to increase the Field of View if you are running in the FPS view (which is good for finding the small stuff).

My main love so far is that you can SWIM IN THE FUCKING CREEKS!  And I don’t mean just on the surface! Like Morrowind, you can go under the water and look around and, of course, find stuff.  Otherwise, like Fallout, for as big as the Skyrim world is, there is a shocking amount of detail to the environments– not RAGE level, which is wonderment incarnate, but close.

You still can’t make a pretty girlface via the custom creator.  In that this is no different than oblivion or fallout.  All the girls you can make for each race are fug ugs.

a little wiggle

I felt it!  I was testing an app and I thought the screen had wiggled but it was everything.  That was my official first earthquake (that I can remember anyway) and let’s hope that’s about as strong as they come.  Thankfully Bethesda is OK and the earth rim won’t effect Skyrim.

 

The deluge of Skyrim info begins

Not sure how much of this is official, but here is quite a bit of info on the game.  It all looks good, and it’s definitely got some Fallout in there.  Here are the most important bits as I see it:

No Classes
There’s really no reason to have classes in these games when it comes right down to it, the player will focus on whatever skills and traits they feel they need, whether for fighting or for sneaking around or seduction.  What this also trashes is the min-max class selection– i.e.: if you want to be a wizard, this is the class/race combo that is the best.

Sprinting
Yay, you can sprint.

Each hand does some stuff
Apparently you can dual wield, or have one hand do some fireball action while the other swings a sword.