Breaking News: Angry People Online Angry At Other People! (NSFW)

People are angry.  And not just angry, violently angry.  I brought this up briefly at the beginning of the month regarding Konami's cancellation of Silent Hills and the outcry regarding the destruction and imminent failure of the studio due to disappointing their most fervent (violently aggressive) and devoted fans.  This morning, Bethesda Softworks tweeted/instagrammed/social media'd a 12 second teaser of a Revenant shooting/screaming at something it apparently is not rather fond of.  And let me tell you, the outpouring of support for a new game in this beloved franchise has been so incredibly heartfelt.

Just a warning, the rest of this article will contain language, both taken directly from the interwebs as well as general sentiment interpreted and reworked by me in order to make a point.  I feel odd to mention that I do not, in fact, agree with genocide of any magnitude upon anyone.

And it's not even that those who apparently only want to see Fallout 4 released by Bethesda to be announced/released at E3 this year as being the game, that for lack of a better and friendly term, unfriendly people here really want to see/hear about.  Even some of those in favor of the development by id Software and release by Bethesda Softworks of Doom by taking a defensive position are just as crass in their response to people complaining about no Fallout 4 announcement.

I can only imagine what Tumblr, Pintrest, 4chan, digg, fark, forbes and reddit all have to say about the people on the other side of their personal opinion.  And no, I am not going to be looking.  I can only take so much of people yelling at their screens about their displeasure expecting a sudden 180 in a company's decision.  Like someone at Bethesda and id will be scratching their heads in a years time wondering why no one said anything about their bad decision to develop and release an updated vision of a game that kickstarted the fps genre.  If only they had bothered to actually listen to what the rest of the world and not the people tasked with writing and designing their own product.

I genuinely wonder what occurred in these people's lives that have made them believe that demanding that what they want is what everyone else wants.  That by making demanding in a derogatory manner will give them what it is that they so desperately crave.  Has yelling "I want General Mills to release the Super Mario Bros. cereal again fucking-damnit!" ever worked out?  For anyone?  At the end of a relationship, do they yell "If you leave me I'm going to commit genocide on your mother fucking family!"  Has company ever been thankful for the "Hey, leave them alone for making a game you don't want to play you whining bitch faggots!" comments that are left in their defense?  When has ever threatening a company or complaining like someone whining while online ever given someone their way?

The comments that really get me are the ones that sound like "No one cares about Doom, everyone wants Fallout 4!  Why don't you listen to your fans!?"  Which are usually followed up by some conglomeration of "Shut the fuck up whining fallout fanboy piece of shit!  Doom is amazeballs!"  Meanwhile, Bethesda is over in the corner drinking themselves into an early grave wondering why they didn't listen to their real fans and publish a game that real gamers actually want to play and not this Doom shit.  Sarcasm.

I saw similar fallout (eh?) when The Chinese Room announced that their upcoming game Everybody's Gone to the Rapture was announced as a Playstation 4 exclusive, which included infuriated statements.  I read statements wanting The Chinese Room to fail with their game resulting in the closing of the company and that people would cancel their pre-order of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs as a sign of protest against PS4 exclusivity.  As a fan of both Dear Esther and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, I was saddened to hear that EGttR was going to be an exclusive, but I wasn't up in arms wishing for the failure of the studio and death upon everyone associated with the company.  

Granted not everyone wanting Fallout 4 wants to bomb Bethesda back to the stone age until they create Fallout 4 (or Elder Scrolls VI: [Insert Name of Desired Geographical Tamriel Province that You Think Everyone Will Only Want to Play in and Everyone Can Suck a Bag of Dicks Because They're Wrong, Obviously]).  Some people just leave "Fallout 4" as a comment, and while it can be annoying to see a page full of a game's title on a teaser video for a different game, at least those people are not threatening to set a person's dog of fire (Bioware helpfully suggests not to pet them).

I'm just going to stop as I know that I could just go on and on (and on some more) often repeating myself and how I view the people who apparently feel that complaining in the above referenced (and shown) manner will get them what they want.  See, I was just about to do it again, but I stopped.  That's called self control.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

How Blind Can You Be, Don't You See?

The Flashlight of Doom

I first saw Doom 3 back in 2006 when Vorlynx was playing it.  I saw him get as far as shortly after the lights went off and the infamous choice between flashlight or gun was the ultimate question.  I myself played Doom 3 back in 2010 knowing full well what I was getting into, knowing that the choice between seeing an enemy and not seeing potentially a dozen denizens of Hell was the choice to be made.

By this time I already knew of the duct tape mod but I knew that the game had been created with the idea that the game could be played without a constant light source.  I could not believe that that would be an oversight by both id and the game testers.  The game could be played and completed with the game played as is, without the duct tape mod, designed as is.  So, that is the way I played the game.

Granted, I did require Vorlynx's help, but I have previously talked about that and it happened in a very well lit portion of Hell, so it had nothing to do with the lack of light.

I will hipsterize myself and say that I am proud of the fact that I could go from beginning to end without the use of the flashlight mod.  Although not using the flashlight did not leave Duke completely in the dark as the area would be illuminated by the muzzle flash, which I felt was more terrifying as creatures lumbered towards you and you filled them with bullets upon bullets upon plasma blast upon everything else in your arsenal.

When Bethesda released the BFG edition of Doom 3, the duct tape mod came pre-attached and I personally am glad that I bought the Doom pack on Steam before the revamped edition.  I however, do not know if the now soldered mod is able to be turned off, but I would imagine that is should be.

This was a similar issue with the first Dementium: The Ward game from Renegade Kid.  In the sequel, Dementium II, the ability to hold a flashlight and a single handed weapon became available.  Again, for single handed weapons only.  If you wanted to hold a shotgun/assault rifle/flame thrower you were unable to hold or attach the flashlight since, as obviously both hands were occupied with your death dealing boomsticks.  This adaptation from the first game I was perfectly fine with as it was created and implemented by the creators.

But now here is where the potential hypocritical view comes into play.  Why would I be fine with the flashlight in one game and not with a similar modification in another game?  I think it really comes down to the audience reaction being "I'm going to make this game better/playable because you didn't when you made the game."  The difference I find is that Dementium could not be modded so the change to Dementium II was made by the developers, but only to a certain extent that made sense within the game.  

Now, if Doom 4 were to have the option of having a flashlight mount on two handed guns, I think I would be fine with that mainly because the game would be made with that in mind as opposed to the afterthought that the Duct Tape Mod was.  

Basically Doom 3 was designed without the Duct Tape Mod in mind as opposed to Dementium II which was designed with a modified flashlight.  If Doom 4 follows suit, I will be perfectly happy.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Noooooooooooo!

Return to Morrowind: The Fall of the Nerevarine

I finished Morrowind quite a while ago although I never wrote a followup to my First Impressions article, mainly because I couldn't think of something insightful to say that hadn't already been said my the people who already love that game over all other games in The Elder Scrolls series.  I will simply say that I love Morrowind too for what it was back in 2002 and for what it is here in 2014.  

Just as a warning, there will be SPOILERS in the following section that cannot be avoided as they pertain to events that happen to the main character in the game relating to the main storyline.  You have been warned.

What I'm here to talk about is the evolution of my character, Valgrin of Markarth, whom I briefly covered in my first post about Morrowind.  In that post, I said that Valgrin was born somewhere in the province of Skyrim, probably sometime around 3E-400 (27 years before the beginning of Morrowind).  Stuff happens around the city of Markarth that lands him in prison, possibly Cidhna Mines and as there is little known history as to how long Cidhna Mines have been in operation as a prison, we'll still go with that story.  Eventually he is shipped off to Morrowind by decree of Emperor Uriel Septim VII as is told at the beginning of the game.

The story events happen in Morrowind including Valgrin contracting Corpus Disease although the symptoms are nullified through events in the game.  Additionally, Valgrin receives the Wraithguard gauntlet from Vivec in the later stages of the game.  I decided that Wraithguard, upon equipping it, has fused to Valgrin's arm.  I haven't decided if this has to do with the Corpus Disease or if it is simply something that just made sense in my head.  I also based the following events on what is known to have happened to the Nerevarine from various sources of information.

So Valgrin of Markarth, now known as the Nerevarine has a disease that affects the mind and body as well as a gauntlet that has fused to his arm.  

The main reason for all of this is that I wanted to increase the stats of the skills that I did not focus on during the main campaign and do side quests in both the main game and expansions that I did not have a chance to do the first time around.  My Light and Medium Armor skills were very low, so I began equipping bits of armor I found, replacing the Nordic Mail I had been wearing since starting the Bloodmoon expansion.  So I have decided that Valgrin was becoming slowly crazy, as an explanation for wearing non-matching pieces of armor.  It made sense in my head.

If you recall from my initial post, when I started the main storyline in Morrowind, Valgrin looked like this:

By the end of the game, roughly 120 hours later, he had developed into an ass kicking Nordic tank sporting primarily Ebony and Daedric armor; I apparently did not care about wearing the heaviest armor in the game.

Although his outward appearance has started to become erratic, I have not changed his overall behavior towards the other NPCs and I am continuing to complete quests as they come in.  He still acts the same as he did before the effects of the Corpus Disease and Wraithguard, but he is not outwardly carrying himself as he did before.  During one of the quests in the Bloodmoon expansion, I came across a creature that used a severed Nord leg as a club that I have held onto.  I figure that along with Valgrin's conglomeration of armor from various sources, that he will end up only equipped with this semi grotesque clubbed weapon (not depicted here however).

Yes, a bug helmet.

I think my endgame is that eventually he will act erratically enough that he might start killing people just because (although that might be pretty extreme), although I am sure that most of us have gone on killing sprees right after saving knowing that we would not be saving after.  After I have decided that I am done playing Valrin, he will be lost from Vvardenfell, possibly becoming a hermit, with history only remembering that an Outlander was found to be the Nerevarine and was never heard from again after a certain amount of time.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
And Everything Needs A Reason To Be

Second Impressions: The Elder Scrolls: Chapter I: Arena (PC)

The following will be my second impressions of The Elder Scrolls: Chapter I: Arena, seeing as how I already had a first impression, but I felt that that article was written a while ago (January 2013) and since then, I have changed my approach to the game and therefore, my impressions of the game have changed dramatically.

About a month ago, I was rereading the article I wrote about failing at being able to successfully load and play Daggerfall (TES: Chapter II) and was going over the comments that had been left.  I followed the link that one Roger left which took me to a wiki page for setting up Daggerfall, that by default is in French or German (if the page does not have the "_EN" suffix), but thanks to the miracles of modern technology, Chrome does a wonderful job at translating the pages into something readable by my uneducated mind.  For both the Daggerfall and Arena pages, I was able to download versions of the game where all of the previous DOSBox commands came "pre-installed."  This was not a problem for Arena, but the chance at having to play Daggerfall without the risk of having the game tell me the previous problems I had were again present, was much welcome.  So the downloads commenced followed by the playing.

The first mission I received after emerging from the spectral gate in the Imperial prisons (surprise, surprise) was to escort a woman from the town of Vullain Haven to Wasten Brukbrook in the east.  Now, I figured that that meant that Wasten Brukbrook would be the next town over, so I began traveling on foot.  It was not until I had exited the game to look up the control setup that I discovered "Shift+M."  

This brought up a map of Tamriel (the explorable world), which then brought up a map of the province I was in when I clicked on that.  I was told that it would take me 17 days to travel from Vullain Haven to Wasten Brukbrook, on the southeastern part of Valenwood.

First off, I learned that by pressing "Shift+M" I was able to bring up the world map, and by clicking on a particular province, I am able to travel to any of the city states or towns in that province.  Finding this out was the very definition of a "game changer."

This was when I decided that I would greatly alter my approach to how I play Arena.  When out traveling in a world without topography, getting lost is beyond easy.

That mountain is really just a matte painting and does not count as topography.

My approach to the game goes now as follows.  If I am on a time sensitive mission (escort/rescue/kill the beast), I will fast travel from wherever I am.  Often times these missions give enough time to fast travel to the desired location, complete the goal and return if need be.  I have yet to come across a quest that would need me to speedrun through a dungeon.

If I am on my way from one town to another, I will exit the town by normal means (the city gate) and head in the direction of the town looking for dungeons along the way.  I will explore said dungeon, often collecting gear and other items and once I am either carrying at my weight or inventory capacity, I finish going through the dungeon (because having a completed map is OCD important), killing as many enemies as I can in order to gain experience then once I exit the dungeon, I fast travel to the next town to sell my collected booty.  I could just as easily fast travel between cities, but where is the fun in that?  Plus I would not be at level 15 having not collected even one piece of the Staff of Chaos.

Currently in the game, traveling between cities takes an average of three days, at least in Valenwood.  So 72 hours of straight walking towards the destination.  I then figured out that 1 minute in real time translates to roughly 12 minutes of in-game time.  So if I wanted to be "hard-core," I would have to spend six hours in real time in order to reach a city 72 hours away.  I do not think that Bethesda believed that players would not use fast travel.  Keep in mind that the town I had to travel to was 17 days away plus the return trip would total 34 days.  I personally would not want to spend 68 hours of real time completing that one quest.  On the other hand, I would be very interested to find out if travelling from one site to another is actually possible without fast travel, but that might have to wait for another time.

In other aspects of the game, I am able to appreciate what Bethesda was trying to do with Arena back when it was released in 1994.  In the instruction manual, the creators often reference pen-and-paper RPGs (Dungeons & Dragons) and even with the character creation and how the stats are affected such as Strength, Wisdom, Endurance, Personality (Constitution and Charisma respectively in D&D), Intelligence, et cetera are all direct references to D&D.  Even the armor rating is taken from THAC0 where a lower number is preferable to a more intuitive higher number.  Bethesda had also expanded upon the standard classes of Fighter, Mage, Cleric and Thief and developed the following subclasses, each with their own bonuses and drawbacks.  For example Thief, Burglar, Assassin, Rogue, Acrobat and Bard are all subclasses to the Thief header.  I blindly chose a thief because unlocking ALL THE THINGS!! is better than say, being able to wear enchanted armor.

There are a few annoyances though, as is to be expected with playing a game that was created 20 years ago on a semi-modern computing device that was built within the last five years.  Now I do not know how often Arena was buggy or to what extent those bugs occurred, but at least once a day I am graced by a crashed game in one form or another.  While the crashes are not all too frequent, they are very annoying, especially when I am about to be picking up some sweet fwag!

But at least the Male is bigger than the Happy4 turning right to the zero eighth notes.  Amiright!?

Having the game randomly crash has also gotten me to save my game after almost every enemy encounter as I have run into monsters that have killed me in two hits while I have full life.  But my main advice for this game: save often, even after doing inane things like selling swag or before leaving a town.

With this renewed interest in Arena, I feel that I am able to enjoy the game a lot more than my first runthrough, although in the article I did sound quite optimistic despite when I last talked to Dr. Potts, before restarting the game again, I mentioned that my biggest issue was finding my way around the world on a 2D surface.  I will probably put out a post on Friday regarding my choice in character and picking a Bosmer (Wood Elf) female and naming her Silandra, so stay tuned if that happens to be your bag of chips.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

I'm Onto The Next One

First Impressions: The Elder Scrolls Online (PC)

I really wish that there was a game stats screen  in The Elder Scrolls Online, similar to what you would find in Skyrim and Oblivion, that way I would know how much time I have put into ESO in the three weeks and change that I have spent playing the game since its early access release on March 30th.  I would not say that I have been dumping truck loads of time into ESO at this point, but I have been neglecting some of the other games that I had been working on before (Assassin's Creed, Bioshock 2, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Papo y Yo, Final Fantasy VII, et cetera) and I think that part of that is that since I have paid for the game and am on a monthly subscription, I want to feel that I am getting the most out of the game for the money I have and currently am putting into it.

However, that argument will not be valid until, I believe, May 6th, which is when the 30 day free period for my account ends and the paid subscription starts.

But enough of that, what about the game?  How does it compare to the beta test?  How buggy is it, even after just under a year of beta testing? How have the early access perks given you an advantage over the regular players?  What are the quests like?  Does it feel like an Elder Scrolls game?  You know, the usual.

To answer, what I feel is the most important question: yes, The Elder Scrolls Online does feel like it belongs with the rest of the games in The Elder Scroll series.  Like every game in the series, you start out as a prisoner (this time finding out how and why you are in prison), you escape by going through a tutorial level and are then plunged into the larger world with a brief hint that something larger that does not involve (or maybe it does and I just don't know about it yet) the war in Cyrodiil between the three factions.

One aspect that has been retained, to a certain extent, from the Elder Scroll series has been the inclusion of books and reading about the lore of Tamriel throughout the various eras.  While in previous Elder Scrolls games you could read individual books on a bookshelf/table/floor/cauldron, in ESO, you can only read from a bookshelf.  This initially made me sad that I could only read one randomly (?) selected book from a bookshelf full of books.  Once I realized that this was how the game was going to operate, then I grew to accept it as is.  As in the other Elder Scrolls games, you still learn skills and can gain quests by reading books.

I do greatly appreciate though that Bethesda still maintains the level of quality of the books in ESO that the community has come to expect.

While you can simply run up to a bookshelf, click to open a book, see that you've gained a level in your Heavy Armor skill then run away without reading a word, I love that I can crack open a tome and read two and-a-half pages of text.  I know this isn't for everyone, but for me, it's a key component for immersion and I love its inclusion in an MMO game.

Another Elder Scrolls staple is the quality of the voice acting, which so far has been very well executed.  Bethesda has reused a lot of the voice actors from their previous games and the have even brought on a fair amount of "Hollywood talent" to voice both main and minor characters.  Most notably has been Michael Gambon (Sleepy Hollow, Harry Potter) as the character of "The Prophet," whose reading of "Let the will of Molag Bal be denied!" is chilling.  Kudos as well to the script writers.

I have noticed a few changes between the released game and the beta tests, the most notable is that I have only experienced one real bug that impeded my progress:

One other bug was similar to the "MISSING" box bug that I encountered during the January beta test, just something else that went missing in a different location.  Other minor bugs have been missing dialogue to text, but those come across as purely cosmetic.  I have, however, seen other people bring ask about potentially broken quests, but I personally have yet to encounter a broken quest so I do not know if I should count myself fortunate or maybe I am simply progressing slowly enough that the bugs are being fixed by the time I reach the formally broken quest.

I have noticed that the combat feels more "real," which was one of the biggest complaints that I kept seeing creep up during the beta test.  It is a hard thing to explain, that when you attack someone that it should feel like your hits are connecting.  Without a rumble feature, this has to come across visually and whatever was done between the middle of March and release has been a great improvement.  I no longer feel like my weapons are simply passing through the enemies, but are coming into contact with them, it is very satisfying.

Personally, when I think of MMOs, I tend to have a mental image of some crowded plaza in World of Warcraft and to date, the greatest number of people I have seen congregate anywhere was at the bank, where you can store items to use between characters, group members and guild members.

There is also a lot of grouping around crafting stations, where you can craft your own armor (heavy, medium and light), enchanting, woodworking (shields, bows, staffs) et cetera, but the nice thing is that you do not have to wait for the station to be free for it to be used.

So far, I have been playing solo and without grouping or questing with others.  There have been certain events such as when Dark Anchors (portals that lead into Oblivion) start depositing beasts of all sorts into the world.  These events, which happen pretty frequently usually draw about 10 other players and a decent sized battle en mass commences against the forces of darkness.

While it is possible to approach the above Dark Anchor or certain quests solo, these are events/instances that are specifically designed to be taken on by a group of people.  I have tried, accidentally to take on a Flesh Atronach (flesh golem) who was supported by two skeletons alone and quickly found myself dead.

This battle was not on purpose either.  I was approaching the two skeletons and right as I "killed" the one, the Flesh Atronach came through a portal as the skeleton archer backed up.  Let it be known that I died with honor.

There are plenty of aspects to The Elder Scrolls Online that I know I have not covered, most importantly the PvP area in Cyrodiil that deals with siege engines and storming castles.  I also did not mention anything about the lack of lag, even in areas that appear to be heavily populated by both PCs and NPCs.  There is just too much information to convey.  I also have not even mentioned the music, but that I will cover in Friday's post (so come back for that if music is your thing).

I will say in closing for today that I am having a lot of fun with the game and, presently at least, I feel that the cost of the game plus the $15/month subscription fee has been and will be worth the experience contained within.


~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
The Skies of Hell Unfell to Earth

My Decision to Play My First MMORPG.

Apologies for not getting this out yesterday.  I ran out of time before having to leave for work and didn't have any time after returning home.  Had to watch Vikings 2.8 afterall.

Online gaming is a genre that had never really interested me.

In 1995, my friend, we'll call him BunnyBurger, and I tried to coordinate a Warcraft II co-op session over my family's phone line with a 28/8 modem.  That ended with me answering the phone when it rang only to hear his modem beeping and whirring at me.  I never figured out what needed to be done so I stuck with the single player campaigns.

As I have mentioned a few times on separate occasions here, I never got into World of Warcraft despite loving the ever living fecal matter out of Warcraft II.  Back in 2004 when the game came out, I hated the idea of paying an upfront cost to buy the game, then having to pay an additional monthly fee to continue playing said game.  I did not see the appeal in this model.  Even with the North American release of Final Fantasy XI, which until 30 seconds ago I did not know was released 244 days *before* World of Warcraft, I had no interest in continuously paying for a game despite loving (most of) the Final Fantasy series (minus VII, VIII & X).

In 2011 I did quest for a short time in Diablo II along with two housemates, but that was more like a short lived LAN threesome.  We'll always have the memories.

In late 2012, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim sucked myself and Conklederpand then I started playing the other games in the series (sort of anyway; some with more success than others).  I knew that I wanted to explore more of this world, its histories and peoples.

Why then have I purchased The Elder Scrolls Online and am an active subscriber, especially in the world we live in where there are any number of free MMORPGs (Neverwinter, WoW, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Lord of the Rings Online)?  The simple reason is that I love the world created for the Elder Scrolls games.  The lore that is told through the various books and tomes throughout the continent of Tamriel are full of histories and allusions to past events and people, mentioning just enough to evoke interest, but not so much that you feel like you are reading a high school history textbook.  There are mentions of races that are either long dead or that inhabit other continents never visited in the games.  To me, it was like a combination of Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings and A Song of Ice and Fire.

Story and setting aside, why then opt to pay up front for a game that requires a monthly subscription fee?  Well, partly because Conklederp has been looking forward to the two of us playing Skyrim since she got into the game and this is the only outlet, specifically set in Tamriel.  But, I cannot put this on Conklederp as it was I who signed up for beta access thinking that if I were to ever play an MMORPG that this would probably the one game that would get me to join.

Honestly though, a big portion of it might have been part of Bethesda/Zenimax's overall marketing strategy.  By bringing on people to beta test, they would hook people into buying the game when it came out then subscribing.  Granted the game that I played had bugs here (quest elements would not spawn or spawned before the quest was given and would not respawn once quest began and then could not be completed) and there (falling through stairs and bridges), but in the back of my mind, I knew that the game I was playing/testing was not a completed product so there were going to be things that were not supposed to happen (unable to leave conversation with NPC).

I also understand (now at least) that the cost for Zenimax to operate their "Megasevers" (each regional continent has their own server so that people can all play online at the same time and with each other without having to worry about if everyone is on the same server).  I understand that owning and operating something of that scale does not come cheap.  The cost of the servers themselves, the cost for maintenance, repair, oversight, cooling, building costs, property taxes. . . all of that adds up.  $15 a month subscription (or about 50¢ a day, depending on the month).  I do not mind paying that price for something that I enjoy.

I do still have some reservations about the genre or things that I feel that I am supposed to do because ESO in an online RPG.  One of those reservations centers around the multiplayer aspect, in that I am not out there looking for groups; which apparently has it's own acronym (LFG).  Presently I am playing the game solo and I am pretty sure that I am missing out on some parts of the game because I have yet to join a guild or experienced a "group adventure zone."  In the end, I do not want to feel that I have to be communal in order to proceed.  Yes, I understand the apparent disconnect within the context of that statement.

I'll get into this more on Monday when I give my First Impressions and then on Friday when I'll talk about the music from the game.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Let All the Illusions Just Wither Away

Long Overdue: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (PC)

Disclaimer: The following article is written from the perspective of one who has only finished Skyrim and played parts (the beginning) of The Arena and barely started Daggerfall, so all judgements aside.  I would also like to disclaim that I am probably going to be all over the place and while this would normally fall under the "First Impressions" heading, after 35 hours, I feel like I've glided past First Impressions and moved to "OMG, here's stuff about how I've played the game," but that doesn't sound as classy.

I bought The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind sometime around the beginning of this year when it was X% off through a Steam sale (which is pretty much how/why I buy most/all PC games now), mainly because in the last year I've become a fan of the Elder Scrolls series.  I am also a fan of the composer Jeremy Soule, who a while back I found out was the composer for the Elder Scroll series, Icewind Dale I & II and the Neverwinter Nights series.

First off, So Morrowind was released way back in May of 2002 on both PC and Xbox, although I will only be referring to the PC release.  The in-game chronology takes place in 3E-421, whereas The Arena takes place in 3E-399 and Daggerfall in 3E-405.  For reference, Skyrim takes place in 4E-201 with the 3rd Era ending in 3E-433 after the events in the Oblivion Crisis (Oblivion 4E-433).  

Upon booting up the game, I was happily surprised that the Dragon Imperial logo was used here and I later found out is really the symbol for the Imperial Legion and Cyrodiil.  While playing Skyrim, I thought it was just a "oh, that's a nice coincidence that the Imperials have a dragon logo and LOOK!, there are dragons which have turned up for the first time in forever!"  That was my first thought upon starting up the game and I hadn't even played it yet.

With Morrowind, you can play in either POV or third person.  For me, most of the game I will play in third person but switch to POV whenever I use my bow (which isn't too often) or when looking through boxes for loot (the POV mode uses crosshairs).  The control scheme is pretty much identical to that of Skyrim, although I had to move a few of the keys around.  Since Morrowind moved away from the strictly POV mode that The Arena and Daggerfall followed, you now only have to "click" in order to attack and no longer have to drag the mouse to perform a specific attack.  However, you still have the option to chop/slash/thrust, which is determined by how you are moving at the time of attack.  Forward/back: thrust; left/right: slash; non-moving: chop.  Each attack, based on what type of weapon you are using bears different results and damage.  Like the previous and later games, you still have health, magic and stamina meters.

Now, for why you are all here, or maybe not, I now introduce you to my character the Nord, Valgrin of Markarth:

Hello there ladies. . .

His backstory is not very developed as I was not (and still am not) sure what the overarching story is here in Vvardenfell, the interior volcanic island in Morrowind, where Morrowind takes place.  You start out on a ship, travelling from the mainland of Morrowind to Vvardenfell and you are a prisoner, soon to be pardoned by Uriel Septim VII for reasons unknown to you and your parole officer.  The backstory I created, was that Valgrin was a prisoner in the Cidhna Mines in Markarth (in the Skyrim Province), possibly imprisoned for thievery; although chronologically this doesn't make sense, unless Cidhna Mine was used for prisoners before the Silverbloods took over after Ulfric Stormcloak retook Markarth in 4E-176, roughly 185 years earlier.  Because birth signs are an important part of your character, I will assume that Uriel Septim VII has been looking for someone born under a particular star sign and sending people off to Vvardenfell.  Maybe, I don't really know as I have yet to finish the game.

The first thing that I learned about Morrowind is that the game doesn't pull punches.  There's a cave right outside the starting town, I encountered a villain and was promptly killed.  I think I landed one blow on the foe out of many swings.  It turns out that my accuracy in hand-to-hand combat left something to be desired.  I quickly decided that I would play as a tank-like character, which was a good soul searching decision as that was how I set up Valgrin's attributes when creating him.

Unlike Skyrim, your character in Morrowind does not regenerate either health or magic.  Regeneration occurs only by consuming health potions, casting heal spells (which unless you have a decent Intelligence score, which is not below 30, you will fail casting your spell and thereby wasting your magic points) or resting until healed.  I'm sure a good portion of my time has been spent running out of a dungeon, finding a legal* area to sleep and sleeping off my injuries.  Every town I come to (which I'll get to in a minute) I always try to buy as many healing potions as I can.  And you have to be careful with those potions, as I have had potions "spoil" if I don't use them within a certain amount of time.  I think that's what is happening anyway.

*You can only sleep in legally designated areas, which means not on the streets of a town/village or within the near vicinity of a town.  If there is an inn or a guild that you are a member of you can sleep there

Another "no-holds-barred" example in Morrowind, is how often I have gotten stuck.  Stuck in multiple senses.  While climbing/walking over mountains, I have found myself in a rut that I couldn't get out of.  The only solution was to reload from a previous save.  I have since learned to frequently save before I go exploring.  I have been "stuck" in another sense when I was attacked by a blighted something-or-other.  I lost my strength, became encumbered and was unable to move.  I tried sleeping it off as I do with low health, but that didn't work, so I had to restart from a previous save.  Most recently (as in yesterday), I had to reload a number of times because an enemy I had to defeat so I could get to my bounty because he always summoned a creature that would drain my strength thereby making my carrying capacity down to 0.  After miraculously surviving the battle, nothing I used seemed to cure my ailment.  Reload.

This is either going to be a very long or very short battle.

Fast travelling!  Until recently, there was only one way of doing this and it makes sense in-game.  In Vvardenfell, there are large insectoids call Silt Striders, which have been domesticated and used to travel from town-to-town for a small fee (usually 35 -50 septims).  Upon looking up information about how to complete a certain quest, I discovered that members of the Mages Guild can fast travel to other Mages Guild houses.  If you're not a member, you can't use this free service.  Personally, I can't see Valgrin even attempting to be a mage, despite him knowing spells (healing spells).  So, the majority of travelling I do through Vvardenfell is done on foot.  Coming from Skyrim, that doesn't sound too bad.  In Morrowind, "by-foot" might bother a lot of people.  Un-modded, and without a lot of skill points put towards fast moving, this is what over 50% of my time is spent like:

Sorry for the not-so-great video quality.  I don't have a capture card, just a cellphone.

Yes, you have two modes of moving.  Walking and slightly faster walking/running.  Thankfully, when you run out of stamina, you are still able to run, but your experience in "Athletics" no longer increases.  Honestly though, this doesn't bother me at all.  I'm one for looking at the landscape and general adventuring.  However, there have been times where travelling from one end of Vvardenfell to the other has been tedious.

As you might be able to guess, having put 35 hours into this game, I am very much liking it.  And, even with all that I have said here, there is a lot more that I haven't even covered, such as leveling up, the vast number of skills and attributes, the way you have to talk to/persuade people for information (the scripting for dialogue), wear-and-tear on equipment, the different components for dressing (pants, shirt, body armor, greaves, L/R gauntlet/bracers, L/R shoulder pieces/pauldrons, helmet) and absolutely no GPS on your map (someone says "it's in the south-western region. . ." you have to go explore the southwest region looking for a cave).

So if you are looking for another game in the Elder Scrolls series that isn't Skyrim and are interested in a challenge with a very steep learning curve (your hand will not be held), Morrowind might just be what you're looking for.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
I Saw The Coming of the End

And Now: A Dramatic Too Much Shit's Happening Selfie

Daggerfailed - Attempts at The Elder Scrolls Chapter II: Daggerfall

I really wanted to play The Elder Scrolls Chapter II: Daggerfall, partly because it's the second game in a series that, in under a year of starting starting The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, I've fallen in love with, but also because the development company, Bethesda Softworks, offers the game free off of their own website.  I downloaded the game (149 MB compressed) and as was the case with The Elder Scrolls Chapter I: The Arena, I had to use DOSBox in order to run the install program and to play the game.

Now here's the part of the post that becomes instructional.  I had to learn a bit more DOS jargon to not only install, but to load up Daggerfall.  All of this "How To" was located in the "Daggerfall Legal and Installation" PDF that came included with the game (thank god).  The following screen is the set up in order to install Daggerfall:

The program then started up flawlessly and following the instructions I arrived at the screen, common when uploading a game from a CD:

I wanted to include this, mainly to show the age of the game, or at least an aspect of computer games when Daggerfall came out in 1996.  That a "Huge" installation is 450 MB.  It was at this point that I wasn't able to proceed with the "Huge" installation and I couldn't figure out why.  I knew my computer had more than 450 MB of free space.  After some online searching, I discovered a key "thing" that I had forgotten to input during the initial installation.  I only say "forgotten" because I didn't know about it and it wasn't included in the installation instructions in the PDF.  What I should have included was a "-freesize 1000" at the end in the first line.  SO, in order to successfully install Daggerfall, your DOSBox needs to look "something" like this:

Z:\> mount c: c/dagger -freesize 1000

Drive C is mounted as local directory c:/dagger\

Z:\>c:

C:\>mount d c:/dagger/dfcd -t cdrom -label Daggerfall

MSCDEX: Mounted subdirectory: limited support.

Drive D is mounted as CDRom c:/dagger/dfcd\

C:\>d:

D:\>Install

I said "something like this" because I have the Daggerfall folder located directly on/in my C:\ drive so that it would be easy for me to find and type out every time I wanted to play.  If the folder were located elsewhere, the command prompt might look "something" like this:

Z:\> mount c: c/Games/ElderScrolls/dagger -freesize 1000

Everything worked fine after that.  The game was installed and I was able to start up a character, although I died partway through the prologue and hadn't saved.  I then had to go to work.  A couple of days later I came back and started up DOSBox and began the loading process:

But then something odd happened.  Odd because I didn't expect it to happen and I hadn't seen it before:

Yup.  DOSBox is telling me that I have the wrong CD in my CD drive and Daggerfall can't be loaded up.  I even tried shutting down DOSBox and going through the start up sequence again and I received the same "Looks like you inserted the wrong CD.  Please insert your Daggerfall CD in your cdrom and try again."  The Internet tells me that this is happening because when I tried to start up Daggerfall, I didn't type it in exactly as I had when I installed it.  So, when I installed the game, if I had typed in "-label DaGgErFaLl" I would have to type it like that every time after that.  Apparently the "only" (??) fix is to re-install the game which I am on the verge of doing a third time.

I don't want this whole post to come across as saying that Bethesda has released a faulty product as there are plenty of people online who have not had any issues with the installation and running of this game, but there are also people, like me, who have had some problems and I just need to figure out what those problems are before I get a character half way through the game and have to re-install the whole thing.

Yes, I am going to give it a third try and with any luck, I will be posting my First Impressions for The Elder Scrolls Chapter II: Daggerfall in the coming weeks.  That is if I can pull myself away from the handful of games that I'm playing at the same time.  First world problems indeed.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Farewell to the Faithfully Departed