"Here's How You Can Play That Game Better."

I've heard this for a while and it crops up every now and then: "If you don't build your character a certain way, you won't have a chance at beating the game" or "To get the most out of Game X, make sure to do this when creating a character."  I can't really be more specific than that as I always avoid reading these articles as I do not agree with them.  I would like to think/believe that a game can be enjoyed and beaten without the need to follow an unofficial ruleset.

I of course say all this after my failed attempt at Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light and I gave advice as to how to not fail as bad as I had done.

Does this make me a hypocrite?  Sure, why not!?

I bring this up now because I am playing (or at least started back in January) The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and someone I was talking to (either in the real world or at work) asked if I was careful in how I created my character, because apparently if you do not do it correctly, you can ruin your chances of being able to finish the game.

I first heard about this "phenomenon" from a former housemate who told me about how to build a mage that wouldn't suck in Diablo II.  This roommate, whom we will call The Sauce, suggested that I build an Ice Mage and put my all of skill points into Ice Magic.  He followed this advice up with recounting how he had known people who had ruined their characters by accidentally putting skill points in the "wrong" skill tree and had to discard high level characters.  This idea that you could ruin a character on accident and have to start over from the beginning frightened me.  I should also point out that this was only 3 years ago.  I'm sure the same could be said for Torchlight I or II and I'm positive that there are at least a couple (hundred?) people would tell me that I have not created my Mage in Torchlight II correctly as I have my skill points spread out between a number Ice spells, a Fire spell and some passive buffing abilities.

I also read a similar article/post over on this internet thing regarding Breath of Death VII.  I was looking for hints about how to defeat a particular boss and two separate posts I read stated that if you put leveling attributes for particular characters in "the wrong" areas, that you would have a very hard time with the game.  And I am currently having a very hard time against a particular boss four hours in.

I do not like this.  Not one bit.  How is the normal gamer supposed to find this out on their own?  I think that's my feelings towards beating video games in general, that there should not be one specific way to beat a game.  To kill Boss A, you shouldn't need to perform specific attacks and defenses in a specific order otherwise you're not playing the game correctly.

I think this is one of the reasons why I could never beat Advance Wars: World of Ruin.  I just became stuck with a certain series of battles and had to resort to Gamefaqs to make my way through them.  It is frustrating to me that a written document could tell me how to beat a multi-faceted enemy, that there is a preordained order that the computer performs its actions so that a victory can be achieved over and over again.  Eventually I gave up because I had reached a stalemate about 20 minutes into a battle and didn't want to go through reading an article and having my hand held through the remainder of the battle.  Additionally, if I had to have my hand held through the last number of battles, I would most likely need to be directed through the rest of the game as it would only prove to be more-and-more difficult.

So that's my two bits about games where people feel that you need to create characters in a certain/specific way in order for the game to be enjoyed (i.e.: beaten).  I'll play the game however the damn hell I please.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
You Can't Change Fate, But Don't Feel So Bad


P.S.  In a similar, but not related train of thought, this idea about following an obscure plan in order to get something from a game happened to me in Final Fantasy XII when I first heard about the Zodiac Spear.  The article I read said that you could not have opened any of the treasure chests in a couple of specific areas  and that the Zodiac Spear could be in one of two chests in a particular dungeon.  I say "could" because even if you did open one of the chests you weren't supposed to open, it could still be there, but there would be something like a 90% chance that it wouldn't.  Now how in the hell is the regular player supposed to figure this out if there was nothing in the game that hinted about this?  

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion ~ New Character Story

A while back, I had considered restarting Morrowind with a new character because I had felt that using a Nord of the Skyrim Province who was supposed to be a reincarnate of a heralded Dunmer (Dark Elf) hero was a bit far fetched.  I thought that playing a Dunmer would be more appropriate.  After I had thought about that decision and slept on it, I continued with my Nord, just to see what would happen and if the main quest line would make any more sense with an "Outlander," believing that Bethesda knew what they were doing, otherwise when beginning the game, you would have only been able to choose to be a Dunmer.  In the end, I am very glad that I continued as that decision gave rise to my new character for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the Dunmer Ashlander, Talaq Ashburnab (same-ish name as the other Tal'aq, but different alltogehter.  I just like the sound of the name).

First off, how Valgrin of Markarth, the incarnate Nerevarine of Indoril Nerevar, a Dunmer General from the 1st Era influenced the events that take place in Oblivion.  

Emperor Uriel Septim VII sees that in the future he will be assassinated, his death is already foretold.  In this vision a prisoner helps him seal the gates of Oblivion which his assassination have brought about.  This is the in-game plot for Oblivion.  In the game Morrowind, Uriel Septim VII sends a prisoner who is born under a specific star sign, whom he believes will fulfill the Nerevarine Prophesy and release Morrowind and those living in Vvardenfell from the blight brought about by Dagoth Ur, who is residing at the heart of Red Mountain, in the center of Vvardenfell.  This is the in-game plot of Morrowind.

In Morrowind, I chose to be a Nord because it seemed like a good idea, having just played 150+ hours in Skyrim and I knew that I wanted to play a tank-like character.  Thus, Valgrin of Markarth was brought into being.  During the main quest, your character comes upon many different factions of Dunmer throughout Vvardenfell.  One of these is a tribe of Ashlanders, the Urshilaku, who are the group that sets your character ahead on his quest to fulfill the Nerevarine Prophecy and the first group/clan/tribe to recognize him as such.  I decided that this is where Talaq would originate from.

So Talaq was influenced by an Outlander being the Nerevarine.  This opened up his view of other races and began to deteriorate his prejudices of other races that were not Dunmer.  Knowing that the Nerevarine was a Nord (using my game from Morrowind as a canon storyline), Talaq wished to visit this land that the Nerevarine came from.  Being an Ashlander, a relatively poor nomadic tribe of Dunmer, Talaq had very little in the way of way of payment to find travel into Skyrim.  In the village of Khull, the Khajiit shipmaster S'virr tells Talaq that he can give him free passage to Skyrim by way of Solstheim after picking up/dropping off a shipment.  Free passage is dependent on Talaq transporting goods to both Fort Frostmoth and to the port in Windhelm.  Talaq agrees to this.

Unbeknownst to Talaq, S'virr fell in with the Nord smuggler Brurid and is smuggling Skooma and Moon Sugar.  While disembarking, members of the East Empire Company call attention to S'virr's boat and Imperial soldiers begin searching the cargo and find the contraband.  The imperial guards begin questioning Talaq on the docks.  A group of Dunmer witness the Imperial's verbal and physical abuse of Talaq and rush to his unasked-for aid.  During the skirmish, one Imperial is killed along with the two Dunmer who attempted to help.  Talaq was imprisoned as he was believed to be connected with the two dead Dunmer.  Because Imperial soldiers were killed, Talaq was taken to Cyrodiil and imprisoned under the charge of "an assault on the Emperor's men, is the same as an assault on the Emperor".  

While being processed, Talaq chose the surname "Ashurnab," after the Daedra shrine Assurnabitashipi to the west of the Urshilaku Camp.  Talaq did not wish to disgrace his family, yet chose and slightly altered a word/name that he already knew.  Coincidentally, in reality and in-game, the Assurnabitashipi shrine is dedicated to Mehrunes Dagon, the instigator of the Oblivion Crisis.

The way that I see this story unfolding, is that Uriel Septim saw an Ashlander at the time of his death and his visions regarding the Nerevarine Prophecy came to him, he saw a way of bringing an Ashlander, a group not normally seen outside of Morrowind, to Cyrodiil.  Uriel, however did not know anything about the Ashlander that he saw in his visions, only that by perhaps helping to fulfill the Nerevarine Prophecy, would this Ashlander somehow end up in Cyrodiil.

And now, I present to you Talaq Ashurnab, freshly released/escaped from prison:

Without a helmet on, Talaq sports the traditional Dunmer top knot.  I do wish that I could have figured out a way to make his cheeks a little more gaunt, similar to the way that the Dunmer look in Skyrim, or you know, Danny Trejo.  I didn't have a specific age for Talaq, hence not bringing up the year of his birth in relation to the storylines of Morrowind and Oblivion, and really, it's probably not that important.

I see Talaq as someone who, having seen the power and influence of an Outlander Nerevarine believes that helping people, to a certain extent can be beneficial.  As with other Ashlanders, he will not question the decision to kill someone who insults or threatens him.  And as with most/all Dunmer, he has a strong dislike/disgust for necromancers (which is how I justified diverging from the main quest so early on and routed a keep full of necromancers and their ilk.

He is still pretty naive though, because he is still pseudo-young so he's bound to do some stupid things.  Sure, why not.

So that's my character that I've created to play, at least through the main questline, in Oblivion.  

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Instrumental

Marketing These Days. Oi, Gevald!

I wonder what this means:

Why is Amazon letting me know that I can pre-order a movie that was released less than a week ago?  I would, upon first thought, believe that Oblivion is getting really bad reviews and that Universal is trying to make any money back that they can.  I haven't looked at any reviews on either IMDb or Rotten Tomatoes, not that I really ever go to Rotten Tomatoes as I feel a lot of their reviews are pretentious and full of a variety of crap.

And today, I received another email from Amazon letting me know that I can pre-order Iron Man 3, the day  the film comes out in theatres, being today, May 3rd, 2013.  I guess I could go out and see a matinée in a couple of hours and during the movie, decide that I absolutely love it, visit Amazon.com on a smart phone and pre-order before the movie is even over.  Technology, geez.  Kids these days have it so easy.  Elderly curmudgeon sounds: "When I was a kid, we had to wait a good six months to see a movie after it was in the thee-ay-tuh.  And then, another couple of months after it was released just to the video stores before the VHS was released. . . What's that? VHS? They were what we watched movies on before we all had implants, ya damn honyockers!  Now git offah ma'lawn!"  Something like that.

Movie tie-ins with food can be interesting too.  Let's stick with Iron Man 3 and throw in some Subway.

Now, unless Tony Stark has a massive BBQ during the movie . . . or, maybe because ***SPOILER*** the Stark's house is on fire and smoking:

You know what I mean.

Although the color scheme of the sandwich does soft of resemble the Iron Man suit.  There's the golden sheen of the meat and the bright shimmering red tomato and the 6 grams of body fat from Tony himself.

Maybe I'm out of touch with marketing of current video games, but I haven't seen commercials or ads for either a video game translation of either Iron Man 3 or Oblivion, not that Oblivion, but the one without Sir Patrick Stewart's glorious voice.  I'm sure they've got to be out there. Or you know, maybe they're not?  

Are video games based on movies not a thing these days?  Well, ones that aren't made out of Legos?  

Do I even own a movie tie-in video game?  Yes, a couple actually.  

There's:

• Willow (NES)
• Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (NES)
• Jurassic Park  (SNES)
• Goldeneye 007 (N64)
• Star Wars
• Shadows of the Empire (N64)
• Rogue Squadron (N64)
• Rogue Leader  - Rogue Squadron II (GC)
• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (GC)
• Goldeneye 007 (DS) 
• [I do plan on doing my own full review of the DS release as there's very little about it out there]

So it turns out I do own a few, but nothing based off a movie that was released in the last 11 years.  I'm sure that probably says something about me as opposed to the quality of movies and video games that have been released.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

No Good Can Come Of This

Skyrim = Sinkhole of Time

My experience with The Elder Scrolls games has been very limited, so much so that I've only witnessed a former roommate playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.  All I could say about the game was that the guy's character jumped everywhere, occasionally killed a city guard and that it was an FPS-type game.  I wasn't overly impressed.  My own personal experience with first person (POV) hack-and-slash swording fantasy games was limited to an old arcade game that I thought was in a Neo-Geo cabinate, but I can't find anything about it anywhere.  So there's that.

During Steam's most recent Fall/Autumn/Thanksgiving sale, I purchased The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.  I did this for a couple of reasons.  First and foremost, the game was 50% off, which still meant that it was $30.  The second reason comes in three parts, but is part of the larger whole, which is that I'm lacking in fantasy realms to be in.  I'm not a subscriber to HBO so I don't/can't watch Game of Thrones until it's released on DVD and Amazon just gave a release date for season 2 as February 13th, 2013 (assuming the world doesn't end in a few weeks).  I'm also reading Shadow Moon, which to pretty much everyone, is the first book in a trilogy that takes place in the same world as the film Willow.  The third part of the second reason is that I'm eagerly awaiting the release of The Hobbit.  So as you can see, I needed a medieval high-fantasy world to play in.

So yes, Skyrim was purchased.  But that is not the point.  The point is, is that I've only played the game for two days, which were my two days off this week, and I managed to clock in about 13 1/2 hours.  Jump ahead two more days and I've now clocked in just over 19 hours.  Granted probably about 30 minutes of that was just creating my character.  I can also figure out how/why I've been playing for this long.  

I don't know if it's something in current large world RPG's and I know I've seen it in a few other games, but Skyrim allows you to in a sense, warp between locations you've already been to.  The required amount of time will pass during your split second journey as if you actually walked it, but you'll be as fast as it takes for the loading screen to finish loading.  I'm not a fan of this "fast travelling" nonsense, something that I felt plagued Final Fantasy XII, but I'm not getting into FFXII right now.  If I'm going from one village to a cave on the other side of the mountains, by golly, I'm going to have my character run the whole god damn way!

A big (as in fucking huge) part of this game for me, is looking at the environment (pun sort of intended).  Anytime I'm travelling, I'll back the camera out to a 3rd person view so that I can rotate the camera and just watch the gorgeous scenery:

Keep in mind that I'm running this game at about mid-level so there aren't all the textures and layers that could be there if I were running on Alienware or something equivalent.  There are mods available designed to make the game look even better, but I'm not going to touch those, again because I don't have the set up for it.  There is this guy though who apparently has 100+ mods running at any given time for some amazing visuals.

The gist is that I like walking.  I like exploring.  So what if I get sidetracked from the main story line and want to find out what's on the other side of that mountain and end up swimming in a lake.  I love being able to look at a mountain range way off in the distance, run towards it and seeing it get larger and larger until there I am, running up the side of it.  I will admit thought that I have on a couple of occasions "Fast Traveled" to a location, but that was because I was strapped for time and knew I wouldn't be able to make the trek to the city to disenchant my non-usable gear before I had to leave for work.  Because in this world, work comes first.

At the moment, I don't see this game taking as much time as say, Goldeneye 007 took, as that was the only game I played on the N64 for just over six months after I bought it.  Some people will scoff at that satement, but I do plan on playing other games, both on my computer and either on the 3DS or PSP if I'm not playing Skyrim.  And besides, I've still got to get through Penumbra Overture.  You hear that Skyrim, you're  not the only game in the box!

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Now If Only They Would Listen

P.S.  And in case you're wondering, I created a female Wood Elf named Allinesea.  She's based off a character I created for a D&D campaign that I have never run.  I also thought it would be more interesting having the lead character as a woman rather than the stereotypical male fighter character.  Although I've also thought about doing a male character and having him be a mage...... I'm sure I'll come up with something later.

And just because, here's a picture of Barbas the wolf hound photo bombing one of my pictures: