The Videogames Tab

It's Mrs Commander Shepard from Mass Effect.

I read a blog a while back about male gamers who play (when given the choice) as female characters...

__________________
"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

Oh, my bad. I actually do make female characters sometimes too, but in Mass Effect I went for the typical action hero look.

__________________
#31 on SC's Top 100 Mofos list!!

Linky?

Here's my angle - Asskix chix are HOT. I like Buffy, Sidney Bristow, Hitgirl, Lara Croft, Femshep and my nifty Female Jedi Consular in SWTOR, Lights Starhealer.

Especially in third person, where I am forced to look at my toon's rump for hours on end.

Meanwhile - I sure would like to read that article! LINK!

__________________

Yeah, my first Revan was an asian female. She really did a number on Carth.

Oh, and I love Buffy. I still rewatch episodes on NF.

Lord knows where I read it mate, I think it was shortly after Skyrim was released and so many people were talking about playing female characters. Staring at a pixelated arse was one of the main reasons guys did it, which I found a bit weird.

Then there are the ones who took it a stage further and downloaded the first Skyrim nude mod they could find...

One of the most downloaded recent mods on the Nexus is one where Lydia does a full floor show. They've turned Oblivion into an Anime dress-up, now that the main modders have switched to the new game.

In my mind, that's even worse.

Wow, sweet sweeteners!

---

On the lady av thing, thought this guy's choices were interesting (female khajit, in raggedy clothes, for his mind-melding pacifist)...



I mean, kinda patronising perhaps to match 'lady' with 'mind meddling manipulator', but, at least he's not all about her arse I guess . (Altho maybe he likes chasing her tail? Arg, sorry )

---

Slung some hours into Skyrim again recently. Funs, but I do seem to alternate between loving the immersion and wondering why I'm grinding through its more 'menial' gameplay sides. The vibe, upgrades, decent missions & 'self story telling' do win out tho (Plus playing 100 health is def helping keep the combat 'edge of the seat' tricky )

Did some adventuring that felt 'valid' last night: trekked over to fight a dragon (via castle peek-a-boo), to get an object that would make me blood-kin to the orcs. All cool, fun experience, expanded the world, and I didn't even object to plucking glowing nirnroot for a 'fetch quest' along the night-time river home. But....

Why the hell did I then accept a quest to drop off the smith's sword to her daughter? Why? I mean, the sperlunk involved brought adventure (deciding to whirlwind sprint away from a pair of bear jaws closing on my head - managed to sprint into a tree nearby tho)... but I couldn't help feel something of a fool for getting sucked into that type of clockwork gameplay. And yet somehow, played in the right spirit, it does all still work (And to be fair, just as I logged off, I was looking up the road at some Thalmor, and planning to ambush them - coz that's something my character would definitely do )

---

This guy has some interesting thoughts on the 'choice' aspects of Bethsheda & Bioware worlds. Whole thing's kinda worth a read, but this sums it up...

---

*EDIT* Oo, my perfect game?

__________________
Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

You can't compare Skyrim to Dragon Age 2, you just can't.

Asides from one being great and one being crap they're two very different games both wrapped in a fantasy RPG overcoat. Bioware's RPGs are all about choice, Bethesda's are about free will. Big difference.

Seds - Now that you've got a great PC are you tempted by ME3 on it? I was 90% sure I'd buy mine for the Xbox, because that's where my Shep saves reside. However, I played a bit of ME1 (ME1 & 2 for under a tenner total in the last Steam sale) on PC the other day and figured I could get into it.

It's been so long since I played ME2 that I forget how my Shep was stacked anyway...

EDIT - Me and the wife out for a nice stroll in the countryside.

Beat Jak II last night, harder than the first. Don't know if I'll platinum it because finding the orbs will be too much of a grind.

__________________
"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

Heh, yeah, it is pretty pseud . Guess he just touched on both my fave and foul aspects of Skyrim - there's a 'rote' nature to much of the smorgasbord of choice, but the end result is you define your character in your own head with many of the decisions (and play in the broad world based on that - rather than having the world's narrative swivel on a few key choices etc).

It's just an intriguing vibe (as my first Bethsheda game)

I was gonna post up a bit of Todd Howard's DICE speech where he mulls on game design and the Beth philosophy, but that was a bit pseud too . Altho interesting to note things like...

• There's a 'sims style' friend rating system, but luckily they stuck it out of sight in the end.
  
  
• Horses were deliberately left periphery / less useful, as they didn't want them centre stage / realised they were a bit shite
  
  
• Loads of stuff evolved or got dumped coz everyone playtests it in house, and they try to get to that 'vibe' stage as soon as possible.

He also talked about the classic 'learn -> play -> challenge -> surprise' loop in games, and how they try to let you do any of the stages at any time you want. That was the biggest pseud bit (And I was thinking of you when he mentioned the early 'escort' bit where you're supposed to have all of those possibilities open to you )

To be fair to Howard he's been trying to accomplish that since Oblivion with mixed results. The way enemies level is more sophisticated than in Oblivion but not by a great deal.

Example: First time I discovered the Lover's Stone it was guarded my a mahooooosive big bear, who proved quite a challenge seeing as I was around lv10. With my present character I decided to snag the stone early and got a carriage straight from Whiterun to Markarth after I'd left Helgen.

The stone was being guarded by a wolf.

So yeah, you can pretty much explore every inch of Skyrim at any time but I miss the instadeath moments of Morrowind after you unwittingly wander into a dungeon several steps above your pay grade.

Broken record, I know, but there's a mod (more than one) to fix it. Don't plan on tackling any overhaul mod until I've done as much as possible in the vanilla game. Obscuro's Oblivion Overhaul was the big one from the previous game and it certainly was a massive undertaking - One which I found weighted things too far in the other direction and I had to drop a difficulty level just to survive early on.

Anyone else got the Louis Letrush bug?



I'm quite lucky in that I've only got 2.5 Louis's - some people have a whole squadron of them!

EDIT - After pondering for at least 3 seconds I'm gonna rename this 'The Terry Nutkins Bug'. I wonder how easy it is to change NPC names? That *is* Terry!

Ay, same happened to me when I snagged it early. They could have at least thrown in some spriggan goats too (Altho I did find the area redolent with frost dragons when I first snagged it with my lvl 10).

I am finding the levelling is adding some challenge at the mo tho. Bandits at lvl 33 suddenly seem to have several higher-powered bosses in their midst. Decided to finish off a straggler yesterday and he turned out to be a stoneflesh-flashing destructo-Argonian who took some beating. That lead to several *what do I do now* menu pauses . But yeah you're right, there's nothing 'unbeatable' out there at the mo it seems.

Loving how the bow slow-time helps with dodging incidentally (altho sparks are summat of a challenge!). Hoping to unlock the fast movement and then I'm pretty kitted out on that score. And yet my 100 health system means I can still get taken out by some of the iterative 'radiant AI' scenes if taken unawares (well, some guys pretending to be Empire soldiers clobbered me t'other day )

PS have you heard of the... who actually makes you shoot / gives you tips? This is def something they shoulda done for all the 'trainers'. Makes it not feel like cheating to level a skill on the sly

Yep, they've definitely tweaked the level scaling since Oblivion where you'd end up with bandits wearing full Daedric armour at high levels and Minotaur roaming the land as common as mudcrabs.

I'm level 41 at the minute, have done the main quest but very little else so now the saviour of Skyrim is embarking on a life of crime with the Thieves Guild! It's akin to celebrities losing their head over here and doing stupid things, I suppose.

Reason being that I thought I'd completed the Thieves Guild line before but it turns out I hadn't - I'd been too busy with the Nightingales part that I forgot about all the sidequests where you're, y'know, actually doing some thieving. It ended up breaking the whole line.

I wandered on the Bow trainer by accident and, I agree, she's excellent. The standard trainers do feel a bit of a cheat in comparison and I'm finding them a bit hit and miss as to whether they even offer their services.

That'll be the Sim-friendship thing probably . I guess you have to do tasks for em for before they offer to help?

I'm doing the opposite with my khajit - gonna go through a load of guilds and get to the main story last I reckon - or at least just push it on periodically (as I understand it ups the dragon difficulty - currently I still find myself getting owned by frost dragons if I can't find a strategic spot tho). He's a reluctant hero

Ahh, I kinda like the idea of a world full of badasses on some levels

PS I've got a livestream running in the background here at work of a guy using the creation kit. If you can ignore the Sims-style music, and his strange geek outbursts about Diablo 3, it's kinda interesting to see basic level design at work. *EDIT* Ah he stopped. Poss for the best. That music was driving me nuts

Hmm, but there's tutorials . Gawaaan. Make Tatty Towers

I cannot do such things. I must content myself with suggesting ridiculous character builds to redditors. Like Badass Santa...



He kills people. Then gives them a present

Aye, I'll probably have to sit down at some point with a Creation Kit tutorial and try to figure something out. Apparently the official one isn't too hard - You end up making a tomb for the horse thief who dies at the beginning.

If only to change Louis Letrush's name to Terry Nutkins...

My Nutkins army will conquer Skyrim!

Well, that was easy! Didn't need to touch the CK either, just the NPC Editor and TESsnip.

Nutkins Army!



EDIT - Now to give him blond hair!

The power!

But remember, with multiple Nutkins comes multiple responsibilities....

Indeed. Maybe I can change the other two into Michaela Strachan and that blond bloke with the speech impediment? The Really Wild Show reunited in SKYRIMZ!

Tweaked Terry Nutkins:



Need to work on the features but made him blond and a bit less evil looking. Maybe I can give him a Skeever as a pet? Don't think there are otters in Skyrim.

Haha

Ach, just mod off a few fingers and you'll be fine

Lord I worry about what kind of mod/adventure you'd make now. The Country Watch team track countryside litterers with their binoculars and pursue them with giant badgers

Damn, you're onto something here!

Instead of Imperials and Stormcloaks I could have The Really Wild Show vs Countryfile!

That big blonde girl who does Countryfile looks a bit Nordic. Hmmmmm, maybe I could make her my wife...