Yeah, here’s the obligatory E3 post. Before I continue, instead of what usually happens, when I am typing a title and suddenly the second half of it is in the text box, just now my computer decided it wanted to be typing the second half of that sentence in the title bar. 

Anyways, I won’t lie, I was pretty bored by the whole thing. Granted, all I wanted was Dawnguard, which I got in spades, and Halo 4, which I am still looking back over. I got those, and they were good. What else happened?

The Last of Us, a game I assume to be an entire game length of escort-mission regarding the teenage girl who looks sort of like Ellen Page. As much as I like Ellen Page, I dislike escort missions. I’m generally disinterested to begin with, but unless they come out and say in my hearing “it’s not a game over if you leave Ellen Page alone for half a second” I really won’t bother. Hell, that game with the immortal knight and the witch had as it’s tagline that it wasn’t one full-length escort mission but all the reviews said it was, so I probably won’t care anyway.

Tomb Raider. Well, since I wasn’t escorted into puberty by staring at Lara Croft’s blocky hindquarters, I have no reason to care about this flagging series. Rumor has it that the first thing the team says when they have visitors is that it isn’t an Uncharted rip-off. If the first thing you have to say about a reboot is that it isn’t ripping off a tribute to the series you’re rebooting, you have a serious problem. 

Elder Scrolls Online, really don’t care. It looked cool until the GameInformer article saying that Bretons considered Orcs people. As a narrative games guy, completely ignoring the lore of the setting you’ve chosen to use is always a no-no. I checked out the teaser on my youtube subs page because I am subbed to bethesda, and it was dull and silly. The logo was the battering ram? That “shwoop” motion? Sigh.

Nintendo, well, they did okay I’d say. The WiiU looks interesting, but when you get right down to it I’m a Nintendo fan for the games. Call me when they have a WiiU Zelda. And as for WiiU Mass Effect 3, the biggest flaw aside from being Mass Effect 3 (without the possible fix of the ending patch, but we’ll see) is that I can’t see how you can port your choices from one and two. I suppose we’ll see if the ending DLC makes the series not terrible again. If it doesn’t, then there’s no reason to care in the first place.

Wow, this was grim and unpleasant. So I’ll switch tack into a personal update because I am riding high. I just got a check from Libboo for Vacation & Holiday Mayhem in a wonderful little card made to look like the Union Jack and I got a new job doing data entry for twice what I was making before. I restarted one of my books because O had a better idea, but since the outline is pretty much the same in terms of main events it should be pretty quick sailing. Earlier today I downloaded the free mounted combat DLC for Skyrim because Bethesda are awesome and a lot of my friends are graduating. So all is well, and forgive me the lack of italicizing titles.

Addendum edit: Although I have to say Watch_Dogs looks like a pretty cool game. Keep an eye out for that.

Well, Lady Luck is on my side in so many ways today, not least because I was planning on writing a Skyrim article the very day the Dawnguard DLC trailer was put up. 

Anyways, as some of you know I have, in fact, written a story about zombies. In point of fact, Matt Grandstaff from Bethesda Game Studios was the first person to retweet my story, which can be found here. However, I had some problems with the zombies in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. They weren’t that fun or original. In terms of originality, they were pretty basic and generic. In terms of fun, well. They were all the same to look at, lumpy, rubbery. They were damage sponges with no particular strategy beyond bringing in a fire-enchanted sword. Oh, sure, the usual psychological coolness of zombies still applied, the fact that they are human enough to be disturbing and all that, but there was no gameplay or narrative reason for them aside from having your usual undead enemy. Compared to Morrowind’s bonewalkers, who were the devil at high levels and had a very specific narrative purpose for the Dunmer people, and it was pretty underwhelming, or the Draugr from the Bloodmoon expansion, men cursed to undeath for cannibalism based on real-world Norse undead of the same name.

Then comes Skyrim. Like Bloodmoon, it is a Nordic place, so Draugr were expected. However, they got a serious power-up from the desiccated cannibal corpses in Bloodmoon. Having been buried in armor and weapons as befitting a warrior, they are revived by an aspect of the Dragon God of Time, blessed and cursed for worshiping him in his destroyer aspect. While only partly sentient still, they retain their skills from life, coming at you with sword, bow, magic and thu’um, using tactics befitting their calling in life. They also have health at normal levels. Instead of hammering at a damage sponge mindlessly, I have to fight like I am fighting a human. They retain the psychological advantages of undead, which are twofold: firstly, I (and my character) feel no guilt. I am not killing people, I am putting down undead monsters. Second, they are still just human enough to be disturbing as they taunt you and laugh at you in the language of their master, Alduin. 

The last advantage of draugr over zombies is that they are less generic. Oh, sure, they do come from a real-world culture in terms of name, but they are still not the first thing that comes to mind when you think “undead.” Therefore, it feels more original. Doing things like that, changing names for things that are functionally the same, was something I actively asked for in Skyrim, and Bethesda deliviered magnificently. Draugr stand in for zombies, falmer stand in for goblins, ice wraiths stand in for normal ghosts (usually) and the like.

It’s the little touches that change a game from good to great, and Skyrim has plenty of those. If you haven’t, be sure to check out the new Dawnguard trailer on Bethesda’s YouTube channel.

I changed my mind, I’ll write about this.

So today The Elder Scrolls Online was announced. Personally, I expect it to crash and burn because WoW has cornered the fantasy MMO market. 

I’ll give it a try if I ever get a good computer and it isn’t a monthly subscription thing. Basically, if it’s microtransactions, which I think is a really good payment model because I’m the sort of person who will work harder to not have to pay. 

As for the plot, hard to make sense of such huge earth-shattering events not having any mention in the (chronologically) later main series. Molag Bal trying to absorb Mundus is wholly in character for the Prince of Rape, but it seems like something too big to go into a prequel without any background.

Also, World of Warcraft is the big fantasy MMO. Most fantasy fans who play MMOs are probably already on that, and not likely inclined to switch anytime soon. I don’t expect it to be able to claw its way past the competition, so basically I expect failure.

If it’s monthly, I’ll watch the stuff on YouTube like I did with Star Wars: The Old Republic. No game is worth paying for more than once, especially at game prices today. 

So today is the ten-year anniversary of the release of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. That game has a huge place in my heart and mind, so I feel like it is a good day to really dig into my history with it. As all truly worthwhile anecdotes start, so shall this one:

No shit, there I was in the Gamestop. I was a kid, early-mid teens at latest. I was always big on, as I called them at the time, “sword games.” I was not even aware of the story genre of fantasy because the only non-video game fantasy I had ever seen was The Lord of the Rings (and The Hobbit). I had seen Morrowind, for the xbox, on the shelf any number of times for fourteen dollars. Every time for months that I walked into that store I would pick it up, read the back cover and slowly return it to the shelf before buying some mindless action title.

At last, one day, I bought it. I read the instruction manual in the mall itself as my mother and little brothers scampered around getting their things, thinking “wow, this looks cool. Oh, it has classes and stats, so maybe it’s like Knights (which is what my friends and I, lacking consistent internet, called KotOR).”

When I got home, I threw the game in my dusty, noisy behemoth of an xbox. After an interminable load made bearable by the little snippets of lore information on the load screen and great concept art of skeletons, lizard men and creatures out of dreams, I saw the trippy opening sequence.

I, having no context as to the world of The Elder Scrolls, was as confused as doubtless the character was. It was that sense of bewildered wonder as I (and my character), shaking off the dream, walked out of the boat and saw the world stretching away.

As the game went on, as I and the character together learned how things fit together in the political and mythic landscape of Bethesda’s world, things began to happen in my mind that I only recently came to understand. Reading the Sermons of Vivec helped make my mind more receptive to mythic patterns in real-world stories. The Heroes Journey became crystal-clear to me as I had the Nerevarine experience it step by step. Finally, and most importantly, the mind-bending and reason-stretching, yet entirely consistent, logic of the world of The Elder Scrolls caused me to fully realize that fantasy has no limits. I learned that, because even the world and sky are not related to what you know, to make a good fantasy story then you have to establish common humanity with the characters above all else. That the strangeness is not something that will drive people away but suck them in, never to leave. 

In no small part, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is why I am a twice-published writer today. I hope and believe that, as Bethesda continues their massive series, more young people will be inspired to artistic careers and to follow (or even find) their dreams.