TESO: Nothing goes to Plan

Adventures of Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

With Queen Ayrenn on board, I figured it was time to report to King Jorunn about my progress and Wayshrined back to Davon's Watch. Jorunn said he'd be at Mournhold which is to the South in Deshann, so that's the road I took. I had to deal with a minor terrorist group spreading chemical weapons to turn people into zombie things on the way and ended them via the "backfire" method with the help of Naryu, a Dunmer assassin. We were getting pretty friendly until she revealed she was Morag Tong. Now she's on my "to kill" list (also I'm pretty sure this is her in the Morrowind trailer).

Anyway, bigger fish to fry first. At the Capital one of the mages from the mage's guild acts as my transport in organizing the three leaders (of whom King Casimir isn't one, oops) to meet at a summit on a neutral isle. Fortunately the Covenant High King Emeric must have heard good things about me as he agrees to attend. The talks don't go well at first, with no lead willing to redirect their troops from the Cyrodil war into Coldharbour. A short visit from Molag Bal and his minions does make them agree to send the war-neutral Fighters and Mages guild though - with me in the lead.

Spoiler: They don't.

Not that it matters because in our hasty and unplanned counter-attack I arrive alone in Coldharbour, at least this time in the open world version of it. I soon find the Hollow City, a town sent here and protected by Meridia (also possibly a Dark Souls reference). It suits its name in that it is almost completely deserted. The local grounds keeper, who I suspect is Meridia herself, offers me to use the city as my base to build up an army. Meridia really dislikes Molag Bal. First things first - I find a cooking fire and make an armies worth of food (which I sell because, shineys are shiney)! Provisioning is seriously the easiest craft skill to level. With my pack lightened and my belly full, it's time to go exploring.

Skyrim: A Criminal from Morrowind

Adventures in Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

In search of the Morrowind criminal, Bo and I headed to the foundling little hamlet of Little Vivec as suggested by Mandryn (who claimed to be following other leads but I suspect he was just drinking all the ale in that tavern). The new community was made up of Dunmer who had fled from the racism of Windhelm and they had a fair amount of courier work to hand out. None of them wanted to talk about the strange warrior who had come through a few days before.

I figured taking out some local bandits for the community might loosen their tongues but they were all dead when we arrived at their camp, apparently beaten to it by the mysterious stranger. Finally one of the dunmer admitted that this stranger was seeking some nearby dwemer ruins so Bo and I hoofed it over there and followed the trail of dead bodies and broken robots deep into the small facility.

A trio of riddles also blocked the path but they were easily solved once I worked out the cool mechanic. Basically the answer to each was an item, and so if the answer was "time" for example, I'd need to put a watch into a nearby box to unlock the door. Good design work there I thought. :) Finally we caught up to this mysterious warrior, and he asked for our help. I immediately said yes.

Brutus!?

Skyrim: The Ebony Warrior

Adventures in Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Arriving at Windhelm I decided to check in with Njada but only got to the town center when a massive Ebony Warrior approached me and having "accomplished everything" wanted to duel me as his final challenge in life. I told him I'd think about it, and when he turned around I called the guards on him (by making him angry via pickpocket). I stood back as I watched the Ebony Warrior decimate the five guards that arrived, learning that he had decent restoration skills and that he too was dragonborn. That's not such a big deal these days.

I should really consider lighting a torch for screenies...

Not willing to risk the lives of any more citizens I let the giant of a man leave after he sheathed his weapon. I had hoped to track him outside but he simply vanished once he reached the gate! Concerned for her safety, I thought I'd advise Njada to move house but she adamantly refused since there were others in the city that required her protection.

My next stop was Riverwood where I recruited Bo after returning Marauder's body to the camp (it sort of got there on its own actually, kinda strange). She mentioned a possible lead in the local tavern and sure enough a dunmer named Mandryn was there asking for my help to track down a dangerous fugitive from Morrowind for a measly 500 gold reward. "Did this guy wear Ebony Armor?" I asked, "If so I think I've already run into him."

Skyrim: Familiar ash, unfamiliar Darkness

Adventures in Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Hey, I remember climbing that.

Apparently Solstheim island is part of Morrowind, which is cool in that you can see the ever active Red Mountain in the distance. The small town of Raven Rock is where BT and I make land fall, meet the locals (mostly dunmer as expected), and get a bunch of quests like hunting netch (flying jellyfish), clearing out ash zombies from the temple, and investigating a strange stone that seems to make people mindless zombies who want to build - something. Even BT began getting entranced by it.

BT: "It's just sooo big..."

An adventure into the local mine to find the remains of some guy's missing relative also leads to familiar looking ruins and even more familiar looking draugr. There's even a cool lazer sword inside, too bad it's kinda weak. While the enemies are no problem, the last pendulum blade hall proves too much for B.T. and she is cut to pieces half way.

At the end of it I find not only a new dragon shout, but an odd black book which warps me into the black/green/tentacled realm of Apocrypha. With walls made of books and scrolls it's easy to see why its ruler, Hermaeus Mora, is regarded as the prince of knowledge. There are some abominations lurking in there, but none really pose a challenge. Having a choice from three boons at the end of the level is a pretty good idea too.

Walls of books go well with Cthulhu.

Skyrim: Altar of the Ascended

Adventures in Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

"Ominously dark" is a very apt way to describe the interior of the altar place that Vithdovah was guarding, and it was inhabited by horrible creatures not seen elsewhere. Fortunately they were all not very observant, and the shadows played to my strengths being a sneaky type. Especially with the armor that makes me run faster in the dark!

There were hounds that radiated smoke (or just farted a lot).

And a giant winged hound.

And giant shark men? These void gehenoths were often accompanied by scamps (like in Oblivion) or flaming guar (similar to those in Morrowind). As expected they could take a lot of punishment and throw me around with their melee attack.

They also have a creepy smile.

That's why I'd vanish into the shadows, reposition, and backstab (sometimes with slow time) their vulnerable rears, a flaw all the monsters in this place have. These particular ones are also quite slow and easy to get the drop on, meaning it was pretty basic to slay them all with just a little bit of patience.

Skyrim: Tomb of the Nerevarine

Adventures in Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Mellori was happy with all the trinkets I've been retrieving for her, and the next one was a doozy: a little hammer called Sunder. Supposedly it was buried with the Nerevarine centuries ago, the hero of Morrowind who slew Dagoth Ur in the Red Mountain. It certainly wasn't me because a) I'm still alive and b) I didn't kill Dagoth Ur with a hammer. I just pushed him into a volcano (which was awesome btw :P).

Anyway, Brutus would have to stay behind again because he had to help clean up the town after being caught littering.

"But it doesn't fit in any of the bins..."

The ship to Morrowind was really fast. Pretty much instantaneous even. If I wasn't reading carefully I'd even think the Nerevarine's tomb was IN the ship. A small Imperial party was idling in the tomb when I got there. Apparently they all tried to take the hammer and were deemed unworthy - turning into Hollows (someone certainly watches Bleach) who forever were trapped in the tomb.

While not openly aggressive immediately, I obviously had a conflicting opinion with their captain and ... well. I set them free. Finally I reached the burial chamber myself and who do I find waiting there?

Azura, the Daedric Prince(ss) of Dusk and Dawn

TESO: Beta Weekend 2 Review

If you are reading this, then the NDA has been lifted fully on The Elder Scrolls Online and I am finally free to talk about my experiences with the game about it during their 2nd beta weekend stress test. At least I think it's the 2nd weekend...

Initial impressions? It is pretty cool and fantastically beautiful. I obviously played a Nord since they come from the country of named after me and after escaping a not too dangerous daedra prison (guarded only by weak, crazed souls) I found myself traipsing around an island that seemed pulled straight from Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and later still was reliving my memories of Morrowind.

The combat was decent enough for the class I used (I played in first person as a Dragon Knight) and the clean interface was pretty much copied out of ES:V, with minor tweaks for hot bar abilities. Skills individually gain level as you use them (and sometimes when you don't - which is weird), and at certain points each can "morph" into a different variation of the same move, for example choosing between additional range or damage. There's no going back up the skill tree as far as I know so while everyone may be using a "slash" attack, each would have variations of the same move. The optional first person perspective also helped add to the immersion.

There were some negatives of course. Being a Beta there were missing textures, text mismatching the voice acting (all lines are voice acted - that must have been expensive), missing quest givers, people falling through cracks in the world into ... space? Can't say Oblivion because that's actually a place in this series. :P The enemies have very simple AI and sometimes it feels like you just have to press "E" to win. Also the instances were very "phase" heavy. If I was playing with a friend and I happened to finish a quest before or differently as to how he did in an area then we wouldn't see each other despite standing in the same spot. This is to keep with our individual immersion I guess, but I can see how that will be problematic later.

More worrying were reports that the further settlements were simply just not done yet, which given their release schedule, is a bit of a worry for all those who purchased the pre-order stuff. They may end up racing to a world not yet ready for them. My main gripe however is the login queue. One hour and a half is a bit rich. Hell, even 5 minutes is unacceptable to me, so that was my queue to go play something else.

In the state I experienced the game at, I'm forced to only score it 2 dragons out of 5. Hopefully Zenimax fixes up all the broken pieces before release because this would easily double its score. Will I pay to play it though? That's a silly question. Of course not.