Skyrim: Far Traveled

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

Not sure how this is a stealth test...

Teleporting through testing areas is a bit sudden. After a brief stint at the arena where I find the sword, Umbra, I am soon back to solving odd puzzles with candles and traveling back and forth through long dungeon corridors to find hidden switches. Whoever designed these tests really made it annoying. For a change of pace the next portal tosses me into Molag Bal's slice of Oblivion known as Coldharbour.

Ooh, an Elder Scrolls Online tie in!

While most of the huge area is devoid of life, the few patrolling guards have fantastic eyesight making this a truly challenging sneak experience since I wanted to prove to Molag Bal that I could escape the place without killing anyone. That last guard really required an invisibility potion though, he was just too good. Or I needed to lure him out or something. Hindsight right?

Master Thief thumbs up!

After even more tests of wit, patience and eyesight I finally emerge out of some mountain temple and into a very humid desert. A sole Redguard is camped nearby and is quite excited to meet me, insisting I follow him to his village. He even knows I am the dragonborn? I ask him just where the heck I am. The answer? An isolated valley of the Alik'r Desert... in Hammerfell!

Kinda reminds me of Al-Khazneh.

Where is Doctor Jones?

Today I Smiled: Over the Limit

I've been having internet slowness of late and I am glad to learn that the reason for it is simply because for the first time ever, I've exceeded my monthly allowed download. This is partially thanks to all the downloading of Christmas present games but more so this pretty impressive app I was introduced to called XBMC. I suggest you google it up to see if what it does interests you.

My guild has also decided to give external voice chat programs a try, since many of the coop games just don't offer it nor do we really want someone hosting a voice server that will impair their performance. We did try Teamspeak first but since setting up a server was too messy we went with Mumble instead and that has been performing admirably so far. The text to voice chat does sound like a funny robot though. Not as cool as Arnie as a robot in the upcoming Terminator reboot though.

Also good to learn some interest exists to revive the old Wizardry Online. Not so good to hear of Elder Scrolls Online's performance though, but hey - if it goes free to play then I can finally play it again (I did run about in the Beta). As usual I also have some tunes for you, the first is one suggested by guildmate Carbon called AMV Psycho Pop. If that is too psycho or pop for your liking then maybe you'll instead enjoy the piano soloist, Jon Schmidt and his song, All of Me.

Lastly almost everyone has been dishing out the hate on early access zombie game H1Z1, yet in the sea of Steam reviews saying "Not Recommended", this one made me laugh:

That's it for now! Hope you all have a wonderful day! :)

Who is your Elder Scrolls Main?

Question time from me since all this talk of The Elder Scrolls Online is slowly seeping out from the bowels of the NDA. If you are going to play TESO or have played any of the previous Elder Scrolls game - who is your main character? The first one you create? Do you often change your protagonist? I don't and you probably can guess what I play just by my name.

If you don't / haven't / aren't going to play any Elder Scrolls related stuff I'd still like your input just based on races. Your choices are:

 

Top Row:
Altmer - tall high elves that favour magic
Argonian - agile lizard folk who favour magic and are resistant to disease
Bosmer - shortish, dextrous wood elves
Breton - fair haired humans that favour magic
Dunmer - dark (of skin) elves proficient in melee and magic

Bottom Row:
Imperial - everyday normal dudes that excel as crafters and traders
Khajiit - sneaky cat people, complete with whiskers - that enjoy making drugs
Nord - pretty much Vikings who like to punch things - especially dragons
Orc - green of skin with under bite, you won't like them when they're angry
Redguard - dark skinned human warriors - best fighters of the land supposedly

Just curious! Looking forward to seeing your answers! :)

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.

Showdown at Sky Haven Temple

Adventures in Skyrim - spoilers ahead! In this entry I am following my custom scenario "A Curse of Iron". You can follow the rest of the story here!

Since he had done such a good job I offered Kharjo to join the Blades but he refused as I thought he might. I set him free of his debt, hoping he had a safe trip back to Elsweyr. Mjoll then called me over and asked how I was doing, taking me outside to the training area for a little chat. It was there that she revealed she too was working for the Thalmor, explaining her sudden disappearance from Riften before. Mainly it was to get back at me for letting Aerin die. Well that's too bad. I drew my iron sword and readied my hide shield while she pulled out my high level magical ebony blade. The hell? Seems she has all my old stuff too!

Our duel lasted for a long while, but she certainly had the upper hand with that magic blade. Furthermore each time I would get her to half HP she would fully heal! It was then I realized that she's using my potions! Things took a turn for the worse when Esbern appeared as well and began thowing magical fire at me. Great, he too is now the thalmor's bitch. No use continuing the fight out here so I pushed past into the temple proper where my large group of friends waited... and did nothing. It's like they didn't know if they should obey me or obey the leaders of the blades! Fortunately one of them decided to help out - Kharjo, who hadn't yet left took on Mjoll while I delt with Esbern, hacking him down as quickly as I could and then returning to the fight against Mjoll for perhaps the longest / best boss fight ever.

Kharjo and I would alternate as each of us would get knocked back, while she just kept healing. Eventually though she ran out of potions and in one furious backhand I sent her head flying from her shoulders. With their leader(s) dead, the remaining people stood even more gobsmacked as before... until they eventually took a knee and accepted me as their new leader. I thanked Kharjo again and the khajiit gave his farewells as he exited the temple. All that was left now was to get this curse off me which meant another trip to Winterhold, so I asked for a volunteer to come with and the knight Rayna jumped at the opportunity. We made our way out and the forsworn were nowhere to be found - they probably fled after their "leader" was killed, so we continued on the road where we passed Kharjo again, as well as Maiq, and upon reaching a pretty high bridge came across a patrol of imperial soldiers with a prisoner. I grinned to Rayna who knew what I was thinking and after slitting the throat of the guard at the very rear, charged the remaining two with sword held high.

Skyrim is for the Nords!

Taking a break from Skyrim again here, so I thought I'd leave you with a few extra goodies. :)

Skyrim Cosplay with Jessica Nigri
Skyrim Cosplay with Manzi de Young
Skyrim Cosplay & Music Video with Lindsey Stirling and Peter Hollens
Elder Scrolls Online