Ya know, I’ve put a lot of time into Skyrim. Some might call it too much time and I wouldn’t disagree. There is something about Skyrim that urges me to keep replaying it like Morrowind. This time around, I recorded it. So far I have about 460+ hours between the TES5 and TES5 Special Edition.
This is a top 10 game for me. What I really aim for is to start a conversation about TES in general. There was a thread that popped up earlier today that inspired me to do this.
I’ll post a new video every so often and probably say something related to TES that happened in the video whether it be lore, gameplay, design or something else TES related. I’m sure there will be many comparisons to games and gripes about Bethesda making the game the way they did but what Bethesda game would be complete without some bitching, right?
to be clear the videos I’m posting are playthroughs. With each post I’ll focus on something that struck me about the game
1st off TES has always been a bug ridden game but I can’t believe the cart physics bug hasn’t been taken care of!
2nd: starting a new character in a TES game has always been a well planned affair for me. I recall in Morrowind, my first character. After speaking with the imperial guard I choose a beast race. After deliberating and looking at the racial bonuses I choose an Argonian because of the disease resistance. Sounds dumb, but that’s because it is. I didn’t know anything about the game other than it was an RPG from a first person perspective.
I went on to talk to Socucius Ergalla to pick my class and birthsign. At the end of the day I struggled to pick a class since there were so many to choose from! I refused to answer his questions because that would be taking the easy way out (little did I know just how customizeable classes actually were). Since my character was a bipedal lizard, I pictured a godzilla-like life for him. Not battling gigantic monsters or shooting fire from the diaphragm but one of strength and power. The life of a Battlemage! That decision took about 15 minutes of going back and forth between class descriptions.
Of course, the next step was to pick a birth sign. I didn’t understand the birth sign at first. Every birthsign seemed to be plauged with attributes which made little sense to me. There was one birthsign however that made sense from the moment I read it: The Shadow. Becoming invisible for 60 seconds just made total sense! Who wouldn’t want to do that? The other reason The Shadow made the grade was because of the radio show, The Shadow, that I used to listen to with my grandfather. “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!” How could I turn that down?
Up to this point I’ve probably spent about 30-40 minutes creating a character. I had no knowledge of how the game worked and I still put that much time into it. Subsequent character builds would take less time but the attention to detail never diminished.
Contrast this to Skyrim. Granted, I know much more about TES now than I ever did then but the attention to detail vanished during character creation. Bethesda stripped one of the more memorable moments out of the game! All the player had to do in Skyrim during character creation was to get the aesthetics down. Lower the chin, bring the eyes closer together, pop in a bit of five o’clock shadow, pick the right hair-do and decide on what color of dirt lies on your face. Oh, don’t forget naming the character, nice of Bethesda to leave that “feature” in.
Color me dissapointed! At least that was the feeling of the day after making my first Skyrim character. “WTF is this?” I thought as I headed to the chopping block, not giving one shit about the dragon that just landed on the tower. Where are the primary skills (secondary was taken out in Oblivion so I didn’t question that.)? How come I couldn’t pick my birth sign? I was not a happy camper to say the least and let the salt flow during the tutorial in Helgen.
Once I got out of Helgen, I felt that familiar sense of freedom that TES imparts after the tutorial. A sense of calm ensued. I followed the soldier to the guardian stones and about shit myself! I was about to pick my “birth sign” by touching a stone. Ridiculous! I begrudgingly picked the mage stone and went about playing the game with a chip on my shoulder for a very long time. I never started the main quest and played for about 70-80 hours until I called it quits. Despite not having a specific moment to define my character, I wound up naturally just being a mage. It was quite fluid and really lent it’s hand well to the series. I never complained about it ever again.
In total, I think I spent all of 3 minutes in character creation.
Character creation in Morrowind was a ritual; a rite of passage. Only, when you did it correctly, you feel like the game was coming together. In Skyrim, it was more of a passing glace. Since you almost never look at your character, it really didn’t matter at all! You played the game and naturally fell into a magic, stealth or combat based character. Both worked very well at the end of the day. The largest difference between the two games is that in Skyrim, each time I stopped playing the game for a longer period of time, I would come back and make a new character. Start fresh. I had totally forgotten what I was doing, where I was going and what motivations I had. However, given a similar situation but with Morrowind, I kept playing that stupid Argonian. I always remembered what I set out to do with him. I didn’t make another character until most of my attributes were capped.
I love Skyrim. I loved Morrowind!
Bethesda, do the world a favor and help us to love our character again.