A dragon roosting at the top of a building in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
It is mid week question time again.
- What games have you been playing lately?
- Are there any you would recommend to other Border House readers?
- Are there games that have you ranting or raving?
- Are there any games that you played and want to see covered on the site?
I had been playing more Tales of Symphonia but this weekend I picked up The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and that has taken up every minute of my gaming time since then. I created a female high elf as my first character. She is mainly a magic user but also has a mace for close combat situations. So far all the NPCs that I have encountered have used the correct pronouns but, unfortunately, that has not been the case for everyone else when they play Pronoun/title misuse in Skyrim
I have started to play Saints Row: The Third.
it’s a fun game. But i think that the Sam and Max game is funnier.
Skyrim. That’s it
To be fair that “pronoun” (is lad a pronoun? i didn’t think so, hmm) thing is probably a bug…
Also generally been playing skyrim a lot slower than everyone else (work!) so trying to avoid the internet for spoilers, but seems pretty impossible
That is why I said pronoun/title with the link. You are right that it isn’t a pronoun, but it is still a gendered term that is referencing a male.
Have played soooo much Skyrim x_X. Will probably be playing that for the next year or so.
But I took a break to start Saints Row 3 – which still makes me laugh, but feels like a step back from SR2 in some aspects.
The “lad” thing, i agree, is a bug — Bethesda has a lot of problems with gender in their games – tho i do note that i have played 33h of Skyrim and this is the only time i have encountered this problem, which is significantly less than Fallout 3 (especially the Operation Anchorage DLC which ONLY refered to my character as a male, and when i went to their support forums had a bunch of dudebros say that “it was probably intentional because women cant fight in wars anyway”, even after i presented numerous WWII examples of women in combat, but that is another story).
Coming from an industry background, and specifically production and QA, it seems to me that this happens due to multiple things —
1) finding a more uncommon term, “lad”, “son”, is more difficult than simple “he”/”she”/”him”/”her”
2) lack of playtesters playing as women, or paying the same degree of attention to this issue.
I personally, am obviously invested in the whole thing – especially because of how much i love Bethesda, and how i get immediately pulled out of the game when it happens, which is why i sort-of maintain my little blog of this kind of thing.
Anyway – other than that, i adore Skyrim. It is what i will be playing for this Wednesday and many Wednesdays after. Also Saints Row, which i have ordered but havent actually gotten in the mail yet.
So far I haven’t run into any lad/him/he issues in my game yet. *fingers crossed*
shouldn’t “lad” be the male equivalent of “lass”? The later term is used pretty frequently by those who embrace ye olde English. Also, “son” could be changed into “my dear” when encountering a female character
Oh, there are alternatives for sure – i just mean that “lad” probably doesnt occur very frequently in the script, and thus was overlooked when people were flagging the words that change depending on the players gender identification. Which is all a guess, but i would think that when they were checking these words, “lad” was easily skipped due to its infrequency.
My character is an elderly battlemage. Anyone calling him a “lad” is getting toasted.
A friend at work is having this problem too – he is an elderly orc but all the dialogue is structured for a young character.
I am starting Lonesome Road and will soon finish New Vegas at long last!
I will be awaiting the GOTY edition for Skyrim and be getting Saints Row soon. Does anyone know if it is possible to edit a character imported from the Initiation Station during the character creation?
All the information i have read says yes. You can upload and then queue any character uploaded for download.
I’m still busy with SMT: Strange Journey. I’m now in that phase of RPG playing where I’m starting to get bored a little with the game mechanics and looking forward to getting it over with. I’m not quite done with trying to complete the demon compendium and looking for medals, but some things, like talking to demons over and over trying to get their specific items or enough macca to spend on fusions, are starting to feel a little tedious.
After reading up on the alignment and conversation systems I now understand how they work, so they don’t feel quite as random anymore. I still think that the good-evil axis is much more important than the law-chaos axis that the game chooses to emphasize though, so it’ll be a long time until I play a SMT game again after this.
“I still think that the good-evil axis is much more important than the law-chaos axis that the game chooses to emphasize”
Can you go into detail here? I think that’s an interesting point because that’s actually part of what made Strange Journey feel so fresh to me… it’s not as rooted in the black & white, good vs evil fantasy as a lot of games that offer a narrative with branching paths.
Yes, SMT is different from most other RPG franchises that way. Then again, few games make alignment (whether good-evil or law-chaos) an explicit factor. Most rely on common sense in judging some acts or motives as bad and those who oppose them as good.
In answer to your question, I feel that one’s motives (e.g. wanting to make people happy vs. wanting to become rich) are more important than how one goes about that (laws or anarchy). I would categorize myself as neutral/good, which also gives you an impression of which dimension is more important to me.
If you will allow me to drift into personality psychology, I’d link contrasting people according to law-chaos to Myers-Briggs’ Thinking personality type and contrasting by good-evil to their Feeling personality type. My feeling about the relative importance of the two alignment dimensions agrees with my own typing as INFP in the MB system.
SMT games are said use both dimensions to classify demons and the player. In SMT: Strange Journey, only the law-chaos alignment is shown on screen though (by coloring names blue (law), white (neutral) or red (chaos)). From what I’ve read about them, the game’s endings are neither good nor evil, only lawful or chaotic.
I know what you mean about the getting bored stage. I’m still playing Xenoblade Chronicles and I have mainly enjoyed it, but after 115+ hours I just want to finish it now and go on to something else.
Wow, 115+ hours is quite a lot. Very few RPGs make me spend that long playing them (a few Final Fantasys, and of course the Phantasy Star Portable games).
I’ve been playing lots of DC Universe which is now free to download and play! Always wanted to play an MMO and this one works on my computer. When I need a break from that I found a neat little XBL download game called From Dust which is a kind of simulation game where you play as the environment. It’s fun and has successfully sucked me in!
Since last Friday, I’ve been playing Skyrim. It’s an improvement over Oblivion in many aspects but still has clunky combat mechanics. The most ridiculous thing I’ve encountered so far, though, is just how easy it is to pickpocket NPCs. I can be right in front of them, detected by them, and pickpocket all their armor, gold, jewelry, and their weapon, without them noticing. Just being able to do so sort of detracts from what I’d hoped would be a challenging thief experience.
Other than those issues, I’m loving the game. There’s an absolute ton to do (the game’s most relevant strength, for me), a fair bit of dialogue with mostly enjoyable voice acting, wondrous scenery and beautiful background music. I’ll probably play a mage and do the mage guild quests next. Oh how I love the guild quests in the Elder Scrolls games
Regarding the poor pickpocketing mechanics (I hope this doesn’t spoil anything for anyone… it’s spoiled some of the fun for me): forgot to mention, stealing armor and weapons requires you to be behind the NPC, though you can still do so even if other NPCs are looking at you. I thought earlier on in the game that you had to be hidden and behind an NPC in order to pickpocket, but realized after I got my skill up some (which is very quick) that this wasn’t the case. Oh well, stealing armor off NPCs provides some level of amusement, I suppose
Sorry for all the corrections today, not sure what’s up with me
(other than lack of sleep). I realized immediately after posting my follow-up on pickpocketing mechanics that I should have referred to them as “crappy” or something similar. I’m terrible with adjectives :C Wish I just had an edit button 
I am also playing Skyrim. TBH, I’m so much enjoying finding each nook and cranny of the world that I hardly talk to anyone.
When I can, I am trying to read the literature lying around the world (I wish there was a way to stick more bookcases in your house). Interestingly, the stories are less gender-equal it seems than the rest of the world. In most, the men are the heroes and the women fill their usual roles of prize or seductress. Though, I haven’t really delved into the history books too much (I am way to busy trying to find more ruins with dragon words. I want me some new powers!).
I found the difference between the Biography and the Real story of … i forget her name… the Dark Elf that became queen of Morrowind.
I’ve been sneaking in bits of Arkham City when my wife isn’t playing Skyrim. Also, will probably play Monster Hunter Tri tonight.
Another Skyrim player here. I got the game yesterday and played if for a few hours and, to be honest, I was mildly bored by the experience.
[possible spoilers]
I went over to the big town with the castle on the top and got involved with the warriors guild-kind of group. After some fetch quests they asked me to go and beat up a tavern owner. Upon choosing the option marked ‘brawl’ in the dialogue, the woman jumped at me with her bare fists. I beat her up in about 2 seconds, maybe because I’m a Khajit and do extra unarmed damage. She then got up, dusted herself and went back behind the bar. When I aproached, she was like ‘make yourself like at home, anything to eat or drink?’. Now that’s some seriously immersive game world. The woman had aboslutely no problem that I roughed her up just a second before. My, are those Nord folks honourable!
So it seems that for Skyrim Bethsoft deicded to scrap the whole NPC disposition system! A whole level of in-game interaction went down the drain. Also, the rather unique dialogue system from the previous TES games with the conversation topics and special options to influence characters is repalced by a pretty generic Fallout-y ‘choose what you want to say literally’ system.
Next, the waririors guild sent me in a company of another member to retrieve some artifact from a nearby cave. The whole affair was a massively overlong dungeon crawl, the dungeon being an aboslutely linear chain of rooms and corridors, which neatly make a loop right back to the entrance when your’re done! The enemies on the way were absolute pushovers, despite that I changed the difficulty from the default ‘novice’ to the middle ‘adept’ setting. My overpowered companion cut down any threat in seconds so even the final wave of baddies was laughably easy. At least it’s good that the dungeon usues some kind of pacing, with a big ‘last stand’ kind of battle at the end. The necessity to look through every dark corner to search every of the many scattered containers for a handful of coins from each is a massive annoyance, the devs could have just dumped the net sum right after that final battle.
Sorry for this overlong rant, I truly hope it gets better cause for now: Skyrim I am disappoint!
Some might be interested that there’s a large sale on indie games direct-from-the-developers here:
http://www.showmethegames.com/sales.php
including at least a couple of female-protagonist or choosable-protagonist games along with the Stuff Blowing Up.
as for what I’m playing at the moment i’m really too BUSY to play anything this week!
All Skyrim, all the time for me. I’m loving the heck out of this game.
I’m been playing Eden Eternal which is one of those free MMOs on Aeria games :3
Still playing MW3. Beat the Campaign on Veteran and now I’m going after the Spec Ops missions, as well as MP of course.
Word of warning: if you enjoyed MW2′s multiplayer, you’re probably not going to like MW3′s multiplayer. The guns all do way more damage, the map design is fundamentally different (and repetitive), and you will be getting shot in the back 24/7. It was a huge disappointment for me and pretty much everyone I know.
I kinda like that the guns do way more damage. When I get shot with bullets, I expect to, well, die >_> It also helps to mitigate n00b toobery. Most of the changes play to my strengths, so I can’t say I’ve minded them too much.
Survival’s brilliant, too. It’s everything zombies was, only better.
I just find it sort of imbalanced, I guess. It turns it into a “whoever shoots first wins” game, which kinda removes some of the tactics involved. And hip firing is laughably accurate now, to the point where I don’t even have to ADS unless I’m trying to pick off a distant enemy (although somehow, the shotguns are pretty awful now). It seems to me like they didn’t really needed to change any of those things to reduce damage of the noob tube.
I dunno. The first two games were made by Infinity Ward, and I think the drama there and the loss of pretty much the entire development team shows in this game. I like the new perks system, but everything else I find completely awful and broken, most of all the map design.
I’m starting to see what you mean about the uninspired map design – I think they might have overreached themselves by launching with so many. With four map packs to come too, I can’t help but wonder if they’re all going to be pretty samey.
I really don’t mind playing the “who shoots first wins” game, it feels more realistic to me. There’s plenty of microstrategy involved in getting that first shot off and with the crisp accuracy that made the MW series famous it’s 100% reliable if you know what you’re doing. You know, it also strongly reminds me of R6:Vegas, which is one of my favourite FPS titles of all time. It’s slower-paced than CoD and places more emphasis on those macro tactics by it’s very much one shot = dead. One of the things I find disconcerting about BF is how nerfed all the guns are. Taking multiple shots for a kill with a sniper rifle, any sniper rifle, just ain’t right.
Maybe it wasn’t wholly necessary but so much of this was so clearly intended to mitigate the most complained about problems – noob tubing and camping, especially with Kill Confirmed – that you can’t blame them for listening to their fanbase. I certainly appreciate it.
Besides, Survival is fucking rad. Like Spec Ops before it, it’s helping me to introduce lots of new players to the series, and now they know what the Rank/Perk system is like, too.
Meant to add that I agree that without the Infinity Ward team it does feel like a little bit of the magic is gone. It’s still a great game imo but it makes me a bit nostalgic. I guess I’ll have to wait and see what Respawn Entertainment puts out.
…Though I was glad in a selfish way that the writer and the creative director were two of the few who didn’t leave, so we’d get to see the single player brought to its legitimate conclusion >_>
I’ve been playing two mods for Skyrim: “Crash-to-Desktop” and “Sir Edmund Horsery Scales the World’s Tallest Mountain”
(Seriously love this game, but by the nine divines is it buggy!)
Skyrim. Skyrim. Skyrim. All the Skyrim.
I wish I could stop but I don’t know hooooow. ;_;
I’m alternating between finishing Venetica and beginning Skyrim. I love Venetica so much I don’t want it to be over. The combat in Skyrim feels clunky and dull in comparison but I hope it improves. I just found out that the dragons are not friendly. I spent my beginning scene running after the wonderful, beautiful dragon and getting my face burned off, but I don’t hold it against it. Oh Starting Scene Dragon, why can’t we be friends? I will rub your belly scales and find you loots!
We all know about reality not living up to the hype but when the hype doesn’t live up to reality? Yeah, that’s Skyrim. I played all weekend and cannot get enough of that dragon dope. In fact, I’m willing to say these are the best dragons I have ever encountered in any medium, ever. Thus far I have only fought two but each battle was satisfyingly tactical, varied and epic. What an amazing game, warts and all.
Skyrim and BF3 inbetween when i’m bored with Skyrim. Game is huge improvement over Oblivion (couldn’t stand that game ). Open world is great and massivly addicting, while clunky combat and a bit of lost focus on PC and story (especialy after 3 same looking dungeon and a bit of fedex quests) are a bit boring.
I played a little bit of Skyrim over the weekend. My character is a female Khajit. There were a few instances where NPCs would explain Khajit to me, despite me quite obviously not needing their explanation. So far, those have been the only “bugs” I’ve seen.
Skyrim people xD I am still going through FFXIII. I really love it. And I finished training a pokemon I need in HeartGold so I transferred it and now I’m back to White. I plan on playing Uncharted 3 co-op this weekend and then Sunday: ZELDA!!!
Juggling time between Skyrim – which proved an awesome experience so far – and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations – which proved challenging experience actually. It’s kind of hard to decide “what to play now” and the “maybe let’s play the other game now” 2 hrs later. Choices, choices.
For the first time in Elder Scroll games my character of choice is Altmer, not Dunmer, and I’m enjoying it so far, with all the bonus mana and so on.
Also since I’m playing both games on XBOX that’s kind of not really mine, and not in my room, I’m playing Diablo with Hellfire addon on my rusty computer.
I am drowning in games. Yet I am blissful about it. I now have Skyrim, Saints Row 3, and Assassin’s Creed 3 on my table, along with Uncharted 3 and White Knight Chronicles 2 that I still have to finish.
I only started Skyrim so I cannot say much about it other than it is pretty and I am enjoying my black-furred feline dude that punches people with magic. Also, I thought the intro was a little confusing… having hands tied in first person perspective (and not seeing that they’re tied) was/is a frustrating experience for me, especially when it is a high risk scenario and dying means you return to the beginning of the loooong cutscene.
Saints Row 3: I am having a blast with it, as I thought I would. It is quirkier and zaney and very hilarious and amusing to co-op through. A big however, the game feels like a step back from SR2 in some aspects. The engendered insults, the constant use of ‘bitch’ every few seconds (and other lady characters using it generously too), and how the intro to the game started out left me feeling that choosing to be a Lady Boss of the Third Streets gang was/is little more than a tacked on afterthought.
The beginning, for example, pulled a Dragon Age II intro. Where the developers thought it would somehow be cool to remove player agency and choice/customization capability by having pre-generated the protagonist for you to do the intro level. Where DA2 defaulted you to choose between three classes, each with an ‘iconic’ male or female Hawke that is white-skinned and predefined in looks, SR3 has your Boss character wearing a concealing big mask/mascot head that conceals your facial features… but the body is obviously very masculine/dudely with a low dude voice. Then after the intro, you are dropped into chargen.
I really cannot express how much I detest such setups. If a game is offering customization of My PC, then I should have freedom from the start of the game to play that character, my character. Not be forced to play a default that assumes de facto maleness and/or whiteness, regardless of silly game reasons. It comes across in a negative manner for me, as if the assumption is that only dudes are the majority/audience in mind, or that privilege is involved. Even if that may not be the case, it is what I am stuck feeling after these contrived intros.
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations: I haven’t even tried it yet. Been too busy! But I did fiddle with the co-op for a few minutes.
I am determined to finish Uncharted 3 first, though. Been playing co-op with some Border House folks, and it has been fun.
More should join in.
“I really cannot express how much I detest such setups. If a game is offering customization of My PC, then I should have freedom from the start of the game to play that character, my character. Not be forced to play a default that assumes de facto maleness and/or whiteness, regardless of silly game reasons.”
I wouldn’t dismiss the reasons for this approach as “silly,” but I agree with the general premise. So how do you propose to solve this classic chicken and egg problem? In order for players to truly customize the PC to their liking, the character must be represented in the game. A fatal flaw of games that introduce players to customization first is that there is no way to understand the context of their choices, potentially making them moot. OTOH to show the character first, some non-customized character must be shown.
One solution might be to generate a default character based on player avatars (i.e. Wii Mii or Xbox Avatar). This requires an external profile however and ideally a game should be self contained.
Another solution might be to randomize the default among a set of presets so the character is not necessarily a white male.
Along the lines of the first solution, perhaps character customization should be a separate “game” or app that allows those who are interested to customize their characters prior to playing the game. Both Dragon Age and Saints Row 3 have experimented with this but I don’t think they have been integrated well with the actual games.
I see nothing wrong with doing the customization first, especially for games like Dragon Age 2, in which neither your chosen “race” nor gender affect gameplay at all. There is no in-game context, only an aesthetic decision.
I think it is a lot more simple than that.
There are many creative and sensical ways to provide obfuscation of the protagonist so that no ‘default’ character required. Elder Scrolls (a la Skyrim) does it by locking you into first person perspective until the intro is over, then it allows you to create your character. Saints Row 3 could have easily avoided their dude-as-default issue by having the Boss wear a full-bodied mascot outfit that conceals not just the face but the body shape as well, and for the Boss remain silent until after the intro (once you are finished with chargen). You could have a third person perspective game where your character is cloaked in hooded robes that obscures body shape and is too dark to see the face within the hood, then after the introduction to the story and world, when your PC flings off their robe, it can switch directly into chargen for you to make their appearance/gender/race/whatever. Or if it is a sci-fi setting, bulky power armor like in many shooters these days can easily mask gender, race, and appearance.
These kind of options are really not that difficult to implement, nor are their complex. It only takes an ounce of creativity to employ correctly without stepping on anyone’s heroic fantasy toes, and without feeling like it can come across as de facto privilege.
For the record, Skyrim defaults to a white male Nord.
Some of these solutions have been implemented in games, Mass Effect 2 comes to mind, but they can be limiting. ME2 is one of the more successful games at this but not being able to see Shepard’s face behind the visor is a little distancing. It is hard to relate to a faceless character.
Skyrim does a better job but still there are compromises. It is another character who tells the PC that they’re a prisoner because players can’t see for themselves that their hands are bound. It is a minor issue but I would have preferred to see that my character was tied up (as opposed to a guard watching the prisoners) than having another character have to explain it.
In the critical first moments of a game, every opportunity to create player attachment is vital. Starting with character creation, while ideal in some ways, is generally not the best way to do that.
I started playing Bumpy Road for the iPad: http://simogo.com/games/bumpyroad/
I’m also getting back into Zombie Café for the iPad, too.
I’ve played some UNCHARTED 3 online multiplayer as well, also with someone from TBH, which was good fun.
So much Skyrim. I wouldn’t say I’m thoroughly impressed by it, but it is an amazing game that takes the best parts of Morrowind and Oblivion, along with the Fallout 3.
Skyrim has that handcafted look and feel to its dungeons and overall world design, combined with the impressive technology that’s been building up since Oblivion. What strikes me is the consistency in the quantity and quality of the world that they’ve crafted. Every quest has been really neat, whether it’s a side quest or the main quest.
It has its issues, some less forgivable than others; I mainly take issue with the crashes and the performance, at least on the PC. However, comparing this to the stability of past Bethesda games, Skyrim actually does a nice job at keeping the weight of all its systems from collapsing onto its own head.
I can not recommend the game enough, though it would not be a bad idea to wait a few weeks until the first big post-launch patch hits, especially on the PC.
The Xbox version is VASTLY more stable than the PS3 version of New Vegas. It’s only crashed on me once–when I tried to activate the dash menu during a save (probably a horrible idea and I blame myself more than the game).
I am playing Skyrim, like lots of other folks on this thread.
I especially love it when NPCs fall out of the sky and then go to work like absolutely nothing happened.
Screenshot!
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/649871686491988939/72F428C57E60B75FF12FD23160A6AA39417A7AED/
Currently playing Persona 2: Innocent Sin for the PSP.
And Magic Online. Lots and lots of Magic Online.
Silent Hill (1999).
No, really.
Played a mixture of Skyrim and AC: Revelations. However, I’ve already beaten Revelation’s critical path – It is, without doubt, the shortest AC game to date but this at least partially offset by the awesomeness of most of the story. The insights into Desmond’s, Altair’s and Ezio’s characters are awesome, and I love when stories really start drilling down into what makes a character who they are.
It looks like the next AC game will have a new assassin, so my fingers are crossed for a female assassin. (But I am not holding my breath.
)
The multiplayer is also awesome but I hope the population of players playing it increases as people beat the single player mode. There seem to be less people playing the release version than did the beta!
Other than that….Skyrim. Skyrim is pretty awesome, clearly the best Elder Scrolls game to date. I’m having a ton of fun with my sneaky mage character.
Also, the landscapes of this game are beautiful! Just artful in the extreme.