Skyrim - Or Why I Spend Every Five Minutes Saving My Game

So "Skyrim, The Elder Scrolls V" sequel, came out on November 11th, which ended up being a kind of crazy day as Marty and I were going to see Cirque de Soleil: Totem which was after about two weeks of basically not speaking to each other and me sleeping in my room on the floor. Which was thusly followed by two weeks of both of us being very nastily sick. So it was a bit of time before I got to settle into the game and check it out.

First, I gotta say I've been playing the "Elder Scrolls" series since "Arena". I remember being creeped out by the dungeons, no matter how repetitive they were or looked. And back then, it had those awesome low-brow graphics, that almost 2-D quality of the old Doom or Castle Wolfenstein. And shit would pop out at me and I'd squeal. Although I've been "gaming" for as long as I can remember, I think this might have been my first "real" RPG and I got introduced to it in the Navy; some guy burned something like six 3.5 diskettes for me. Remember those?

And of course, I was hooked. Then it was off to tons of "Daggerfall", only a little bit of "Battlespire" and "Redguard". Then I tried to play Morrowind (along with its expansions) on my shiny new Xbox, new to consoles at that point. Well, I DO remember Atari and Nintendo and all the really, really old consoles. But I'd seen nothing like the shit you could play on the Xbox from a console. PC games, sure. They were all built for the desktop. And since I loved the series, I really wanted Morrowind to work out but the travel system SUCKED balls and became so frustrating I had to put it down with great reluctance.

But lo, behold "Oblivion" and all its attending expansions on Xbox 360, on which I logged many hours running around and hacking away and collecting shit and exploring. And I was still playing "Oblivion" when "Skyrim" came out. I haven't even finished the storyline. In fact, it's kind of my MO to not finish games. I love playing them. But maybe there's something about them ending that I don't like. But then of course, the sequel comes out, usually bigger and better and prettier and all that, and why go back to the old? So they don't get finished.

But what does bring me back to play this series, no matter what comes out next is Bethesda's (the game studio behind the series) open sandbox games (including the Fallout series). And I mean, REALLY open. These games are so vast and open with so many choices. You can follow the main quest line or completely ignore it and tromp off-roads and do tons of side quests. In fact, this is often why I don't complete the Elder Scrolls series; I'm off romping about in the wilds. You can swing and flail about with your chosen hunk of metal of doom and slash and hack to your heart's content. Well, it was more motion on PC with the mouse, since you got to move the mouse in time with the slashes. Consoles don't really have that quality. Controllers are pretty much button pushing (more like mad mashing) and finger triggering (like wild). Takes a little bit out of it, but still such awesome games.

And let me tell you about the absolute sinker of time for me in these games is the mass collecting of STUFF. These games are a pack-rat's absolute dream. I mean, absolute. Total. Lots of my focus goes into leveling strength and stamina or whatever stat is needed for increasing carrying capacity. And my chosen house is jammed full of crap that I end up really never using. At least I sort appropriately into different bins and don't leave it all laying about the floor.

And "Skyrim" is no less any of these things. In fact, I think it might be the biggest map, with tons of dungeons and things to do, than any other of the Elder Scrolls game. Within a couple of hours of playing I was already hip deep in main quests and tons of miscellaneous quests to do.

But damn, it sure is buggy. I've lost many horses due to sudden alien abduction (rising up and away into the sky on its own), falling off cliffs and not having had saved in a while, losing them to various dragons and what not because the stupid things keep rushing off to try and save me and get killed for their troubles, suddenly just wandering off on their own while I'm inspecting a dungeon door. In regards of horses, I appear somewhat cursed. But they're so purty!!!

I also am constantly falling off cliffs or getting totally raped by dragons while I'm just trying to mind my own business. As a low level character, I was constantly mauled. This probably isn't helped by my play style which is rather, ahem, shall I say, scream and rush in, wildly swinging some weapon and hurling fireballs. It almost seemed as though any time I showed up to some eventual quest spot for a dungeon, lo, there was a dragon circling or trying land and eat my horse. With me on it.

So, I learned to obsessively save every five minutes. Because otherwise, I'd be utterly frustrated rather than wonderfully awed.