Still on vacation in Skyrim, the mythical home of the Nords. Perhaps this picture will explain why.

Still on vacation in Skyrim, the mythical home of the Nords.  Perhaps this picture will explain why.

Still on vacation in Skyrim, the mythical home of the Nords.  Perhaps this picture will explain why.

Hello, I am your new hero. May I come in? What, you only accept catgirls? Well, perhaps next time then.

This entry is about a computer game, so not very interesting. It may tell a little about the game, a little about the state of the world in 2011, and perhaps more than I intended about myself. Not very interesting, as I said.

I must admit that my first character was largely inspired by my experience with the two previous games in the series, and particularly the last of them, Oblivion from 2006. Since they run on the same hardware, and come from the same company, I assumed they would be fairly similar. My experience at level 16 is that yes, they are fairly similar.

There are one huge difference, in theory: This game has done away with classes entirely (well, except college classes at the magical college, but even then I only ever attended one, and it was quite informal.)

Now, what you do decides who you become. There are no “major” and “minor” skills. The different races (or possibly species in some cases) have different starting skills, but only to a modest degree. Most skills start at 15, with 20 when you have a racial bonus. Since any skill can be raised to 100 (I think, I have not come near that) you pretty much decide your own class by doing what you prefer. If you pick enough locks, your skill in lockpicking goes up. If you block enough attacks, your blocking goes up. (It also rises faster the harder the attacks you block, but that seems to be a bit of a special case.) If you cast enough spells of a certain type, you increase your skill with that and similar spells.

After enough skill gains (seems to be around 10?) you gain a level and can choose to increase either your health, your stamina, or your magic. That is pretty much the only part that is detached from your actual practice: You can bash on wolves for the entire level and never cast a spell, yet raise you magic. So that is an exception.

You can also pick “perks” within each skill. For instance I have several perks by now in blocking and heavy armor. However, each perk is associated with a minimum skill level, so I cannot for instance get perks in Destruction magic, where I am still a newbie.

So, at level 16, what kind of character have I become? Basically what we in City of Heroes call a “tanker” – the invulnerable guy or gal who wades in first and takes all the beating and remains standing, while the rest of the team does damage from a safe distance or from the flanks. I have a high block skill and heavy armor skill, a decent one-handed weapon skill, and an pretty good summoning skill (I have summoned a spectral wolf to assist me since the beginning of the game). Now that I have a follower (Lydia the housecarl), I can concentrate on blocking their attacks while Lydia and the wolf whale on them (or in the case of the wolf, wail on them) from the flanks. This works pretty well. If they turn on my companions, I use my weapon to convince them otherwise.

Life in the game became a lot easier once I qualified for the Quick Reflexes perk in blocking, by the way. This perk causes time to slow down when the enemy makes a power attack while I block. A power attack is a particular intense and dangerous attack that takes a moment of preparation to perform and drains far more stamina than other attacks. Players can also do this. But with the quick reflex perk, I can actually see when such an attack is beginning, and try to step back or slide aside. If the terrain allows and the attacker is not extremely fast, I can avoid the power attack entirely. This saves quite a bit in potions.

Yes, you can heal yourself with potions during the game, and even with eating stuff from your inventory. (That seems like a glitch, really, but the potions are strictly necessary to survive some of the opponents you meet.) On the other hand you cannot cast self-heal spells during battle. Well, you can, but that leaves you wide open for attacks. So in hard fights, I wait with the potions until there is an actual risk of defeat within the next few hits, to save on potions. Once the battle is over, I can heal easily with magic. And before the battle begins, I cast an Oak skin spell that adds to my defense, along with the heavy armor and the shield.

So who is this main battle tank? Is it a Redguard soldier, the dark-skinned desert and jungle people known for their superior fighting skills and adrenaline rush? Or perhaps a blond Nord berserker, also with some inborn fighting skills? Neither – in the game, I am a red-haired Breton woman with a slightly chubby and innocent-looking face. Although the menacing horned helmet does hide part of that, and the heavy armor barely even lets you see that it might be a female in the first place. For those who want to play a female character to have a nice backside to look at, I recommend finding another game. Even in underwear, the difference between the sexes is understated compared to the real world. Well, certainly my part of the real world.

So far, she is doing reasonably well, although I never know for sure when I go into a dungeon whether I will be able to clear it out or have to withdraw with my tail between my legs. Except Bretons don’t have tails. I wonder if I should make a magical catgirl next. Wait, that’s the anime talking. But you can do that in Skyrim, actually. The Khajjiits are a cat-like race, complete with fur and tail. But they are not nearly as cute as Japanese catgirls and catboys. Perhaps that will be fixed in The Elder Scrolls VI? For if the nice people at Bethesda Softworks are still up and about in five more years, there is every reason to think they will improve on their success, as they have done since 1996.

Whether I will still play games at that time, nobody knows, not even I. Perhaps I have become too saintly for such things by then. Or if not, perhaps at least I will have stopped undressing my fallen enemies and placing them in compromising poses with the local wildlife.

Not unlike home.

The Elder Scrolls V: SKYRIM already appears in my doomed third attempt at a novel this month. There, the main character is on his way to buy the game, and in his excitement he collides with a car on 11/11/11 at 11:11:11. He then wakes up in Daggerfall, 500 years after the Elders Scrolls games, in a female Breton body.

I seem to have escaped with my life so far, but naturally I pressed “Enter” on 11/11/11 at 11:11:11, as is good and proper, to enter the kingdom of Skyrim.

Skyrim, land of the Nords, is the northernmost province of the continent of Tamriel, where the Elder Scrolls games take place. From the very start of the series, the place has been pattern on Norway, although the names of people and places are more like a mixture of Danish and Old Norse, with English and Old English. It is amusing for a Norwegian to find a lake named Geir (a common Norwegian male name), and the game starts in a small town named Helgen (which could mean “saint”, “the weekend” or even “the guy called Helge”, although the latter is a West Norwegian usage mainly.)

The locals are blond, strong, tolerant of cold, and the men are usually bearded. The architecture is inspired by the Viking age, complete with stylish dragon heads. (The place reminds me quite a bit of the Viking part of the multiplayer game Dark Age of Camelot. It helps that the size of the game is also similar. It is truly huge for a single-player game.

As for the dragon decorations, they are somewhat ironic in this game, for it has dragons, and they are not friendly. Well, one of them is responsible for the main character’s escape inches from the headman’s axe, but that is somewhat of a coincidence. Or is it? In any case, the dragons are supposed to be the main enemy faction of the game. I, however, have only played the game for one short day (and I even managed to get a walk in), so my character is still level 3 and still gets scratched up good by the local bandits near the starting area. No dragons for a while, I hope. The things are HUGE. Big as houses.

Skyrim continues the Elder Scrolls tradition of letting the player do whatever he or she wants. There is a helpful character giving advise and fighting for you during the first quarter of an hour or so, perhaps a little more, which serves as a tutorial to the game. They have changed the controls a little again, so a tutorial is appreciated. After that, however, it is up to you. There is a main quest and the reviews says it is the best of its sort in the series, but there are a lot of other things to do. It is a bit like a Sims game with fighting, I guess. You can collect stuff and craft weapons and armor or potions or magical equipment, and sell them for profit. You can buy a house and furnish it. You can even marry, although I haven’t heard anything about babies.

The game is supposed to be theoretically endless, as the game engine creates new minor quests based on your experience so far. Of course, the same was the case for Daggerfall, but I still stopped playing it after a bit more than 5 years. I expect it to take substantially less time with this game, since real life has been upgraded since then…

I can’t really call this a review, as even many of the first impressions are not my own. It is more like explaining where the day went.  But I would not be surprised if I end up doing what I did with Oblivion, traipse around the landscape and take photo-like screenshot.