Stuck in the world of Skyrim

The last few years I’ve been avoiding games “without an end,” such as games where the major focus is on multiplayer. The reason being that I like to beat a game and move on to a new gaming experience, II like variety. There are gamers in the world who have been playing nothing but Counter-Strike for the last twelve years and while I don’t think there is anything wrong with that, in fact those people are going to save a lot of money in the long run on new titles and hardware, I don’t think I could bring myself to actually spend more than a few months on any one game.

This year I’ve played some long games such as Dragon Age and Fallout: New Vegas, as well as games with no clear end like Shogun 2. Even though they were long the two RPGs had a clear end and while I didn’t get tired of Shogun 2 I just didn’t find myself returning to it after a certain point.

I’m a person who loves to beat games and move on. My goal is to get a complete narrative experience, then move on to the next one. Skyrim has completely halted that urge. I find myself going into Skyrim now, two months after its release, just to wander around and do little quests. After killing dozens of Dragons the encounters are still exciting and the variety and richness of the quests continue to absorb me. Even with all that more than the game continuing to compel me, the world of Skyrim has become a comfortable place to return.

The main reason that this happens is because the experience of Skyrim isn’t fixed, it isn’t directed by a writer and crafted so the player gets a specific narrative. It’s built as a choose your own adventure where the player is able to craft their own experience as they go along. If a quest doesn’t interest the player then they can simply ignore it and that part of the Skyrim narrative vanishes from their own personally crafted narrative. The most enjoyable aspect of this being quests which you stumble across almost accidentally. I hesitantly accept the responsibility and starting to run through them as a quick way to get some gold. It’s in these little pieces of the game, something that could have easily been skipped over, which best illustrates individually crafted experiences. There are some of these seemingly small side quests that develop into epic pieces of the Skyrim story. Once I experienced the first of these I couldn’t help but wonder what little secrets the game held that simply went passed over, unnoticed. Not from disinterest but simply from the fact that the game is too massive to ever be completed.

I’m expecting to get ready and move on from Skyrim soon, but each time I play find myself falling into the side quests rather than resuming the main quest. Before I can put the game away permanently I will finish the main story, something I didn’t come close to doing in Oblivion, and I will complete the Civil War quest line. Even after that my quest log is filled with unfinished quests on top of the thieves guild and Dark Brotherhood quest lines that I haven’t even touched, but of which I’ve heard nothing but good things.

Skyrim has become more than just another game in my normal run of games. It has become a comfortable place to go when I feel stress, it has become a way to craft my own gaming experience where I can choose to fight monsters, settle arguments through diplomacy, or just go for a long walk. It’s a little scary how much I’ve fallen in love with Skyrim as a destination, more than a game. I’m looking forward to seeing how much longer I’m going to be playing it, even as my backlog becomes larger and larger.

Fallout New Vegas and choice

Fallout New Vegas is a compelling game in ways that the original Bethesda Fallout game wasn’t. Starting from the first scene of the game it turns the plot into a personal vendetta and mystery that the player has to unravel. The original game did have something similar, your task was to find your father, but the mystery elements in Fallout New Vegas made me want to keep playing to discover why I was almost killed for a Poker chip, who Mr. House was, and why a strange robot kept following me around. The narrative of the game, which I always treat as secondary in Bethesda games, becomes the driving force for me to continue playing. The cast of characters in the game were more fun to interact with this time around the most interesting among them being the Kings, a group who has modeled themselves after Elvis because he was revered before the war, and is only one of many gangs that have their own unique culture within the world of Fallout New Vegas.

Exploring the world of New Vegas is where most of the fun comes from; the game is really a way for the player to explore the rich world that the developers have created. There are real, living people in this world each with their own prejudices and quirks. As you go through the game you slowly reveal the world, each new location adding another layer onto of New Vegas. One of the most fulfilling examples of this is the NCR, the largest presence in the game. Early in New Vegas the player bumps into some NCR troops, an outpost, a few small camps, and one large compound that were set up as a staging ground for the upcoming war. Even though the NCR has such a large presence throughout the wasteland their power isn’t apparent until the player reaches Vegas itself and visits the NCR base at what used to be McCarran airport. The size of the place dwarfs the largest settlements I had encountered in the wasteland at that point and the entire place was teeming with NCR troops and equipment. A rush fell over me as a member of this world and I felt the terrifying power of the NCR. The same feeling washed over me when I entered the camp of Caesar’s legion. Except instead of awe what I felt was fear. I had seen what Caesar’s legion was capable, random ambushes against the NCR and the destruction of a city, not only were there dozens of Legionaries but at the highest point of the camp I could look out and all I saw in the distance were Legion tents.

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