Skyrim review volume 1: Bethesda hates magic

Skyrim is probably the best video game I have ever played. It’s incredibly immersive and just down right beautiful. All I hear about online is how much everyone likes it and thinks it’s amazing, which is true; it is amazing. I think, however, there are still some things that don’t quite fit right or that there are mechanics of the game that don’t work for me.

Now, I should start by saying I have logged 100 hours into this game since it came out. I have a level 64 character, I have beat the main quest, and have I completed the big side quests, including: the College of Windhelm, the Thieves Guild quest, The Companions, and the Stormcloak side of the rebellion quests. So, I feel I have a pretty firm knowledge of the game. The character I created was Imperial. I picked an imperial because it had the nice mix of magic/melee that I was going to make (leaning more towards the magic side). I always seem to want to make a jack-of-all-trades when I play these games, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas; maybe that is my downfall. I start out doing fine, with a little fireball, a little alteration spell for armor, a little hitting you with the sword, etc. Around level eight is where I started to have trouble.

From the get-go I could tell that Skyrim was not built for the magic user. Like most RPG’s, it made for the “tough guy melee type,” the run-into-the-middle type and kill-everything-and-survive type. Not much love for us, who want to stand back and shoot you with a fire ball, types. My hope was that in later levels the magic would pay off. I was sorrily disappointed that the game seems to focus more on melee and weapon damage heavily, and magic seems like an after thought. For example, leveling smithing is the easiest thing in the game to do. I was about level 20 smithing when I figured out that you could take one ore bar and one leather strip, the easiest, cheapest things in the game, and make iron daggers over and over until you get to 100, which doesn’t take very long. As apposed to enchanting and alchemy, which get progressively harder to level. It’s like the game wants you to wear heavy armor and use a weapon. With your smithing you can improve your armor; exceeding higher than any alteration spell, and improve your weapons to do more damage than any destruction spell. So, just some reflection, you have an easier time leveling, and surviving, when using heavy armor and weapons, and in later levels can do more damage than a magic user can ever do. Yep.
I could spend some time talking about the many glitches in the game. Namely, dragons flying backwards for no apparent reason. Or the quests that you can’t complete even though you did them before you had the quest. And the ill-timed freeze up, that always seems to happen at the exactly the worst time. But every game has bugs, so I wont nit pick that to much. Just commenting on the fact that they exist.
Like smithing, I got my enchanting skill to 100, begrudgingly. I began to make sets of Dragon armor, with varying enhancements to play styles. I had made a character that I would allow me to do whatever I wanted. One set had enhancements to armor, weapons, health, and weapon damage. The second set was an utter disappointment; the only magic skill you can add to armor reduces the cost of a particular school of magic. You can put enough enchantments for a particular school, reducing any spell, to nothing. Sounds cool right? But then you start to think about it. Why did I put so many points into magic when I leveled, yet my spells cost nothing? What’s the point of having 500 magic when it never goes down? I would have liked to know that before I put so many points into it; maybe those points would have been better for health and I would have survived a little more. To be continued!

Perspectives on terrorism (in film)

Imagine that you hear a story on the news: we catch a known terrorist, the police and FBI are integrating him. His known associates break into a building, kill 50 police, and blow up the bottom floor of the building. They steal a helicopter and break out their friend, killing anyone who gets in their way. They then proceed to crash the helicopter into a building, possibly killing hundreds. In the end, they get away. Sound familiar?

Flash forward to the future. London. A rogue solo bomber blows up the Old Bailey, (google it). Are there people inside? Unknown, we are still sifting through the rubble. This rogue terrorist then breaks into a news station, and proceeds to kill Innocent police. Guys that are probably just doing their job, and like the good benefits that a government job gives them. Instead, their kids will grow up with out a father. This bomber then gets on the television, and rants about some tyrannical government. Whether he is right or not, he is still a criminal who blows up buildings and kills government workers. How well are you going to listen to him?
Going back to the first group of terrorists, you are in The Matrix. You are not some holy warrior, working with the human resistance, doing crazy flips and shooting guns. You are just a father of three working at subway, trying to make ends meet. Little do you know, that you are just a battery in some machine’s power source somewhere. But you don’t know that, you are just living your life and wanting some one to do something about people getting killed. You don’t really understand why these people in black trench coats keep killing people. When they kill an agent, a person dies. All that is left of them is the person the agent downloaded into.
You live in London, and the government sucks. They kill people and arrest people for no reason. How did it get to this point? Oh, that’s right, you were scared about some virus killing everyone, so you gave government tons of power to sort it out. But wait! You’re still a democracy, right? You elected a dictator? That doesn’t make much sense. Your country has been a democracy for a long time. How did it get to this point? By not going to protest or give a crap that your vote got taken away. In that case, you deserve to be ruled. Sounds harsh, but in the movie V for Vendetta, that’s what it has come to.

When V blows up the building, you do not know whether there are people inside. That detail is just glossed over. It’s at night, granted, but are there security guards or janitors in there? These are the same people He is trying to free from the evil government.

These movies are both great, but in the end, I am thinking how other people who live in these universes would view what’s happening. Remember, you are not Natalie Portman, you don’t have V explaining everything to you. You’re just some random person. Now, this begs the question, “do the Wachoski brothers like terrorists?” They wrote the screen plays for both these movies. The “V for Vendetta” graphic novel was written by Allen Moore. He is a great writer, but that dude is nuts. He seems to have it in for governments and corporations. The Wachoski’s still choose to bring these movies to the masses. Seems like kind of a strong message when you look at it like that. Maybe they do not even know they are doing it, or I could be blowing this out of proportion, but I think it’s fun to think about.