Tag Archives: essay

Game dev, Games

When the CK Came out

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Still working on the World Space issues, though I’ve made progress, and yes, still working on the second part of the Dwemer translation. It may take a while to write it but keep eyes open! Meanwhile, I appreciate comments and discussion if you care to talk about it, or, you know, totally slap down something completely silly and ridiculous I somehow missed. I tend to do things like that.

A lot of my recent work brought back memories of when Skyrim first came out. I remember being very excited about creating one of the first story mods and anticipating it as the launch of Skyrim got closer, and the disappointment when the CK wasn’t immediately released. The anticipation mounted to a frustrating point when the CK was delayed, originally supposed to come out the same day as Skyrim. It was at least two months before we saw any mention about when it would finally grace Steam downloads, and a lot of people had turned to using GECK for Fallout with moderate success.GECK and the other modder’s resourcefulness sort of quashed my dream of being one of the first to realize all the possibilities the CK offered. Oh well! A good lesson to not worry so much about being first, because being first is not always the point.

I also remember, vaguely, loading the Creation Kit up when it came out sometime in January 2012 (or was it Feb?) and starting the long process of learning how to use the files in Skyrim, but not many tutorials save for the woefully inadequate CK Wiki. I sort of got lost trying to piece together a large house and eventually gave up and abandoned the project as I had other obligations to tend to at the time.

So many awesome mods have come out since then, though, it’s hard to keep track of everything. I look at the vast number of mods for Skyrim, and it’s only been a little over a year and a half since it came out. I don’t think Oblivion had so many in the same period of time. The sheer creativity of humans astounds me.

Still, there’s still things I want to do or have in my game that nobody else has made yet. My initial disappointment at really wanting to make a difference in the community is somewhat allayed now, because maybe it wasn’t the right time, or maybe I didn’t have the right kind of experience yet. I’ll admit, it’s so much easier learning the things a modder needs to know with the larger array of tutorials available, even if a number of them are outdated. It’s important to figure out what works for you. Thinking back, the state my health was in wasn’t really conducive to learning, either, as I may have mentioned before. The difference of clarity in my head between then and now is pretty drastic.

It’s June, and New Years is a long way behind and ahead, but I feel… sort of optimistic of the future for the first time in such a long time I can’t even remember. Creating a mod, heck, just creating something at all is rewarding. It’s a good lesson, for sure.

Games, Rant, TES Lore

Things that Frustrate me about Tamrielic Lore

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As much as I love the world of Tamriel, I think the creators do the potential of it a strong injustice with the way they’ve handled it in the past several years. Badly written novels aside, I think the world should be expanded, and fans should have a direct bearing on the lore. I don’t mean just toss whatever crap people feel like tossing in, but I think certain extremely well made mods should be appointed canon, and also, fan art and fan stories. Hell, I know of half a dozen fans who are talented writers that would kill for a chance to write a novel that would get published.

It would solve a lot of problems. Such as irritating things that we never find out what exactly happened after certain big events- big point Morrowind, second point, what happened to all the people you meet in Oblivion, third point what exactly happened to Nerevar?

Multiple explanations for everything, if we get any at all.

Today’s topic is the frustration of the Tamrielic lore. As Elder Scrolls Online is still months away from release with its infusion of new lore to the already vast world, it could be a complete game changer for the series with its look into the history of Tamriel, so at this point in time, I’m only going to refer to the already released aspects of Tamriel.

It’s frustrating, I say, because of the complete lack of clarity on some subjects, and the tendency to rewrite already established lore just to fit something new in. When it isn’t even necessary. Karliah was a good example of a grand rewriting of Barenziah’s story just to fit her in. There had already been plot holes and openings to allow Karliah without also completely- and to put it bluntly- screwing up the Nightingale/Jagar Tharn and Barenziah’s relationship and the whole back story to Elder Scrolls: Arena. The sex of the child who is supposed to be Karliah’s parent, isn’t even the same from The Real Barenziah, which was originally male. We never did find out what happen to the child in any of Barenziah’s biographies originally, there was no reason at all to rewrite it so completely. The blanks were already there; they could have just filled it in.

In addition, between games you never really totally find out what happened to the characters you befriend or otherwise unless the game devs specifically put in references, and that’s what it tends to be; rather vague references if we get any at all. I absolutely loved having Sinderion and Neloth appear in Skyrim in their various forms, but Neloth doesn’t really speak specifically about the Nerevarine and Sinderion is dead so he can’t tell you anything about the Oblivion crisis. Instead, we get a few books about vague general things about what had happened (which we already knew) and some new things about how the other continents handled it, like the Argonians ejecting the Oblivion forces from Black Marsh by sheer numbers.

But you never hear anything about the Hero of Kvatch. Who got a freaking statue in Bruma for their efforts in the Crisis. In fact, you don’t even hear if they went to another country like the Nerevarine who supposedly went to Akavir. The whole deal with Sheogorath couldn’t have been permanent, and I’m not entirely convinced the Sheogorath you meet in Skyrim is the Hero of Kvatch as others say. It’s possible, but again! There’s that vagueness. I’d rather know if Jyggalag had been split into his two selves when the curse broke at the end of Shivering Isles or not! I mean, I love the open worlds to adventure in, but there comes a point where they’re sacrificing coherency for no good reason. Throw us a goddamn bone here. I’d happily create a mod about Jyggalag if they’d just give us the hooks we need to take off with it! BUT IT DOESN’T HAPPEN.

That reminds me. Oblivion and Morrowind had a period of about six years in game time between them, and the only mentions of the goings on in Morrowind is about “That whole Tribunal nightmare.” Come on! There needs to be more about that than a few random rumors. How about a few enclaves of religious fugitives? Fugitive priests? A better explanation of what’s going on? The Dunmer of Cheydinhal and their vague references are not enough! The whole damn province should be in an uproar and it should have a blatant effect on Cyrodiil. The re-establishment of the Good Daedra couldn’t have been easy or overnight.

And now, let’s talk about the Warp in the West a little bit. The gap between Daggerfall and Morrowind is a bit longer than Morrowind to Oblivion, but we get a whole book about it. At the end of Daggerfall, you have a choice of who to give the Mantella Crux to. There’s about seven or eight choices. You get to pick only one. The in-game book? Every single person who could get it, all got it at the same time. Okay, that’s pretty not-vague, but it’s also really strange without a decent explanation, like the intervention of an Elder Scroll that manipulated time for some reason, because I’m pretty sure the Mantella can’t do that kind of thing on its own, even as powerful as it is.

If you’ve noticed I haven’t mentioned the novels yet or that there may be some explanations in there, it’s because I don’t really consider them a reliable contribution to the lore and are… sort of poorly researched. And not very well written, may I add. I’ve read a countless number of books in my life and have written a few, and the novels… really didn’t do it for me. The characters were lack-luster, the plot confusing, the author had a poor grasp of the mechanics behind the lore- I don’t think he played any of the games and got to know the world like we do-, and the bad grammar and shoddy editing really took away. That’s another thing- a good book should at least attempt to explain enough of the world to the reader so that they shouldn’t have to know the other installments in the lore. Other major series does this in varying degrees in their novels, even ones that seem almost universal- from Star Trek, to DnD, to Xanth. I lent the book to my mother, who has a discerning taste in fantasy literature, and asked her what she thought of it. Her review was even less stellar than mine, citing almost the same problems I had and then came up with several more for someone who just happens to stumble across the book in a bookstore and didn’t know the lore like I do- and even knowing the lore, it was confusing..

What I think Bethesda should do is expand the novel lore, bring in more authors, open up the opportunity to the fan base to submit manuscripts, and set some damn standards. Ask what the fans want in the way of filling in the gaps in the games. I don’t know, maybe just more interaction with the community at large and let many more people into the world. Tamriel could really be a force to reckon with if they’d just open it up in the same manner as Dungeons and Dragons, who have thousands of books out. Well. Maybe not literally, but I haven’t counted recently. It’s been more than 10 years since I’ve looked at D&D.

And no, quest line mods don’t really count. For as awesome as they are, we know they aren’t really canon. That’s probably the most frustrating of all. Community mods can never be considered canon. Yeah, well, think what you like, I’ll always consider Ruin-Tail an essential part of Oblivion.

No, wait, I take that back. The most frustrating of all is when the undefined, vagueness of the lore sets the fans against each other over extremely wide interpretations. That’s probably the worst part of it. People I’d like to otherwise know better getting nasty because people see the other potentials. I realize this is endemic to the fantasy genre of games, for cripessake Final Fantasy VII still has that ridiculous triangle debate still going on. But it would be nice to be able to agree on something, like, say, the friggin’ height of the Dwemer. Which is regular elven height, by the way, and thank you very much. There’s two camps in that debate; the ones that have scoured the lore and the ones that only read the Elder Scrolls Wikia.

Anyway, I’m done. I had to share that because I’m getting brain-sore trying to think my way through this stuff for the Project, while plotting out something unique and interesting, and still trying to make it lore friendly.

Games, TES Lore, TES: Skyrim

Playing through Skyrim: Why You Should Side with the Imperials

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PSA: This is a video game blog. This is about a video game and the sociopolitical structure in said game. If you are here from truthstreamedia would you can kindly get the fock out of my gaming blog right now. It has nothing to do with any real live governments and everything to do with my opinions on a plot point within a game I enjoy playing. Thank you. – Zen

#1 reason why you shouldn’t side with the Stormcloaks: Ulfric Stormcloak is a brainwashed sleeper agent for the Thalmor.

No. Seriously. It says this in the game. If you play through the main quest and go to the Thalmor Embassy, there are several dossiers you can pick up in the torture chamber, one about Ulfric. If you lost or sold those on your play throughs of Skyrim without reading them like I did at first, go create a new character and go through the quest, and read it this time. Also, pay attention to the Thalmor Embassy and the fact that it has a torture chamber. Which implies that the Thalmor are into some pretty serious party games.

Nobody likes the Thalmor. At least I’m fairly sure that nobody in the game likes the Thalmor except the Thalmor and maybe certain Khajiti groups. I’m willing to bet that nobody who has ever played Skyrim, even as an Altmer, likes the Thalmor. They’re arrogant, rude, corrupt, and cruel. And insidious. As if having a torture chamber underneath the Thalmor Embassy, where Elenwen and her minions torture men and women whose only crime was worshiping a deity they didn’t approve of wasn’t bad enough, there is ample evidence to suggest that the Thalmor were behind Ulfric’s rise to power in the first place. Point being: the dossier and Ulfric’s own comments on the death of his father, the former Jarl of Windhelm, while he was a prisoner.

The idea was for the Thalmor to covertly destabilize the Empire by inciting rebellion in Skyrim and keeping the rebellion going for as long as they could, to weaken the Empire’s resources throwing it away in a war that would in the end, a bitter victory or defeat either way. It seems to me that the Thalmor were hoping that with extremely high causalities in the Stormcloak war, the Empire would be far better pickings afterward.

Personally, I think the Thalmor offered Emperor Titus the White-Gold Concordat because they were actually far more vulnerable and had heavier losses than they wanted to admit. They were fighting a war on several different fronts, and it obviously had taken great effort to take the White-Gold Tower in the first place. By offering the Concordat, they wouldn’t have to keep an occupying force in Cyrodiil while their efforts in Hammerfell continued and were costing them a great deal of resources in the meantime. The mer races are crafty, long lived people, and tend to think and plan for the long term. If they were planning another Aldmeri Dominion that occupied the entire continent, it would have taken a lot more maneuvering than the White-Gold Concordat. In my opinion, there was absolutely no reason to offer that treaty if they already had the Empire by the balls.

If you need any more reason to rethink joining the Stormcloaks, let’s dig into Ulfric’s racism a bit. He hates anything non-Nord. Several people in game repeatedly say this in his own city, from Ambarys Rendar to Brunwulf Free-Winter. He treats the people under his protection as second-class citizens and ignores their complaints. The Argonians get the worst of the lot because they’re not even allowed inside the walls, and I would mention the Khajit except that nobody in Skyrim likes them, and that would be unfair. Any leader worth having would try to better life for all the citizens. Instead, Ulfric is far too focused on his rebellion to even pay attention.

Ulfric’s ideals behind the entire campaign, while sort of understandable, cannot be justified in the way he executed them. The Empire had to sign the treaty in order to survive to fight another day, yet he is angry about that. He continuously refers to the Empire and all the Jarls that supported the decision as milk-drinkers, inferring that they are weak. Yet, it is a wise leader who knows when to quit. If he thinks that the way to a strong Skyrim is by standing alone and standing up to the Thalmor, without the aid of their Imperial and Breton brethren, that’s damned well going to get every single Nord under his command killed. Ulfric is forgetting that ancient proverb, “divided we fall.”

The murder of High-King Torygg also sticks in my mind quite a bit as the actions of a man not honestly taken with his ideals, but one that is merely using them for his own gain and to inspire others to support him in his agenda. A boy that became King too soon, one that had held Ulfric with respect, and had not seen much of battle, slain by someone twice his age and a veteran of several wars, only to prove a point. To kill a King is not going to create a Skyrim that is strong, it only destabilized it, and then Ulfric felt free to say “Skyrim is weak.” I’m willing to bet it was fine before Ulfric came along and made it weak.

What, exactly, did Ulfric go through when he had been captured by the Thalmor and tortured during the war? Is this outburst across the whole of Skyrim just a symptom of his own guilt? Ulfric’s Dossier from the Thalmor Embassy reads that the Thalmor led him to believe that some of the information he broke and gave to them was instrumental in taking White-Gold Tower. It’s a fair thing in my mind that the answer is yes, and his intense desire to stand up to the Thalmor is because he was a broken man.

Taking these things into consideration, it’s quite reasonable to say that Ulfric was just as much a victim of the Thalmor and circumstances as Torygg was, and that’s probably true. However, in real life, someone who was abused or had some sort of previous trauma that led to his eventual negative actions is never exonerated on that justification and is still held responsible for those actions. I feel this should be the case here. Despite what may have happened to him, Ulfric would still topple the Empire for no good cause. The Nords were not being oppressed except by the Thalmor, and in fact did most of the oppressing of the other races in Skyrim, and all they had to do was hide Talos better until the day came when the Empire regained its strength. I understand the desire to worship whom you please, but that was never part of Ulfric’s agenda; it was to “free” Skyrim and in a way himself of the influence of the Aldmeri Dominion, and crown himself King. And then the Thalmor would have a king on the throne that they could manipulate.

I think it’s more fun to play the Imperial side, anyway, because then I can imagine the hell that would break lose when those veteran armies of combined former Stormcloaks and Imperial Legion march on Valenwood and the Summerset Isles.

Education, Games, TES Lore

Taking a Break from the Adventure

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Sometimes, for the good of your own literary quality, it’s a good idea to break from a large project every once in a while and write whatever the hell you feel like.

Today, I just wanted to write a little bit about the benefits of struggling through learning something the hard way. This is hardly the first time I’ve taught myself, often through trial and error, how to do something, but it’s the first time I’ve really tried to document it.

A reason to learn something like how to edit a nif file is not hard to find. For me, I wanted to increase my skill set. Moreover, I wanted to get back into modding for games. Then, there is the challenge level. It’s incredibly frustrating not being able to do something, but when you finally realize what you were doing wrong all the time, the satisfaction as everything goes right is hard to describe. I suppose I can include not wanting to rely on someone else to bring my ideas to life. They’re my ideas, and who else is better qualified to do them?

Learning in a classroom is fine and dandy, I thoroughly enjoyed college and often miss it, but there is nothing better than learning hands-on for me. Theories and concepts never mean much to me until it comes to life. It was like that in science class particularly. I could read a mathematical equation over and over and still not understand it until we performed the actual experiments that proved it. I remember standing in a lab with my partner using different temperatures of hot water to research Newton’s Law of Cooling and the properties of black metal vs reflective metal (useful to know for cooking) and being late for the actual class because the cooler liquid took so long. Lesson learned. This is why I always add cream to my hot drinks first off. I think that was also a question on the test.

I suppose things like that is why I prefer actually doing over reading about it. Sometimes I get impatient with reading about the theory, or the instructions, realizing I could probably figure it out better just by doing it. That has caused me no end of pain, but at the same time… I feel good about it because it’s allowed me to actually figure it out by myself. Pain, in of itself, is also a very good teacher. On the other hand, sometimes I actually broke things.

The Elder Scrolls mythos actually comes to mind here, a book I had read during playing one of the games, The Final Lesson. It had stuck in my mind for a long time after reading it, and writing up this post reminded me of it again. In it, a master had two apprentices. Their paths separated, and one had to rely on himself, and the other continued learning from the master. It’s a short story, so if you haven’t read it yet, I recommend it. Learning on my own often brings that story to mind.