Being genetically engineered to compete, fight, compare dicks and to strive for being better than anybody else, online gaming was the perfect method for me to satisfy that craving. Half Life, Quake 3: Arena, Unreal Tournament - happy days, where people weren't willing to shell out tons of money for map packs, useless new game modes and other crap currently sold as "DLC". Most of all, no one was desperate enough to spend shitloads of money on aimbots and other 3rd party hacks. Possibly because those weren't as readily available back then and a lot easier to detect, but I'd like to believe that cheating simply wasn't as much of a problem as it is today.
When MMOs became more and more popular, I started raiding guild castles on Ragnarok Online and eventually, it all ended where everyone went at that time - WoW. And being the competitive bastard I am, I cranked out more DPS wielding a shield in tank spec than anyone else in the guild did with their damage-dealing setups. It's what I did. If they couldn't take down a boss or tackle some other crap on their own, I'd log on, kick some ass to help them get past whatever it was they were stuck on and logged off again.
Now I'm 30 fucking years old. I no longer feel the urge to "prove" anything, to myself or anybody else. And that's not simply because of age or because I've done it a million times, but also because games and people who play them have changed too much. When I played Unreal Tournament against 2000 strangers for actual prizes, we were the proverbial social outcasts, we actually had our own computers and modems and all of that freaky shit nobody cared about back then. Now look at games today. Our parents are gamers. Claire's grandmother is a gamer. I think that's awesome, no disrespect there. But "I can do more DPS than your mum" simply doesn't have a cool ring to it.
You see, it's one thing if you compete against a bunch of weirdos, who dedicate most of their lives to racking up kills and high scores and headshots and shit in their game of choice. Competing against middle-aged ladies and twelve year olds and my own parents... meh. No offense. I'm sure they'd feel exactly the same if they had to compete against me in naming Pink Floyd songs or something.
For the first time since the invention of the 56k modem, I actually want to play offline. No competition, no fighting over loot, DPS, strategies, being the world first to do something incredibly meaningless and stupid and no fucking trade chat.
The Elder Scrolls are my safe haven, far away from all of that online stupidity. Well. That is, until Bethesda decided to name their next project "The Elder Scrolls Online". Thanks a lot, you fucks!
One thing I particularly enjoy about Skyrim is how I can change and tweak the whole thing to my liking. MMOs give you a firm set of rules and you're stuck with the whole thing. If I don't like a particular quest, character, race, monster or what the hell ever on Skyrim, I can alter the whole thing, replace it with something else or get rid of it altogether. If there are weird design decisions, which I disagree with, I can change them. Take my character, for instance. He's a cat and one of his racial abilities allows him to see in the dark. Makes sense for a cat. What doesn't make sense is how I actually have to activate that ability and how it wears off after 30 seconds. That's how this thing works by default and I think it's stupid, so I changed it. Now the ability will automatically work its magic whenever my surroundings get too dark and that's it. No hotkey, no timers, no nothing. I like it that way.
That's a very minor change, of course. I could change all elves into orcs if I felt like it. Some genius changed all his dragons into Macho Man Randy Savage. With the free construction kit and some basic texture and sound editing skills, you can do a whole lot of crazy shit. Or realistic shit, for that matter. You can download a mod, which dramatically increases immersion for all those die-hard maniacs, who want to live and breathe their video games. Said mod makes your character crave things such as food, water and sleep on a regular basis. If you keep food in your inventory for too long, it will spoil. Eating rotten food or raw, uncooked meat will make you sick and you'll throw up. Drinking nothing but alcohol? Bad idea. Use them empty beer bottles to fill them up at a river, drink some water, happy hero. Yay! I wonder if it makes your character need to take a shit every now and then. I don't like this sort of thing, because having to eat and sleep keeps me busy enough IRL and I really don't need a simulation for it. But I can appreciate what the creator of this mod is doing.
 |
| Oh yeah, my character is also a werewolf. |
When I hit a baddie in my game, especially one with little or no armor, he'll show a bleeding cut. So when I beat the crap out of somebody, you can really tell afterwards. I'd like to be able to split them open and see some guts, but that's probably pushing the boundaries of the construction kit a bit. When I get on my mount, so do my companions. When my cat characters wear helmets, their ears don't just magically disappear. Neither do the horns of the lizard guys. If I screw up with my skill points, I can respec. When I bump into my companions, they get out of the fucking way. And since I like to gather adventuring parties of five or six people, I get monster spawns of 10-20 baddies where I'd normally just get 3 or 4. I didn't like the colour of my mount and my armor, so I changed the texture. Convenience stuff. Logical stuff. Fixes and minor changes rather than a whole new game. If I wanted Skyrim to be a whole new game, I wouldn't be playing Skyrim. But to each their own.
One thing that utterly fascinates me is how random and unpredictable the game can be. Some scripted events aside, Skyrim doesn't really sit and wait for you to show up and interfere with stuff. In fact, the game usually doesn't give a shit about what you're doing - the world moves on, with or without you. I've come across angry giants, pounding the living shit out of a bunch of sabretooth cats, who were attacking a pack of mammoths. The giants herd these mammoths and protect them from anything that threatens them. Which was fun enough to watch by itself, but got gradually more intense when a dragon spontaneously decided to have a go at the giants. I didn't actually interfere until pretty much everything was dead and the dragon decided to go for me next. The game didn't care. Those tigers want mammoth steak. The giants want to defend the mammoths. Dragons want to be dicks. They all act accordingly, whether you join in or not.
The AI can be incredibly stupid, too. Look at this shit:
This elk came running out of nowhere, possibly startled by some random monster, heads for the cliff and, before it realizes what's happening, plummets to its death. Maybe he bugged out. Maybe his wife left him. I'll never know. Should you watch the lengthy video at the end of this post, you'll see some random Stormcloak soldier do the exact same thing. Why? I have no fucking idea. There are some monsters fighting at the bottom of the cliff, maybe she wanted to get to them, maybe she was running away from something, but whatever the reason, I'm standing by a cliff, somebody zips by and does the Wile E. Coyote.
I find this one particularly entertaining, though:
In this case, the AI is so surprisingly smart and stupid all at the same time, even the developers didn't see it coming. NPCs will only respond to actions, which they can actually see, which is good. I like that. Smart AI. Problem is, you can exploit that feature by blocking the view of NPCs with any random pot or bucket and they're too stupid to do anything about it. Want to get away with theft and murder? Place buckets on the heads of all potential witnesses. Stupid potheads!
Some people master the art of exploiting silly AI and physics to perfection. Take a look at this stuff:
Stupid or not, it's lots of fun. Get paid a nice amount of gold for returning some ancient relic to the local shopkeeper, steal the relic right back and fence it to the thieves' guild for even more cash. Be sneaky or use a bucket, it's really up to you. And that applies to just about anything in the game. You just play any way you want without having to worry about whether or not your character is gonna be good at it. You wanna get better at sneaking and backstabbing? Wear light armor, bring a dagger and sneak and backstab. Don't like it? Grab a staff and a spellbook and toast some shit. I'll admit I was sceptical when I read about how Skyrim removes the traditional class and attribute-based character development they used in previous games, but it all plays out fine. Just do what you want, master whatever abilities and play style suit you best.
And that form of freedom applies to every aspect of the game. Become a werewolf or a vampire (the series featured that sort of stuff long before there was shit like Twilight around), join the guild of thieves or assassinate assorted dipshits in the name of the Dark Brotherhood. Join the Empire or the Stormcloak rebellion and fight in the civil war. Or just run around, explore, fight your way through the dungeons as you discover them and don't give a shit about any of the factions and guilds. Buy a house, settle down and get married! For whatever reason you'd actually want to do that...
 |
| She's almost sexy. If you ignore her being a cat and all. |
It's not the most fun or spectacular thing I've ever done in any game, but having the option is still nice. Basically, it started with me downloading some female cat companion NPC. Because my character is a tom cat, he should have a girl cat with him, that kind of thing. And the guy who created that cat has picked the creepiest, scariest face I've ever seen on any character of that race, but when I saw her in that ragged, desert-warrior kind of Redguard outfit, hacking everything to bits with stereo sabers, I thought she was cool. So I thought why the hell not and dragged her to the church of Mara, then I put some nicer clothes and some epic new sabres on her and carted her off to my house in Solitude. The whole scenic cart ride isn't actually part of the procedure but yet another mod, but I kinda like it. It's fun how my mount dutifully follows us for the journey. You don't actually see it in the video, but he even fought off the odd critter here and there. Oh yeah, video:
With my enthusiasm for MMOs fading, the upcoming Guild Wars 2 may or may not change my feelings about the whole thing. It's less than a month away now and I'm sure it's gonna be awesome. Do I want to spend all night and day on the battlegrounds of Tyria to dominate the shit out of random casual gamers? Nah. But I'm sure it's still gonna be great. And in the meanwhile, Skyrim really helps me pass the time.
-Cat
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen