The Lone Gamer

Fast Tube by Casper
Centurion? Or perhaps… Imperial?

Even though Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V Skryim has certainly proven to be a worldwide, multi-media sensation, we haven’t really heard any rumblings of a possible game-to-film translation of adventures in the Nord homeland… well, aside from that live-action trailer made for the game posted during release. Perhaps it’s best that the fantasy realm of Tamriel remain in gamers’ minds rather than be watered-down and rationalized by some small-minded director and equally small budget. But then, apart from the many fan flicks and shorts released online and such, perhaps there’s already some existing films, which given some tweaking, may actually pass for a ‘Skyrim’ movie.

One such film, I realized tonight while watching cable, is Centurion (2010), starring Michael Fassbender (Magneto from X-Men: First Class). The action-thriller, set during the Roman occupation of the lands of the barbarian Picts (Scotland), relates the harrowing tale of several Roman legionnaires trying to reach safety as they are pursued by a vengeful force of bloodthirty barbarian hunters. Of course, we can easily consider the protagonists as Imperial Legionnaires, while their adversaries may be either extra-savage Nords or perhaps Forsworn (the more savage tribal faction of NPCs in Skyrim’s Reach region); head baddie Etain (Olga Kurylenko) certainly looks and fights like a Forsworn Ravager, complete with Dual Wielding.

Perhaps some enterprising film editor can splice together some clips and edit a bit of dialogue to include more Skyrim-ish terms and dialogue, and set the whole thing to music from the mega-hit RPG. Just a thought. Well, of course the flick could use a bit more magic, and really- with Quick Travel, would such travails be really necessary? Ah well, the pleasures of Skyrim. On the gaming side, I recently just actually finished playing through the Civil War and Main Quests for the first time EVER (yeah I know, funny), which means I actually have finally finished a game after a good long while. I still plan on playing Skyrim still indefinitely, and with more mods and Dawnguard on the way, I don’t think I’ll be taking the game off my laptop anytime soon (if ever). Heheh. Yeah, even with Diablo III’s impending release. What can I say? Best RPG ever. Really. So if you haven’t tried it yet (where were you, man?), give Skyrim a try. And to start yourself off, watch Centurion. Or not.

More adventures are set to rise in Skyrim!

Bethesda’s blog just got updated with the intriguing visual above, and some cryptic words. Dawnguard, whatever it is- is set for release on Xbox360 this summer. Other than that… nothing else save that more info will be coming at this year’s E3. I assume that this expansion or whatever it is will eventually come to other platforms. Till then, I’ll be playing the PC version and loving it. So what could Dawnguard be all about? Will it involve the Mythic Dawn and Mehrunes Dagon (again?)? The town of Dawnstar? The Daedric artifact, Dawnbreaker? Or is it something altogether totally new?
I’m sure a lot of Dovahkiin have shaped Skyrim to some degree by now… it will be very interesting to see how this new adventure or questline fits into the greater scheme of things. Will it have bearing on the existing quests? Will it affect the status of the land as you made it? We’ll see. Man, this is exciting. I’ve never been invested into an RPG and world like Skyrim… I relish the ability to continue playing and living in it even more with Dawnguard (as if I needed any more content, really). To E3 then!

Fast Tube by Casper
Yet another peaceful village becomes the testing ground for Mod Munitions… WHY? WHY?

I’ve been seeing tons of videos like the one above, demo’ing various mods being created everyday for The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim. Now, I enjoy quite a lot of these vids and like how they try out cool stuff like overpowered spells and swords that I will probably never use since they break the game or lavish Player Houses that have more mannequins than what’s reasonable. But there is one thing that I am noticing and kinda getting tired of. I mean, most of the time when these guys post testings of this or that badass weapon or spell, they always try it out on the poor, defenseless citizens of this or that little town (like Riverwood above).

Now, far be it from me to go all prudish when a virtual granny gets skewered (which I actually don’t find funny… but maybe that’s just me) or some poor guy walking along minding his own business suddenly gets fried by a bolt from the blue. But really- what’s the sense of doing that? Why not go out and find something else to try that awesome sword or spell on… I don’t know… like an ACTUAL ENEMY? Maybe, just maybe that’s a better gauge of how badass a sword is, to see how it fares on something that’s actually fighting back, instead of some unarmed farmer or an old lady sweeping her porch. Just saying. Okay, back to Skyrimming, people.

Fast Tube by Casper
If this isn’t an April Fool’s Joke… Whoa.

I’ve been having tons of fun with Elder Scrolls V Skyrim on PC, with various mods tweaking the game and visuals, making it new and refreshed with every new install. But here, it seems, is a mod that is set to not just tweak gameplay style but transport it to a totally new genre style. Tower Defense, Skyrim-style? The Ultimate Tower Defense Mod by aTittyKitty will put you in command of a castle, which you can then upgrade with various defenses to withstand various deadly assaults. You can do everything from setting up barricades, hiring soldiers to man the walls, getting farmers and workers to gather resources and upgrade your troops’ equipment and weapons. Best of all, you can jump into the fray yourself aside from just standing back and watching your peons do all the work.

According to the mod trailer, you can expect to have every enemy available in the game coming at your abode, so this should be something sweet. I mean, if it’s REAL. It WAS, after all, posted on April 1… but the channel owner has said that it isn’t a joke. So, we’ll see. Man, this could be freakin’ awesome. Once again, I have to say… Skyrim on PC is the only way to play.

Once again, the Impulse Buyer in me reared up like a dragon over the weekend, and before I knew it I suddenly found myself purchasing a brand new laptop. ZOUNDS! Well, it’s probably been a year or so since I got my previous ‘top- an Intel Core i3 HP G42 Notebook. It had ‘okay’ specs- 4GB SD RAM, 500 Gigs of HD space, a Radeon video card. It was okay for gaming, but that really isn’t that great for a game like Elder Scrolls V Skyrim. However, I actually bought my laptop not for Skyrim, but for Starcraft II and Super Streetfighter IV AE… which both ran well, if not spectacularly. I actually didn’t really intend to play Skyrim on the laptop- I was (at the time) perfectly happy with the PS3 version and resigned to the fact that I couldn’t play the game with a mouse and keyboard to save my life.

Well, since then things have happened. For starters, Skyrim launched their Creation Kit and I saw all the freakin’ amazing mods for the game. MODS. That was the reason why SSFIVAE on PC is the supreme version, for the amazing user-made masterpieces of mods. Now in Skyrim, the mods are even more affecting and awesome. The next thing I knew, I had gotten an Xbox360 Controller for Windows and I was ready to Dovakiin my way through the PC version of Skyrim.
Unfortunately while my i3 Notebook could play the game adequately, it wasn’t that great. The frame rate was a sad 10 FPS or so at its most consistent, at medium settings (slightly lower on High). The game looked better than the console versions, but I was horrified at how the PS3 version moved so much smoother. 10 FPS and less was horrible, and just not a way to play the game.

Yesterday I set about upgrading my laptop- perhaps replacing the processor with an i5 or better. Well, turns out that’s not something computer shops do- and replacing it myself is a no-no. So, I was trapped with low-frame rate Skyrim forever? Nope. Faster than you could say ‘bargain’, I suddenly found myself aiming at a new laptop that was pretty affordable but with much improved specs. I decided there and then- I wouldn’t be getting the New iPad or a PS Vita for now.

I came home later with a new, i5 Notebook with 4GB DDR3 Ram and an Nvidia GT540M video card with 2GB Memory. Perhaps to torture me even more, installing Skyrim took the whole afternoon (thanks to the freakin’ idiotic way the system kept defaulting to downloading the game wholesale from Steam online instead of loading from the disc which was IN THE DRIVE. I finally got the game to install locally thanks to some knowledge from the internet.

Shortly after, I was playing Skyrim on my new laptop. Was it worth the money and effort?

Fast Tube by Casper
Best way to play Skyrim- with earphones, in the dark. Mmmm.

Oh, YES. GODDAMN YES. My new notebook runs Skyrim quite nicely- a level up better than my previous laptop. It runs a constant, stable 20+ FPS, at times better, at High Quality. This means really nice detail in everything- from fine textures on wood and stone and trees, to nice shiny metal bits on armor, realistic water… OH MAN, and I thought the game already looked great before. Yeah, you guys with Super PCs out there can make fun of me and my amazement at High settings when there’s Ultra- but heck, I came from the PS3 version which is nice but unspectacular in comparison. The detail, depth and texture is just better on PC.

Fast Tube by Casper
You’ll wonder why I bothered posting footage that’s almost too dark to see much; half of the thrill is in the sound as much as the sights.

All this is made better by various mods- Realistic Lighting mods make nights even darker and more sinister, added Sound mods (Sounds of Skyrim, natch!) surround you with a world full of tension and menace. I played my first hour on my new ‘top with the Brightness set to halfway, stereo earphones on.
A simple walk from Riften at night to the nearby town of Shor’s Stone was a feast for the senses as I found myself being stalked and hunted in the near-darkness by everything from deranged deer to bear and wolf packs, spiders and a freakin’ Brotherhood Assassin. Is it just me or was that one night more exciting and eventful than ANY routine night run I’ve ever done previously? It was just so easy to lose myself in the roleplaying, in the situation… my fierce Dragonborn alone in a dark forest on a frigid, cold rainy night, surrounded by slavering foes intent on blood. Bring. It. On.

Once again you have to excuse my gushing, but with this Skyrim has just gotten refreshed AGAIN as I wanna experience this game from the ground up once more on my new rig. I may start a new character again… I dunno. Everything can be done, nothing is out of the question. Skyrim is once again virgin territory to be explored and conquered. Awesome.

Fast Tube by Casper
Fantasy Battles don’t get any more EPIC than this.

Yeah, Elder Scrolls V Skyrim isn’t perfect- but heck, what is? I think it’s succeeded not only as simply an RPG, but as a world- a setting for adventure and imaginative fiction that has gone beyond the simple boundaries of the existing, pre-set storylines in the default game.
Perfect example- the scores of Skyrim Machinima- short films made using in-game graphics- that grace Youtube with their awesomeness. You have your goofy Gamer Poop and all the humorous nonsense (usually at the expense of some poofy Jarl), but every so often you have something freakin’ awesome. Like BATTLES. Skyrim by itself (on PC at least) is a sandbox with which you can stage some pretty cool skirmishes between various creatures or warriors. But it takes a special something to be able to turn what could have been a simple free-for-all skirmish into something Tolkien-esque.

And that’s certainly what the Machinima film above is. The ‘Siege of Markarth’ isn’t just a simple matter of spawning mobs of CPU drones and throwing them at each other… nope, this is freakin’ ART. You’ve got a shadowy observer enigmatically flitting between the raindrops in a truly EPIC attack on the aforementioned Hold Capital by a huge and formidably equipped army of Forsworn (complete with a damn Mammoth!), his goal unknown till the very end. Throughout you’ve got cinematic closeups, camera angles, magic pyrotechnics and wholesale carnage on a grand scale.
It’s a pretty awesome 8 minutes of action well worth seeing. Man, what other amazing tales will Skyrim spawn in the future? Damn!

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Ranged and Magic Kills and more arrive in the new Skyrim Patch!

I’ve said it many times before and I’ll keep on saying it- Elder Scrolls V Skyrim is the freakin’ best RPG The Lone Gamer has played (and am playing) in a long, long time. Even after playing a hell of a lot of time on PS3, I’m now set to play even more on PC (I’ve already clocked in 96 hours on my Steam account thus far). I want my RPGs from now on to always have this depth, this detail, this amount of freedom, this engaging a world. Yeah, I know- I’ll probably only be truly satisfied again by the NEXT Elder Scrolls, but it’s a sweet sadness (though The Witcher 2 looks awesome as well).

Anyway, enough of the fanatical gushing- the best RPG is set to get even better (or less flawed, as some detractors may say) with the release of the official 1.5 Update (which is shown off in the trailer above).
As the video shows, the patch will include MORE Kill Moves- those cinematic finishing maneuvers your character performs (or are performed on you) occasionally at the end of a vicious duel. From the trailer we can see that the existing weapon styles (one-handed and two-handed, and perhaps duel wielding) will get new Kills, and Unarmed Combat in particular looks to have more Coup de Grace moves as well (MAN, I am going to have to start off another Unarmed Fighter character, am I?).

But that’s not all- there are now Ranged Kills as well, following your deadly arrows as they zero in on their target for that fatal hit- and these look even more awesome. Magic Kills get some love as well, which should make mage characters look just as badass as the warrior builds. GODDAMN this game is a gold mine of experiences.

Aside from the Killer treats, the patch also comes with various bug fixes, including some long-running kinks that have caused quests to lock up and stall. One particularly awaited fix surely is the removal of the bug that has so far prevented players from marrying the ever-popular Lydia- at least, without the use of any mod or messing with console commands.

Right now, the Beta patch is already online and can be availed of on Steam- I’ve already signed up and tried a bit last night… got my first Ranged Kill Shot… awesome. I’ll give the updated Skyrim a more prolonged run through this weekend. If you wanna get into the Patch action, log into your Steam Account and DL away. Now… when’s the right time to pop the question for ol’ Lydia..?

A Dragonborn’s Work is Never Done…

It’s been a week since I transplanted my Skyrim love from console to PC, and I’m still having a ball with the game- it’s almost a new experience or a ‘remastered’ version of the RPG for me in a way.
Thankfully my laptop is able to handle Skyrim loaded with quite a few mods, even if the frame rate can sometimes dip. So far it’s always still been playable and always enjoyable. First off, I am thinking that the game looks so much better thanks to the Realistic Lighting mods- the sunlight looks amazing, and sometimes things just look so real. On the other hand, a bit away from reality is the fact that pretty much every female in the game now looks like there’s a Beauticians’ Guild operating behind the scenes in Skyrim. This is thanks to some beauty mods- I recommend going with Coverwoman. I’ve never really had a problem with the female faces in the Vanilla game, but it IS nice to see lovely pouting, glossy lips on the ladies- kinda odd though that even rough and evil bandit females have great makeup. Well, this IS a fantasy anyway… heheh.

But some of the best mods I’ve installed are a bit more subtle, and more concerned with actual gameplay. Invaluable to my current Conjurer/Necromancer character is a mod called Possessive Corpses which takes away that singularly glaring limitation that when your Animated Dead spell wears off, the corpse thereafter crumbles into useless ash. So now, even the most humble and basic Raise Zombie spell is useful since you can use it over and over on a corpse.
So now you don’t have to wait mid-or-late game when you’re a freakin’ Master Conjurer (if you ever even reach that) when you get Dead Thrall to have the benefit of having your own long-term undead follower/portable suitcase. The limitation though is that you have to re-cast the spell every 85 seconds or so, so you have to keep tabs on your zombie as you travel the lands. In a way though I actually prefer this short term animation.
This mod just gives all the Necromancy spells a new lease on life (pun intended) that the Vanilla game didn’t have. It’s also loyal to the lore, I think- in Oblivion, the Staff of Worms (necromantic power item) could do the same thing, and there was no ash pile left after. Several hundred years after, you’d think magic would have advanced a bit. Even better, this mod should actually help game performance because the ash piles and refuse left by expiring zombies would otherwise tax your system resources- plus they clutter up the landscape since often they NEVER disappear. So I highly recommend this mod.

Anyway, funny little war story last night. Was playing till early in the wee hours of the morning. I was about to turn in when I climbed up some mountain in the northern regions, and I saw this dragon sitting on what I could see was a Dragon Wall. A Word of Power! Cool. At this point I was still just Level 12- barely above novice level in any skills, not well-equipped with a lot of magic equipment (no big weapons, actually)- heck, I haven’t even visited High Hrothgar yet, and only had my feeble first-stage Fus shout.

But I had Lydia and a zombie bandit with me so I was kinda confident. Three against one is fine. So we attacked.
The battle with the dragon took a while, and at first our arrows seemingly didn’t make much of a dent. Once the thing started landing though, it’s life bar was steadily going down from the onslaught of three blades. I had to keep tabs of my zombie and keep it animated periodically, but having her hack away with a two-handed sword was worth the effort. Soon, the damn dragon headed back to it’s Dragon Wall lair and stayed there, having lost the ability to fly. Lydia and the bandit zombie charged at it, while I kept discreetly at a distance pelting it with arrows. Victory was in our grasp!

Suddenly I noticed something odd. There were some explosions of fire and ICE being thrown around. Was this dragon breathing both Ice and Fire? No, I realized- that wasn’t dragon breath but Destruction Magic. Was there a spellcaster there somewhere? I headed closer. Lydia was battling something alone- the bandit zombie was dead on the ground (again). I finally saw that what we were facing (aside from the freakin’ dragon). It was a goddamn DRAGON PRIEST. An encounter with one of the game’s most deadly enemies- a Skyrim Lich, at barely apprentice level. Great. I realized then we were at the infamous Shearpoint, facing off against the Dragon Priest Krosis (the name means ‘Sorrow’ in Old Speak). This was actually the first time I had ever encountered this formidable enemy, either on PC or consoles.

But we were committed so what could you do? Like other DP’s, Krosis had a fireball staff along with other destruction spells, and he loves using it. Good thing the dragon died after one more hit, so it was just me, Lydia and Krosis. My bandit zombie just kept dying with one hit, so I just left her out of the rest of the fight so I could use my Magicka for healing instead.

Krosis: Poster child of Dragon Priests and one EVIL opponent- not a foe you’d like to encounter too early.

The problem with this foe is that he’s very elusive- he hovers around and flits about with irritating agility, circling around you and making for a very slippery target. In fact, a couple of times I hit Lydia by mistake, killing her even… gah. But hitting him in close was what I pretty much had to do to make a dent in this fight; my arrows weren’t doing much damage and I had no ranged destruction spells (not that engaging him spell to spell was a smart thing to do) other than feeble Flames. WIth his fireball staff firing off rapid attacks, I could be dead in three hits, unless I quickly healed with either potions or spells. And I was almost out of potions.

Nevertheless, I did what I could. I peppered him with arrows from a distance, when his fireballs were blocked by the terrain. When Lydia recovered and attacked him, I came at him to engage in melee, one hand jamming on a Healing spell as I chopped away with the other. After a heavy hit I ran for dear life and healed, preferably behind a rock or outcropping. This way, somehow, I was whittling him down. Yeah, along the way I died quite a few times. But whenever I was able to actually score a few hits, I saved the game so in the event that I’d die (which was often) I could push forward from there.

FINALLY though, after perhaps half an hour of fiery deaths and chasing Krosis down half the mountain fighting between trees and sheer cliffs, Lydia and I finally got him down to a sliver of health. I cornered him against a cliff and wailed away with my axe until the bastard crumbled into ash like dead leaves. When all was silent and it was just me and Lydia standing. That. Was. EPIC. We WON! Man, if my Dovakiin wasn’t a lady, I’d marry Lydia. Hmmm…

It’s battles like the one above that really make up my finest memories of Skyrim. Often I find myself seemingly overmatched, but the game is so playable enough to be able to work out a solution and scrap your way to victory somehow, someway. And when you take victory, it just feels freakin’ awesome.

Darn, I don’t know how long I’ll be playing this game. New mods seem to appear everyday, and hell- I haven’t even finished the game completely at all yet to begin with but now everything just feels so fresh- and this is three months after release. Well, it’s going to be awesome to keep on going through this game, at least with what I believe now to be the best version you can get. More war stories to come, I guess. The adventure continues!

Lydia, are you slacking off??! Good!

As I’ve posted earlier, perhaps the single most awesome thing about PC versions of games is their relative customizability and ability to install mods. That aspect for me makes Elder Scrolls V Skyrim a much different game than it was on PS3 or Xbox360. Right now, thanks to Bethesda Software releasing their Creation Kit and the enthusiastic participation of thousands of fans, gamers and players, there are literally thousands of mods to check out and install to make your version of Skyrim on PC that much more user-friendly, sexy, funny, awesome or broken as you wish.
Since fully switching over to PC full-time, I’ve installed a couple dozen mods already. Some are really nice, some are just for detail and atmosphere, some are just… fun. Here are a few of my faves so far.

Sounds of Skyrim by Cliffworms is one of the most highly-rated and popular audio mods out. Basically this adds in more ambient sounds to the various locales in Skyrim, making the soundscape even more textured and interesting- in the wilds, there are more sounds from unseen fauna all around you like birds and insects, or perhaps some unknown beast far away. In dungeons, depending on the inhabitants, there are more SFX to creep you out like far-off keening, howling and moans, ominous rumbling and so forth. It all goes to making the game that much more atmospheric. Play with headphones! So far there are mods for The Wilds and Dungeons, with more hopefully on the way.

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Realistic Ragdolls and Force by Bakakemono. This tweaks the game’s physics and flexibility of charater models to make their movements- particularly when falling over, dying or being manhandled by things like your Dovakiin’s Unrelenting Force shout a bit more realistic and life-like.

Dragon Bone Weapons by ChurchOfSmallDog is something the game SHOULD have shipped with out of the box. You can make Dragon Armor- so why not Dragon Weapons? It’s just a no-brainer! The screenshots of the stuff you can fashion with all those Wyrm bones and scales looks awesome and just as good as the canon stuff, so this should be cool- haven’t gotten my Smithing up that high yet, so it’ll take some time for me to enjoy this fully though.

Followers Can Relax by King Coin. Nice little tweak, more for roleplaying than anything else but I just find it so cool. This mod lets you tell your follower that you’ll be staying where you are for a while, giving them the chance to just chill and take five. So instead of the simple Wait command which makes them stand in place the whole time (which is still there anyway), this lets your follower wander around a bit in the area, interact with stuff (sit down, have a snack, do some smithing, etc) and just look like they’re part of the scenery instead of standing out like a sore thumb all the time.

While I originally was okay with the ‘au naturelle’ look of Skyrim’s females on the PS3 version, I eventually realized that mods could give the game TONS more eye candy and detail where you can appreciate it. Mods like Bella’s Better Females and Coverwomen smoothen and generally make females beautiful- model gorgeous, in fact. Lore purists may scoff but I don’t mind that every lady I meet- from village lasses to noble ladies to evil bandit wenches- look pretty hot. My personal choice for face mod is Coverwomen, which strikes a nice balance with overall beauty that doesn’t look too makeup-heavy. Another awesome but understated mod is Phygit’s FemFeet which gives the female character models detailed (in fact, amazingly detailed and life-like) bare feet- instead of the gruesome stumps in the vanilla game. A small detail but it helps make the world and game that much more detailed and believable.

Arrow Crafting by Boom. Ever wonder who makes arrows in Skyrim? Well, YOU can, with this mod, adding the craft of fletching to the Smithing skill. Nice for Archery Specialists!

There are tons more mods available, including new quests, new character, spells, locales and other goodies to try out online, both at the official Steam Community site and also over at Skyrim Nexus. Man, the longevity and replay of this game just shot up- as if it wasn’t already shot to heck.

When will I ever finish this game? Do I even want it to finish..?

Over the weekend I was playing Elder Scrolls V Skyrim- so what else is new, you’d ask, given that I’ve been playing this uber-RPG since November pretty much non-stop. Well, the change is that I have now started playing it on PC. Well, on my gaming laptop, to be exact. And well, my world has been completely changed. Pretty much since launch last 11-11-11, I’ve been playing Skyrim on my PS3. And to be honest and fair, I’ve been pretty happy with it; heck, I’ve restarted playing four times and I’m still raring to go every single time. But of course, it hasn’t been without hiccups.

One thing about consoles is that you’re basically buying the guided tour- since for the most part consoles have one constant and set spec and range of capabilities, you don’t trouble over things like memory, processors, video cards, sound cards and the like- as which is the case with computers. For the most part, consoles are cheaper and less troublesome, while PCs take some work to put together and are usually pricier. But of course, you get what you pay for.
The PS3 version of Skyrim looks fine- even on my 51-inch Plasma it certainly is easy on the eyes, with limitations only being apparent if you stop and take a look at things a bit too closely. The frame rate is more or less constant, albeit later on in the game, in cities like Whiterun (particularly that area between your house, Breezehome, and the town market) there’s consistent lagginess and slowdown. Though crashes are infrequent, there were some times where the game would just stop and freeze, repeatedly, prompting me to restart my PS3. Irritating but not game-breaking. As for load times, it depends- perhaps upwards of eight or so seconds generally for loading into most interior areas, slightly more for dungeons- let’s just say it became a pastime for me to revolve and rotate the loading screen 3D models as a way to pass the time.

Last night, I finally tried playing Skyrim on my laptop. My portable PC isn’t a souped-up gameslayer by any means, but it IS a dedicated game console and I did get the specs up to par with contemporary games. I actually bought Skyrim for it months ago, but didn’t play it since my first day for it since I found the controls (keyboard and mouse) just inaccessible (which is basically what keeps me from mastering stuff like Starcraft). Really, I just can’t fathom battling gangs of Deathlords awkwardly fumbling with hotkeys and directionals- it would take time to get good at that, and I wasn’t willing to practice.

Well, I finally remedied that with an Xbox360 Wireless Controller for Windows- just insert the receiver into the USB port, sync it up and voila- I was good to go.
So how different is playing Skyrim on PC?

For starters, the game looks far more detailed and solid- character models have much better textures and detail (even more so if you download mods, but more on that later)- heck, EVERYTHING has better textures and detail. Though I was playing it on a much smaller screen, the resolution was just as good, if not better. As for frame rate, the game chugged along at a constant below-30s, which was fine (funny that it went up to 60FPS whenever I level up and check on my constellations). Load times? Going into any interior area in cities takes perhaps less than 3 seconds- or maybe even less. Fast traveling between areas is double faster than in console. Saving takes about one or two seconds. Reloading after a death, just about as fast. Man, that alone is awesome.

But of course, perhaps the single best thing the PC has over the consoles are the MODS. They’re free, they’re all over the internet and easy to install. Just like how apps sold the iPad, the PC version of Skyrim will continue to flourish thanks to mods. They range from little silly things like bikini outfits and nudie mods to really cool stuff like Dragonbone Weapons, new character houses and more enemy variety. It’s a veritable fountain of youth for this game… even in Vanilla format, Skyrim looks amazing- with the added detail and meticulous nature of most mods, the quality goes from ten to eleven.

I’ve yet to load a lot of mods- still dabbling and trying to find which ones are nice enough to keep. I don’t want any mod that alters gameplay too much or makes certain things overpowered or broken. I certainly won’t install any nude or porny mods (although I do want more ladies in my Skyrim to wear that hot Nocturnal robe…), but fan service is nice. Face reskins are good, but I think i”ll stick with the natural faces instead of generic supermodels with too much makeup.
I am interested in one mod that dresses up every guard in every hold differently- but I may miss the default guard outfit. I tried out one mod called ‘More Rain’ which literally does just that- quite lovely and neat… but frankly you get sick of it (at least the ‘heavy and dark’ variant) after one in-game day of it (if only it just comes occasionally, it would be fine).

Anyways, what can I say? I’ve been converted. Gotta say farewell to my console Dovakiin. Perhaps someday I’ll finish their sagas, but I think they’re all in good places where I left them. The PC Tamriel has ensnared me and refuses to let go.