Then my rational side replies "Are you kidding? Don't you remember what happened with Oblivion? Fallout 3? You were so annoyed with both games you didn't get anywhere near finishing either one of them!"
Then comes what I can only call 'Lifetime channel reasoning'
"It will be epic! This time it won'tsuck! THIS time it won't be boring! THIS time will be different!"
Then I say "No! Just wait awhile at least! You just spent like 50 bucks on various random Steam games! Play those!"
"but I waaaant SKKKYYYYRIIIIIMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!"
I haven't broken down yet, but I know I won't last much longer... I suck at arguing, even with myself.There is something in me that, ever since Morrowind, has guided me to Bethesda's games like a rat following the Pied Piper – and yet, I haven't finished EITHER of the big titles SINCE Morrowind for one reason or another. Despite owning Morrowind on PC, I also had it on the original Xbox, and it was there that I happened to play it. At first, I had no idea what I was doing, I was just screwing around – by odd chance, I had missed speaking with some key character that would have led me to the guild I was supposed to join in order to begin the main quest. Instead I blindly wandered off and began hitting things with sticks and my all but useless spells, stumbled into a new town, and found the mages guild which then gave me an endless list of tasks to complete. I became so engrossed the world, I completely forgot about the main quest entirely. By the time I remembered what I was SUPPOSED to be doing, my character was a powerful mage, decked in custom armor and enchantments - he was untouchable…. And it was hard earned, head of all the guilds, endless sidequests… no cheats of any kind. When I joined 'The Blades' – I really did feel like my character was indeed the chosen one, he had existed in that game world for hundreds of hours over the course of like 3 or 4 years. Obviously it wasn't all at once, I'd go months without touching the game, but I'd always come back to it. Nonetheless, nothing could kill me, and I flew through the main quest in a week or two… a lot of the quests assigned were simply done immediately as I had already done them at some point or another. Fetching this, carrying that…. Dreaded escort missions weren't even enough to faze me. I really enjoyed the feeling of using my character in the main quest from beginning to end and really seeing all my hard work and time pay off. Once I was done - I felt a sense of completion that allowed me to lay the game down for good, satisfied. I like to picture my character retired in the countryside zapping trespassers who dare to tread on his lawn. Sure I did it completely backwards, but that's the freedom Bethesda games afford you.
That said, I jumped at Oblivion – I wanted to recreate the experience I had in Morrowind. I broke out of that jail, made my way past all the sewer rats, died a few times along the way – and finally got my first real view of the game world. This will be epic, thought I. Setting off in a completely random direction; I was immediately mauled by a bear.
Loading my game, I found myself standing again at the exit from the sewers. Okay, I'll go a different way! I was then killed by bandits.
Okay… THIS time I'll book it straight to the stupid marker on the map, which was a nearby city. I set about finding a guild, and began working my way up – then there was horse armor. I won't go into it… all I knew is that I was still having trouble with ****ing bandits and the fact I couldn't seem to beat them was beginning to give me twitches. One particularly long session of leveling, wherein I sunk everything I had into mastering a few offensive spells with the clever use of summon creature. I went and found a group of bandits…. Aaaand they made short work of me. Again.
Upon reloading I also realized I had not saved prior to the encounter, and lost roughly a 1/3rd of my work. I then rampaged killing various NPCs which of course alerted guards who were all easily as strong If not stronger than the stupid bandits. Reload again.
Now fully hating the game, I went and found the assassins guild. I enjoyed these missions as I finally got to be a semi effective killer. Not how I wanted to play my character, but there was no progress to be had playing a good guy apparently, so screw it. "Renegade for life"…. finally, I broke down and turned to the good old internet for answers. I was somewhat relieved to find I was not the only one having these problems – I had apparently leveled my character all wrong and he was completely broken… but also, the ENTIRE freaking game world was leveling with me, and while I had indeed sunk a lot into attacks of the non-physical sort, the rest of the world was bulking up pretty much across the board, and it would continue to do so for the entirety of the game. I simply had no hope of catching up.
I found some modsthat fixed this, but at this point, I had no interest in really playing the game anymore.
Enter Fallout 3. This one just confused me, I made it to a town built around a bomb of some kind – I don't know why they thought that'd be a good place to found a town – but there you have it. Therewas something about disarming the thing, I think....then I wandered out of that town and eventually died of radiation poisoning or something. Then I found some kind of vampire hideout? I don't know. The game was so boring to me, my mind really only picked up on things when stuff happened, which was rare... so it's just flashes of various places. I went searching for enemies to fight, people to talk to.. I did a few side quests… killed a couple mutants...but wow. It just wasn't for me, I guess. Apparently Skyrim's leveling system is like that of Fallout 3's but I have no idea what that means. The leveling system meant nothing to me, I picked my "perks" but I don't recall really gaining much from them. There was no sense of getting any better or stronger at anything in that game, at least not in the 30 hours or so I put into it.
Which brings me to Skyrim itself; a new installment to a series that annoyed the hell out of me in its last entry, made by a company whose previous big title bored me to tears. Yet like a lifetime movie wife, I can't help myself. I feel like maybe THIS time it won't suck. THIS time I won't have to wear a turtleneck and sunglasses to work and send myself flowers so my coworkers will think that I am loved, respected and well taken care of. THIS time it's going to be different.How DOES Fallout 3's leveling system work? How does it apply to Skyrim? If a game makes me have to research extensively to quell my fears of things that I personally (note the italics denoting that you should pay attention - as this part pertains to these being my opinions) might find obnoxious. Level scaling is not my bag, I'm not sure how this became the evolution of "don't go to some areas before you are sufficiently leveled and equipped or you WILL die. You'll discover these areas for yourself, I'm sure." I don't want the world to adapt to me, I want my character to adapt to the world, and then through various actions the world should change... I play these types of games very meticulously, I'm one of those gamers that loves the grind. I get a thrill from returning to the first areas and taking my ungodlyvengeance out on those first few bandits who gave me swirlies. Doing things like this is not only fun to me, but it gives a distinct measure of just how far I've come. Level scaling removes that.This is actually about 3 different blogs mashed togetherinto some patheticsemblance of semi-coherant rambling (oxymoron?)Hence some things repeat in variation, ultimately I was too lazy to go through and edit it beyond Frankensteining them all together. So there you go.I've since found articles that detail the leveling which was the greatest deturrent to me. I'm still going to fight myself on the purchase because truth be told - I don't have the time to sink into the game... things like this, I want to buy just before a long vacation where I can sit in a comfy chair, laptop suspended infront of me, headphones on and the lights off for a gaming session worthy of the title. I can't do that right now because I spend a large amount of time pretending I'm a responsible adult and not a dragon slaying, icewizard/werewolf.
Stupid job.