My Skyrim problem
You might say I had a little problem with Skyrim. And by problem I mean raging obsession.
This is the story of how, many years ago, I got a little $60 Xbox game for Christmas that wound up being more of a mysterious time-suck than a Ferrari-driving pet unicorn that purchases cases of bratwurst for you with expired pizza coupons and delivers them via zipline right into your fridge.
Back in 2011, I asked my wife for Skyrim, a computer fantasy role playing game (cRPG), as a Christmas gift. It was insanely well-reviewed, and I've been a casual fan of the Elder Scrolls series of games. You should take a moment to realize that I was a young dork with Dungeons & Dragons inclinations, so the idea of controlling bunch of pixels in the shape of a warrior and galavanting around a snowy land smashing monster-shaped pixels with a fire-enchanted sword was not altogether unpleasant. Still, I thought it would be a passing interest. To be honest, part of me just wanted to see how Bethesda Softworks, Skyrim's developer, created the massive open-world environment and set up the game's combat and quests.
Fast forward. Even though I’ve long since completed the game, Skyrim devoured over 130 hours of my life, and if I weren't writing this now I'd probably be playing it all over again (it’s been remastered to re-entangle aging gamers like me).
What kind of character did I play, you ask? Oh, you don’t want those boring details. Those days are long gone. I mean, who really wants to hear about —
OH OKAY FINE
So you see, I had a level 81 warrior (max level, don’t you know?), and I would be happy to list all the Daedric equipment I have (sorry, that I made, because maxing your smithing skill along with enchantment is totally devastating), but I don't want to go all super nerd on you. You don't need that nonsense. I certainly won't tell you about maxing your sneak skill either, because then I would have to tell you to really work on archery too, because then you could have a Daedric bow that does upwards of 220 damage per shot, not including arrow. And also NOT including, I might add - if I were going to tell you about this, which I am not - the 3x damage bonus you get with ranged attacks if you are sneaking. And I most certainly won’t even hint at how you can smith and improve weapons and armor to an almost game-breaking degree by doing so while stacking a secondary set of clothing with smithing bonuses and drinking a Blacksmith's Elixir to really get your armor and damage off the charts. And naturally, I absolutely will not tell you that you should go the heavy armor route, as it has only one penalty, that being encumbrance, but it's worth the weight penalty for the armor rating alone and you can always take a heavy armor perk that negates weight. And there's no way I be such a nerd that I’d included a picture of Shadowmere, the baddest horse in the game, and post it here for you to see. NO WAY.
Yeah. I won't get into it. Because that would be really weird for a 52 year old man who by most other measures is 'professional' to go on and on about an RPG video game was all the talk among the teenagers back in the day. I mean, who would read a post about that, right?
Turns out you would read such a post, because you just did. Years ago I casually mentioned I had a wee Skyrim addiction on Twitter, and a few of y'all came out of the woodwork saying you know the pain. So hi there. No need to fake it. Loosen your tie, grab your favorite beer, and tell me about your total weaksauce Skyrim character.
Weaksauce compared to mine, I mean. I'm sure you're totally happy with it.
Thanks for reading!
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