Friday, November 11, 2011

Musings of an Insomniac (part 2): The Quest for Skyrim

I don't know if you guys heard or not, but the new Elder Scrolls game came out a little over a day ago.

                                          via Wikipedia

Now, The only Elder Scrolls game that I really got into was Oblivion, and I played it pretty regularly until I beat it. So, as I'm sure you can imagine, when I heard that Skyrim was going to improve upon Oblivion in every single way, I was mildly excited.

 You should see me when I'm really excited.

Before I continue, note that store clerk's extreme disdain for his job. He wishes he was at home playing Skyrim.  Anyway, I bought the game, and probably broke the sound barrier running back to my car. I sped home as fast as I could, hoping that there wouldn't be any cops along the way, or if there were, that I'd be going too fast for them to even see me. Once I reached home, I popped the disc into my Xbox and tuned out the rest of the world. 

I just now resurfaced, and that was only because my bladder kept rabbit punching my kidneys in protest. Once I relieved myself, I realized that I had a throbbing headache from not eating all day and proceeded to eat half the contents of our refrigerator. Only then did I remember that I had a blog to tend to, so I headed straight for that next. I don't know what's scarier though: the fact that I forgot to eat all day, or that the pain of having to urinate was so bad that I didn't even realize how hungry I was.

The Elder Scrolls games always bring out the worst in me. For example, I've spent more time terrorizing the townsfolk and going on city-wide murder-sweeps in Oblivion than I have actually playing quests. But somehow Skyrim is different. It brings out the Snidely Whiplash in me. Let me explain by telling you something that happened to me in the game today, and don't worry. There won't be any spoilers.

It all started when I stumbled across a lumber mill that you can actually run at the edge of a mountain stream. I spent about five minutes splitting huge logs and going "This is so cool," and then I continued on my quest up the mountain path. After a short distance, I reached a spot where the path crossed the stream just above a large waterfall. I bumped into a man on the bridge who offered to sell me skooma (drugs), and something called moon powder.

                                                                                                            via Wikipedia
Moon Powder?

The only responses the game provided me with were "This sounds illegal," and "No thanks. I'd rather not." I chose the first. The man responded by saying that he couldn't have me talking to the guards, and he attacked me. I think this was a bit of an overreaction, considering that I actually wanted to buy me some moon powder, but I was left with no choice other than to kill him in self defense. (Imagine my joy when I realized that I could loot all of the drugs off of his corpse after I killed him).

There I was, standing on a bridge in the mountains with nothing but a dead body and the sound of a roaring waterfall for company. Then, the sound of a saw tearing through wood would echo up the slope, and I remembered the mill.  Then, the gears started turning, and came up with a great way to dispose of the body:

Snidely would be proud..

Never mind the fact that I was standing over a roaring waterfall. I drug the corpse the entire way back to the mill, and tossed it over one of the logs like a towel on a towel rack. The bewildered woman running the mill chimed in and asked me "What are you doing with that?" NPC's (non-player characters for those of you that have lives) in Skyrim don't register corpses, so she was most likely referring to to lever I had thrown to start the mill, but her timing was just so damn perfect.

Now don't worry. The saw didn't actually cut the him in half. As soon as he hit, his arm glitched and attached itself to the saw blade. He flailed around wildly, like a macabre marionette, until the mill stopped moving, and he detached and fell into the log chute. Then, he slid into the stream and was carried away by the current.

As you can see, Skyrim has opened the door for me to be dreadfully maniacal to my heart's content. And for this reason more than any other, I love this game to death. So now I'm off to go play it some more. Tune back in tomorrow for the next post, which I promise won't be about video games.

© 2011 Kier Harris

1 comment:

  1. This made me laugh out loud. How do you pick up corpses in Skyrim?

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