Skyrim: Hearthfire DLC

Being released on the Xbox 360 next week, this piece of DLC for TES:V Skyrim is something a little different...

Land ownership, Home building, Adoptions, and protecting your property...

I am not sure about implementation, but it sounds like a fantastic way to draw in more players who like Sims type games, as well as Role players who would jump at the opportunity to build their own home and expand on the activities they can do.

Players can buy plots of land, upon which they can design and build a home. This at first glance sounds like a good idea. You can find a location you like, and make something to your own tastes. The reality of it however I suspect will be a little different... Having no experience with the Construction Kits for the likes of Morrowind, I am not the best to speak on the matter, but I imagine choosing size, shape, design, appearance, and all the other features that will be required is going to be more than a little tricky and time consuming. The alternative would be a 'plug and play' system, but then the player is not really designing their own  home... just picking the modular layout. I would like to get my hands on it to take a look in more detail, but unfortunately I have no Xbox 360. Checking out the video does make it appear to be a 'modular' type set up, and I even think furniture is automatically places ala house furnishings for in-city housing.

As an aside, I think this game would be excellent if they were to implement some Minecraftian features... let players gather the materials and build the house from the floors and walls up, placing sections as they wish. Also, being able to turn their game into a 'server' for friends and family to come join them on for some co-op or role play goodness could work very well. It need not exactly be balanced, just optional.

In addition to building your house, you can get NPC's on board. Bards, servants, adoptions, etc. This should all add up to make it feel much richer, and I think it will be very good to see in action :-) Fingers crossed there is a lot of detail to it, as it would be kinda poopy to build the home, move in your partner adopt some kids, fight to keep away the beasties only for there to be nothing to do when you are there. Player housing just now for me is a case of 'nip in, drop stuff in a chest, nip back out again' affair. Rather boring, its just storage.

If you plan to download this game next week, it would be great to learn more :-) I will be keeping an eye out for Let's plays and reviews!

-V

Skyrim: Velk's journal - Part 1. *Contains spoliers*

As previously mentioned, I wanted to keep an in-character game journal, much like Arwen. It will contain spoilers, I have no intention of editing thme out, if you dont want to see them, please don't read. I am a veteran of Morrowind and Oblivion, so I am going to try my best not to use any exploits I find in the game, Im likely also going to stick fairly close to the main quest line with this character, and explore all the fun to be had with guilds when Im not trying to keep notes as I go! And with that over with: INTO IT!

*****

I awoke, with no memory of where I am, or why I am here... I was in a cart, being transported in convoy with what appears to be prisoners. Ulfrik Stormcloak introduced himself to me. A few others rode beside us... We arrived at a keep soon after... One by one the prisoners were lead forth to be given their last rights before... before being beheaded. I was not on their list, but nevertheless, the captain ordered that my head should be removed along with the others...

The first man hurled taunts and insults at the guards, and was promptly dispatched. The lucky one. A freshly sharpened blade took his head in a single stroke.

By now, eerie sounds could be heard echoing from the mountains... but it made no difference... I was next. Perhaps the sounds were my own imagination as I stared death in the face... As I lay my head on the block, some strange beast flew in from behind the keep, and landed on a rooftop, and started raining fiery death to the village. A Dragon! 

AArrgh! Death!

 I made my escape with Ulfrik, into the keep with a few other injured survivors...

We made a break across town, and I met with Hadvar, the guard that tried to bargain for my release with the leader at the executions, and we headed into the Keep, and made way through catacombs.

We fought our way through a number of Greycloaks that decided they fancied some hostile negotiations, but we managed to fight our way through and out the otherside. When we got out, the dragon flew right over our heads and over the mountains in the distance...

Spot the dragon!

we watched the Dragon fly off into the distance. Hadvar informed me the local town of Riverwood would be a good place to shelter, so we headed off along the path. He pointed out an old ruin, and we paused at some blessing stones.

Thieving time!

We then continued heading on towards the town, being halted briefly by a pack of Wolves, though they were easy to dispatch with my bow, and Hadvar's sword.

We entered the town of Riverwood where Hadvar and I met his father, Alvor. We went inside his house to talk...

Alvor and his wife

I talked to Alvor in length about assistance he needs. Soldiers from Whiterun seem to be his prime concern, he told me a little about Whiterun and the Jarl - this may be tricky, he is quite opposed to the war, although he doesn't side with anyone, it may make it tricky to coerce him to assist...

I spent a little while milling about, cooking some Cabbage Apple Stew, and sharpening my weaponry at the blacksmiths and had a brief run around town. It was dark now, and a full moon was out.

The mountains at night. Pretty. Dangerous. Hide.

I decided I want rest, and somewhere to sell all my loot, but Alvor and his family had been hospitable enough, so I headed to the Sleeping giant inn. Hopefully I can get some rest, a clean and some coin for my troubles. After coughing up 10 gold pieces, I rested for the night. Whiterun can wait until tomorrow... I need rest, lest I will fall to another wolf pack and never even get the alert out!

*****

Thats it for now folks - I did not get much time to get into the game as I am still in the midst of studies, but the more notes I get, the more I shall post :) My thoughts so far: plotline seems good, the game is very immersive. Full HD on a 22" screen, with headphones on makes it very immersive, and I love the water and the atmosphere, especially walking through the valleys and looking up at the misty peaks above! :-)

-V

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Pre-amble to a write up...

"That's a bit of an odd topic title!" I hear you cry, and alas. I concur. As a self confessed geek, I feel I need to be deducted some geek-cred for not having a copy of Skyrim yet.

The reasons are many, among them there is university studies - Im busy as all hell until about the middle of December, and the abundance of Death that has happened around me and Kat in the last month has thrown us off course a little (AKA, a metric Fuckton.) As a result, I am heavily commited to getting coursework done and out of the way before I risk gaming addiction on the level that this promises to enforce...

In an attempt to compensate for this, when I finally get to indulge in the game I am going to do a couple of things: 

Firstly I am trying to get my mits on a second monitor to help simplify my working experience. The new one shall be bigger and better for gaming which will enhance the experience I hope.

Secondly: I am going to try to keep a written log/journal of my characters adventures and randomness. I shall refrain from giving away main-quest info or spoilers (Or I might focus on the main quest and just give a write-up as if it was a journal from my character... that could be cool.) - I know I have been trying hard to find a few blogs/sites that provide this fix for myself without giving too much of the game away with little success.

As for now... well... Importance fact at the moment :: life > game 

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

With this game looming over our heads and the hype surrounding it, I thought I would look into it a bit more. I have loved TES games since Morrowind first came out - back then I didn't even have a computer or graphics card powerful enough to run the game beyond the most basic effects.

On the site - http://www.elderscrolls.com/ - there has been a new video put up since I was last on there - a making of clip, that will be included in a making of DVD in the collectors edition.

Ultimate dragon fighting game
Ultimate warrior game
Ultimate mage game
Ultimate thief game
Ultimate assassin game.

Yep - they have a lot of ground to cover! I thought they done quite well in Oblivion. I am hoping that the engine etc has been knocked up a notch since then, since looking at Oblivion now it looks sadly dated. The good news is that from the clips - it does look like it has changed! Maybe not as much as I was hoping for, but maybe having a new computer Ill be able to run everything to its full potential anyway ^.^

Im looking forward to being able to just explore a huge open game world again. How thorough should I be? Who knows! I would like to finish this one - since I didn't actually finish Morrowind. I think I got half-way up the mountain at the end then formated my PC or something... fun times!

I shall certainly detail in here what I get up to in it anyway, once I get round to buying it...

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - articles

Christian Heilmann (@codepo8 on twitter) who works at Mozilla here in the UK, and who is a huge advocate of HTML5 in web development linked the updated Elder Scrolls website as being written in HTML 5, so I went for a browse. I have been a huge fan of the Elder Scrolls series ever since I stumbled across Morrowind back in  2002, so I took a long look at the eyecandy provided on this site - and actually found a number of very interesting articles - articles that are very interesting if you are interested in game development.

Having a browse on the TES site, the following articles relating to the development of TES IV, Oblivion caught my eye:

Game Audio. Focusing on audio immersion and voice acting.
Graphics Design in-game. Deceptively titled, this article goes into details of how they generate in-game terrain, scenery and sprites.

Im looking forward to Skyrim :) - though i have a backlog of games to work on. Dragon Age 2 and The Witcher 2 being the most prevalent. But what can I say. Vikings v Dragons sounds like its gonna be AwesomeSauce!

-V