I Liveblogged A Murder Mission In ‘Skyrim’
By Blake Butler
I haven’t owned a video game in about ten years, since the first Halo came out for Xbox.
I feel like I relatively suck at video games because I don’t aim well with the little toggle control controllers have now.
Actually I relatively sucked at video games when the controllers were just A, B, select, start, and the direction pad.
I don’t think I focus well on the hand eye coordination development required to become good at specific abilities innate to specific games.
I remember being significantly worse at shooting type games for that reason, and slightly better at role playing type ones because they at least slow down sometimes and let you think about what crap you are supposed to do now.
I find almost as much enjoyment in sitting there and watching someone who is good at it go through the game, or at least I used to when I lived with people. It’s like a really long, cruddily produced movie that you are also in but you are just sitting there in a room.
I got an Xbox 360 for my birthday from my girlfriend one week ago yesterday, as well as one game: Skyrim.
I have played Skyrim at least I think four hours everyday since then, and up to ten hours on the second day. I have used the word “addicted.”
I am now a level 13 dude who wears a steel helmet with horns coming out of it and I have a beard like I’m in Korn plus green face paint that I remember selecting because I got tired of changing the look of my character, which in this game you can do down to what might as well be like ‘length of hairs on abdomen’ and ‘cholesterol level.’
Where I saved last night I find myself standing on a platform and the wind is blowing all muffled sometimes as if onto a microphone and there is music like you are about to go on a horse ride to somewhere you’ve never been with someone you sort of like.
When you don’t do anything in the game the “camera” starts spinning around you in 360, which I just discovered after leaving the game on while typing the beginning of this and when I look up I start to feel sick.
I would like it if my character got sick and threw up on the concrete or said something to me after idling so long but I’m tired of waiting to see if that will happen.
The mission I am going to go do right now is kill a “bandit leader,” which makes me wish you could also alter the look of characters in the game because, speaking of Korn, the “bandit leader” should wear a Korn shirt.
I am running through the snow. I like that the sound your footsteps make in snow sounds like when I was very fat and wore sweatpants and my inner thighs rubbed together, which seems entirely appropriate.
I would like to be a sound designer for a game like this and use like sounds of someone eating tacos very close to your face or the sound of me with my mouth full trying to say the words “hi daddy” for things like raising your arm and taking out your sword.
Sometimes I wish I was a “gamer” but I know I’m too much of a pussy to play games like this regularly enough and well enough to even be something like a ‘guy who likes games a lot.’
I wonder if they had to hire church choirs to make the parts in the soundtrack that sound like people singing happen or if you can do that with a good synth now.
Has there ever been a church formed around the worship of a video game? I could do that with Might and Magic II, which I ripped in middle school, for PC.
PC gamers seem better than game system gamers: less bro and more get your ass beat.
I’ve been playing for ~20 minutes and so far all I’ve done is wait for load screens and run across a mountain.
I tend to save my game before I fight most anybody if I’ve gone anywhere at all, just because you never know who will be good enough to kill you.
A pointer on the compass at the top of the screen always tells you where to go. You can always know exactly where you are supposed to be running if you want to. It might be nice to just run around in the game forever and never do anything real except what you run into or figure out on your own, like life.
I finally found some people to kill but they were faster than me and did not even realize I was coming up behind them with an Orcish Sword of Draining and a Frostbite spell in hand. 🙁
Back to running through the snow. Nice they include the detail of snow still falling. Seems relaxing. Do people play video games to relax or to feel accomplished, or some of both? This game makes me feel insane in a very specific, purposeless way that I have found I look forward to through the day while doing “real things.”
Found where the guy I’m supposed to kill is hiding. He’s in a tower also covered in snow that makes it look like “snow camo.” Some dude outside it just told me he is going to “split my belly like an old woman’s purse.” I killed him by shooting ice out of my hand.
Now he’s just lying on the ground there. It was really easy to kill him. I hardly even got hurt myself. I searched his body and took his clothes off of him so I can sell them later for money I don’t need really because I have a lot of money already. I just go around stealing money and killing people and taking their money in this game. That’s pretty much all you do.
While game was paused so I could type previous lines, suddenly felt like I was “live” in this document and that I should “pause” it too before going back to the game, like the document might do things without me.
Going to start trying more often to “pause” life and see if it will tell me stats like Skyrim keeps such as Days Passed, Hours Slept, Hours Waiting, Locations Discovered, Food Eaten, Books Read, Horses Owned, Stores Invested In, Diseases Contracted, Intimidations, Bribes, etc.
Afraid of a stat that tells me how many hours I’ve sat in a room staring into a rectangular solid made out of wire and metal.
Found four tomatoes in a barrel. I like that you can eat food in this game and cook the food different ways, but usually you just leave the food lying wherever you find it because it doesn’t seem like you really need to eat the food and it’s not worth any money. I am going to eat these tomatoes now just because, now that I’m thinking about it, why don’t I always eat everything: the one time in life you can eat everything and gain no weight and pay no money and still somehow be satisfied by the sound of the chomp.
Ate four tomatoes and drank a bottle of “Alto Wine” I have been carrying for I have no idea how long. My dude carries tons and doesn’t do anything about it unless I tell him.
Just thought “Is this game a metaphor for America” but didn’t want to just write it straight so put it in the “just thought” category because that seems too obvious but then that also makes it seem more true.
Found five carrots in another barrel and ate them all, plus a bottle of Mead and a “Mammoth Steak” I’d also been carrying for a long time. Really enjoying eating everything now.
There’s a “bed roll” here on top of the tower that I can choose to sleep in even though I don’t know whose it is. Seems gross. The bed is a bunch of animal skins, which seems sexy. According to the in-game clock it’s 1:39 AM, which is close to when I go to sleep in real life, though in real life it’s 8:48 PM. I guess I’ll go sleep in the game and make myself something to drink in real life.
This game encourages drinking.
You can choose how long you sleep in this game by number of hours, from 1 to 24. Like you can just press a couple of buttons and sleep for 24 straight hours in someone’s bed on top of a tower in the snow. Cool game.
I have to go back now and tell the guy who told me to kill the guy in the tower that I did the killing. All you have to do in the game to do that is tell the guy where to go on the map and then the screen goes black and then you are where you said you should be.
This game encourages unhealthy and awesome ideas of life.
They give you general tips about how to do good in the game while you are waiting for the game to load, which also seems kind. I would like to go to Best Buy and have a wait sign while I’m in line at the cashier about to buy the next game I buy to play after this one that says “You shouldn’t buy whatever you are going to buy, just put it back and go home.”
Now that I’m back in the town and I can see again the screen tells me exactly where to go to get paid for killing the guy. The guy paying me is sitting in the snow with his head down outside another camo building. He looks sad. I told him I killed the guy and he gave me 100 gold coins, which equates to about $16 in real life, as far as I can estimate considering an apple is worth 3.
Asked the guy what he does around the town and he said. “Nothing. And I hope to keep it that way.” Sweet.