1) Oh. Wait. I guess I didn't finish out this character before I stopped playing to wait for Dragonborn to come out. I guess I'll finish Peryite's quest.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
2) I started a new file in Bowser's Inside Story today. Not sure why.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
3) Oh man I actually got to the new content and they put the old music in. I never knew how much I missed it until it had been playing for like a minute and I realized.
Best $20 I ever spent on video game expansion content including Bloodmoon. I'm sure this isn't as good as Shivering Isles was, because c'mon now, but the nostalgia factor (and it says something powerful and virginizing about how truly that *felt* like a homecoming) is through the roof.
I am intrigued by what happened to great house Hlaalu which was my fave. I feel like I"m going to want to kick an ass that's inaccessible on account of being in the city that used to be Mournhold.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
I haven't been playing skyrim much so I didn't really want to pay the $20 for it... is this something where I'm going to miss out on stuff because I didn't play Morrowind(much)? I know about some of the terms from reading about the lore, such as the Great Houses, Dagoth, Vivec and such.
Basically would this be worth $20 without the Morrowind experience, you think?
The 20 is better spent on Morrowind methinks, but if you've played MW already and it is not your cup of tea, well, I'm not qualified to answer because I haven't played Skyrim yet.
I think I will pick it up when I get back home, though. Confound the price remaining high. Maybe I'll continue to wait and replay some of my old favorites.
Did you like Shivering Isles, though, Wil? Though I really loved KotN, one of the few things I thought was actually very good about Oblivion (I'll never forgive them for what they did to the dunmer voice, or not unless they try real hard to make it up to me) but I hated Shivering Isles. I feel less raildroaded playing Mario Kart.
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There's about eleven minutes of gameplay in the town that gives the nostalgia vibe, so I think you're safe. That level of delight may have owed more than a little to the bottle of wine (it having been drink an entire bottle of wine and play morrowind day when I posted that).
Otherwise, it was fun, I guess? If you want more Skyrim it's more Skyrim, and it's substantially better "more Skyrim" than Dawnguard was, but that's a pretty low bar. (Though I think a lot of my frustration with Dawnguard was that the plot was completely incoherent. Also I thought that in a bizarre move the whole Vampire Lord thing was trash, but according to UESP, there's a script that severely nerfs it as long as your companion is the vampire NPC that's required to follow you around everywhere for all the DLC missions. So... 100% of the time. I really only get about a third of the decisions that went into Dawnguard.)
Anyway I give it a "yeah if you feel like it."
Re: Shivering Isles I think I liked the art direction more than anything else. I never *felt* railroaded but there were definitely big sections of the map I never went to or only went to once for one main quest thing, so I know what you mean. But it just recaptured a little bit of the alien goofiness of Morrowind, and so for that reason I loved it.
I've never actually done KotN because right when I started doing it was when my PC at the time totally died, and I just haven't yet worked up the nerve to go through an play again (which I wanted to do mostly for SI). I might in a few months now that I've about tapped out Skyrim.
Re: Skyrim, it's great, but at the same time it makes me sad because it doesn't go in for any of the weird goofiness. (There's actually a little bit of alienness in that Nord culture is sometimes a fairly good depiction of a culture with premodern shame/honor system, and they occasionally have weird religious fixations, but you really have to dig for that.) They pretty much doubled down on the direction they went in Oblivion (generic fantasy setting with a world in imminent peril, more dungeon crawling, simplified leveling/magic/etc).
It all works better than Oblivion did, but a little bit of the soul is gone, you know? I'm still hoping the next one's in Black Marsh or Valenwood straight out of A Dance in Fire.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
Man, I don't always sperg, but when I do it's about The Elder Scrolls.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
That's the thing I really liked about Shivering Isles, the alien quality of it, that brought back a feeling of Morrowind. Before the producers were more concerned with playing it safe and generic and soulless than diving back into Kagouti and Alits and all that.
What happened to me, though, was that I'm in this dungeon and homeboy is all like (spoilers for Oblivion SI)
Hey, murder these adventurers.
I was like, um, no. But I couldn't leave. I couldn't evil kill the p o s insane scientist because he was invincible. My only choice was to torture or murder presumably innocent people. Then he's all like, hey, get this person killed (no option to avoid it) and then he's like, hey, start doping up on drugs. For some reason even though you can slay daedra by the hundreds, you can't open up a cave door unless you are hopped up on drugs, and if you don't continue to take drugs, you'll literally die.
Ok. Cool. So I have no choice but to murder and take drugs. Ugh. I was so disgusted I reloaded to a save 15 hours before, to a point where my horse hadn't been murdered (I didn't know he had been killed and my only other save predated his death by 3 hours or so so I just kept playing into KotN and SI) and redid KotN and actually had a lot more fun the second time around. Plus I was infinitely more pleased that my horse was no longer dead. That was a serious blow to me.
Blargh!
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Oh I do kind of remember that weird "you need to murder a bunch of people to appease this guy" thing. It was uncomfortable. It kind of fit with the dark underbelly of Mania--that being manic seems fun, but you'll make impulsive decisions based on poor evidence. It kind of reminded me of that one Dark Brotherhood mission, which of course *did* feel uncomfortably like being brainwashed in an insane assassin cult. Which is fun... of a sort.
I kind of enjoyed the drug binge in the same way. You know going in that the greenmote will literally kill you, so it's clear that nobody--neither the player nor the character--really *wants* to in the strictest sense. Then it's paired with actual gameplay that's uncomfortable--it's probably the only time in the game that the game wants you to rush through a dungeon instead of stopping to explore. All in all, it's a neat interactive lesson in why uppers are bad.
Plus it's a little more grounded than the murdery thing. Like you were doing a bunch of drugs to win the hearts and minds of the upper echelons of Drugland society. That makes sense. You can't stab someone into respecting you, after all.
But nah I getcha.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
lol I like the explanation. All in all, I was probably a bit harsh on Bethesda. It is not that Oblivion is a bad game, and was certainly enjoyable to me and many others. It''s just an elegy in memory of how good Morrowind is. It's not nostalgia for you or I because Morrowind is a game that I come back to all the time, where as many others, not so much.
I just felt so mad that I couldn't force the issue in ways that I normally would have in Morrowind. If I didn't collect ample alms for the poor, I just lied and said I did and gave it out of my own wealth. If I didn't want to kill an innocent person there was another way around it. If I didn't want to talk to a specific deity about a specific artifact, I could just do it some other way.
One other thing I really miss about Morrowind is that there were very few generic things, until the expansions. Like, if I go into a cave and kill Frik Stormfang and free the slaves, well, if I come back a month later, Frik is still dead. He's not some generic respawning NPC. I really liked that.
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I know what you mean. There was just so much stuff. And there's still so much stuff, but a lot of the stuff is like interactive cabbages.
There was some guy on LUE (yeah I check LUE what about it) asking if he'd done all of the major faction questlines in Skyrim, and since he had I was a little sad because you could *never* run out of stuff to do in Morrowind. Like you could always go and join the Twin Lamps. And I know this because I have *never* done the Twin Lamps quests. I've known about them for years now and just never felt the need.
Oh and the vampire clans. I know that there are those, but I've just never gotten the bug. Point is, I could fire the thing up tomorrow and there'd be stuff I've just never checked out, just hanging out.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
Sufficiently advanced video games are indistinguishable from an actual alternate dimension.
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"Generally the plan was to get away from government and allow the natural virtue of man to assert itself. What more can you ask for as an explanation of failure?" —B. F. Skinner (as Frazier in Walden Two)
Ha, yeah, the vampire quests I've really never done. Nor have I ever done the FG without first completing the TG and thus eliminating some portion of anti TG quests.
I can't remember if I have done the Twin Lamps things... I know I've been included with them, as the slaves will tell me 'they light the way' and I've delivered a few slaves to their freedom (like the one under Fat Leg's Dropoff in Hla Oad) but I can't remember if that's the same thing.
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Oh you know what I've never even done the fighters' guild.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
Srsly? Dang.
In fact, I rarely find myself as a part of it. I don't know why.
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Yeah. One of my first couple of characters ('cause you know you need to roll eight or nine before you figure out how to do that right) did the fighters' guild quests up until they conflicted with the thieves' guild (so still in Balmora) and sided with the thieves.
I always meant to go back but then I never played a straight melee character, so I never would've had the skill set to advance. So come to think of it I've never done the Redoran quests either.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
Wait I've also never done the legion after the first couple. Or the imperial cult OR the temple initiate quests. I might be kind of terrible at this game.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
What the!
The thing I hate the most is when I start to get involved in multiple guilds at the same time. Because then it turns into a dash and grab thing for me, and I spin out of control. But before that, seriously, a lot of time I can just walk through the roads and stuff, taking my time, and cursing when I stumble upon that girl. What's her name? Pecunia Viatrix or something? If there were roses to stop and smell, I'd totally be capable though. I love Morrowind.
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Ugggggh I know the one you're talking about too. You just walk back and forth up a road, but because you run into them so early you have to do it with level 1 fatigue so it is torturous.
My favorite memory hands down was getting totally hopelessly lost in some foyada (sidebar: When was the last time they had to make up a word to desribe a feature of the landscape?) in the ashlands with no idea how to get out. Out of desperation I started picking trama root and just making potions willy-nilly, when I discovered (or noticed; I forget how alchemy effects worked then) that I could totally make levitation potions with clifff racer feathers.
There was a simultaneous "I'm nerd McGyver" rush and a "man they anticipated this and gave you the exact tools to get out" sense of appreciating art.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
Levitation with "cliff racer" feathers, you say?
http://i.imgur.com/UGuCmp2.jpg
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That's awesome. So is that pic. I really wish I buckled down and did alchemy in Morrowind. It's something I really have little experience with. I'm very reticent to use items in any game, and I'm always like, oh, I don't wanna waste that, let's wait until I have grandmaster equipment and I train my skill up... and it never pans out for me. Also, using magic. Never really done it other than a few healing spells. Dunno why. It's practically essential in Arena and I used it a lot in Daggerfall, but in Morrowind, not at all.
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Man, Mark is so much like me. I end every run of Deus Ex with 10 proximity mines, 20 multitools, 20 lockpicks, max first aid (20 I think), etc.
Yeah same exact here. Even objectively useless stuff like fortify skill potions. When will I ever need ten levels in Restoration in a hurry? That is a contradiction on its face.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
I wasted a ton of time leveling alchemy up in Skyrim only to realize that the only potions I was bothering to make were damage magicka regen poisons that also fortify the target's speechcraft because those give you disproportionate skill xp. It was not a proud moment.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
Oh man, Deus Ex... same thing for me. I MIGHT NEED THIS LATER. And instead, you reload several times to do things the hard way rather than spend an item.
And potions, oy vey, I'm usually laden down with 50 pounds of potions on a good day. One thing that helps is I try to play my character on a no death thing, and so I'm more willing to consume a potion, but that only lasts for like the first couple hours of gameplay until some dude smashes me with an axe and drops me to my knees for the finishing blow.
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I need to go back and play Deus Ex now that there's time.
I was starting down that road. I didn't take a heavy rifles specialization, but I held on to one "just in case."
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
Yep, sounds just about right. Am I making this up or is the GEP gun in that game? If it isn't, I wonder where I got the idea of a GEP gun.
Anyways, Deus Ex is awesome, and offers the extremely rare sort of style I like to play on, that being realistic. It makes everything way more badass when you can't actually take a full magazine to the chest and keep on ticking.
I probably will never fight a boss that left a more lasting badass impression on me than the first time I met Simons in the sunken lab. That place was creepy as heck and I was unnerved to find him waiting for me. The battle started, I sprinted towards him with speed and health augs, all I could see was plasma searing me, and the dragonstooth sword chopping three times, and that was it. A real, honest fight, like it would have been in real life, lasting about 2.5 seconds with one man dead and the other almost.
On the other hand, jumping on Strong's head from several stories up and pulling a Mario is also great.
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Yeah, that's going on the list.
In other news, while I wasn't doing that, I reinstalled AoE2. It turns out that after playing a bunch of faster-paced RTSes (even though I haven't touched one in years) you just completely dominate. I played Vikings and went all boat-aggro and then pillaged until I got a relic victory. It was all pretty historically accurate.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
Yeah dude, of course DX has the GEP gun. It's the one you kill random civilians with.
Just when I think things couldn't get better someone brings up AoE2. Here's to AoE2's health forever and ever.
*drains a cup of orange juice*
Ahhh yeah, I remember now. lol JC to Paul "Gimme the GEP Gun"
Paul "(oh damn)"
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If you've never used a GEP gun to kill the kid who wanted a chocolate bar in exchange for the passcode for the panel behind the soda machine... you haven't played.
Oh now I remember. I got stuck right before things get interesting because I desperately wanted to keep Paul from getting killed by the shadowy government guys but it's like super hard.
I just need to learn to let go, man.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
I did it with LAMs, I put a couple by the door to his hotel room and then threw more at the door as they came in.
Doesn't he survive even if you get 'killed' so long as you don't go out the window?
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I tried the LAM thing. I was also pretty beaten up from having run from the cops and whatever else, though, so that particular deck was always stacked against me. That was one of the things I liked about it: I felt like I was constantly on the verge of dying, but that there was *totally* a way I could pull this off without getting into a one-sided firefight. (Contrast with, say, Fallout 3.)
Also I have no idea. That would be way easier than mining that hallway.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
Sidebar: With the The Conquerors CD in my drive again, I get to relive the joy of how they wrote the background track directly onto the CD so that my music player keeps demanding that I rip it.
Actually I guess there's no reason I wouldn't want to rip it. It would be kind of neat to go through my day pretending that I'm building a medieval civilization.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
buh BAHHHHHHHH bah bah bah bahhhhhh
bahhhhhhh bah bah bah bahhhhh
Oh speak of the devil:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/age-of-empires-ii-hd-arriving-april-9-6404962
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
Actually I'm not hugely impressed with that.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
Uh, you're not? I am. If the multiplayer actually works and I don't have to use freakin' Voobly, that's all I want out of life.
You know I never got the multiplayer going. As a result AoE2 was always a solipsistic, relaxing thing for me. Maybe after all these years it's time to change that. Maybe.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir