Master Architect says a house is a machine for living in

Actually, Le Corbusier said that, but what does he know–he didn’t spend countless hours fast-traveling and staring at the same ol’ loading screens in Skyrim‘s Hearthfire DLC to gather the numerous and welcome-to-encumbrance building materials, such as clay, quarried stone, and iron ingots, to build three houses that are void of character and personality and truly, without a doubt, not worth all the effort. Really–don’t bother building your own house, especially if you’re already pretty far into the game, wherein you likely already own a home in one of the many cities, such as Breezehome in Whiterun or Honeyside in Riften. Those cost the same base price as your own plot of land, but require a whole lot less work, giving you more time to kill that bandit leader in Cave X or find your twentieth Jazbay Grapes.

Housing in Bethesda’s games has always been a pesky business. For Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, you had a few options to call home, but they were not very exciting. In the former game, I shacked up in Megaton, covering my bed in teddy bears and the shelves with rare trinkets–if I could figure out how to properly move and place an item via an Xb0x 360 controller. Your only other choice was staying in Tenpenny Tower, which came with some neat themes, but required going through a lot of load screens to simply access. Too much waiting, not enough storing of loot, if you asked me. For New Vegas, pickings got even slimmer. Some hotels offered a permanent room, and if you felt like going through a lot more loading screens, you could keep your prizes in the Lucky 38 presidential suite. Strangely, your best place to call home is at The Sink, a futuristic homebase brimming with goodies. Oblivion had a few homes that you could earn through quest completion as well, but I never really used them as once you joined a guild, that became my place to store stuff and rest comfortably.

You could always find places to…let’s call it…squat. Abandoned houses or shacks that seemed ready to be yours, but at an invisible risk. See, while they might have containers or places to store you treasured treasure, there was no was to know if that container was safe or would respawn its contents in a few day, thus erasing yours completely. Unless you used the Internet, of course, but that’s never fun. I’d rather sell off items than lose them to a coding abyss.

So, unfortunately, while the three houses in Hearthfire look pretty cool once totally complete–that’s Lakeview Manor, Windstad Manor, and Heljarchen Hall–they are not fun to build and require, at least for me, a ton of back and forth, as I’m not the sort of character who just carries around 100 iron ingots at a time. You spend a lot of time looking at menus or watching your character mine for quarried stone, which is as exciting as it sounds. And after all that, you really have little input over how your house turns out. Sure, you can place tables and chairs and barrels and weapon racks, but they go where the game designer decided they should go. All you are doing to spending your materials to place it there. Your house is not your vision. And that’s a big bummer. I was hoping to be able to have a trophy room that was filled with my kind of trophies, like a thousand scattered troll skulls, presented in my way. Instead, no. It is a model home, and nothing more. Again, you might as well purchase a house in one of the cities, which is a model house too, but cheaper and easier to fill in.

You can also hire a bard for your house, as well as make any follower a steward. The steward helps a lot in ordering building materials for you which go directly to the chest by the workbench, but only to that chest. If you need that clay for your other house, you best make room in your inventory. The steward can also bring in animals or furnish your rooms completely for a small fee. It’s okay, but came across as very robotic, especially when one is ordering piles of wood after piles of wood after piles of wood.

In short, I wasn’t expecting Minecraft, but definitely some more flexibility for creativity. I mean, I couldn’t even pick the place to build my house, ruining my dream of shacking up right next to the Thieves Guild.

But yeah. This is one Achievement definitely earned with stubbornness and patience, backed by a numbing soundtrack of clinking hammers and thumping hammers:

Master Architect (10G): Build three houses

Here’s hoping that player housing changes quite dramatically in Fallout 4 and whatever the next Elder Scrolls ends up being. Here’s hoping…

Achievements of the Week – The Blessed Unbound Master Edition

It has arrived. The day is 11/11/11, and it is so much more than a Spinal Tap reference or a day to honor Veterans everywhere–it’s the day dragons awoke, the day I became a bearded man of import. Getting there wasn’t hard; Tara and I went to my local GameStop around 10ish, paid for my copies of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and LEGO Harry Potter, Years 5-7 (which I won’t be able to pick up until early next week) and then hung out on the store’s floor for a bit. We gamed on our DSes for a bit, but eventually had to line up outside in the cold as we drew nearer to midnight. Once the time chimed high, we were sent into the store in groups of six or seven, given our copies, and ushered out. The drive home seemed to take forever.

Got home, made my character–his name is Lohgahn, and he’s rocking some killer Wolverine-esque sideburns–and played until the intro tutorial part was completed. Then I saved my game as I was a truly sleepy bear, but woke up early this morning to continue bounding onwards. Have only taken a break to make/eat lunch and type up this Grinding Down blog post.

I’ve never waited for a midnight release of anything before, and it was a little interesting seeing what type of people came out for this event. Mostly young teenagers or kids just getting into college by the look of ’em. There was a group attempting to sing–to everyone’s horror–Queen. And then listening to them spew words about how dumb Batman ultimately is and what Final Fantasy is the best had me cringing a bit–is that what I sound like, just not out loud? Ugh…

Well, maybe more on that later. For now, here’s a rundown of this week’s Achievements. They all come from a single franchise.

From The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion…

Blah blah blah, who cares now. All hail Skyrim Achievements!

From The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim…

Unbound (10G): Complete “Unbound”

Blessed (10G): Select a Standing Stone blessing

These are probably the first two Achievements the majority of gamers will unlocked. The first one is basically tied to Skyrim‘s tutorial/intro level, and the second is obtainable by following your companion right down the main path a little ways. Can’t miss it. Unless, upon the game truly opening up for you, you headed left or right with such ferocity that you never found the easiest Standing Stone possible. Bummer to you.

The first few hours of my game have gone well, and I certainly didn’t see any crazy horse-on-carts antics, but knowing it’s a Bethesda game means it’s only a matter of time until the glitches start popping up. I did stumble upon one oddity. I was speaking to a woman inside her own home in Whiterun, and she was ready to give me a quest, but said it’d be better to talk to her in her home in case anyone was eavesdropping. We…uh, were in her home. Speaking to her a second time triggered the correct dialogue, but it was still pretty amusing.

And with that, I go back to make Lohgahn a better archer, a better necromancer, and a better thief. To arms!

All must bow before the Master of the Fighters Guild

Well, of the remaining quests to complete to the Fighters Guild, three more involved going into a cave and killing [plural noun]. The final ones actually broke form, but even with that said, they weren’t that exciting, despite being concerned with taking down the Blackwood Company and destroying a crazy drug-producing tree. It was still go here, kill these people, report back what happens, accept next quest. Very disconnected and disappointing, but I’m glad to have to at least fully completed a guild questline–other than the easy-peasy Arena one–so here, look at my shiny rewards:

Champion, Fighters Guild (10G): Reached Champion rank in the Fighters Guild

Master, Fighters Guild (50G): Completed the Fighters Guild Questline

The final quest involves you taking down the Blackwood Company, a group of no-gooders that have popped up a few other times during your growing career in the Fighters Guild. Instead of going to a cave to murder them all, you go to their base of operations in Leyawiin…and murder them all. Molly summoned a lot of skeletons to distract them and then plucked them down systematically with her bow and arrows. Nothing terribly hard. In the basement, she found a tree surrounded by cogs and wheels and other crazy-looking mechanisms. Every time you click on it, nothing happens. You are tasked with destroying the pumps powering the chaotic thing; I loosed some arrows and fire spells into it, but nothing seemed to be working. Then I noticed some boards on the ground, which fit perfectly in the spinning wheels, breaking them fast and setting the whole place on fire. Upon returning to mean ol’ Vilena Donton and telling her all about Molly’s good deeds, she bestowed upon her the grandest of grand titles, the Master of the Fighters Guild. After that…um, nothing. There’s no confetti or party in the basement, no roasted rat meat and seasoned cheese wedges, no cheering and clapping, no anything. Hollow from beginning to end.

For this marathon run, I stayed focused. I picked up very little loot, unless it was lightweight or simply gold or more arrows for my enchanted bow of numbing, and that was a little hard for me at first. I am, by nature, a lootwhore. I like taking everything, whether I plan to use it or not. I mean, in my mind, there’s always the possibility that X might come in handy or that I could always just sell Y at a later point, but this then leads to spending a lot of time on inventory management. My goal was to see every quest completed, and so there was little time for fidgeting. Bad enough all the loading from fast traveling to and from constantly, from cave to city, city to city, city to cave.

And that’s mostly that for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. From what I’ve gathered, the most exciting guild questline in the game is that of the Dark Brotherhood’s, but I chose poorly, going with Fighters Guild and am now out of time. Tonight, I am going to be devouring The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in big-eyed fashion, and while there’s no Fighters Guild in this new snowy realm, there is another guild similar to them. The Warriors? I dunno. I think though for my first playthrough I’m going to work on getting into the Thieves guild and going from there.

Molly the Master, out!

Too many caves for the Fighters Guild to count

Molly’s been working like a mule as of late in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, increasing two more ranks in the Fighters Guild. See here, non-believers:

Warder, Fighters Guild (10G): Reached Warder rank in the Fighters Guild

Guardian, Fighters Guild (10G): Reached Guardian rank in the Fighters Guild

Ping and ping. That’s all well and good, but to be honest, these last few quests have been a grind. An extremely bland one, too. All involved going to some cave marked on the map and exploring it, whether to find out what happened to so-and-so, escort so-and-so safely through, or simply murder a bunch of so-and-sos/escaped prisoners. In fact, the majority of quests for the Fighters Guild so far have been of this ilk, with the only ones standing uniquely being “A Rat Problem,” “The Unfortunate Shopkeeper,” and “Drunk and Disorderly.” Otherwise, it’s been this on repeat: tip-toe through a really dark cave that looks just like every other cave in the game, spam the heck out of Nighteye and Minor Life Detection spells in hopes of seeing something, and save frequently to avoid losing progress to quick deaths from unseeable tripwires and pressure plates. Not overly exciting stuff, and it doesn’t help that I’m sitting in a freezing cold living room, crawling through digital caves that look just as cold, if not colder.

But up two ranks means that I’m almost done with the Fighters Guild, right? Well, no, not exactly. The endgame of the latest quest got problematic. Seems like the mother of Viranus Donton, found dead in a cave, was not happy with the mission’s outcome. Did I also mention she’s Master of the Fighters Guild in Cyrodiil? Yup. So, she threw in the towel, firmly, firing Modryn Oreyn for his lack of winning. Molly was also reprimanded and demoted down to the rank of Defender. So, it’s more like, up two ranks, down two ranks. I gotta make good and climb back up the corporate ladder for the Champion and Master ranks, which means more cave quests. I think I will just grin and bear it though as I’d love to complete at least one whole guild before The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim arrives. Once that game comes out, I’ll probably forget all about its predecessor–the same thing happened with Fallout 3 once Fallout: New Vegas reared its shinier head.

I’ve already joked with Tara that I’ll basically stop playing Skyrim the way it’s meant to be played when I get my first cave quest. I’m sure my character will be content to just spend the remainder of his/her days in a safe, well-lit town, decorating his house and chatting with locals. Maybe he’ll start a spoon collection. Or just make potions and fancy foods, sunrise to sunset. Who knows. The realm is my oyster. It’s gonna basically be Animal Crossing: Wild Skyrim, and that’s fine. Unless, I dunno, the caves got a whole lot better in the fifth game or my bad eyes are perfected magically overnight. Let’s hope for both of those things, my fellow fantasy spelunkers. Let’s hope.

Achievements of the Week – The Highly Trained Old School Gamer Edition

Honestly, I didn’t expect much in terms of Achievements this week considering I was without my Xbox 360 for three-fourths of it thanks to that crazy October snowstorm. In case you didn’t know, power outages and console gaming don’t get along. I only just got to sit down and game a bit last night, giving Mass Effect 2 some solid minutes, and that game is starting to sink its narrative hooks into me, even if it is severely less of an RPG than before. I don’t even bother looking at stats or skills after enough experience has been earned, simply hitting “auto level up” and then going about my day.

That topic’s probably for another post. Today, however, is all about the Achievements! See ’em below.

From The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion…

I moved up the Fighters Guild’s rank ladder pretty fast, going from Journeyman to Defender after a handful of mediocre quests. You can read all about that here, and I’m still planning to hit the top rank of Master in at least one guild before Skyrim takes over my life. That’s in seven days, people. Seven freakin’ days.

From Mass Effect 2…

Exploring more of the Normandy, I stumbled across several Achievements just sitting there, waiting to be unlocked. I hadn’t played Mass Effect 2 since the first main mission of rescuing the salarian scientist Mordin Solus, but had an itch for some dialogue trees and Paragon actions. This spurt of playing included running around the ship like a kid on Christmas morning, getting drunk with the onboard doctor, and rescuing an old friend by the code-name of Archangel. A nice mix of things to do really.

Scientist (10G): Complete any research project in the Normandy’s laboratory

Highly Trained (15G): View all advanced combat training videos at Shepard’s private terminal.

Scholar (15G): Unlock 15 new Mass Effect 2 codex entries

Prospector (5G): Retrieve mineral resources by scanning and probing a planet in the galaxy map

Not exactly sure what to do next or who to go after so I headed for the Citadel to see what’s new with that place since Shepard last saw it. I’ve only just gotten inside thanks to Michael Hogan. Hope fast travel is readily available and that I can remember what is where. Shepard’s planning to do the old “pop in” on the Council, something I’m sure they won’t like, especially considering many still believe him to be dead. Can’t wait to see their faces.

From Deus Ex: Human Revolution…

Old School Gamer (10G): You found all the hidden story items in Megan’s office. Point and Click much?

Not enough, to be honest. Need more point-and-click games now that I’ve wrapped up Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars. Anyways, I started a new game just to get this Achievement, but don’t know if I’ll play again. I’d love to see more of the side missions, but I’ve turned bitter towards the game, and even going into it all guns blazing seems unappealing. There’s fun in sneaking through a room successfully, little fun in hiding behind a crate and firing a gun until all is motionless. I dunno. There are parts of this game that I love, and parts I loathe. A full review is coming soon to The First Hour.

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Proud of a certain Achievement this week? Tell us about it below in the comments, even if it’s from a Kinect game.

One-goal Molly wants to be Master of the Fighters Guild in Oblivion

A long ways back, like in April 2011, on that infamous day where everyone gets hiiiiigh, I talked about diving back into The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and giving some it another go, this time trying to play a little differently, as well as finishing up all the major guild quests. Well, that plan quickly fizzled out as that was actually the last time I played the game until this very weekend. I think my gaming ADD hit me hard, and I was off on some other adventure, one that was probably immediately followed by another adventure. And so and so on. Such is the life of a gamer…

But then, as the world outside went snow crazy, I started Oblivion all over again, giving Hodor the heave-ho and creating a creepy looking Night Elf woman witchhunter with bleach blonde hair named…Molly. She focuses on a little bit of magic and a little bit of bow and arrow action. Not bad, truly, and I was able to rush through the majority of the opening quests for the Fighters Guild, finally breaking into new territory, advancing not once, but many, many times. Oh, just look:

Swordsman, Fighters Guild (10G): Reached Swordsman rank in the Fighters Guild

Protector, Fighters Guild (10G): Reached Protector rank in the Fighters Guild

Defender, Fighters Guild (10G): Reached Defender rank in the Fighters Guild

Good job, Molly. You’ll be Master of the Fighters Guild soon enough. Four more ranks to go. That is if the power comes back on and I don’t yet have The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to eat up. See, on Saturday, as an October snow unseen of before descended over New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the power kept flickering on and off. And yeah, I continued to game, or tried to at least. The last straw was the power shutting down as I was exploring a cave for the quest Azani Blackheart; I hadn’t saved since I entered the cave and did not feel like doing it all over again, at least not just then. So, we’ll continue to advance in rank some other time. I promise, Molly.

What is helping this playthrough versus the one I started with Hodor is that I’m no longer worrying about all the little things, such as picking up every bit of gear to sell, collecting a thousand and seven ingredients for alchemy purposes, and always trying to level up this skill or that in hopes of reaching the next level. All that matters is the quest at hand, and as long as Molly has some potions and plenty of arrows, we’re good to go. The quests themselves are not terribly difficult; the difficulty lies with–and this is inherent in all open-world games, I guess–the player’s determination and not getting distracted by Everything Else. With blinders on, one can get through the guilds pretty fast, I’m assuming. After Fighters, I think we’ll tackle the Mages Guild since Molly does have a knack for summoning skeletons.

This spurt of Oblivion playing is also a great reminder of what worked in that game from 2005 and what’s going to be ten times more fantastic in like twelve days. Every time I speak to someone and the camera zooms in on their fugly faces, Tara makes a noise. A mixture of a gasp and utter disgust. Especially for khajiit women. It’s the best.

30 Days of Gaming, #3 – A game that is underrated

This was a tough one to narrow down, and I’ll let slip the tidbit that I almost went with Chrono Cross for today’s 30 Days of Gaming topic. Like, it was a coin toss, only I didn’t have a coin handy and decided to go with the game that had the most lovable gargoyle ever. In that regards, Primal won through and through.

But what is Primal, you might understandably ask?

Other than a game I consider very underrated and overlooked, it’s the story of love, demons, and alternate planes. Jennifer Tate is dating Lewis, a tribal tattooed lead singer for a lame metal band, and everything is going peachy until a tall, shadowy man shows up at the Nexus nightclub one evening when Lewis and his mates are jammin’ and jivin’. Suddenly, the shadowy man reveals itself to be a freaky-deaky demon, attacks, and leaves both of them unconscious in an alley. Jen is moved to a hospital room where she is in a coma and given a fifty/fifty shot of making it. As she sleeps, a gargoyle named Scree slips into her room and separates her spirit from her body, claiming that he was sent to find her and needs her assistance. Together, they will travel to an alternate plane known as Oblivion to restore balance.

Yeah…it’s a crazy whacky opening, but at least it gets everything in place to get truly videogamey. I can’t help but imagine Joss Whedon approving of it though.

Primal is divided into roughly three aspects: exploration, combat, and puzzles. Naturally, the weakest of these three is combat, and one can’t, unfortunately, simply get by with button-mashing. It can be very frustrating, especially since combat is solely Jen’s responsibility; Scree turns into a statue when danger shows up. Jen can take on different demonic forms–Ferai, Undine, Wraith, and Djinn–and each have their ups and downs, but none really make anything easier. Once all enemies on screen are killed, Scree softens and is able to heal Jen’s wounds. 

Both characters can be controlled, and using Scree to hold a torch and scout ahead always comforted me because I knew nothing could hurt him. Search away, little stone buddy!

Like I mentioned though, the joy to be found in Primal sits not in fighting werewolves, but exploring the otherworldly planes, solving puzzles, and talking. Yes, there’s some great chatter here. Scree is voiced by Andreas Katsulas and Jen by Hudson Leick, and together, the two make one enthralling team. Scree is 99% seriously serious, and Jen plays the role of a sarcastic goth perfectly, bouncing off each other. She’d fit fine in a snooty book club consisting of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Morrigan from Dragon Age: Origins.

I’ve read that some consider Primal to be the British Ico. I don’t really get that comparison. Instead, I like to think of it as Tomb Raider With a Twist. You play as a strong, intelligent, well-capable woman searching for mysterious artifacts and trying to keep evil at bay. Sure, Jen does it for love, and Lara Croft does it because, well, it’s her job, but the two titles seem very similar to me. However, Primal‘s world and its characters are must more imagined, and I’d rather climb walls as a gargoyle than climb walls as an archaeologist. Oooooh snap!

So, yeah. That’s my pick–2003’s underrated Primal. Eight years later, it’s still an excellent, engrossing adventure. If you can find a used copy, grab it.

And now I will just keep refreshing the Internet, praying that one day it will spoil me all about that forthcoming Primal HD remake…