HoonDing

I finally got sick of the ridiculously slow flame/frost/storm thrall, but then I remembered the Dead Thrall spell. It didn't work on Astrid (unfortunately) since she was too high level, but now I have Orchendor the teleporting mage as thrall.

It's great that you can at least destroy the Dark Brotherhood. I loved turning on that smug bitch that kidnapped me and told me to kill. Still incomprehensible why you can't destroy the Thieves Guild.

I'm really getting sick of unkillable NPCs. I can't kill any Jarl and corresponding house carl, I can't kill Maven Black-Briar (though I killed her son in front of her), I can't kill her son in the jail, I can't take out the Thieves Guild, let alone Delphine. All because I need to follow Bethesda's linear little storylines.

I don't like that FXAA post-processing injector. It makes the game look too happy, when it should be cold and bleak.

You do get a permanent boon from both Mara and Dibella after doing their quests.

I think its the dialogue writing. I felt the same way in Fallout 3. I enjoyed the game. Running around blowing stuff up and exploring was fun, but I foudn talking to any of the npcs extremely tedious and did it as little as possible. Bethesda does a good job with the whole open-world explore and conquer thing (Oblivion being the one exception) but they write much much worse than any of those Saturday night Syfy channel original movies. I don't know if it's a lack of skill/talent/training or if they just don't care enough to bother doing it well. Quickly, someone paste a screenshot of that Three Dog Intelligence dialogue.

Well, all Daedra save Meridia, Sanguine, Azura and maybe Sheogorath, Malacath and Peryite are pure evil. What do you expect? Not to mention in Namira's quest, you can choose to save the priest and kill the worshippers, with the consequence that a shopkeeper in Markarth will go missing.

The Thalmor persecute anyone who disagrees with their mantra, including High Elves. I'm currently running through the College of Winterhold and it's pretty interesting. I can see it's different for non-mage characters, though, since they will most likely miss out on the Ritual quests. The main storyline is interesting too, though, lore-wise since you get to know more about Saarthal.

I gave Arkham City a little spin before the DX11 patch is out, and it's pretty fun. Playing with Catwoman is way better than Batman: she doesn't move like a cement truck and has some amazing acrobatic animations.

ALL HAIL

What's the point of dual wielding? I can see it useful for backstabbing, but in straight melee you can't even block.

Huh? You can use these skills to let ANY armour or weapon reach the cap.

Just because quest NPCs are immortal doesn't mean you can't mess with them.

Illusion & conjuration level up very quickly and are both very useful. Enchanting goes hand in hand with smithing, and goes up fast as well. I've been leveling only magic skills and maxed them all out (save restoration) after reading the Oghma Infimium. Now I'm dabbling in smithing & enchanting to give my companions the best armour.

83 hours, according to Steam. I've done the Companions, and it was okay. I wish Bethesda would go back to Daggerfall system for guilds, i.e. just doing quests until you reach the master rank, but I guess these days they insist on inserting some story into it. The whole "enter Guild and something awesome happens" is getting old. Still, at least it's short and way better than Oblivion's Fighter's Guild and you can still do quests afterwards.

Going to take a break in Skyrim when if Arkham City is out tomorrow.

How the mighty have fallen.

They're wrong.

All in all, it's pretty impressive what Bethesda has been able to pull off using the ancient Gamebryo, and on consoles with that. Divinity 2 is a semi-open world game that uses Gamebryo and has lackluster animations as well, it makes me think there must be something about that engine that makes implementing animations difficult. Maybe Bethesda should've opted for Two Worlds 2's GRACE engine. I was impressed by it.

I found "Blackreach". It's like a gameworld inside a gameworld.

The game ceratinly isnt half bad. Without the companions, though, it would be pretty boring.

When you bash things you enjoy, maybe it's time for another hobby?

Here it's just water cannon and tear gas.

I think the biggest improvement of Skyrim is that the world feels actually alive, much like a Gothic game. NPC interactions with each other and their actions in the game world are pretty believable while in Oblivion they just wandered randomly talking about mudcrabs. Even the Skyrim bandits are talking to each other and even engaging in fist fights on occasion, if you spy on them. As atmospheric as Morrowind was, and as unique its gameworld, the world was dead.

I'm reading that Bioware Edmonton makes quality games? Here? Apparently the Styx froze and you can cross it by walking. Could've been sarcasm.