Skyrim

Over the winter and spring I decided to take a break from my art and my writing. There were several reasons, including the demands of my job cutting back on my spare time and being mentally worn out after finishing "The Girl with No Name".

Instead of Poser or writing, I spent my spare time doing something I had wanted to do for a while: explore the Bethesda video game "Skyrim". I had the game in my possession for two years, but was unable to play it on my desktop PC because I have an AMD card in it instead of an Nvidia card. I was reluctant to change cards because the AMD card does work well with Poser. Finally we bought a new laptop in the fall that, among other things, was able to handle some newer programs such as Skype and Skyrim.

So, I had the opportunity to take a break from my own fantasy world of Danubia to indulge in one created by Bethesda. I'm not a hard-core gamer, but previously I played "Fallout 3" and "Fallout New Vegas" (about two years ago) and before that (about five years ago) I played "Oblivion" and "Morrowind". Bethesda's games are more suited for my taste in gaming more than most others: I like open maps and plots that allow me to explore the game's map at my own pace, Bethesda's style of play and combat suit my way of interacting with an imaginary scenario, the player's characters are completely customizable, and there is an active modding community on Nexus that allows for further customization.

My play-through took about five months, during which I reached level 77 and completed most of the quests. These included the main story-line, the three add-ons (Dawnguard, Hearthfire, and Dragonborn), other faction quests such as the Mages' College and the civil war, and any side quests I came across during my explorations. According to some stats I saw on Steam, I got much further into the game than most players. That struck me as kinda strange, why would you pay $ 60 for a game if you're not going to complete it?

I enjoyed Skyrim, although it did not inspire my imagination as much as Fallout did. For example, it is very unlikely I will create any Skyrim-inspired art in Poser similar to my Fallout-themed images. It was simply a bit of fun and an escape during the time I played it. I think there was a lot of plot-related events and characters that could have been further developed, for example I think some of the side factions such as the Thalmor elves and the Foresworn raiders could have been better developed with their own quest-lines.

My biggest complaint about Skyrim is the physics engine and how it affects item placement in the game, especially for players who want to customize their houses. The placement of items inside houses is simply not allowed by the physics engine in the way it was allowed in Oblivion and Morrowind. Given that I like to collect and display items in a video game, for me the physics engine issue was a major annoyance.

Another note on playing... in spite of the game practically begging you to immediately start the main quest (chasing after dragons), it is a good idea to NOT start the main quest right away. The dragons can be a real hindrance for beginning players and sometimes kill game characters needed to complete other side quests. I sidestepped the main quest until I reached level 48, which made a lot of other things in the game much easier than they would have been if my character were constantly being attacked from the air. The dragons tend to spawn at the most inconvenient moments. Fortunately that was less of a problem for me because my character was already sufficiently leveled-up to deal with dragons before I started the main quest.

Upon completing the game I took a series of screenshots I will post here in DeviantArt. The main purpose of the images are to show my visitors what Skyrim looks like, along with some explanations of what is going on in the pictures. I did not take screenshots during my play-through because I did not want worrying about setting up screenshots to distract me from completing quests and leveling-up my character. Decent screenshots really need to be set up in advance and you need to be ready to take them, which is much easier to do if you've already completed the tasks in the area where you want to take the pictures. So...what I did was re-visit various places in the game to obtain the screen-captures through Fraps, after I was done with my serious playing.

All of the Elder Scroll and Fallout series games allow the player to customize their character and insert outfit/armor mods. I used the Dimon99 body replacer and Obmit's armor mod. I did not use any other mods for my game. For anyone interested in using the files in their own games, here are the links:

Armor mod: Obmit - You Call That Skimpy? www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/…?

Body mod: Dimon99 - UNP Body skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads…

So...I created an attractive female character and ran her around in skimpy armor. Yes...I know that's a bit sexist, but Skyrim is a fantasy world and if I am going to invest a bunch of time playing a video game, I want to play with a character I enjoy looking at.

My entire collection of Skyrim screenshots are located in my screenshots/Skyrim folder: caligula97030.deviantart.com/g…