Skyrim 12 – Completing the Bounty

I complete the bounty given to me.

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Oh well. I’ve discovered that twitch does kinda run well on my machine so I’ll start doing some broadcasting on that! I’ll keep putting my FTH on YouTube but I’ll probably record them on Twitch live first :P.

Regards,

Sarah.

Skyrim 10 – Speaking to Everyone

I end up doing what I do best… Badgering everybody in Riverwood… :P.

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So tired. Can’t comment much!!!

Regards,

Sarah.

Skyrim 09 – Back to Riverwood

I return to Riverwood after completing the Barrow.

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So it’s my first Skyrim video. I have not forgotten about Morrowind but Skyrim is so addictive that I can’t help myself for now :).

And back to posting videos on a regular basis after a couple of nights off (Which I plan for each after FTH to give myself (and everyone watching) a breather!)

Regards,

Sarah.

FTH Schedule

The FTH Schedule widget is now live. It’s located at the bottom of the blog on the right hand side… This is currently what I have planned:

November

11/11/11 – Skyrim (Complete)
18/11/11 – Batman: Arkham City
22/11/11 – Serious Sam 3

December

Trine 2
TBD

Regards,

Sarah.

Skyrim – FTH Now Live

What’s going on?

I completed my first of my FTH series. I also have a rough idea of a schedule… And yes, Skyrim has successfully been uploaded and published to YouTube. I suppose now is the time for some thoughts!

Please note I did not RTFM :). Lets go over the things I didn’t like and then we’ll go over what I love. Bad news first. Good news later :P.

• Dual wielding. I found it incredibly awkward. I complain about it a few times in my videos. Essentially I’m clicking on items and they’re either going in my left or right hand and I didn’t seem to have any control of what hand they were going in. For example, my right hand wielded an axe. My left hand wielded a flame spell. Let me just say I love this combination, but the problem came after a fight when I wanted to equip my healing spell. I’d click the healing spell with the intention of it replacing my left hand spell (The flame spell)… It wouldn’t. It would replace the axe. I’d sigh a little bit, do some healing and then go back to replace the healing spell with my axe. Suddenly I’m replacing my flames spell with my axe.. So my axe is now equipped in my left hand and my healing spell in my right. It takes a few tries to get this right and it just seems very… Awkward. I can’t make my mind up if it’s precisely because I didn’t RTFM (I had a busy weekend, I ended up out of the house most yesterday and was surprised I got as much time in with Skyrim as I did!) but to be fair I will be RTFM’ing today and if it’s “just me” I will take this back. I remarked on my video that for now it “smelt” like consoleitis, again, not sure I can confirm that quite yet.

• The faces. Erp. Well, the engine is new and greatly improved. So this will also be in the bits I love… But the faces just look downright atrocious in places. Kind of bare in mind though, I’m clutching at the vaguest of straws… It’s daft that there are very few faults I could find but this was definitely one of them. For such a beautiful engine, how did the faces of the NPCs end up looking so bad? Well, I guess this is completely and utterly subjective. I say that in the sense of I might not like them but other’s might love them.

• The autosaving perhaps didn’t save enough. Not sure it’s a bad thing, it taught me to be more liberal with making saves myself as I wasn’t sure what trouble lay around the next corner.

And the very good things. There are plenty.

• The new levelling system. It’s absolutely fantastic and no more of this major, minor and misc stuff. This is great because now I can choose to be some kind of battle mage that wields maces and axes and things like that. They have instead implemented it so the restriction comes from perks, in the sense of, to make Apprentice Destruction magic a bit cheaper to cast you’d have to level Destruction to roughly 25 points. When levelling there’s also a choice to increase HP, magicka or stamina.

• Distinct lack of hand holding. I kind of liked that I was thrown in the deep end.. Very much the way Morrowind and the previous games do it… And is very overwhelming for those that are not familiar with the style of gaming. In short, it’s a new game masquerading around in it’s old school hat.

• Fast travel makes a return. This is a good thing :P. At some point we will all get bored of looking at the scenery and decide that the only way we’ll eventually finish the game is by fast travelling. The downside to this is that you can miss out on some very cool things by doing so. Think of it as … A calculated penalty :P.

• The graphics. Oh my! Where do I start? Other than my initial gripe about the way the facials of the NPCs look the graphics in themselves are absolutely gorgeous and thrilling. OK. The game is NOT RAGE…. Nor does it need to be. Why? Well, lets just say the person who decided to put that much more attention to detail into the game deserves a medal. I’m serious. It snows on mountains, blood goes all over your hand and axe, the towns are glorious. It’s colourful. It’s not green land (Oblivion) nor is it murky swamp land (Morrowind). It’s alive and I feel like it’s an absolute delight and pleasure to have paid the money to see this. I guess you could compare it to Daggerfall in terms of differentiation.

• The dungeons! In my two hour play through I only encountered one dungeon. It wasn’t a main quest, nor was it a guild based quest that you see so often in the Elder Scrolls games. Instead, it was a quest that a merchant gave me to find a dragon’s claw. So.. Off I went. The sister of the merchant directed me in the general direction, and my map had coloured the place I needed to go in a dark colour so I knew where I had to go. I climbed up this hill and eventually I found this place. And did it take me by surprise…. It was huge! It also looked nice and different and contained traps, puzzles etc. The puzzles were good. Not too hard, not too easy, and just got you to think enough. The hints provided were fine and I should imagine that the average gamer would not have trouble with them. In fact, the claw puzzle was a great way of showing off the new engine via the inventory. Yes. I officially love dungeons and can’t wait for the next one. I just hope that there is none of the repeating nonsense that made Oblivion so tedious at times. The fact I only encountered one dungeon in two hours should give you an idea how long and in depth the game is.

• The crafting system. Ha! Finally someone in Bethesda actually bothered to explain it properly. You kind of need to stumble upon the explanations yourself in Riverwood though (The crafters will give you little quests that will show you what each piece of equipment does and how).

I can’t really praise the game enough. I’d say my only true gripe is the wielding. As I say, I’m unsure if I can rectify this, I hope I can… Hmm. What else to say? Oh yeah, I love this game… And it’s calling to me right this moment now .. It will become a longplay so hold onto your hats :P.

Regards,

Sarah.

Morrowind 30 – Ancestral Tomb

I explore an Ancestral Tomb just outside Caldera.

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A small update on things! Yes, another Morrowind video, no Skyrim as of yet… The problem being I had a bit of a problem with the recording last night and had to fix it pretty much ASAP. The good news is that I salvaged what I had, the bad news is I lost 5-10 seconds of material. Not the end of the world, but it took a good 30 minutes to solve. I recorded 33 minutes last night, I’m recording more today and I plan to have it encoded and at least some of it up tonight.

Regards,

Sarah.

Morrowind 29 – More Restocking and Exploration

I continue my restocking “mission” and then I explore some more!

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A Morrowind video! And now! My first two hour video to be recorded :D.

Regards,

Sarah.

Morrowind 28 – Restocking

After using so many potions in beating Rels, I go on a restocking mission across different towns

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After defeating Rels, I need to restock, so I basically head around all the places until I find where I can get potions :).

Regards,

Sarah.

Morrowind 27 – Finally Win

Upon returning to the cave I finally beat Rels Tenim

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After getting my potions I manage to go back and finish off what I started… Succesfully!

Regards,

Sarah.

Announcing FTH

Hi!

Well, now seems a great time to announce FTH.

This is one of my first ideas for a regular show rather than longplays. Basically FTH stands for “First Two Hours”. With Skyrim out tomorrow, I figure, why not?

Now… Originally this was going to be a JustinTV/Twitch show which would later get uploaded to the YouTube channel, but I don’t have the finances to “output” that kind of bandwidth (or the CPU to do the encoding on the fly) so it would just look terrible. Not to say that the YouTube looks great at the moment, but I honestly don’t have the finances for that either, especially with the Thailand floods pushing the prices of HD’s so ridiculously high. Anyway, space is pretty limited on my machine so I have to record from FRAPS half screen at the moment. If I could do more, I really would, but it isn’t economical.

So basically, tomorrow, I will be recording a two whole hours of Skyrim and then uploading it to my YT. Great, huh?

I’m coming up with a schedule soon for FTH, which I hope will whet everyone’s appetite. This will come this weekend… Again, funds! So.. Maybe this will be limited to one or maybe two games a month. In preparation for that, the next one will be quite “Serious”….. And there you have a massive hint ;).

I would like to take the opportunity to remind anyone that is out there and reading and is following (that is currently no one, but for historical purposes: Hi there) that not all FTH’s will turn into long plays. Skyrim however WILL be turning into a longplay.

I know that this will be a question, so I will put it here….

How will this impact the Morrowind videos?

I am really hoping (currently) that this will have very little to no impact on the Morrowind videos. I try to release one to two a day (and once I slipped up but made up for it) and I’m about to release another one or two tonight. As a matter of fact, I really enjoy Morrowind, and I’m looking to create more space on my harddrive so that I can store up some more videos and put them up for encoding. The harsh truth is that I’m miles ahead of what you see in Morrowind to the point where I already have up to 70 episodes lying around to release. This is an awesome amount and I still have one video to encode before I can clean up the harddrive in preparation for tomorrow. I try not to release everything in one go as I know this would overwhelm some people and little doses is a lot better (not to mention that it gets spammy, but for my purposes, recording so far ahead works out fantastic).

So there you have it. The first First Two Hours (FTH) will be Skyrim which will also be a longplay/let’s play. To be fair, the reason I dislike the let’s play moniker is because longplay suits me so much better. I tend to cut very little out my videos (swearing, a crash or two) but any mistakes are there.. In all their glory. I am hoping to release two videos a day. One of Skyrim, one of Morrowind. Demand may push Skyrim videos more in favour, understandably, though.

But this is all tomorrow…! And tomorrow is another glorious day…! Let’s stay on course with Morrowind tonight, eh?

Regards,

Sarah.