Legate

Well... that was quick! Once I finally buckled down to finish the main quest in Skyrim, I did so with such swiftness that I started to doubt that it actually was the main quest. To make sure, I did another major quest line as well out of curiosity to see if it was actually the main. It wasn't, but both were quite fun.

MEGA SPOILERS

I had kind of "parked" the main quest partway through the process of training under the Greybeards. After I was done with the Thieves Guild, Dark Brotherhood, and Dawnguard quests, I returned to the mountain and saw what there was to see.

The first surprise: Blades! Blades have been an important faction in all of the other Elder Scrolls games that I've played; they're kind of an elite Imperial force that handles sensitive jobs, a bit like a fantasy mixture between the Secret Service and Navy SEALs. Based on the information within the game thus far, I'd thought that the Blades had all been wiped out during the war against the Dominion. Well, most were, but a couple remain, and they are pursuing one of the ancient duties of the Blades: defending against dragons.

Responding to a note left at the end of my quest to retrieve the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller, I met with Delphine in Riverwood. Riverwood was the first village I ever visited in this game, and Delphine was one of the first NPCs I'd met, so it felt interesting and a little odd to be revisiting so late in the game. Delphine revealed herself and her mission: she had learned that dragons were being awakened, returning from the graves where they had been interred. She was getting good at predicting the order in which they would arrive. We investigated some ourselves.

Delphine had thought that she was the only surviving Blade, but we learned of another, Esbern, who was hiding in the Ratway in Riften, and happened to be the most acclaimed scholar of dragon lore in Tamriel. We rescued him; he was initially filled with despair, convinced that the world would shortly end, but was enheartened once he learned that I was a Dragonborn.

We visited some ancient sites to learn more about the first wave of dragons far in the past. Their leader, Alduin, is prophesied to destroy the world. The ancient Nords were thought to have killed him, but in actuality, they used a spell that removed him from their time and cast him far into the future... which is now our present. Alduin had never died, he was simply gone for a time. Now he's back, and may destroy the world.

In order to defeat Alduin, I learned that I would need to master a new Shout. The Blades reluctantly asked me to consult "that cult," the Graybeards, and get the knowledge I'd need. Well, the Graybeards were none too happy, for reasons that still seem obscure. They don't deny that the world may be destroyed by Alduin, but don't want to struggle against it. Anyways. They eventually allow me to see their leader, who is - surprise reveal! - a giant and ancient dragon named Paarthurnax, who lives on top of the mountain and is the one who taught Men to Shout. He admits that he once served Alduin, but eventually betrayed him by teaching the ancient heroes their Shout as a weapon against the other dragon. He'll do the same for me.

The fight against Alduin is a little confusing, but not too hard. He and Paarthurnax are both fighting aerially, and it was hard for me to visually differentiate the two, so I would need to track the red dot on my compass to figure out which one was him. For this fight, I learned a Shout that is exactly what I've wanted for all of my dragon fights: it forces the dragon to land, where it will be vulnerable to my melee attacks. At least, it's supposed to - in practice, he seemed to ignore it much of the time. Once he did land, though, I just needed to slap on some Lingering Damage Health poison (-24 health per second) and whack him a few times.

Alduin was defeated, but not really dead... he had retreated to a place to recover his strength. This was a perfect opportunity to destroy him once and for all. One catch: I wasn't sure where he had gone or how to follow him. This led to a fairly convoluted but interesting set of goals:

• Get one of Alduin's dragon thralls to show me the way to his hideout.
• To make the dragon talk, I'd need to capture him/it.
• Dragonsreach in Whiterun was built as a trap for dragons. Huh, interesting factoid!
• I'll need Jarl Balgruuf of Whiterun's cooperation to lure a dragon inside his castle.
• The Jarl is sympathetic to my mission, but doesn't want to risk the damage a dragon can cause while the civil war is raging between Stormcloaks and the Legion (remember those guys?)
• So, I'll need to negotiate a temporary truce between the factions.
• The Graybeards reluctantly agree to host the summit. (Heh, get it? Summit?)
• Ulfric of the Stormcloaks agrees to attend.
• I'm supposed to get General Tullius to attend, but this quest gets semi-broken since I've already accepted and not completed the quest to join the Imperial Legion. So, he just snarls at me to talk to Legate Rikke.
• Meh. I was hoping to put off declaring my allegiance for as long as possible, but by this point I've made the difficult-but-firm decision to side with the Empire. (My previous post has my rationale; I'm very sympathetic to the Stormcloaks' grievances and desire for freedom, but ultimately more attracted by the Empire's diverse society and better long-term prospects as a counterweight to the Dominion. The Thalmor dossiers I'd acquired made it clear that they saw Ulfric's rebellion as beneficial to their cause.)
• Fine. I clear out the fort she wants me to, join the legion, and then Tullius deigns to speak to me, and agrees to come to the summit as well.
• Hey, Tullius's voice sounds really familiar. Is he the same guy who plays Saul Tigh on Battlestar Galactica? I check the credits online. He is!
• I attend the summit, and basically lead it, making crucial decisions about the course of the war. I really like this part. It isn't as cool as the kingsmoot in Dragon Age: Origins, but it's a somewhat similar situation where passionately opposed forces are brought together at a high-tension conference. Ulfric is being a big jerk, demanding large concessions from the Empire in exchange for a cease-fire. I try to negotiate as fairly as I can: he wants Markarth, which is a major and wealthy city, so I order him to surrender Riften, a similarly sized city, in return. He also wants Falkreath, apparently just because he wants it; I say no. At several points he seems like he'll walk out, and he accuses me of harboring well-known Imperial sympathies. (Sigh... I wish I could have waited to join the Legion.) He ultimately agrees to the terms and storms (hah! get it?) out. The Imperial side is subdued, and I can sense some interesting tensions - Tullius is no fan of the Thalmor, who have sent an emissary; Jarl Elisif is understandably furious at Ulfric, while Tullius seems more measured.
• I lure a dragon into the Dragonsreach balcony, defeat him, and capture him. He swiftly agrees to betray Alduin: he won't just tell me where Alduin is hiding, but will take me there himself.
• I get to ride a dragon! This cut scene just lasts for about five seconds, but still, it's pretty cool.
• A portal takes me to Sovngarde, a pretty clear parallel to Valhalla, where warriors who die in battle are eternally rewarded with feasts and other good stuff.
• Oh, no! Alduin is busily corrupting Sovngarde, laying down mists and false paths that cause warriors to lose their way and not reach their reward.
• I'm awesome, though, and make it through easily.
• Inside, I meet the three ancient heroes I'd seen before: they're the ones who originally "defeated" alduin. They're actually really cool, especially the valkyrie-ish woman; I'd have enjoyed doing more with them. We unite our voices together, Shout away the fog, and force Alduin to fight us.
• This time, the "hey you, stop flying around and land down here on the ground where I can whack you!" Shout seems to work much better. It's an intense fight, but a pretty fast and fun one. Soon, Alduin is dead! Sovngarde is restored to its original state, and all the spirits of dead warriors talk about how awesome I am.

Hooray! Now that I write it all out, I guess it is a longer plot than I had originally thought... it probably felt shorter because I could just jam on it and go from task to task, unlike my faction quests, where I typically was doing a bunch of quests more or less at the same time.

There's still the little matter of the civil war left, though. I started to wonder if THAT was the main quest; after all, I hadn't needed to resolve it before defeating Alduin, so maybe my stature as not just Dragon-born but Dragon-bane would be necessary for wrapping up the conflict?

I reported back to Castle Dour to take my instructions. One mission fairly early on was to convince Jarl Balgruuf of Whiterun to side with the Empire; up until now he had tried to remain independent, but Tullius had learned that Ulfric was planning to make a move. I asked Balgruuf to accept the Legion's help; he sent me to Windhelm to gauge Ulfric's intentions. Ulfric may be a jerk, but he's an honest and honorable one, so he made clear that he intended to start a war. Back in Whiterun, I helped defend the city from an invasion. This was a REALLY fun sequence, one of my favorites in the game: you initially defend the barricades, then eventually fight a running battle, trying to keep the Stormcloaks from reaching the drawbridge. We eventually slew all the attackers and carried the day.

There are quite a few missions on this quest line that involve you fighting alongside the Legion in defeating the Stormcloaks, and while I generally liked them, one thing really bothered me: I had an extremely hard time telling the two sides apart. I'm pretty sure that they have different uniforms, but they're all basically the same color and the same size, so unless I'm paying close attention to the compass radar or the target indicator, I can easily end up hitting an Imperial; and since I tend to one-shot enemies, I often felt bad realizing that I'd struck down a comrade. There was one mission where each enemy had a little quest arrow over their heads; that made it MUCH better, and I wish all of the civil war fights had used this.

Oh, that brings up another point: these fights seemed to be greatly under-leveled. Granted, I would be fighting up to fifty enemies at a time, so it's good that they aren't each as strong as a Draugr Overlord or something, but still... I was fighting in melee, and can't use stealth, so everyone had ample time to hit me, and still, my natural health regeneration always kept my health above 95% throughout the entire fight. A dual-wielded power attack would invariably kill anyone, even through a block, and when my Stamina ran out, it would just take three normal hits to kill an enemy. I tore through them like nothing. Which, granted, is fun, but still, a little more challenge would have been nice. The quest rewards also didn't seem to be leveled: the very first reward I got from Tullius was something like a Daedric Sword with a powerful enchantment, but each of the later rewards were more like, well, Plate Armor (?!) or an Orcish Mace (?!!!!!).

Other than defending Whiterun, most of the Legion quests involved meeting up with a group of Legionnaires, then assaulting a Stormcloak fort and killing everyone outside. In this way, we gradually extended Imperial control over the various regions of Skryim: the Pale in the north, the Reach in the west, and the Eastmarch on Ulfric's doorstep. This leads the way to the finale: a thrilling assault on the city of Windhelm itself. You travel over familiar streets, which are now filled with unfamiliar flames and towering barricades, as catapults rain fiery death down on the city. I summoned my Spectral Assassin and we ran through the city, leaving the Legion in our wake as we rushed to the Hall of Kings.

Once inside, the final fight was very anti-climactic; for some reason, I summoned Durnehviir, who was too big to fit inside and was generally clipped out of the drawing plane. Ulfric and his right-hand man Galmar were pushovers, without any special abilities, and were defeated in something like six seconds. It might have been an interesting fight with just me, but with my summons and Tullius and Rikke, it was just too easy.

The finale is pretty interesting, though. Tullius offered me the privilege of a summary execution of Ulfric; I demurred, and Tullius did it himself. He then emerged and, despite claiming to hate speeches, delivered a rousing barnstormer to the Legion, praising them for what they've done and doubling their pay. (The soldiers audibly cheer more loudly at the financial rewards than at the abstract geopolitical gains they have accomplished. I suspect this to be historically accurate.) Tullius strides off. I chatted with Rikke, who confessed that she isn't comfortable in a political role, but will be assuming more administrative duties as the Empire consolidates its strength in Skyrim.

And... that's it! I traveled to the Blue Palace in Solitude to see if Elisif would be crowned Queen (perhaps with that nice Jagged Crown I had recovered), but she didn't acknowledge the defeat of Ulfric. As far as I can tell, that's the end of the line. I think there will still be at least one more expansion, so perhaps there will be some final action on the civil war plot, but otherwise, that seems to end it.

END SPOILERS

Phew! What a fun game! The blessing and curse of open-world western RPGs like Skyrim is that there's always more than enough available to do. Sometimes this can make them drag a little, since you don't have urgent narrative momentum like what's offered in games like Mass Effect 2; but on the plus side, if you're ever bored by your current plot or mission, you can just switch over to doing something else.

Now that I'm at a good place to evaluate the game as a whole: Skyrim is good! It scratches my itch for open-ended gameplay, while stoking my appetite for more focused narrative.

Improvements over previous Elder Scrolls games:

• Voice acting in general is much better. In particular, you no longer get the extremely disconcerting accent shifts when one character uses recycled dialog for some conversation options and bespoke dialog for others.
• The economy is much better. In particular, once you finish the Thieves Guild quests, you'll have a good chunk of merchants who can afford to buy the most expensive items in the game.
• Skills. As previously noted, stuff like Smithing is now a more fun, positive skill that lets you do and make new stuff, instead of a rote maintenance chore.
• Stealth. As previously noted, this is the first Elder Scrolls game where I've felt like I'm able to play a pure-stealth character without being crazily handicapped. (If you're a power-gamer, you'll still want to mix in magic and other skills, but if you're playing for fun, this is a nice way to go.)
• Graphics are better. They were good in Oblivion too - anything to get away from Morrowind's ugly palette - but characters now look better as well. I particularly enjoyed the idle animations: smiths pounding away at their forges or tempering and sharpening their weapons; alchemists mixing potions; shoppers strolling around; even guards shifting their weight from foot to foot looked pretty good and natural. I should mention that I did install the "no more blocky faces" mod which may have helped this category.
• Followers. Dawnguard, at least, had one great companion. I didn't have too much experience with the others, but on the rare occasions where I needed to bring someone else for a plot purpose, they... they weren't GREAT, but comported themselves reasonably well, and certainly did far better than those in earlier Elder Scrolls games.
• Horses. They can be slain, which sucks, but they're much more reliable than Oblivion's. My first horse, Frost, lasted me about halfway through the game before he was unfairly killed; my second, Shadowmere, is still alive, and even participated directly in a bunch of fights, including some against dragons and against entire armies. And they're still very useful for getting around, especially when trying to reach new locations.
• Personalities. Oddly, I can recall the characters in Morrowind much better than I remember those in Oblivion, even though I played that game longer ago. I still remember Vivec, and the various House Hlaalu folks, and most faction heads. In contrast, for Oblivion I can barely remember Martin (though I do recall Sheogorath quite well... though it would be hard to forget him after a whole expansion where he's practically in your face the entire time). We'll see in a few years how well Skyrim's personalities retain an impression, but at the moment I feel like Elisif, Ulfric, Rikke, Tullius, Alduin, Delphine, Maven Blackbriar, Karliah, Delvin, Vex, Astrid, Babette, Isran, Harkon, and Serana are all interesting, memorable characters. (Granted, still not memorable to the same degree as characters like Minsc, Morrigan, or Moridin, but for Bethesda they're quite good.)
• Combat feels a bit better than Oblivion, and much better than Morrowind. I suspect it would have been even more dynamic if I played as more of a warrior character and used blocks and bashes. Still, as a melee stealth fighter, I had a lot of fun and a bit of challenge.

Strengths of the franchise:

• Factions. The more I think about it, this may be the single best innovation of the series. It's just so much fun to be able to choose an affiliation, climb up through the ranks, and improve not just your own standing but also the stature of the group.  
• Environments. A bit better than Oblivion, but both were wonderful. Mountains, streams, forests, rolling hills, ancient ruined forts, snowy fields... every once in a while I just had to stop and stare at all the beauty around me.
• Lore. This game has just as many books as earlier ones. I wasn't as thorough this time around in reading entire libraries, but whenever I decided to pick up a book, I was rewarded with a well-written peek into Tamriel's history, culture, or mythos.
• Stability. Quests can occasionally get broken, but it's rare, and at least on PC can quickly and easily be fixed with a Google search and a couple of console commands. I had almost no crashes throughout the entire game.
• Equipment. There's a huge range of craftable materials to make your own, and an endless variety of enchanted gear lying around. (Two requests: I'd love to have a "hide helmet" option similar to that in Mass Effect so I can see my character's head if she's in a powerful-but-ugly helm, and I'd like to have a match-hue option so you can mix-and-match bonuses from different sets but still look visually coordinated.)
• Music and sound. It's not incredible, but the music feels thematically appropriate; best of all, it's subtle enough to not get repetitive and annoying over the hundreds of hours you may play. The foley is quite good.
• Total freedom. This also has its downsides - I'm sure many newcomers to these games are permanently frightened away the first time that they walk into town, innocently pick up a basket, then quickly find themselves hacked to death by a squadron of guards. Still, I love the fact that this game lets you do anything you want to. Murder people in their sleep? Fill a room with sweetrolls? Swim around the entire continent? Get naked and sit on the High King's throne? You don't need to do any of these things; just knowing that you can makes it awesome.

I enjoy complaining about:

• While the voicing is better, they still recycle scripts between characters. Throughout the world, you will hear many different people say "Ah, so you're an alchemist, then?" and "Got a pretty full stock of potions and alchemy reagents" and "Just what you see here." 
• And, they could still use some better quality control on the voice acting. My teeth grate whenever I hear the assistant at the White Phial in Windhelm say "Got a pretty full stock of potions and alchemy regents." Oh, really? You have a full stock of kings and queens that you've chopped up into pieces, burned down into salts, ground up in a mortar and pestle, and are now selling in your store? Or did someone just forget to tell you how to pronounce "reagent"?
• Money is still pretty useless. There's just so much stuff out there to pick up that you'll almost never need to buy anything, except for raw materials if you're leveling up a skill like alchemy or smithing. Houses are a pretty good money sink, but still not enough to dent the cash you'll have by the end of the game (in my case, just a little under a million gold pieces).
• While humans looked pretty good, the dogs were terrifying. This might be the most uncanny-valley-ish thing I've ever encountered. They're supposed to be furry and friendly, but they just look like demonically possessed hellbeasts, with weird heads that move wrong, and eyes that blink unnaturally, and a tail that seems to move independently of their bodies. The dogs were so disturbing, they made me retroactively realize that Bioware may have been brilliant in designing the Mabari like they did. At the time, I'd been bummed that Mabari look sort of ugly; but by making them something dog-like-yet-not-dogs, they may have avoided the creepiness of making a wrong dog.
• The default interface. It's awesome that the game can be modded to fix it, but it's a little absurd that PC gamers need to rely on volunteers to fix problems from a major game studio.
• Lack of agency in the plot. I complained about this at great length in an earlier post. Basically, you very rarely get to make any meaningful decisions (the major exception being the one in this post, the side of the civil war you choose to back). Most "conversations" just consist of you selecting a single "choice" in a dialog.
• The world of Skyrim actually felt a bit more static to me than the earlier games. In Morrowind, you could buy your own land and gradually transform it into a grand estate. In Oblivion, an early incident permanently changes the topology of Cyrodil. In Skyrim, certain interiors are changed - you can upgrade your house and faction headquarters - but it would have been really cool if, say, a village would burn to the ground, or someone built a new watchtower, or some other lasting change occurred to the landscape.

There's still a ton left in Skyrim, but I think I've finished the major story quests, so I'll probably leave it here for at least a while. The remaining quests that interest me most are probably the Bards College quests; I do love that the Bards are a joinable faction, and I have a well-documented affinity for playing as a Bard, but at this point all they're offering is a bunch of fetch quests, and I've had my fill of those for a while.

I'll probably peek online just to make sure that I'm not missing anything major, then set this aside for now. I'll likely eventually return and play through Dragonborn, the latest expansion. I hear that you get to ride a dragon! That sounds really cool.

EDIT 1/1/13: I've uploaded an album of screenshots from the game. As is becoming usual for me, the images start from about 2/3 of my way through the game, though they encompass the bulk of the main quest as well as most of the Dawnguard expansion. Consider these images to be mega spoilers.

Dah Dahn Gahn

Elder Scrolls games are games of detours. I'm constantly putting off doing something fun and important because I'm too busy doing something more fun and less important. My most recent excursion was the Dawnguard expansion. Since this is a fairly stand-alone set of quests, and available for separate purchase, I figured it might be worth devoting a post specifically to that experience.

MINI SPOILERS for The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim: Dawnguard

I know I just called Dawnguard relatively stand-alone, but actually, it permeates the entire game in various ways both obvious and subtle. One important effect of simply installing the expansion is a significant increase in the incidence of vampire attacks. Lone vampires will periodically attack inside peaceful areas, including the major cities. As you progress through the expansion, the attackers will grow more powerful. I liked the sense of danger and unease that this added; even the strong walls of Whiterun can't protect you from enemies. However, be aware that, while the guards can generally take care of the threat (and, therefore, you don't need to be too involved in the fight unless you really want to), other NPCs are likely to be swept up in the conflict as well, and they are less likely to emerge intact. Some fairly-significant named NPCs, including a couple of shop-owners, were killed in my game. Actually, the thing that impressed me most about this was how resilient Skyrim's AI and scheduling system is. In many cases, when a shop-owner was killed, their assistant or another local would take over their role. So, while it feels like there was a (random) story impact from the attacks, it didn't permanently break anything important. (The one time I did re-load was when an attack in Whiterun killed Niranye, one of my reliable fences and thus one of the few people with enough gold for me to bother visiting.)

The quest kicks off when random conversations you have reference the re-forming of the Dawnguard. You travel to the far southeast of the map, east of Riften, to Stendarr's Beacon. You keep going farther than this, eventually finding your way into a new valley where the ruins of the old Fort Dawnguard lie. For some reason, you can't take your horse here, and the trek to the fort is fairly time consuming (albeit pretty). Later on, as the Dawnguard strengthens and expands, the fort grows bigger and better-looking, and eventually you can fast-travel right to the front door.

The Dawnguard is lead by Isran, a former Vigilant of Stendarr who was kicked out of the order for being too extreme. And he is quite extreme indeed: he hates vampires with every fiber of his being, and will stop at nothing to eradicate them.

Before I plunge into more plot details, here are some overall impressions on the expansion:

My favorite aspect of the expansion is a new companion you get, who is the only companion who I've actually enjoyed enough to keep as a follower for a long period of time. I don't think that you're required to always have her with you - you can ask her to wait somewhere, and I suspect that she'll just pop up when her participation is required for the story. But, she is actually fairly good at remaining undetected, has good magic, and can survive pretty well once you equip her. She can even raise the dead to follow, increasing your numbers even further.

The expansion adds a variety of items. The new areas include some new reagents. It also adds crossbows; I never used these (melee for life!), but from what I've heard, they're more powerful than bows and slower to reload. You can get enhanced schematics for crossbows and some other items. One enhancement was particularly helpful to me: Dragonbone weapons. In vanilla Skyrim, the most powerful weapons you can forge are Daedric weapons, which require going through the Heavy Armor path of the Smithing tree; Light Armor smiths can't forge anything stronger than Glass. Now, the existing Dragon Armor perk has been upgraded to let you also forge weapons that are slightly more powerful than Daedric, finally bringing light armor wearers (like me!) up to parity offensively.

You can become a vampire in the main game (which I accidentally did once; it's a kind of annoying process to cure), but in the expansion, you can choose to become a Vampire Lord. I didn't do this, but from reading the text on loading screens, it sounds pretty cool... you can fly, and cast spells, and reanimate corpses.

The expansion adds a bunch of new areas, some of which are HUGE! There's a single cavern which is larger than any other level I've seen yet in the game, and also some cool, creative new places, both indoors, outdoors, and otherworldly. One downside: the new areas seem a bit more crash-prone than the main game. I've had a grand total of three crashes in my months of playing the game, and all of them happened when I was in one of the new environments.

Okay, I think that's all I can say without going into some

MEGA SPOILERS

Like I said before, Isran is a hard-core vampire-hater. I had actually wondered early on if they might really push this idea into some strong, morally-ambiguous directions. Like, if the story would indicate that his hatred of vampires had turned himself into a sort of monster, or overpowered his love of humanity. It never really does that, though... he's just a very tough man, but the end of the expansion makes it clear that he's a good guy.

That said, the story might change depending on the decisions you make. That is by far my favorite aspect of Dawnguard: unlike nearly all other quests I've played so far in the game, there's actually a meaningful choice you get to make in this quest, which can have an effect both on the gameplay and on the plot. After helping Isran by investigating an ancient vampire lair, you rescue Serana, a very old (but, of course, still young and beautiful) vampire who possesses an Elder Scroll. I agreed to take her home to her father, a powerful vampire lord who leads a large but secretive clan of vampires on an island to the west of Skyrim. Once there, he asked me if I would like to be rewarded for my rescue of his daughter by receiving the gift of vampirism. As noted above, this form of vampire sounds way more fun and useful than standard vampirism; unfortunately, as noted in a previous post, it also would have required me to become incredibly ugly, unlike the somewhat fashionable form taken by normal vampires.

I assume that, if you accept his gift, you would probably still do most of the remaining quests, but would then be operating out of the Volkihar castle instead of Fort Dawnguard, and working for Lord Harkon instead of Isran. As it went, though, I left Volkihar, and continued working for the Dawnguard. Several quests that I think are optional allow you to recruit new members to the Dawnguard, and further quests you do for them seem like they may upgrade their arsenal. If so, then that may help with the final battle at the end.

Eventually, you are reunited with Serana, who returned to Fort Dawnguard in secret and is trying to win over a highly reluctant Isran. Unlike almost every other NPC in the game who I've encountered so far, Serana is fun and interesting to interact with. She's voiced very well, knows interesting things, is unsure how she feels about certain issues, and can be influenced to some degree based on your actions. I was very friendly and kind to her, and while she can be a little stand-offish she did seem to value our bond. (I don't think she's marriageable, though that may be because I was already spoken for.)

Most of the remaining quests are the standard Elder Scrolls fetch-and-return type of quest, but they're set in interesting environments and have some interesting lore around them that make them more bearable than they would be otherwise. Over time, you learn that Valerica, who is Serana's mother (and Harkon's wife) had deliberately imprisoned Serana and her scroll in order to keep her away from Harkon. Serana gradually fills you in on her family history. At the beginning, she, her dad and mom all seemed to get along well, whatever that means for a vampire family. However, her dad came across a prophecy that turned into an obsession for him: a ritual that could be performed to blot out the sun and allow vampires to freely roam throughout the world at all times. His wife disapproved of the attempt to fulfill the prophecy. Vampires had existed securely if secretively alongside humans for all of history. Coming out into the open, she believed, would only inspire humans to unite and launch a total war against the vampires, a war that the vampires could very well lose.

Serana has been out of commission for millennia, but decides to re-unite with her mother in order to figure out the next steps. Together, you infiltrate the castle, and discover a secret wing that Serana's mother had created. Inside, you find journals that show what she was up to: she intended to thwart Harkon's plans by placing the pure-blooded vampires he needed beyond his reach. Serana had already been ensconced in an ancient temple, and now the mother would retreat into the Soul Chamber.

Remember how one of my favorite parts of Dragon Age: Origins is the trip to the Fade? Well, the next part of Skyrim is a little like this, but instead of being populated by the spirits of the dreaming, it's populated with the spirits of the dead. Actually, I really liked this section since it finally provided some lore around the opaque "soul gem" mechanic that's been present in every Elder Scrolls game that I've played. Basically, whenever you want to enchant an item, you first need to get a special type of gem. Next, you must cast "soul trap" on a living creature. Then, you must slay the creature, and their soul will be trapped within your gem. Finally, you use the filled soul gem to enchant your item, destroying the gem (and presumably the soul) in the process. More powerful enchantments, such as a long-lasting levitation effect, would require a more powerful soul, such as that of a human; weaker enchantments, like a small fire effect, can be obtained from smaller souls, like those of peaceful animals.

Well, this part of Dawnguard finally describes what's really going on here. Enchantments are done by powerful entities who live in or beyond the Soul Chamber, and enchanting is a form of bargaining: the enchanter offers a soul, and the beings reward them with an enchantment. They have similar offerings for necromancy as well: if you agree to a bargain with them, they will let you raise beings back to a temporary form of life.

Serana's mother was a necromancer (and, evidently, Serana is one as well), and so she was acquainted with these sorts of bargains, and secured a place for herself in the Soul Chamber. Most of the beings there, though, are the souls of the dead, who presumably were used in some ritual or other.

After reacquainting with the mother (and, in my case, restoring my soul), I acquired her Elder Scroll. Next, we found a Moth Priest to help us translate them. I'm pretty sure that the moth priests were in Oblivion as well, since the term sounds very familiar, but I remember practically nothing about what they did in that game. Here, the priest offers some initial help, but then goes blind, leaving you to complete the translation yourself. Along the way, you learn the secrets of the priesthood (turns out that there are actual, physical Ancestor Moths flapping around), and visit a surprisingly beautiful hidden glen where the moths congregate.

With the scrolls translated, you finally understand the prophecy. It's tied up with Auriel's Bow, an ancient artifact; it is dedicated to the Sun-God, but if it were corrupted and turned against the sun, it could destroy it. Harkon is pursuing the bow, so you need to find it first.

Entering the endgame now, I initially needed to run through a series of quests that felt annoying, but then was swept away by their grandeur. Throughout the game, you've encountered Falmer, twisted and blind Gollum-like creatures that live in the deep abandoned places below the earth. [Etymological note: in the Elder Scrolls universe, the suffix "mer" is used to denote elves. You'll occasionally hear the phrase "men and mer", meaning "humans and elves." Most of the elves are self-evident: Altmer are high elves (roughly analogous to Tolkien's Noldor elves), Bosmer are wood elves (akin to Tolkien's Sylvan elves, like those of Mirkwood), Dunmer are dark elves (kind of like D&D's Drow, though they look nothing alike and don't live underground). More interesting, though, are the other races ending in "-mer". The most obvious is the Dwemer, the mysterious ancient race that dwelt underground and built technological marvels before vanishing. Dwemer are dwarves, and Dwemer are elves, so in this universe, dwarves and elves are the same thing.] Falmer are the corrupted descendants of the once-proud race of Snow Elves. Snow Elves used to live on the surface of Skyrim, but steady conflict with the Nords gradually pushed them underground, where over generations they turned into the Falmer.

Aaaaanyways... late in the game, you actually get to meet one of the two remaining Snow Elves in the world. He's the keeper of the Bow, and sends you off on a quest before he'll give it to you. The quest is to visit all 5 cisterns to draw sacred water for a sacred urn. I groaned. That's exactly the kind of busy-work quest I hate. And, indeed, the first cistern was a pain to reach, through a tedious (though, granted, great-looking) cave. But! After that, it opened up, into an absolutely massive new outdoor environment. I wandered around, absolutely stunned at the towering mountains, crashing frozen waterfalls, massive sheets of ice (with dragons bursting through!), and more. There were relatively few enemies in this area, other than an exciting two-teamed fight against dragons. There were also almost no quick-travel points, and no horses, so I was glad for all the Stamina I'd invested in throughout the game.

A couple of these cisterns were hard to reach, and required navigating through caves that weren't indicated on the maps, but that made it all the more rewarding once I finally completed the sequence. I had the water, then confronted the other remaining Snow Elf and learned the truth: he had invented the prophecy in the first place, in order to lure a pure-blooded vampire into his lair. Unbeknownst to his former compatriot, he had been infected with vampirism, and abandoned by their god. His revenge would be to use the pure blood of the vampire to kill his god.

This fight was pretty fun. It went through a couple of stages in a frozen throne room, against several waves of enemies, and then led to a climactic battle against the vampiric Snow Elf on a high parapet overlooking the hidden vale. He was pretty tough, but fortunately I have Mehrunes' Razor, so even the toughest enemy will fall if I'm sufficiently determined with my blades.

We checked back in with the good snow elf, and he rewarded us with Auriel's Bow. Serana said that it was time to finish it and kill her father. I was all, like, "Really, babe? You sure you want to do this?" And she was all, "Yeah, man, whatever, it's cool. Just... just leave me alone for a little bit, kay?" So we skedaddled back to Fort Dawnguard. Isran flipped OUT when he saw the bow - I guess it's now a famous vampire-killing artifact or something? - and announced the immediate assault on Harkon's castle.

The finale was a lot of fun. Everyone shows up at the gates and charges in, yelling and shooting and killing. There's a running battle through a couple of rooms; most of the vampires are using magic, while the Dawnguard primarily relies on weaponry. The Dawnguard cleaned UP - granted, I'm a powerful person and I was on their side, but still, I was pretty surprised to emerge from the fight without a single casualty on our side (unless you count a war troll, which I don't). Again, I'd like to think that the strength of our side was due in part to the side-quests I'd done for them, but I can't say for sure whether that's the case.

Isran was all pumped up on testosterone after slaughtering a complex full of vampires, but for some reason he and the others didn't want to help me with Harkon, so Serana and I entered his throne room by ourselves. This led to some more juicy plot-related stuff, with Harkon making it quite clear that he'd willingly sacrifice his daughter to achieve his dream of a dark world. I also got to declare my affection for Serana, leading Harkon to denounce her. He gave me a final chance to hand over Auriel's bow - which seems really weird, since we hadn't said two civil words to one another since I had first returned Serana home - and then the fight began.

This actually ended up being probably the most interesting fight I've had in the game so far. Harkon is very powerful: he has both melee and ranged attacks, can summon a large number of undead, has a large health pool, is apparently able to regenerate health throughout the fight, AND, in the most innovative twist, can transform himself into a cloud of bats to teleport between locations. At the start of the fight, I focused on taking down his skeleton summons and letting Serana focus on him. Then I heard her shout "Use the bow!" Huh. I was carrying Auriel's Bow, which appeared to have some vampire-slaying capabilities, and I had invested in some Sunhallowed Arrows. As I've previously noted, I have entirely focused on one-handed melee weaponry in the game; but thanks to the Elder Scrolls design, I CAN use any weapon, I just don't have special perks for the others. I figured, "Eh, why not?", switched to the bow, and started firing away.

The fight was very long, but quite satisfying. My Skyrim fights typically either end instantly (if I can attack someone from stealth... a 30x backstab multiplier with a dual-wielded power attack of Legendary Mehrunes Razor and Blade of Woe can one-shot even a boss), or very quickly (if I am repeatedly doing that power attack to their face). Well, with this fight, Harkon flits around so quickly that I wouldn't have been able to melee him successfully. As it was, I still missed a good chunk of my shots, but each one that landed took a small yet noticeable chunk out of his health. When he was near the chapel window, I was able to fire through the window into the sun, which did an even more powerful sun-based attack. Whenever Serana seemed to be getting swarmed by the skeletons, I would shoot them to get her out of it; the Sunhallowed Arrows seem to do area-of-effect damage, with both a fire effect and extra damage to undead, so a few shots would eventually take the beasties down, and I could then re-focus on Harkon.

Eventually, he fell, and I won! Isran finally deigned to enter the battlefield and praised us for our work. He begrudgingly acknowledged all the aid Serana had provided, and invited her to join the Dawnguard. She said she would be happy to, unless... unless I wanted her around? Well. Turns out that I did! I don't know how long it will last, but I've been pleased with her as a companion; she can hold her own in a fight, and doesn't bring me into too many unnecessary fights, and has a nice, soft-spoken but insightful approach to the world. (We'll see how long this continues - I think she's marked as "essential" during the main Dawnguard quests, so she merely falls unconscious if her health falls to zero. Presumably, she is now a standard follower, and can die for real. I may send her back to Fort Dawnguard to stay safe if she seems too vulnerable.) She's also just a kind of interesting follower to have around; she'll tinker with nearby alchemy labs, sharpen her weapon on a grindstone, and do other random but visually engaging things.

Oh, yeah: for the record, I've equipped her with my best random castoffs. I've kept her default vampire armor, since it seems pretty powerful, but have added legendary enchanted glass boots and gloves. I had her in a legendary elven helmet for a while, but eventually took it away since I didn't like the goofy look; I replaced it with a Circlet of Destruction, which should make her offensive magic cheaper to cast. I also give her every Staff I come across. She SEEMS to use these; I check her inventory every once in a while, and see the charges gradually dropping. I've also tried giving her soul gems, both filled and empty, but it doesn't look like she will recharge her own equipment, which is too bad; instead, I'll grab her staves once they completely expire and sell them off.

I was chatting with Serana shortly after, and was surprised to see that a new conversation option had opened up to chat with her about being cured of vampirism. We discussed it, and she's going to give it a try! I'm curious to see what happens - whether her appearance will change, whether she will lose any powers, if her personality and dialog will shift to something new. She is thousands of years old, so I do wonder if she'll simply crumble into dust. We will see!

END SPOILERS

On the whole, the Dawnguard expansion has been possibly my favorite major quest line in Skyrim thus far, right up there with the Dark Brotherhood story and the Thieves Guild. It gets at some interesting lore that helps shed a bit of light on mysteries that run through the entire Elder Scrolls series; it provides some nice item upgrades that apply to the entire game; it introduces some absolutely vast and gorgeous, huge new areas; and it has some very interesting new NPCs, including someone who is BY FAR the best companion I've had in any Elder Scrolls game. (Still not as good as a Bioware companion, but hey, we can't have everything!) It's definitely worth picking up. Now, as I FINALLY turn to the main quest line in Skyrim, I just hope it doesn't feel anti-climactic after Dawnguard...

Alpha and Omega

I've been getting back into Mass Effect 3 lately. I officially beat the single-player game back in July, but since then I've periodically checked back in to the multiplayer campaign, typically just accomplishing the weekend challenges to unlock promotional weapons from the Commendation Packs. In the last couple of weeks, though, my multiplayer has "graduated" to first place in my gaming rotation. That's driven by a couple of things, but the biggest is probably the release of the Retaliation expansion and its accompanying Challenge system. The challenges are structured to give you nice goals and things to look forward to, and along the way, they've been prompting me to break out of my rut and try some new stuff, with great results.

For example, I've almost always played an engineer in multiplayer, with occasional forays into other classes. The new weekend challenge system, though, has included some awesome, fun challenges that force you to play with a specific type of character. There was one where you had to score a certain number of points with fire-based attacks (Incinerate, Carnage, Flamer, Flame Turret, etc.); another required doing a certain amount of damage through Biotic Charge; this weekend's was to set off a large number of Biotic Explosions. The resulting teams are fairly chaotic, but way too much fun. I would have thought that playing with four Vanguards would be disastrous, and to be sure people died a LOT more than typical, but everyone seemed good-natured, and took advantage of the opportunity to earn some Revive medals. The fire-based and biotic explosion challenges seem like they may be designed to help educate the players about the mechanics and use of Mass Effect's explosion system. If so, it was successful: players can see first-hand just how quickly matches can be won when everyone is setting up and setting off one anothers' explosions.

Along the way, I've finally made the step up to regularly playing on Silver difficulty. There are a lot of things that change from Bronze to Silver: enemies are faster, and hit harder; ammo boxes have fewer grenades; less health is restored after each round; bosses appear in earlier waves (Reapers by Wave Four in Silver versus Wave Seven in Bronze); and there's no limit to the number of times a boss can appear in a wave. During Operation Blast Furnace, I started playing with my Vorcha Soldier, and was surprised at how easy he made it. The Vorcha is an interesting character: with his Bloodlust skill, he's able to regenerate health, but his regeneration rate is dependent on having recent kills. This led to a COMPLETELY different playstyle than I was used to. Generally, as an engineer, I hang back behind cover, spawn a helper to draw fire, and opportunistically take shots with my powers when I can. As a Vorcha soldier, though, I strapped on my flamethrower, started running around, and learned to kill kill kill kill KILL THEM ALL CAN'T STOP MUST DESTROY WARGHARGHAWARGHA!

I kept playing with the character after beating the challenge, and started to get a better appreciation for what he does. He especially shines against the Reapers, who used to be my least-favorite faction to play against, but their mindless hordes of fodder were actually a perfect match for the soldier's mechanics. I'll typically start off by finding some Husks and Cannibals, and use my Flamethrower to quickly kill them, gaining several stacks of Bloodlust. I then run around the field, mowing down all the weak enemies I find. My biggest target is Ravagers, who are hands-down the most dangerous Reaper enemy. I used to always hate facing them, but now, if I have full stacks of Bloodlust, I can actually regenerate my health more quickly than Ravagers can shoot it down; and so I can face them with my flamethrower and burn them down in three seconds, rather than cower behind cover for half a minute or longer. I love it, and I'm sure my teammates appreciate it as well. The health regeneration is what gave me the confidence to try the build out on Silver. I equipped some one-time-use equipment for my first game, made sure to play against Reapers, and was really pleased with how it went. I died a few times, and it was definitely harder, but in a good way: I felt like I needed to be smarter, and more aware of the battlefield, my position and the enemies'.

For about two weeks, every game I played (except for Challenge matches) was a Silver Reapers game. This had a great side-effect: more cash! I typically finish a Bronze match in about 15-20 minutes. A silver match usually takes just a bit longer, a little over 20. (Though, a game on Glacier can take as little as 17.) But, a Silver match awards roughly twice as many credits as Bronze does, and I usually walk away with around 35k in credits. That means that I'm now getting a Premium Spectre Pack after every three matches, unlike before, when it would take seven Bronze matches to get one. That's meant more and better gear, new character unlocks, upgraded weapons, and carry capacity. I think that I've finally reached my maximum for the number of missiles, medi-gels, ammo packs, and survival packs I can take into each mission.

While I love tearing things up with my Vorcha, the Challenge system has been giving me some good incentives to try out some other builds. Thanks to my proclivity with engineers, and the fact that Flamer counts as a tech ability, I was about halfway towards reaching the Tech Mastery achievement. This would unlock a nifty banner, "Mathemagician", which would display in the lobby. To finish the remaining parts, though, I would need to try out some other types of characters to get some points from rarer skills. So, I played with the N7 Paladin's Snap Freeze a bunch, and the Krogan Sentinel's Tech Armor, and so on. I was bummed to realize that I couldn't actually get the banner, though, since I was missing three characters who had four of the rarest abilities: Submission Net, Geth Turret, Shadow Strike, and Electric Slash. So, I went back to my Silver Reaper games with my Vorcha, and sure enough, I eventually unlocked the N7 Slayer character. A couple of matches later, I had my swanky new banner!

I'm finally getting to the point where I'm comfortable playing Silver with other classes and other races. This weekend I did most of the challenge as an Asari Adept playing on Silver, and after getting my packs, I moved on to some other classes: the Drell Adept, and most recently the hilarious Volus Adept. I'm mostly poking away at the Biotic God challenge, but I'm also enjoying building up my skills for Silver without the crutch of infinite health regeneration.

Against this backdrop of multiplayer goodness, I was feeling even more positively disposed towards the Mass Effect universe than usual, and so I perked right up when I heard about the latest DLC expansion for the single-player game. Mass Effect: Omega is set in the Omega space station, possibly my favorite location in Mass Effect 2, and features Aria T'Loak, my favorite recurring character from the series. I haven't bought any of the other DLC for the game - there have been two campaign expansions and a couple of smaller cosmetic weapon or appearance packs - but this story just seemed too good to pass up.

MINI SPOILERS FOR MASS EFECT: OMEGA

Omega is set during the main campaign of Mass Effect 3, so I loaded a save game from before the final push. I suspect that it's playable after you recruit the Blood Pack during the main campaign. In my case, I got an email from Aria inviting me to a meeting on the Citadel (docking bay 42!), and from there we headed off to retake her station.

I was very pleased with the high level of polish in the expansion. There are plenty of great cut-scenes, dialogue, interesting moral choices to make, some Renegade interrupts. I couldn't find credits specifically for this expansion, but I'm pretty sure that Carrie-Anne Moss is reprising her role as Aria. Her dialog is as awesome as always: she's curt, arrogant, and supremely confident, even when her position seems objectively weak. There were also some wonderful little moments in her scenes. She has some amazing miniscule eye-rolls when someone says something particularly virtuous or naive. Jennifer Hale reprises her voice work as Shepard, and is as wonderful as I've come to expect. She's never showy, and perfectly expresses the role of a strong woman in a dangerous situation. There's also a cool new character (the first female Turian we've seen!) and a colorful assortment of minor Batarians, Vorcha, Turians, and Asari. Almost no humans to be seen, aside from a cute hacker at a terminal.

The combat is pretty fun. I should not have been surprised to discover that my months of playing multiplayer have totally spoiled me for the single-player game; I ended up taking the difficulty all the way up to Insanity, and still was able to beat all the fights without dying or using medi-gel. My companions were less useful than my human companions in multiplayer, but I would still treat them somewhat similarly. Back in engineer mode once more, I would stick behind cover, deploy my tools (Combat Drone PLUS Sentry Turret PLUS Defense Drone), then proceed to fight. With a better understanding of power explosions, I now alternate between Overload and Incinerate, and thus can set off a lot of helpful explosions. My companions would inevitably die, but rather than medi-gel them I would rush to their side, revive, and then get back into cover.

The fights do often feel rather different from Multiplayer, though. In MP, you're in a fixed combat space, and need to survive or accomplish objectives there. In Omega, you're generally moving forward through an area, and rarely backtracking. The levels are still interesting - there's lots of cover, some exposed zones, often multiple levels of elevation, etc. - so that was a nice change of pace. Most of the fights are simple "kill all the bad guys as you go from Point A to Point B" missions, but a few fights towards the end had more complex objectives to accomplish during a fight. Those final fights were the most difficult in Omega, but still probably a bit easier than the fight against Kai Leng, and much easier than the big London battle.

The enemies you fight are mostly Cerberus, primarily the units we've come to know and love from the single-player campaign, but they've also added in the Dragoon that was created for multiplayer, as well as a tech unit that seems unique to this DLC. There's also a new species they've created, which looks really impressive, although almost no time is spent actually fighting them.

It isn't all fighting, of course: besides the cut scenes, you also spend a bit of time in ally-controlled sectors of Omega. This is like a very stripped-down version of the Citadel: there are a couple of people you can talk to, one or two optional missions to pick up, and a single store that sells some upgrades. (One piece of advice: buy every upgrade that you want as soon as you can. You won't have many opportunities to return there.)

As usual, I generally followed the Paragon path, although I did take one Renegade interrupt (shooting out a security camera) and a handful of Renegade dialog choices (while I want to preserve as much civilian life as possible, I don't have any problem with Aria returning to her dictatorial role: I want a strong ally holding down that region). The DLC ended for me with a typically bittersweet mixed outcome. I'm curious now if my choices could have altered the outcome... it would be in keeping with Mass Effect's approach to storytelling if making a choice to sacrifice the lives of innocent civilians could have prevented the death of someone I cared for.

END MINI SPOILERS for MASS EFFECT: OMEGA

 On the whole, I was really happy with the DLC. I'll address my complaints first. Most of my issues with this are the same as my problems with ME3 as a whole:

• It's extremely easy to miss items located in a mission - datapads, salvage, credits, weapons and upgrades. It's frustrating since, unlike ME1, you can't revisit an area later to grab anything you missed the first time around; and unlike ME2, you need to be almost on top of an item before it will display in your reticule. I really wish there was some indication that items are remaining to be found.
• There are a few minor graphical glitches. Nothing too major, but occasionally characters will zap into the frame. On one elevator ride, Aria's shadow was dancing on the floor psychotically.
• I have a hard time justifying the price tag. On the one hand, it's a great expansion. On the other hand, it's $15. I bought it on Saturday night and had beaten it by Sunday night, and I wasn't playing non-stop. It's about a third the cost of the entire game of ME3, and adds the equivalent of one planet's missions.

If money is an issue, then I'd recommend waiting for a bit, as I'm sure that Bioware will eventually release an "ultimate edition" with all DLCs included. Playing through this DLC, while a good experience, actually makes me less inclined to pick up the first two ("From Ashes" and "Leviathan") - both of those are just $10, so I doubt that they would be any longer or more impressive than this one, and besides, I'm still irked at From Ashes being a Day One DLC. (Conversely, I feel increasingly dismayed that I never tried out "Lair of the Shadow Broker" from ME2, and I'm pretty sure that I'll never go back to experience it.)

If you can swing the cash, though, it's definitely worth checking out Omega. It adds lots of wonderful character moments with Shepard and Aria, and feels like a worthy addition to the Mass Effect epic. Be aware that it's a bit on the short side, but everything you do is fun, so minute-for-minute it's a wonderful expansion.

Switching topics:

I was GOING to say that I had wrapped up Fallen London, but it looks like my timing has been impeccable: right around the time I finished the last storyline, Failbetter started rolling out some new content. Much of the focus has been an extension to the Seeking Mr. Eaten's Name plotline, which I personally do not participate in, but has been fascinating to hear about second-hand. I've also seen some new heists crop up, and some recent changes to the faction Opportunity cards make it look like another wave of plots are coming up.

MINI SPOILERS for FALLEN LONDON

I'm currently frantically running through the Fidgeting Writer sequence, and I think that I, erm, might end up with an Overgoat. I know, I know, I'd sworn that I wouldn't do it, but I'm so close now!

The last storyline I did was the Mystery of the Plaster Face, and boy, am I ever glad I saved it for last - if I had tried it earlier in the game, I'm pretty sure I would have quit in frustration. So much about it irritates me... starting the second phase will cut off the chance to experience the first phase, without giving you any warning of doing such; the second phase requires a horrendous grinding without any intermediate progress (basically, keep trying a nearly impossible luck-based challenge until you succeed, and get hit by nightmares for each of the many, many, many, many times that you fail); for the bulk of the plot, I was paying my way to keep my companions safe and boost a quality to progress; only to learn that, in the latter phase of the plot, I needed to DECREASE the same quality I had spent so much money increasing, and would have been far better off not parting with the cash; THEN I lost my favorite companion in the whole game, and wound up with a nifty-but-useless pet at the end. It was pretty horrible at every step of the way, and if I wasn't such a completist I would have given up long ago; as it stands, I'm mad at myself for wasting so much time and so many resources when I could have been doing Fidgeting Writer instead.

So, if you're wondering whether to do the Mystery of the Plaster Face, I'd kind of urge against it; but if you want to give it a try anyways (and, from what I can tell, it isn't NEARLY as painful as SMEN), here are a few tips.

• If you think you might want to eventually do "A Night-time Conference" (the storylet in your lodgings with your rats), do NOT take the first step in "The Mystery of the Plaster Face" (the storylet in your lodgings with, well, a plaster face). Starting the latter cuts off access to the former.
• I think that A Night-time Conference may actually let you get through the Plaster Face without that luck-based challenge, though you may need to build up a Quality a certain amount to do so. If you do need the luck challenge, though, be prepared to bang your head against a wall for quite a long time - it took me about 20 tries to get it. For me, a good approach was to grind that storylet until my Nightmares reached 5; then take a break and go back to other stuff, using helpful Opportunity cards (A Moment's Peace, A Familiar Face by the School Railings, etc.) to bring Nightmares back down to around 2, then go back to grinding. You'll eventually get it.
• I don't have great advice to give for the middle portion... I think it might be best to stick with the cheaper bribes all the way through, but maybe it's worthwhile to grind it out with some disposable rats. 
• For the love of all that is good and holy, do NOT use your disgraced bandit chief ever, for anything, under any circumstances. It simply isn't safe. And you'll cry.

Other than that miserable experience, though, I'm still generally enjoying the game. I do look forward to acquiring my Overgoat, and suspect that by the time it's in my greedy hands, the next tier of content will be available for me to explore.

END MINI SPOILERS for FALLEN LONDON

And, as long as I'm posting random stuff....

MINI SPOILERS for SKYRIM

I'm continuing along Skyrim, though less quickly now that I'm back on Mass Effect. I've completely finished the Thieves Guild quests, and think that I'm nearing a climax of the Dark Brotherhood. After this, I think I'll probably switch back to the main quest. I'm not too interested in the Companions or the College of Winterhold factions, and many of the other missions are basic "explore dungeon X to acquire item Y and return it to person Z" endeavors.

I do still want to figure out how to buy more houses - so far I've only gotten the ones in Whiterun, Riften and Solitude.  The one in Solitude is awesome - it's sort of a cross between a townhouse and a mansion, three stories of luxury. That's where I took my wife after our wedding. Oh, yeah, that's right - I got married!

After experiencing the romance systems in Bioware games, romance in Skyrim is... pretty hilarious. It's also another great example of the philosophical differences between Bioware and Bethesda. Bioware, in their quest for curated experiences, will offer a handful of romance options; each one will be a full, complex, creative creature, with long relationship plots, myriad dialog options, and ways for you to shape and influence the relationship and your partner. Bethesda, as typical, trades off quality for quantity. You can marry any one of... well, at least dozens, and probably scores, of people. They're rather forward-thinking in that you can marry someone of either gender, and also of any species you like: Nord, Redguard, elf, lizard, cat, whatever. The romance itself is pretty laughable. You need to wear a special ring, see. Then talk to that person. If they're interested in you, they'll comment on your ring. You express your own interest. Then they agree to marry you! The ceremony itself is pretty cute - it's held in a chapel in Riften, with your housecarls on one side and your beloved's associates on the other - and they wear a pretty wedding dress. Afterwards, you can decide whether to move in with her or send her to one of your houses. And then... that's pretty much it. She'll stay there, making you home-cooked meals and providing an extra experience bonus. I think there's like a single line of dialog post-marriage to hear; otherwise she'll keep repeating stuff she'd otherwise say.

Oh, yeah: I ended up marrying Muiri, a cute apothecary's assistant from Markarth who had me murder her ex-boyfriend. I know, I know, THAT old story. I was also kind of interested in Sapphire, from the Thieves' Guild, but she doesn't seem to be marriageable. Aela the Huntress will actually accompany you on your journeys, but personality-wise she didn't seem to be a great match with my character. I'm still much more of a lone wolf, preferring to sneak through dungeons with my dual-wielded daggers rather than leading a charge of companions.

And, as long as we're comparing franchises, playing through ME so close to Skyrim has reminded me of yet another difference: just how pointless so much of Skyrim's dialog is. There are almost no points where you actually get to make any decisions when talking to someone. In most quest-related dialog, there's only one single line to "choose" from. In some cases, like the Dark Brotherhood quests, there might be three responses, but none of them will have any material outcome on the mission. I have so few opportunities to establishing my character's personality. It feels a little constricting.

However, there is one BIG choice you can make in the game, and I have been putting off making it. Skyrim is taking place against the backdrop of two crises. The first, most obvious one is the return of dragons. The second one, which I think is actually more interesting, is a... well, a revolution or a civil war, depending on your perspective. This game takes place hundreds of years after the end of Oblivion, and the Empire has gone through many changes: the Septim dynasty has ended, it's been involved in a war against the Dominion (an alliance of Altmer and Bosmer elves), been forced to sign a humiliating treaty that, amongst other things, forbids worship of Talos. In Skyrim, the Nords are increasingly disillusioned by the Empire and their role in it.

There's a struggle for power between two factions of Nords. One, led by Ulfric Stormcloak and based in Windhelm, seeks to claim independence from the Empire and establish a free Skyrim led by the Nords. The other, led by the puppet ruler Elsif and based in Solitude, seeks to continue Skyrim's membership in the Empire. At the start of the game, I had assumed that I'd be backing the side of independence. Since, you know, I'm in favor of freedom and against oppression and tyranny. So I created a Nord character, sided with the Nord prisoner during the initial attack, and even freed another Nord prisoner on the road.

As I'm delving deeper into the story, though, I'm growing increasingly drawn towards Elsif's faction. Part of this is based on my understanding that the Empire is essentially like the Roman Empire here on Earth: yeah, they're in charge, and have big armies, and appoint puppets to rule; but, they're generally happy to let their subjects run their own lives so long as they don't fight the empire, and they tie together most of the world in a multicultural, cosmopolitan quilt that's helpful for trade and culture. I've also come to understand that the Nord faction is pretty, um, racist. You never see any Khajit inside the Nord cities, and it's extremely rare to see any Argonians. The Empire-friendly cities, while still dominated by Nords, seem much more tolerant of other races and cultures. While I myself play as a Nord, and so I don't directly feel that hostility, it's still something that's pulling me towards allying with the Legion.

END MINI SPOILERS for SKYRIM

Last night's Dexter seriously bummed me out. This happens to me EVERY SEASON since the second one: The show starts out really promising, the first few episodes seem to be taking the show in an intriguing direction... then everything gets stupid, and awful, and I hate myself for getting fooled again into watching it. Note to self: next year, don't be swayed by independent reviewers who say "this season looks good!" - wait until the END of the season when they can use that phrase in the past tense. I'll save hours of time that can be devoted to more worthy programs.

On the plus side, I didn't think it was possible, but I love Parks and Recreation more than ever this season. That show continues to evolve, taking characters in believable, heartfelt, hilarious new directions. I'm really enjoying Tom's arc - I'm one of the few viewers who loved the Entertainment 720 storyline, and it's great to see him learning from his mistakes and trying to succeed again. And the relationships on that show - April/Andy and Ben/Leslie - are just delightful, and growing better as time goes on.

Speaking of relationships, last week's 30 Rock was one of my all-time favorite episodes. Jack Donaghy's reading from Atlas Shrugged was a definite highpoint.

The Walking Dead has been pretty painful this season, but I gotta say, it's still less painful than the comic books. I've been cringing during all the scenes in Woodbury, and am very, very glad to see that the show's creators have stayed away from the most sadistic elements of that sequence in the books. It's been interesting to watch The Walking Dead as an adaptation; they take a far looser approach to the source material than Game of Thrones does, and still hit many of the same story beats while radically changing around characters, timelines, and settings.

I've finally started watching the reboot of Doctor Who, starting with the Eccleston season. It's... very cheesy. I've been assured that it gets better.

Um, I think that's it for now! So many games, so much great TV... it's a wonder I ever manage to read any books these days!

UPDATE: I grabbed some screenshots from my play-through of Mass Effect: Omega. These should probably be considered mega-spoilers. Also, I can't believe it took me until now to realize that, since Omega is typically used to mean "end" (as in, you know, the title of this blog post), that name may have been a deliberate choice from Bioware to indicate that this will be the final piece of content in Shepard's story. Something to think about!

Halcyon and On and On

I felt like I was doing entirely too many of these random posts on the topic of "Here are some shows or games that I am enjoying!", but I see that I haven't done one of those for, like, THREE whole posts, so I won't feel so bad if I indulge yet again. In no particular order:

Fallen London continues to impress and amuse. I'm growing ever closer to the end of major content, and the last few storylines have been most impressive (more details below the spoiler block). That timing is somewhat fortuitous: very little new content has been added to Fallen London recently, while Failbetter has been working hard on building their Story Nexus platform and other projects like Cabinet Noir and The Silver Tree. So I've basically avoided the long drought, since it's all new to me anyways. (The feeling it not entirely unlike someone reading through A Song of Ice and Fire now - they skip over the pain of waiting years for a new installment.) And, with The Silver Tree due to arrive before the end of the month, we should be getting a few of the associated Fallen London rewards that were promised during the Kickstarter campaign.

The first of those rewards actually arrived on Monday, in the form of a delightful roleplaying chat conducted on Twitter between several Fallen London luminaries and backers of the project.

MINI SPOILERS for Fallen London

The forum was quite cozy and spirited: Mr. Pages officiated the conversation, with Mr. Wines and the Gracious Widow as guests. The Gracious Widow's presence was much to be expected: she is one of the survivors of the Fourth City, where The Silver Tree will be set, and thus provides a useful bridge between the two cities. Mr. Wines is almost certainly the most favorite among all Master of the Bazaar: he engages quite cheerfully with humanity, and seems much more vibrant and upbeat than his often-menacing associates.

Most of the hour was given over to answering questions from backers, with welcome lengthy digressions included. This included some intriguing tidbits of information, and some confirmations of matters long-suspected. (For example: the Masters are not equipped to enjoy the services of Sinning Jenny.) For the most part, it was an enjoyable ramble over familiar ground: for example, in response to a question as to whether the Masters have emotions, Mr. Wines replied, "We have a wide variety of emotions, exactly like those of humans. The cellars of our spire are full of them."

I was happy to have my own question answered… or at least addressed. (One of the benefits of an intimate group was that I'm pretty sure everyone who wanted to participate, was able to do so.) I had just recently concluded the Affair of the Box (more details below in mega-spoilers), which raised some intriguing and chilling questions. So, I put a form of those questions to the speakers: Is the Fifth City worth keeping? Do you look forward to the Sixth?

A rather long silence ensued. Mr. Pages broke it, assuring us all that, while all things must eventually end, they would certainly mourn London once it passes. Mr. Wines contradicted him, stating that there had always been and would always be five cities: "London endures." That contradiction is, of course, wonderful, since… well, I'll get into why below.

Some of my favorite exchanges follow:

Mr Pages
By the voids! Can it be true,@Mr_Wines? A bottle of the Hesperidean? Loose in London? I am gastroflabberated!

The Gracious Widow
This is UNFATHOMABLE. What were you thinking,@Mr_Wines

Mr Wines
We were thinking of rolling around in a bath of money, which is also filled with money.

***

Mr Pages
"Rumours tell me when one dies in London, they find themselves unable to leave. What exactly happens if I try to return to Belfast?"

Mr Pages
I answer the question with a question. Why on *earth* would you want to return to *Belfast*?

Mr Wines
Returning to Belfast from London is much like putting on a pair of shoes filled with hedgehogs.

***

Quite wonderful!

Anyways. The Silver Tree fast approaches, and apparently new cards have begun to appear in Fallen London in the last few days. I hope to soon make the acquaintance of a Bitter Saker Falcon, and perhaps visit the Temple Club.

MEGA SPOILERS for Fallen London

The two plots that have been occupying me most since my last update were the Affair of the Box, and my investigation of the Jack-of-Smiles case.

The Affair of the Box has been going on for so long that I only vaguely remember how it started… something about a stuttering fence? Most recently, I was approached by Jasper and Frank, Clay Men who serve the Masters, who wanted the box, or the key to the box. This set me on the trail of the Kashmiri Princess, the most celebrated performer at Mahogany Hall. I renewed my acquaintance with Glass, the society of illusionists, and pulled off a spectacular illusion of my own while preparing for Sunday's performance. I avoided or lied to Jasper and Frank, came clean to the Kashmiri Princess(es!), and was given the key. Which… did nothing.

It turns out that the Box's locks are merely for show. I ultimately had to enlist the help of the Drownies to open it. And found… a CREATURE, inside the box, who creates glim, and seemingly cannot survive outside the box.

This discovery led to others, eventually pointing towards an epic conflict that could decide the fate of London itself. Namely: there have been four cities before London. And, I now learned, in each case, the previous city was destroyed when the following city descended. Hence, for example, the ruins of the Fourth City than can be found in the Forgotten Quarter today. This raises a rather alarming question: do the Masters plan on bringing down a Sixth City? If so, the death toll will be calamitous.

As it turns out, the Masters are actually debating this amongst themselves. That was quite startling to hear; this may be the first time that I had heard of actual disagreement between two Masters. Mr. Stones and Mr. Fires lead the two opposing factions, one which wishes to hasten the arrival of the Sixth (and destruction of the Fifth), the other which rather enjoys the Fifth and would like to see it linger for some time.

The Affair of the Box ends with a very delicious choice. Will you cast your lot with Mr. Fires, to act as the savior of London? Will you follow the path of nihilism, supporting Mr. Stones and annihilating London? Well… to be entirely frank, I've had quite enough of the Masters by this point. I've found them exceedingly difficult to work with, and singularly stingy in their recompense. So, I happily followed the third path: the path of truth, the path of muckraking, the path of infamy. I fired up the presses, and produced the most shocking exposé ever issued by the Fourth Estate. The chink in the Masters' armor has now been revealed, and, given time, it may grow into a crack that brings down the whole endeavor.

I'm very close to finishing the Jack-of-Smiles case, too. I'd spent some time early in the game hunting Jack around Watchmaker's Hill, during which time I'd learned that there are, in fact, several Jacks. The more recent phase has you digging more deeply into Jack's activities, through your new position on the Velocipede Squad. This was quite enjoyable: both Jack and the Affair of the Box eventually open up some new options on some very old Opportunity cards, the faction-related ones, so there was a nice bit of variety while pursuing the cases. I chased all sorts of Jacks: male and female, young and old, rich and poor, corrupted Constables, etc. In all cases, the people seemed entirely normal, until one day they seemingly went insane and started stabbing.

Without any discernible similarities between the people, I eventually gravitated to the true commonality: their knives. Many were cheap, some expensive, some elaborate, but they all shared a common characteristic: a maker's mark from a forge in Polythreme.

Along the way, I was granted the opportunity to become Jack in order to continue my investigation. This offer was accompanied by a very thoughtful warning, that the content would be significantly more violent and gory than typical for Fallen London. I was grateful for the warning, and decided to pass, instead taking the more pedestrian (and cheaper) approach of traditional detective work.

Once the Polythreme connection was made, I embarked on a (hopefully final) voyage to the Sea of Voices and its distant shore. Along the way, I stopped to acquire yet another Plated Seal, having lost the offspring of my first two seals when making a Bifurcated Owl. I think I'll make this one a Hound of Heaven; I didn't have much chance to play with my previous one. Anyways… I'm a trifle bored of voyaging, and hope to make this my last visit to Polythreme. Once there, I realized that, though I had not completed my guidebook before departing last time, it still remained unwritten, and so I was regularly met by Zailors. I quickly wrapped up that tale, singing the praises of Polythreme, then started my investigation, once again making the acquaintance of a stream of Fractious Furniture. I easily tracked down the workshop where the knives came from, only to find that its owner is entirely ignorant of the harm they cause. A consultation with the Clay Priest revealed that the problems all started some time ago, when the shop's human owner was led astray in his dreams, leading him to murder his family and set the shop ablaze, thus touching off the spirit of malice that would manifest itself across the Zee.

I'll be heading back soon to London and Veilgarden to hopefully track down the true culprit once and for all. As long as I'm in Polythreme, though, I'm spending some time making a small fortune in Stolen Kisses and Romantic Notions, just so the (long!) voyage doesn't feel wasted. I'm also contemplating a return to London via the Tramp Steamer rather than my own far superior vessel… it would take much longer, but would offer some variety.

Once I do arrive in London… well, that will be about it! Wrapping up the Jack case, and enjoying whatever Silver Tree-related content arrives. I suppose I might finally brace myself to explore the Mystery of the Plaster Face, though I'm not exactly looking forward to that; that particular storyline has managed to annoy me greatly even during the very small amount of time I've spent with it thus far.

END SPOILERS for Fallen London

In other gaming news: I'm increasingly getting into Skyrim, so it's now moved from a roughly-weekly activity to a roughly-daily one. My level is in the low-to-mid 30's. I recently maxed out my first stat, Stealth, which unlocked a particularly enjoyable Perk that lets me briefly turn myself invisible even mid-combat by exiting and re-entering Stealth. I also raised Smithing high enough to improve my magical gear, which is useful, but also leading to some dashed difficult decisions. Example: I currently have three sets of armor to choose from. One is an assortment of Gilded Elven and Scaled armor that I crafted and improved myself. It has the highest armor rating, but no special abilities. Next is a set of Nightingale Armor, which has some nice bonuses, but also some useless ones (like a hood that boosts Illusion), and is a little weaker. Finally is a set of Shrouded Armor, which includes my single favorite piece of armor so far, the Shrouded Gloves, which double my backstab multiplier… but is also a weak set of armor, and most of the other pieces aren't incredibly useful (like a bonus to Frost Resistance).

I'd LIKE to stick to one set, so I could use the set bonus and look snazzy, but as it stands I have a mishmash between the three… plus, I worry I'll need the other pieces sometime, so I'm currently carting those around with me, which is eating up some much-desired carry weight.

Eh. Too much good armor is a nice problem to have, I suppose.

I did decide to try experimenting with dual-wielding, and so far I'm really liking it. The only major downside so far is that I no longer get that awesome animation when I backstab someone with a dagger. Instead, there's this complicated thing that involves flipping around daggers, yelling, and stabbing. It's a bit less creepy-looking, but WAY more effective… I don't have actual numbers, but considering that I'm doing a dual-wielding power attack with a 30x multiplier, it must be a LOT of damage. Everyone I've tried it on so far has gone down in a single shot, even the boss creature I fought. At the moment I'm just wielding two Flawless Elven Daggers that I crafted, but I'm about to reforge Mehrunes' Razor, which I'm certain will be more impressive.

I still am not doing anything at all related to the main plot. I suppose I should sometime, just so I can make use of some of the Shouts / Words of Power that I've been stumbling across. I'm having a blast with everything else, though… I'm almost finished with the main Thieves Guild questline, and just recently started the Dark Brotherhood one.

For the most part I'm enjoying the game. The thing that's irritating me most at the moment is the journal. It's much better than the abysmal Mass Effect 3 journal, but I really wish it would provide more context. Most items in the journal are only a few words describing the immediate task you need to do, like "Kill the bandit leader in Haveron Cave." Now that I have scores of tasks in my journal, it's impossible for me to remember what's significant about more than a handful of them. What's frustrating is, I know that some of the quests are more important than others. In particular, certain quests were given to me directly from a Jarl or his/her steward. I'd like to focus on these, since these are probably the quests that would help me become a Thane, and thus purchase more property. However, it's been long enough since I accepted those quests that I can't remember which ones are Jarl quests, and which ones are from random people I've encountered, and thus probably would only reward a couple of hundred gold on completion. I'm guessing that Bethesda did this deliberately, to keep the journal simple and keep people from feeling overwhelmed by copious amounts of text, but it really takes away from my sense of immersion in the game… it makes me feel like I'm just pushing buttons, not questing.

The other thing that bugs me: sometimes I'll leave my horse while I go do something, only to find out that he managed to get himself killed. I won't figure this out until MUCH later, and will need to reload a very old game. This is infuriating. At the very least, the game should say "Your horse is dead," so I know then to reload. Far better: don't kill my horse if I'm out of earshot!

Those complaints aside, though, it's a good game. The graphics are absolutely gorgeous; some of the best screens I've seen from any game are when I'm standing on a mountaintop, watching the sun come up over a valley, while some snow swirls around nearby, and a dragon wings gracefully in the distance. The controls feel much better than earlier Elder Scrolls games. I'm delighted to finally be able to play as a pure rogue without penalty for ignoring magic. Level designs are good and keep getting better. Voice acting, while not as good as a Bioware title, is far better than any of the previous Elder Scrolls games. I do have subtitles turned on and will skip through most conversations, just reading the text, but a few actors are so good that I listen to every word they say. Karliah jumps to mind as one of the best.

On to television…

I'm thoroughly addicted (hah!) to Breaking Bad, and am now plunging ahead into the third season. It's been really good so far, though I suspect it will get even better… fans talk about the third season with hushed, reverent tones, and while the first few episodes have been good, they haven't come close to touching the highlights of the second season.

Hm, I think that's it for now! The election is consuming entirely too much of my attention, which I look forward to regaining after it's complete.

Fus Ro... Oh, You Know Where This Is Going

Media Roundup Time!

Let me get the title out of the way: yup, I'm finally getting into Skyrim. As I do so, I'm belatedly remembering that all of my previous Elder Scrolls experiences have started the same way. I always start the game a bit late, after the mod community has had a head start on new content. The beginning (after a tutorial-ish opener) feels simultaneously overwhelming and underwhelming: you can go literally anywhere, and do literally anything, but the main plot won't kick into gear for some time, and so there isn't the sense of urgency that you normally get with something like a Bioware title.

So I'll poke away at it with short play sessions, maybe thirty minutes or so at a time. The structure of the game actually lends itself really well to this kind of approach, since that's roughly how long it takes to clear an area of enemies. (As with Morrowind and Oblivion, these areas are a mixture of caves, ruined forts, ancient Dwemer ruins, and other cool, large explorable locations.) Gradually, over time, I come more wrapped up in one of the game's through-plots. Amusingly enough, this is rarely the actual ur-plot; instead, I'm usually more motivated by one of the faction questlines. In Morrowind, my favorite part of the game was the House Hlaalu quests. In Oblivion, I actually had the most fun with the Mages Guild quests, which is interesting since I was playing much more of a thief-type character. In Skyrim... well, it's still far too early to know what my favorite will end up being, but the game started clicking for me once I made contact with the Thieves Guild and started running their quests.

Elder Scrolls games are purposely designed to encourage tangents and diversions. At any given time, you'll probably have 20 or more quests in your journal. You'll decide to accomplish one of them. You'll start walking or riding towards a new destination. Along the way, you'll stumble across, say, a fort full of bad guys shooting at you. You might just skirt around it... or maybe you'll fight back and kill them. Then, as long as the guys outside are dead, you'll poke your head inside. Then you'll clear out all of those people. Then maybe you'll find an artifact or something that will start off yet ANOTHER quest.

On the whole, I like Skyrim much more than its predecessors. It improves many aspects of the previous games. Some highlights include:

• Fast Travel is much more sensible and fun. Previously they limited fast travel to places where it made logical sense (along a Silt Strider route, or between Mages Guild teleportation rooms). Now, Fast Travel is clearly about convenience to you, the player of the game, and not about convenience to your character. You can fast travel between any two places on the map that you've previously visited; it will take however much time it would have taken your character to have traveled, you just don't need to watch every step you take. (There are two downsides which are worth noting but not really complaining about: first, a few landmarks don't get fast travel spots, most importantly the standing stones. I wish these would at least get marked on your map; as it stands, it's impossible to remember where they are, so you need to resort to online resources. Secondly, I do kinda miss Mark and Recall... but again, with the other improvements they've made, it doesn't really matter since you can fast-travel to a spot very close to where you want to be.)
• Along the same theme of "minimizing time spend in drudgery," I love what they've done with level designs. Levels are still fairly long and complex - a cavern might include several loadable regions and many stairways that lead you farther down - but when you "beat" the area (often this means defeating a particularly powerful foe and taking a great treasure), you don't need to turn around and retrace your steps all the way back to the service. Instead, there's usually some fresh exit from the very end that lets you quickly get back outside. This varies a lot from place to place (another thing I appreciate) - in an ancient Dwemer ruin you might ride a mighty elevator back up to the top; in a cave you might find a small opening you can exit that will drop you back in Skyrim a ways from your original entry; other times you'll raise a portcullis or unlock a secret door that will close a loop that lets you easily access the entry. The bottom line: more time spent doing fun stuff, less time walking.
• Yet another welcome improvement: smithing. In the earlier Elder Scrolls games, this skill was used to avert a negative. Your weapons and armor would decay over time through use, losing effectiveness with each combat; you would need to repair these at a smith, or use a whetstone and a skill to fix them yourself. Now, you no longer need to worry about decay: a dagger will always be as strong as when it started. Instead, smithing is now a crafting skill, joining the ranks of alchemy and enchanting. You collect raw materials (animal hides, iron ore, steel ingots), and at a blacksmith's forge you can create new weapons and armor from scratch, and improve these items or others that you find on your journeys. Weirdly enough, the analogy I find myself thinking of most is with the Civilization series' treatment of pollution. In the early Civ games, pollution was a negative: it carried a risk of polluting a nearby terrain square and reducing yields, so you would spend a large part of the endgame carrying out the annoying work of having settlers/engineers mop up the detritus of your industrial civilization. In Civ IV, they flipped the system around: instead of Pollution, now we had Health. Health was a positive, something you could act to increase: build an aqueduct, install a sewer system, etc., and watch  your health flourish. Higher health meant full growth potential. If you let "pollution" get out of control, it became a macro issue (growth gradually slows to a halt), but it's something you can treat strategically ("I need to discover new technology to improve my health") instead of an endless series of rote tactical judgment ("Clean THIS pollution up HERE, then clean THAT pollution over THERE..."). Aaaaaanyways... the elation I felt at Civ IV's update to pollution is similar to the elation I feel about Skryim's smithing. It's more fun now.
• They fixed leveling! This was by far the most-complained-about aspect of Oblivion: the game brutally penalized you for improving your character, and even more so if, like me, you were foolish enough to spend time improving your Speechcraft or picking pockets or sneaking. Skyrim still levels enemies, but in a far more sensible manner now: they roughly track your progression, and are nicely varied (I just cleared out a cave where there were many low-level brigands, a couple of other challenging ones, and a chief who would have been rather deadly if not for my poisonous hidden blade). No more encountering random bandits wearing glass armor and daedric wakizashis!
• The economy is a bit better in Skyrim... still worse than any Bioware game, but loads better than Morrowind or Oblivion. The fundamental problems still remain: there's too much valuable stuff in the game, it's too hard to sell it all, and there's very little reason to ever buy anything. Each of those individual points are a bit better than in previous iterations, though. I still haven't seen price scaling at the highest level (i.e., I haven't yet seen Glass or Daedric weapons and armor), but it feels like any given item you can find should be worth little enough that a decent merchant can buy it from you. Secondly, there are more merchants who have around 1000 gold or more, so you don't need to camp out as much to empty your inventory. Finally, the houses are a pretty decent money sink, which helps make up for the fact that you'll probably never, ever, ever buy a single weapon or piece of armor from anyone. I hope that they'll continue to improve this in the next game; I would highly value a more streamlined way to convert the loot I acquire into usable coin.

In any RPG, I enjoy playing as a thief-type character.  This has been hard to do in previous Elder Scrolls games... I can mainly focus on thief skills, but since Elder Scrolls are so focused on single-player (as opposed to party-based) gameplay, you basically need to combine thief, magic, and fighting skills in a single character. In the past I've usually gotten away with just focusing on one or two schools of magic, a single weapon and armor skill, and otherwise trying to optimize my thief skills. Now, for the first time, I'm trying to create a character with no magic whatsoever: he's purely a rogue, with minimal fighting skills to supplement his thieving talents. It's actually going OK so far.

Well, let me back up a little: here are the skills I'm taking my perks in. (I also am leveling Speech and Lockpicking a lot, but those perks don't seem terribly useful and so I'm not perk-ing those.)

• Sneak. Probably the single most important skill I have. It's currently at 80, the highest of any skill by a pretty wide margin. I'm pretty much always undetectable, unless I'm running right in front of someone in strong light.
• Pickpocketing. This skill is crazily easy to level, so much so that I've had to cut down on it to avoid building a skewed character. This tree has some fun extra perks, especially one that dramatically improves your carrying capacity, and another that lets you silently poison people by giving them potions.
• Alchemy. One of my two crafting skills. This is plugging a lot of the potential gaps from skipping any actual magic skills. It's also a lot of fun... I enjoy the discovery that goes into both finding ingredients and learning new recipes.
• Smithing. My other crafting skill. It's very practical. Weirdly, I spend most of my time, and get most of my profit, from making jewelry, but the armor I do craft is better than anything I've found in-game so far, including the enchanted stuff I find. 
• One-handed. I actually haven't put that many perks into this: the biggest benefit I've gotten is a 15x damage multiplier from the Sneak tree, by attacking via dagger from stealth. This has an incredibly sick and fun animation when you attack a humanoid from behind: you grab the top of their head, pull it back, and drag the dagger across. Ewwww. Most of the perks in this tree are useless to me, but I did grab one for improving my power attack. I may or may not invest in the dual wielding perks at some point; currently I'm holding a shield for the armor bonus but not investing in Blocking perks at all.
• Light Armor. Cuz, y'know, I don't want to die. This is leveling very slowly, due to my incredible sneaking skills.

I am enjoying the perks system. It slightly decouples the level advancement process, the skill advancement process, and special ability acquisition. You now level up by gaining points in any skill; there's no longer a classification of "major" and "minor" skills for your character. And, you can spend your perk in any skill you want, but most perks do have minimum skill requirements. So, I still can't get that top point in the Sneak tree until my skill reaches high enough for it; but I also don't need to spend any perks in Lockpicking or Speech, despite the fact that they factor into my leveling up.

My play style has been really fun so far. I'm a very stealthy character. In towns, I'll generally just walk around and talk to everyone, but when night falls, I break into houses and steal everything valuable. Pickpocketing is fun too, though I confine myself to just one or two items from everyone. (A surprisingly large percentage of Skyrim's upstanding citizens are walking around with lockpicks in their pockets. Can you imagine?!) In lairs (forts, caves, temples, etc.), I stay in stealth the whole time, carefully watch for enemies and light sources, and try to maneuver so I can one-shot everyone from stealth. It's high-pressure, exhilarating fun. It's most effective against humanoid opponents like brigands. It works OK against undead; they're a bit slower, which is good, but they're also immune to many powers. So far it's been hardest against dwemer constructs, especially those spherical guys who move around very quickly in well-lighted areas.

When my stealth fails me, I'm only a mediocre fighter, but that's where my alchemy comes in very handy. I carry around a variety of poisons and "restore health" potions, so I can heal myself pretty much indefinitely while whittling down my opponents' resistances. I've been pleased with how often I'm able to stick to stealth, though... there are even a few "bosses" who I've been able to ambush, with good results.

In the open countryside, I'm a bit weaker and more exposed, but I also don't feel the same compulsion to defeat everyone. I got (well, okay, kinda stole) a horse relatively early on, and ride it any time I'm traveling to a new place. If I run across a pack of wolves or a bear or some other baddie, I can always outrun it.

The one enemy type I've had most trouble with so far is dragons. As a stealthy character with a backup of melee weaponry, I'm an extremely poor match for a gigantic flying fire-spewing beast. I'm very vulnerable to its unblockable aerial flame assaults. When it lands, I can rush in and whack it and account for myself rather well, but then it will take back off again. I can still win, eventually, thanks to all my potions, but it's a long and annoying process. I'm not totally sure what to do... I don't really want to pick up archery just so I can handle one enemy type, but I may need to.

Oh, I should mention mods. I'm playing with a pretty light set at the moment. One is absolutely essential for playing on the PC: Sky UI, which makes the game's menus actually usable and useful. The Elder Scrolls has been targeting consoles for a while, which makes sense from a market-share perspective, but also sucks since the PC controls and UIs tend to get dumbed down to something that can be controlled with a thumbstick and viewed on a low-resolution screen. Trying to scroll through a list of 50 potion ingredients and only being able to see 8 at a time is pure pain. Sky UI drastically fixes this by completely reworking the menus: they fit the color scheme of Skyrim perfectly, but are (finally!) designed with a mouse in mind, and take advantage of text that's perfectly readable from two feet away instead of across a living room.

Other mods I'm happily using: a World Map upgrade, a water-enhancement mod, the wonderfully-named "No More Blocky Faces," and a tiny patch that improves the way Transmute Ore works. (Remember when I said my character uses no magic? That was technically a lie. I do cast Transmute Ore. It's infinitely more usable with this patch, which (1) affects all the Iron One in your inventory at once, instead of requiring a separate cast for each unit, and (2) doesn't force you to transmute all your Silver to Gold before you can transmute more Iron.)

I haven't tried any NPC or quest mods yet. I may roll some in if and when I start running out of stuff to do in the main game.

Speaking of NPCs... it looks like there are more followers here than in the earlier games, but they still don't really have personalities, and feel pretty cookie-cutter. In each town, there's one mercenary drinking in the inn who you can hire for 500 gold. In each town, after you become famous and get a house, you get a "housecarl" who you can ask to follow you. They seem to all be fighters; I haven't found any mage or thief followers yet. And since I'm a thief, followers are useless: they're no good at sneaking and would just give me away.

It sounds like romance is possible for the first time in an Elder Scrolls game. I haven't explored that avenue yet; I won't get my hopes up, but I look forward to seeing what Bethesda is doing there.

So, that's all been fun!

Let's see... I haven't tried out Leviathan for Mass Effect 3 yet. I peeked at the reviews, they look good-but-not-great. I suspect (but haven't yet bothered to research) that it adds content earlier in the game, so I would need to reload an old save to do it. I do occasionally jump in to Mass Effect 3 multiplayer; if there's a weekend challenge that I'm capable of doing (e.g., not requiring perfect extraction from Reapers on Gold while only using melee attacks), I'll play to beat the challenge, and typically stick around for a few more matches. I'm pleasantly surprised at how easily I can slide back into the game, even if it's been over two weeks since I last played. I think that's a testament to the awesomeness of cooperative multiplayer, and also how well multiplayer matches are constructed, with gradually increasing waves of difficulty.

Regarding Fallen London:
MINI SPOILERS for FALLEN LONDON

I'm currently on Polythreme. It's very strange here! I've made some new friends. My new friends used to be my clothes. It's... it's rather confusing.

I came to Polythreme to fulfill my Ambition, and finally got to dispose of that bottle of Fourth City Airag that I'd been carting around for ages. It was a little frustrating at first, but I consulted the ever-helpful-and-brilliant community, and now I have a system down that works beautifully. It's based around deck management and opportunity cards. I did all the special stuff, and lately I've been acquiring bazaar permits by becoming fascinating. It's quite lucrative! I'll eventually travel back to London, and probably pick up a Plated Seal along the way to I can complete my menagerie.

I do think that I'm nearing the end of currently available content, though... I need a Hound of Heaven, and to finish the Affair of the Box, and do the Jack's Back story. Which will take a little while, but the end is finally in sight. Well, the "end"... I'm sure Failbetter will roll out some new content for the game later (probably after StoryNexus is available and the Silver Tree comes out). I'm very close to capping my first stat: Persuasive is at 129, and I believe that it's the lowest cap at 130. (As far as I know, the other stats all cap at 140; other than Watchful, I'm pretty far away from those caps.)

I might try some other fate-locked storylines then, or just park my character and wait for another wave of updates. The alternative is grinding, which I don't think I want to do... some of the hard-core completists in the community set goals for themselves like gaining the highest rank in Master Thief, or becoming the most Hedonistic. The most popular goal is gaining an Overgoat, which costs a staggering 11,712 echoes (and some change). Many players are taking advantage of the stomach-churning but highly lucrative Fidgeting Writer roulette wheel to raise that cash. I... I don't see myself doing that. At most, I'll improve my wardrobe so I'm ready for the next content wave.

Hrm... I really want to talk more about the plot, at least a little. Let's drop into

MEGA SPOILERS for Fallen London

On Polythreme, I spoke with Hundreds, the king and ruler of the city. A LOT of pieces of various puzzles fell into place here, thanks to some astonishing flashbacks all the way to the First City. Let me try and piece these together:

• As we suspected before, the Manager of the Royal Bethlehem Hotel was the ruler of the First City. In flashback, he appears as a Priest-King, with bronze raiment (a wonderful evocation of the brass buttons on his modern jacket!)
• The priest-king fell in love with Hundreds, back when Hundreds was a man, who traveled from the orient. 
• Hundreds fell ill, and the priest-king bargained with the Masters of the Bazaar to take his city in exchange for his lover's life. And so the first city descended.
• (What is the First City? It's clearly in the Middle East. We know that "Even the First City was young when Babylon fell," which disqualifies my first choice of Kish.)
• This seems to match our understanding of the fall of the Fifth City: Queen Victoria made the deal with the Masters in order to save the life of her own lover, Prince Albert. Presumably, variations on this same deal were done for the second-through-fourth cities as well. 

All very exciting. Also, I'm pretty sure that the Rubbery Men are totally disconnected from the masters... I don't want to get into Flute Street too much, but based on what I saw there, I'm pretty sure they're pursuing an entirely separate, though not necessarily antagonistic, agenda.

Oh, oh oh! I also finished the Diocesan Intrigues storyline. Well, at least as much as there is so far. I was INCREDIBLY nervous about the last choice. I kept that opportunity card in my hand for, um, I think about three days while I warily weighed the pros and the cons of a frontal assault on Hell. At last I gulped and threw in my strength fully behind the Bishop. I may not always approve of his methods, but I'm in complete agreement with his goals. It looks like the end of that story hasn't yet been written. I can't wait to see what happens!

END SPOILERS for FALLEN LONDON

Let's talk about TV!

I was extremely disappointed in the previous two seasons of Dexter, and had promised myself that I was done: no more of that show. I was surprised to see a fairly decent review of the season premiere on the AV Club, though, and browsing the comments I saw a lot of variations of "Wow, I was convinced this was going to be awful, but it's actually pretty good!" So, I broke my promise and am watching it. It's definitely way better than it's been in a long time, but I still maintain my skepticism: Dexter has a pattern of creating seasons that start off extremely promising, only to peter out and get super-dumb near the end. We'll see how it goes. I reserve the right to bail at any moment if it starts to slide. (Oh, and if it does turn out, I think it will be yet another argument in favor of setting hard dates on TV shows to end. It gets good results!) (Heh, wow... reading my previous posts on Dexter is pretty amusing. I seem to always post a few episodes into the season, when I'm really optimistic about what the show is doing, before it goes of the rails and becomes unbelievably stupid and annoying. I... I may be continuing that trend here.)

I've been watching old Monty Python's Flying Circus episodes. Man, those things are absolutely hilarious. Even forty years later, when they've inspired multiple generations of imitators, their weirdness remains fully intact. Of course I grin when I see something like the Ministry of Silly Walks, despite having seen it dozens of times before; but I'm also amazed at how much of this show I haven't previously seen, or had completely forgotten about. There's a lot of Gumby material there that I don't think I've seen before, and it's as funny as the operation sketch. Also, for the first time in my life, I'm finally able to identify each individual Python immediately, as soon as they appear on screen, and I think that's helping me get an even deeper appreciation for their talents.

And... did I mention that I'd also re-watched Chappelle's Show's entire run? (Well, except for the third season, which I'm deliberately avoiding.) I was kinda-inspired by an AV Club tour of the series, but I'd have gladly done it without any prompting. What impresses me most is how well that show has aged. Even stuff that seemed extremely topical at the time, like one about how Dave's life is just like Grand Theft Auto, and a brilliant piece that compares the Internet (remember when that was a thing?) to a skeezy shopping mall, still feel fresh and valuable today. I'm impressed all over again at Dave's incredible comic brilliance. What a huge shame that he's not sharing his gift with as many people these days. I really need to catch him the next time he makes a commando appearance at a show here in the city.

Parks & Recreation is back, and is wonderful. I'm curious to see if they come up with any major arcs for this season. Well, I guess we're kind of on an arc now, just based on where the characters are located. And it seems like Ron may be embarking on something new. Yay! 30 Rock just came back too, and had a nice, appropriately meta premiere. I'm a little sad that show is going away, but at the same time I feel like now is a great time to end it... I still love that program, but it feels like they're finally starting to reach the end of what they can get out of characters like Kenneth and Jenna. That show has never been nervous about shaking things up, and I'm curious to see what they do for the rest of the season, now that they no longer need to worry about the future at all.

Speaking of shaking things up... I'm very belatedly jumping on the bandwagon for Breaking Bad, and just started watching the first season. No spoilers, please! I'm already completely engrossed, and will probably blow through the rest of the series in short order. I can already see why everyone likes this show so much. Wow, Cranston is just incredible.

Robot Chicken's pretty strong as well... I wasn't super-impressed with last season, which may have just been my own problem, but I loved their DC Comics special, and the first "regular" episode also hit me right. They have a new title sequence now. Maybe that's helping?

Oh, man, Louie! Such a good show. Such a good, good show. It doesn't even need to be funny, it just needs to be good. It sure goes to some unexpected places; I defy you to find anyone who predicted where the season finale would end up. Lots of great guest performances this season, too, both from comedians and non-comedians. I'm impressed at what that show can do: get really famous and well-respected comedians to play parts that make them look awful; and almost single-handedly rehabilitate the reputations of comedians that the cool have long since written off.

Speaking of comedy... I saw an awesome show last Friday at Cobb's. Patton Oswalt was the headliner, and was incredibly funny, as I've come to expect from him. I was really impressed by how strong the openers were across the board, though. Typically you'll get a mediocre local MC who opens up, then some decent-to-good comedians, then a great performance from the headliner. Here, though, everyone was just great. Next to Patton, the very first guy may have been the funniest. Argh... I'm trying to find his name online and I can't. I think he's local. He's Cuban, maybe? He had some phenomenal material: starting a Mariachi band in the Mission, describing his experiences at Outside Lands last year, the contagiousness of nervousness, and so on. There was a former Muslim from Los Angeles who had a short but really funny set that included some autobiographical material (the process of getting US citizenship) and some outright lies (a very resourceful cat). Right before Patton was Mike Drucker, a really funny guy who I follow on Twitter and had no idea did stand-up comedy. Drucker's comedy was very much aligned with my sensibilities: very focused on geek culture, male insecurity, and so on. Patton killed. Absolutely killed. I think this is the third time I've seen him in a bit over three years, and I don't think I've ever heard any repeated material (well, unless you count his Magical Black Man bit that was on the AV Club's Stand Down series) (man, this is turning into the "plugging the AV Club" post!).  Aaanyways... it's interesting. In some ways, Patton seems like the same guy who we all fell in love with years ago: he complains about his weight, and is broadly self-deprecating, and also launches really funny, scathing, yet surprisingly good-hearted assaults on things he dislikes. (One highlight of his set was a quasi-justification for Nickelback's horrible music.) But, he's also a dad now, and part of his routine is incorporating those sets of experiences. It's great! I look forward to many more years of great comedy from that talented guy.

And, Louis CK in just a tad over a month! I am truly blessed.

On the book front: I've been coasting for a bit since finishing Cloud Atlas, just catching up on my New Yorker issues and some political stuff. But I have made it about a hundred pages into Telegraph Avenue and am really enjoying it so far. Great characters, fun sense of humor, really interesting atmosphere. It's hitting a lot of, um, thematic beats that I should probably expect from Chabon, but that's good.