Haiku of the Day: Turkey in the Yard

Turkey in the Yard

Oh turkey, turkey
Where dost thou go on this morn?
So long, feathered friend

Dragonborn Debt Consolidation (Skyrim prank call)

Ulfric Stormcloak has fallen on hard times. Waging a rebellion against the Empire can be very expensive and Ulfric has not managed his finances properly. Now, Ulfric must call a debt consolidation company and try to figure out how to get out of this sticky situation.

Oblivion and the ‘leveling problem’

In preparation for Skyrim, I’m doing a new playthrough of Oblivion. I really like this game but hate its broken-ass leveling system. If you’ve played Oblivion before you know what I’m talking about. The game’s enemies and treasures level up as your character does, which sounds like a great idea in theory but it’s entirely possible to screw up your character to the point where you are ‘behind the curve’ of the game and the enemies all own you. To figure out why this happens we have to analyze how the leveling system works.

When you create your character, you’re asked to choose 7 major skills that basically define your character’s abilities and also determine when you level-up. These skills have their own independent skill levels that are raised as you use those skills in the game. When you have a total of 10 skill levels across your major skills you level up. If you are playing as a warrior, for example, you might want to choose ‘Blade’ and ‘Heavy Armor’ for major skills in the interest of improving your character’s fighting ability. This would most likely be fine because with these skills you should be able to handle the stronger enemies as the game progresses.

The problem arises when you decide to try a more interesting character build, like say a thief. As a good thief, you will most likely want to choose a major skill like ‘Sneak’. What good is a thief that can’t sneak? Just imagine yourself in a dungeon, shrouded in darkness, bow and arrow in hand, just ready for that sneak attack on an enemy guarding a treasure you so desire. Sounds awesome, doesn’t it? Here’s the problem: choosing a major skill like ‘Sneak’ for a thief could actually hurt your character. You will sneak pretty much constantly and your character could level up too fast, causing enemies to become too powerful for you to defeat. What you will end up having to do is stop using ‘Sneak’ and the other major skills you chose in the interest of not leveling up. That’s right, in this game you want to avoid leveling up. This is inherently flawed because as an RPG gamer your sensibilities are to choose the skills that your character is going to use most, but some skills level up so quickly through normal play and don’t really contribute to your characters ability to stay alive that they end up hindering you more than helping you.

So what’s the solution to this problem? What I am going to try for my new playthrough is the following: I’m going to pick major skills that I can generally avoid using in the game, things like ‘Hand to Hand’, ‘Heavy Armor’ and ‘Conjuration’. Basically my strategy will be to have all my good skills as minor skills, level them up until I’m satisfied (gaining minor skill levels does not cause your character/game to level up) and then level up a throw-away major skill 10 times to trigger the character level up. How ass backwards is that? This will be my first time trying this strategy but I think it will result in the best character for me. The beginning of the game might be harder due to the fact that I will not be getting the initial stat bonuses from choosing such skills as ‘Sneak’ and ‘Marksman’ as major skills for my thief character, but I think in the long run it will make my character better and the game more fun.

I’ve purposely been avoiding looking up Skyrim info to avoid things getting spoiled, but I’m very happy to say that Skyrim will be adopting the (much better) leveling system from the Fallout series.

TLDR version: To make the best character in this game, choose major skills that you don’t actually want to use.

Quick Movie Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Let me start out by saying that I saw this movie without having read the book, so I will not be able to compare the two. I will be reviewing this as a movie alone. I found this movie to be very entertaining and engrossing. I mean, this movie is 2 hours and 53 minutes long(!) and I was into it the whole time. There are not many 3 hour movies that can hold my attention (or even need to be that long for that matter) but this movie is an exception.

The most interesting part of the movie is the main character, Lisbeth Salander (played by Noomi Rapace); a very strong, independent woman with a unique look. She is a employed as a professional computer hacker for a private security company, and for some reason (that is not explained in the movie) she has what is called a ‘guardian’. Apparently, in Sweden there is a system in place where people have these ‘guardians’ which seem similar to parole officers, and this person has the ability to control Lisbeth’s monetary assets and basically control her. Now, I’m not familiar with this foreign system and like I said the reason behind why she has this guardian is not well explained in the movie. I may have missed it somehow but I can only assume she committed some kind of crime. Anyway, despite the confusion these scenes with the guardian are quite compelling and are some of the most memorable in the entire movie. She hates his guts and it will not be long before you do too.

The plot of the movie revolves around a man name Mikael Blomkvist (played by Michael Nyqvist). He is a investigative journalist who has been convicted of libel and is sentenced to 3 months in prison. For some reason, he has 6 months to wait and walk around freely before serving his sentence. Again, this is not well explained and I can only chalk it up to laws being different in Sweden. He eventually meets up with Lisbeth through a series of events and together they have a nice little murder mystery/missing persons case to solve. This aspect of the plot is very well written and interesting, made all the more so by the fact that the movie has spent quite a bit of time developing the main characters by this point; you feel empathy of the characters, especially Lisbeth. The mystery plot sort of reminded me of The DaVinci Code or National Treasure, only darker.

I really liked this movie, but watching it I couldn’t help but feel that it just wasn’t made for me. I feel like the movie was meant to be watched under the assumption that you had read the book, which I haven’t. There were things that were sort of glossed over or unexplained that I have to think must be clearer in the book, especially the ending. On it’s own, however, it’s a solid movie that is made all the better by the deep characters and I am very much looking forward to learning more about Lisbeth Salander in the sequels.