Game Changer #43 – The Skyrim Travel Log 2
My name is Jared Whittaker, one of the hosts and Audio Chewbacca of the Super-Fly Podcast and PCW! Welcome to Game Changer, a weekly burning missive about all aspects of video gaming with a little bit of opinion thrown in for fun. Proceed with caution and tread lightly, gentle gamers. It’s going to be good time. Like the first time you saw Super Mario 3 good time.
This week continuing my adventure in Skyrim, I manage to start a riot, I stole a horse for someone that I shouldn’t have, ran across my first vampires and fought a cave full of spiders. Along with random dragon attacks and smithing like a madman, This is the Skyrim Travel Log.
30:30 – 40:00
I rolled into Riften, like I do every town, looking to talk to people and find a new adventure. After talking to a few people and picking up some nominal quests, I ran into a gentlemen by the name of Hofgrir Horse-Crusher that ran the stables outside of town. After talking to him, he mentioned that his hand to hand combat game was pretty tight and that no one could beat him in a one on one fight. Being the person that I am, I politely walked away, not wanting to start none, thus not being none. told him “don’t talk about it, be about it.” So we knuckle up and start to go at it. He was pretty good, but I was getting the better of him. Just then, one of the town’s guards walked by and saw what was going on and attacked…..me. Yes, for whatever reason, even if the other person starts it, you can’t assault a citizen of the town. So now, I’m fighting Mr Horse-Crusher AND a Riften guard. After all was said and done, I had knocked out Horse-Crusher and killed three guards, getting me a 1400 gold bounty on my head and free horses from Horse-Crusher for Deebo’ing him. Funny how things happen in Skyrim.
40:00 – 45:00
I ventured east and found a small town with an insect problem. A big insect problem. It seemed that the small mining town’s main source of income had been cut off by invading frost spiders. That didn’t sound so hard, so I said that I’d help out. Going into Redbelly Mine and seeing how many frost spiders were actually in the mine, I started to think that maybe these people should be looking to taking up something else other than mining. But, with the help of a staff that I enchanted with the power to shoot fire, I managed to spray flaming Raid in the mine and completely wipe them all out. My reward for the dangerous undertaking? 100 gold and being welcome in the town. Thanks, jerks. Next time, burn your own spiders. Or get R-Truth to squish them.
45:00 – 45:35
Staying in Riften, a man asked me to help him to get a horse back that he paid for. The guy he bought it from? He’s in jail. He wants me to talk to him and find out where the horse is and get it back for him. So I head down to the jail. The guy turns out to be related to the woman that basically runs the town. He had a plan to flip the horse to someone else after he had gotten the money up front. The gang didn’t take too well to that and just took the horse. After a little coercion, (read:threatening) he not only agreed to tell me where the horse was, but told me where his secret stash of gold was in the house that the horse was. An little extra money never hurts.
The horse in question.....
So I show up at Black-Briar lodge and the place was swarming with very big, armored dudes. So I did what anyone would do in this situation: I just rolled up to the house and started swinging. Sure, fight six people at once isn’t something I’d recommend anyone do in real life, but in Skyrim when you have dragon powers and can shoot electricity from your hands, you can handle yourself. While the fight wasn’t as easy as it sounds and it took me retreating a few times and breaking out the big guns (my shock battle axe and my two handed poisoned sword) to slay everyone in the place. After the battle, I grabbed the papers for the horse and then the house itself and took off for the rendezvous point. As I got close to meet up, a dragon randomly attacked some frost spiders nearby. The sight of a huge battle unfolding that didn’t involve me was pretty awesome. That was they realized that I was right there and figured “why not?” and jumped me just as I was getting my gold payoff for stealing the horse. Needless to say, your luck can change drastically in this game.
Apparently, I killed Triple H.....
45:45 – 47:00
I was wandering around the plains in the southwest area of the map around dusk. At this point in the game, I’ve been aimlessly walking to parts of the map that I haven’t been to just to see what trouble I can get into. The plains area gave way to a wooded spot where, in the distance, I saw some kind of activity going on. Most people when seeing something a little off going on that looks like it could be dangerous, would be more cautious. What do I say? “LET’S GO CHECK IT OUT!!!” Yes, I’m Freddy from the Scooby Doo gang.
In the forest, a fight was going on between two people in robes, using magic and three people with armor and maces. I decided that once I was there, I’d talk to whoever won the fight. The ladies with the maces ended up beating the crap out of the robed people, so I figured that I should see what they were up to. Turns out that they hunt Vampires, Werewolves, and especially Deadra. Sounds pretty awesome to me. So I started following them around to see what they were going to get into and that’s where I stopped playing. Hopefully, I can see some werewolf action at some point soon so I can get my Van Helsing on.
Skyrim is continuing to be a amazingly fun time. The fact that in talking about the game with other people, I’ve found very little story overlapping is a credit to the vast amount of content in the game. If you aren’t playing this game, you REALLY need to strongly consider getting it.
Keep gaming….
Jared Whittaker plays a lot of games. Not as much as he’d like, but as much as time and money will allow. If you want to play some games with Jared, you can find him on Playstation 3; PSN tag: JFX. He is also on Steam and Battle.net as JFX316 and while he doesn’t have an Xbox 360, he has the coolest Gamertag in the world: Obiwan Jaborni. Feel free to add him as a friend or email him at JWhittaker@PanelsonPages.com. and on Twitter as JFX316
Filed Under: Columns • Game Changer
*POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT*
So I recently went ahead and finished the two big storylines in the game.. 1) Choosing a side in the Civil War and 2) Stopping Alduin from bringing on ‘Dragongeddon’.
I’ve been loving this game the entire playthrough, but I’ll be honest, the “ending” left me cold. I won’t spoil anything for those still playing, but I use quotations when I say ending because it’s basically a non-ending.
Now continuing playthrough after completing the main story is nothing new to the gaming world, and in a game like Skyrim it makes sense due to the sheer amount of possible quests to undertake. And it makes more sense that some of those quests would still be relevant after the big bads are dealt with. But for all the build up of the war and the dragons, those storylines end not with a bang, but with a “that was it?” whimper.
I fully intended to do another playthrough as a different character type, but knowing what awaits me at the end makes me wonder if it’s worth it.