Time Is Nigh, I Must Fly...

So there's this video game called Skyrim that the world has been going completely nuts over the last few years. I'm going to share with you my relationship with it. I know it's not exactly topical, but that's because I'm not the one to jump on a bandwagon for the sake of it. In fact, hype aversion was one of the key sources, but I'm getting ahead of myself here.



So the story goes back several years, back to around 2008-ish. A friend of mine had shown me a video game box that he said was an awesome game. It was a game called Morrowind, and reading the instruction booklet, I was intrigued because there were lizardfolk and catfolk playable races. Unfortunately, it was an Xbox game, and neither of us had the console (as a matter of fact I loathe Xbox with a passion), and so I never got a chance to try it out. I was disappointed, but I forgot about it after a while.

Not too long after, started getting into Zero Punctuation, and I watched a review Yahtzee did of a game called Oblivion. It was an entertaining review, but neither the review or the game left much of an impression on me. I didn't even make the connection that it was an Elder Scrolls game, the same as the video game that looked so interesting to me for a few short hours.

Fast-forward about a year or so. I was getting into Watchmen, and saw this hilarious parody of what Watchmen would be like as an '80s Saturday morning cartoon. I decided to follow the artist until I saw this:

Again, "Elder Scrolls" and "Skyrim" meant nothing to me, but I loved the video because it was such a perfect example of a Nerdgasm (and the song was awesome). I watched it several times.

However, the hype of this game kept building and building, and I was feeling a tad annoyed that everyone seemed to be so excited over this thing that I really had no idea about. Plus, everything I had been seeing about the game was turning me off of it completely. It seemed like a bunch of humans running around killing dragons (Y'know...can't we have a fantasy game from the other perspective for once?) in a dark and gritty world. Yuck.

So, then the game actually came out and the world, pardon my language, completely lost its shit.

Even Yahtzee forgave what he felt was its flaws, though I was happy to hear it wasn't perfect, and it was here that I finally got the clue that it was connected to Morrowind and Oblivion. Still, everything was "Arrow to the Knee" this and "Fus Ro Dah" that, I'll tell you I was absolutely sick of it.

Even my Uncle was into it, though I was softened by that time and I found out that indeed the lizardfolk and catfolk that had interested me about Morrowind had returned as playable races in Skyrim. But still, I was content to ignore it.

Then, without warning, I woke up groggy this past Friday morning, and what should keep running through my head ad nausium but this:

So, after the 30th time, I decided it was time to at least take a look at what the video game sensation had to offer me before the world murdered me.

I learned this much:

1. The Lizardfolk are called Argonians and they look kind of like raptors in this game.
2. The Catfolk are called Khajiit.
3. It still looks gritty and "realistic" which is still a turnoff, but I can forgive it depending on how it plays.
4. It's hard.
5. It's even harder for mage-type characters, which is of course the one I'd want to play.
6. You need Steam to play on PC, which I have promptly signed up for.
7. While theorycrafting exists, the possibilities of character types are nearly endless depending on how patient you are.
8. I am very interested in trying this game out.

But I didn't want to buy it, not yet. It's still a very expensive game, even for PC, and even with my newly negotiated budget it would take me at least a month to save up, adding on top of that my monthly Warcraft fee and my resolutions to pick up Skylanders at retail price before they become rare enough to only be available on Amazon for fifty bucks (BOOOMMERRR!!!!), so it would be even longer.

I did ask my Uncle if he had a PC version I could borrow. He has no problem with it, but there's a possible authorization code issue and we're not sure if he can lend me that one. He does also have an Xbox version though.

Still, whether a few weeks or a few months, a long-overdue review of Skyrim is imminent.

In the meantime, it being Monday Mons-Day after all, there's this announcement from Pokémon:

My thoughts on that...well...yeah, it's pretty much this again (with the relevant proper nouns changed, of course):