This was not a good start… Floating in freezing water off the shore of skyrim somewhere on the way to Solitude. Brrrr… Grasping at the strands of consciousness seemingly content to float away on the freezing waters, I dived in to find a way out of here.

There was luckily a few things hanging around in the capsized ship, some weapons and some armour - could be worse. One of the crates also had some snowberry extract as luck would have it. Swigging it down, dived down again and slowly traipsed my way out of the ship before the first hit from the extract finished.

Making my way to the bottom of the ship, which was ironically on top, there was an aldmeri lady on top carrying some stuff, which I conveniently lifted :-D

Now was the hard part, it would seem. I was surrounded by the icy ocean and the cold breeze did not help much either. Preparing myself mentally, finished off the last of the snowberry extract, hoped for the best and dived right into the icy blue seas.

The swim to the shore was not that bad - the snowberry extract kept me going! Once there, I managed to collect some deadwood and light a fire to dry me off and warm me up. There really wasn’t much of anything around - until I spotted a camp - with a tent and a fire and everything. It was an absolute surprise how it was missed the first time round - and it looked a lot nicer than the little camp I put together with deadwood.

I went over there and looked around. There was an Argonian there - and although I tried to talk to him, he was really not interested.

Looking around, I picked up something that was on one of the barrels, and the Argonian friend did not take kindly to me snooping around - so I had to kill him. Hmmmm.. The first drop of blood spilled on this land.. and it was all over a misunderstanding… :-/

Anyway, I warmed up a bit there and looked around more to realise that I had to swim across to another island - and I had no snowberry extract left. Well, the hard way it will have to be  then. Fortunately, it was a short swim across and I found a tent on the other side and a little camp which I used to warm up.

After that, a short hop skip and a jump later, I was in Dawnstar, and freezing. As luck would have it, it was night and everything was closed.. it took me a while, and it seemed like an eternity, but I finally found the inn… and warmed myself up…

As I was falling asleep, it dawned on me that there were a couple of draugr that I killed in a cave earlier but couldn’t remember exactly when or where it was. The cold and the tiredness drifted me off to sleep rather swiftly…

It is a shame that with all of this power, some of the features I have really enjoyed in games like witty banter with your companions (The Baldurs Gate series being a very good example) are still so sorely missed. :-(

I found myself in Ivarstead one morning on my way to Whiterun. The walk was largely dull except for me trying to play hunter. Trying to shoot an arrow into a moving deer is more difficult than I imagined. Needless to say, little was achieved more than losing a few arrows.

Walking past the alchemists hut, I snuck in to see if the herbs and grown, ready for another pruning ;-) but it was not. It re-ignited my curiosity about the previous owner of the hut but I got distracted by a deer. After losing another few arrows, I decided to focus on picking some mountain flowers and other alchemical ingredients.

Things were dull until I got to Riverwood. I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to deliver a note from Faendal (the scoundrel) to some girl at the bar. I didn’t like how he wanted me to lie about some guy and as luck would have it, the guy was at the bar too singing something.

He probably deserves to know what was happening so I told him the truth. Now he wants me to lie and say that Faendal wrote a stupid letter. Now this was not my intention. Now I am in a situation where it is obvious that this town has not one but two lying idiots. I mean - what’s wrong with these people - can’t they sort this out themselves? I mean even a old fashioned duel would still better than this lying about each other.

I headed over to the girl resolving to tell her that both the men in her life are idiots. I started to tell her that Sven (that was the other guys name now that I remember) wanted me to lie about Faendal and before I would explain that Faendal was the same, she shouted some abuse about Sven and told me that I should probably thank Faendal. Oh wait, the women are crazy too. To each their own I thought and wandered across to Faendals house.

It was a little late in the night and he was fast asleep. I couldn’t be bothered to wait till morning, so i broke into his house. Considering that he’s a lying bastard and he was soundly sleeping, I robbed him of all valuables - which honestly was really not that much. I then woke him up and told him the good news - he seemed happy. The things we do for love… I thought.. For a moment, I wondered if I had done such silly things in my life… but only for a moment and jumped off the balcony and ran across to Whiterun.

Running past the honningbrew meadery, I remember that I had kicked the previous owner out and put somebody else in place for Maven Black Briar (one of the things I did for the Thieves Guild). I thought to drop him a visit and see how he was getting on.

He was happy to see me and told me how fortunate he was to go for being somebodies lackey to a very wealthy man overnight. He did not even offer me a free mead. I went upstairs and robbed him of all his valuables and I was just about to head out when I saw that the bar was full of bottles of Black Briar Mead. Not only are they delicious, they are also worth a fair bit of money, so I snuck around and shoved them all into my pockets.

I also tried to pickpocket the now wealthy Mallus but he had nothing on him that I could find…

It was pretty late when I got into town and stumbling into the first tavern, it turns out they don’t have rooms. I then made it across to the town square which had another tavern. This one did have rent out rooms - thank god.

After ditching all of my extra stuff that I could at the merchants, I headed back out in the direction of Markarth. I did various things on the way including killing a bandit leader is some cave and speaking to Kematu which was enlightening and further eroding faith in people.

Finally, I reached Rorikstead, it seemed like a nice quiet town. I even met Rorik who seemed like such a nice man to have bought a bunch of land for people to live off.

It was a nice enough place that I decided to spend a day hanging around and taking in the scenery and the loveliness of it all. There were even kids running around playing.

As one of them ran past, I stopped her and talked to her but it didn’t quite go the way I hoped. “Most days, I do all I can to stay away from my sister and my father. The beating’s the same from either one.” she told me. Sure enough her sister was right behind her and I realised that they were not actually playing…

This made me very curious and instead of hanging about soaking in the atmosphere, I followed people around trying to confirm how true this was and it saddened me a great deal to find out that it was indeed true. As it turns out Lemkil, their Father had lost his wife to the birth of the twins. A sad thing no excuse for what his daughters are going through.

I was overcome with a desire to put their father out of his misery. I did not even have the patience to wait until it was dark. He was working on a farm, I went up on a hill and hid behind a rock. I took aim and the first arrow hit the rock and rolled down the hill. I couldn’t help but giggle. I then readied another arrow, aimed a little higher and let it loose. Time slowed as the arrow left and found its mark.

Erik screamed bloody murder - pointing out it was in cold blood but I was well hidden and safe. Erik had told me how much he wanted to travel and be an adventurer. Hey, two birds with one stone eh? ;-)

I was in front of the daedric lord Clavicus Vile and it was all slowly coming to me. I heard Barbas barking away in the background and Jordis the Sword Maiden was her usual self, prancing about.

I looked for a way to get out and got to a closed gate. Seeing now way to open the gate, I took the long way back out the cave. No biggie, it was a good way to re-acquaint myself with the world again.

Once I got out of the cave, I re-prioritised. I had enough of traipsing around doing whatever I fancied. It was time to put an end to the civil war and of course to put a stop to all this dragon malarkey.

It was nice to have to followers - and one of them a pet though it did start to get very annoying when Barbas would just refuse to stop barking. He'd bark at anything. If I moved, he'd bark, if I stayed still, he'd bark, ooohhh there's a butterfly, woof woof. but I put up with it. More aggravating was his desire to always get in my way - in his own playful way of course, but he always like to come along an lie down in the door way. I could usually jump over him but it did sometimes cause me a bruised head with the doorway deciding to take up the same space as my head..

The three of us, the merry trio, did a lot of good things in Skyrim - defeated a number of dragons, helped a bunch of people do this and that, sold a lot of stuff and made a lot of money and even got up the throat of the world and travelled back in time.

I would often head back to my first home in Whiterun and see Lydia hanging about and while Jordis too complained about being sworn to carry my burdens, she somehow simply did not irritate me as much as Lydia did and I was happy.

I would often run off without waiting for the two of them and on more than one occasion, I would lose them somewhere, but after a while, sure enough, they would find me. Barbas was usually the first (must be his keen olfactory senses) and Jordis wouldn't be far behind. It usually brought a smile to my face to see Barbas - he always seemed so happy to see me "Where did you go - we've been looking everywhere for you", he seemed to say. I always imagined Jordis probably had a similar expression, but she was wearing a helmet that covered her whole face, so all I could see was cold hard steel - oh well.

After the brief jaunt through history, seeing Barbas still following me around, made my heart sink with sorrow. He was following me around since I promised to find an axe and re-unite him with his master... I hadn't done that for a very long time. I was level 25 when he started to follow me around and I was now level 31.

I decided it was time to find the axe for Barbas and re-unite him with his master. So I traipsed around a mountain, into a cave, killed a wizard and got the axe. That was easy. I returned to Clavicus Vile with no regard for his nonsense, I left Barbas by his masters side. I took a few moments to say goodbye and was confounded by the door I could not open again. This time though, I was used to world and saw the little chain on the right of the door, pulled it and et voila, I was out.

It was once again, just me and Jordis, the sword-maiden. My heart was heavy with the absence of Barbas but I shrugged it off and carried on. Helped with more the civil war stuff and got to Fort Snowhawk. I found these to be a little more difficult than ordinary missions, partly because, as a mage, I had very little health so it was easy to get injured. More importantly, I always found it difficult to be able to tell who was who and as a ranged combatant, it was even more difficult. I usually kill a few stormcloak  troopers by accident but I don't pay it much mind. After taking over the fort, I did various other things and it was time to take over the next fort. Once I got to that fort, I noticed that Jordis was nowhere to be seen.

I looked around, teleported around, and I still couldn't find her. It dawned on me that she might have been killed - and that too a while back - so there may be no way to fix this. I went to Proudspire Manor. Waited a while, and no - she did not come home and I was sure that she must have been killed. I had to be sure.

I wanted to know so badly that I resorted to otherwordly magic (I uttered the blasphemous phrase ~player.moveto 000A2C95) and I was in the strangest room I had ever been in. There were four hallways meeting and each of them led to what seemed like eternity. On the ground were a bunch of dead bodies and among them lay Jordis. I was speechless. She was dead! We had spent so much time together and without even a goodbye, she was dead. She was dead and all her armour was taken off, and I saw her face again. Calm and Serene.

I thought about resurrecting her with otherworldly magic but decided that would not be what she would want. I had to do some otherworldly jiggery pokey (load the previous save) to get out of that place since running out the door would just drop me back in the room.

Just a little while ago, I had two companions and within a matter of hours, I was all alone... I knew that if she takes enough damage, she would yield and  enemies would not attack her. It occurred to me that the last time I saw her was at Fort Snowhawk and then the realisation dawned on me. It was entirely possible that she was killed not by enemies, or wildebeasts - it was entirely possible that it was me who killed her.

I had recently killed a Boethiah cultist and was considering going to her shrine, where I suspected I would have to kill my companion so had avoided that mission. I had also gotten out of killing Barbas. Was it possible that Boethiah and Clavicus Vile were working their twisted magic to get me to kill my own follower? In any case, it was done! She was dead! and I was the most likely suspect for her murder.

When we finally crushed the Empire and liberated Skyrim form the Thalmor, when Ulfric Stormcloak was praising me, I thought of Jordis and Barbas. Fallen Comrades! Friends!

I waited till midnight and on the gong (as it were), I clicked install and instead of it saying that the game was not released yet (and I do wonder why they make us wait until midnight when we have the stuff to be able to play it anyway but that is a whole another blog post), it started to install.

I felt an anticipation and an elation that I have not felt in a very long time. My first foray into the world of Elder Scrolls was daggerfall and this was way after it was released. I had always thought about a world; a living breathing world that was built upon simple foundations that could grow to envelop your imagination.

Elder Scrolls promised to do that and while Daggerfall failed spectacularly to deliver this, it set an expectation. I for one am glad that Bethesda continued on and eventually brought us Morrowind which I played for a while and loved but couldn’t quite get the hang of.

Then there was Oblivion which again, I played for a while but couldn’t really get the hang of. In honesty, it is only in replaying it now over the last few weeks that I started to get the hang of it. The secret was to not over-specialise which was the mistake that I originally made. The other mistake I had made as not to be patient. It is tedious and annoying in the earlier parts of the game because, as a character, you are just not powerful enough.

At level 20, I was finding the game rewarding. The level itself is largely irrelevant, it was that I was able to fill the skills gap using other mechanisms. For example, my securiy skill was atrocious but I managed to acquire the skeleton key (which also ups your security skill). This helped me make leaps and bounds of progress through the thieves guilds missions.

Alchemy and getting that up to a 100 pretty much changed the game for me as well. Having picked the Atronach as the birth sign (No Magika regeneration but spell absorption at 50), I really struggled at the beginning of the game to keep my Magika replenished.

After about level 16 or so with Alchemy ramped up, I found that I had more Magika potions that I could throw a stick at. My intelligence was also up at a 100 at that point and the discovery that there was no benefit in increasing my willpower (since there was no Magika regeneration to worry about) changed the focus on levelling up as well.

Along the invisibility spell, Oblivion was suddenly much easier to play. I also got the hang of regularly swapping between and using the various spells. Major Heal wounds instead of health potions became a habit particularly since my Magika restoration usually meant that Magika was still going up after I’d killed all the enemies around the extra regen was just going to waste.

In short, Oblivion is a complex game and you cannot over-specialise if you want to be able to succeed. As the prebuild Sorcerer class, I had an unusual combination of skills to work with including heavy armour and magic.

I expect the biggest complaint that people might have about Skyrim is that it is a lot simpler. There is no armourer skill component for maintaining your armour for example. While this was a nice maintenance thing, particularly when you levelled up on it and you got that feeling of satisfaction, I believe that Skyrim is going largely in the right direction.

Fallout 3 based on the same Engine did a great job to kick it up a notch from Oblivion and Skyrim feels like it has really kicked it up a few notches.

The graphics are absolutely stunning ( in fairness, I am seeing it with the the quality set to ultra high :-] )and the game just flows so much better. The NPC interactions (in my limited 90 minutes or so gameplay) is practically sublime.

Let me put it this way, stealing from a family made me actually feel guilty. If a game can make you feel like the characters in it are real and make you feel guilt like that, then you are definitely doing something right.

The radiant A.I system with the updates coming into Skyrim is also very impressive. Actualy gameplay experience does seem to give it much a organic and fluidic feel.

I expect that my feelings might change over the next few days and dozens of hours of gameplay. However, I would like to finish by saying the Skyrim has so far failed to disappoint which if you know me, is a rare and high praise.