Tag: Skyrim

Westworld
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The videogame world of HBO’s Westworld

Based on the 1973 film by Michael Crichton of the same name, HBO’s Westworld has taken the original’s hackneyed premise of a couple tourists escaping from the Delos Corporation’s various time-focused theme parks (Medieval World, West World, and Roman World), and shifted it into a refined look at what it means to be human, the nature of memory, and the true extent of humankind’s appetite for depravity. With “over 100 interconnected storylines” programmed into the park’s daily routine, the world they’ve created resembles a heightened version of the storytelling that players of modern RPGs have grown accustomed to. That connection to…
Bethesda glitch
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In defense of Bethesda’s notorious videogame glitches

Glitches and bugs have become the hallmark of Bethesda Softworks’ renowned 3D RPGs. Their releases are riddled with them: Fallout 3 (2008) regularly sent robots and Deathclaws flying through the air, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006) had an arrow duplication glitch that led to the greatest YouTube videos in the world, and characters fell through the map in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011), like, all the time. Any upcoming Bethesda game is met with excitement, and then a caveat: you’ll have a great time… if you can make it through without glitching. Some are little, like characters clipping…
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The Sims finally loosens up its gender restrictions

Prior to last week, characters in The Sims 4 (2014) were at a bit of a paradox. They could have any skin color the player wanted—including nonexistent ones—move and present themselves in a variety of cartoonish manners, have one of dozens of slightly different styles of eyebrows or chin lengths (yes, chin lengths), and could even have different interests and life goals tailored to the player’s choice. But a man with long hair? That, apparently, was just too much. Of course, it wasn’t that the game didn’t have any options for long hair available. In fact, there were almost as many…
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Digitizing your ex: How men are using RPGs to cope with breakups

Videogames are a medium often used to escape the cruelties of reality, fostering a safe place for players to take a load off and step into a world that is familiar and comforting. Using a digital space to cope with complex situations or emotions isn’t a new concept, but it seems that some users are taking to the environment of RPGs in order to deal with their break ups. More specifically, Cecilia D’Anastasio of Motherboard explains how men are digitalizing their exes and placing them in games to be downloaded and shared among the modding communities.  Cited as both a…
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Fallout 4: Return to Junktown

For more in-depth game writing, back our Kickstarter! Here comes the trashman! He’s strutting down the highway in his scrap metal suit, tin cans rattling up and down its legs, soda bottles and glue dispensers falling out the cracks between its plates, cereal boxes bobbling on the tips of his metal fingers. He’s blasting “The Wanderer” with no headphones on and waking the mole rats up. He’s bounding downtown like he owns the world. He intends to put all of it into his pockets. He works fastest indoors: his vision jumps from floor to desk to shelf, hunting for the…
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Skyrim mod turns its highly-detailed fantasy world into a cartoon

Skyrim, the fifth installation of the long-running Elder Scrolls series, is known among other things for its intensive, high quality graphics and level of visual detail. Even then, it’s common for players on PC to install several graphical enhancement mods for even more realistic lighting, water, and textures. To run Skyrim on max settings is a badge of honor for those who spend a lot of money on their rigs. Less frequent, but still just as awesome, are mods like Toon Skyrim from UniqueUses, a “potato texture mod” that turns the game’s highly-detailed environments into cartoonish landscapes. According to the…