What I do when I’m not playing TF2 – TESV Skyrim

I don’t play TF2 24/7. That’d be silly. And I’d get very sick of the game after not very long. Yes, the person called Medic does play other games. Most of the time, I play a healing passive role. Throw me into Dota 2 and I’ll find the most passive champion around and play that. Same with League of Legends. Borderlands 2 is slightly different, I basically become a pure healing Siren or a bullet sponge. My Berserker (named Heavy, heh), currently has, what, 10k health? And he’s not even on True Vault Hunter Mode yet. But yeah, normally I’m passive and nice and healing. Except in TESV: Skyrim.

Although, paradoxically, in the other Elder Scrolls games I’ve stumbled across, my passive self remains true to form, for some reason, I am a bloody monster in Skyrim.

I’m not sure why that is. Maybe it was because I was about to have my head chopped off when a giant black dragon comes along and saves my life, but I really couldn’t care less about the people living in Skyrim. Really though, I owe it to Alduin for saving me. Or maybe it’s because I keep on getting told to collect shit for people. No, I don’t care about your stupid noisy Nirnroot farm, so fuck you and your jazz berries or whatever, I don’t care if it’s dangerous. And then a frost dragon comes along and you decide now is the best time to attack it with a dagger. Whatever, you were only going to give me 100 gold anyway.

Or maybe it’s because I spend so much time focused on quests. Alduin threatens to devour the world, I don’t have time to join your crummy Companions! Nor do I have time to join any of these other factions. Nope, you vampires can wait. The organised person inside me forces me to deal with issues with priority first. Then I’ve got to sit there and listen to you all blabbering on. Can’t you walk and talk? Screw this, I’ll go on my own. The only useful guy around was Odahviing, who actually took me where I wanted – to Skuldafn, so I could kill Alduin. Even HE needed persuading, but then again, he was Alduin’s right hand ma- dovah.

All three of my (finished) characters are fairly nasty. Even the Arkay Priest which I, er, named Arkay. The priest bit came later, when I first entered Markath’s temple-y place and realised that Arkay was the name of the god of life and death. And that was after I’d beat up Alduin. I decided to retcon my Arkay character into a more Arkay-worshiping girl. It’s not like I wasn’t already hunting down vampires and draugr anyway. But while Arkay was fairly nice, my other two characters, Phovos and Lokmah, were evil bastards. Phovos is your standard Dragonborn, wearing the scales of dragons and the armor of Daedra, who joined every faction apart from the Dark Brotherhood, because she accidentally killed Astrid when she got kidnapped while sleeping. That’s one of my little fears, so I wasn’t happy when that actually happened in Skyrim. She also steals everything that isn’t nailed down.

Lokmah though is something else, the result of modding. A bright white Argonian with blue and black stripes during the day, a Frost Dragon by night. Or whenever he feels like it. A dov trapped in a mortal body, Lokmah realised that he’d been mistaken for the Dragonborn and decided to play along with it. Alright, he had to kill his boss, but oh well,with Alduin and, later, Paarthurnax, out of the way, Lokmah could easily rule over all dragons. He also has a bar in his house, which he filled with Argonians he had freed from their shitty lives. One day, Lokmah will turn them all into dragons too.

So yes, it must be contempt. Or it’s the fact that you can mod the game to pieces. Mod it until it breaks was my motto for Garry’s Mod, it carried on in Skyrim. Even without mods, I turned my characters into monsters of pain, death and destruction. But it’s SO MUCH FUN turning into a dragon and killing everyone. A lot of my play time in Skyrim is actually doing just that – turning into a dragon, either with Dragon Aspect or the Burning Skies mod, and slaughtering major cities.

A recommendation: if you can handle it, invest in the Open Cities mod for Skyrim. No more loading screens when entering cities. Just ride your horse (or saber-toothed cat or whatever) straight into the middle of Whiterun.

If my Medic self had been in charge, all of my characters would have ended up as boring healers, employing summoned allies and followers to do all the hard work.

Funny how Skyrim broke my normal play-style in video games.