I love the gameplay, characters and combat. The amount of lore and detail they put into this game. The scenery is just AMAZING. Has anyone else just stood on a mountain and looked for a while at the sky and the land? I’m an Imperial female; one-handed, light armor and restoration skill.
I ignore the gay marriage feature. It’s frustrating, but what can we do? Dranu was right, it is being shoved down our throats. What was even more disturbing was the Daedric Princes and their quests. I have two right now that I absolutely refuse to finish. I never soul-trap either. It’s really niggling at my conscience.
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I think applying personal moral standards to a fictional game is kind of a dicey proposition. Does the inclusion of a Thieves Guild and organization of assassins, both of which can be joined by the player, mean that the game is promoting murder or thievery? I don’t think so. I guess I feel that if someone is bothered by such optional story lines, just don’t don’t do them. I have ignored the assassin quests in the past, and will probably do the same in Skyrim.
Well, you aren’t playing yourself in a game. Unless you are, but even then you’re simply playing a character based on some aspect of your personality or an alegory of yourself. It’s not you in the same sense as you’re you when sparring or playing riddles or participating in paintball in real life.
This said, myself I don’t play evil characters, don’t use necromancy, don’t commit typical straightforward theft etc. because I that’s not my kind of fun and generally, that would be a sick kind of fun anyway (okay, apart from Aladdin/Robin Hood kind of thievery if you take it with a pinch of salt
). On the other hand, I allow my characters to loot bodies of fallen enemies, raid goblin caves or even human bandit camps with the primary intent of levelling up (improving combat skills) and getting items (loot), confiscate merchants’ wares from enemy trade ships while at war etc. or follow up with war on diplomatic insults (from other types of games) due to it being game, with a specific outlook and mentality inscribed into it, and taken with a pinch of salt, in a make-believe fashion. In real life, my own life, I’d spend more time on such decisions and with different outcomes.
I have two right now that I absolutely refuse to finish. I never soul-trap either. It’s really niggling at my conscience.
There was an official addon to a certain RPG game that I refused to finish because the main quest involved buying back somebody’s soul and it had to paid for someone else’s soul. I decided that trading souls was beyond my limit and refused to finish the game. I read up on the finish instead.
Oblivion is getting on my nerve too with the plentiful Oblivion gates swarming with devil-like creatures that occasionally scream recognisable things and the naming of the parts of gates is rather offensive, plus there’s that ugly ritual Martin Septim has to perform to gain access to the place of hiding of the main villain’s biggest crony. But then you’re fighting against those creatures and not just exploring, they’re clearly evil and enemies by the game’s terms, and Martin is far from eager to dabble with the whole thing, and he does it to open that portal and kill that evil lackey, so it’s not that bad for a game. On the other hand, Skyrim, while it doesn’t have the whole daedric thing to it, worries me on the point of those dragon souls being destroyed and/or the player’s character having one himself, supposedly, in a human body. But then it’s probably a metaphor with the dragon soul in the player’s character, and I guess the destruction of dragons’ souls can be explained as some kind of punishment from the gods if that’s what they want the player’s character to do. In turn, the way magical items are created, with souls being trapped and channelled via soul gems to put them in magical artifacts (not all artifacts originate this way but almost all player-created ones do), now that’s something I hate and don’t do.
