Nocens

Me, I don’t much care for the expression 'dumbed down'. It’s such a personal thing. For me, Morrowind is one of my all-time favourite games. I worshipped that game, and at the time, spent a mad amount of hours playing, and playing, and playing. I loved vanilla Morrowind SO much and I loved it even more when it was modded. I didn’t like Oblivion much at all. I couldn’t stand the main quest and the Oblivion gates bugged the hell out of me. I only enjoyed the game after excessive modding and even then, I didn’t put even a fifth of the hours into it that I did with Morrowind. In fact, I didn’t even finish it. I never played it through with a single character, and I think I only had two characters compared to the much greater number I played with in Morrowind. Notice I’ve not talked about skill points and inventory at all. That’s because those things aren’t very important to me. I play a game for the experience, whether that’s a very complex experience or not. I can just say that Morrowind had a joy of exploration, of finding new things, of wandering off the beaten path and I didn’t at all get that sense from Oblivion. Now, enter Skyrim – and sure, there are things I might want to change but like Morrowind, I adore it un-modded too. I have that joy back, of sneaking around the countryside just finding things. Of wandering from one edge of the map to the other and just letting the world wash over me, and it’s been an almost poetic experience. Could I have enjoyed more spells? More skill points? Sure – but in the end I don’t care. That was never any of the reasons why I played Morrowind. I played Morrowind because it drew me in and kept me trapped, and Skyrim has done the same. What I’m saying is – I’m sure that for some people, Skyrim isn’t as enjoyable as Morrowind was, but maybe what people should say is that there are things missing that they wish were still here rather than insulting the game as a whole or the people who love it. There are also things in Skyrim that weren’t in Morrowind. For me, it evens out. For others it doesn’t. But dumbed down? In my case, I don’t need to compare, don’t need to say this or this is better or worse than Morrowind and go through whatever details I liked better there or here. They are both my favourite games in a long, long time. I find Skyrim a huge improvement over Oblivion. For me. I’m sorry for those who lost spells and things they loved. That can’t be fun. I guess it’s just hard to relate because that was such a minor part of why I loved Morrowind.

I haven’t bothered with any of the ‘romance’ in the game so far, but I’d think the whole reason they have the amulet the way they do is so that people can choose what type of characters they want to romance so as not to be bothered by sexuality issues. If you don’t want to romance that goat, don’t wear the amulet talking to it :P It really IS that simple, isn’t it? If you choose to be bothered with it at that point, it’s your personal problem and showing a slight bit too much sensitivity for the issue as far as I’m concerned. Don’t rain on other people’s parades – be nice, be glad there are more options in the game rather than less so that more people can play the character they want to play which is sort of what the Elder Scrolls games are about. This is, by the way, the way games are heading now. Dragon Age II was a lot more blunt about it than Skyrim is. You might want to get accustomed to the fact that chances are, game makers from now onwards will be open-minded about these kind of things, and if getting hit on by a few characters of your own gender is so absolutely bothersome and heinous, that’s your problem and you’ll just have to wait for the appropriate mods to remove the option, somewhere down the line. Don’t we all want more options, more freedom, more right to play the characters we want? If that’s the case, don’t we want the same for other people too? As for what’s ‘realistic’ and what was ‘possible in these times’, it’s not really an issue, is it? It’s not a historically accurate game. I’ve never seen any cat-people or lizard-men in our history books and like someone else mentioned, women weren’t really allowed to wear armour and fight for most of history. No mage’s colleges, no dragons, no ancient dwarven ruins or huge spiders or strange elf-folk that have gone blind in the dark. This isn’t history, it’s fantasy. If they say gay marriage is this acceptable, I’m afraid you’ll just have to live with it. Complain about it if you like but it will make no difference. I doubt you’ll see a lot of games of this type without gay relationships and marriages in them, from now on. Times are changing. Oh, and stop wearing the amulet and chatting guys up :P

Not that I think anyone's actually reading the topic now, but the texture is turning out quite nice. I started out too complicated and it didn't get across at all, but now I'm just working on making it higher quality and enhancing features, such as the lips, nostrils and eyelids (lower and upper) as well as adding a small birthmark, because this is mainly the texture for my own character. There's more shading in the face and more highlighting. Attached is a comparison between original texture (left) and the improved one (right), the eye texture isn't mine though (couldn't make any that didn't look blurry as heck and I don't even know what I did wrong, hehe, will try later). No makeup used.

Oh wow, I fixed it somehow, nevermind... but wow, the lips I'd painted looks awful... back to the drawing board, ha ha.

This is... this is driving me absolutely insane. I never had any problems with any of the other games I've modded for but in spite of clicking DXT5 option, I'm getting the very, very glossy look on my face. It's a little less glossy now but she looks oily. My texture itself isn't oily by any means so I don't know what I'm doing wrong. If you have a moment, talk to me like you'd talk to an idiot (hey, that's me! :D ): in a DDS converter (using DDS converter 2.1 now or photoshop's inbuilt filter, getting same problems), which options do I need to click or unclick? I know I'm being difficult it just feels like I've tried every single option. I'm not touching anything but the 0d.dds files, gah... :/ I'll keep trying after dinner. I've got plans to do a really nice freckled texture as well as a femme fatale, alas...

That sounds like it might be it. I'll try again (apparently I kept my psd though I thought I tossed it in anger, hehe), and see if it works (if I can figure out how to do it). Thank you!

All right, I’ve been fretting back and forth, and I’ve finally decided I need to be able to create new face textures, tattoos, and similar for my own game and if it works out, release them so others can enjoy. Alas, while I’m an experienced texturer, I am absolutely awful as far as the technical side goes. Games just keep getting more complicated and I imagine I'm not clever enough to texture for them for much longer, hehe. What I tried was applying my freshly painted texture to a downloaded one (having replaced it entirely, I just wanted to use their DDS file to figure out how it would work in this game) and then save it through photoshop’s exported DDS plug-in, but unfortunately, it’s looking horrendous. For some reason, in the editor it turns super-glossy and shiny, like the face is covered with lard and I’m barely able to see the texture at all. Never having had this problem with other games I’ve textured for, I’m well aware of the fact that there’s something I’m missing that I need to figure out but I can’t quite figure it out. Are there any specific settings I need to use? Do I need to edit both files (there was one ending with _0n.dds and one with _0d.dds, I edited the one that looked like an actual face rather than the map one)? Will it make a difference if I skip using the DDS converter in Adobe and download a separate program (though I can’t see why, Adobe’s always worked for me before :/ )? Anyway, I’m asking too many questions, I know. Just feeling a bit frustrated here. Any help is welcome! It might be that this is very simple and I'm just missing some integral part, or it might be it's just too complicated for me (in that case, dang, oh well...)

I understand the need to play your character, and not every character fits into every plot. But a game is always made with a storyline in mind. In this case, to play a Gray Warden, someone part of an ancient order with mysterious origins that has fallen out of grace, as of late, and trying to save the world in spite of how some now loathe you and think of you as traitors. If you’re just a regular hero, it sort of doesn’t make any sense or doesn’t have a point anymore. There are plenty of regular-hero-games, but this one, you’re a Grey Warden in, end of story. I was also struck by how cruel the initiation was, how harsh the recruiting was, but I thought it fit the world marvellously. Duncan seems to often have to do things in an underhanded way to get the best recruits. I get that. He was looking for the right people, regardless of who he had to step over in the process. With the world at stake, I can see how he can accept some casualties. It’s a game of great greyscales, and I love it. Loghain isn’t necessarily that much more evil than Duncan is. Your character isn’t always doing the ‘good’ thing, heck, so many places where I paused and thought, uhh, what now? If I do this, I’m sort of a b*tch, but if I do THAT… I’m sort of worse, argh! If you’re playing a character that doesn’t want to be that hero, or even that anti-hero (because there certainly are some choices you can make along the way that are everything but heroic), then you need to get that player into another game, it won’t fit into Dragon Age. Even back in the good old pen’n’paper days, most game masters I came across had a storyline in mind, somewhere they were guiding the player towards, and a lot of choices were taken away from the player (that wasn’t how I ‘GM’d’, but it was usually the case). Dragon Age has options, you can take different roads at different points, but it still steers you along in a certain way. On the other side of the spectrum, you have games like Morrowind (love it!) and Oblivion (not so splendid) where you can run about doing whatever you like… but the price of endless options is every option being less well thought out, and clumsier and with less intent behind it. I, too, felt frustrated among the dwarves but inciting a riot? Might as well add the option of regicide, putting yourself on the throne, putting Oghren on the throne, putting whoever on the throne, and suddenly it’s a whole game just getting the dwarves to join you, and who knows how many more options the programmers have to add and how many voice acting hours, and how many programming hours, just because you derail at a point in the story where you already have two choices. At this point in the gaming industry, you get either the full on super-freedom games like Oblivion, where you sacrifice story and actual interaction with characters for freedom, the in-between-games like Dragon’s Age where you have some freedom but more story and more interaction with what you’re offered, and then games like Mass Effect 2 where choice is left behind but the story becomes very vivid and almost movie-like. Maybe one day you can run around and do whatever you like in a game and have voice acting and depth and turn any corner, meet any person, and make whatever choice you like, (kill both kings-to-be, be the king, make someone else the king, incite riot, leave them kingless, force them to help anyway, etc, etc, and every idea someone might have that they think better than what the game already offers). As far as I’m concerned, Dragon Age offers the most pleasing compromise so far. I’m happy to create a character that will sort of fit into the storyline, and won’t emo-storm-off when things aren’t going his or her way (shame on you, Alistair!).