Skyrim, Immersion, and a Question of Genre

[cheimison]

I just wanted to comment that what's wrong with a lot of the arguments for Skyrim survival mods is that they don't understand the literature. Conan, Elric and Aragorn do not rest between fights - at least not for long, and they don't get Skeever Dickrot from scratching themselves on twigs in the forest. They can run for - literally - days at a time. Skyrim's immersion problems come from the fact that nobody acknowledges that you are a demigod, not because you don't have a piss meter.

In this game you literally play a reincarnated demigod, if not a god outright. You are the Eternal Champion of Moorcock trope, and this is a 'thing' in Elder Scrolls. Those people in Riften and working at Battleborn Farm are the people who have to build a fire to camp, who worry about getting lost, etc. Through supernatural hardihood, divine luck and plain eugenics you are a person who is so naturally superior that you can not make a place for yourself in the world and are constantly at war with it, this is like the point of your character; conquest, ravaging not merely particular enemies but whole social orders and ancient traditions fall before you. Your character isn't a nameless soldier, he's not even Alexander, he's Anomander Rake. Of course he's better than everyone at everything.

Now, Skyrim being an engine and an open game I can see that people may prefer to play it as a survival and crafting game, or whatever. But that's because they're not playing the character that TES are supposed to be about, not a fault of the game engine. Indeed, I generally find many of these so tedious that I question if real people (with stuff like spatial sense and rumble in their gut) would have so much difficulty getting their shite together as these modded characters do, but that aside, it simply is not in genre for your character to actually be threatened by the sorts of trivial s*** that other people are. You are, literally, better than them.

Also, a lot of the characters are not even human - like half the races - what do you know about elf eating habits? If they're anything like mythical Sidhe/Oni, etc. they probably are made more of magic than not, and I've never heard of an elf with frostbite - they are nature gods, the Vanir at least. In fact, if anything the game engine underplays the inhumanity of the Mer, which the lore is much more keen to emphasize.

Aside from Appendix N literature, Indo-European and Babylonian mythology will tell you a lot more about the logic of TES than treating him like a frail, merely human thing. These guys are hardcore compared to vikings like vikings are compared to fat Swedish bankers. Most people today underestimate the hardihood and chutzpah of the ancients (who couldn't just give up and get a desk job when things got hard), much less the mythological ideal of the Warrior/Mage who occupies so much of the literature of the ancients. There is a whole cycle of post-Vedic literature covering a mage who enslaves a race of demons, a man who is chopped to pieces and survives; Gilgamesh bodyslammed an ogre the size of a freakin' mountain. 'Realistic needs' are inaccurate to such a being, personally I'd prefer 'realistic responses to your being an invulnerable demigod who tosses off magical artifacts for practice'. Is your character an unstoppable badass? Well, that's how it's supposed to be.

Even the part where you go nuts and kill your allies for trivial reasons is in-character. Herakles, Rustem, etc. it's even got a term in the literature 'the sins of the warrior'. You put up with the murderous Pelinel Whitestrakes because they're your only hope when slaying dragons and, also, because they will eat you alive if you annoy them.

Edited November 29, 2015 by cheimison