Update from a Fake Place

Who wants lumber? One of the towns I've visited in Skyrim has a fully functional lumber mill--the flowing river powers by wheel a saw that cuts the massive log you see my character moving in this screenshot. I'm not sure if there's any use for it, but I love the detail. It's part of a whole very credible feeling system to create the feeling of a functioning medieval community and as always I love the verisimilitude.

I'm a few days into playing Skyrim now and I'm loving it. I haven't even started with the main plot yet--I've just been wandering and going after bounties on bandit leaders. I've played through three dungeons now, stalking and killing bandits. So I've been sneaking a lot--thus my character's bare feet--boots and shoes actually make you easier to detect at early levels. That's how it was in Oblivion, but Skyrim's sneaking system is slightly more sophisticated. Now if I shoot an arrow at someone and miss, for example, the bandits take notice. A couple places I've been in have strings of bones hanging from the ceiling, put there by the bandits because when you walk into them they make noise, the bones clinking against another dynamically for the intricate physics system rather than being some canned animation. The first time I blundered into one, three bandits came running.



The dungeons are nice and atmospheric, too. They have less of the prefab feel of some of Oblivion's dungeons.

Twitter Sonnet #323

Rabbit footed flying ants are lucky.
Fortune's crown multiplies teeth of the fork.
A half man still can't kill Nazgul Duckie.
Luckless congress cookies are filled with pork.
Citrus assassins sneak through the juice gate.
Penny faces fade back to Civil War.
Elbows defy sleeves of feather light weight.
Alfred stencils bats in suits 'til he's sore.
Gold leaf skitters across the cruise ship deck.
Cool Caliban peeps over the railing.
White scale tightens around a bottle neck.
Negative chalk is black in the telling.
Ariel crafts small cotton candy men.
Carnival specks spell constellation spin.