The Sky Has No Rim

A couple months ago, I remarked that I was the weirdo still playing Bethesda's twelve year old game Skyrim while the rest of the world had moved on to Bethesda's brand new game, Starfield. Well, it turns out I'm not such an oddball as the number of people playing Skyrim has been edging out the number playing Starfield. At this rate, unless something changes, I wouldn't be surprised if Skyrim was consistently outpacing Starfield by January.

Would could change? There could be a whole bunch of mods, though it'd have to be some pretty drastic ones to overcome the basic lack of joy players seem to have found in the game's principal features. Bethesda games are famous for allowing the player to freely explore vast territory and it seems Starfield's vast territory is dull as dirt. Much of it, indeed, seems literally to be dirt as exploring often involves crossing vast reaches of barren landscape. That sounds like more of a punishment than a game, if you ask me.

It's not so unlike the Fallout games. Fallout 4 may be much more complex, with more character creation options and various forms of dynamic gameplay, but it still all boils down to running around in a junkyard. In Skyrim, you have forests, snowy peaks, and ancient Nordic tombs. Even the worst places have an attractive aesthetic in one way or another.

Starfield, even if it weren't dull and ugly, would still have to compete with the wealth of user made mods that have accrued over more than a decade. Of the 110 mods I use with my copy of Skyrim, several are graphics and and sound mods. You can't honestly call it a purely 12 year old game. In many ways, a modded Skyrim is as up to date as recent releases. And the mods, conceivably, may only improve as years pass. What might this suggest about the future of video games as a whole? For years, people have already been complaining that games are being released unfinished. That doesn't generally include Bethesda games, but many of the mods for Bethesda games are devoted to fixing bugs or streamlining code in the vanilla releases. Could we get to the point where game studios just release bare frameworks, or starter kits of animation and graphics, and then expect online communities to generate free content on their own?

Just look at all the free labour that's gone into the Beyond Skyrim mod that's been in construction for several years. A mod endeavouring to fill out the entire fantasy world in which the country of Skyrim is located, Beyond Skyrim features not only custom graphics, items, coding, gameplay, and writing but even composers of original music, teams of musicians, as well as professional quality voice acting. Are studios asking themselves what is the bare minimum of product they can put out to trigger a volunteer labour force as massive as Skyrim's?

This is my latest character, Grushenka, named after a character I had in Morrrowind over twenty years ago who was originally named after the character in The Brothers Karamazov. Her dress is based on a 1660 gown and comes from a mod. Her sword is a silver rapier which comes from a weapons mod that also includes custom animations. Her hair comes from a mod that includes hair that utilises modded physics and, thanks to another mod, is blown naturally by the wind across the tundra. I'm using a modded combat system as well as a modded survival mode that adds detrimental effects from cold weather, hunger, and lack of sleep. This particular mod was an official Bethesda release but the hunger portion of it was ridiculous. Only a few items of the game's vast collection of foods were actually able to sate the player character's hunger. A helpful user mod revamped the whole system based on a the real world calorie content of Bethesda's assortment of in game foods including bread, fruit, meat, pastries, etc. This, of course, adds a whole new dimension to the game, another thing that keeps it feeling fresh.

X Sonnet #1790

It starts with dust and ghosts of blasted cars.
The restless heath explodes with howling blooms.
But autumn crashed across the tracks of bars.
Another drink at three before her looms.
The plan was never red and blue apart.
Again the arms combine to make a pact.
Where larger feet would tread's a bigger heart.
Where angels like to walk we seldom act.
It's rolling snow that stills the mind.
Collapsing crusts of diamond blanks abide.
The mental world adheres to freezing rind.
In storage, melons broke before the bride.
In scattered clouds, the viewer sees some dots.
The cluttered points reveal confusing spots.

Dungeons, Dragons, and Intoxicants

Somewhere in the space between fantasy and a cosy evening hanging out with your friends is Dungeons & Dragons. And so, too, is 2023's Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, a good movie, much to my surprise. Now I'd be surprised if this thing doesn't become a smash hit.

Remember how good Marvel movies used to be? Remember that smile you had on your face after you saw Thor: Ragnarok? That's where this new Dungeons & Dragons movie will send you. But actually the closest comparison I can think of is The Princess Bride or possibly Your Highness (though Honor Among Thieves is much better than the latter).

It's a medieaval fantasy setting with loose fidelity to any kind of lore or canon, despite being based on the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. The characters all feel very modern, indeed like a group of friends who meet regularly at a bar. Yet it's not so loose that you feel like nothing matters. As in The Princess Bride, the heart comes entirely from a real sense of the characters' concerns for and interests in each other. Which makes it a perfect adaptation of the D&D gaming experience.

This was what it was like playing D&D in high school. We kids were no medievalists, we didn't know how to talk like Chaucer. We were American teenagers improvising shit, often telling jokes along the way, but still with an earnest desire to advance the story and achieve our characters' goals. Although D&D started as groups of friends wanting to live in the world of Tolkien, the appeal of the series has had less and less to do with the Tolkien interest in world-building and more about providing an alternate context for the players to act out drama. So, while popular fantasy of the past twenty-five years or so, things like Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and Harry Potter have depended upon creating a credible world with a sense of culture, history, and civilisations, Honor Among Thieves presents us with a hodgepodge. You won't be able to infer a character's ancestry from their skin colour, accent, or clothing. The cities and towns are free-wheeling blends of European, Middle Eastern, and Asian aesthetics applied with no rhyme or reason. I was able to have some fun when things like Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter, and the Underdark were name-checked but they bore little particular resemblance to the Forgotten Realms books I read or video games I played.

What I love is that the cast actually played Dungeons & Dragons in character before filming began. Which was absolutely the right thing to do and it comes through in the rapport they have on screen. More movies should do that. Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Justice Smith, and Sophia Lillis are a tight crew with truly entertaining chemistry, particularly Pine and Rodriguez. And Rodriguez is captivating in the fight scenes which are excellently choreographed. I only wish her costume were better.

Hugh Grant squeezes some delicious nuance from his typical pompous villain dialogue, making his character just complex enough to be interesting, and Daisy Head as his evil magic-user compatriot is gorgeous.

If you're looking for a good time, this movie's got it.

Twitter Sonnet #1683

We know the drink is acid 'cause its green.
She never shops for shells on Dragon Beach.
On fateful days her figure's clearly seen.
No drake but orcs to claim the lass would reach.
For us, the horses stumble off the track.
She slipped a desert wind beneath his coat.
And so a winter chill went up his back.
But nothing's changed the single sailor boat.
A destined hand forsook the kingly sword.
Portentous trees had choked the lonely way.
But sightless sisters sought the pond to ford.
Adrift amid a sea of green were they.
Chaotic stripes conform to easy nights.
A cam'ra deftly tracks the friendly fights.

Japan Continued

My little winter vacation is coming to an end and I'm feeling especially lazy to-day. So here are some pictures that have accumulated on my camera over the past week.

I did go back to Kashiharajingu and was it ever packed.

Covid numbers have been very low in Japan lately and I guess everyone was itching to get back to the normal New Year's temple visit.

Aside from the temple that day, I haven't been getting out much for this vacation. I worked on my comic, though not as much as I'd have liked because I didn't have tracing paper. I'd taken my pad of tracing paper to work a few weeks ago and it rained when I walked home. The whole pad of paper got warped. So on Monday I journeyed to the one place I around here I knew of where I could get some more, a shop called Stationery Club, five train stations north of me and a bit of a walk. As I was leaving the train station, I ran into some second year students from the school where I'm currently working (so they're around 14 years old). Two boys and one girl. They were all eating karaage, Japanese style fried chicken, and walking to Twin Gate. Looks like the Japanese taboo against walking and eating at the same time is dying. They told me they were going bowling. Twin Gate has bowling, darts, video games, slot machines, a movie theatre, a comics shop, and I think pachinko. I was advised never to go into pachinko parlours so I can look like an upstanding citizen. I hate gambling anyway so that's one piece of advice I don't mind following.

Stationery Club was closed so I dropped by Twin Gate on the walk back to have a look around. I ran into a group of high school boys who'd graduated from one of the junior high schools I'd worked at last year. I remember them as a mischievous bunch and I was happy to see them there, hanging out in front of the ice cream shop, posturing like gangsters. The ice cream shop was closed, too, and one of the guys informed me that it was closed until January 4th. Not everything was closed, though. I had a look around the arcade which was equally divided between video games and gambling machines. I didn't see pachinko in there so hopefully my reputation won't suffer. I certainly didn't play anything. I wouldn't have unless I saw a little Black Lodge floating above a machine.

In a lot near the Twin Gate there are these statues I first noticed some time ago:

I walked onto the lot and found this strange but sort of inconspicuous storefront near the back:

Inside was anything but inconspicuous. A used goods shop, it was filled with books, clothes, video games, jewellery, CDs, movies, gaming systems, swords, and guns. Lots of guns. Various handguns and rifles. Japanese gun laws are pretty strict yet here was this arsenal a few feet away from stacks of video games. Gun crime in Japan isn't close to what it is in the U.S., though, so they must be doing something right.

The place also had David Bowie's Outside album in a special two disk version for only 750 yen (around $7.50). I might go back for that.