I completed the “Forbidden Legend” side quest. I actually finished about one-third of the quest a long while ago, so the first part isn’t recorded. Still, it was a pretty long quest. It took me a while to solve some of the puzzles, and I hate all these stupid claws these quests use to open passages; it takes me forever to look through my bloated inventory for the right claw. So the gameplay on this is pretty boring. Plus, I went off an a tangent chasing a fox down a waterfall about halfway through. (God mode is great for jumping from deadly heights.)
I completed another older short side quest called “The Man Who Cried Wolf”, given to me by some guy in the Blue Palace in Solitude. This quest was rather boring; it only involved venturing into a cavern and killing a bunch of people. Oh, what madness! I probably should’ve taken the opportunity to practice more magic; I’ve been mostly using only flames lately.
Finished Skyrim’s quest called “The Horn of Jurgen Windcaller” to get the “Dah” of “Fus Ro Dah”. Then I went on to finish a much older side quest from Whiterun called “The Blessings of Nature”. Along the way, I ran into a frost dragon, who I lost patience with and succumbed to the lure of god mode. But I don’t mind cheating; the point is to have fun, and I have plenty of fun not having to worry about my health.
Completed the quest “A Cornered Rat” which involved leading the elderly Esbern out of the Ratway in Riften, but I didn’t record it. The videos below feature me finishing the quest “Alduin’s Wall”. There were two stupid frost dragons to defeat on the way, and one of them killed me a few times before I finally bested him. Then Esbern, Delphine (who really annoys me), and I had to defeat some pesky Forsworns before uncovering Sky Haven Temple and studying Alduin’s Wall. I am loving these quest patterns of action followed by revelation (story exposition and creation of new goals).
In an effort to make the main quest last longer, I will probably venture off to some other quest lines before continuing with “The Throat of the World” quest.
I found a more convenient way to upload gameplay videos to YouTube. I first installed the free Xvid video codec. I then downloaded the free VirtualDub video editing software. Then I simply batch-encoded all the uncompressed AVI files that Fraps spits out while recording gameplay. The re-encoded AVI videos look beautiful and take up far less disk space (4 GB to 200 MB). Re-encoding and uploading to YouTube still takes plenty of time, but very little attention. I can set those jobs to work, and walk away.
So I recorded something like an hour and a half of gameplay yesterday, playing through the “Diplomatic Immunity” quest in Skyrim. There’s a lot of wondering around the Thalmor estates, as I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking for or what exactly I needed to do. Turns out I needed to talk to a character to finish the quest, which was annoying. And I forgot to bring my lockpicks into the Thalmor estates, so I couldn’t unlock any doors without their keys. At the very end, I accidentally killed my accomplice as I tried to defend him against Thalmor soldiers. Oops. Sorry.
I wanted to experiment with videoing my boring PC gaming. Recording while playing slowed the frame rate, but not as much as I expected; it was still very playable. Uploading to YouTube was the real hassle. First I had to compress the video, which took my computer half an hour. Then I had to split the video into two files, because my YouTube account will only allow me to surpass my 15-minute limit if I “verify” my account by giving YouTube my mobile phone number. Sorry, YouTube, that ain’t happenin’. And then, of course, uploading takes plenty of time. Anyway, in the end, I captured my half hour of PC gaming today. In the future, I’ll probably only do screenshots. But recording video every now and then may be fun, now that I’m familiar with what I have to do to get it to YouTube.
So, I’ve spent about 55 hours playing Skyrim so far since I started playing last summer. But I’m only now starting the game’s main quest line. I spent a long time with various side quests, leveling up and collecting stuff. (And, yeah, I’m cheating with my carry limit, because carry limits are dumb. I want to carry everything.)
So in these videos I’m finishing the quest “A Blade in the Dark” and starting “Diplomatic Immunity” which I will continue next time I play.
