Gah. I hate this system so much. Any advice would be appreciated.

Hawk’s Official Facebook

I promise, I didn’t do it because I’m seeking likes or attention. I’m simply looking for an easy way to communicate with fans that doesn’t involve comments buried in a blog, or on YouTube. I want you to know when new eps are coming out, and if/why their are delays easily. I also want you to be able to communicate with ME more easily, whether that’s cursing my lack of updates or having a discussion about Half-Life.

Please don’t stop commenting in the blog or on the videos of course; but I figure this will give us all a way to stay connected much more easily.

Now, obviously my site’s not black–no one would care if it was, frankly. (I know the videos I’ve promised aren’t up yet by the way, but that’s due to an unrelated technical issue. I would never bait you guys by saying I had videos to post, then not post them just to make a political point.)

Now, as much as I like to, I don’t make my living doing this, so my livelihood is not threatened. My hobby, and several hundred hours of my time to date are though–and so is your entertainment. So are all of the video creators I love. (Just look at my blogroll–none of those people would be around if this is passed and enforced to it’s full extent.) It’s well worth your time to write your congressman and even more importantly, to vote in the next election. We don’t just want SOPA gone–we want anyone foolhardy enough to support it gone. Because that means they’re either so technologically behind they don’t understand why these bills are terrible, or (even worse) that they FULLY understand why they’re terrible, and SUPPORT THEM ANYWAY. There are many updated lists of politicians and corporations who support these things. Take note of them, and vote and act accordingly.

In closing, I give you Neil Gaiman and Friends.

Ah, the Skyrim theme. It’s not Morrowind, but damn it’s beautiful. The male choir is gorgeous, and sets the Viking-like tone very well indeed. And so does the scenery as the game opens–trees, mountains, snow…in fact I feel quite at home. I spent four years at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks and loved it, -60F temperatures and all. I immediately feel that familiar chill as the opening scene fades in.

Of course, as is Elder Scrolls tradition, my character is a prisoner. I hadn’t specifically known this ahead of time, but it’s hardly a surprise. I’m not sure I’m a huge fan of this convention–it rather limits the hypothetical background you can give your character–but it is an easy way to get you into (and out of) a tutorial and character creation quickly. As an Elder Scrolls veteran, I already know what race I want to play–a Wood Elf. They’ve always been my favorite. And although I usually play a male (purely because the female versions of armor–especially the light armor I favor–is insultingly skimpy) I think I will try a female this time. The screenshots I’ve seen have shown at least some suits of reasonable armor for female Dovakhiin, so that will be nice.

My fellow prisoners–none, sadly as endearing as my good friend Jiub (whatever happened to him, anyhow? I hope he got released as well)–talk for a bit, and don’t tell me much of anything I don’t already know from Skyrim‘s marketing department. There’s a civil war, and it seems that a small band of Nord freedom fighters and/or terrorists are attempting to force Skyrim to cede from the Empire. As much as I know the writers probably want me to sympathize with the rebels, nothing Ulfric Stormcloak says here convinces me OR my character that he’s playing with a full deck. Maybe this is residual Imperial sympathy from the last two games, but much of his ‘inspirational speech’ sounds like militant Texans demanding their own country. (And yes I AM allowed to make fun of Texas–I was born there.) While I understand his position, I–the player–have far too much love for the Empire after the events of Morrowind and Oblivion to immediately get on the rebel bandwagon.

But does my character? That’s the question. Granted I haven’t been through character creation yet, but I already know who she is/will be shortly. A female Wood Elf named Accipiter Dulintaure. Great with a bow, fair with a sword, and able to disappear into the shadows at will. (I’ve played a variation on this same character since Arena.) She’s a bit of an oddball–a ranged fighter who wears light armor and sneaks like a thief, but has virtually no lockpicking or pickpocket ability. She’s a ranger, not a thief. And although almost all of her skills revolve around agility (including her crafting–no self respecting ranger wouldn’t be able to create a healing salve using alchemy after all), her main crafting skill is smithing. In fact, on the rare occasions she stays in town (and away from hunting) for an extended period, smithing is how she makes her coin. How does someone like that end up in Skyrim with an Imperial death sentence? Well the first part is fairly easy, I suppose–the hunting in Skyrim must be some of the best in all of Tamriel. Although conditions are harsh, there would be no better place for my little Wood Elf to ply her trade. Skins and furs must be in high demand here as well, and fetch a fair price.

The second part is trickier. The best I can do on short notice as the execution cart makes its way towards its destination is to decide that poor (Acci)Piter was acting as a guide to these rebels. She’s a ranger, she lives in the woods–what does she care for sides in a civil war in a country that’s not her own? Had the Imperials asked her, she would have led them to their destination just as gladly, for the same price. But as it happened, she was acting as a guide for rebels when they were ambushed. Guilt by association. And since the leader of the band she was guiding just happened to be the leader of all the rebels…she was sentenced to share their fate. One imagines that the Imperials, flush from the triumph of capturing the rebel leader, would hardly have time for the protestations of one Wood Elf. Kill ‘em all, and let the Nine sort them out.

And so my character is created, just in time to meet the headsman. While the Imperials are rough with us I–the player–can’t really blame them. From where they sit, they just caught an Al Quadea leader, and are about to put him and his closest allies down. Piter, as the one about to be wrongfully killed because the stupid Imperials won’t stop and listen for a quarter of a second, is less sympathetic. And even *I* become a little less sympathetic when the writers straight-up force me to watch a guy lose his head. I’ve seen some brutal stuff in the Elder Scrolls universe, but nothing caught me off guard quite like this. I’m not sure why–I guess I just assumed SOMETHING would happen before any of us were killed. That, and the very matter of fact way it just HAPPENED–no heroic music, nothing special, just CHOP–lent in an air of authenticity that was quite surprisingly disturbing.

Then, of course, a giant dragon attacks, and everything goes all to hell.

I run like hell, genuinely frightened I might die and loose the half hour I put into character creation (it doesn’t seem to let me quicksave yet.) Eventually I make my way through town and find myself at a crossroads–one of the rebels is shouting at me to follow, and an Imperial is shouting the same. It doesn’t take me long to figure out what Piter would do, In spite of my own love for the Empire, there’s no WAY she’s following the uniform of the man who just tried to have her killed. So we follow the rebel through the tutorial dungeon, and are finally cut loose in the world of Skyrim. Before he suggests we part ways, the rebel does tell me where to go if I want to join his group (called the Stormcloaks, after Ulfric–further proof that guy might be a little unhinged.) I’m certainly not ready to make that commitment, and neither is Piter following several near death experiences in a row. She wants to get the hell away from this town and everyone in it, and I want to find my way to the main quest and start kicking some dragon scale before I get bogged down in the politics of the region. Besides, Piter might be pissed at the soldiers that tried to kill her, but the Empire is what helps keep order in Tamriel, and their laws help create peaceful trade and commerce (not to mention the ability to travel freely and relatively safely) between regions. If not for them, her life would be far poorer. There’s no way she’s ready to sign up with folks attempting to drive away the Empire because of a few idiot soldiers, and the fact that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

That’s where we’ll end the first installment for now. I leave you with a picture (taken a bit after this, when I actually remembered to start capturing screenshots) of Piter in the first (big) town I ended up exploring.

Piter and I like wolves, so we ended up here first. Leather armor and bow courtesy some very unfortunate and stupid bandits who got in our way.

Meet Temba Wide-Arm, my new favorite Skyrim NPC. If you don’t know why that name is absolutely freaking awesome…well then, Sokath, your eyes remain covered.

InusSonCurtis, this one is for you.

Cut Beta Quote about the 7 hour war:

“There was an illusion of safety, for a time. And then the Citadels appeared. It happened in a split second, all over the world. A chunk would disappear from the center of a city, to be replaced an instant later by one of these… headquarters for the Combine. Invasion Central.”
-Eli Maxwell (later renamed Eli Vance, after General Vance[whose role in he plot was taken by Barny] was cut)

This also talks about the Citadel’s arrival on Earth, whether or not it’s still cannon is unknown but it makes sense.

Another peace of cut content said that the UN asked Breen to negotiate the surrender of earth, but that is on vary shaky ground.

But now let me ask you something, wouldn’t you do the same? To save the humanity from extinction at the hands(or whatever) of an alien empire? ‘The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.’

Well. For all my blustering about hating Breen and wanting to shove my (sadly non-existent in this game) M-4 up his rear end, I was NOT expecting to be confronted with the moral quandary he faced. I mean, Breen wasn’t a bad guy, or he wasn’t at Black Mesa. He’s not a bad or evil man, although I think he’s thoroughly misguided by this point. Whether he’s taking advantage of the situation or simply being misled by the Combine, I don’t know.

But as for what *I* would do in his shoes? Well, I’m not sure. Having to negotiate the surrender of my entire planet/species is a little beyond my ken. However, I have had to entertain this kind of moral dilemma on a much smaller scale in the military. As an officer, it’s my job to lead my soldiers, and let them know when and where we need to fight. I should qualify that by pointing out that I’m not in the Infantry, obviously–combat arms branches are still closed to women. But given the nature of the current conflict we’re facing, it doesn’t matter all that much. The bad guys attack anyone and everyone–there are no ‘front lines’ and no ‘safe’ places to be.

I’m in the Signal Corps–my job is to set up computer and radio communications to make sure that people can talk to each other. Let’s say I have a communications relay set up on some hill top that my Platoon and I are in charge of setting up and running. And let’s say that suddenly, and without warning, we’re absolutely overwhelmed by the enemy. So overwhelmed that it’s clear we’re going to be overrun, with no way out, and no reinforcements that can get here in time. What do I do?

Obviously there are a ton of variables involved–just how overwhelmed are we, how tactically sensitive is this communications relay, etc. But this is a hypothetical morality exercise, not the real world. Let’s assume that we’re just as overwhelmed as Earth was during the Seven Hour War. And let’s assume–charitably–that the enemy has offered us the option of fighting to the death, in a very clearly losing cause, or surrendering. Well under those circumstances, I’d make the same decision the UN made in Half Life 2–you’re damn right I surrender. Throwing away lives at that point won’t do anyone any good at all. So from where I sit, surrender was the right–really the only–option. No fault of Breen’s that it came to that.

But here, it gets tricky. Breen didn’t just negotiate the surrender to the Combine. He became Earth’s liaison with them. That makes sense to me too. And NOW he’s their mouthpiece, feeding the masses the information–and ONLY the information–that the Combine want them to hear. He’s gone from negotiator to active oppressor. The equivalent (very roughly) of keeping my soldiers alive in my hypothetical military scenario by allowing them to fight for the bad guys. Or more accurately, by keeping them alive by fighting for the bad guys myself.

Could I do that? Maybe. If you held a gun to my head, probably not (I hope), but if you held a gun to an 18 year old Private’s head? I bet I could. The question is, IS that the actual dilemma that Breen is facing? Are the Combine telling him, “say and do these things, or we’ll annihilate your world”? Or has he been given more freedom than that? I honestly don’t know–nor am I intended to at this point in the game, I think.

What little I can tell comes from his voice actor (who is very, VERY good.) I don’t think Breen is making up–or even being told to say–anything on those Breencasts. He genuinely sounds like he believes what he’s saying–the last one, where he started talking about the One Free Man started getting near-religious in fervor. I think that whatever Breen’s motives were in the beginning, he is SOLIDLY in the Combine camp now. I don’t think he just wants to SAVE humanity anymore; I think he honestly believes that the Combine are genuinely GOOD for humanity, and that what they’re offering represents a step forward.

If that’s true, then the question becomes this: is it worth fighting the Combine and dying–possibly wiping out our entire species–to stop the kind of oppression they’ve saddled us with? Now think about that–pretend this isn’t just a video game where you know Freeman will prevail thanks to Hawk’s quick thinking (and reload spamming). Could you genuinely take up arms against the Combine knowing that not only will YOU die, for sure, but that the rebellion you’re a part of might lead to the extinction of all humans?

Rough call. I don’t know that I’ve seen enough yet to be able to make that choice, honestly. The only REAL kind of oppression I’ve seen so far is fairly basic; it’s really no worse than what humans have been doing to each other for thousands of years. The Dampening Field is disturbing, and that, coupled with everything else, might be worth giving up my OWN life–but I don’t know if what I’ve seen so far is worth risking the species.

I dunno. Without spoiling any big revelations yet to come, what would you do?

In honor of the place where I stopped the second video, which should be up soon, I should let you all know that there is another reason I’ve been a bit delinquent on my video making and blog posting:

Yeah. I got attacked by a headcrab. Sadly for me, it wasn’t Lamaar, and it kind of decided to take control of my brain. So THANK YOU VERY MUCH to the (amazingly awesome) fan who sent me this alien-spawned brain sucker, and condemned me to an existence of living death and muffled screaming. (I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to out your name on the site, so if you’d like, feel free to take credit in the comments if you are so inclined.)

In other, possibly more important news, I have a situation that I was not expecting: I own a copy of Skyrim. I could never have bought it, but a good friend of mine gave it to me as a Veteran’s Day gift. Obviously I’m going to start playing like, as soon as I finish typing this (and I’ll start recording the playthrough just in case), but I’m not sure if this would be a great LP. Open world games are notorious for being difficult to watch. So, I’m leaving it up to you guys: do you want to see a blind Skyrim LP, even if it involves a lot of me running around being lost and doing nothing? I’m actually okay with it either way. But I want to know what you think.

As an alternative to a full LP, I could simply play with video on and post any actually interesting/funny things that happen. Or I could BLOG about the game, rather than make it a video LP. I do like written LPs on other sites.

Hmm. Right now I’m leaning towards the written LP. I think that would really be the best of both worlds: it would allow you to hear my reaction to the game, while cutting out the boring parts. Naturally, this LP would have several screenshots per post, as well as video supplements.

But, you guys are my audience, so I’m interested in what you think. Post away!

Last weekend, my best friend and I made a trip up to Disneyland. This isn’t unusual for us, as we only live a couple of hours away. “But Hawk,” I can hear you saying. “This is a nerd blog. Why are you telling us about your vacation when you should be playing Half-Life 2 and/or Portal?”

Because, my friends. Because I have found It. I have discovered my own personal Shambhala–a nerd Mecca unlike anything I had thought possible in this day and age. Now, I know my reader/viewership tends to skew a little young (younger than I am, anyway) because I LP relatively modern games, so not all of you may appreciate this as much as I did. You might find it interesting nonetheless, though–this is, in many ways, the story of where my love of video games came from.

I grew up in the 80s and early 90s. Although I just missed what most consider to be the golden age of the video arcade, the arcade culture was still very much alive and well when I was a kid. This is where I discovered video games–in various mall arcades, and also at the (at the time) very large arcades present in Chuck E. Cheeses. At first it was with games like Asteroids, Space Invaders, Dig Dug, Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Mario Brothers…all those. As technology progressed, the games got much cooler–that’s where I discovered things like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, the classic Simpsons and X-Men arcade games…even lame gimmick shooters like Area 51 would eat quite a few dollars worth of quarters over the course of a day at the arcade.

Of course, nowadays I don’t have time to go to arcades even if there were good ones still around. The few arcade-esque places in existence carry modern games–Guitar Hero cabinets, DDR, all those. And that’s not a bad thing, that’s just evolution–but it’s not the arcade I grew up with, and not one I’m interested in spending time in. Especially not when most of the games are upwards of a buck a play! (Seriously, one song on a GH cabinet costs a whole dollar–and you don’t even get to keep playing if you win! What kind of an arcade game is that?!)

Well friends and neighbors, after almost 15 years of searching for something I didn’t even know I really missed, I have found it. At the Disney’s California Adventure theme park (Disneyland’s younger and lesser-themed brother.) There, Disney has created something remarkable. It’s called ElecTRONica, and it happens every weekend. Now, this event would be pretty damn fun it its own right; it takes place on weekend nights and involves a really cool TRON-themed street party with techno music, live DJ and dancers, and even–and this is truly amazing for a Disney park–a bar. An overpriced bar sure, but it’s a theme park, what do you expect? The drink selection is not large at all, but it is fun, and they call come either in a glowing glass or with a cool glowing “ice cube” inside them. There are places to stand, places to sit, places to dance. To give you an idea of how good this was, I HATE going to clubs, I refuse to ever go to a rave…and yet I had the time of my life here.

What does that have to do with arcades and going back to the 80s, you might ask? I’m glad you brought that up, reader. In addition to the really cool street party, DCA has seen fit to include one more small piece of TRON-themed goodness at this weekly event:

This, ladies and gentlemen, is Flynn’s Arcade. I had noticed the sign during the day, when the place was all closed up, and had assumed it was just a cool bit of decoration or set dressing. NOT. SO. During ElecTRONica, the doors open and…

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, because we were too busy playing and listing to all the old 80s music being pumped in over the sound system to take any more pictures. It was like being seven again (in a world where you’re allowed to enjoy a beer at seven.) Every single game I remember from childhood was there–they even had an old school air hockey table!–and all of them–every single one–was only one token.

Yeah, token! They even had a token machine. Looked just like the ones I remember.

Anyway, that was a bit of a ramble, but I had to share it with you. If you’re in the neighborhood and get a chance, check it out–it’s well worth spending an hour or two. Because the games are only a quarter each, you get a lot of bang for your buck, and it’s just so much fun. Whether the place is a new experience or brings back memories like it did for me, if you’re in SoCal and going to the parks, put this near the top of your list of things to experience.

So apparently the Combine have weaponized headcrabs. This is not something I had foreseen. (And apparently some of these headcrabs come pre-stocked with explosives, but that’s another blog entry.)

Aside from just being a cool idea, let’s step back for a moment and think about this logically. When humans conquer something, what’s the usual objective? Power, right? (Not that there aren’t other motives, but we’ll get to those in a moment.) If the Combine is launching zombie-creating headcrabs at people–rendering entire areas inconvenient to reclaim at best–then this means one of two things: they don’t care about humans, or they don’t care about land. (Or maybe they care about neither one.) Maybe we’ll learn which later on–maybe the Combine actually will send troops in to clean out the area. Or maybe they’ll be content to let all the non-City areas become post-apocalyptic nightmares, which is exactly what will happen if they use this weapon regularly.

Which choice the Combine makes is actually very important. See, we know they want to keep humans alive–clearly they have systems in place to provide for them at least minimally, and aside from that, they didn’t exterminate the species on invading, which it seems they could have done fairly easily if they had wanted to. So we serve some purpose to them. Slave labor, maybe? All of those City citizens must have jobs–perhaps they’re being forced to work for the Combine. (What a human could possibly do that would benefit such a technological species is beyond me, but then humans have found uses for slaves in all sorts of cultures, so who knows.) Clearly they DON’T care enough about humans to worry about infecting an entire countryside’s worth of population though. (Unless, like I said, they have some clean up plan in place–but that would be a LOT of resources to spend, when they could have just used regular rockets and weapons instead, if it was something they cared about.)

I’m going to assume that the Combine understands resource management, and thus doesn’t care about reclaiming the places they’ve infected. That pretty well eliminates land and power as a motivation for them. This has gone from 1984 to something far, far worse, just like that. Even the Party, while it certainly wasn’t shy about killing those who opposed it, wanted as many bodies under it’s control as possible–more people, more power, more laborers too. But this seems to demonstrate that the Combine are oddly indifferent to that. This is especially troubling given the elaborate systems they have in place for supporting humans within the City. They clearly NEED humans–but they don’t need ALL the humans they can get. And they don’t need our land either.

I suppose their motive could be resources–if you’re going to use magic alien tech to strip mine an area (or whatever), I guess you don’t really care one way or the other if it was covered in zombies before you started laser-drilling. If that was the case though, wouldn’t it have been easier to simply exterminate the humans before sucking the world dry? And why haven’t we seen any evidence of that at all, if resource gathering is indeed their goal?

No, the Combine want humans. But they don’t care WHAT humans, and they don’t care if many are needlessly lost along the way. This is getting into Twilight Zone “To Serve Man” territory. And while I doubt they’re using us for food (and they’re not right? Because that would be stupid), whatever cog we ARE serving as must be far from pleasant. And I have the distinct and very nasty feeling we haven’t even seem the tip of the iceberg yet. (Also, I’m only like four hours into the game, and there’s no way Valve would tip their whole hand this early.)