So apparently I have lurking fans! I would say I was shocked, but come on... When you're this incredibly hot, you get used to that sort of thing. I can't even tell you how many times a week i get stalked, because let's face it, when you're this chubby, you can't see past the moobs.
As for Xbox vs Playstation, let me clear that up right now. I'm a PC purist! I had a Sega Genesis up until I got my first computer, and then I gave away my Sega and never looked back. This was back in the early 90's. The mouse on a PC gives you pinpoint accuracy, and the keyboard gives you a huge variety of options for buttons, macros, strategies, and whatever else you need. Sure, you could plug a keyboard and mouse into a console, but you can't browse the web, install new software, upgrade your components, and generally futz around any way you want to, like you can with your own PC. Plus, anyone can learn how to troubleshoot and repair their own PC. I work in tech support, so if I break my own shit, I can always repair it, or replace the parts myself. Once your Xbox or Playstation goes, you're screwed. You need to buy a whole new unit. I've heard some of the games for consoles are better than PC games. I say that's a bunch of BS. When you have to design a game to handle only a few buttons and a limited amount of control from a directional button, you really have to dumb down the amount of strategies you have to work with. And that's how they have to design the games, because despite being ABLE to plug a keyboard and mouse into a console, most aren't shipped standard with a keyboard and mouse, only controllers, which are limited in scope. Not even mentioning the fact that the age range for consoles is younger than PCs, so you're almost guaranteed a simpler style of play on ANY console, as compared to a PC, which not only opens the field for a variety of strategies because of the range of the standard input devices, BUT it also has to work on a variety of systems. Sure, this may hurt the graphics some in the long run, but honestly, fun and gameplay is so much more important than graphics, and I've never noticed a big difference between console game graphics and PC graphics anyway. PC gaming for teh win!
But, my opinion may be biased... as I said, I am a PC purist. :-) To me, having a console is like only being able to use your cell phone to make phone calls, not surf the web, play games, or anything else. It would severely limit the usefulness of the device, as well as the fun.
As for John Carter... I haven't seen it yet. I don't go to the movies much. From the previews, it looks like a Superman scenario. Instead of an alien coming to earth and having super strength, etc because of his denser body, we've just got a human being go to a slightly lighter planet and having greater strength because of earth's relative density and gravity. Nothing new there. Same concept, just reversed.
Now, on to skyrim! So, there's this one scenario in skyrim. There's a woman from hammerfell working in a tavern, and during the course of your early adventures, you find out there's some mercenaries from hammerfell who are searching for her. So when you mention this to her, she asks you for help. Now, here's where things get tough. You go find the guys who are after her, and they tell you that she's lying, and they are only there to peacefully return her to Hammerfell for trial for betraying hammerfell to the aldmeri dominion (the bad guys). So you're basically forced to make a decision on which one to trust, based on very little conflicting information.
Now, like any good gamer nowadays, I can't make a decision on my own. So I checked the forums. Apparently, most people sided with the mercenaries, led by some guy named Kematu. Mostly because, he offered them a set some of money up front, and he had a good story as to why they were searching for her. The woman, Sadira, I think her name was? Her name escapes me. Anyway, I sided with the girl. I didn't expect anything out of it, but I had plenty of good reasons, and I did try it both ways to see if one was better than the other. So here's my list of reasons.
(1) She was one woman against a band of highly trained mercenaries. If nothing else, the XP for killing a bunch of mercenaries has to be better than turning a woman in. Not to mention the satisfaction of slaughtering a bunch of heavily armed men is MUCH more emotionally satisfying. Then, there's that nagging guilt for agreeing to help sadira and then betraying her. What can I say, I have morals.
(2) The guy in jail. Supposedly a member of the mercenaries gets caught by the whiterun guards, and the rest of his buddies abandon him because he got jailed. This doesn't sound like the actions of very nice people. Also, if you look at things from a purely mathematical point of view, and assign the letter A to sadira's story, and B to the jailed mercenary, and then C to Kematu's story, you basically have an equation where A and C cancel each other out, since they are opposing tales. The only thing you're left with is B, which is the jailed mercenary's tale. The way he told it, you'd be slaughtered if you went after kematu, and that doesn't sound like the actions of a friendly group of mercenaries just here to collect a woman peacefully for trial. That sounds like assassins. Which tends to support sadira's side of the story.
(3) The "Big Picture." Let's face it, Kematu's story just doesn't add up. he says that Sadira went and betrayed an entire city to the aldmeri dominion, and the mercenaries were hired by the hammerfell resistance to track down sadira and bring her back for justice. Now, you honestly think a band of hunted fugitives, rebels in their own land, are going to hire the "best of the best" mercenaries to go to another country and capture some woman who betrayed them? Let's face it, if you have an entire dominion trying to take over your country, there's better uses for your gold than to hunt down a traitor. That sounds more like the actions of the aldmeri dominion, since tracking down an escaped rebel for public trial back in her homeland would be a stern warning to anyone in hammerfell looking to aid the rebels against the aldmeri. What good does it do rebels to track down a traitor? Save it til after the rebellion, when your lands are back in your own control. THEN hunt down those who betrayed your people. In fact, Sadira would have little reason to leave the country at all unless she did, in fact, speak out against the aldmeri, since they would now be grateful to her for supporting them, if kematu was telling the truth. Why leave a country where the aldmeri are mostly in control, for the province of skyrim, where the aldmeri basically have no presence whatsoever? She'd be throwing herself out of a safe haven into an entire country of people who hate the dominion, and that's just idiotic if you buy what kematu is shoveling. Also, he tells you Sadira's been using her sob story to get people like you to help her all along. If no one knows who she really is, then why are they helping her against trained soldiers?
(4) The hammerfell mercs are hiding in a cave with a bunch of bandits. There's basically only one reason for this. They aren't welcome in Whiterun/skyrim. Supposedly there was some vague "incident" in whiterun that led to them being shoved out of the city, but since there's no reference to what exactly the incident was, all you can assume is that the hammerfell mercs are actually agents of the aldmeri, and as such, would be hated by anyone in skyrim. Which is why they aren't welcome in town.
(5) Curved. Swords. As the guards in whiterun will tell you, the Hammerfell mercs have CURVED SWORDS. What's cooler than that? If you turn in Sadira, you don't get a curved sword. You have to kill the mercenaries to get that! Sure, I never used them myself (more a dagger in the back or spell in the face kind of guy), but they did look pretty awesome.
So let's sum up. Basically, I sided with sadira because, in my opinion, she was just more believable. Sure, she didn't have all the answers. She didn't really know why the mercs were after her, and she didn't know where they were. But Kematu's answers had the practiced ease of someone who was used to lying to people in such a way that they'd believe him, and despite everything he was saying seemed to make sense, it didn't if you gave it much thought. He reminded me of a politician, and as we all know, those guys make a living by lying their asses off, so they know how to make it sound like they are telling the truth, especially when they aren't. Unlike a person who actually IS telling the truth, because such a person isn't going to expect the lies to be more believable. They just tell the truth and assume the person listening is going to be able to recognize the difference. And most of the time, they can't. Which is probably why most people sided with kematu, and betrayed a helpless woman to a bunch of ruthless cutthroats... because kematu was a better liar. So sad. How do such people sleep at night, turning a poor serving wench over to a bunch of armed men for a few hundred gold?
So if anyone ever tells you you don't learn anything from video games, tell them they are LYING SONS OF BITCHES! You learned that liars are better at selling the lies they tell than the truthful people are at getting you to believe the truth! Who'd have thought there was such deep insight in an RPG, of all things? :-o
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