Hello everyone, I accidentally left my music and film book at home this morning so I’ll have to do my reading tonight, so instead I’ll be reporting this morning.
So yesterday, in an attempt to better stay in the loop, I subscribed to just about every single video game feed I could find so that I could get plenty of information to post. I have therefore been greatly rewarded with a plethora of news to share my opinions on, although some of it is more than a week old. Here we go:
According to Jon Miller, the Global Communications Manager for THQ, players who purchased Saint’s Row: The Third for Playstation 3 may recieve a free download of Saint’s Row 2 if they redeem their online pass within 90 days (by midnight on February 13, 2012.) I’m not a huge Saints Row fan; I’ve heard it was good, but I’ve never played any of them so I can’t really judge, but apparently a lot of people like the games and I have to say that giving away free games is awesome, even if they’re older. You can read the full blog post here.
On another note, about 2 hours ago that there is now a functional PC Mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim that allows the player to kill the in-game children. Upon hearing the news I immediately scoured the internet to look for a response to the mod. Not surprisingly, I found many who understood Bethesda’s position on the situation but disagree with the decision to leave kid-killing out of the game as the believe it takes away from the immersion of the game or made it feel incomplete. On another hand I found a number of others who were excited to slaughter all the virtual kids that they could as fast as possible.
Personally this is a touchy subject for me as I am left with very mixed feelings. As a player, I feel somewhat cheated because Skyrim’s children are invincible (a fact I was not until this morning aware of, as I haven’t actually tried killing them,) and for me it kills aspects of the immersion. However, on another hand, the game, while realistic, is not hyper-realistic; there are a number of things in the game world that are not inherently accurate to to real world such as the experience system, the fact that you always know which way North is, and the idea that your physical well-being can be summed up by a red bar on your UI. With that said, I understand why Bethesda wouldn’t include such a thing; not only does it put them in the middle of a moral conflict, but also the developmental thought is that, for the most part, players playing straight through the game wouldn’t even push these boundaries, and thus not even notice.
Therefore, all I have to say is that I am somewhat disappointed that kids were invincible due to immersion, but it doesn’t effect me at all as I wouldn’t go around slaughtering kids, and I feel that Bethesda what they felt was right and as players we should respect that decision. As far as the mod goes I am glad someone put the time and effort in to produce something that others can enjoy, I just hope that people use the mod for simple immersion rather than going on a child killing spree.
After that deep introspection look at another, Diablo III for consoles. Over the past year Blizzard has all but confirmed (latest link) Diablo III would be on consoles. Most people are ecstatic about have a wider availability of this title, and on a normal day, with any other game, I would likely agree. But this is Diablo III. For those who are unfamiliar with Diablo III news, this is the non MMO game that both requires players to be online and implement a real world marketplace.
I guess the reason I’m not thrilled about the idea is I’ve had some bad experiences with Blizzard in the past and I just wish they would stay on PC. I don’t really have anything to back up my thoughts on the issue and even still I’m not even sure what I think regarding this. I guess I am just scared as to where this could lead.
Anyway, that’s all I have to report this morning, I hope you found this insightful, informative or at least entertaining.
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