Welcome to Traversing Tamriel, a blog dedicated towards my trial of playing through the three recent Elder Scrolls games: Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim.
I'm going to be using the same character throughout all three games, as if the protagonist were the same. The timeline between Morrowind and Oblivion is no problem, as there are only six years or so between the two games. Between Oblivion and Skyrim there are about two hundred years, but the events of Morrowind allow that to be hand-waved, assuming a very cautious and lucky post-Oblivion life.
I got the idea from the CRPG Addict's blog, while waiting for him to return from his holiday hiatus, though my inspiration directly stems from The Journal of Arvil Bren, a massive first-person Morrowind playthrough that was unfortunately abandoned with no explanation. I like the first-person style and the ton of additional backstory the author provided.
As for myself, I'm really not sure what style I'm going to use. I'd like to try a first person perspective as well. It was suggested that I play as an Orc, but the Morrowind mod I'm using for faces has terrible Orc faces, so I'm still not decided on that. My original idea was to play as an Imperial, since they would have more of a reason to actually be in all three games' situations, but this is the Elder Scrolls, where anything goes. I've definitely decided on playing as a Healer though.
Update: I wound up creating a custom Scout-like class in place of a Healer after I abandoned my effort to play a Redguard pacifist Healer.
Within the next couple of days I'm going to be testing out screenshots and tweaking the blog's layout, while I settle on a character idea.
Let me be the first to compliment you on this wonderful idea! I myself enjoyed both Morrowind and Oblivion (played also Daggerfall which was my first real "sandbox" experience). I was planning on holding out on playing Skyrim until some patches and good mods were out, but I failed utterly.... :-) So I'm waistdeep in that game too. I look forward to reading about your Elder Scrolls exploits, let's see what I missed the first time around and how you fill your unique story-telling "canvas". Have fun!
ReplyDeleteHi...just thought I'd explain...and send some encouragement on what I know from experience is a massive undertaking.
ReplyDeleteArvil Bren's Journal got stopped by two factors...one of which was the siren song of Oblivion, the other of which was Arvil Bren being completely unplayable. What would have been the next chapter, where Arvil stamps out the revolt of five powerful Telvanni actually went like this:
Arvil walks up, tells Telvanni he is going to stomp them. Telvanni proceed to blast off spells. Tim takes notes to be able to say later which Telvanni cast what in entertaining but accurate fashion. Telvanni run out of magica and pull out weapons. Tim takes note of who uses what, including what those who use missile weapons do when they run out of ammo. Eventually, all notes taken, Arvil whips out spear, or sword, or maybe just beats them all to death depending on how Tim feels at the time. Playing was just no fun at all any more, and that made the writing very hard.
All that said, because of a lot of comments like yours I am planning a revitalized finishing of Arvil's story. Thanks for the kind words.
Tim
Awesome, great to hear Arvil is being resurrected! I've re-read your game journal several times throughout the years. The CRPG Addcit's blog, combined with yours, is what inspired me to try this.
DeleteI ran into the unplayable issue myself, this blog originally started with Dulian Hawker, a Redguard Healer. She couldn't do anything well and was generally uninteresting, so it made writing a chore. Kerra, the Khajiit Imperial Auxiliary, is far more interesting to me and also helps railroad the game for me a bit, preventing me from wandering around aimlessly, since she's pretty concentrated on her Imperial responsibility.
Also, writing it via first-person releases me from having to note things down in exhaustive detail as you apparently had to. Anything I leave out of my journal are simply things Kerra either didn't notice or didn't think was important enough to record for her own posterity.
Alright, I'm finally starting reading this, after planning on starting it for ages. I'm working my way through about 4 blogs at the same time, so don't expect me to catch up any time soon.
ReplyDeleteNo problem, I hope you enjoy it!
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