Skyrim Fan's Real-Life Journal Tells an Epic Tale

[Phuctifyno]

This is something I've actually given a lot of thought to.

I don't have the time to do this myself, but I've often wondered how difficult/profitable it would be for Bethesda, or a third party, to write software to do this for a player (likely distributed as DLC). I already know that a huge portion of TES players imagine their playthroughs as epic quests deserving of novelization, and often try to imbue their characters with nuance and originality. So how interesting would be to have a program recording your every move and writing it down?

I would imagine that it would have customization and editing features, so that hours of inconsequential walking could be removed. Naturally, this would also result in a lot of terrible stories with no sense of narrative or pacing, but would show a level of mastery for players who are able to string together something coherent and enjoyable from their playthroughs - then show them off online or order official (even leatherbound) printouts from the distributing company.

Anyway, just a thought.

Kudos to M'Bhasa for ignoring the lack of anything like that and doing it all by hand. Now that's commitment.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

I'd like to judge his handwriting but speaking as someone who types everything that I possibly can since I first had access to a computer, my handwriting just gets worse and worse every year. I am convinced in another 10 years, it will just be illegible scrawl.

 

[bigfatcarp93]

Goddammit. This was my idea first. I've been doing this for about a year with New Vegas, and then this. Fuck.

Oh well. This one's way better then mine anyway.

 

[piinyouri]

This reminds me of sitting hunched over in my room deciphering the deadric alphabet, feeling like I had genuinely stumbled upon some secret hidden treasure.

 

[Nurb]

I'd like to read it but even the album doesn't have resolution enough for me to figure out everything.

 

[UsefulPlayer 1]

I think the ending was only good because of the way he phrased it. It was a feeling we all had at some point in the game about something.

But imagine if the journal ended with M'Bhasa getting ready to head out with Mercer. I certainly can see how that could be an ending.....if ya know what I mean....

 

[Anatoli Ossai]

Initially I thought the writer had Parkinsons, he gets Zero points for penmanship, (I've seen Doctors with better handwriting) and no it did not improve LOL, sorry buddy. But the detail on the Ebony Mail is quite good.

Anyway kudos to your dedication. My brother and I just share campfire stories about our travels in that world. It's good enough.

 

[Therumancer]

Interesting, perhaps Bethesda will immortalize the work by scanning it and putting it into the game as one of the props so you can read about M'basa's adventures page by page when they finally get around to doing another Elder Scrolls game.

The handwriting they can keep, after all most people have pretty bad handwriting by the standards of others, but they should probably change the ink color if they ever do that though.

 

[AbsoluteVirtue18]

I did something similar for TES III: I hand-drew a map of Morrowind so I could keep track of any interesting places I found. I still have it around here somewhere, I think.

 

[Olas]

I can't read a damn word of that, is it in english? God I hate cursive so bad.

I could totally see doing something like this in Fallout 3.

 

[Sindwiller]

Now that is the proper way to enjoy a video game.

 

[Phuctifyno]

Doing it with Skyrim though... you're pretty much just rewriting the stories someone else already wrote.
Not saying it's wrong or a waste of time, quite the contrary; I'm sure it makes the game much more rewarding to play and gives a greater sense of immersion.

I know where you're coming from, but that's not exactly true. More accurately, you'd be writing your own story in a world that somebody else created. The degree to which you're telling somebody else's story is proportional to the degree to which you're following the laid out quests. You can create a character with their own goals outside of what the programmers intended. It only depends on the player's ability as a creative mind to put significance into acts that the game doesn't deem significant.

For example, my unmodestly often mentioned Argonian, Caliban. Travels long distances only by water, offers aid only to other Argonians (sensing their local oppression), and possesses a naive mind on a spiritual journey learning about death in a war-ridden land. He's growing a bit of a religious obsession with death and retribution, and has taken to dressing like the grim reaper, with robe and (scythe-like) axe, a dispenses vengeance to pirates and bandits he encounters along his path. Also, he's an under-water treasure hunter.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

I can totally relate to this. I wrote a 10,000 word background story...

for my Runescape character.

I've always been more interested in world building and character development than actual roleplay. I thought about joining some of the roleplay threads in these forums, but I realised that I only really enjoyed coming up with my own characters backstory, and reading the actual roleplay of the threads it seemed to just be 90% people talking to each other, 10% actually exploring the world or getting into the action.
Oh well. I think I'll make another Skyrim character, a properly bizarre quirky one and see what happens.

 

[Bellvedere]

Wow that's awesome. I really want to do this myself now. Not to mention it would be handy as I always get lost/disinterested in my character when I stop playing because I get busy and then have to pick it up again later...

 

[BehattedWanderer]

I kept a notepad journal of Terraria, that was kind of like this. I randomized each character, and used a name generator to name them, set the difficulty to hardcore, and would get as far as I could with each character before they died, recording a log every night (or every few nights, for the characters that lasted longer than a few days). They all worked in the same world, though, to see how long it would take me to get certain projects done, and what kind of enemies I could get to come bother me.

This makes me want to play Skyrim again, from tip to tip...ooh, and there's all that new content that was finally released, isn't there?

 

[Diddy_Mao]

While I'm not the biggest fan of the Elder Scrolls games I have to admit that it's kinda nice to see people still do this.

I've got an old office filing cabinet will tons of this kind of stuff from back when I would play a lot of tabletop role playing games.

Hell, even today I'll spend my free time writing up little notes and back stories to my Warhammer 40k armies...and come to think of it I had done something similar with The Secret World. Nothing to this extent obviously but I've got a Moleskine pocket notebook full of in character notes and hasty sketches of the various puzzles, maps and whatnot found in that game.

 

[Jessta]

"And then I got another cave. And then I got another dragon. And then I got another cave. And then I got another dragon. Some guard had his knee capped. And then I" seriously, there's nothing to Skyrim's lore to warrant this ...

when I played I didn't become a dragonborn that ran into dragons until level 28 since I never did the dragon quest in whiterun nor did I enter a cave without having a story that directed me to that cave until about level 22ish (Although I did spelunk in a dwarven ruin city called rabaldthar a quest had brought me to its gates). Also throughout that time I only heard the arrow to the knee phrase two times because I never stopped long enough to talk to guards since I was constantly busy and they have something like 50 lines of dialogue
during my adventures I did two major quest lines, 10 moderate ones and about 40 small ones
I started off by joining the dark brotherhood as an acolyte of sorts and was really focused on that quest line and thought it was overall pretty well written my fave character being the crazy mage who burned his ex wife to death over a petty mistake. Once I got to the end of the dark brotherhood quest and all my friends had been killed and I had to kill the emperor who turned out to be sort of a bro I decided to have a bit of a change heart and tried to pull a 360 to a pacifist illusionist character, I ignored the final part of the dark brotherhood quest where I was supposed to rebuild and headed to winterhold college where I was welcomed as a new apprentice alongside 3 class mates, each of which had their own problems and backgrounds, during my time at winter hold I was contacted by the psijic order and told one i would save the world however being more one for side quests and looking to settle down I instead decided to start collecting books for the grumpy old orc librarian which led me through a variety of crypts and grave robbing, all the while I was practicing my enchanting and illusion magic and found a new best friend in J'zargo an overtly ambitious Khajit destruction mage who gives you a scroll that causes you to explode on contact with an enemy and has a line I'm particularly fond of, 'May your feet fall on warm sands' after awhile by some odd twist of fate that happened all around really suddenly I became the archmage of the mages guild and now I'm doing random little side quests around the world forever in search of the warm sands my friend J'zargo makes reference to in this frozen wasteland. all this within the first 20 hours of gameplay playing 3 hours a day for a week.

Skyrim has a crazy indepth storyline with a ridiculous amount of original characters if you bother to sit back and listen a bit but it's incredibly spasmodic and I find it best to start a variety of characters to do the main ones such as Thieves guild, dark brotherhood, companions, winterhold college, bards college, primary quest line, civil war, especially since combat doesn't really scale all that well into the later game, combine it mods and it has an infinite amount of potential.

 

[Mr.FrigginMarvelous]

That's really cool. I remember keeping a journal in Morrowind. It was mainly just for remembering who I was supposed to find, where I was supposed to go, or to keep from getting lost in an ash storm. I wish mine was that well written.