Conference Call

GWJ Conference Call Episode 266

The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Special Guests Justin McElroy and Jeff Cannata, What To Do When The Trilogy is Done, Our Tribes: Ascend Contest Winners, Your Emails and more!

This week Shawn, Julian and Elysium are joined by Justin McElroy and Jeff Cannata! We've called in the big guns to talk about Skyrim and what developers should do with all the trilogies wrapping up.

To contact us, email [email protected]! Send us your thoughts on the show, pressing issues you want to talk about or whatever else is on your mind. You can even send a 30 second audio question or comment (MP3 format please) if you're so inclined.

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Joystiq
My Brother, My Brother and Me
The Totally Rad Show
Weekend Confirmed
Tribes Ascend
Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Skyrim Mod Thread

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Show credits

Music credits: 

Intro/Outtro Music - Ian Dorsch, Willowtree Audioworks

Main Theme - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - http://www.elderscrolls.com/skyrim/ - 37:25

Chandra - (b-sides) - workbench-music.com - 56:28

Comments

I don't see what all this has to do with Skyrim being the best game ever

The topic of control on the PC vs Xbox was brought up in the podcast. While I will admit the PC did seem to underutilize some of (read: a lot of) its potential, it didn't sound like anyone on the show had learned you can hotkey spells, abilities, and weapons. All you need to do is open your favorites list, mouse over said skill and press a number key. This will speed up your game play quite a bit. Every time someone said they wanted to hook an xbox controler into their PC it made me cry a little on the inside.

While I will admit I'm still a little sour with Jeff for his RAGE recommendation I definitely appreciate his passion. I can only wonder if his disappointment with alternate game mechanics in Skyrim however might be a little premature. I feel that the mechanics behind sword and board vs. duel wielding or two handed weapons makes for interesting changes, you then can add in active spell casting from one or both hands. Not to mention the dragon words, many of witch have (without spoiling too much) combat altering effects.

I can only assume that because the game is still new many of those points may not have been discovered yet as of this podcast. Or maybe its time to drop all that armor, put the sword and shield in a chest somewhere and find yourself a knife and muffle spell and go explore the stealth aspect of the game. Might just change your mind?

Now if you will excuse me, dragons don't just kill themselves.

rabbit wrote:
Bottle wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

Heck yes. If you're going to speak intelligently about art, you'd better quickly learn that what a creator intended doesn't mean beans.

I feel I've been indirectly insulted, so I'd like to point out that I agree. I just worded my earlier point poorly. It had nothing to do with authorial intent.

I'm quite sure no insult was intended. But I love the fact that someone can legitimately be insulted here for feeling falsely accused of arguing authorial intent. God bless GWJ.

Maybe it's the dry office air, but I'm tearing up a little, here.

A bit late to the navel gazing-gazing party here, but I'd like to chime in as a strictly consumer film-goer who likes neither Ebert nor Rotten Tomatoes, but who trusts those outlets more than the usual newspaper clack.

The first thing that I'd like to point out is that it's rather pointless to expect the majority of the magazine-basd gaming media to write thoughtful pieces about nearly anything because they have rather low standards for hiring and writing. A significant fraction (if not all) of the staff of IGN do not have liberal arts degrees. That's a rather glaring competence gap if you want to seriously get into appreciation and in-depth discussion of cultural products such as a picture art, film, and games.

On the other hand, what rabbit says is also perfectly. There's a heckuvalot of self-absorbed navel-gazing on the internet in the appropriate sites if you just look. There's a crap ton of that.

I like GWJ partly because of its "takes," which, unlike Ebert and RT entries, do not purport to be authoritative statements on the products they cover, even though I would unabashedly say that content here on GWJ of that nature easily trumps most of the stuff Ebert has to say.

The second thing I would like to point out is that rabbit's point about games being a naturally deeper medium than film is spot on. There's only so much Citizen Kane you can watch. At some point, you're going to have to watch something else. We don't have people who are experts on just Citizen Kane, or The Godfather series, or even an expert on just Band of Brothers miniseries.

That sort of exerpertise is extremely common in gamedom. There are pros in Korea who earn six figure salaries (in American dollars) being just that good at Starcraft. There are guys who only play Madden, or WoW, or CS, or BF3 or any of a number of games we can mention. The emergent nature of gameplay and MP gameplay in particular lends itself to gaming being both a cultural product and a sport.

You can't be an expert in all these games at once. You can be a novice at many games, a jack in some games, or a master of one or two. There is not enough hours in anyone's day to be a Grandmaster at SC2, and a pro in SC, and a ranking world player in LoL, and a guildmaster in RF Online.

Just three of the five above would have to presume that you make money doing one or more of those activities, you don't have a social life, a love life, or a family life, and you use a poopsock.

I suppose the point here is one of hubris and arrogance. Ebert comes across to me as being unnecessarily arrogant, being that many of his film critiques aren't even technical criticisms. A pro in SC2 could raise very technical criticisms of, say, Red Alert 3 as a competitive RTS, and he would probably be right on the money on each one, and no one but a pro would have the expertise to say those things.

LarryC wrote:

I like GWJ partly because of its "takes," which, unlike Ebert and RT entries, do not purport to be authoritative statements on the products they cover, even though I would unabashedly say that content here on GWJ of that nature easily trumps most of the stuff Ebert has to say.

Yeah, we're not Modernists. All Modernists will have their work deconstructed and viewed from posthuman angles.

wordsmythe wrote:
LarryC wrote:

I like GWJ partly because of its "takes," which, unlike Ebert and RT entries, do not purport to be authoritative statements on the products they cover, even though I would unabashedly say that content here on GWJ of that nature easily trumps most of the stuff Ebert has to say.

Yeah, we're not Modernists. All Modernists will have their work deconstructed and viewed from posthuman angles.

Pepperspray. It's the only way to be sure.

Great episode this week. I had to work today and it made it slightly less miserable

rabbit wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
LarryC wrote:

I like GWJ partly because of its "takes," which, unlike Ebert and RT entries, do not purport to be authoritative statements on the products they cover, even though I would unabashedly say that content here on GWJ of that nature easily trumps most of the stuff Ebert has to say.

Yeah, we're not Modernists. All Modernists will have their work deconstructed and viewed from posthuman angles.

Pepperspray. It's the only way to be sure.

Thankfully you're not postmodernists either. At least I hope not. I don't think there's anti-virus software strong enough to clean that out of a hard drive.

Postmann88 wrote:

The topic of control on the PC vs Xbox was brought up in the podcast. While I will admit the PC did seem to underutilize some of (read: a lot of) its potential, it didn't sound like anyone on the show had learned you can hotkey spells, abilities, and weapons. All you need to do is open your favorites list, mouse over said skill and press a number key. This will speed up your game play quite a bit. Every time someone said they wanted to hook an xbox controler into their PC it made me cry a little on the inside.

Hee hee, me too man. I hate that feeling of watching a game review or listening to a podcast and knowing something the presenter doesn't. In this case though, the developer could have (should have) made that feature more explicit, instead of having a lucky few intuit their way in to it.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:
rabbit wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
LarryC wrote:

I like GWJ partly because of its "takes," which, unlike Ebert and RT entries, do not purport to be authoritative statements on the products they cover, even though I would unabashedly say that content here on GWJ of that nature easily trumps most of the stuff Ebert has to say.

Yeah, we're not Modernists. All Modernists will have their work deconstructed and viewed from posthuman angles.

Pepperspray. It's the only way to be sure.

Thankfully you're not postmodernists either. At least I hope not. I don't think there's anti-virus software strong enough to clean that out of a hard drive.

"We have never been Modern," DT.