My Feminine Side

I made a sudden realization over the weekend that the last number of games I've played, if the option to to play a female character is included, that's the option I take.

Saints Row: The Third, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Star Wars: The Old Republic, SSX (I'll pick Elise over any other character) and now Mass Effect 3.

Why is this? It hasn't been a concious choice to play all these games -- almost in a row -- to see if the "female experience" is any different than the usual male experience. I just picked that character. Is it a response to having played so many games with a male protagonist? At this point I'm not sure but I do think it deserves some more thought.

If there was a robot option would I want to play as one? Is that my next stop when it comes to choosing a protagonist avatar? Right now, games are making me think but for very different reasons. I'm thinking more about myself than any theme or design choice or game mechanic.

The only change I made to my Saints Row: The Third character was her skin color. She was green for a long time.

The Main Problem with Skyrim

Here's the moment I became an

F12 addict.

So far my biggest problem with Skyrim is that I'm constantly hitting F12 to take screenshots. Every vista, every detail, every place I've been, I keep thinking to myself, "Oh man, that looks so cool!"

I've been very careful about staying on the main story path so far because of the problems I ran into with Mass Effect 2. That game would present these seemingly innocuous choices that might (or maybe they didn't) have repercussions down the line. For Skyrim, I've stayed on the straight and narrow and the only exploration I've really done is the distance I have to travel from story point to story point with a decision early on to always try to take the "good" path during NPC interactions (when they didn't try to kill me first).

After the story is done I might go back and do some more exploring. After all, there might be other vistas and caves that are just begging for a half dozen taps of F12.

There are spots like this all over Skyrim. Places you just want to string up

your hammock and drift into unconsciousness.

Just how many moons are there to see in Skyrim? Maybe the ultimate in-game 

moon is the crazy one from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (N64).

The spider is only on fire because I'm using some kind of flame spell on it.

(I'm not good with knowing the specifics of what things are called -- the
spider is on fire, that's the important thing.)