MikeDixonUK

Very nice! Shame about the end though! The shouts are pretty cool it must be said, although I don't really use them much (or magic in general) other than the basic healing spell, but even that's only when I'm desperate - I tend to just stick to stabby stabby shooty shooty drinky drinky. Here's one of me having a shot at some of Ulfric's boys: But tonight Legate Mikkel of Daggerfall marches with the Legion to Windhelm, to send the traitor Ulfric Stormcloak to Oblivion!

Bad form, you should write to your MP - you're just not allowed to discriminate against people like that!

Here's the generic Nord Warrior chap I said I was going to make, I'll keep him as a neutral 'glory hunter' for now, probably be a Bounty Hunter and member of the Companions and the like: I reckon he looks a bit like Sean Bean - which is ironic, seeing as Sean Bean was in Oblivion and looked nothing like him! As such I have called him 'Rikard Sharpe-Blade'

Here's my two septims to stick up for the Imperial side : (Includes some minor spoilers about the overall political situation) At first when I started the game I just wanted to join the Imperial Legion, mainly for two reasons - first of all, I just like the whole Roman thing (my main Morrowind character was in the Legion too, and I was very disapointed that there was no Legion in Oblivion - plus they didn't seem as Roman in Oblivion.) Secondly, I knew I was going to make at least two characters, the first would be a Breton Archer (thats my standard TES class), and the other would be a generic Axe wielding bearded Nord fellow (as is required in Skyrim) - so it seemed logical to make the Breton Archer an Imperial and the Nord a Stormcloak. But getting into the game proper and learning more about the events since Oblivion, I find myself leaning more and more toward the Imperial way of thinking, for a few reasons (some of them may be due to Imperial biased 'propaganda' information, as all the people I've talked to have been Imperial alligned.): Firstly I don't like the idea of the Nords rebelling against the Empire, when the Empire is the only thing keeping the Dominion from taking over the world - maybe if the Nords were as keen to fight in the great war as they seem to be now fighting for their own personal power then we wouldn't have had to make a bad peace with the Dominion and ban Talos! The way it's been going, the Empire has been getting weaker and weaker, with different regions leaving etc - so at the moment it seems like the Empire consists of Cyrodiil (where Imperials come from), High Rock (where Bretons come from) and Skyrim (where Nords come from), left to face the Dominion - so in the event that the Stormcloak rebellion is successful and they secede from the Empire, that leaves High Rock and Cyrodiil standing against the Dominion - and me being a Breton (from High Rock) that doesn't sound like a brilliant situation - so my character is fighting to defend his homeland of High Rock, by making sure the Empire is as strong as it can be. Secondly the whole Talos thing just seems to be an issue that Stormcloak has hyped up to get normal Nords to join his banner so he can gain power for himself. Thirdly it seems Stormcloak is something of a racist, especially when it comes to the Elves, but somewhat in regards to every race apart from the Nords (allegedly his plan is to create a Skyrim only for Nords.) And lastly the way he killed his King, this one is a questionable one as the Imperials, and the Queen - say he murdered the King in cold blood, where as one NPC has said that he killed the King in honourable Nord combat (but who is telling the truth?!) With those in mind I might not make my Nord character join the Stormcloaks as I originally planned (mainly because of the 'Nord only' issue he seems to have, and I was expecting it to be more of a 'Freedooooom!' style faction, rather than 'grumpy racist' faciton) - so my Nord will probably go for his own glory, so that his name will be remembered forever in song - not overshadowed by petty men such as Stormcloak! (Although I am now planning on making a High Elf Mage/Assassin/Thief and pretending to be some sort of Thalmor inquisitor who goes around setting fire and otherwise killing off Talos worshipers, just to have an evil character! )

You can physically place thing by dropping them in your house (from inventory) then hold down E over the item to move it around, then just move it to where you want it. (Also a good way to move suspicious looking dead bodies... ) The fire sould be lit when you buy one of the house upgrades from the steward or whoever he is (the bloke you buy the house from) - think its probably the Kitchen upgrade.

I decided to buy one of them there houses (not the Solitude one, I did buy it but it was a bit too fancy for my tastes. ) now all I seem to spend my time doing is decorating the bloody place! Need somewhere to store my many, many, many, many books: Most people go adventuring for gold or weapons, I go to find the latest volume of the History of the Empire... (Was a tad annoyed though as I decided to redecorate the dining room table with some nice silver plates that I stole from a Gods dinner table (obviously) then after I'd placed it all and loaded the save the plates went flying around the room!) Of course only after I put all my books all over the place did I notice that the book shelves can be activated to show books like that...

Here's one for all us archer wannabes to try out: (Not my video by the way.) I've modded mine so that there's no crosshair and has the old gravity drop back though, so might be a tad tricky.

Here's a video of one of my dragon kills (with one of those fancy kill moves at the end): Plus a little 'extra' after the end. At the moment I'm saving up for a house in Solitude, costs a 'ruddy fortune!

Fiefs serve Landlord is the best one I've been able to find.

Here's my bloke, Mikkel of Daggerfall, a Breton Archer - off to join the Legion: And with required Archer / suspicious youth Hood:

I think for my first character I'm going to go for a Breton (ideally half Breton, half Nord - but I'd probably have to pretend that bit) who's loyal to the Empire (I usually go for Breton as I'm unoriginal and it sounds like Briton. ) Although I imagine I'll make a bearded Nord with a big Axe at some point, as is required.

I also like to remember those before the First World War who often get left out, such as those from the Napoleonic Wars and the Crimea and such. Granted nowhere near the scale of WWI or WWII, but they still died.

Now now, not so - Royal Navy Frigates prevent piracy. Just a shame no one went with my idea of supplying a Royal Navy Frigate with every game disk... Think of the jobs it would create in the Shipyards!

Getting mine delivered tommorow from Amazon (been dispatched already) - although I won't get to play it until monday as I'm having it delivered to my home address (go home on weekends) where as my proper gaming computer is at University. Gives me time to finish the main story from Oblivion over the weekend though I guess - had the thing for years but never seemed to get around to finishing the main quest...

RIP - very tragic that someone should die, let alone with the sad irony that you should be killed by something whos sole purpose in the universe is to prevent your death. Not a good year for the Red Arrows it seems...

If someone did that to me they wouldn't have to worry about 'pretending' to be unconcious after the landing.

If people really cared enough about it they'd do something about it, but as it is the majority will probably just go 'oh no it's terrible' for a while, but won't care much more than that so long as they still get to watch Football.

Looks reet grand if I duh say-saa-me-sen!

Unfortunately I'm too young to be aware of the WWI and WWII war comics that were popular between around the 50s to 70s (other than being vaguely aware of them) - but today I bought a book of war comic cover art (The Art of War - by David Roach to be precise.) And to my great surprise I found this chap: Clearly this discovery demands that I start a new OFF Career with the specific objective of doing the most dashing and heroically dangerous thing each every sortie, hopefully with custom skins if I can find some good pics! (And a yellow and orange polka dot scarf of course!) Ah the joys of having such a common surname!

What! But surely all the snazziest of snazy chaps wear polka dots?

Don't forget the UAV Fokkers, not the same without having something to shoot down! The Fokkers would have to shoot blanks though I'd imagine, unless you're into dangerous sports!

When I become a bajillionaire I shall have a Hangar with a 360 degree screen and a replica Aircraft on a rig in the centre for the ultimate OFFage! I have until now and my becoming a bajillionaire to decide which replica WW1 Aircraft to use... (And obviously I'd have another Hangar with a Spitfire in it, but that goes without saying! Either that or just buy a real Spitfire - or both, of course!)

I must say I agree as I've noticed the lack of head movement too and it gets quite jarring when you're pulling tight turns and the like unfortunately - it's kind of as if your camera view is a camera stuck to the aircraft rather than a person moving around in a cockpit, or as if you are static and the world is moving around you (unless thats some sort of strange pondering of ones existance. ) and I find TrackIR doesn't help as your real head doesn't move around based on the forces of the in game aircraft. The term 'head bob' might be a bit confusing as it's more to do with G forces and the like as opposed to a shaky cam type of thing, for example if you were to break left your head (and thus your point of view) would move to the right of the cockpit, and vice versa. I kind of figured it was just a CFS3 limitation and something that the devs would have added by now if it was possible with this engine.

Here's an example of the mix of real clips and CGI that I was on about before, from the docu-drama 'First Light' (good program by the way, and excellent book!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CdXMrn_0YY The clips mainly being from that old favourite 'Battle of Britain' but with tracer fire and added explosions here and there, granted the effects themselves aren't the best - but they were done on a docu-drama budget, so imagine what a film could do (granted the First Light people didn't have to film the flying bits themselves.) Although I think they need to shorten their gun convergence a bit.

I dunno, I think CGI seems a lot less memorable, if that makes sense - you don't quite get the same thrill when it's all completely made up, as opposed to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02BBtN-P0lc Obviously there are drawbacks to this sort of thing as well, such as certain effects not being the best, incorrect Aircraft, lack of tracers, etc - but it just seems more 'epic' to use a much too commonly used word. Granted it's probably bloody expensive and bloody dangerous to film, but that's probably part of what makes it so memorable. A mix of both real film with CGI effects would probably be my ideal middle ground, although that sort of thing is hard to pull off (i.e having CGI against a real background.) Then again I think 633 Squadron is an amazing film, so maybe I'm just mental.