Much like Pocky-han up there, I first become involved with the TES (waaaaait, doesn't that mean 'the The Elder Scrolls'...?) franchise through my first TES game, which was Skyrim. I loved it to bits and would stay up at night for hours to play it, sometimes deliberately waking up in the small hours of the morning to get a few hours in before school. I then proceeded to retroactively play Oblivion, Morrowind and Daggerfall, though to be honest I never finished Daggerfall.   I only started becoming involved in the fandom a few years ago, looking for a responsive outlet to share my fanfiction works. It's been wonderful all the while, even though I'm not the most active participant. The vast majority of the time I stick to the story corner, lurking everywhere else. I do feel a little bad that I'm not more involved in lore discussions - the heart and soul of the TES fandom, really - but that doesn't mean I don't like to make good use of such discussions, taking and picking interpretations of information that best suit my narrative to craft, flesh out and, for lack of any better terms, pad out my stories with filling material. Everything from speculation on the Akaviri to the sheer amount of detailed Tamriellian historical events in the universe to Kirkbride's metaphysical mind torture can be drawn from and used, even though I do tend to shy away from the metaphysics. The vast amount of preexisting lore available to any half-decent internaut is incredible, and it trivialises the task of stringing together a living, breathing universe because, much like how writers also draw inspiration and direct material from history, the building blocks and blueprints are already there.   I'm afraid I'm not quite sure how to answer your last two questions to your satisfaction. I don't feel as though I am involved enough in social media to get a full grasp of how fans of TES have reacted to the newest games set in the Elder Scrolls universe. I am aware that Bethesda has had a rough stretch of it lately with Fallout 76 and Wolfenstein: Youngblood, but those aren't Elder Scrolls games, and on the other hand I've largely been hearing good things about ESO Elsweyr.   Finally, as a relatively recent addition to the community I really can't say how different the communities are from the ones I started in, because this is the community that I started in. The Discord server is nice, but I'm not the most active there either.   Good luck with your article! This post was edited by The Sunflower Manual at August 11, 2019 9:08 AM EDT

Okay, not literally a Daedric cult, but like the last time I posted a video of me playing a VR game, I like to stretch the imagination a little... I'm having more fun with this game than I did with Gorn, and I had a looooot of fun with Gorn. The combat system in BnS has more nuance than most any fighting game (VR or not) that I've played. Enemies react to your movements like actual people, changing their guard in response to your stance, making wild flailing a far less successful tactic but at the same time enabling you to perform feints and improvisations. The content is admittedly quite lacking at this point, but the game is still in a developmental stage, much like many other VR titles. If you own a VR headset, I highly recommend getting it~!       This post was edited by The Sunflower Manual at January 2, 2019 3:44 PM EST

Justiciar Thorien said: A funny thing, I have read (or, more accurately, tried to read) the Witcher books back when I was in high school. And this is how I know that I'll never ever buy that game no matter how cool the developers may make it, even if it's the last RPG ever. No amount of Kirkbride's Talos-centric posts can ever make me feel that sick. I wonder what I would think of it if I hadn't read the books. That's a pretty popular opinion, apparently. Many people aren't that fond of the books. Some claim it's because of poor translation (books were originally Polish and all that), while others just say that it's the writer messing up character development. The games are a different beast, but many of the themes you find in the books are present in the games' narratives as well, most notably the whole 'But what if the humans were the real monsters??!!!!' schtick many people seem to think is getting a bit stale at this point.   Anyways, for my own entry: Some original title assassination game with the Middle-Earth series' Nemesis System and the dialogue interactions in Deus Ex. Conventional stealth approaches are pretty common in video games nowadays, but picture a social stealth system added on top that's actually social and not the 'sit down on a bench/walk into a crowd and I'm invisible whoopee' approach that AC uses. Each NPC has specific preferences/personality quirks that can be exploited and used to befriend, seduce, turn enemies against each other or isolate a target and eliminate them, and your actions make your own mini-stories within the game. It's probably going to be exceptionally hard to implement well, though.

ilanisilver said: Did you just pull out that one guy’s heart?!! I’ve been considering getting a VR...a friend of mine had the one you use with your phone, and I tried it and got immediately motion sick. Is this one better? Do you get nauseated at all?   I didn't get nauseated, the HTC Vive headset (which I'm using) is far above phone VR. It uses two sensors to determine your position within a designated play area, usually 2m x 2m. I don't know if you get motion sick easily though, so I wouldn't rush out to buy it if you're not sure.   Zonnonn said: Bloody hell! That game looks great, although I doubt the credibility of taking on all those guys with just a knife. What are the other weapons like?   GORN is great, heh heh heh. And the enemies are slowed down and telegraph their attacks for like a whole second, so they're really easy to deal with, even with a short blade. As for weapons... oh boy...   Swords, maces, flails, spears, quarterstaves, humongous greatswords, nunchaku, double-edged axes, warhammers, honey badgers, round shields, kite shields, tower shields, hatchets, bows and arrows, and goodness knows what else.   Oh, and your hands. Aside from punching people, you can also grab enemies and rip them into pieces.     Yeah. This post was edited by The Sunflower Manual at September 18, 2018 5:36 PM EDT

  Akaviri shinobi bladework vs. random grunts! Okay, it's not REALLY the Imperial Arena, but it's close enough >< This game is fun. Like terrifyingly fun. It's the most fun I've ever had on VR - every move there, every thrust, parry, feint, backstep and dodge was executed by yours truly's actual physical body, and it takes your immersion into the next level. For anyone who's gotten a virtual reality headset, I wholeheartedly recommend it. And because I'm looking for more things to distract me from my actual writing, does anyone have any other good VR games they'd recommend? XD This post was edited by The Sunflower Manual at September 17, 2018 3:17 PM EDT