I love to talk and explain everything I know about video games to someone. This is a very similar post to the one where I explained about "Stardew Valley as an endless game" to my friend, but now this one is when I did the same thing to a different person who played Skyrim and an RPG for the first time, about 2 years ago.
I have forgotten most of the conversations we had so I decided to write it down before I forgotten more than I already have. The conversation is not entirely accurate, of course, but I still remember the points correctly. Well, maybe because the person I talked to keep asking and love to talk about RPG games, but mostly Skyrim, up until now every time we talk. I hope you enjoy this read.
It was a good day at my school, no class was held because we were having this yearly festival. So I was enjoying myself playing Skyrim on my friend's laptop while the owner was attending the festival, because mine was recently dead. A few minutes into Skyrim, a friend of mine, let's call him Thor because it was his nickname, came by and watched me play. He's one of my squad in LoL but he knows so little about games other than that, or video games in general.
His first remark was his amazement with the graphics and when he saw me picking up a flower by the street, the exact same reaction I had the first time I saw Skyrim many years ago and it was somewhat heartwarming, I was like "That shall be your first step deeper into the world of gaming, my child." (no I did not say that).
"Wait, what? Did you just pick those flowers? How could you do that? What's this game about? That's pretty awesome."
"The game is about being the hero who save the world from an evil dragon. You know how it is. And you're free to do anything, including picking up sh*ts in front of you."
Knowing he was curious about the game, I took turn with him and let him have his first taste of open-world RPG. It was in a very early game and I just got to Riverwood with Hadvar. When Thor sat in front of the laptop, having control of the player's character, he didn't know what to do.
"So what do I do? Where are we going?"
"In this game you are free to do whatever you want, find your own adventure. But for starter, let's just follow the quest (pointing to a quest marker that leads to Whiterun)."
These are not the actual screenshots.
On the way to Whiterun, we encountered 3 Imperial soldiers taking a prisoner by foot. Thor's reaction to one of the guard's dialogue "Move along, citizen!" was amusing. He's.. kinda goofy sometimes.
"What the- "Move along"?! You move along! (pulls out sword). Dude, we can kill people, right? Oh wait, he's wearing the same armor (as the player, Imperial Light Armor). Are these guys our friends? What if I kill them? Will I be a wanted man?"
"That doesn't matter. If you want to kill him then go ahead, but you must be ready for the consequences, if there's any. That's what it means to choose your role in the game, that's RPG. Like what you see right here--three soldiers taking a prisoner somewhere, with no explanation of what's this all about. You can choose to leave them be, kill the soldiers and free the prisoner, or kill all of them. The outcomes? Your decisions may lead to different situations but in ways that you need to find out yourself. Now, make your decision."
He didn't have the balls to fight the soldiers and continued the journey, but he kept wondering what will happen if he did and freed the prisoner. His questions were forgotten straight away when we encountered Aela fighting a giant on a farm near Whiterun. Remember that one?
After talking for a bit with Aela, she offered the player to join her clan, the Companions. Once again, Thor didn't know what to do, agree and join or refuse it.
"Look, she's asking us to join her, what do you think? I'm just afraid if this clan is sh*t and if there are better clans. This one sounds like a group of mercenaries, she said they will show up if the money is good. What other clans that you know that is better than this one?"
Without spoiling the story about the Companions being werewolves, I explained about the decision making again.
"You must figure it out yourself from their storyline. Don't worry about other clans, because you'll still able to join the others even if you're already in this one. Well, yes, there are groups who are against each other and you can't join each one of them.
My favorite is the Dark Brotherhood, a small group of assassins. Remember those soldiers earlier? They are from the Imperial, an entire goddamn empire that is an enemy to the Dark Brotherhood. So you can't join both."
He nodded and continued playing until we reached Whiterun. He accepted Aela's offer, by the way. I went out and left him play alone for a while and a moment later I came back to him venting about his problem to me. He was in Whiterun walking around aimlessly.
"Dude, I don't know where to go next. I can't find the clan. I followed the quest marker and it didn't lead me to it. I was in a house with many people talking about stuff I don't understand and then they went out and I lost it. This game is stupid."
Apparently, the quest marker was still on the main quest and led him to the Dragonsreach instead of the Jorrvaskr that he wanted.
"You didn't switch the quest, you dimwit. I told you to press J to do so (I did). You're still on the quest from before you got here (before Aela and Whiterun, the main quest)."
Then he answered jokingly..
"Oh sh*t, my bad. Alright alright, apology master. Please, enlight me. I still don't quite understand what's this game about. What you can do, where to go.. etc etc."
"Let's see it this way.. Imagine you're this brute you're controling (the player's character), you live in this world. You have nothing but a map, a journal, a sword, and some money. Your journey take you to this particular city with many people you can talk to. And now you need a place to stay in. What will you do?"
He was thinking of the answer, just when he was about to say it, I pointed him to the inn in Whiterun.
"There, an inn. Try going there and see what you'll find. (he goes into the inn and talk to the inn keeper). Yes, that's right. Now you have learned that not only you can rent a room by talking to this inn keeper, but look, you can also ask for rumors that'll tell you a story, and give you something to do, a quest."
He told me to explain further, so I did. I told him everything I know about RPG game but only the basics, and Skyrim in particular. Not the indepth knowledge of RPG, because I knew my knowledge is not that deep also.
"Quests will send you out on adventures, tell you stories, and lead you to rewards. The rewards is what you will use to improve your character. Improve how? By obtaining better equipments, and gaining EXP that if you've gained enough you can level up your skills. Take a look at the skill tree, press Tab and open the skill tree (he open it), there, your character can learn skills to become better in certain aspects.
Do combinations of your skills and items too, like if you focus on being a tanky warrior, you'll want heavy armors and level up the right skills. But because there's no class restriction in Skyrim, you are free to be anything. You wear heavy armors but want to use lightning spells? Sure, why not."
From his respond, I see my explanation was good enough for him to understand the basic, and he asked more question that I happily explained the answer.
"I see, so basically it's like in real life. The EXP is the amount of self-building skill that will progressively improve yourself. It's quite different from the EXP system in League of Legends, though. And how do you know where to find quests? Also, how free you are in this game? I mean, you could pick flowers.."
"To know where to find quests or quest giver, the game will tell you and you need only to pay attention and be curious. You see, exploration is an impotant thing to do here. Talk to NPCs, find strange places, find interesting items. That's how you lead yourself to quests.
You're free to do and be anything in this game. You want to kill someone for saying your face looks funny? You can do that. But if turns out that NPC was a quest giver, then your consequence is not being able to do his/her quest, thus the rewards could potentially lost forever. You want to save a girl you randomly found in an ancient crypt? Sure. She might as well be your companion.
In this world, there are stories you must follow. But who you are and how you follow them is up to you. Your decisions will change some things, maybe alter the stories, or resulting in different rewards, etc. The changes could affect your gameplay significantly or not so much. That's the joy of playing a role-playing game. So the question is what's your role in this game?"
As far as I can remember, that's how the conversation went. We played until the school was almost over, we reached Riften to join the Thieves Guild because he was so interested in the Thieves Guild that we rushed to it. He was so into Skyrim after that day and played on my friend's laptop everytime he had the chance.
Doing this twice already--explaining about video game in detail to someone--I feel like I know how much knowledge I have on the said games, which is not so much. Because all of this was not as clear before I put them together and explained them. So doing it is really helping myself too. The more I do it the more I know I have much to learn and find out.
So if you'd like to add something, please do. I'll be happy to hear it. Because I think there's something I missed regarding RPG genre in video game. Thanks for stopping by, I hope you enjoyed the read, Steemian!
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