Regarding the Skyrim Civil War, anyone who thinks the Stormcloaks are a good choice clearly doesn't understand logistics. The Empire, which included Skyrim, barely kept the Elves out of their hair. Hell, the Dominion killed off the Blades early in the war, and even captured Ulfric Stormcloak in battle, and that was back then when the Empire had his back. What chance does an independent Skyrim have against a Dominion that took on Skyrim AND several other provinces in the last war? None. Especially since the Stormcloaks eschew magic, whereas we know from lore tidbits that the Mages' Guild has been replaced by new magical orders in the Empire that have been stockpiling magical artifacts for power.
As for all that nonsense about the Empire bowing down to the Thalmor, that's hogwash. In fact, if you talk to General Tullius, you'll find out that the majority of the Imperial army is down south preparing for Part 2 of the Great War, the Empire basically took the majority of its army down south to guard the border and sharpen their blades for some future Elf-killing. The war in Skyrim is a joke to the Empire, hence why Tullius is stuck using local recruited Nords with makeshift leather armor, instead of the Imperial Legions we know from Cyrodiil in the past game, who were dressed head-to-toe in metal. THOSE heavy legion troops are down south, already preparing for the inevitable future war with the Thalmor. In fact, if you win the civil war for the Empire, Tullius drops subtle hints about how the peace with the Dominion won't last and that a future war with them is all but certain. So yes, that White-Gold Concordat was a temporary peace, and people on both the Dominion and Empire sides agree that the war between them will resume at a later date.
So yes, for those pissed off that Talos worship was banned, the ban is obviously temporary, and once the war starts again, prayers to Talos as a god would be offered all throughout the Empire as the Imperial Legions march against the Thalmor. It's funny, even, when you look at how Ulfric fears the stronger Imperial Legions; when you do the Dark Brotherhood questline alongside the Stormcloak questline and the Emperor appears on Solitude, Ulfric refuses to attack, since if the Emperor is endangered by his little war, the Imperial Legion will commence an all-out war with them, and that would crush their little revolution. So tell me, if Ulfric is afraid to meet the real Imperial Legions in battle, how the hell will he be able to face the Thalmor?
And even with General Tullius working with such sub-par forces scraped from western Skyrim's streets, he was still able to capture Ulfric and was on his way to decapitate the loser before Alduin intervened. If Ulfric can't even beat a makeshift Imperial militia of Nords dressed in leather armor, how the hell is he going to defeat Thalmor forces wearing plate armor and wielding magic alongside their steel? He can't. Ulfric has proven twice now that he's an incompetent military commander. If Skyrim breaks free of the Empire and fights the Thalmor on their own, Ulfric would just get captured a third time, except this time, there's no dragon to save him. The Thalmor will just mail Ulfric's head in a box to the Stormcloaks and watch as their morale plummets, before finishing them off.
If you're going to pick a military generalissimo to replace the Empire and take on the Thalmor, might I suggest someone who doesn't get captured like Princess Peach?
Now that I've pissed off half the people who play Skyrim, it's time to piss off half the people who play Fallout. Legatus Lanius and Frank Horrigan are awesome characters in-lore, but as in-game bosses, their hype far outshines the actual fight. It's not like the fight with Darth Traya from KOTOR 2 where the three lightsabers she telekinetically controls keeps you on your toes, or the fight with Bhunivelze from FF13-3 which is a long, taxing battle. A well-equipped, high-level Chosen One can gun down the turrets in the arena where you face Horrigan, and gun the fucker down himself.
Meanwhile, a Courier who's leveled high enough can and will crush Lanius in a melee-fight; my Courier who's got melee maxed out sent him flying during a sword duel. She then chopped Lanius into Legate stew then proceeded to annihilate his guards. And it wasn't just Lanius, either. Ulysses was similarly just as easy to kill; on normal, a single AP round from an anti-materiel rifle from a hidden position will kill him. On very hard, the same attack can rob him of half his life points; just destroy his healing robots when they spawn, then shoot the combat inhibitor on his repair bots so that they shoot him and he focuses his attention at them. Then pump AP anti-materiel rounds in his face while he's too busy to fight you, then use explosive rounds on the Marked Men who harass you after he's dead.
It seemed like these games counted on you being mid-level at most; once you know how to play these games, and how to break them, these bosses go from near-impossible to a joke. Which, incidentally, makes all that buildup for Lanius and Horrigan look comical when you have a player who takes the threat they pose seriously, then finds out through battle that they weren't that scary.
A player who plays RPG games well gets bombarded with lore and visuals of how powerful Lanius and Horrigan are, how scary they are, they see Frank kill people left and right and they hear about how tough Lanius is from the radio and from other characters like Caesar. So they juice up, they prepare their character for the inevitable showdown with the Legion commander who executes failures and the Enclave super-soldier who can kill a Deathclaw with his hands. Then when they come to the final fight, it just becomes a battle of arithmetic; you've got enough of X, therefore, the boss becomes a punching bag who goes down like a wet blanket.
This stands in stark contrast to other RPG games' final bosses. Especially JRPG boss fights where the final battle really does feel like a battle, where if you screw up, you'll have to start it all over again and it'll take half an hour or more. I remember battles with the likes of Bhunivelze and Barthandelus from the FF13 games being such a long slog that takes roughly half an hour, and I still had to take great pains to not die, or half an hour of work goes down the toilet. But even outside of JRPGs, Darth Traya in KOTOR 2 can fuck up even a fully-upgraded and max-leveled player with the lightsabers she controls with her mind, and other RPG bosses like say, Saren from Mass Effect, can really fuck you up even if you're max-level, like when he overloads your character and all your max-level abilities and your gun are locked out.
I mean, don't get me wrong, Frank Horrigan and Legatus Lanius aren't Kai Leng levels of bad, as characters, they were well-designed, in terms of story, they were well-crafted, and the cool factor for them is such that young boys who see these guys would obviously fantasize about being them, but still, they seem to only be challenging to mid-level players who didn't max things out and were just plowing through the game as fast as they could. If a max-level player can kill your final boss in a few minutes, or hell, with Lanius, it took less than a minute for me, then it seems to be a gap in the game design.
It seems like Bethesda's idea of having the boss level with you is the better idea, that way, if you have a max-level player go up against the final boss, the final boss levels with him, and the final fight becomes a battle worthy of a player who cleaned out every dungeon and researched every skill. I remember when I first faced Alduin in my first playthrough where all my low-level character needed was nerves of steel and an itchy trigger finger to fire lightning bolts, but when I faced Alduin as a high-level character, he killed me with one gush of flame despite the fact that I was kitted out in Daedric armor, because I forgot to put enchantments on. Once I did, the fight still wasn't that easy, since he leveled with me and his attacks hit really hard.
In the same vein, that was how Obsidian designed KOTOR 2, and Darth Traya going up against a Level 50 Jedi Exile on hard mode is a battle worthy of John William's most brilliant scores, since it's the kind of battle that can still end either way even if you juice yourself up with stims, buff yourself up with the Force, and activate the best shields you can find. Same thing went for Saren in Bioware's Mass Effect, where even if you're max-level and have all sorts of abilities that can even the playing field, he has abilities of his own that can disable yours and force you to fight him with guns that you're not good with.
I was thinking that maybe, Lanius and Horrigan would have more to them than just being really tough, since that could easily be countered by a player with the right equipment and enough numbers pumped into the right stats. Like say, imagine if Lanius ambushes the Courier with several squads of top-ranking Legion troops, then he shows up and engages only when he thinks they're bushed, instead of just waiting at the tail end of the assault force with his thumb up his butt like a dateless dweeb on prom night. Maybe he leads the attack himself, and he's there trying to lure Courier 6 into a pitched battle where his Praetorians can defeat them in detail.
Maybe Frank Horrigan can call in brainwashed Deathclaws if he finds that the Chosen One is way too strong for him to handle alone; that's something I can see a Secret Service agent doing. Maybe he flees and gets the player into a room where several Secret Service agents are in sniper positions, he's there to lure the player in so that his pals can give the Chosen One the JFK treatment, and the player will have to use cover while engaging him so that his friends don't give you a new hole in your head to breathe out of. Heck, a smart player can get the drop on the snipers and give Frank a new hole in his head if they're enterprising enough, but they'll have to risk getting shot by both Frank and the snipers, which won't be easy. With an isometric, turn-based game, that could be done. That would justify giving Frank all 10s across the board for his attributes, instead of making him dumb as a brick despite having 10 in Intelligence.
, but dialog really is presented like spergy walls of text. I can believe it was all written by a dude popping amphetamines like there was no tomorrow, because it feels right on board with internet forum schizoposting.
