games

elder kings 2 kind of dominated my week, they updated to the latest ck3 patch and it's sooo good. what's really crazy is this sense of reality i've gotten from it, it's almost more 'real' feeling than the historical game.

let me explain--elder scrolls games are almost all first-person experiences of being in a fictional place, you've (assume you're a massive elder scrolls fan) 'walked' through the imperial city, you've seen Vvardenfel from the ground level, you've seen the inside of the palaces of Skyrim. Though EK2 is a bit different time from all other elder scrolls games, it's not that different which is something the historical game can't really compete with. The royal courts, if you've been lucky enough to go to the real things are accurate and beautiful in-game but everything else really has no analogy for something a player has personally experienced. The player genuinely has point of reference to how medieval London feels or should feel, and if they're enough of a nerd to have an impression it will never really match what a game developer is able to produce. No such problems exist when the setting is a fictional, massively popular video game series, with a standard experience for everyone. The result is a bit mesmerizing, I can go to Anvil in EK2 with the reference point of Project Cyrodiil and Oblivion, and a cursory impression of ESO and have a very good idea of where I am and what it should look like. And the lapses in artifice are so much more forgivable because it's fictional, you can't actually say 'that's wrong' and have it take you out of it.