DIABLO 3 IMPRESSIONS: ULTIMATE EVIL EDITION

Recently Diablo 3 came to consoles yet again in a bigger and badder way with the ULTIMATE EVIL EDITION, a version of the game that now includes the Reaper of Souls add-on that all us cool PC gamers have been playing for months. Now console gamers can enjoy the fifth and final act of the game’s single player storyline, as well as the madness of the Adventure Mode. Not only that, but those lucky sods with their PS4s and their XBones can rip and tear across Sanctuary as well.

Given that Sam and I have been playing Diablo 3 on the Xbox 360 with a copy rented from Redbox, we haven’t progressed far in the past year. There’s the occasional weekend that comes up when we decide to put our free time to the lazy art of sitting on the couch and mashing buttons, so we haven’t gotten to the point where we can reap (har har) the benefits of the ULTIMATE EVIL EDITION. Neither of us wanted to make a new character (sorry Crusader), and since the game was nice enough to detect the old save file, we’re still dawdling in the desert. For those of you without a frame of reference for where that means we’re at in the game, I’ll help clarify: Not. That. Close.

It was good to get some time in with the ULTIMATE EVIL EDITION, even though the game is identical to what we’ve been playing in months past given our progress in the game. We didn’t reach the end of Act IV to lift up our arms and cry for just one more act. Everything is exactly as it was in the past: we’re still a barbarian and a wizard desperately trying to avoid getting eaten by the minions of hell.

The controls are the same, especially that nifty console-only feature of rolling to evade incoming blasts of eldritch energy that the PC players should be totes jelly of. Menus are still navigated with the weird radial that remains far inferior to the menus navigated via the mouse on the PC, but that doesn’t render the game unplayable. The ULTIMATE EVIL EDITION provides more of the entertainment that Sam and I enjoy together when our weekends overlap, and doesn’t do much more than that except extend the shelf life of its content.

It’s still good fun, so now we ask ourselves: Do we go ahead and save our money for a copy of our own so we longer have to depend on its availability at the local Redbox? Now looms the prospect of finally upgrading to the newest generation of console babies, which means the possibility of losing our progress, especially when it’s the PS4 I’m eyeing and not the Xbox One (sorry Microsoft). Whether or not this will actually happen is still up in the air as the “how” is a puzzle unto itself, but if/when it happens, the adventures of Hogoth the Barbarian and Demena the Wizard will end abruptly. Or just get rebooted if we’re feeling nostalgic.

Late to the Party: Far Cry 3

I’ve been stumbling through Far Cry 3 for the past month or so after picking it up off the ground during a robbery masquerading as a Steam summer sale. First-person shooters have become less my thing recently, so I thought a game in which you don’t just run and gun might make for a comfortable change of pace.

I was incorrect.

Let me be clear: Far Cry 3 is not a bad game. The voice acting’s sprinkled with a liberal dash of meh, but the gunplay is entertaining and the experience system adds a reasonable amount of RPG number crunching to distract you from the fact that your main objective is force-feeding bullets to red-shirted men with strange accents. Good old family-friendly fun.

There are, however, two tiers of leveling. The first tier is that familiar sort of progress in which you do cool things and you get points for it, and then you spend those points to do even cooler things. Simple, elegant, and hard to beat.

The second tier, on the other hand, really wants to emphasize the fact that you’re on a tropical island trying to survive. You don’t have to manage hunger or thirst or any of that finicky crap, but you do have to hunt and skin animals if you want to carry more than one gun, a handful of loot, and $1000. It’s gross, and it’s also hella boring. Hunting in Far Cry 3 is the sort of activity you’d expect in an MMO like World of Warcraft. You go up to the friendly looking gnome and he tells you that, “Hey, guy, I need, like, five wolf pelts. I’d get them myself but I have to stand here and tell some other dope my sob story. Do this for me and get Generic Item of the Mundane.” Since nothing’s ever easy, you have to do it because for whatever stupid reason, you need that item.

Far Cry 3 falls into that very trap, but without the pseudo-social environment of World of Warcraft. You’re not playing Far Cry 3 with anybody—shut up, I know there’s a cooperative option—you’re doing this solo. Man versus the Wilderness. And somehow, it’s really boring. “Killing wild pigs to make a bigger wallet” was a design choice that an actual person came up with and said, “Players will love it.” Or maybe they just said, “Players will tolerate it.” Because it’s this same process that allows you to carry more than one gun.

I spent more time killing goats to make a bigger rucksack just to carry all the junk I pick up than I have fighting pirates which is supposed to be the meat and potatoes of this game. The amount of goats killed would flag my character as a Satanist. Lo and behold, I’ve had to upgrade it a second time within a half hour. And guess what? Now it’s nearly filled to the brim with old syringes, multicolored leaves, single playing cards, and other bits of useless trash that somehow take up an equal amount of volume in my rucksack made of dingoes.

All I ask is for an easy way. The major theme of the game’s “plot” is the walking the path of the warrior, so I get that the game is supposed to be an arduous climb. But why must the fun play second fiddle to the grind? Why can’t I just pay for a new backpack with $500 in blood-soaked cash from my handmade pig wallet? Real RPGs let me do that. 

Believing in Destiny: Exploring Bungie's Strange New World

Master Chief could have always used a cape.

Destiny is the far future incarnation of our world, evolving with the intervention of alien technology. The old world is wasteland: you find rebirth in Old Russia, where rusted cars litter the landscape and wildlife slowly retakes the buildings that stand on it. A floating orb calls itself your “ghost” and directs you to safety. You have no idea what’s happening, but you’re not supposed to. You’ve been dead for a while.

The premise is hardly new territory. Hell, at times it feels like its older brother Halo. Waves of alien troops descend upon you from spaceships, shouting their strange guttural language. You are one of the select super soldiers tasked with protecting humanity. Only there are a great deal more of you, and you’re supposed to work together.

Here we have the similar gameplay as the Borderlands series, where you go out to explore and shoot the threatening wilds. Each successful hit puts up a number to let you know how much damage you’re dealing, and there’s satisfaction in making those numbers bigger with a headshot. You level up your character through frequent firefights punctuated with minibosses. These early missions don’t provide much variety beyond go to this point and interact with something or go to multiple points and interact with more things, though that might change as the game progresses. Progress seems to move more swiftly in some aspects, however, as you’re not tied to a town hub just to get rid of gear. Within the inventory menu, pressing a button breaks down a given item into “glimmer,” the game’s currency.

My experience has been pleasurable. I don’t stop every few seconds to think how Borderlands might have done something better, so some of those comparisons may be unfair. The controls feel tight and intuitive. Crouching while sprinting makes you slide across the ground, giving you an illusion of security as you scramble for cover. Access to iron sights offers varying levels of shot precision and control. Like the game’s story, a lot of this is nothing new, but it’s virgin territory for Bungie.

Even on the PS3, Destiny is a pretty game. Perhaps it’s simply the size of my TV, but I still like the way the game works. Compared to its predecessor Halo, the colors are earthier but still colorful. Blue lights shine everywhere like K-mart was responsible for the fall of civilization, but it’s not a silly aesthetic. The armor of certain characters appear to have some pseudo-fantasy feel to them, with fur collars and the like. It’s different enough from the gamut of sci-fi shooters to give the world its own unique flavor.

The game won’t be able to avoid Borderlands comparisons, which is a shame. Destiny does a lot that Borderlands and other shooters already did, except that it attempts to do it in a larger massively multiplayer scale. To what end this scale shall manifest is still unknown to me. Missions I’ve played are limited to three players, and though the game makes matches with other players working on the same level, it seems all too random. Whether it succeeds at its MMO-like aspirations has yet to be seen, however, since we’re still in beta. It’s clear they want this to be a social game, not quite like Halo and its matchmaking, but on that grander scale. As of right now, it doesn’t offer that sense of wonder that inspires and encourages exploration that so many MMORPGs offer, but then again that may change. Until then, I’ll continue to struggle with the game’s mechanical identity.  

A Tale of Two Snakes: Adjusting to a New Voice from an Old Face

To complain about Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes' length would be to beat a dead horse, so I won't even bother to pick up a club. It's a tight game, one that's pushed the series further from top-down sneak 'em up gameplay to tactical shooter mechanics that rivals most military shooters on console. The story is compelling, and they waste no opportunities in terms of getting you up to speed. Didn't play side-story game Peace Walker? That's alright. The loading screens are rife with context. Not that it will do you much good. This is a Metal Gear Solid game, after all.

That being said, what little story you do get is good. It's intense. It's much darker than its predecessors, even more so than Metal Gear Solid 4's theme of an aging soldier who may or may not be knocking on death's door. You get some unexpected social commentary with Guantanamo Bay stand-in Camp Omega. All in all, it's clear that Metal Gear Solid is doing some growing up. 

To amp up the maturity levels, Hideo Kojima sought out some Hollywood talent for his cast of battle-hardened characters. Enter Jack Bauer himself: Kiefer Sutherland. The growly son of Donald now voices Snake as opposed to fan favorite David Hayter who, for many people, is the voice of Snake, whether Solid Snake or papa Naked Snake. A lot of folks weren't happy, especially Mr. Hayter himself, and understandably so: Hayter's gravelly intonation was Solid Snake. It only got more gruff when Solid Snake aging sped up in MGS 4, and it felt right. Hayter is Snake.

It's jarring to see the face of a character who is recognizable, regardless of polygon count or texture detail, but instead hear the voice of another, a voice that doesn't quite fit. For over fifteen years, gamers have consistently had the same voice for Solid Snake since his delivery unto a 3D canvas. Why change it now?

It's already evident that MGS V is a game of change. The game is a transition for the main character from protagonist to antagonist. Already, there's a tonal shift between MGS V and its predecessors. In spite of its depressing content, MGS 4 keeps the razors from the wrists with moments of the comedic and bizarre. A gun dealer who looks oddly like Dennis Rodman in Simon Sez with a pet monkey in silver hot pants? MGS 4 is abound with Koijma-san's signature quirk. In the brief window of MGS V, we don't get that with the exception of his Frankenstein-esque, anachronistic iDroiD, but even that is easy to overlook. No guardsmen with diarrhea, no roller skating grenadiers. For a Hideo Kojima production, it's all very straight-forward. 

This is a prequel, of course. Post-origin story, pre-epitaph. This is us seeing Anakin tossed into the lava pit. This is us seeing the hero become the villain. We need to see why Naked Snake becomes Big Boss and why Big Boss becomes hellbent on renouncing his allegiances with private army and a giant robot. Heavy moments are bound to happen. Kojima needs an actor who can handle some emotional weight, and disappointingly maybe Hayter's not cut out for it. 

It's still weird, though. It's like seeing a friend you knew as a kid but didn't see again until after puberty struck: voice is deeper and attitude is different. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it's for damn sure a weird thing. Kiefer Snake is definitely different from Hayter's Naked Snake. Kiefer Snake's seems more haunted, more weighed down by crises. I need more time with Kiefer Snake, but Ground Zeroes is, by all means, a glorified demo. 

Reluctant Hero, or Avoiding the Main Storyline of Skyrim

For a game that came out over two years ago, I'm still a big fan of Skyrim. The free-form classless leveling system opened the boundaries for more freedom in an already liberated game in which you were not bound by levels bookended by cinematics. It was up to you to craft the story of the Dragonborn--Bethesda just gave you the set pieces to do it.

The sad truth is that Skyrim's story isn't as compelling as it could be. One could argue it's due to narrative limitations imposed by the sandbox nature of The Elder Scrolls series, but I don't believe Skyrim was built with story in mind. Skyrim is in itself a viking-inspired playground with glory to be had and foes to be driven forth. The main quest is just a guideline, and an underwhelming one at that. But the hundreds of hours I sank into Oblivion, Skyrim's older brother, didn't give me high hopes for its successor's main quest. It's a reservoir of fantasy trope runoff, siphoning whatever might be popular. A lot of it is regurgitation, but the player's actions don't have to follow suit.

My first character was a Redguard that I lazily named "Prisoner" with a long terrorist beard and a great bundled mane of dreadlocks. For nearly ten levels, I disregarded improving his hit points and focused solely on improving his stamina. Near the end of his tale, he could sprint great distances, wielding two delicately crafted one-handed axes. Dragons would fall before him with only three spin attacks from his axes. Prisoner thirsted for blood and cared not how he got it. He fought alongside the Stormcloaks despite their xenophobic platform to whet his appetite for carnage. To put it simply, Prisoner was a psychopath and he will forever be remembered in the canon of The Elder Scrolls as the one who slew Alduin the World Eater.

At that point, the narrative is out of my hands. Yes, I killed the World Eater but only because the objective sat at the top of my quest journal. Is that why Prisoner did it? No, he did it to explore a monster's insides. Threat to mortals or not, Alduin's death by Prisoner's hands was by no means a noble deed. But Skyrim the game doesn't care. I had to be a big damn hero and save the world.

Not this time. In the upteenth I've started a new character, I've decided to reclaim my ownership of Skyrim's narrative. It will not be hijacked by the game's prescripted main plot. I will avoid the main quest like the fantasy equivalent of the plague. Right after I escape the raging dragon in Skyrim's opening, I'll head to Riverwood and collect whatever supplies I'm offered. But I will not head to Whiterun. I will not inform Jarl Balgruuf the Greater that his town may be threatened by the return of winged horrors with scales. I will not shout as dragons do, regardless if I am the Dragonborn.

There is no achievement built into the game or Steam for this. By avoiding the main quest and the path of the Dragonborn, I forfeit any true conclusion to the game. Alduin, the almighty butthole of a dragon set to gobble up the world, will not taste my blade because I will ignore the call for as long as mechanically possible. This may prove more challenging because, though the game is designed in such a way that my enemies increase in level as I do, it is also designed to balance with the player's ability to use dragon shouts. But I will not use them.

In doing this, I seek to change the ultimate narrative of Skyrim. For all intents and purposes, if my character is the fabled "Dragonborn," he will not know about it. Though the name my escape the lips of those I meet, my character will not know. This is, after all, the purpose of the open-world game: strip of the player of a linear path. Not only allow for diversion but mandate it. It is not destination but the journey. And if I need a destination, the Ebony Warrior shall serve as a final boss. His defeat will not affect the game's main quest. It is only at level 80 that my character my encounter him, and as that is the level cap it is fitting that I should fight him last.

Considering the fact that the highest level any of my characters are at is 56, I'd say it's going to take time.

Rated M for Mature: Wolfenstein's Strange but Satisfying Tone

Dat typeface.

Wolfenstein: The New Order came out to "generally favorable reviews" this past week, exceeding the expectations set forth by the series' 2009 bland iteration in Wolfenstein. Admittedly, Bethesda put out one hell of a marketing campaign for it, featuring a revised version of history where--spoiler alert!--the Nazis won World War II and the world comprised of public player executions on soccer fields and Nazified versions of '50s and '60s pop songs. Even from the trailers, the writing looked impressive, so it was hard for me not to be excited. Just a little excited.

So I marathoned it on my days off. I jumped into the combat boots of William "B.J." Blazkowicz, hero of the games since 1992's Wolfenstein 3D. We storm the castle of high-ranking Nazi butthole Deathshead, aiming to riddle him and his legions of jackboots full of Allied lead. But, of course, things go south quickly. Planes come down, men get killed, and we survivors get captured by Deathshead himself. Soon we are posed with a choice that changes the game significantly enough that it creates two separate timelines: do you choose to kill the wet-behind-the-ears rookie or the battle-hardened veteran? Deathshead leaves the decision up to you.

It seems like only yesterday that I was playing BioShock Infinite, a game peppered with significant choices that it almost feels less like a shooter and more like a role playing game. Then you start blasting dudes and it feels like a shooter again. Given BioShock Infinite's origins, playing with player choice is not only expected, but almost required. It's not a BioShock game if the idea of player agency isn't toyed with. Wolfenstein, however, is certainly also a series about choice but with more immediate consequences, such as which gun to maim which Nazi.

But it's more than that this time around. Picking between my two comrades, I can't decide who to let die. As a player, I've had about an hour by this point to get to know these characters. The rookie pleads for his life. The veteran resigns to death. The Nazi tells me that if I don't pick one of them, we'll all just die. I pick the rookie. He pleads, asks if I'll get him out of there. The game fades out.

I feel immediate pangs of remorse right after I make the timeline altering choice. My conscience sings in cliches: the rookie had so much to live for, the veteran knew what he signed up for. I answered back with cold logic: the veteran was experienced and necessary to the mission. But the mission is a failure, we attempt to escape, and Blazkowicz ends up in a head injury and a vegetative state for fourteen years. Such is Wolfenstein.

The game is unrelenting in its depiction of a Nazi-controlled Europe. Most World War II shooters don't show the full extent of Nazi persecution. In a given Medal of Honor game, it was almost as if the only crime the Nazis committed was not having enough bullets in them. Developers depended on the history books to give you the explanation why the Nazis are the bad guys here. But Wolfenstein: The New Order is a post-World War II game. I don't only mean the setting of the game, but also the fact that it comes in after an era where much more of the shooter market was comprised of World War II games where the big objective was to thin Nazi ranks. The objective remains, but the narrative seems more daring this time around. We go to a labor camp in the game, evoking depictions of concentration camps in film and TV. Blazkowicz gets a numbered tattoo, echoing the very thing that so many came out of the war with on their arms.

While the thought of depicting a concentration camp in a video game can appear to trivialize the war, the game sets its stance on war early on: it's bad. Blazkowicz and the player bear witness to some awful scenes, often when they have no choice but to watch. Throughout the game, Blazkowicz whispers to himself in a way that sounds like a broken man, damaged by things he's seen. The player must see these things. Such things can't be whitewashed, or they almost assuredly trivialize this war.

But a video game can't run on such harrowing content alone. Given the almost B-movie backdrop of the game, Wolfenstein could run dangerously close to undiluted melodrama and undercut any weight the game might carry in its more serious moments. We've got to have the moments of humor because, let's face it, we're playing a game where a good portion of the enemies are giant robots whose scanning sounds like a guitar lick from a garage rock outfit. Wolfenstein can take itself seriously at times for some very human moments that we rarely get in video games. But in those other times, if it takes the player to a Nazi moon base, it's okay if a character says, "I'm on the motherf***ing moon."

Why Assassin's Creed is Dumb (Spoilers if You Actually Care About That Sort of Thing)

What's with the Jolly--ooo I see what they did.

I'll fess up now: I've only played the first Assassin's Creed game in its entirety, the one where you're the American-sounding Arabian assassin with a baller hood and parkour moves to boot. It was okay. It took me a while, but only because I got bored with it. It's not a terrible game, and indeed the gameplay was good enough that they recycled it with a little bit extra for four more games with a fifth one coming soon. I just found the story dull, the gameplay repetitive, and HOLY GOD IS ALTAIR A TERRIBLE PROTAGONIST.

As is his descendant, who you also play as in all of the games. I dreaded the intervals where you're cooped up in a sterile-looking penthouse between pseudo-time-traveling. You have two things you can do: move your character and press a button. Any button. They'll all do the same thing, assuming you've encountered something you can interact with like strange writings or a person. Most of those intermissions are spent conversing with that lady from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and all of those sequences are boring. Yes, they serve to further the plot. But never mind is the plot silly and convoluted for the sake of being convoluted.

In these games, you either play as Desmond, just some modern day dude who gets caught up in a secret war between the Assassins and the Templars. Oddly enough, the Assassins are the "good" guys, but that's just because between them and the Temples Templars, they're the less dickish. The Temptations Templars want to rule the world because that's a convenient motive for bad dudes. But you don't just play as Desmond, you also play as one of his several ancestors who--get this--were all Assassins. Crazy, no? And the way the game explains is that you're tapping into Desmond's genetic memories to, uh, learn stuff. I guess. It was to find a relic in the first game, I think it's to learn how to become an Assassin in the third game. Don't ask me about the rest. The third one wasn't too clear either.

Of the games I've played, Desmond seems to be progressively groomed to be the savior of humanity from the Temps and their diabolical designs. The second game's intro gives Desmond a little bit more to do, like beat up some innocent security guards hired on by the Evil Templar Organization because somebody wants a little taste of freedom. Desmond gets to do more than just talk to Sarah Marshall; he gets to punch some guys.

Already, it's a step up from the first game's modern day interludes, but it's still not great. Desmond is still uninteresting and clueless (granted, it picks up right at the end of the first game), and despite being voiced by everybody's favorite voice actor Nolan North, he has the charisma of a fake potted plant. The long-ass introduction with Desmond from the beginning of Assassin's Creed III doesn't help things, although given my ignorance of the end of AC II and the everything of AC Brotherhood and AC Revelations, I missed where the weird got turned up.

Yup. Weirder than genetic memory.

But in the process, they also picked up a new cast member, everybody's favorite interdimensional godlike manchild from Star Trek: The Next Generation, John De Lancie.

Q, now with 100% more goatee.

But he doesn't have his mystical Q powers in this as far as I can tell, and he's only there to be the hard-to-impress dad to Desmond's angst-ridden son. Again, I missed some things so maybe the father-son dynamic is more worthy of my emotional investment than I'm giving it credit. But then again, this game is from the same makers as Assassin's Creed with Most Boring Video Game Protagonist of 2007, Altair. 

So good of an Assassin he doesn't have a face.

So we have a fourth game coming up, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (pictured at the top). As you can probably tell, it's about pirates, which sounds promising. But so did III with its Revolutionary War backdrop, until it killed the entire series for me. As I mentioned before, you play as at least two different characters in these games, Desmond, and some random descendant. Desmond's plotline serves as a pointless frame in which, honestly, if ditched could improve the games ten fold. An argument could be made that the cuts to modern day from the first Assassin's Creed were to help the pacing and give players respite from the action. Except there isn't much action. The parkour movement gets stale after you realize that all you're doing is holding a button down with an additional button if you want to move faster. The missions are identical: kill this bad dude and escape the guards. The extras are all scavenger hunts that aren't remotely interesting because, get this, to do find stuff you have to hold a button down for an extended amount of time. It's a boring sandwich with slightly less boring meat (or vegetables if you're awful). 

In III, you again play as Desmond and, get this, some rad English Assassin named Haytham who's gotta take some targets out in the Colonies. And he's pretty alright. It might be the accent, but he's already a load better than Altair and an improvement over the rich boy Assassin of AC II. He's interesting. He's got a three-corner hat. He hooks up with a Native American lady. He turns out to be a Templar. Damn, didn't see that one coming. And I don't mean that in the good way. If there's anything I learned from my college creative writing classes (except that I don't like a lot of creative writing students), it's that you can't be coy with your readers, and Ubisoft, the first few hours of your game is a hot mess of coy sauce. It's at that point that you start playing as his European-Mohawk offspring, Connor. And it's at that point I stopped.

Nothing against playing as that character (except that he's a kid and one of your training missions is a game of hide and seek), but it's then when everything takes a dive. One of the characters you associated with as Haytham is a premium buttpipe, but only after you encounter him as Connor. Maybe the last few years corrupted him, but it's still a stark contrast to what we saw of him pre-Connor. 

I felt burned. Duped. Like I'd been played with a plot line sleight of hand that had picked my precious time from my back pocket. The game's dull framing narrative was bad enough, but then they took away a protagonist I actually enjoyed playing as. Maybe Connor would grow on me if I kept playing, but I don't have it in me to give the game another chance. Assassin's Creed IV comes out near the end of October. It's got pirates, and from what I've read Desmond is dead at the end of III so that's a vast improvement. 

I'm looking forward to not finishing it.

Sojourning Skyrim Again, or a Confession

Skyrim is nearly two years old, and the fun returns on the game have diminished little. After my Hard Drive Crisis of '13, I lost some of my save games--specifically my original character--but thanks to the Steam Cloud service, I retained the rest, specifically a female dark elf named Elaris. Burning stuff her thing. Burning it with * M A G I C *

I put about six hours into her game long before I got a new hard drive. By that point, I had returned to my original character, the defaultly named Prisoner whose Redguard background in one-handed weapons fueled his bloodlust. I had started Skyrim's expansion Dawnguard and joined a band of zealous vampire slayers to, uh, quite literally guard the dawn. My interests shifted back to The Witcher 2, so it was a long while before I traversed the cold mountain and Skyrim, home to Nords and giants alike.

I reinstalled Skyrim last week and saw only Elaris--no Prisoner--remained. I did not click on her save, instead I hopped into a new game. the long familiar intro of my character wheeled up to a small village in a prison wagon was still the same chore to sit through, but finally I was called up for execution, which meant I was called up for character creation. It's a curious thing that one's character should be birthed only a moment before they rest their neck on a chopping block. Leave it to those clever bastards at Bethesda.

Skyrim is a game of sandboxy freedom, and character creation is an extension of that. Want to be human? You've got four choices. Elf? Choose from a few different pointy-eared dudes. Cat-man? Sure. Lizard-lady? Fine. Dwarf? Go screw yourself.

Skyrim is part of a long series of games with an established lore that while they threw fifty different variations of fantasy tropes en masse towards your face, they wrote out the single best demi-human race the genre has even known: dwarves. Sure, dwarves are referred to and you can explore their steampunk ruins. But they're not Tolkien's brand of bearded badass. Oh no, they're just an extinct society of elves. There's a reason why The Hobbit focuses on a band of dwarves and not elves. Because elves suck.

And I don't mean this from an "elves are gay" position, because that's just an insult to the LGBT community. When it comes down to it, I cannot separate the word "elf" from its Christmas connotations. I've been immersed in fantasy long enough that I know full well that Tolkien was not referring to Santa's Little Helpers. I don't have this same issue with dwarves and Snow White because they mostly perform the same function. When they belt out "Hi-ho, it's off to work we go," you better believe they got some mining to do for gems and ore and stuff. Sure, we don't see them tear it up with ale and battle axes, but that's because Disney's a family company and they can't show that Sleepy's just in a perpetual drunken stupor.

So what do I go with in Skyrim? Khajiit, or anthropomorphic gypsy cat. Why? Because they're naturally stealthy, got claws they can use as weapons, and I DON'T LIKE ELVES