Since posting my thoughts on the religions of Skyrim , I've taken something of a newer approach in a somewhat "meta-gaming" vein. Now I've determined that my character is in some way "immortal", with origins from a higher dimensional plane. I've decided that my character has the same knowledge that I do. Namely, that his real name is Paeter and he lives in the real world and no one he interacts with in Tamriel is "real", but rather simulations of reality that some dark force has placed in my path to conceal the existence of the "First Cause", which I feel compelled by reason to seek out. For this reason, a quest for power and dominance over Tamriel has become my focus. Not in the usual power-mad way you might think, since as I mentioned, my character is aware that his environment is an illusion and none of the "people" he interacts with have any real feelings. They are deceptive simulations. Rather, my quest for ...

Last time I brought up anything philosophical regarding "Skyrim", I was talking about the choice of religious views one can take in the Elder Scrolls world, and what my choice is as I play. This time, I have a political decision in front of me. There is a war going on between the Emperial forces and those of a rebellion known as the "Stormcloaks", and in order to see one of the major plot-lines of the game I have to choose a side to join. The Stormcloaks are fed up with the how things have been in Skyrim for hundreds of years. They believe Skyrim's High Kings have been nothing but puppet tools of the empire, and believe the status-quo should be forcefully overthrown. (Of course, they have a High King of their choosing ready to fill the empty seat as soon as the war is over.) On the other hand, you have the empire, the legal, rightful ruler of all kingdoms, who reigns from a far off land, removed from the struggles of Skyrim and taking them for granted...

With "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" sucking the hours and social lives out of RPG gamers all over, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the world of Elder Scrolls from an angle that usually isn't covered. That of the religious culture. Almost every big name RPG and fantasy novel series incorporates religion in some form. Neverwinter Nights and Dragon Age had polytheistic and somewhat monotheistic settings. Even sci-fi RPGs like Mass Effect 1 and 2 and Fallout 3 have religion involved in numerous subplots, if not the main story. But the Elder Scrolls games may have one of the richest fictional theologies ever developed for a video game RPG. MY GAME WITHIN THE GAME A fun little exercise I like to do when I play a new RPG is try to figure out what religion I would follow if I were in this world and doing my best to seek out the truth about who is really running the universe. I play the part of a spiritual "seeker", letting every nut-job pro...

Relativism strikes another blow to pop culture in "Countdown To Mystery" from DC comics. I love the Spectre. One of my favorite character concepts. The Wrath of God bonded to a human soul. John Ostrander's run with Tom Mandrake doing artwork was a critical success, but since they stepped down, the character has gone downhill. First with the J.M. Dematteis "Spectre the Friendly Ghost" series, where the character suddenly became the "Spirit of Redemption", going on all sorts of touchy feely journeys with people who "really aren't so bad after all." Now don't get me wrong. I'm all about redemption. I know my own heart, and I'm certainly deserving of some wrath. But there are people in this world who are completely given over to evil and they will never seek redemption. Granted, we don't want to be judgmental and pretend we know who those people are, but history has demonstrated that plenty of peo...

The Matrix Trilogy is, in one of it's primary layers, a six-hour discourse on the subject of predestination. The idea that choice does not begin with our conscious decision, but with events creating factors for making our decisions that are completely out of our control. The brothers suggest in the film that choice, if we have the ability to choose, is a mechanic that exists only within the confines of destiny. We can only choose from the options available to us. And the options available to us exist because of factors that we did not bring about. For example: If I choose to drink a glass of water, it is probably because I am thirsty. But let's go deeper into why I might have made that choice, and see if the choice begins with me, or with something I had no control over. I'm thirsty because it's been awhile since I last had water. I may have been busy(something I could control), forgotten(something I can't), or not known where to get water(I cannot con...