Christmas. Christmas never changes. Every day this week though, Fallout: New Vegas gets into the spirit of the season as a selection of mods make wishes come true... for better or worse. Today, new friends mean new opportunities, but at what cost? The answer: Pants.

Previously: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4




Zombies sighted. Crush them like they're the democratic spirit that made this country what it was, before we made it a nuclear wasteland with our ancestors' now legendary douchebaggery.









Enemies neutralised harder than that family at the start of Fallout 2, sir. Permission to put on the special power armour with a spacious enough codpiece to handle serious murder erection, sir?



Oh, this couldn't feel more wrong.



Cass, if it's wrong to use an evil paramilitary army as your personal security service to seize control of a casino from its proper owner, turn it into a fortress, and profit from a zombie apocalypse you accident'ly started, I don't want to be right.





Kinda getting that feeling, yeah, Comic Sans. Pretty sure even most folks who'd make deals with the devil would take one look at the Enclave offering to just follow orders and go "Jesus, no! Are you insane!? No! Just... just no! "



Ah, come on-



Last I heard, Satan refused to sign a deal with those guys, saying they were too ruthless. And they're just following your orders? You know there'll be some catch.



Sir! No catch! You have the Command Radio sir! While you have that, you can just phone us and we obey your every whim for reasons that make such obvious sense they hardly need explaining, sir!



Yeah. Like it's that simple. One whim to rule them all, one whim to realign them; one whim to bring them here, and in the weirdness, oh, nuke Black Mountain.



COMMENCING ORBITAL STRIKE!



What? No, wai-





Well, there goes my soul. Right then. Just happened. Burned right away to a sulphurous crisp. Text message from the devil, sayin' "Rose of Sharon Cassidy, be seeing you soon." Thanks for that, boys. Way to go.



Eh, don't go beating yourself up over it. Last I checked, beating up a few of Caesar's Legion-



...



...



Huh. Right then. Or beating up Powder Gangers and other evil sorts can wipe that clean off the ol' karmic slate. Come on. We got a casino to start running.



Yeah, about that, Trajan Pro. Not sure just putting on these fancy business suits is enough to run Mr. House's casino. For starters, pretty sure he's got an army of Securitrons who don't like us much.





Army of Securitrons who don't like you very much destroyed, sir! I shot that cowboy one who looked like he was going to do something really interesting but ended up not!



Right, okay, but it's not like we can just stand about and just act all proprietorial, like we're just role-playing casino ownership while these guys shoot zombies.



No need. Look what I found in the back.





See? Course, I don't reckon even us and our friends here will be able to to run the whole place ourselves. Enclave's good for shooting zombies, not so much at dealing blackjack. First gambler to say 'hit me'...



No shit. You got a back-up plan then?





Mr. House's old robot pets? You sure that's a good idea? They're not even working.



Least if we use these malfunctioning pets, we know they're-



No. Don't even think about it!



House-broken!



*pant* You meant 'Caesar'.



Oh, shush.





Right. So, we're all up and running, more or less, assuming 'not having the money to open any tables or buy any booze' counts as 'less', and I'm thinking it probably does. Any ideas for raising quick money in a zombie apocalypse?



Figured a good starting point would be heading to Freeside, finding all the scrap we can get, then crafting it together into more worthwhile stuff and selling it to the gun runners for starting investment capital.



That actually... sounds quite sensible.



Then I figured, screw that, let's do this.







Of all the things I've ever woken up without my pants to find, I like this one the best. 'Course, technically, we just appeared here with all our stuff still on, like something went wrong. Not sure why you had us take it off anyway.



Seemed the thing to do, I guess. Fair being fair and all that. Think we should get dressed and head back before anyone notices?



Wouldn't do much for our reps to be seen in the least stylish underwear this side of Dragon Age, though I'm pretty sure we could go to church like this and no-one'd care. Come on. We've got a casino to run and the Enclave'll be getting lonely.





Cass, when we started this casino, two long hours ago, you ever think it'd be as successful as this? Caps and chems flowing, the Lucky 38 restored to its old glory, the zombie apocalypse almost never spilling in from outside?



I don't care if the chems are better at Gomorrah. Sod'em! You tell those gamblers that only the Lucky 38 is protected by the Enclave, and- yeah, sure boss. Wonder what Mr. House thinks of how we're running his beloved casino?



Aw, I reckon he's happy to see the old girl full of life again.






My... piss tube... is filled... with impotent rage....





So what's wrong? You look like someone put Bonzi Buddy on your PIPBoy.



I dunno, Cass. Just don't feel right, is all, being in here and not out there like in the old hours.



Even with the zombie apocalypse going on out there?



I guess just sitting around in one place just 'aint for me whatever's out there. I need to feel the sand... the snow, I guess, underfoot. Taste the air, then be sick 'cause it's full of radioactive poison. You know? The open trail, that's the life for me.



And also a million or so zombies.



Point. Still, y'know.



Way I see it, we've got everything anyone could want, right here. At least until the Enclave get back to their old tricks. Come on, let's head to the VIP lounge. Just got in a new shipment of alcohol in need of popping open.



Tell you what, how 'bout you start the popping without me. Just going to go swap the guards outside, okay? Swap the guards, do a few other quick things. Business things. Like a business guy. Be there 'fore you know it.





Courier...





He's not coming back, is he, ma'am?



Depends. Would you and your soldiers likely return to your evil ways and go on a genocidal killing spree if the guy with the Command Radio suddenly vanished, leaving an obvious power vacuum for your insane masters to exploit?



Yup.



In that case, yes.




And so the Courier, who had first seen the Christmas snow in Goodsprings, continued to see Christmas, in a Mojave Wasteland forever changed by strange weather, the hordes of the undead, and some seriously dodgy shit to look up on your own time.


Rose of Sharon Cassidy continued running the Lucky 38, which turned out to be surprisingly boring after a while. Eventually, tired of waiting for the Enclave to turn evil, she packed up her caps and went west. Life was peaceful there.



Unleashed, the Enclave revelled in their ability to conquer the Mojave, before remembering that they were too stupid to do anything without orders, and that the Courier had kept the Radio. Their leader was heard to comment "Arse."



FISTO WROTE AUTOBIOGRAPHY, "CLOSED FIST, OPEN HEART!" IT SOLD SURPRISINGLY WELL!



Still brainwashed, Edward Sallow - better known as Caesar and 'Caesar' - found himself travelling with the Doctor, though was too nerve stapled to appreciate the honour. Sometimes, the Doctor used him as a coat rack.



Xenite continued demanding "Uhmmm... is this supposed to be humorous?" until being randomly flattened by a falling bison on an otherwise uneventful Tuesday.



Trudy, owner of the Prospector Saloon, reverse-engineered the weapons found in her bar, raised an army, and declared herself Boudica, Queen of the Wastes. Anyone describing her horde as "Caes-HERs Legion" was crucified, for funsies.



Mr. House's constant complaining led to the coining of the phrase "The House Always Whines". Proving the point, he spent several years bitching about this to himself until his life support system finally committed suicide.



And so the Courier's holiday season came to an end... for now. In the new world of the Mojave Wasteland, fighting continued, blood was spilled, and many lived and died - just as they had in the old world, and original game. Because Christmas... Christmas never changes.

Today's Mods: Frozen World, Zombie Mod, Enclave Commander, Zombie Apocalypse, Run The Lucky 38, More Perks

Christmas. Christmas never changes. Every day this week though, Fallout: New Vegas gets into the spirit of the season as a selection of mods make wishes come true… for better or worse. Today, when was the last time the Doctor arrived to find nothing going horribly wrong? Just saying...

Previously: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3




Trespassers, hello! How strange! Better tell me your name. It's tougher to be a trespasser when everyone knows your name, and I'd know. Of course, that's me, and you're probably not me, because I think we'd have met.



They call me The Man With No Name.



How fascinating! They call me the Doctor. Some people, anyway; the smart people. Others, The Oncoming Storm, The Destroyer Of Worlds, The Lady of Pai- no, wait, that's a secret. Anyway, mustn't stop. Unless!



Unless what?



What? What's with all these questions? Have a Jelly Baby. Didn't think I liked them any more. Turns out I do, as you can see from my face. Not a red one! The red ones are my favourites. I bite the little toe off first. Going for the head is barbaric.



What is this place? Some kind of spaceship?



Ah! Half-right! Mostly right. Time and space, you see. It's my TARDIS, and it can take you anywhere and anywhen and anywha. You'll discover that. Well, usually. Right now, it's stuck to this wasteland, and changing time of day.



Does that mean you could teach me how to fly it?



A human? Please. Now, if you had a Time Lord brain perhaps, yes, but there is no way a regular person could handle this, except for any of the ones who can or if it starts flying itself. You though? Sorry, I just don't-





Well, I'll be. If that isn't the most wonderful, amazing contrivance I've seen in... oooh, five minutes. Be my guest then! Turns out it's actually as easy as picking a destination and pulling a lever. No problem at all.



Alright then, pardner. Reckon I'll set the co-ordinates for my suite at the Lucky 38. Cass, stand by. I'm pulling the lever. And... nothing happened. "Unable to land at these co-ordinates" it says. Doctor?



Well, you know TARDISes. Always buggier on the inside.



You do remember that we can teleport at will?



Sssh there, New Amy. Pond 2.0. Anothermy Pond. No. No, I won't be saying that again, definitely not. Try another destination if you like, or don't.



I know where. Something I been meaning to do, but for all them new Legion patrols in the Mojave. Someone I owe a debt to, and I just figured out how to best repay.





Hail Caesar.



That's 'Caes-.





NANOPROBES INSERTED! INITIALISING NEURAL TAKEOVER SUBROUTINE! I AM YOURS TO COMMAND!



Yeah, reckon that's more like it. You're coming with me.





...



FISTO ONLY WENT OUT FOR FIVE MINUTES. NOW FISTO ALONE.





You did what?



Made Caesar our new pack mule. Thought your back'd be happy.



That's not Caesar. Met Caesar once. Not as good with salads as you'd expect.



Okay, I can't take this any more. Let's say goodbye to our new friend here before things really start getting strange?



Leaving so soon? Did I mention you can explore the bowels of the TARDIS if you're in the mood for what I hear you people call 'adventure' times?



Thanking you kindly, sir, but I don't think we'll be poking round your bowels. What's say you drop us off in Freeside so we can continue our patrol?





Well, this all seems reassuringly quiet. So what's the plan, chief? Check in with the Kings? Go take a look at the Strip?



In a bit, Cass. First things first, want to see if there's any more of them magic books lying around. Got a bit of a taste for the old sparkly stuff, and you never know. Here. Like this one. This looks promising.





Necronomicon? Almost positive you shouldn't read that one, Caslon Antique. Let's just go hit the Atomic Wrangler, maybe check the blackjack tables. Bet someone's put naked ladies or something on the back of the cards.



Eh, what's the worst could happen?





THE ANSWER WAS ZOMBIES!





A LOT OF GODDAMN ZOMBIES!





Okay, so in retrospect, this may not've been my best idea. Probably not even in the top five or so, if I'm honest. Ideas?



NEVER TOUCH ANYTHING EVER AGAIN!



And in terms've ideas that might help right now?



We can't hold them back! There's no way House has enough Securitrons without dealing with the Platinum Chip thing, and somehow I don't see we've got time now. Doubt we'll get NCR or what's left of the Legion helping so much either.



Not seeing what choice we got, not 'less you want me to call the Enclave on this radio and beg them for help. Know you'd never want me doing that.



Are you kidding? Call them!



Ahem. Excuse me. Is that... is that the evil remnant of the US government? We seem to have us a bit of a zombie problem. In New Vegas. Look, this is awkward, but you know how you guys are the baddies and so have the best toys?



I dunno. Maybe 1/5 mutant, on my mother's side? Yeah, I know, but... look, it's you guys spent years taking order from a computer. And you heard your music? Who's the real freaks? Yeah, okay. Nightkin. Point taken. So anyway... hello?



Well? What did they say?









Why, I I believe we said "What the hell, it's Christmas."


Today's Mods: Frozen World, Female Caesar's Legion, Increased Legion Presence, Increased Wasteland Spawns, Cortex Scrambler, The TARDIS In The Wasteland, Electro-City, Zombie Mod, Enclave Commander,

Christmas. Christmas never changes. Every day this week though, Fallout: New Vegas gets into the spirit of the season as a selection of mods make wishes come true... for better or worse. Today, the wasteland beckons, but not quite as the Courier and his partner Cassidy expect.

Previously: Part 1, Part 2




Morning there, Myriad Pro. Hand on fire? Guessing that means you found some new toys around town, or really need to put a few skill points into cooking, stat.



Was that a...



Pun not intended. What's up with that anyway?



Book of magic spells in Doc Mitchell's old place - "Vol 1: Hellfire". Gotta say, suddenly I find myself more ambivalent 'bout setting the world on fire. Not the only new toy I found either. Look at this here fellow from Trudy's place.



"Big Bomb"?





...



...





And that's the story of how we got chased right out of Goodsprings...



SHUT UP AND KEEP RUNNING I THINK THEY HAVE PITCHFORKS!





Think we can prob'ly take a breather now, don't you think? Hey, Nipton. You remember this place? Legion raided it way back when, stuck all the people up on crosses, burned it to the ground for sins committed. Ah, nostalgia.



Yeah. Think... think things might have changed a bit since, Arial Black.





Shiny new caravans? Pretty houses? A welcome banner over the town hall and not a single crucified townsperson? Tssk. Some places have no respect for tradition.





Don't worry, I won't have you forcibly sold cookies or made to attend a PTA meeting. It's useful that you happened by. I want you to witness the fate of the town of Nipton, to memorize every detail. And then, when you move on-



What do you mean, the fate of Nipton? Place looks Stepford new to me.



Indeed, Courier. This was a town drowning in moral sickness, cowardice, decay... but overnight, look! A wretched hive, stripped of all decadence, of all filth; rendered pure as the mysterious white snow all around. It is become... perfection.



The Legion's gone into the decorating biz now? Caesar's Legion?



That's 'Caesar'.



Whatever.



Was this our direct doing? No, but it is as I dreamed. Clean. Orderly. Quiet. A true civilisation of the wastelands, away from guns and fiends. There will be book clubs, Courier, and amateur dramatics every weekend. There will be salsa.





The hell, boss? I WAS STANDING RIGHT HERE!



Still are, so quit your yapping. Had to be done, and you know it, for the thin end of the wedge and all good folks who don't need subjecting to the first all ghoul version of King Lear. C'mon, I reckon things may be worse'n we thought.





Don't know about worse there, Marker Felt, but definitely pornier and with a hell of a lot more guns and people wandering around to use those guns. Not one person out there wished for world peace or somesuch?



Extra lighting from those Electro-City folks is handy, mind, what with the nights suddenly actually being dark and everything. And at least we're not going to fall for that Door business again.



We agreed never to speak of The Door again!





Hey, look. A door in the middle of nowhere. Think we should open it?



Can't think of a reason not to.





AAAARGH!



AAAARGH!





AAAARGH!



AAAARGH!





GRAAAARGH!



Meh.





Weirdest thing, portal to Hell ending up spitting us out over at a place called "The Bison Steve Hotel". Funny old world, 'aint it? Anyhoo, let's find us some good old walking music on this here PIPBoy radio, shall we?



Second thoughts, let's chat some more about The Door. Just saying, if I ever have to listen to Big Iron again I'm going to have to smash the nearest person with a PIPBoy's head in with a golfclub - then mine.



No, look, Cass. My radio's picking up all kinds of stations now. J-Pop, Christian Rock, old propaganda. Classic Christmas songs!






Suddenly Big Iron isn't sounding so bad. Hey, what's that? Is that an Enclave logo on that radio in your pack? Tell me you just picked that up off a corpse somewhere, or us two are going to have some serious Words.



Don't be silly, Cass, you know I'd have nothing to do with those incredibly powerful, genocidal zealots, most likely.



This is exactly why people hate travelling with amnesiacs. I catch you dosing my food with FEV or anything and you'll be singing Old World Blues from here to wherever I finally finish kicking your ass.



Never rightly said I had amnesia as I recall. Just don't talk much about the old days. Anyway, don't be worried. You'll never catch me doing that, pardner.



Well, good. That's... wait a minute, when you say 'never catch you', you mean-





What in the seven hells is this thing supposed to be?



No idea. Door's open though...




Today's Mods: Frozen World, Female Caesar's Legion, Increased Legion Presence, Increased Wasteland Spawns, Cortex Scrambler, The TARDIS In The Wasteland, Wacky Weapons, The 8 Books, Electro-City, Nipton Rebuilt, The Door, CONELRAD, Radio Free Wasteland

Christmas. Christmas never changes. Every day this week though, Fallout: New Vegas gets into the spirit of the season as a selection of mods make wishes come true... for better or worse. Today, the wasteland wakes up to an unusually snowy world - at least except the Jacobstown mutants, but it's not as if anyone was heading over there with a bottle of wine and seasonal good cheer anyway.

Previously: Part 1




Cassidy! Get yourself up, something amazing's gone and happened! There's snow everywhere and it's like Santa's been and everyone's woken up with something they most wished for last night. You'd better come out and-





What? Quit gawpin' already. Not like you've never seen me with bed hair before.



Aaah. Cass, you didn't... didn't go to bed last night wishin' for a better childhood or anything, right? No like, secret desire for a lost youth or nothing?



Yeah, those long days of not being able to drink are top of my nostalgia list. You been shot in the head again there, Haettenschweiler?



In that case, little lady, you better go find a non-broken mirror somewhere pretty soon. I'll be... you'll find me over here, by the tree. Behind the tree, most likely.



Jeez. Don't know what's up with him today, but...



...





Listen up, perverts. I am not some Lydia to play dress-up with. Lydia wouldn't start lopping off balls with broken whiskey bottles, and believe me, I have a lot of whiskey bottles going spare. This was your doing, you better pray it reverses right now or-





Aw, you looked so cute.



That never happened, you got it? Never happened. Now what the hell's going on? Where did the snow come from? Why's there dancing strippers outside? Where's my hangover? Why is no-one else looking like they want to scream?



It's a Christmas miracle, Cass! Everyone got what they wanted.



And you're saying that like it's a good thing? Your semi-amnesia stretched to where we live, Segoe UI? Don't see most folks round here asking for pre-war books or anything. We'd all better pray whatever happened didn't get as far as Caesar...





Hail Caesar!



That's 'Caesar'.



Whatever. Our scouts have verified the reports. The entire south-east of the Mojave is filled with Legionaries, none there yesterday, many in more accurate Roman armour. It's like we're an actual army instead of a small town Ren-Faire in skirts.



As a wise man named Aristotle once said, “Be not arrogant when fortune smiles, or dejected when she frowns.” If fortune is smiling, it behooves us to accept gracefully, wouldn't you say, Praetorian?



Great Caesar is forever wise.



Yes. Yes, indeed. That... ah... that rather reminds me. Some of your Frumentarii... not me of course, I would never presume to question such as yourself... have been wondering about the... uh... rather sudden change of staff around here?



The what, Lucius?



The... uh... the way your Praetorian guard rather seem to have been... replaced overnight with rather more... distaff counterparts. Modestly hot redhead ones, to be exact. It seems a little... out of... out of character for a misogynistic despot?



I like my new 'Vale' girls. Tell anyone who complains that we all have our crosses to bear in this life, and they shall find themselves bearing theirs all the way to a radioactive Golgotha if they do not remember their place.



Sir? You appear to have... a delivery waiting outside from a man named Boone. Note attached says "Happy Saturnalia from me and my dead wife, you fascist piece of-" and then it's all just crossed out. Shall I have it sent away?



Nonense! It must be tribute from an admirer of my attempts to civilise this wasteland. Bring it before me! Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's!






FISTO THE LOVE-BOT IS HERE! PREPARE FOR NUMBNESS!



Praetorians! Defend me! Destroy this abomination!



FISTO IS INDESTRUCTIBLE!





Reckon you just might got a point there, at that. Going to be a lot of slavers and rapists and such getting their presents too, and while I'm guessin' we won't be seeing those for various reasons of good taste...



EVEN FISTO IS DISTURBED BY GOOGLING 'SEXOUT'



...stands to reason some folks might need defending from their neighbours' ideas of how the world outta be. What you say, Cass? Should we go see what's new out there? I reckon there may just be unfinished work for us yet.



Sure beats hanging around here waiting for aliens to attack or whatever. Say, if everyone out there got what they wanted, how's about you? What was your gift?



Aw, you know me, Cass. I'm just an old-style cowboy at heart. Always said, with the sun kept from my eyes, big iron on my hip and the horizon callin' me forwards, I got all any pilgrim could ask for in this life.



That's surprisingly mature.



Yeah, so I was surprised as hell to wake up owning some toy called a "Cortex Scrambler" that nerve-staples folks to be my slaves. Like this guy.





Wait, wha- NANOPROBES INSERTED! INITIALISING NEURAL TAKEOVER SUBROUTINE! I AM YOURS TO COMMAND!



You are so losing karma points for that.



Suggest we spend some time looking round to see what else might be lying round town for us to use, then tomorrow, hit the dusty trail to go check out the big bad wasteland. You with me one last time, Cassidy?



Snowy trail. And at least you're still acting like I got a choice, even with you holding that thing, so I figure that's cause to stick around for a bit.



Aw, shucks, Cass, like I'd ever do a thing like that. I reckon we've been through enough for you to know your business as well as me.



Thanks, I guess. Means... means a lot.



Just make sure's you keep your distance, only use your ranged weapons, and open up that inventory - I got a whole heap of crap I been meanin' to unload.



...I am sworn to carry your burdens.



What was that there, partner?



Nothing. Probably nothing at all...


Today's Mods: Frozen World, Placeable Christmas Trees, Cass and Veronica Shojo Restyled, Female Caesar's Legion, Increased Legion Presence, Increased Wasteland Spawns, Cortex Scrambler

Christmas. Christmas never changes. Every day this week though, Fallout: New Vegas gets into the spirit of the season as a selection of mods make wishes come true... for better or worse. This silent night though, a woman called Cassidy just stares into another empty glass, killing time in Goodsprings' Prospector Saloon and waiting for a certain someone to finish walking a Lonesome Road.



'Twas the night before Christmas, and all over the Mojave
Not a... um... larvae? Harvey? Sod it, never mind...




So there I was, pretending to be in the middle of an anecdote, when this stranger walked into my bar. Did me a solid or two. Didn't even try to sell me to cannibals that one time. Can't say fairer, so we've been partners ever since.



Sorry, was you talkin' to me there?



Then he just runs off, for the fourth time. Sorry, Cass, he says, you wait here, some guy called Ulysses wants to see me alone-like, and it'd be rude to bring company. Some Christmas, right, sitting drinking alone like I got nothing better to do.



Girl, enough. This here's my saloon, not your Bar Humbug.



Only Christmas sprit I'm looking for this year goes in a glass, Trudy. Pint glass for preference. Keep it coming 'til I could strum myself off to a photo of Caesar.



That's 'Caesar'.



Whatever.






Oh, if it isn't the man with the lobotomy scars coverin' up the bullet marks behind his brain. Can't say as I noticed you gone, save for no-one tellin' me what to do with my stimpacks or leaning in close for a while.



Who's this guy?



Pardner, I reckon you can just call me The Man With No Name.



Oh, that's not what I've been calling you these last few drinks, Courier. Trudy, pour him two fingers of whatever you've got left back there. Figure I about bought this saloon tonight already, may as well go for the furniture and all.



Much obliged there, little lady.



Be glad I'm drunk enough not to know which of you I can punch without a sore ass from hitting the floor. So anyways, find your mysterious fella rocking the epic hate-on? What did he end up wanting anyway?



I dunno. About five hundred corks to plug up the bulletholes, I'm guessin. That varmint had himself skin like his daddy was a deathclaw and his momma a radscorpion. Still, I reckon we both got what we was looking for.





Courier, have you heard that old world saying, 'do not shoot the messenger?'



'Course.



I HAVE NOT!





Actually, now's I think, he probably expected more out of it, or he wasted himself a heck of a lot of time setting up his plans. And me, I just realised I had no real reason to play his game from the start. New stuff I got from it looks dumb too.



Well, great. I'm good too, since you're asking. So, where next, now you're all done with that business? We going to go deal with that House guy? Maybe give the Legion what for, or go questing for the NCR's spine in some cave?



Later, Cass. Reckon we take the Christmas off, enjoy some time with our loved ones, enjoy the holiday and all that. Saving the world can wait a few days.



Loved ones. Yeah, right. Never knew my Dad, Mom was a tribal, died when I was a kid, and last I checked you're not exactly Mr. Social, Mr. One Friend At A Time. Think a thousand turkeys out of my ass will be enough?





WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!



What the shit?!



Rose of Sharon Cassidy! I have been sent to help you learn the true meaning of Christmas! You will be visited by three ghouls of past, present and future, who will humorously show you the error of your cynical ways and-



Do we know you? You look as familiar as this sounds.



Oh, I do apologise. My name is Marley. You may have heard of me.



Jacobstown Marley?



He's my cousin. I'm from Nipton. Or was, before... you know.



Oh. Seems like a missed opportunity, that.



Yeah, well, what are you going to do?



For starters, this.





Great. More mess to clean up.



Oh, stow it. You've had two hundred years and still not done anything about the broken mirror in the bathroom. Don't pretend to be Little Miss Houseproud now.



The heightened perception of this very nice hat on my head suggests you're upset about something. Was it something this guy said?



Huh?



I just don't like Christmas, okay? If there was ever a Santa giving people what they wanted, he got nuked or stopped checking the mail centuries ago. Tomorrow's just another radioactive day like any other, and that's all there is to it.



You never know. Maybe this year will be different...



Please, there's only one impossible delivery boy round here, and he don't wear red. Gah. Calling it a night already. Anyone needs me, I'll be on a floor somewhere between here and Victor's place, or giving Easy Pete a run for his title.



Merry Christmas anyways, Cass. Santa asks, some of them sherries and mince pies was from you. Old soda and a squirrel on a stick anyway. Reckon we're okay swapping traditions up some, now everything's bout gone to poop.





"Merry Christmas, Cass," indeed. Not enough moonshine in the wastes.



...



Guess though... guess it wouldn't be so bad, that lobotomised optimism there being true. Like, just for a bit, the world waking up and there being snow everywhere, and presents under trees, and everyone just...





Yeah, right, Cassidy. As if.


Today's Mods: Frozen World, Placeable Christmas Trees

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Phil Savage grabs a buddy and puts the community’s best Portal 2 maps to the test, or possibly vice versa. Convection funnels, laser death and no small amount of inter-player bickering ensues.

Skyrim: Week of Madness

The name does not lie: Rich Cobbett’s Skyrim diary, in which he installs 100 randomly selected mods is an experiment in genuine derangement. Not entirely safe for work, unless your workplace encourages inarticulately rendered BDSM.

Making of Minecraft

I wrote this! And I got in trouble for quoting Notch’s swearwords. Sorry, everyone who bought the magazine for their kids. Still, once you get past the F-word opener, it settles into a heartwarming tale of indie devs done good, a triumph born from equal parts serendipity and smarts.

Old friends: an ode to Defense of the Ancients

Cara Ellison recalls the original DotA. “Some people think that gaming is a solitary hobby. But for me, DotA was a way to connect with my real life friends through an experience that didn’t include a darkened room serving overpriced alcohol we couldn’t afford.”

The indies guide to game-making

Tom Francis hunts down the world’s premier indie devs, unfurls his needle-thin proboscis, plunges it into their brains and slurps out every last drop of advice from them. Then he squirts it all back out here. Drink deep, budding indies, for the advice is good!

Hearthfire: the beginner’s guide to homesteading and mass murder

All Chris Livingstone wanted was a home to call his own. Things don’t go to plan. “The air fills with the screams of the dying and the streets run crimson with the blood of the dead.” Oops!

12 year war: rise of wargaming

World of Tanks is now one of the biggest games on the planet, and its curators at Wargaming.net are, shall we say, rather comfortable. How did they find themselves with such phenomenal wealth? Tom Senior finds out.

Crapshoot 2012

It would be unfair to pick just one of Rich Cobbett’s terrific retrospectives (which we run every Saturday dontchaknow), so here’s his top three picks for this year: Hard Time, Les Miserables and Shadow President.

Flash of greatness

Rich McCormick stares enviously at the bright lights of the pro-gaming scene, and charts the ascendancy of Lee Young Ho, known to the Star Craft scene as Flash. Wipe your chin, McCormick!

Sim-plicity 2012

Chris Livingston has retired from videogame heroism. Instead, every Sunday, he embarks on a career of more modest proportions: driving buses, cutting wood and occasionally igniting entire airports in a deadly maelstrom of flame.

Day z photo diary

Evan Lahti charts an epic journey through Chernarus in this excellent two-parter: “He was a survivor with one life to live. His backpack: filled with beans. His world: filled with zombies. These are his tales, and the tales of his inconsistently-brave friends. And the tales of the woman played by a man who loved him.” Part two is here.


The best Skyrim mods

Whether you’re looking for new looks, new loot, homesteads or fulsome quests, Tom Hatfield’s compilation of the finest mods should see you good.

The Elder Strolls

Chris Livingston once again proves that the most valiant path is often the most humble: “My name is Nordrick. I’m not a hero, I’m an NPC, and I’m here not to play Skyrim, but to live in it.”

Inside the final hours of Star Wars: Galaxies

When Star Wars: Galaxies shut down its servers, it was as if millions of headline writers trotted out the same Obi Wan quote and were suddenly silenced. Our very own Imperial agent Chris Thursten was there to watch the mighty MMO’s light wink out.

An Illusionist in Skyrim

Tom Francis is a coward. Not in real life, of course, where he is bold and manly and frequently wrestles giant salamanders with his bare hands. But when he wants to get away from it all, he settles into Skyrim: “This is the diary of me attempting to play Skyrim using only Illusion magic: I’m not allowed any weapons, armour, or magical items, and I can’t attack anyone directly.”

The E3 2012 press conference PC gamers deserve

Graham Smith imagines an alternative E3 - the one we deserve. “The first parties were more concerned with propping up their platforms with lifestyle buzzwords than making great games. Even the big publishers, EA and Ubisoft, seemed lost in the tall grass, offering almost nothing other than the expected sequels. I can’t help but think we could do it better.”

Running a website called Dead End Thrills (about pictures of grafix), I spend a lot of time playing with visual mods. When PCG asked me to list my favourites from 2012, I agreed thinking I could do it in the style of the prize round from Bullseye. "You'll be up all night 'cause it don't look like shite." "Act well-heeled with this depth-of-field." But that wouldn't work overseas, they said, and stopped being funny after two examples.

Here's a straightforward top ten, then, in no particular order.
SweetFX
Battlefield 3 screenshot by Jim Snook (jim2point0)

No sooner had Nvidia's Timothy Lottes introduced FXAA (a 'fast approximate' antialiasing solution effective, unusually, upon deferred rendering and shader aliasing) than 'some dude' (their username - bet it's a lady) weaponised it into a DLL injector for most DirectX games. Copy it into the same folder as the game's binary and it hooks the calls to DirectX, softening the edges most AA methods can't reach.

Then things got interesting. Tonemapping, digital vibrance, luma sharpening and other neat effects got thrown into the mix, giving us the power to customise the look of most modern games. It's also one of the most reliable, no-nonsense screen capture tools: just hit your assigned hotkey and a lossless image plops into the game's folder.

Christian Jensen's SweetFX is the next evolution. Using SMAA for antialiasing, its features include S-Curve contrast adjustment and a filmic Cineon DPX treatment. Popular presets for these injectors include the Mass Effect 3 'Illumination' mod and James Snook's work with Borderlands 2 and Dishonored. When it comes to cheap, powerful tweaks to colour, image quality and luminosity, PC gamers have never had it so good.



Smarteck's Mass Effect 3 textures
Additional screen.

Back in February, the official Mass Effect Twitter account confirmed that “when the full game releases, hi-res textures will be built into the game!” And so we learned that when BioWare uses an exclamation mark, it's because it can't quite believe what it's saying - because it isn't true. Altogether now: 'Crikey, these textures are taking a while to update. Oh, they have updated and the costumes still look like Ceefax.'

Some months later Smarteck, a member of BioWare's long-suffering community forum, has led an effort to retexture not just Mass Effect 3 but all of its DLC as well. Inspired by the sterling efforts of 'Jean-Luc' with his ME2 textures, he's made the game's costumes and environments palatable, if not strictly 'hi-res'. Some detail texturing here and artistic licence there can't always cover the initial upscaling that's gone on.

The other quirk is that you need ancient memory patcher Texmod to actually inject the stuff into the game. It adds something in the region of ten minutes to the initial load time and can cause issues of varying severity if you try and inject too much. All of that said, it has the not-insignificant effect of making the game compatible with your eyes.



Durante's 'DSFix' for Dark Souls
Screenshot by Midhras

I'm going to paraphrase a bit here. From Software: "We can't do it." NeoGAF poster Durante: "I bet I can do it in half an hour." 23 minutes later: "Look at that! Sometimes I surprise even myself." An awkward silence now follows into eternity, save for all the whooping and cheering of users who'd just about written off the PC port of the magnificent Dark Souls.

Unlocking the game's internal frame buffer with his 'DSFix', Durante revealed assets that were clearly fit for more than pitiful sub-720p rendering. Then, among other things, he added ambient occlusion, uncapped the framerate and improved the game's texture filtering. And there was much rejoicing - and nagging for further features.

It's hard to recall a PC version that's been rescued from the brink of utter rejection quite like Dark Souls, and certainly not rescued by players themselves. The wrong lighting model going into Resident Evil 4, the performance tailspin of DX11 Arkham City: such things are usually patched with some urgency by the developers. Souls fans had barely lit the torches, much less found the pitchforks and a way to still type, by the time the game was fixed.



ENB Series for Skyrim and Fallout 3
Outspoken graphics programmer Boris Vorontsov might just be one of the most important people in PC gaming right now. No joke. His ENB wrappers and injectors have brought to many games the kind of generational leap in quality people expect from modern graphics cards, but seldom receive beyond those tech demos where fairies in Nvidia-branded loincloths ride turtles into battle with Decopunk death balloons. Those exist, right?

But where do you begin? Vorontsov has banned the hosting of his core dlls anywhere but on his own website; then you have the community-made presets. That's where effects like indirect lighting, subsurface scattering and complex ambient occlusion are wrangled into something complementing (or wildly departing, depending upon taste) the game's original look.

The last year has seen several masters of this bizarre artform emerge. In one niche you've got Midhras and his deep and luscious 'Midhrastic' presets for Skyrim and Fallout 3. In another, Trillville (aka Anthemios) and his muted but cinematic 'TV ENB', again for both games. And there's the fantastical (but surprisingly GPU-light) Seasons Of Skyrim by Bronze316. There's loads, basically, so get looking.



Sikkmod/Wulfen's Textures for Doom 3
Additional screens: 1, 2 and 3.

Not strictly from this year but here by virtue of significant recent updates. If Rage left you questioning the genius/foresight/influence/marbles of one John Carmack, let the properly modded Doom 3 splash all over your grumpy face like a hyper-demonic poo pump (or whatever those things are).

To put it really crudely, user Sikkpin brings the effects while Wulfen (and to a lesser extent another modder called Monoxead) brings the textures. There's a lot more to it, though. Sikkmod adds a beautifully implemented list of options to the game's menu, letting you toggle but also heavily customise things like ambient occlusion, colour grading, bloom and HDR. The icing on the cake, though, is the experimental parallax occlusion mapping (POM).

Given supporting ultra-quality textures like Wulfen's, POM adds a relatively primitive relief effect to the game's grungy surfaces. It's also an effect, though, that makes you want to reach out and touch all the stuff you really don't want to have on your fingers. The caveat - and it's a big one - is that it's far more demanding and less reliable than tessellation in a DX11 game. When the effect breaks, it breaks bad. Still worth it? Absolutely.



REX: Real Environment Xtreme
Alternative screens: 1 and 2

Of course you're aware that the flight sim community takes things rather seriously. Where modding is concerned, they build planes like they're actually building planes. The manual for one of these suckers is bigger than the manual for my car; in fact, the 2005 Honda Jazz feels less realistic all round. Meanwhile, when these modders are building the weather, they do it better than God. His clouds have been rubbish for years.

You'll get the lot if you invest the considerable time and money required by Flight Simulator X and its biggest mod, Real Environment Xtreme. The latest version is called REX Essential and is soon to be improved by REX Essential Overdrive. Assuming your mind can handle something so essentially overriding, what that gives you is almost 10gb of clouds, runways, dawns, dusks, reefs, waves... an awful lot of photorealistic stuff.

The way the mod works is to build a weather profile for the particular flight you add to your planner. It takes a while to import the necessary textures and runs a background app to keep track of them, but it's well worth the rigmarole. Add it to things like TileProxy and a high-fidelity terrain mesh and you have a game that makes Microsoft Flight look like... well, Microsoft Flight.



Skywind/Morrowind Overhaul
Screenshot from Morrowind Overhaul site.

The heart says Skywind but the head says Morrowind Overhaul, the one you can actually play. The magpie in me likes Skywind’s shiny stuff, but the historian bristles at the idea of just transplanting Morrowind into the framework and tech of a really quite different game. Not that it stopped the Dragonborn DLC, but that's not quite the same thing.

The screenshots of Skywind are marvellous, of course, in that specific way that most ENB-assisted shots are. Beautiful art and beautiful technology on occasionally decent terms. Can the authors pull it off without inflicting a violent mood swing on the game? We're a long way from finding out: they just made the difficult decision to take several steps back in order to bypass some serious obstacles, and now there's just a skeletal worldspace to explore.

Morrowind Overhaul has had a lot longer to gather its greatest hits collection of mods for the original game. Crucially, it suffers none of the legal issues surrounding asset-porting that affect Skywind and its Oblivion-based predecessor, Morroblivion, so isn't such a kludge of community-only content. And hey, even if you don't like it, the divine beauty of its installer will still come to you in dreams.



GLSL shaders for Minecraft
When no one can even agree on Notch's motives for the game's look - I want to call it 'Voxel Art' but its polygons won't let me - you can imagine the confusion over how Minecraft should be modded. Maybe that's the beauty of it. At the very least you get the comedy of people striving to make it 'photorealistic', as if waiting for the mod that shrinks each block to 1 cubic pixel so they can make a perfect replica of Crysis.

Better, I think, to flatter the blocks without pretending they're something they're not. I'd love to see realtime radiosity in Minecraft but suspect my computer wouldn't. (You should have heard the noise while rendering these 4K screenshots.) What we do have, though, is the ongoing work on daxnitro's abandoned GLSL Shader mod. Some of it's awful, like the lens flare and depth of field effects, but you can turn those off in the shader files and still enjoy sumptuous light and shadowing.

What I was looking for was a realtime version of the renders described here. It warms me to know I'm still looking at a game. I have to warn you, though, that finding the right shaders for the right version of the mod, for the right version of Minecraft, was an utter chore. Each small update of Minecraft requires a new version of the mod, and each new version of the mod tends to break something, whether it's the lovely new water shader or Nvidia compatibility. It might not even work at all.

You need to learn this stuff for yourself, really, as there's a lot of trial and error. Start by reading the thread for Sonic Ether’s Unbelievable Shaders (SEUS). Then look at Sonic Ether’s updates page on Facebook and figure out why he chose such an abhorrent solution as Facebook for an updates page (hint: you can’t). If, like me at 2AM, you’ve followed all of these instructions and have more questions than answers, you could always try chocapic13’s preset here which I turned to in desperation, and which actually worked.

Crysis 2 MaLDoHD Mod


Screenshot from MaLDoHD site

Real soldiers don't look at the enemy, they look at the floor. They stand by their fallen comrades, lower their guns and think, "That is a dirty puddle, all right, but is it a wow puddle?" Then they get shot. Bleeding out, they look up at the sky and think, "No, those clouds aren't doing it for me at all. This is simply unacceptable."

Thanks to the jargon-tastic MaLDoHD mod, the shoegazing soldier doesn't have to die disillusioned any more. Fears that Crysis 2 would become any less MAXIMUM with age can be safely laid to rest.

He's suffered for his mod, this Maldo. His computer "burst" in October, reveals his blog, and some believed he was dead. So you'll just have to settle for the "1894 textures and 1297 materials" in the existing beta version of MaLDoHD; those, and all the effects such as SSDO, object tessellation and penumbra shadowing. Sucks, huh.

The RAR file is 1.5gb and expands to over 2gb. The configuration process remains, as even MAXIMUM GAMER Craig Pearson had to admit, "a bit of a faff". His install guide still applies, though, so check it out.



Deus Ex New Vision
Screenshot from Deus Ex New Vision ModDB page.

Any visual mod for Deus Ex has its work cut out. My lasting memory of the original graphics is how freshly waxed the floors looked, not how the characters resembled ice sculptures on a balmy day. Accept the rather mathematical art as a style choice, though, or a trade-off for the game’s complexities, and you’ve ticked the first box for installing New Vision.

As well as enabling DX10, New Vision gives most of the game’s textures a fourfold increase in size and quality, bringing them into line with a modern game. It does it by exploiting the seldom-used S3TC standard of the original Unreal Engine.

Installing it is simple, especially if you have the Steam version which includes the required patches. The single installer asks if you want to install a modified launcher (you do if you want FOV options and enhanced resolution options) on top of the new textures, then you just run the game as usual.

Sucked helplessly into Ion Storm's universe for what’s probably the tenth time, you might just realise that old geometry and HD textures aren’t always a bad combination. New Vision is the work of top-tier artists with an obvious respect for the source material, and these are genuine 1024x1024 textures rather than horrid upsamples. Rather than drag the game kicking and screaming into 2012, though, they invite you back to 2000 with augmented eyes.

This is the diary of me attempting to play Skyrim using only Illusion magic: I'm not allowed any weapons, armour, or magical items, and I can't attack anyone directly. The first entry is here, or you can see all entries to date here.

The whole concept for my character is that I never directly attack any living thing, so it's rather awkward that I now find myself getting all the credit for slaying a dragon. I didn't. I didn't even help. I was going to lead some angry giants over to beat it up for me, but the guards killed the dragon before I got there, so I just ended up setting some angry giants on the real heroes and then stealing all the glory.

So as the Jarl of Whiterun is singing my praises, naming me his Thane, giving me a personal servant, and entrusting me with his own battleaxe, I'm wishing he'd shut up. I need him to read the letter my general ordered me to deliver.

At last, he does. "Take my axe to Ulfric Stormcloak in Windhelm," he replies. "He'll know my meaning."

Jarl, I think I speak for my superiors in the Imperial Legion when I suggest you start researching communication. Posting someone an axe is a really inefficient way to talk.

I mutter most of the long, uneventful ride to Windhelm, halfway across Skyrim. When I arrive, I slip off Sarah the Implausible Horse and barge into Ulfric's great hall, expressing my feelings about their culture by trampling all over the banquet table on my way to his throne.

"You are quite brave to carry such a message," Ulfric says. Do you mean bored? I'm quite bored to carry such a message. Tired, maybe? It's pretty heavy. Capacious? It's not really clear where I was stowing it.

"Return his axe, and tell him to expect visitors. There will be a great deal of excitement in Whiterun soon."

Oh you are kidding me. This whole conversation is not only going to consist entirely of me taking axes back and forth, it's going to be the same axe? Your conversation is literally just:

"Thing."
"Same thing."

Didn't you kill a guy with a shout once? Talk with shouts! Kill with axes! You people need to take a long hard look at either your traditions or your dictionary.

No, it's fine, I'm going.



A predictable response

Another long trek. Another ride to the city gates. Another walk to another throne room. Another rebellious stomp across another dining table, goblets and grilled salmon flying everywhere.

The Jarl: "I knew this would be his response." Oh, cool. Kind of a massive stupid insane waste of my goddamn time then, wasn't it?

A messenger runs in to inform us that the Stormcloaks are at the gate. Huh. Must have somehow missed their whole army being right behind me all the way from Windhelm.

"This is it," shouts the Jarl, "to the battlements!"

We all rush out, but a guard stops me.

"Wait, I know you!" Oh god, not this again. "You're a wanted woman!"

My bounty is 2 gold - I still don't know what for, but I don't have time to go to be arrested right now. I explain to him that the Jarl has just made me Thane, and ask if whatever those two words mean translates to me being somehow above the law?

It does! Excellent.

As we head on, another guard chimes in: "Looking to do some hunting? Avoid Brittleshin Pass." OK. We're... we're off to the war now.



The battle for Whiterun

It's early evening, and smoke - possibly fog of war - is thick in the streets. Fiery projectiles come raining in over the battlements and slam into the ground. And, as with every other time I leave Whiterun, I take the wrong route to the gate and end up in a cow pen.

When we finally get out of the front gates, I hop on Sarah the Implausible Horse and gallop out towards the oncoming troops. Arrows whiz by, Imperials and Whiterun guards charge out behind us, and for a moment it looks like I know what the hell I'm doing.

When I actually reach the enemy, of course, I can't really do anything, so I bank round and canter back behind the guys who are going to actually fight.

I park Sarah somewhere safe-ish and dismount to start flinging spells. At first I try to Fury the enemies, to make them attack each other. I encounter a few problems with this, not least of which is that Fury doesn't really do that. Furied enemies just attack the nearest thing, which is typically me by the time I hit them with it.

The other problem is that Whiterun guards look similar to the enemy Stormcloaks in the evening gloom, so often the person I've just tricked into attacking me is one of our own troops. I'm used to not being the most useful person in a given fight, but this is about as actively unhelpful as I've been since the incident with the giants.

All around me, everyone's doing their job: Legate Rikke is shouting at the troops, the troops are twirling and impaling enemies in gruesome kill moves, and the enemies are dying excellently. I, on the other hand, am nearly dead and low on health potions, so I decide to stick to Couraging our troops. At least if I hit the wrong people with that spell, it's basically useless anyway.



The General

The tide starts to turn against us: an objective popup informs me we've lost the drawbridge and should protect the battlements, then immediately adds that we've also lost the battlements. And oddly, my companion Belrand is nowhere to be seen. He must have lagged behind on our way out of the city, and now the gates are locked until the attack is over.

I'm beating a strategic retreat when I bump into a half-naked woman wearing most of a bear. I instinctively cast Calm on her, then realise she's the Stormcloak commander. Deeply chillaxed, she puts her bow away and wanders through the carnage. Two Imperial Legion soldiers run up to her and slaughter her in cold blood. Hurray, I helped!

I start Calming more of the enemies - I've had enough Illusion practise now that the mana cost is trivial, and at this stage in the battle I'm able to pacify almost the entire Stormcloak force before I run dry. It's a bizarre scene, an invasion force suddenly ambling around the battlefield, acting like they never wanted our stupid city anyway.

Our last few soldiers are less relaxed. They keep hacking at the idle Stormcloaks, and killing all but three by the time the spells wear off. I check my inventory to drink another health potion, and when I flick back to the game, a massive skeletal monster plunges down out of the sky in front of me.



Close to the bone

After a moment of total bafflement, I realise it's a dragon. The reason I didn't recognise it is that it's crashed skull-first into the ground, its massive pelvic bone wiggling weirdly in the air. It's not a skeletal dragon, it's a dragon skeleton. In fact, it's almost certainly the skeleton of the dragon the guards killed for me out at the guard tower. What the hell it's doing here, and why it plummeted out of the sky, I will never know.

Backing slowly away, I see there are only two Stormcloaks left now, so I Fury one of them into killing the other. When the spell wears off, he looks round at me, the Imperial soldiers behind me, and the massive dragon skeleton on the ground between us, and he runs off into the night. Whiterun is ours.

I head back to the city gates, stopping briefly to check my journal and make sure that's where I'm meant to be going. When I put it away, a titanic mess of bone crashes down on my head. Jesus goddamn Christ! Get it off me!

The gibbering dragon skeleton wobbles awkwardly between me and the city gate, then slumps down to the ground. It's the same one, it just jumps on top of me every time I bring up my inventory. Is this glitch meant to remind me how bad I should feel for setting angry giants on the guards who killed this dragon for me? The symbolism is a bit heavy handed, even for a videogame. I feel bad! You don't need to literally hit me over the head with it!

Mercifully, the dragon corpse symbolism attacks stop once I get back into Whiterun. Belrand's there waiting for me, being the useless one for once, and so is the Jarl. He prattles on again about how amazing I am, gives me yet another axe, and says as a sign of his appreciation, I'd be welcome to buy a house in Whiterun. Er, buy a house? My reward for saving the city is the ability to acquire a house in exchange for the cost of a house? I didn't realise I was ever actually banned from engaging in basic commerce.

Slightly offended, I find Sarah the Implausible Horse and ride on through the night, Belrand jogging behind. We should reach Solitude by dawn.



Dead drop

We reach Labyrinthine by dawn. Labyrinthine is a snow-covered ruin I usually try to avoid on my way to Solitude because of all th- oh God Frost Trolls! I steer Sarah the Implausible Horse around one and onto a bridge, which immediately turns out to be a precipice.

I look down. It's quite far. I look back. The troll's quite close. There's no way around him, and there isn't room for me to get off to cast Illusion spells. Belrand is nowhere to be seen. We ride off the edge.

Sarah the Implausible Horse and I both collapse when we hit the ground. I get back up. I stand there for a while, looking at my limp horse, hoping she'll move. She doesn't.

Belrand finally catches up, runs over to the body, stops, and looks up at me wordlessly.

Eventually the Frost Troll scampers down some stone steps towards us, and bizarrely, he stops too. The Troll looks at Belrand. Belrand looks at me. I look at Sarah. It feels weirdly like a moment of silence for this stupid, senseless loss.

Once I feel we've paid our respects, I walk off. Belrand follows. The Troll follows. Suddenly, they seem to remember they're enemies, and start to fight. I Calm the Troll and carry sadly on to Solitude by foot.



The Pale

Back in town, I stop by the local trader to sell some dragon bones, which are probably not haunted or anything, and spend the money on new spells: Fear, Rally, and Frenzy (see For my next tricks).I'll be honest: that's about your lot for Illusion, until you get Invisibility at level 75. I've levelled up a lot in my travels, but I'm still a long way off that. I'm not even sure I'd have enough mana to cast it, since I'm not allowed to wear enchanted gear.

At HQ, General Tullius announces that I'd be "wasted as a regular soldier." If you mean useless, I agree! He sends me out to help Legate Rikke in the Pale, which I deduce is some kind of region.

Before I leave Solitude, I wonder if I should buy a new horse. No, it's too soon. For me to afford it.

I find Rikke up in the mountains, at a remote Imperial camp in the middle of a blizzard. Soldiers huddle around a campfire, and the wounded groan in the medical tent. Also in the medical tent, oddly, is a table with two strong health potions on it. Are we just leaving these guys to die three feet from some health potions? Are they aware that health potions magically fix everything?

Oh well. I'll take them if you're not using them. And this money I found in the drawer. The 'pick up' icon wasn't red, so morally it's fine.

The way we're going to take The Pale, Legate Rikke informs me, is by creating fake orders to trick the enemy into doing what we want. My orders are to steal some orders so we can fake some orders. Honestly, I could save them the trouble: these people seem to communicate entirely in axes. Let's just take them an axe and say it's from Ulfric Stormcloak, they'll all kill each other.

I am instructed to leave this freezing, windswept camp and go directly to a pub, where I should hang out until a Stormcloak messenger comes by. Yessir.



Suckers

I'm trudging through the mountain blizzard, still sadly horseless, when I see people fighting up ahead. I run over to see whether some or all of them need to be Calmed down. It turns out to be Imperial Legion soldiers fighting a group of dark elves in dark clothes, and the dark elves win before I can intervene. They turn to me. I hit them with Frenzy, but nothing happens. A note at the top of the screen explains that "Vampire resisted Frenzy".

Vampires! My Illusions won't work on them because they're undead, and they can even do the one Illusion I can't: invisibility. Right now, though, they're giving me a thorough demonstration of their Lightning and Life Drain spells, and I have to drink my entire stock of health potions to stay alive. The two I stole from the dying soldiers actually save my life.

Finally I manage to scramble up onto an icy ridge the vampires can't climb, and I'm safe. Then something occurs to me. I edge back down towards them, and let the nearest one stab and Drain me as much as I can risk, until the message pops up:

You have contracted Sanguinare Vampiris.

Eeeexcellent.

The next entry is in the current issue of PC Gamer in the UK (which you can buy online here) and will go online on January the 17th.

We used to put the diary online in shorter, weekly posts, but a lot of readers felt they were too short. Which is the best complaint, but in some cases I agreed. They were written as 2,000 word entries for the magazine and then split afterwards, so not every 500 word chunk had the right structure to work in isolation. We've switched to putting the full magazine version up all at once, which means changing to a monthly schedule to stay in sync. Let us know in the comments whether you prefer it this way - we plan to do more diaries after this one finishes.

Obsidian's uncannily accurate recreation of South Park's art, animations, and fart jokes in its upcoming Stick of Truth RPG first came into being without a budget. Kotaku's lengthy profile of the storied studio revealed that CEO Feargus Urquhart and his team constructed early prototypes for show creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker without financial support.

Urquhart initially stressed to the pair that any sort of South Park game should mirror the show's construction-paper style, saying to them, "Let’s pretend we can do all the RPG stuff. We can handle that. If it doesn’t look like the show, all of this is pointless."

So, Obsidian crafted working examples unpaid as a proof of its enthusiasm for making the crossover work. Stone and Parker immediately loved the results. "We took it in to Matt and Trey," Urquhart said. "And Trey just grabs the controller and he's like, ‘This feels awesome!' And Matt runs up to the screen and he goes ‘That's the construction paper!' And they were like, ‘Let's do this.' And that was that."

The rest of the profile goes over Obsidian's shelved and successful projects and its rise from the ashes of Black Isle Studios. And if you feel a surreal sort of excitement over the fact the developer responsible for Fallout: New Vegas is working on a game involving sentient feces and a High Jew Elf class, we're right there with you.

Lambent Stew's free, web-based Steam Time Analysis tool laid bare my backlog of shame by breaking down time spent (or not spent) on each of my library's games like some sort of cold, ruthless PowerPoint presentation. The breadth of information provided is quite impressive. Over email, Stew told us the new build includes a few new features that further visualize users' habits.

You're now be able to compare your profile with those on your friends list for games owned, how many were played, and total hours played. (Our own Executive Editor Evan Lahti only played around 16 percent of his over 1300-game stable, the lazy bum.)

Similar to another homebrewed utility, a new worth calculator also provides combined figures for minimum, maximum, and current game prices in your library. Locating your own profile should be easier with improved search: just type in your Steam profile ID, and the tool should easily zero in on your data.

Check out the tool for yourself on Lambent Stew's website. How do you rank against your friends? What's your most-played game?