Author: Kris Takahashi

Character Profile – Iris the Elder

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I was probably about seven or eight years old when my uncle told me my mother ran track.  It was an oddly seminal moment for a child.  You see, mom is not swift.  She’s a tiny little Japanese woman and that comes with a certain spunk, but I wouldn’t characterize her as a runner.  Yet, there was a time in her life that she was actually considered fast.  A time before I was born.  For any child, the first time you realize space and time exist independent of you is a mind blowing experience.  Mom wasn’t just the mom I knew.   My teacher wasn’t just the wrinkled old crone all the kids insisted she was.  In fact, every adult I ever met had been in my shoes, dreamed my stupid kid dreams, and had lived an entirely separate existence from the one I used to define them.

In video games, characters are often viewed through a similar lens.  The myopia of the present.  Old women are always old women.  Sweet old ladies.  Miserable old hags.  They always act their age.  Old.  Rarely do we ever get to find out who they were, and how that shapes who they are.

Ostensibly, Iris is the same.  She begins with a monologue about death, how in the twilight of her life, she can see the sky fading to black.  Yet just as the nickname Iris the Elder was never meant to imply old age, so does Iris’ appearance belie what she’s really about.  The concerns about her mortality are revealed to be her children’s.  Iris herself just wants to relax, have a drink, and enjoy a hot bath.  In her old age, her courier legs have finally slowed down.  Yet at heart, Iris remains the same person she always was.  Brave.  Kind.  Swift.

I sometimes get asked about the Windhelm courier story.  When I wrote it, I knew the narrative was good, but it was Lila Paws‘ acting that truly brought it to life.  She does more than hit every note.  She takes you there, to that cold, wintry night, and as she sets the scene you can feel the chill frisk your bones.

To this day, that story is one of my favorites, because it isn’t a traditional warrior story, and yet it fits the theme of TESV so perfectly.  It’s a winter story, a Skyrim story, but more importantly, it’s a Nord story.  It’s about courage, duty, and sacrifice, from the most unlikeliest of sources.

After all, Iris may be old, and she may be feeble, but those aren’t the traits that define her.

Creation Kit – On Faces

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One thing Bethesda did remarkably well was diversifying Skyrim’s faces.  If during the opening sequence, the guards rounded up Ulfric and his Stormcloaks for an old fashioned police lineup, you would have little trouble distinguishing Ulfric from Ralof or Lokir from the Dragonborn.  Well, maybe you might.  Yet I do think there’s an obvious distinction between NPCs of similar size and race, such as Uthgerd and Mjoll.  And you certainly wouldn’t confuse a demure lady like Ysolda with a strong Nord woman like Olfina Gray-Mane.

Although it’s a stretch to say the faces are memorable, they definitely have a uniqueness when placed side by side.  It’s quite an accomplishment considering the number of NPCs in the game, although some of the results –  *cough* Benor *cough*  – almost make you wonder if they were adjusting the facial sliders at random.

Similarly, the goal was to make the faces in the mod unique, if only upon closer examination.   When I construct a face, I really only have two rules.

1.  Choose mouths, lips, and eyes you haven’t used before.
2.  Do not make them all purty.

The first is easy.  The second, not so much.  Still, it’s important to resist any inclination to make them attractive unless it’s an essential component of their character.  The key is diversity.  Trying to create a world of beautiful people will typical result in a world of clones, because it’s very easy to fall into a subconscious trap of making all the NPCs conform to your standards of beauty.

All that being said, it’s evident I have a problem with #2, but only with women.  Compare, for instance, the sliders on the following two images for Olivia Meronin and Hjoromir.

The slider on her nose is long and high, but many of Skyrim’s nose types tend to be flat.  Her eyes, jaw, and mouth are extremely balanced, and the mouth is actually adjusted to fit better with the contour of her face.  Ultimately, little about her facial features is adventurous, yet I had no problem giving her a fancy shmancy tattoo, cat eyes, and other affectations, so clearly this wasn’t the product of laziness.

Evidently, it seems with Olivia I was hesitant to shift the bars away from the center, despite the fact that appearance factors little into her character.  She’s essentially asexual.  I had no problem going to town on poor Hjoromir, however, whose facial settings look like a small child fiddling with a graphic equalizer.

So it’s an ongoing battle.  The point isn’t to make the NPCs ugly, but rather, to create variation.  And if there’s a few Benors in the bunch, I’ll live with the results.  Lately I have tried to make a stronger emphasis on screwing around with the sliders, especially with females.  After all, It’s better to have a  few neanderthals in the group than a lineup of the usual suspects.

Character Profile – Okapi

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Misguided fools always do.  Mean well.  Yes, things in the pit do get…gory. But in the end, there’s a difference between hurt and pain.
–Okapi

Before I started the mod, one of my goals this year was to finish Infinite Jest.  Needless to say, I failed.  I want to blame the mod, but to be frank, I blame the book.  The book is a bit of a grind.  Now, while I find David Foster Wallace to be funny, thoughtful, and at times inspiring, the story itself makes me want to fling said book out the window and go back to marathoning porn.  To this day I don’t know if that represents a personal failing or the author’s, but I choose to blame it on him, seeing as he’s dead and can’t defend himself.

Given our shaky history, it would seem counter-intuitive for me to want to read one of his essays.  Essays are by nature extremely didactic(read: boring), as they’re typically sans all the witty humor and lingual acrobatics an author performs in his novels.  Still, I’m glad I picked up Consider the Lobster, because the whole thing was a fascinating read, and something to draw back on when building the character Okapi, the degenerate pit fight gambler.

The premise of the article is simple.  Is it inhumane to cook a lobster?  The argument Wallace makes is that the answer is unknowable, because the answer, er, boils down to whether a lobster feels pain.  And because it’s impossible to know whether a lobster feels pain, your answer reflects more about you than it reveals about the scruples of your local seafood buffet.

For humans, the purpose of pain is obvious.  Whether it’s a knife in the gut or a deep-seeded regret, pain more than anything else molds experience.   When athletes talk about their career, they remember the heartbreaking loss more than the glory.  When old timers reminisce about high school crushes, they’ll talk most vividly about the one that got away.  Pain cuts deeper because it’s wired deeper.  Grog knows not to eat rocks because the last time it gave him a tummy ache.  However, none of this would be applicable if not for memory and our concept of time.   Without an understanding of the past and a fear of what might happen in the future, there’s nothing to stop Grog from jugging down a bottle of drain cleaner  while petting a king cobra.

For animals, memory isn’t memory.  It’s a miasma of circadian rhythms, Pavlovian cues, and funky hormones.   The less complex the brain, the more unreliable it gets.  At some point, the act of avoiding pain isn’t so much a decision as it is a reflex.  And like a hand jumping back from a hot stove, the body works on its own.  The mind is on a need to know basis.  The pain only comes after, to forge the memory so we don’t touch the stove a second time.  This is the basis of Okapi’s argument for why the pit fights are kosher.  Animals get hurt, but they don’t feel pain. For animals, everything is a reflex.

Obviously, such an argument is relatively shallow, something a mother kitty said to assuage her child.  Wolves are not lobsters.  Moreover, feeling pain has other functions besides memory, as it plays an integral role in recuperation.  A wolf who hurts its leg may not understand it has to rest, but it will likely avoid chasing Red Riding Hoods because the pain is sharp.  It won’t remember the experience or tell its grandwolfs about it, but in that moment, it feels the pain every bit as much Okapi does after a bad day at the pits.  Having no memory doesn’t equate to no pain.  What it does mean is that an animal is far more likely to hurt itself a second time.

Which brings us full circle to the character herself.  Okapi, you see, is a gambler.  And the fundamental trait of all degenerate gamblers is an inability to learn from their mistakes.  They double down and let it ride, all the way to the poorhouse.  They spend years trying to mine their way out of the gutter, building back their bankroll only to have it collapse on a single bet.

Okapi may argue that wolves have no memory, but in the end, it’s hers that’s a cause for concern.