Forced Agnosticism In Skyrim

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, except when they need men from Skyrim to fight their wars.

The status quo clearly has some shortcomings that may even be responsible for the loss of many lives in Skyrim. But the Stormcloaks are all reckless passion and little reason as they aim to make things better.

The problem is that, much like I feel in American politics, all I'm getting are opinions. No matter who I talk to, I'm getting editorial rather than straight up news. Fox and CNN talk shows instead of C-SPAN coverage of the legislative meetings. So I'm forced into a kind of political agnosticism.

Now, there are two main forms of agnosticism. The pop-culture form, when someone says "I don't know" and the more formal philosophical definition, which says something "CAN'T be known".

Far too often in our search for the truth about God, we claim to take the former definition while living like we believe the latter. We say "I don't know if God exists, or if such and such is true about God" and leave it at that, as though the answers are not available no matter how hard we search for the truth of the matter. We assume that truth really can't be found and begin to value the search for it less and less in our lives, whether the search is related to God, our next President, or the best dentist to go to.

As I read fiction and enjoy the new wave of RPGs boasting complex moral choices, it sometimes seems as though the choices aren't all that complex, they just don't provide the necessary information to make an educated decision.

True, if we go back to real-world agnosticism, we can't know with the certainty of proof that God exists or that "so and so" would be the best choice for president. But there are many things in life we choose without proof that they are the best choice. Our family doctor, our brand of toothpaste, our next car, etc. In all of these cases we examine the available evidence and make the choice that we think is most likely to be the best one. The same is true (or should be) regarding our position on God's existence or attributes, or our position on who should be governor or president.

Maybe the lack of useful decision-making information in video game RPGs like Skyrim and Mass Effect is simply because it would make the writer's job far more difficult than it's worth. Or maybe it's because there is a tendency in our popular artists to believe that truth really cannot be found.

Whichever the case, it's an interesting phenomenon I've run into in books and movies for a number of years now.

Hmm... books. Maybe the College of Magic at Winterhold has some books about the political history of Skyrim that would help me make my decision...

Movie News And Trailers!

It's been awhile, so I thought I'd share some tidbits about some upcoming movies and my projections on whether they'll sink or soar. (Thanks to David Arington for tipping me off to a few of these bits!)


The Avengers movie is coming May 4th, but if you just can't wait that long (and Marvel is banking that many of you can't) there is a four-issue comic mini-series that takes place in the Marvel Movie Universe and leads up to The Avengers. The mini is called "Road To The Avengers" and will come out in March, giving more details about Nick Fury and what the "Avengers Initiative" is for.


The next DC Universe animated movie is coming out February 28th. Justice League: Doom will be an adaptation of the Mark Waid "Tower Of Babel" JLA story, in which the JLA's villains use Batman's secret files on each JLA member's weaknesses to take them all down! This story was a significant shake-up in the DCU when it came out, since it severely strained JLA team members' relationships with Batman. It will be interesting to see how it plays out next month!


A pair of new directors are in pre-production on Monsters 2, the sequel to the indie film about an alien invasion that focused more on human relationships under extreme circumstances than it did on aliens. This choice was carried out to great effect, which is why I'm nervous to hear the guys working on this film saying things like, "There will be more monsters, more tension, more action and more extraordinary effects. We will expand the world created in the original movie whilst upping the action ante. This is our Aliens to Alien!" Good luck guys. Sounds to me like you're doing all the wrong things.


The Resident Evil: Retribution movie trailer starts out looking like a Sony commercial (and in one sense it certainly is) but gets more interesting after 15 seconds or so. Still no indication that this series is wrapping up. I'll definitely see it. I've enjoyed all of the movies to some degree. I just have trouble getting too excited about a movie series that I suspect will die with a whimper, on a cliffhanger, killed by a poor box office before anyone gets a chance to actually finish this story. It's like investing yourself in a cool tv series that get's abruptly cancelled. (Oh, Sarah Connor Chronicles... I'll never forgive Fox.) Will this finally be the end? Doubt it, but we'll know for sure September 14th!







Mania.com reports that at a Tokyo press conference, Amazing Spider-man star Andrew Garfield talked about the new approach to the movie's action, describing how he collaborated with the stunt team to do as many in camera(as opposed to digital) stunts as possible.
"A lot of the stunts are practical and grounded in reality. That was something that Marc, the director, really wanted to make sure happened in this movie to set it apart from previous ones... I would exhaust myself every day and get into near-death experiences every hour on the hour..."
I'm ALWAYS up for practical over CGI, but in filming a live action version of Spider-man, it's always gonna be challenging to go practical, since the character moves in a very inhuman way. We'll see how it turns out when Amazing Spider-man hits US theaters on July 3rd!


The remake of Total Recall starring Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel comes out August 3rd of this year, but I'm less than thrilled to go see it at this point. I thought the original was a fantastic flick, and it feels a little too soon to be doing a remake. Mania.com posted a recent synopsis of the movie, and it sounds all but superficially identical to the original flick. I'd rather they went with different characters and a new story, if not a new concept. I have a feeling this movie will do well in the box office on the recognition factor of the original, but is also destined to be forgotten.


On Febuary 3rd, The Chronicle will arrive in theaters, and may be an interesting study on human nature in the vein of "Watchmen", though likely dumbed down a bit, given it's produced by MTV films. The concept is stated as: Three high school students make an incredible discovery, leading to them developing uncanny powers beyond their understanding. As they learn to control their abilities, and use them to their advantage, their lives start to spin out of control, and their darker sides begin to take over.

Personally, I'm hoping for a cool, emotionally intense "super-powers flick" and the trailer makes me think "The Chronicle" may just deliver.





Over the Christmas break when my wife and I went out to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie (which I LOVED by the way!) I saw a promo poster that I thought must be a joke. But Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter looks like an attempt to actually tell a serious vampire story. Well, mostly serious. Even after reading the article at mania.com I couldn't quite figure out how much intended humor will be in this flick. I haven't read the book it's based on by Seth Grahame-Smith, but I'll enjoy finding out on June 22nd!


All kinds of speculation surround Ridley Scott's Prometheus, coming to theaters June 8th. It started as a prequel to Alien, with the intent of answering the question "Who was the 'space jockey' and what was he doing on the planet they found the Alien on?" Scott has since revealed that the famous "Alien" will not even appear in any form in this movie, although it does take place in the same "universe" as the Alien movies. (Or at least the first one that Scott made.) One thing is for sure, millions of rabid fans will line up on June 8th to witness Ridley Scott's return to the sci-fi genre after a 25 year absence. Count me among them!





Principle photography on the new Star Trek flick has finally begun, and the release date set for May 17th, 2013. All the familiar stars and creative forces are returning, hopefully the disfunctional relationships will make a comeback as well and keep Roddenberry's once daring and now relatively boring execution of a utopian future far in the past.


If you haven't seen the trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey yet, your hopes for the prequel to the epic "Lord Of The Rings" movies are about to be renewed. Though some familiar faces (like Galadriel for one) indicate the movie will be mining Tolkien source material outside of "The Hobbit", the look and feel of the everything in the trailer says that the property is in trustworthy hands once again. Can't wait for December 12th!

The SBU Movie Awards!

Spirit Blade Underground Podcast listener and contributor, David Arington, gave me what I thought was a great suggestion to have some kind of "movie awards" in January or February for the flicks of the previous year.

So I'm giving it a go this year, and starting fairly small. But if people respond with interest, I can increase the number of available award categories next year.

This year there are two awards to be announced. One for the highest quality film and another for the most thought-provoking.

I've narrowed down the nominees based on the highest scores I gave out in each category of my movie reviews in 2011. Four have been selected in each of the two categories and polls have been set up to determine the winners. All that remains is for YOU to VOTE!

You'll find both polls on our forums, and can jump to them easily by clicking here!

Polls close on Thursday, February 9th and the winner will be announced on the following episode of the Spirit Blade Underground Podcast! Don't delay! Vote right now!

Movie Day!

Today I'm taking most of the day off and the main event this morning is a movie with my oldest son.

We're fixin' to pop some popcorn, get under a blanket on the couch and throw in a DVD. Well, carefully place one in the player, touching only the rim of the disc and never the data side. I'm trying to teach my son proper care for DVDs. (Wish I could teach the same thing to more Red Box renters. Yikes! Scratchy fingerprint city! Who are these animals?)

I'm thinking he might be ready for Prince Of Egypt. He likes songs in videos a lot. But if there aren't enough of them, or if he decides some parts are too scary, we might switch over to the Superman animated "movie" The Last Son Of Krypton... which would also be fine with me. ;-)

Diggin' DCU Online

I'm not a fan of MMOs. I hate the monthly subscription concept. Call me traditional, but I like to pay for a game once, and for that game to be complete. I also dislike the idea of having my play experience spoiled by someone who just feels like anonymously ticking off other people.

But if there were ever an MMO I would give a try, it would be DC Universe Online. And when it went free to play, and I suddenly had a new laptop that could run it, I had to give it a go.

The experience has largely been amazing. The world feels large and open, the action is sweet and feels great with a controller, though it's still an action RPG, meaning that hand-eye coordination skills are not required if you're willing to level grind. (Woohoo!)

Character creation is a bit narrow and pre-packaged, but the biggest thrill for me is just being able to explore my favorite comic book universe at will. It's also finally a game I can play with my gaming buddy Mark, who lives 9 hours away by car.

The game still isn't without the annoying trappings of MMOs. Even in a non PvP server I've gotten one or two requests to fight somebody. Another time several players decided to team up and block access to a room that is commonly needed by all players, just standing there to block movement, knowing they couldn't be attacked in the non-PvP server. I had to wait about 10 minutes before they were booted from the server, though other players seemed to have been waiting much longer.

My only other gripe is that once you reach about level 10, most missions basically require you to team up with others in order to be successful, or spend insane amounts of time level grinding. (Bad guys yield very little XP. Completing missions is the primary way to earn it.) So I've got my gaming buddy Mark that I'll be able to partner with, though eventually we'll probably have to find one or two others to group with if we want to see all of the game's content. Bummer.

Not that there aren't nice gamer folks like you out there that I wouldn't enjoy gaming with, but for me, video gaming is a solitaire experience almost by definition, and I prefer my rare times of co-op to be of the couch variety, with friends I've already built a relationship with away from a computer screen.

Even so, if you play the game on PC, feel free to look me up. I'm not very good at using the chat interface yet, so please forgive any perceived ignoring. So far my two characters include "Vincent Craft" when I play solo and "Paeter" when I play with my buddy. (Though I've already snagged the name of CFOS and suspect he will emerge in the world of villains sometime soon.)

Midnight Chronicles (Movie Review)

As a fan of Fantasy Flight Games, I came across news in 2007 that one of their fantasy role playing games, "Midnight", was being developed into a movie. A TV pilot, to be exact. Written, Produced and Directed by Christian T. Petersen, the founder of Fantasy Flight Games.

Looking at the promotional clips online gave me mixed feelings about what the final quality of the production would be like. And the fact that a game producer was doing all the creative heavy lifting could be awesome, since he would have complete control, but also terrible for the same reason, if he doesn't know how to make movies.

The movie was passed up by all those considering it for going to pilot. Not a good sign. But nothing in the clips or trailers I'd seen told me this movie would be monstrously bad. (The first "Dungeons And Dragons" movie comes to mind in that capacity.) So I watched and waited until it finally came to DVD, and waited even longer until distribution made it possible for me to rent it before making a blind purchase. This week it was finally available for me to rent and my curiosity at last was satisfied.

From the very opening of the movie, a dark, dreary tone is established. This is the story of a fantasy world with elves and magic, but one in which the big, bad, unspeakable evil... won. For 100 years the world has lived under the cruel oppressive rule of the dark god Isrador. Commonors move from city to city under the watchful eye and lashing whips of orc soldiers. The premise of this movie is ripe for some wonderful storytelling. But the script never gets around to it.

While the opening tone of the movie is great, and the depressing grit remains through much of the movie, the writer seems more interested in introducing us to the world than in giving us a story to follow. The pace moves incredibly slow, with very little action to break things up. This would be fine if the movie worked as a character drama, but there are no characters I found myself relating to or caring about. The script would have been served well by cutting out a number of plot lines to center on just two or three, using the remaining time to give us reasons to invest in these characters. It seemed to me as though many of these characters had rich stories that wanted to be told, but all of the best material was left in the writer's notebook instead of being put in the script.

Performances were also pretty bland, with a few performers that I wouldn't be surprised to learn are just really good volunteer LARPers (Live Action Role Players) rather than actors, especially given the presence of a particular, minor speech impediment that I've found to be most common around a gaming table.

Visual effects were standard TV series quality, which is not an insult, given that the movie was shot for consideration as a TV pilot. But in a fantasy movie with a run time of an hour and 40 minutes, I would have liked to see more of them.

The fighting scenes, when they did get around to them, seemed to be put together without any benefit of a fight/stunt coordinator. Very poor even by TV standards of 15 years ago.

The included documentary about the making of the movie is a little interesting, and the fact that the entire thing was produced by a table-top game company should not be overlooked. But their first time out should have been less ambitious.

This movie might have worked if they had focused the script on two or three characters and what they want to achieve, and searched far and wide for stronger actors (volunteers though they may be) and a stronger director, who could tell a character driven story that was emotionally involving, without needing fight scenes or lots of effects.

As it is, I can't even recommend spending a dollar to rent it, or two hours of your time to watch it unless you really have nothing else to kill time with. It's not offensively bad or cheesy, just extremely uninteresting. For the same reason, I find it highly unlikely that any meaningful conversation would come after viewing it.

For a better experience in the same intended mold, try "Dragon Age: Redemption" for free on YouTube.

Not rated by the MPAA, but I'd roughly place it at PG-13 for violence and language.

Quality- 6.0/10
Relevance- 5.5/10

For information about my scoring system, visit spiritblade.net/reviewscores.
To listen to this review, visit spiritblade.net/podcast this weekend

Lookin' For A City

Back from my Christmas break and ready to crack open my brain for you once again.

This time, you get a dose of the "musical performance" that's been running through my head ever since my wife cursed me with the link to it.

I get such mixed feelings from watching videos like John Daker and this one. I cringe, I laugh in shock and disbelief, I get frustrated with the stereotype of Christians being perpetuated... the list of conflicting feelings and reactions goes on. I'm left in state of befuddlement where I don't know how to respond except to say... what the crap.

Enjoy!