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All right, I gave up and did it...
So my new Skyrim runthrough with a lady orc tank (named Jehane d'Arc I cannot believe it didn't occur to me to call her Jehane d'Orc) was kind of boring because I couldn't really get into my character and give her a guiding impulse.
So I did it...
Murderface McKenzie 2.0 it is!
I'm not going to be doing full writeups because honestly, it was getting kind of tedious to make notes and write it up every time. So you'll just have to deal.
Also, I've installed some mods with an eye to ones that'll make my gameplay more fun, rather than ones that are mostly cheat codes. The closest I've come to installing a cheat is to give Murderface the spell Resurrect so if he kills his companions it's only temporary, because that was annoying. So far it hasn't been necessary, though, as the only companion he's traveled with (a priestess of Azura), and she tends to stay back, lobbing lightning and fire atronachs at enemies, instead of rushing in front of Murderface's attacks. Plus, I've been trying to get his bow skills up before I start the dragon questline, so he's been setting fewer people on fire this go-round.
That will be changing soon as I just got a fancy upgraded bow and enchanted it to set people on fire.
I've installed mods to make the water look better, to install lanterns along roads, to make signposts actually point the way to cities and settlements, to make bridges fancy, to give NPCs more dialogue, to improve and rebalance the skill tree a bit, to increase the sounds of nature, and to keep vampires from attacking cities because I HATE THAT AND I DO NOT HAVE FUN WHEN VAMPIRES RANDOMLY ATTACK CITIES. I also installed one that changes the text on loading screens to sarcastic comments.
The PS4's graphics are much nicer than the PS3, which has the odd effect of changing Murderface's character a bit. As I couldn't port the game over, I had to attempt to recreate his face based on the skewed photo I took of him with my phone, and I don't have it quite right yet, but the graphics upgrade also means there's more detail visible, so he looks a little bit older, a little bit tireder, and his scraggly goatee is a bit darker.
You can also see the effects of a mod there, which enhances weather effects on the player character. He's standing in a snowstorm at the moment so his elven armor's all frosty.
There's a mage who can reshape faces (i.e. let you go back into the character creator), and I've already hit her up once to tweak him, but I may have to download the reference kit I sent to artists I commissioned and hit her up again as things still don't seem quite right.
Anyway, this Murderface doesn't yet have any real guiding principles other than to want to be a giant loner. He's traveling with that priestess at the moment because I'm cheesing his levels by smithing dwarven bows, which means I need to gather a lot of dwemer artifacts and there's a way you can exploit a minor bug in your companion's inventory to allow them to carry an infinite amount of weight. Once he's done with that, he'll cut her loose.
He also doesn't want for a home right now because I installed a mod that gives him a nice little hunter's treehouse, so he'd have a place to store his stuff.
He does remain the old Murderface in one special way, however: after I took the screencap of him in his armor above, which was standing on the porch of his treehouse, he attempted to use the leather tanning station on the side of the house and fell off the porch.
Also, the weapons rack in his house doesn't work, instead throwing anything he attempts to put on it onto the floor, so he has to store his weapons in a case under the bed.
Other than that, here's a few amusing glitches and other things I've encountered (actual screencaps, not phone pics, as I can easily get them off the PS4 now!):
Farengar Secret-Fire, who is the closest thing to a friend Murderface has at the moment, being that he's actually nice to Murderface, refuses to bow to your expectations of how chairs should work.
Murderface 2.0 specializes in crotch shots because he's moving around in Sneak mode (i.e., crouched down) all the time and I am, at heart, a 12-year-old boy:
This is an arrow that got stuck in midair between two candles.
And a rope that the game forgot to finish.
This bandit was killed by an arrow to the side of the head.
You might have to look a bit to discern this one, but this is a stone texture floating above the floor.
No glitch here, it's just that I was crouching and all three of these guys were watching me in a creepy manner.
This guy got stuck with his mouth open like that for a while.
These two shots are of this dude, who got so tired he couldn't make it to his bed and slept at a 90 degree angle to it. And then when I went to talk with him to complete a quest, he was so tired he didn't get up and talked to me from that position.
Oh--while I haven't done the Companions' questline yet for this game, so Murderface hasn't met Farkas yet, my short-lived Orc lady started it, and I thought y'all would want to know that Farkas is still in fine form.
So there you go! Any suggestions on Murderface 2.0's guiding principles? What does he really want, deep down? So far, I mostly want to get his archery up and to start the Dawnguard (anti-vampire) stuff so that I can get my hands on rapid-fire crossbows before he starts the dragon questline, given how slow I am with regular archery. The new Murderface has a bit more of a "been there, done that" air to him, although he's been sampling the local flora and fauna about the same amount as the old one.
So I did it...
Murderface McKenzie 2.0 it is!
I'm not going to be doing full writeups because honestly, it was getting kind of tedious to make notes and write it up every time. So you'll just have to deal.
Also, I've installed some mods with an eye to ones that'll make my gameplay more fun, rather than ones that are mostly cheat codes. The closest I've come to installing a cheat is to give Murderface the spell Resurrect so if he kills his companions it's only temporary, because that was annoying. So far it hasn't been necessary, though, as the only companion he's traveled with (a priestess of Azura), and she tends to stay back, lobbing lightning and fire atronachs at enemies, instead of rushing in front of Murderface's attacks. Plus, I've been trying to get his bow skills up before I start the dragon questline, so he's been setting fewer people on fire this go-round.
That will be changing soon as I just got a fancy upgraded bow and enchanted it to set people on fire.
I've installed mods to make the water look better, to install lanterns along roads, to make signposts actually point the way to cities and settlements, to make bridges fancy, to give NPCs more dialogue, to improve and rebalance the skill tree a bit, to increase the sounds of nature, and to keep vampires from attacking cities because I HATE THAT AND I DO NOT HAVE FUN WHEN VAMPIRES RANDOMLY ATTACK CITIES. I also installed one that changes the text on loading screens to sarcastic comments.
The PS4's graphics are much nicer than the PS3, which has the odd effect of changing Murderface's character a bit. As I couldn't port the game over, I had to attempt to recreate his face based on the skewed photo I took of him with my phone, and I don't have it quite right yet, but the graphics upgrade also means there's more detail visible, so he looks a little bit older, a little bit tireder, and his scraggly goatee is a bit darker.
You can also see the effects of a mod there, which enhances weather effects on the player character. He's standing in a snowstorm at the moment so his elven armor's all frosty.
There's a mage who can reshape faces (i.e. let you go back into the character creator), and I've already hit her up once to tweak him, but I may have to download the reference kit I sent to artists I commissioned and hit her up again as things still don't seem quite right.
Anyway, this Murderface doesn't yet have any real guiding principles other than to want to be a giant loner. He's traveling with that priestess at the moment because I'm cheesing his levels by smithing dwarven bows, which means I need to gather a lot of dwemer artifacts and there's a way you can exploit a minor bug in your companion's inventory to allow them to carry an infinite amount of weight. Once he's done with that, he'll cut her loose.
He also doesn't want for a home right now because I installed a mod that gives him a nice little hunter's treehouse, so he'd have a place to store his stuff.
He does remain the old Murderface in one special way, however: after I took the screencap of him in his armor above, which was standing on the porch of his treehouse, he attempted to use the leather tanning station on the side of the house and fell off the porch.
Also, the weapons rack in his house doesn't work, instead throwing anything he attempts to put on it onto the floor, so he has to store his weapons in a case under the bed.
Other than that, here's a few amusing glitches and other things I've encountered (actual screencaps, not phone pics, as I can easily get them off the PS4 now!):
Farengar Secret-Fire, who is the closest thing to a friend Murderface has at the moment, being that he's actually nice to Murderface, refuses to bow to your expectations of how chairs should work.
Murderface 2.0 specializes in crotch shots because he's moving around in Sneak mode (i.e., crouched down) all the time and I am, at heart, a 12-year-old boy:
This is an arrow that got stuck in midair between two candles.
And a rope that the game forgot to finish.
This bandit was killed by an arrow to the side of the head.
You might have to look a bit to discern this one, but this is a stone texture floating above the floor.
No glitch here, it's just that I was crouching and all three of these guys were watching me in a creepy manner.
This guy got stuck with his mouth open like that for a while.
These two shots are of this dude, who got so tired he couldn't make it to his bed and slept at a 90 degree angle to it. And then when I went to talk with him to complete a quest, he was so tired he didn't get up and talked to me from that position.
Oh--while I haven't done the Companions' questline yet for this game, so Murderface hasn't met Farkas yet, my short-lived Orc lady started it, and I thought y'all would want to know that Farkas is still in fine form.
So there you go! Any suggestions on Murderface 2.0's guiding principles? What does he really want, deep down? So far, I mostly want to get his archery up and to start the Dawnguard (anti-vampire) stuff so that I can get my hands on rapid-fire crossbows before he starts the dragon questline, given how slow I am with regular archery. The new Murderface has a bit more of a "been there, done that" air to him, although he's been sampling the local flora and fauna about the same amount as the old one.