Blog #045 - Journey Illustration, Steam Sales, Oblivion Madness

Haven't posted a blog in 2 weeks. Haven't even been doing anything except playing some games. As always I've been keeping up with my daily design, making something creative every day. Today I did something for Journey.

Journey

I hadn't heard of this game until Jenova Chen appeared on the E3 bombcast. I didn't really look it up until Brad posted the quicklook this week. Visually stunning, conceptually amazing. The only way I can describe that game. It shuns the feeling of 'gameyness' so much, and I like that.

I decided to make fan art for it today. Initially I drew the main character, but the landscape was the most interesting thing to me, and I remembered that in January as part of my blog I drew a man in a desert. I used that as a basis for my design, that you can see below.

thatgamecompany retweeted the design earlier. Awesome. https://twitter.com/#!/Alister_Cat/status/89422593194594304

View High Res Here

I enjoyed making it. As always I love to read your comments so post away.

Steam Sales

I have always looked forward to the steam sales. Never mind that I haven't even played 90% of the games I've bought. I have spent way too much in these sales already, but have shown restraint. So much stuff that I didn't buy. It always annoys me to see people complain about the sales either because they own everything already, or the games aren't for them. That doesn't make the sales bad, it just means that day isn't for you. There are plenty of other people saving a lot of money. It's a great thing for everybody, all around.

The game I wanted the most was Shogun 2 and a friend who has owed me for a long time was kind enough to gift it. I haven't stuck much time in to it yet but it seems like an incredible game that will devour my time. I expect to suck for a long time but I love the setting and aesthetic enough to stick with it.

Oblivion Mod Madness

2am on a tuesday morning. I suddenly have the urge to play Oblivion. 7+ hours of installing and downloading mods later, I have Oblivion fully modded like it was on my system last year. i have sunk at least 500 hours in to this game since 2006. I'm only 10 hours in so far but I can't see it ending any time soon. Mods really improve this game. I wouldn't want to play it vanilla, which is to say I wouldn't want to play it on a console (I bought Oblivion 5 times on Xbox360 when it first came out).

There are some seriously impressive mods. The community gets a bad rap for the numerous nude mods, but there is a lot more out there, including utilities to make modding easier and more expansive (Oblivion Script Extender and Oblivion Graphics Extender). It's true, a lot of the mods for this game are about visuals. I downloaded a lot of mods to improve the weather, textures, cities, characters etc but that's exactly what this game needs. 5 years have not been kind. I am use a mod that adds an experiencing system for levelling, more like Fallout 3.

Most of the mods I download though are for immersion. I never liked oblivion for excellent gameplay. It was living in a fantasy world. I download mods that added farm animals to the world, improve cities to make them feel lived in, more vegetation, more wildlife (wild rabbits), animated lighting and chimneys for houses. All of these things draw me in to the world more, and make the hours and hours (and several huge problems) all worth it. I still have some missing meshes around which is annoying but I'll deal with that in time.