Well it's official, i broke the 60 hour mark on Skyrim today and I haven't even completed the main storyline. While I have taken shots at it from time to time, I have for the most part done my best not to make it my main priority. Were there a main priority for myself in this game it would be to obtain level 50, and being at level 30 now I can safely say that will not be occurring anytime soon. If there's anyone that even bothers to check my updates here on Giantbomb, you would have noticed that I just completed the Reader steam achievement, and I am 42% done with the achievements. For all intents and purposes, the completionist in me is very happy and ready to continue. But im somewhat concerned as to how much I still have left to do in this game.

As far as exploration goes, I have only managed to fill out the areas around Whiterun, Riverwood, and Falkreath to some degree, and due to a bug in the PC version, I have had to omit a cave that is nearby because of a game-breaking bug that causes a nearly instant crash upon entering the cave. I can't remember the name of the cave off the top of my head, but it leads to an area where a dragon resides. Despite this though most of the south-western portion of the map is completely explored, with inklings of explored areas in all other portions of the map. I have stopped randomly exploring everything I find to finally begin putting a dent in my sidequests, and the miscellaneous quests. But the main quest line I am enjoying right now is the one involving the College of Winterhold, and im finding it to be more fun and engaging than the Companion quest line (yes, even despite the awesome twist (spoiler omitted)). Im not sure how this will affect my general exploration, as I have a ton of quest items that I have no idea to do with, but im looking forward uncovering additional information about the (omitted) and if you can eventually become part of the (omitted).

Anyways now im just jabbering on about how much I like doing things in the game. This living breathing world of Skyrim is fantastic and really engages you to the point that you think about it even when your not playing, and lately I've been thinking about is my second character. I've had musings of a stealthy assassin like character that is capable of smithing and pick-pocketing with the best of them, but i've also considered going all mage, or in the characters case, witch, as I enjoy how the general application of spells works in the game, and not to mention all the awesome spell effects. My current character is lovingly called Geralt of Rivia, as he looks like the famed icon of The Witcher series, and even enjoys hack-and-slash as much as he likes to lay the smack down with an inferno of flames.

As I got to thinking of my second character I thought of a fun idea to implement as well. Since many people are doing play-throughs of their first character, I thought it would be more interesting to do a play through of a second character. My reasoning for this is that you already know the lay of the land, the quests to be expected, and the in's and out's, so when you are playing you are able to give additional information of a locale as you go through it. Previous knowledge can be used as a heads up not only for yourself, but for others as well. And secondly if things deviate from what you experienced before, you can note it on video and provide viewers the chance to see not only what you are currently experiencing, but an idea of any other possible interactions. So consider this a general heads up on my idea, and don't expect that anytime soon as I still have plenty of time ahead of my on Geralt.

So i'll end this blog with a general heads up of recording my second character, and just a two cents on the sneaky Skyrim update that Bethesda did so you cannot launch Skyrim without steam running. I hate it, but it wasn't really bothering me before. In any case, happy dragon hunting!