After playing Skyrim for a while, I realized something: my Dovahkiin, while looking and acting like a Dark Elf, is a direct, if distant, descendant of the original Doom Marine.

Think about it. The Doom Marine was characterized by three things: his ammo count, his health score and his armor score. It didn't matter whether he was shot in the head or the leg. It didn't matter if he was shot with a missile or a pistol, so long as he had enough health and armor to absorb the impact. He felt no fear. He felt no pain. He did not bleed. His limbs did not become crippled. He was equally stellar at handling every weapon under the sun, from the chainsaw and handgun to the esoteric plasma rifle and BFG. And even when critically injured and hanging by a thread, he could come back to the fight in the matter of seconds by just finding the right pickup item.

Years passed, and games got more complex. We were introduced to skills, choices, attributes and limitations. A lack of skill that your character possessed meant that he couldn't handle a minigun or a big hammer - or,conversely, the ham-fisted big guy could not compete with a nimble sniper or an assassin when it came to the art of precision kill. Location damage made a difference between being shot in the head and dying outright, or having no use of one of your arms and not being able to heft a weapon, or not being able to run because of a damaged leg. Attributes told us that some characters were faster, some were stronger, some were smarter. Choices and consequences opened some paths and left some closed, in shocking likeness of real life. In some cases, the path to victory depended not on the size of your weapon, but on your ability to speak the right words.

And then... then there's now. When your character is defined by the red bar, the green bar and the blue bar. When you in fact CAN be the paragon of goodness AND the dastardly assassin. When you can master everything and make every choice with no drawbacks. In the end, you simply have to shoot the cyberdemon until he dies. The Doom Marine returns. He is the jack of all trades and the master of them too. He feels no fear, no pain and no crippling blow. He is the smartest, the strongest, the fastest and the stealthiest, and he possesses the survivability of a cockroach.

On November 11th he was reborn, and his name is Dovahkiin.

Pretty much.

I guess.

Well done, TC.

My character was a direct descendant from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGJnp1YJCNU&feature=related, and the Final Boss from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFkTNQL0PFw.