Background pencils!

Today, I invite you to enjoy a look at the pencils for my upcoming 1up.com game-webcomic. Your individual level of enjoyment may vary, depending on how you respond to landscape pencils. Ten points for anyone who can correctly guess the game being parodied! Eternal shame on whoever guesses wrong, 'cause there's clues all over the page.

I forgot to mention it since I was on vacation at the time, and thus very busy forgetting a lot of things, but while I was out, a new videogame-webcomic debuted on 1up.com, based on the "Elder Scrolls: Oblivion!" Yes, Oblivion, not Skyrim. If you've played Oblivion, you'll enjoy the heck out of this one -- check it out at: http://www.1up.com/features/oblivion-webcomic-game

Alternatively, if you haven't played Oblivion, you'll probably still enjoy it on some level, but if your only exposure to the Elder Scrolls series has been the stunningly gorgeous footage leading up to the release of Skyrim (soon!), you may be a little puzzled about what's going in. Specifically, you may wonder why there's so much fuss over a game series if one of its main, identifying features is that it has a ridiculously high number of bugs.

Technical glitches, that is. Not insects. It has those, but they're pretty lukewarm so far as game insects go. Two out of five stars, that's what I rate their insects.

No, the glitches of the Elder Scrolls series are the stuff of legends, and so varied! Many were terrible, game-killing bugs; quest-enders, instant death, falling through scenery, getting stuck in the landscape! Some were wonderful: item duplication! Gravity-defying paintbrushes! Some were just weird, and youtube can help you fill in the blanks there. The point is, if you played Oblivion on the first day, chances are good you had to reset at some point. Even now, five years and heaven only knows how many patches later, you can still find the errant bug cavorting through the game world.

Which I realize doesn't exactly explain why people -- myself included -- think these are some of the best games ever, regardless, but I was getting to that. The truth is, the game has so many bugs because there's so much GAME in there to start with. Elder Scrolls games aren't short experiences; they're as close as you can get to having an alternate life in a fantasy world that doesn't require a subscription fee, psychedelic drugs or circumvention of federal law.

In fact, for my money, they're WAY more immersive than an MMO, not just because of the beautiful landscapes and deep fantasy lore, but because you don't have to

1: hear other players, fully dressed in fantasy garb and suited up to battle the hordes of the underworld, talking about 'Family Guy' episodes, or

2: Feel like a complete wiener because you're the only one playing the game in-character. I'm not saying this because I've played "The Lord of the Rings Online" as a hobbit, spending several minutes alone on a hillside, strumming an in-game lute; I'm saying this because as far as I know, nobody else ever has.

At any rate, Skyrim's out on the 11th of November! Very exciting! Now go guess the game in the pencils.