Chestnuts were an important traditional foodstuff in parts of Italy. Peasants could supplement their diets with chestnuts, and flour was a natural extension of this. Roasted chestnuts remain a common sight in Roma over the winter, though I’m skeptical about whether this is because Romans demand it, or because it’s another cute novelty to sell to tourists.

Anyway, I bought some chestnut flour – farina di castagna – from the Testaccio Ex-Mattatoio producers’ market last weekend, on a whim. Didn’t really have any idea what to do with it. And nor do I particularly like chestnuts. Living in New Zealand years ago, some friends who tried to live as much as possible by foraging provided enough for me to eat far too many, resulting in a certain aversion. Which might not sound promising, but bear with me.

After a bit of Googling and polling friends, I plan to use it to make various items at some stage, including the Italian traditional castagnaccio – a kind of peasant cake that doesn’t include sugar and instead realies on the natural sweetness of chestnuts. (Chestnut flour is also known as farina dolce – sweet flour.) Also: chestnut flour pancakes (maybe on Shrove Tuesday, which is looming) and this cake, which comes from a gluten-free angle. If I can work out a replacement for crème fraîche, which isn’t readily available here in Roma. Apparently I can use panna acida.

But first, I made some bread, inspired by a recipe in Richard Bertinet’s Dough. His version uses rye flour; here I replaced that with chestnut flour. I also reduced the yeast in his recipe and added some white leaven. What the hell.

So:
400g strong white flour
100g chestnut flour
10g salt
320g water
6g fresh (fresh)
50g white leaven (100% hydration)

Combine the flours and salt.
Whisk together the leaven, yeast and water (warm – use dough temp x 2 minus flour temp to give you a water temp… or just warm…).
Add liquid to flours, bring to a dough.
Knead.
Form a ball, rest, covered, until doubled in height. I’m not going to suggest a time, as that really is so dependant on the temperature of your room.
I divided it into two, formed balls, rested 10 mins then I made rings, but really, knock yourself out with the shape.
Prove again, until doubled in height.
Bake at 220C for 15 mins, then lower temp to 200C and bake another 15 mins. Or if you’re doing one large loaf, it may need longer. Trust your judgment!

And you know what, it’s yummy. The nuts give the crumb a slight purply tinge and the taste is indeed subtly sweet.

I really ought to try and take better pictures though. Random snaps from my phone don’t cut it. And that tablecloth is getting a bit overused as a backdrop.

Further up, through the labyrinth of looming walls liberally decorated with graffiti (extremist politics and/or football mostly), navigating the perennial Roman pavement adornments c/o sundry cane and their inconsiderate owners (seriously, it’s worse than Paris), we passed along Via Giambattista Marino, behind an ecclesiastical establishment. There are many in the neighbourhood, but this one’s particularly grand. Not sure what it is – a school? A monastery? Anyway, both Fran and I assumed there was some sort of event going on, as music appeared to be emerging from within burly stonework. Except that when we turned the corner at the top of the street, the acoustics changed radically and the music was revealed to be a brass rendition of ‘Strangers in the Night’. Not part of the Church’s typical Sunday program.

Heading up our street, the sound got louder, and clearer until we spotted due vecchi, two old geezers, seemingly serenading an apartment. If serenading is the right word. It looked like they had a small amp and backing track, and while one was giving it his all with a battered old French horn, the other was clutching a trumpet. This chap, a decidedly lively little chap, was so digging the tune, he kept stopping playing to dance, among the giant wheelie bins and closely packed parked cars.

We wandered past, and further up, two other, very different old geezers, were packing their rifles and gear into their car, presumably for a spot of hunting in the hills of Abruzzo.

The day before this scene, we’d watched Fellini’s Roma, a 1972 film that, via a series of loose sketches, recounts some autobiography. We see the young Fellini arriving in 1930s Rome from his native Rimini, and immediately becoming embroiled in a vigorously communal way of life, getting a room in a sprawling apartment full of large woman, squalling kids, a sunburned mammone (mother’s boy) and a selection of eccentric tenants. Going out to dinner, meanwhile, the local community (is it supposed to be Testaccio?) convenes to eat at long tables outside a restaurant, joking, arguing, critiquing the food. This includes, I believe, pajata, a delightful, typically Roman dish of veal intestines, which congeal somewhat on cooking, much like rennet from cows’ cuts is used to curdle milk for cheese-making; and snails, which prompt a few saucy comments about how mastering the art of eating them can educate a young man in how to please a woman.

A little kid sings a dirty song about how the new young man, Fellini, is going to have sex with, well, basically everyone. A young man abusively beckons his haughty sister down from where she’s posing on a balcony. Middle-aged women vie for Fellini’s attentions.

The film cuts between such scenes and scenes of contempory Rome, which is now dominated by traffic. It seems to be suggesting the exuberant, social street life of the 1930s has been destroyed, disappeared. Certainly it’s true that the streets are now overwhelmed by Rome’s very tangible car problem* – not just a traffic problem, but a problem with the sheer scale of ownership. Streets are packed with parked cars, and the character of innumerable venerable piazze and piazzale is utterly compromised by them simply having become car parks. Old neighbourhoods didn’t evolve with car-parking in mind.

These days it’s frequently hard to even walk along the pavement as it’s often appropriated for parking. Not ideal for wheelchair users or people with kids in buggies. Our personal favourite is when cop cars from the station up the road block the zebra crossing.

Anyway, so, yes, of course the modern world has quashed the traditional world of street life, but not completely. Summers in Rome are still defined by al fresco dining into the night; restaurants generally have walls of planters to prevent their spots being used for parking. And, well – the two old geezers with their feisty miniature brass section wouldn’t have looked out of place Fellini’s Roma. Their musical endeavours went on long after we’d got home, the brass still echoing down the street for at least an hour. Quite who they were serenading, I don’t know, but from the duration, she never emerged.

* something I’ve written about before:
Moto city
“Death on the Highway”

A few months back I also read a column in the paper where the writer was taking her daughter and friends to see Harry Potter for a birthday jaunt. The kids, 10 ish, were all nonplussed that the 2D screening was sold out and vetoed the idea of seeing it in 3D, preferring to wait for the next 2D. So if kids don’t like it, 20 and 30-something men don’t like it, who does? I certainly don’t.

Living in London the past few years, time and again I was keen to see a film, then found out it in 3D. This meant that all the central London cinemas, the ones I tended to frequent, would be showing it in 3D. Suburban cinemas would offer it in 2D, or have alternate screenings, but they weren’t generally my beat.

Sure, I’d vaguely enjoyed the 1950s throwback theme-park ride of having stuff thrown at me in Final Destination 3D and I definitely enjoyed Avatar at the IMAX, but the IMAX is the only cinema in London that is properly designed for 3D. And even there I had my reservations: I don’t like the extra equipment required (the glasses), there’s always some blurring of the image on the periphery, and there’s always the chance of eye-strain and headaches. This is even more of a problem if you already have poor eyesight; my mum, for example, is a big cinema-goer, for but 3D glasses along with her problematic vision just don’t work; it hurts.

After moving out of London to Sussex, at least the local Odeon would do alternate 2D and 3D screenings of the big releases proffering this tedious, desperate gimmick. Give me a big screen with a crisp 2D HD image anyway. A big screen and the latest in reproduction and projection technology is a joy, a reliably immersive experience that doesn’t need the muddying of trying to project in 3D in a cinema that was never designed for it, and expecting the punter to don the glasses – effectively put an extra barrier between you and the image. Even Peter Jackson looks uncomfortable here checking Hobbit shots wearing both 3D glasses and reading glasses (“It’s all good,” he says, unconvincingly). All the while enthusing about the wonders of shooting in 3D with the new Red Epic camera and saying “If I’d had the option to shoot The Lord of the Rings in 3D I certainly would have done it.” I am so glad he didn’t.

Alongside the passion of these evangelical technologist filmmakers – Jackson, Cameron, Lucas, Spielberg, who love their new tools, new toys – film distributors either genuinely believe that 3D is “added value” that will save the cinema trade in the face of on-demand home viewing (legal or otherwise), or are just so caught up in the machinery of capitalism that they’re deaf to punters’ cries. The argument is that “this is what people want”; I’ve read that so many times before though, even in other contexts, like the question of supermarkets’ over-packaging of foods. But it really isn’t what people want – it’s just what they’ve come to accept as the norm after they’re been bludgeoned by enormous marketing budgets.

Even mediocre mainstream film can prevail, financially, if it’s marketed heavily enough. You see the poster on billboards and bus-sides, you see the promo or trailer on telly and online, over and over, you see ads in mags and papers. It features a few sexy stars; it’s a sequel to another film you saw, so you’re already engaged with the brand; it comes on at your local cinema, where there really isn’t much choice. It’s a Friday night out you don’t have to think much about. You apathetically pay the extra £2 or whatever for the 3D specs. You get a headache. You moan about it on Facebook to your friends, or you mention how pointless the 3D was in your IMDB user review.

Seriously, I adore the big screen experience, I love the whole package of going to the cinema. My mind is full a lifetime of memories of walking off the grubby pavement, pushing open the cinema doors, being met by the scent of popcorn, leaving behind the real world, the bustle, the traffic, your own concerns; entering the darkened room, getting absorbed by the flickering light of the image, being immersed, forgetting your own concerns for 90 minutes. And although I like an intelligent film with a decent narrative, I’m also a fan of action, and fascinated by the aesthetics and technologies of VFX. But I just will not pay for 3D at the cinema, for an uncomfortable experience predicated on a gimmick, a gimmick that served its time in the 1950s when people were being lured away from cinemas by the wonders of newfangled TV, in a similar way to how we’re being lured away now by big-screen TVs and on-demand movies.

Frankly I’m deeply cynical when the likes of Scorsese and Herzog, filmmakers who’ve garnered respect for intelligent filmmaking, not mere popcorn fare, come out with 3D projects (Hugo Cabret and Cave of Forgotten Dreams respectively), and sing the praises of 3D in interviews. These guys may be iconic, but they’re still aging professionals who have to play the game if they want the studios and producers to back them, to fund them, so they can keep working and keep earning a living. And those studios are backing 3D, and are proffering them the latest 3D equipment. Said equipment may have come on in leaps and bounds, but so what if punters don’t appreciate the end product? Do the punters’ opinions really not matter at all. Money might talk, but, you know, people do too, and when they’re polled, they don’t generally seem to feel that 3D does add value.

Oh, and to take my sceptical cynicism a bit further, remember many of the studios are these days part of mega-corporations that include consumer technology arms, eg Sony Pictures Entertainment, and its subsidiary Columbia Pictures. And what does Sony sell? 3D BluRay discs, 3D BluRay players and 3D televisions.

Still, despite venting all that dismay and cynicism, I’m still hoping Jackson can change my mind when he transports us back to Middle-earth.

I played it by ear (well, by fingers) with some of the quantities, and I wanted to keep the dough very soft and wet – hence it flattened slightly when I moved it from the proving basket to bake. But flavour-wise, it’s great.

I’ve been struggling to get used to Italian flours. Many of them are low protein, unlike your standard British bread flour, which is ground from harder wheat. Harder wheat produces stronger flour, with more protein, say 13% or higher – giving the requisite gluten proteins to create certain bread structures, for the types of bread we’re more used to making in the UK.

Anyway, the recipe:

Cook about 50g of farro in water, simmering for about 45 minutes, until the grain is soft.
(You could use the cooking water for the sponge, though I didn’t in this case. You can also soak the grain overnight in ale, wine or friuit juice, if you’re interested in experimenting! Also, if you can’t get farro, wheat grains, aka wheat berries, would be fine.)

Make a sponge with:
360g water
250g wholewheat flour (I used an Italian integrale)
10g fresh yeast (or say 5g ADY if you can’t find fresh)

Leave the sponge to ferment for 8-12 hours. I did it overnight, in a fairly cold kitchen. (We’re in Rome, but it is January – nights getting down to around 0C.)

Make up the dough with:
The sponge
10g salt
150g wholewheat flour
100g white bread flour (I used an Italian bread which, despite being called “Farina di grano duro” – flour from hard wheat – and professing to be “per pane, focacce e dolci” – for bread, foccacia and sweets – is only 10% protein. See my perplexity? It worked ok though, so you could use a British plain flour.)

Bring the dough together and add the farro grains.
Knead. It’s sticky, that’s good, don’t worry!
Clean off your hands with some extra flour and bring the dough to a ball.
Ferment, covered, for about 4 hours, or until doubled in size.
I gave mine a few turns.
Turn out, form a ball, and rest for 10 minutes.
I formed a baton and proved it in a 36cm (14″) long basket.
Final prove until doubled in volume.
I turned it onto a baking sheet and made one long dorsal cut.

Bake in a preheated oven at 220C for 20 minutes, then turn down to 200C and bake for another 20 minutes. Or thereabouts.

I always assumed the French had the last word on patisserie, but living in Rome, I’m not so sure any more. In Monteverde Vecchio, our neighbourhood, indeed within about 100 metres of our flat, there are at least three pasticcerie (as I understand it, the word can mean the outlet, the trade and the product), as well as a bakery/tavolo caldo (“hot table” – meaning then sell hot snacks) that also does pasticceria.

Two of these places, and another one just down the hill on Viale Trastevere, have counters around 4-5 metres long utterly packed with biscuits, pastries, chocolates and sweeties that you buy by weight. And none of them are chains.

That’s one thing I love about Italy – it’s got an incredibly strong business culture of independents, of SMEs (small-medium sized enterprises). As well as all the independent pasticceria, which are also cafés, there are umpteen independent cafés, which also sell pasticceria. Although I’m an oddity in this culture for my dislike of coffee, I’m more than happy to frequent these places and indulge in pastries and, as it’s the winter (hey, there was a frost last night), I can get away with drinking lots of the cioccolata calda without breaching too much strict Italian food and drink etiquette. Well, I say “drinking” but it’s frequently half-way to eating as Italian hot chocolate is generally thickened with cornflour, making it a thick, gloopy thing that’s almost like a hot chocolate mousse.

My current obsession is for castagnole and frappe, which started appearing in the pasticcerie shortly after Christmas, specifically at Epiphany; that’s 6 January for heathens. These are seasonal sweet treats for carnevale – carnival or Mardi Gras season.

The Christian tradition is that Mardi Gras, aka Fat Tuesday, aka Shrove Tuesday, aka Pancake Day, is the day when you use up all your rich food products, fats and sugars to initiate Lent, the period of abstemiousness that leads up to Easter. While us Brits, and others, might have a pancake blow-out on just one day, here in Italy it looks like we’re getting weeks of the aforementioned treats.

So, castagnole are small, deep-fried dough balls, a bit like doughnuts, but the dough isn’t leavened with yeast, but with chemical raising agents, ie baking powder or equivalent, according to both the ingredients taped up on the counter at Pasticceria Dolci Desideri (“Sweets you want”!; our local, on Via Anton G Barrili) and the recipe on this blog. The word presumably relates to castagna – chestnut – though they have no chestnut flavouring. Instead you can get them semplice (plain) or filled with crema (custard) or ricotta.

Frappe, meanwhile, are basically thin rectangles of crisp, slightly puffy pastry, like a sweetened pasta, baked or deep-fried, and sprinkled with icing sugar, or sometimes flavoured with honey. The name itself (singular: frappa) is a bit confusing, as the similar word frappé means shake, or milkshake. According to the above-mentioned blog, they’re also known as cenci (the plural of cencio, rag – not very appetising), stracci (shreds; stracciare is the verb to tear or rip up) and lattughe (lettuce) in other parts of Italy.

We’ve been treating ourselves to castagnole and frappe, well, pretty much every day this week. It can’t go on, for obvious reasons, but not only are they delicious, there’s just something inherently lovely about going to a pasticceria and getting some treats wrapped up like a gift (eco concerns about over-packaging notwithstanding.)

Really, Brits have a long way to go to make the patisserie experience as charming as this. Sure we have some wonderful independent bakeries these days, but their patisserie can still seem meagre by comparison, even if they have an array of poncy cupcakes. And for people who still don’t even have access to real bakeries, some foul mass-produced “Toffee Flavour Yum Yum” from “Greggs The Home of Fresh Baking” [sic] just doesn’t cut it.

Thank you Ram Power 102.7FM for getting this one stuck in my head.

I can almost feel my music taste getting shifting, uncomfortably.

The inner me dismisses this one as deeply naff, like a kind of Italian Coldplay – a band that, well, no male should be listening to or enjoying, especially not if they’re beyond adolescence.

The song in question is ‘Tappeto di fragole’ by Modà. Check out the official video:

See, a girl, singing along. It’s for girls. And they leap around in their stadium like rockers, when they’re playing pop that by no stretch can be called rock. Other than by Wikipedia, which may well be down today to protest SOPA, but isn’t as comprehensively down in Italy. So the Italian page, translated by Google for me, says “The fashion are a band pop rock Italian .” [very much sic.]

And yet, my inner me isn’t entirely prevailing here. I kinda like it, as an exercise in cheesily emotive power pop pap, with lyrics I really can’t follow. All I could get initially was that he’s singing about strawberries, fragole. A carpet (tappeto) of them, in fact.

Here are the full lyrics:

Resto fermo tra le onde
mentre penso a te,
fuoco rosso luce e rondine..
tra le foglie soffia
un vento molto debole,
nel frattempo un fiore
sta per nascere..

eccoci qua,
a guardare le nuvole
su un tappeto di fragole..
come si fa,
a spiegarti se mi agito
e mi rendo ridicolo..

tu parlami e stringimi
oppure fingi di amarmi,

in una foto un po’ ingiallita
è tutto quello che ho,
e non capisco se ridevi o no..
qui trafitto sulla terra
steso me ne sto,
aspettando di volare un po’..

eccoci qua.
a guadare le nuvole
su un tappeto di fragole..
come si fa,
a spiegarti se mi agito
e mi rendo ridicolo,

tu parlami, stringimi
oppure fingi di amarmi
x2

And here is my terrible attempt to render them into English:
I remain still in the waves
While I think of you,
Firelight and swallows
Among the soft leaves
A gentle breeze
While a flower
is opening.

(Ooh boy, I could sense it was cheesy, but that is truly cheese-tastic. Even in bad English translation.)

And here we are
Watching the clouds
On a carpet on strawberries
How it is
I tell you how you make me feel.
And I make a fool of myself.

(? Hm. Dunno. Those reflexives and pronouns really mess me up. Sorry. Plus come si fa is an idiomatic expression so probably needs an English idiomatic expression, but I’m not sure which.)

You talk to me and hug me
Or you pretend to love me.

(I think. How sad. Boo hoo.)

In a yellowing photo
Is everything that I have
And I don’t understand why you were laughing o no
Who I pierce on the ground [??]
I lie down [???]
I am waiting to fly a bit.

(Sorry that lost me completely. With only basic Italian, it’s hard to a] understand the idiomatic usage and b] render that into viable, idiomatic English. Anyway, avanti!)

Oh, that’s it. Now it’s just the chorus again –

And here we are
Watching the clouds
On a carpet on strawberries
How it is
I tell you how you make me feel.
And I make a fool of myself.

- and the funny little extra chorus element, no idea what the technical term is –

You talk to me and hug me
Or you pretend to love me.
x2

Now I can sing along, in English! Maybe.

And apologies to anyone who’s offended by my jovial cynicism, good-humoured sarcasm, possible sexism, or general benign maligning of Modà.

This is Ram Power, whose tagline is “Un successo del momento, un successo del passato”. I believe that means “A hit of the moment, a hit of the past”, or words to that effect. Not sure. It’s one of those frequent incidences where I know the words, but I’m not sure about their usage in this context.

Anyway, not only has this station been playing loads of 1980s music, transporting me back to my adolescence, albeit with cheesy numbers like Wham’s ‘Club Tropicana’ (a song that always makes me think of Center Parcs), alongside the cooler stuff like Propaganda’s ‘Duel’ (what a quality video; I particulary enjoy the amateur fight coordination towards the end) or Tears for Fears’ ‘Change’, it’s also, strangely, been winning me over with some of the contemporary Italian hits. Or so I thought.

The tune I was enjoying the most involved an Italian female singer and a male rapping in English. Although he sounded somewhat Eminem, he also sounded decidedly south of England. Thing is, as Ram Power is also a station that’s “senza chicchiera” (“without chat”), they never tell you what any of the songs are.

When, after four long months of Italian telecoms shenanigans, we finally got the internet, I was able to scour Ram Power and YouTube to actually find out what some of these song were, notably the Italian songs. Well, turns out the one I was particularly enjoying was, er, the UK number one, but, confusingly, an Italian version thereof. I’m talking about Prof Green’s ‘Read All About It’, released in the UK at the end of October 2011. In the UK it featured a chorus song by Emeli Sandé. I’d neither heard of him or her, for my ignorant sins, but in my defence, I’m both a bit old for most of the UK top 40, and that lack of real internet kinda left me cut off, with no access to internet radio etc.

(The Italian version; you might not be able to play it in the UK. Who knows. If it doesn’t work, maybe try this one.)

Anyway, confusingly, the track released in Italy featured Italian singer Dolcenera instead of Sandé.

And where Sandé sang:
“I wanna sing, I wanna shout.
I wanna scream till the words dry out.
So put it in all of the papers, I’m not afraid.
They can read all about it, read all about it, oh.”

Dolcenera sang:
“Faccio così, grido di più
Voglio che tu da lassù mi ascolti
E chi se ne frega se gli altri
Gli altri lo sanno
Non mi fai più paura
Non ho paura, no.”

Which really doesn’t mean the same thing. There’s no allusion to newspapers at all. In Italian, the song is still called ‘Read All About It’, but it has the subtitle ‘Tutto Quello Che Devi Sapere’ (“Everything that you should know”).

Now, again, I’m struggling translating this with my crap Italian. For a long time when  heard the song on the radio I thought Dolcenera was singing “Basta così”, which means “Enough of that”, but I can’t get my head around “Faccio così”. Faccio is the first person singular of fare, to do or to make, so it’s something like:
“I’m do that, I shout louder
I want you to hear me up there.
And who cares if the others,
The others, know it.
No I’m not afraid any more
No I’m not afraid. ”
[with a little help from Fran; though she can't quite get it right either]

It’s an interesting situation – well, I’m interested me, at least in passing. I’m intrigued as to who decided an Italian version was necessary – it’s not like Italy is a big market, as it’s not like Italian is a significant language internationally like Spanish or Mandarin. A Spanish or Mandarin version would have made much more sense.

Does Professor Green have a big following in Italy? Dunno? Did Dolcenera like the tune? Dunno, but she certainly gives an emotive performance in the Italian video. Which is kinda odd given that the rap itself is comes across as very personal to Green – aka Stephen Paul Manderson – whose father committed suicide (something that seems to be reflected in the rap’s theme of paternal abandonment). Dunno though. So maybe it was just a decision by some suits at Virgin. Dunno.

There’s certainly something very corporate going on, as, in Italy, I cannot watch the original version’s official video, it has a region block or something (“The uploader has not made this video available in your country.”). I can only watch the official video for the Italian version. I’m guessing that, as with the song itself, the video has the alternate chorus spliced in.

Manderson’s rap is clearly very heartfelt, but once the song’s released, it, like everything in modern culture, becomes just a product, which can then be manipulated for deployment in a new market. As much as I like Dolcenera’s lyric, and her performance in the video is suitably agonised, it’s hard not to be cynical. Especially for a cynic like me. That said, I’m still enjoying the song. Both official versions; I reckon Dolcenera’s voice pips Sandé’s though, it’s slightly richer IMHO. Strangely, both singers sport a similar quiff.

My YouTube travels also threw up the earnest phenomenon of people covering ‘Read All About It’. Now, I really should be cynical about all this. I cannot abide the whole TV talent contest culture of needy wannabes being showered in glitter and pantomime abuse, but people just sticking low-fi recordings of themselves on YouTube is kinda sweet. Even if some of the amateur ones are awful.

This one, however, is sweet but also really proficient. It’s by a London pair with the uninspired name The Chain (Ben Parker and Kate Aumonier) showing off some lovely voices. They seem to be crowd-sourcing an album or something here too. They do another song that they refer to as “our version of their version of his version”, which kinda sums up this culture of covers, versions and t’interweb*. Though I’m still kinda confused by the region blocks; what tedious corporate control freakery that is.

* And is the sort of creativity that may be buggered if SOPA is passed in the US.

The sumptuously realised landscape of Skryim

Delving deep into the ruins of the Dwemer – The Elder Scrolls’ long-dead “dwarves” – reminds me of some of the time I spent exploring Moria in MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO, 2007; Moria pack 2008). I was inspired to play LOTRO by my love of the LOTR feature films, created by Peter Jackson and his innumerable talented collaborators. In those films, I always wanted to see more of the dead dwarf city of Moria, so I joined friends (from the heinously addictive MMORPG World of Warcraft) to explore it. It was interesting to see how a parallel creative team had visualised this iconic environment, and then some.

So Skyrim’s Dwemer were kind of brass-and-magic steampunk technologists, which is a nice twist on the basic Tolkienian interpretation of dwarves as miners and engineers. Plus, well, the Dwemer are actually “Deep Elves” and not dwarves at all – just short-arses compared to giants.

In the era of Skyrim, the denizens of the deep, subterranean Dwemer ruins, are the Falmer, a kind of mutant strain of elf who are not unlike how the goblin inhabitants of Moria were envisaged in the films. Bethesda’s creatures are blind, and have a symbiotic relationship with giant insects, who serve as watchdogs and companions as well as stock, it seems, their shells providing the Falmer with materials for both armour and furniture. It’s a nifty, albeit basic, version of underground farming.

Fictional agriculture
Though I must say here, having recently done my annual Christmas LOTR movie marathon, the Skyrim world, despite how sumptuously detailed it may be, still annoys me in one of the ways that the world of the LOTR films annoys me. There’s simply not enough industry, and considering it’s a faux-early Medieval, agrarian culture, there’s specifically not enough agriculture and food production.

Calories are the building blocks of any civilisation. (Check out Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel for more on this theory.) But think of Middle-earth, as envisaged by Jackson and co. Beyond the cute idyll of the Shire, there’s no evidence of food production, no arable fields, no crops, and virtually no cattle.

Whiterun in Skyrim. Or is it Edoras in Rohan?

The Rohan capital of Edoras (a clear influence on the design of Skyrim’s Whiterun) would be surrounded by productive fields, much like a medieval town. Likewise Minas Tirith: it’s the biggest population centre seen in the films, but it’s surrounded by what? Barren planes. I know there’s a war on, but there would be evidence of the infrastructure of agriculture at least. Field boundaries, farms, grain storage etc. There’s simply nothing. It’s a massive oversight for the credibility of the films, if, like me, you enjoy the world-building that goes into fantasy fiction.

The world of Skyrim is better than that of the LOTRO films, as there are dozen or so farms, watermills and windmills scattered about the region. But it’s all pretty small-scale. Sure, smallholder farming does – still – produce much of the food in the real world, so it’s not that the farms are smallholdings that’s the problem, it’s that they’re microholdings. Their “fields” are little larger than urban back gardens. In total, the whole region of Skyrim appears to have around two acres of land producing grain. What do all these people eat? I know they’re manly northern types but they can’t just live on game, it’s just not viable for feeding fixed populations. And everywhere you go, there’s cheese.

Mmm, cheese

More cheese...

So where are the large herds of cattle?

Skyrim smallholding, outside Whiterun

About enough to feed a family. But nothing to take to market.

Jeez. I know. I’m a bit obsessive. Sorry, but this is something that’s been nagging me for years about the LOTR films, LOTRO and now Skyrim. When so much creative thought and energy goes into producing these elaborate fictional worlds, with so much eye for detail when it comes to the design of the wood carvings in a longhouse, or the contents of some shelves, or the armour worn by random characters, or the autumnal colour of the birch leaves, or the dash of a fox, it’s a shame the same attention to detail isn’t applied to life’s more basic practicalities.

Daniel Etherington

Thoughts on Skyrim part 1, Running with Mr Foxy, can be found here.
Thoughts on Skyrim part 2, Twitchy gaming, can be found here.
Thoughts on Skyrim part 3, Plan it, or organic?, can be found here.
Thoughts on Skyrim part 4, Giving voice, can be found here.

You told me that two months ago! Change the record already!

Skyrim is at the forefront of the evolution of the (single player) role-playing game (RPG), that much is evident. Though in many ways it’s both stifled by its adherence to RPG conventions and by its own ambition. Arguably, today’s technology cannot cope with the demands of a game this complex, notably in “temporal” terms, with the progression of time, via the narrative threads, not being entirely smooth, while many non-playable characters (NPCs) keep on offering you the same lines of dialogue, despite your progress. But then such basic practicalities presumably have tight budgets: there are, after all, hundreds, even thousands of NPCs in the game.

The game’s voice acting is something that’s been criticised. We’re at a point in the development of the videogame where, finally, voice acting is improving, after years of cringe-worthy border-line incompetence. Games like Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (2010) or the Uncharted games are benchmarks for better voice-acting in games, but they are also titles that are much overtly filmic, hewing closer to film narrative structure, and focussing on just a few main characters, where any weakness in dialogue and voice acting would be really in-your-face. Skyrim, on the other hand, features a mute hero (you), then the abovementioned slew of NPCs. So it’s perhaps unfair to malign the voice-acting of Skyrim in comparison to that of Uncharted etc. There are a few NPCs who play bigger roles, and these are voiced by big name actors.

It’s funny the first time you hear Max Von Sydow’s distinctive tones, and he does a reasonably job given some of the hokey stuff he has to say. Indeed, some of it almost sounds poetic.

You may wonder why an actor of such distinction would appear in a game. Well, he may not be aware of how culturally important such products are these days, or even their commercial significance, but if you’re 90-plus, still keen to earn, a few days in a recording studio can’t be a bad option. Ditto for Christopher Plummer, who, like Von Sydow, was born in 1929. More and more big name actors are doing game voice work these days anyway; just look at the Grand Theft Auto series, which has a roll-call that includes Samuel L Jackson, Dennis Hopper, Ray Liotta, Kyle Maclachan, Iggy Pop, Ricky Gervais and, er, Phil Collins among many others.

Repetitive brain injury

The voice work of the lesser-known or unknown actors who are called on to voice multiple characters isn’t that bad, either. Indeed, a lot of the voice acting is adequate, given the context. It just suffers increasingly as your in-game hours mount up, and certain elements remain static.

The game has something called “Radiant questing”, which means it takes on board your choices, decisions, movements, etc to alter NPC interactions and create semi-randomised quests. However, even with the Radiant innovations, the game still can’t accommodate your development as a character, and your sense of progress is frequently quashed. So for example, every time I visit the Riverwood trader (who I’ve invested with, so I can sell him all my junk), he and his sister thank me for something I did for them several game weeks, or months, earlier. That’s fine, I’m warmed you’re grateful, but maybe you could just say “Hi” now rather than going on and on about that “claw”!

It’s these nuggets of dialogue you get from NPCs you have frequent contact with that become excruciating. Given the amount of dialogue a game like this has, it’s understandable that Bethesda have to draw the line somewhere. However, when the dialogue itself is grammatically clunky to start with, it particularly grates, eg when every bloody vendor has this same line (though spoken by difference voice actors) of rum English: “Some may call this junk, me I call them treasures.” Plus, well, why are some of the Nord adults voiced by Scandinavian actors, when all the Nord kids have broad American accents? It’s adequate, but there is still room for improvement, so the game’s voice-work matches the sophistication of, say, its environments.

Thoughts on Skyrim part 1, Running with Mr Foxy, can be found here.
Thoughts on Skyrim part 2, Twitchy gaming, can be found here.
Thoughts on Skyrim part 3, Plan it, or organic?, can be found here.
Thoughts on Skyrim part 5, Falmer and farmers, can be found here.

Did this person deserve to die? Dunno, looks cool though

Here be spoilers. And dragons.

Deciding who to side with in the Skyrim civil war isn’t the only difficult decision you have to make in the game. At one point, you’re also put in a position where you have to choose whether to kill a major character. It’s a character who has helped you, but has a dreadful history. It’s also a character who’s voiced by the same actor who gives voice to Mario, Luigi and co.

It’s a fascinating situation, as it touches on fundamental ethics, and the differing approaches we have to notions of justice. Should justice take the form of punishment? Or is rehabilitation possible? Or, to look at it another, arguably more religious way, should the response to violent crime be vengeful or is there the possibility of forgiveness and trust? It comes down to the question of whether you think someone can change, or whether personality is innate and fixed.

Getting in character

Such decisions put me in a position I find very interesting, as playing a complex game like this works on different, distinct levels. Do you try to act “in character”, or “out of character”? In character, do you want to be an adventurous sort, but also someone who does the right thing? Or, out of character, do you want to explore every inch of the map, obsessively, and get your money’s worth (and then some) from doing every quest.

The whole matter of whether or not you kill the “Mario” character … look, trying not to be spoilery here is silly. I’m talking about the dragon Paarthurnax ok … He was once very evil but isn’t now. So in game, and in character, I’m prepared to trust him. But out of character, the whole matter has annoyed me, and made me question my whole approach to the game.

Although Skyrim is nominally an open world game in which you’re free to explore and play in the “sandbox”, this can not only result in narratives tangles (like I discussed in part 2), it can also chivvy you in the direction of the excellent Elder Scrolls wikis (here and here). Which in turn can result in you having access to an endless array of pieces of information: which can help you plan ahead, if you’re prepared to think out of character, or they can be total spoilers, if you’re trying to play in character.

The game is awesome if you let your personal story – your personal engagement with the world of Skyrim and with the game’s main narrative – develop organically, but conversely you may wish you’d planned ahead, if, as in this Paarthurnax situation, you’d know that your earlier decisions would culminate in this troubling choice: to go old school, Old Testament, fundamentalist on his ass, or be liberal, New Testament, forgiving.

Philosophisiing with Paarthunax

Moral maze. Or mess

Although the game features major moral choices like this execution scenario, it doesn’t have a broad moral mechanic built into the gameplay, unlike, say, the Fable games, which are loosely comparable in their RPG elements and fantasy settings. In the Fable games, your very persona evolves or mutates depending on your actions, and in Fable III (2010), your decisions as ruler have a tangible effect on the very environment, with neighbourhoods either prospering or becoming slums, for example.

In Skyrim, however, you can get away with being both the hero, saving the world from an apocalyptic demise, and doing some pretty heinous things, being a vampire, a rampaging werewolf, a cannibal who takes health from the bodies of the fallen, or embarking on crime sprees for the Thieves Guild or the Dark Brotherhood, a grim bunch of death-worshipping assassins.

I tend to approach these games with the notion that the hero should be broadly virtuous, and because I find stealth-type gameplay dull, I tend to either ignore or kill the thieves and assassins. But that hasn’t stopped me accidentally doing some pretty morally dubious stuff, like cannibalism, or murdering people at the behest of the Daedra, the series’ perverse demigods who visit Tamriel (the continental setting of the Elder Scrolls) to toy with humanity.

The only system the game has to manage criminality involves fines or bounties on your heads, and that’s only if you’re caught with stolen goods, or caught in the act of killing a citizen, or a little bit unruly with your use of dangerous magic in a built-up area. It’s a morally interesting, though also somewhat bewildering, as there are grey areas. Indeed, the whole civil war context is arguably one massive grey.

The point is, considering how maligned games still are as medium, Skyrim is remarkable for featuring such thought-provoking moral and ethical elements. How often to you think or feel anything like this coming out of a comparably mainstream feature film? This alone highlights how mature, and even superior, mainsteam gaming can be compared to mainstream cinema these days.

Daniel Etherington

Thoughts on Skyrim part 1, Running with Mr Foxy, can be found here.
Thoughts on Skyrim part 2, Twitchy gaming, can be found here.
Thoughts on Skyrim part 4, Giving voice, can be found here.
Thoughts on Skyrim part 5, Falmer and farmers, can be found here.