Skyrim 1.2: Breton's Got Talent

Fig. 2 Preview of Character Perspectives

The first time my brother and I started Skyrim, we didn't know what we were getting ourselves into or anything about the previous Elder Scrolls games from Bethesda.  It was just a recommendation.  My brother played as a Nord.  Neither of us really questioned that choice, but it was the one he just "liked" the best.  Being a pathos-based decision, I might wonder now if he wasn't influenced by the fact that some of our ancestors came from Scandinavia.  Whatever the case, he liked the look of Nords, and that was his choice.  The first character I played myself was a Khajit.  I mean, night vision and claws - who wouldn't want that?  The most powerful character I ever played was a Dunmer, or Dark Elf.  Both of these characters were good for the stealthy style of play I was most comfortable with, and the Dunmer was better at magic than the Khajit.  I approached these choices in a more logos-centric fashion using evidence-based character traits.

This time around, I wanted to be very intentional about my decision.  As a course instructor, my decisions needed to rely primarily on ethos, and I decided that I need to be less stealthy and more transparent in my playing style as it's supposed to represent my teaching.  Also as an instructor, I thought that maybe an Altmer, or High Elf, would be an appropriate choice for their high level of symbolic power, but I didn't like the idea of relying mostly on magic, and I also didn't want to just replicate the power structure in the Empire, but negotiate it. 

I then came across another dilemma.  I'm not entirely satisfied that races are so essentialized in Skyrim.  That is, depending on their race, characters have certain starting advantages and disadvantages.  This may be representative of trends in the social world outside of the game, but some of those advantages and disadvantages are not just social, but genetically determined, and there seem to be no bi-racial characters.  Anyway, some of this can be attributed to the game itself not being able to keep track of infinite possibilities of combinations, but I thought that choosing to play as a Breton would be important this time around as the only race that has the possibility of hybridizing and negotiating between social groups since the The Elder Scrolls Wiki records that "Bretons are a race of both human and elven ancestry" (Breton). It remains a compromise because they don’t ultimately escape the structure of racial characterization.  They still have certain character traits automatically as Bretons, but it's a symbolic choice at least (for the final outcome of the initial character building decisions for Heskah Frey, see Figure 3).

Fig. 3 Heskah Frey as a Breton. The war paint highlighting the eye represents action based on observations.

As for the character traits themselves, Bretons are known for their "abstract thinking," and the option is open to develop skills for both combat and magic, which fits well with the course objectives for the class I'm teaching in using different composition skills strategically depending on the situation.  The speech skill is also high, and language is important for me both personally and professionally.  I also like that Bretons have the "conjure familiar" spell unlocked at the beginning of the game, which is the ability to summon a spirit wolf companion (Breton).  I actually have two dogs at home with basic search and rescue training, so the starting skills also represent me in another way as well.  Relying mostly on ethos for my decision-making, Breton is the choice that probably best represents me at this time in my particular role as a composition instructor.

Works Cited.

"Breton (Skyrim)." The Elder Scrolls Wiki. Wikia. n.d. Web. 14 Mar 2015.