Gaming inventories are both a blessing and a hideous curse.
Let's dispense with the 'blessing' part of this quickly. Inventories exist to allow the player freedom to collect all manner of gubbins to aid them in their quests. Developers usually put a limit on said inventory (be it weight, quantity or some other measure) to force the player to specialise in a skill or to play strategically instead of becoming monstrously overpowered. All very useful stuff.
Having read that description, you might now be wondering where the curse could possibly lie. The curse comes when weight-based inventory meets imagination.
The developers of Skyrim, Fallout 3 et al probably forgot to include people like me in the beta testing stage. People who decide that their character is just the sort of jerk who would take a coffee cup (or related trophy) from each of her kills. People who think that if a skeleton went to the trouble of keeping some loose change and a teddy bear about his person, then perhaps he knew something we didn't. People who would rather get rid of weapons than their painstakingly gathered collection of hats or mobile library of scorched books.
Eventually - or rather, immediately - you become overburdened. From this point onward you have to implement a strict one-in, one-out policy and every new item must be subjected to intense scrutiny before it can be shoved into the magical backpack or whatever receptacle you have been given.
Occasionally someone sitting next to you on the sofa may mistakenly think they can be of some assistance.
During the third such trawl through my Skyrim inventory for things I could get rid of a friend decided to help.
"Do you actually need that bear pelt?"
What a stupid question - of course I did.
"Well, you have two of them. Just get rid of one."
Were they mad? What if I needed a spare?
"How about all those bizarre home-concocted potions that drain something vital while restoring your magic?"
I didn't even bother to dignify that with a response.
So what's the answer? I'm not entirely sure how viable it is but I suggest a two tier system with a 'things that are useful' limited inventory for your plasma rifles and your quest items and an entirely separate Mary Poppins-esque sack for everything else.
This way you'll never have to choose between your armour and your spoon collection again.
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This blog originally appeared on GMA-nominated gaming site Ready Up.
Follow Philippa Warr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/philippawarr
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In the olden days of computer and paper / pen / dice RPG, each piece, each scrap was worth something or was needed for a vital quest. And the RPGer's motto became "if it ain't nailed down, take it with you." But as I noticed in Morrowind, a spoon was even steal-able and quickly one's inventory became overloaded with junk.
One could sell it to a merchant along with tonnes of swords, armor and other asortments and get filthy rich, thus revealing a weakness in the game economic system, lots of currency but no place to spend it. Unless an economic mod was added, Morrowind, Fallout 3 and now Skyrim are games that after a bit, one's characther never has to worry about cash.
Moreover, collecting and selling all that junk meant making a choice between the more fun aspect of exploring the game world or the less interesting frequent trips / and or inventory adjustment because of the limitations in how much loot at a time your character could carry.
If one takes a look at real life for a moment and has the opportunity to liberate cups, spoons, and trophy buck antlers from an abandoned house, I imagine, there would be some inventory choices there as well.