Vyrukas wrote:...
So "CHIM" is an excuse to metagame and cheat?
Taking CHIM to mean "my character knows they're in a game so I can do whatever I want and it fits perfectly in the setting" seriously cheapens the religious and philosophical nature of the concept. The terrifying reality that you are a figment of someone else's imagination, but refuse to go away (like an idea you have that you can't stop thinking about no matter what you do), while also recognizing the precarious nature of your reality, that you can blink out of existence the moment you faulter, or you and your entire world can unceremoniously disappear when the entity dreaming you wakes up. There's actually quite a bit of "cosmic horror" to the concept, the fear of an entity so much bigger than you that you have absolutely no way to influence, let alone defeat, should it come to do anything, or the constant dread that everything you've done or would want to do is completely insignificant and can be wiped out if the entity so desires it.
But sure, CHIM means you can metagame and exploit bugs to move really fast and still be "lore friendly".
Okulo wrote:Lessee... what else. Making your own spells allowed you to combine some effects for some very interesting combinations.
I'd say it was more convenience than anything. When you combined two spell effects, you just created a spell with those two spell effects. Combining a Damage Health on Touch and a Restore Health on Self in a spell was simply a damage target and heal self in one. It wouldn't be much different than casting a damage spell followed by a heal spell, just a bit more convenient.
What would've been interesting is if combining different effects actually created whole new effects, or had extra side effects automatically added in. Like combining fire, ice/water, and shock damage effects to create a new explosive effect. They toyed around with ideas like that in Skyrim (as shown in their Game Jam video; equip one spell in one hand and another spell in another hand, then casting both spells together causes a new spell effect to be produced) but never got it into the main game... presumably because it would take a lot of effort to create new interesting and unique effects from the large number of possible combinations. Magicka is the only game I've really seen attempt this, and that game completely revolved around the idea (unlike TES where magic is just a small part of the game).