As anyone who's played Skyrim will tell you, it can be pretty intense when you're so emotionally invested in the game.
That's one of the things that's always bugged us about the late Roger Ebert's claim that games can't be an art-form. Art gives you an emotional response and games ABSOLUTELY give you an emotional response and here's a perfect example. Patrick Lenton is a writer who's on a playthrough Skyrim when he decides to adopt a dog.
The feature came with the Hearthfire update and allowed you to adopt NPCs - that's non-playable characters - to your house. You could also build a house, find a wife, adopt children and pets to go along with it. Savvy so far?
Right, let's get into Patrick's tale of cat-woman wizards, real estate, dragons and trying to get a computer-generated child to like a dog. Be warned, of course, that some of the language is NSFW.
Let's begin...
Did you make it through all that? Skyrim, man. Sometimes, it gets just too real and we can't handle.
Really though, that entire story played out like a Mexican soap drama or, at the very least, a half-decent story arc from EastEnders. Either way, we're genuinely shook by the entire thing.
See, this is why we never bother with interpersonal relationships in games. The power-ups might be good, but there's too much hassle involved.
Via Twitter