Living in Oblivion

The great thing about playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is that the cursor helpfully changes color to let you know if the item you're trying to pick up is owned by someone, or if accessing a container or area is otherwise verboten. Of course the color selection is red (bad) and green (good). If you're running through the game at breakneck speed to finish it at some point before, oh, the heat death of the universe, you need to be able to tell at a glance. You can't sit down and stare at the cursor for a few minutes and figure out if it's a few degrees darker than the cursor usually is. You need that instantaneous recognition and ability to distinguish.

And the hysterical bit is that if you do screw up and go rummaging through someone's private sack of rice or accidentally pick up a carrot that doesn't belong to you, this doesn't necessarily trip any switches instantly, at least, none discernible to you, the mere player. No, you get a bounty applied to your name, telepathically applied to the guards in the city, and they come to take your sorry ass away. No habeas corpus here; they don't tell you what was the offending produce or merchandise you're alleged to have stolen (or, in my case, did out of sheer obliviousness). You get carted away sans appeal. And I spend five virtual days in jail, my skills atrophying away as I serve my penance. At this point I've spent more time in jail than I have playing the actual game, and I'm trying to be nice. This says something about the game mechanics, my eyes, or perhaps just my character in general.

And even if I saved the game religiously and at regular intervals in separate slots, how do I know which one to go back to? Unless I check in with the city guard between every encounter, I'm not sure if I'm on the side of the angels until I get someone ten levels higher than mine asking "What's all this, then?"

Other than that, it's just like Grand Theft Auto 400 A.D., with fewer hookers.

Edit: I'm in ur game, bluin your crosshairz.

Obligatory televisual aside couched in non-spoilery generalizations

I want to give the writers of House credit for planning this season's arc out from the very beginning, because if so, it's a fantastic piece of misdirection. But I can't. I'm willing to believe they stumbled into the shape the season took (influenced, I'm sure, by the writers' strike), sort of how Lost only acquired a sense of direction when its end-date became firm, or Preacher's final issues, for that matter. I can't believe Ennis intended the Alamo showdown to be between...the characters it featured, though there's a poetry in God being conspicuous by His absence yet again. And I found Cassidy's final letter to Jesse too metatextual to be taken otherwise: "Isn't it funny when you think your story's going one way, and it turns out it was going another way all along?"

That's how I felt after watching the House finalé tonight. Because if they drew this arc out from the very beginning, with this ending in mind -- that's bloody brilliant, that is. Even if it's unintentional, in the right light, it still looks good.

(Warning: spoilers in comments, some protected, some not.)