You see, I am a hoarder. An item hoarder.
For anyone who has played Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, or The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, you are well aware of Bethesda's usual gig: TONS of in game items strewn about the environments, and the ability to have a house of your own.
When I was introduced to my first Bethesda game by Jon (which just happened to be Oblivion), I immediately was amazed by the sheer number of items laying about. Much to his entertainment, I began picking up items I thought were interesting and cluttering up my inventory. He had played the game for hundreds of hours so he knew which items were common and which were harder to come by, but everything was new to me. I WANTED IT ALL.
I kept nearly EVERYTHING. My house in Bruma was small, but after painstaking hours of item placement, I had a dreamhouse. As a member of the Dark Brotherhood, I had lots of questionable items. Jon was slightly horrified when I picked up a rotten, severed head of a woman, and placed it on a shelf facing my bed. (It was a unique item, why wouldn't I keep it?!) I also stacked books I had gathered in my bookshelves, collected one of every gemstone and displayed them on a shelf, and placed various weapons all over my house.
In Fallout 3, my addiction to collecting and decorating only got worse.
When first I got my house in Megaton, I spent nearly 20 minutes rearranging my items. Just plain entertainment, or a bit of womanly instinct? Who knows. Either way, I decorated my room with items remniscent of old Americana. A baseball, baseball bat, baseball mitt, Nuka-Cola truck, Nuka-Cola, and toy car are just a few of the items I had placed around.
The need to decorate my house with things I found throughout my adventures only grew when I went through my second playthrough as an evil, mohawked Raider-wannabe named Rodd. I brought mutilated body parts, teddy bears, and lots and lots of knives back to my suite in Tenpenny Towers, which made Jon question my sanity a bit. (I swear, it was all in good fun! I'm not crazy!)
For Fallout: New Vegas, I actually have SCREENSHOTS.
I decorated my Old World Blues base with all of my favorite items, which wasn't easy at all.
Some collectables, plasma axes, a Tesla Cannon, animal skins, and my favorite headgear.
Every animal egg, items from different DLC, all of the different scientist gloves, and those awesome blue headpieces.
Animal parts and other collectables.
My dinosaur collection (the ones that make noise, not Dinky the Dinosaur), my teddybears, and other items.
So yes, you can see I had a lot of fun with New Vegas. You wouldn't exactly call it hoarding, more like... "collecting."
(...Okay, so those boxes were filled with tons of useless stuff, but nobody would know that unless they checked, right?)
Skyrim, however, is where the true hoarding began.
On my main character, Rakta the Khajiit, I got to the point where I simply had so much money that I didn't NEED to sell ANYTHING. I could afford anything I wanted, had everything I needed, and generally was at a loss of what to do with all my items.
So I began to hoard.
I guess you can't call me a true hoarder. I don't keep just anything... just gems, soulstones, and jewelry. It's started to become somewhat of an obsession though. I can't leave behind any gems or stones without thinking "That could go into my house! YEAH!"
The result? This.
So thanks, Bethesda.
YOU MADE ME A HOARDER.
And I'm only going to find MORE gems...
