Skyrim - Released, Review Roundup #1

I was stacking books on a shelf in my house in Whiterun, one of Skyrim's major cities, when I noticed a weapon rack right beside it. I set a sacrificial dagger in one slot, an Orcish mace in the other. They were on display for nobody but me and my computer-controlled housecarl, Lydia, who sat at a table patiently waiting for me to ask her to go questing. The chest upstairs was reserved for excess weapons and armor, the bedside table for smithing ingots and ores, the one next to the Alchemy table for ingredients. I'd meticulously organized my owned virtual property not because I had to, but because tending to the minutia of domestic life is a comforting break from dealing with screaming frost trolls, dragons, a civil war, and job assignments that never seem to go as planned. It's even a sensible thing to do; a seemingly natural component of every day existence in Skyrim, one of the most fully-realized, easily enjoyable, and utterly engrossing role-playing games ever made.

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It’s hard to walk for a minute in any direction without encountering an intriguing cave, a lonely shack, some strange stones, a wandering traveller, a haunted fort. These were sparse and quickly repetitive in Oblivion, but they’re neither in Skyrim: it’s teeming with fascinating places, all distinct. It was 40 hours before I blundered into a dungeon that looked like one I’d seen before, and even then what I was doing there was drastically different.
These places are the meat of Skyrim, and they’re what makes it feel exciting to explore. You creep through them with your heart in your mouth, your only soundtrack the dull groan of the wind outside, to discover old legends, dead heroes, weird artefacts, dark gods, forgotten depths, underground waterfalls, lost ships, hideous insects and vicious traps. It’s the best Indiana Jones game ever made.

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So, you have the world, but what about the quests? As expected, there are hundreds, all offering something different. Some are brief, some span hours. You might join the Thieves Guild and make a name for yourself as a notorious criminal. You might swear an oath to the returning Dark Brotherhood and become a ruthless assassin, killing in cold blood for gold. Or perhaps you want to get involved in the civil war that's tearing Skyrim apart, siding with the invading Imperials, or the rebel Stormcloaks.
There's so many more - like forming an uneasy alliance with a Daedric Prince and leading an army in the invasion of a city - but one of our favourites saw us leading the hunt for a serial killer. This is a game full of stories, of ways in which you can directly affect the lives of its citizens, and even the politics of its world, and the variety is astonishing and, at times, overwhelming.

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In arcane combat, there's a tangible, almost physical sense of feedback from the hiss of a furnace just before those jets of flames engulf your enemies. Thunder echoes quietly in the aftermath of the electrical storm that flows from your fingertips. There's a tremendous sense of connection between caster and cadaver, and the effects themselves are breathtaking. Throughout one evening in the game I stood in the mountains beside a peaceful village, gleefully working through my repertoire of magic tricks while the locals slept below (uneasily, no doubt).
The melee combat is less perfected, but has nevertheless been evolved. Those who specialise in it may not be left feeling quite as satisfied as those who prefer to dabble in the darker arts, but it's still a sweeter deal than the rote, block-and-retaliate combat of Oblivion. Enemies will circle and prod at your defences more effectively, displaying a little more intelligence when exploiting your weaknesses. A similar degree of refinement has been made to Bethesda's famously floaty third-person animations.

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I’ll admit, I’m in the camp that believes Bethesda’s games have been on a downward slide since the hallowed Morrowind. I got plenty out of Oblivion (especially the thieves’ and assassins’ guilds arcs) but it did feel hollow, bland and awkward compared to its predecessor. Fallout 3 I found boring, contrived and clumsy, though I deeply wanted to like it. I seriously worried Skyrim would, for all its talk of lavishness, depth and dragons, continue the transformation into a trudging, consolified action game filled with clunky acting. It does not. It slams on the brakes then reverses at dangerous speed back into Morrowind territory.

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I may be some time. I may be the rest of the year, and beyond. Not only is Skyrim, for my money, the game of the year, but… oh this is hard. Very hard. I’m sorry Morrowind – I love you, but I don’t need you anymore. I think, at last, there is a new Best Elder Scrolls Ever.

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Remus said:

Overall very positive reviews. Now i need to wait the game to arrives

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rune_74 said:

I would say every one was very positive.

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Honestly, there just aren’t any games in the videogame landscape that even come close to this, save for the games the team have made prior. And scope aside, even they’re at a stretch to keep up

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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is, in my humble opinion, a perfect game. It’s the first game in nearly 14 years as a videogame journalist I’ve ever given a perfect score to, and despite its flaws (of which there are a few), it delivers on so many varying and engaging levels, it really is unparallelled.

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The best way to express any of this though, is to simply relay the event. One of the best non-spoiler examples I could muster came in the way of talking to a priest in the town of Falkreath who was conducting a burial in the town’s graveyard -- the biggest graveyard Skyrim has to offer, apparently.

Talking to him lead to me asking the others at the service what they were there for, and it turns out a little girl who’d not yet “seen her 11th winter” had been ferociously attacked and mutilated by a man who was now being held in the town’s jail, located in the barracks. That’s it. There was no quest-line given, no on-screen prompt to do anything save for a tantalising piece of information: said murderer was locked up. I decided to investigate further. Upon doing this, I learnt that the man suffered an infliction many of you know as werewolvism, and that there was a chance I could help cure him of his burden and maybe, just maybe, bring some relative justice to the young girl’s death. The rest of the tale, I actually cannot tell you for pure spoiler reasons. But I can tell you it’s not even remotely clear cut and dry; you’re forced to think for yourself and the characters around you and make decisions that will impact you. And this is was just one other, small example.

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I tried shooting an ice bolt at it (a dragon corpse), just to demonstrate it was dead, and the force unexpectedly catapulted the whole thing violently into the distance. A beggar looked at me and said, “Oh sure, just throw your trash around.”

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We got a review copy of Skyrim the day the game was officially finished, but it’s curiously buggy. Among a lot of minor problems such as issues reassigning controls, there’s glitchy character behaviour that can break quests, and AI flipouts that can turn a whole town against you. And the interface isn’t well adapted to PC: it sometimes ignores the position of your cursor in menus. There’s an update due as soon as the game’s out, but there’s a hell of a lot to patch here. Next time, maybe don’t commit to a specific release day just because it has a lot of elevens in it?

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None of the people (followers) we brought on board had any unique dialogue or associated quests, and there's zero emotional connection with them: they just silently follow you around, attack enemies and eventually die. And once they do, the only thing you can do is strip them of their armour and leave them there to rot.

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we have our horse to thank for most of our dragon kills - he actually attacks the dragon, and never seems to die, no matter how many times he's set on fire.

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More than once, characters we were supposed to meet somewhere wouldn't turn up at the agreed location. We'd go back to where we initially met them, and they'd be stuck behind scenery.

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