I've been getting the urge to make a new character and try a different playstyle (Argonian assassin/thief), so a few days ago I decided to make a push to finish the main quest and leave my first character in a more or less "finished" state. There's still so, so much more I could do with him, but I've got to scratch the new character itch.
So I took up the reins of the Dragonborn, met Wonder Woman, and fulfilled my destiny, which I'm quite pleased with overall. Now that that's done, I can look back on the experience and consider the game I played.
I finished at somewhere around level 37, didn't max a single skill, and only finished one faction questline (Mages College). I bought two houses, became the thane of three cities, and found most of the daedric quests, even if I didn't do the more evil ones. I played naturally, with no grinding or skill/levelling management, no game-breaking custom gear, and still felt pretty powerful by the end.
The game world feels so much more real than Oblivion's did, if slightly less interesting than Morrowind overall (come on, giant mushroom castles!). NPCs generally reacted to me and each other with a good illusion of depth. The level scaling seemed to work just fine, with weaker enemies staying around to make me feel like I was getting stronger, while tough things were always lurking around dark corners of the world to make me run away screaming like a little girl. I never did find any full glass armor.
Now I figure I've got at least two full game's worth left to explore, and like previous TES games, I imagine I'll get a lot more than that over the next few years. Except for a few cosmetic UI changes, I could probably enjoy a lot of that without any mods, which is simply amazing for a Bethesda game.
If you'll excuse me, my Argonian's going to try slipping across the border into Skyrim to escape those pesky charges of theft that have finally caught up to him.
So I took up the reins of the Dragonborn, met Wonder Woman, and fulfilled my destiny, which I'm quite pleased with overall. Now that that's done, I can look back on the experience and consider the game I played.
I finished at somewhere around level 37, didn't max a single skill, and only finished one faction questline (Mages College). I bought two houses, became the thane of three cities, and found most of the daedric quests, even if I didn't do the more evil ones. I played naturally, with no grinding or skill/levelling management, no game-breaking custom gear, and still felt pretty powerful by the end.
The game world feels so much more real than Oblivion's did, if slightly less interesting than Morrowind overall (come on, giant mushroom castles!). NPCs generally reacted to me and each other with a good illusion of depth. The level scaling seemed to work just fine, with weaker enemies staying around to make me feel like I was getting stronger, while tough things were always lurking around dark corners of the world to make me run away screaming like a little girl. I never did find any full glass armor.
Now I figure I've got at least two full game's worth left to explore, and like previous TES games, I imagine I'll get a lot more than that over the next few years. Except for a few cosmetic UI changes, I could probably enjoy a lot of that without any mods, which is simply amazing for a Bethesda game.
If you'll excuse me, my Argonian's going to try slipping across the border into Skyrim to escape those pesky charges of theft that have finally caught up to him.