Skyrim review

The fifth installment of the Elder Scroll games is finally here, 5 years since Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (which itself was 4 years after Morrowind, hmmm...coincidence?).

So, without further ado, let's jump into the shoes of the Dragonborn in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Just imagine there's a Latin chorus whenever you read this title.

So the story kicks off as you you are captured and shackled for an unknown crime (Hey, that sounds familiar.), then the town you were in gets attacked by a DRAGON, which were nothing more than myths at this point in the province of Skyrim (those people aren't too genre savvy are they?). At which point, you need to escape from prison (Hey, wait), with either the Stormcloaks, who were responsible for the death of the High King (the royalty is dead, waitadangminute...) or with the Imperials, whose High King is murdered (Dejavu much?), escape via the sewage system (AGAIN?), then get out into the open world where the first thing you see after the obligatory sun glare/pure white screen is a picturesque view of the continent you're in lovingly rendered by the Creation Engine (*facepalm*).

Yea...It's not too different from Oblivion ain't it? That last part is kinda similar to Fallout 3 as well.

And later it turns out, if you ever get around to actually doing the storyline quests, you are the DRAGONBORN!!!

Cue epic music.

The Dragonborn is apparently a mortal with the blood and soul of a dragon, able to speak the Dragon tongue, can use and learn Dragon Shouts more effectively like a boss, and most importantly can absorb the souls of Dragons. According to the lore of the Elder Scrolls, Dragons never truly die, their shells may wither away, but they can always return to life given time.

For some reason, the Dragons have returned, and not being the kind, fuzzy, loving creatures that we're all used to, they want to annihilate all mortal lifeforms and it is up to you, THE DRAGONBORN, to save the world!! Or all of Skyrim, nay, Tamriel, WILL BE DOOMED!!

No pressure.

The storyline is nothing to shout about (hehe), it's certainly not Bioware level, but I guess that's being a bit harsh. I do find it a much better attempt than Oblivion's storyline, and the general setting is much more well developed as well. And I personally like the Norse/Viking themes.

The civil war background between the those that support the Empire and the rebellious Stormcloaks has an admirably grey and grey morality to it, where I had trouble deciding who to join as both had their fair points.

The Stormcloaks argue that the Empire is now weak, and that Skyrim should return to the rule of the Nords. The leader of the Stormcloaks, Ulfric Stormcloak, comes across as a war veteran who is truly tired of the war but is willing to fight one last battle so that the dead from the previous battles died meaningfully and he does see himself as a liberator of Skyrim from the weak Empire, undeserving of their support. However, the Stormcloaks do come across as extremely zealous, racist (or xenophobic), who only care for the Nords, the major population of Skyrim.

On the other hand, the Jarls that continue to support the Emperor, and backed by the Imperial Army wish to keep the peace, even if it means sacrificing some aspects of their culture, such as the worshipping of Talos. They understand that to stand up to the Empire or worst, face the fury of the Aldmeri Dominion, the dominant force on Tamriel, could mean the undoing of the Empire. Keeping the peace was far more important than simple blinded pride. At the same time, its visible that a number of the higher ups in the faction are just corrupted and lazy, using force to bully the citizens and generally don't really care about the fact that the Nords basically gave up a piece of their proud history and culture to appease the Empire's enemies.

However, generally most of the characters in Skyrim do come across as rather flat, and serve nothing more than quest and reward dispensers. Thankfully, dialogue wise, it HAS improved significantly since Oblivion: time no longer stands still during conversations and they've removed that annoying and pointless radial menu conversation thingy. People in the streets have conversations with each other, which may lead to quests, or just talk about certain issues which YOU may have a hand in it, giving some life to the world of Skyrim. The annoying thing though, is that when you are having a very important conversation with another character, some passerbys would just start talking randomly, causing me to be unable to hear the actual important shit.

Bitch, I don't care about your Mammoth Tusks.
I'M TRYING TO PICKPOCKET THE GUARDS!!

Graphics wise, Skyrim is an improvement over Oblivion, the game is able to handle a much larger world with a much more varied environment. You will find forests, snowy mountains, and plains, with a weather system that implements snow and rain. The night sky deserves a special mention here, the starlit sky looks absolutely gorgeous especially during the full moon.

The graphics however, makes looting a problem sometimes as it's pixel perfect. Instead of grabbing a quest item from the table, I may accidently "steal" a cheap-ass goblet instead. In broad daylight. In front of everyone. And then they call for the guards. And you either go to jail, bribe them or kill them all.

Armors and weapons in-game look pretty normal, the exceptions are those super-special unique gear which have their own models, lovingly designed and rendered to make even the toughest of men weep with joy.

Check out my chest, dude. It looks good.
I SAY CHECK IT OUT!!

In terms of scale, holy crap.

Skyrim is HUGE. The map is huge. There are nine holds (term for major cities in this culture) throughout the province of Skyrim, and there are smaller villages scattered here and there. They all offer quests, ranging from the major storyline quests or faction quests, to the simple tasks of fetching a certain item or 10 herbs. Within an hour of playing Skyrim, I had more quests than I could mentally remember, thankfully, the Journal used to keep track of the quests has a location indicator for the tasks.

Exploring the world of Skyrim, whether on foot or horseback, is a simple joy in itself. It's very easy to get sidetracked while following the map indicator to your quest as you find new points of interest, just to see what it might have in store for you. It helps that that the game allows for dynamic events to happen, so a detour to a nearby circle of stones may see you getting involved in a fight between a furry Mammoth and a horse. No seriously, that happened to me.

Gameplay follows the same route as the previous games, the more you use a skill, it will get better and level up. With each level up of a skill, it contributes to your character leveling progress until you level up. With each character level up, you gain one perk which you can spend within any skill, which improves it in many different ways, such as doing more damage with fire spells or gain the ability to craft dragon armor. Its basically, you find your own playstyle, and you slowly improve it by using those styles more often, and the effectiveness can be FELT, not just dictated by some number crunching in the background.

Here's my tale. When I first got Skyrim, I had a dream. I wanted to make Captain America. In Skyrim.

He would've approved killing the oppressive Dragons.

So, when I started the game, I choose a male Nord as my race. If you check out the link, you will find that he is about as close as you can get to his fighting style and Nords fare well as honorable fighters, in the Norse/Viking sorta way. And thus, Steve Rogers the Nord warrior was born. I was going to make him fight with fists and shield! If I could dye his uniform in the Red, White and Blue, I would.

At least that was the plan.

As it turns out, there is no barehanded character skill in Skyrim, short of a single perk and some limited enchanting, and the Block skill itself does not really have much of an offensive skillset. I tried to play it that way anyway, but Steve Rogers couldn't cut it. I guess there are limits to this game afterall.

In any other game, I would've had to restart the whole game, and make a new character.

Not in Skyrim.

Thanks to the way the game works, I simply dropped the shield and started using spells to roast, freeze and shock my enemies to death. And eventually, became pretty damn good at it too.

If it were another game, I would've been locked in the fighter class, and I won't be able to cast magic for nuts (I have a strong penchant for playing spellcasters in fantasy games, I thought I would make an exception here). Think about the Dungeons and Dragons games, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, World of Warcraft, Diablo etc etc. Once you have chosen your class, you have limited your options to that class alone, sure you may multiclass D&D style (IF that option is even available), but you lose out on being a Ubermage or a Uberfighter by being a Jack-of-all-Trades, and even then, getting to that point where the multiclass is effective is a pain in the ass.

Hell, I actually restarted Mass Effect 1 to play the Soldier class because playing as the lower health, sniping-loving Infiltrator Commander Shepard in mostly close ranged combat proved to be too much even for the alien booty loving badass. Thankfully, by Mass Effect 2, the classes were rebalanced, and much larger combat areas were implemented for viable sniper rifle usage.

Well hello, Tali. Your suit looks so fiiinneeeee.
Snug in all the right places.

That is what I find to be the beauty of Skyrim.

There are NO mistakes, and there are NO limits. If you don't like using magic, use the bow and arrow; if you don't like the bow and arrow, then swing a big ass overcompensating great sword; if that doesn't fancy you, then pick up a mace and a shield; and if you still don't like that, then go get another game. The point is, there are no closed doors, no option is ever denied to you. The worst case scenario is that you won't do it as well or as easily as someone who has invested perks in it.

Take for example, the Lockpicking skill. In Fallout 3, if you have not raised it to a certain level, you can't even try to pick a Lock. Why is that? Why has the game locked you out before you can even began to try? What, your character looked at the lock, said "FUCK THAT SHIT." and just gave up? Skyrim does not have that kind of shit. Even if the Lock's difficulty was at Master level, you always have a chance of picking it, its just that you might lose a lot of lockpicks and it will take longer, as compared to someone who has invested skills in it.

I started off with 99 lockpicks...

One of the best things to enjoy about Bethesda's games are usually their love of placing random events in their open world games. And just like Oblivion and Fallout, they deliver, and this time on a grander scale. WITH DRAGONS.

After a certain amount of progress into the storyline, dragons will start appearing much more often in Skyrim, usually chasing after you. So, its entirely possible to fast travel to a town, and find a dragon appearing within 15 seconds, hungering for barbequed mortals. And its always a sight to see the townsfolk trying to take down a mighty dragon. It's a vital event for you as a player as well, as absorbing the souls of fallen dragons is the only way to unlock new dragon shouts. However, the dragon fights do tend to be a bit tedious after a while as they don't have much variety in their fights.

So enough of the mostly good points of Skyrim. Any bad points?

Well...there are the bugs. Loads and loads and loads of bugs. But given the sheer size of the game and the fact that we're used to Bethesda's games being buggy anyways, it's a given. Once in a while, the textures won't load properly until a few seconds later, and the quest indicators don't always appear on-screen. And one time, a horse fell out of the sky, landed right beside me, and died.

But so far I have not met any game breaking glitches, and there was one single quest that couldn't be completed, thankfully, that was just a minor quest. So I count myself lucky.

Can't say the same for this guy in the video though:

But still, bugs are a given in a game series that continues to push the boundaries of scale and size. And in the long run, just to push the borders as far as possible, is well worth the price we pay in bugs.

And speaking of prices to pay, there is a general problem with all the damn merchants in Skyrim. THEY DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH MONEY!!! Each merchant generally does not have enough to buy the weapons off you. Sometimes, one of your major loot will cost more than what the merchant can carry. So, I end up running around Skyrim trying to sell loot. I feel its a rather pointless design, I can understand that you can only sell certain types of items to specific merchants, ie weapons and armor, but not potions and herbs, to a blacksmith. But this gold limit on merchants breaks the flow of the game.

The one bad thing that can get rather annoying is the control system on the PC version. Maneuvering menus with the mouse is extremely annoying, and seems to be leaning towards the WASD controls. The game doesn't seem to remember the position of your cursor, and it be can quite bad if you accidentally choose the wrong answer to a question.

Another issue is with the NPCs in the game. Almost all of them feel...empty. Just quest dispensers, or just dummies giving, speaking out story expositions. Their models just look like they're glued to whatever surface they're at.

The favorite position of every Jarl in Skyrim. All nine of them.
Whether arguing, giving out titles or being happy.

Don't get me wrong, some of the stories are damn good, it will disgust/inspire/draw pity out of you, it's the delivery that just quite bad. Have you ever seen an argument between two people just stand there, hands limp beside them? It's weird, and it makes the game feel outdated. Elder Scrolls could do with better animated models and a greater range of animations.


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In the end, however, it doesn't matter. Skyrim is by far the best game I've had so far this year.

Heck, its probably one of the best games I've had in a few years. I've spent two weeks of glee in Skyrim, and there is no doubt I will spend the next few coming months just plain having fun.

Any criticisms of the game is outweigh by the incredible, deep and engaging design of the game. Bethesda has basically built a more detailed and livelier world than some MMORPGs ever did. And they delivered it in a shiny black box.

My recommendations? If you want a damn fine RPG, Skyrim. Get it and immerse yourself.

And now, I'm off to kill more dragons.

COME GET SOME!!!