Genre: RPG, Action, Adventure
Available Platforms: PC, PS3, 360
Platform I played it on: PC
Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
Publisher: Bethesda
Alright, full disclosure time: I STILL have yet to finish Skyrim. I’ve spent almost 200 hours in the game, I’ve maxed out my Argonian character, I’ve completed every guild quest and I THINK every side quest (you can never be too sure), I own every available property in Skyrim, and I’ve managed to keep Lydia alive and with me through all that time because fuck it, why not. Despite all these accomplishments (at least in my book) I still haven’t completed the main storyline (I’ve only done 4 or 5 main missions) or the 2 DLC campaigns: Dawnguard and Dragonborn. Let that just sink in… Just take a minute to contemplate on how absolutely vast and infinite this game is. It’s a time sink like no other game I’ve ever played before in my life. To date this is the longest game I’ve ever played, easily kicking the previous numero uno, Final Fantasy XII (101 hours), out of that top spot.
So what exactly is Skyrim then? What kind of game could command this level of dedication and time without being an MMO? Any gamer worth their salt will know all about Bethesda and their absolutely time destroying series’: Fallout and The Elder Scrolls. Bethesda is the best at what they do and what they do is create TRULY open world games. Games have touted open worlds for as long as gaming has been around and there’s been a recent insurgence of this in the industry, but a lot these open world games are actually just open sandboxes for you to play around in, with a finite amount of missions and activities available for you to do, a la Saint’s Row, GTA, Assassin’s Creed etc, with you being able to play through every single little thing in 20-30 hours. The Elder Scrolls games are not like this. Skyrim especially so. The game opens with you as a prisoner being carted to an execution and after this first compulsory story mission, which serves as a tutorial of sorts and a character creation process, you are thrown right in the deep end. What you do after you walk out the door into the sunlight of Skyrim is entirely up to you. The world is literally your oyster. And that’s what makes this game so great: your experience is entirely your own. You can quite literally forget the main storyline completely and just do your own thing, or inversely just focus on the story. It’s all up to you.
The world of Skyrim is one soaked in fantasy and magic. Anybody familiar with the usual RPG settings or the games themselves will immediately recognize some common fantasy troupes such as elves, dwarves and magic. At it’s core, Skyrim is an action RPG in which you create your own character, chosen from an extensive list of different races, including humans, elves, orcs, argonians (lizard people), or khajit (cat people). You then take your character out into a huge world for some good, old-fashioned adventuring, and maybe a spot of saving the world if you’re so inclined. Skyrim is set in the same fictional world built up in the previous 4 games, but playing all of the others isn’t necessary to enjoy the game itself. It’s set on the continent of Skyrim: an icy, mountainous, war torn region, and home of the Nords, taking place 200 years after the events of Oblivion. The Elder Scrolls games have an incredibly deep lore associated with the world, as any good fantasy RPG should, which is great for fans but can be off-putting for newcomers. If you’re unfamiliar with it, just know it will take a LONG time to explain everything, so I’m just gonna skip that part. If you’re interested, browse through the Elder Scrolls Wiki for a few hours.
The game is played in first-person perspective (or third-person if you’re so inclined), with you being able to wield numerous weapons and magic spells to defeat your foes, as well as being able to equip the usual assortment of armors and accessories. You can dual wield weapons and spells for deadly combinations and it’s a fun feature to mess around with other than the standard sword and board combat in many other similar games. Magic is divided into different schools denoting their function. Destruction magic consists of offensive magic like fire, ice and lightning. Conjuration magic focusing on summoning. Illusion magic involves bending perception, such as charming people and turning invisible. Restoration is healing magic. Finally, Alteration involves changing the properties of items and other miscellaneous stuff such as transmuting ores or detecting life and waterbreathing. There are numerous skills for you to learn and level up, such as smithing, speech (used for bartering and interacting with NPC’s) and enchanting. As you use these skills, such as using a bow to increase the Archery skill, they will gain experience. When you’ve accumulated enough experience in your individual skills you get a level up, in which you earn perk points you can use to unlock perks to improve your skills. There are no set character classes such as Warrior, Rogue or Mage, although you can find different “Standing Stones” in the world which will let you chose which skills level faster depending on these tropes. You decide for yourself what skills you want to level up depending on your play style, although if you’re like me you’ll likely switch your play style around in order to level up every single skill to 100. There are 18 skills in total, divided into different disciplines, namely: magic, combat, stealth and crafting. The play style I used most of the game was the stealth route, which includes the sneaking, pickpocketing and lockpicking skills. What can I say, I enjoy playing the rogue. There is also a vast crafting system in place to add flavour to the gameplay. You can make, enchant and upgrade your own weapons, jewelery and armour pieces using different ores and gems. The level of upgrade, enchanting quality and class of armour you can make all depends on your associated skills and perks. You can also craft a wide variety of different potions and poisons for your own use, as well as being able to cook food which serves to restore health and stamina in place of having to waste potions. Health, magic and stamina regenerates over time, although you can use potions to speed up this process. You can only carry a finite number of items, depending on their weight, but you can buy houses or plots of land in each hold where you can store your unused items. Trust me when I say that jumping to your different houses in order to free yourself from the burden of junk you accumulate will take up A LOT of your time. Finally, the game features a unique system of “Shouts”, which is basically magic, but not really. You learn Shouts from Word Walls scattered in dungeons and then unlock them by using dragon souls that you gain from killing dragons in the wilderness. These are helpful in augmenting your abilities or granting yourself some extra magic without having to actually commit to the magic skills path. The use of Shouts is governed by the a cool-down timer, although there are items that can lower the timer which are useful if you find yourself relying on Shouts often.
The first Elder Scrolls game I played was Oblivion and while that game was a goddamn masterpiece, Skyrim just took the bar set by it and threw it out the window. Then blew up the building. There are MILLIONS of missions, activities and side quests for you participate in. The world boasts a number of “holds”, basically city hubs, as wells as a vast assortment of villages, dungeons, farmsteads, caves, shrines and the like, which you are free to visit and explore at your leisure. Each hold boasts a considerable number of quests and activities, such as bounty hunting or farming. The game world is populated by a myriad of NPC’s, many of whom you can interact with, either because they’re vendors, important to certain quests (indeed you can screw yourself over by killing a quest-important NPC), or companions you take with you as you explore the vast world and help out in combat. NPC’s actually have very good AI programming and they behave (somewhat) realistically. They run away or fight you if you commit crimes around or against them, go about their daily business and do their jobs, or simply chat and gossip with each other in the streets. They will comment as you pass by, such as admonishing you if you run around with your weapons drawn in a city area, remark on your recent deeds or acknowledge your faction allegiances. Each of the holds have their own bounty systems, which builds up if you’re caught by guards doing illegal activities and which can be paid off or served out in jail time.
In addition to the main quest and numerous side quests, there are 6 faction storylines for you to participate in as well. There are 4 factions you can join, granting you with access to their guild houses, new companions, equipment, trainers and other perks. The Thieves’ Guild are exactly as their name implies – thieves – and most of their quests involve thievery of some kind and are perfectly for rogue-type players with high sneak, pickpocket and lockpick skills. The Dark Brotherhood is an assassin guild and their quests involving killing people, so playing a rogue might be to your advantage in order to escape the murders without accumulating any bounty, although any play style is really viable. The Companions are a group of werewolf warriors and involve quests where you bash people’s skulls in and/or protect people, perfect for warrior-types. They are normally the first faction you will join and are perfect for low level players. The College of Winterhold is full of mages and so a high magic skill might be useful, although not really required. I’m not a magic guy, although I did have to grind quite a bit to upgrade the different magic schools’ skills in order to gain access to special side quests associated with each. The civil war faction storyline involves you choosing a side in the conflict that’s affecting Skyrim and trying to secure victory for your chosen side. The sides are: the Legion, the Emperor’s army trying to keep the peace in Skyrim after the death of the High King, and the Stormcloaks, a rebel group trying to usurp the authority of the Imperial Legion and make Skyrim an independent nation free from the Emperor. I sided with the Legion myself because while the Stormcloaks have a noble cause, they are racist, prejudiced, bigoted assholes and I just couldn’t muster any sympathy for them. Finally, there a number of Daedric quests for you to complete. The Daedra are basically the dark, old gods of the world who live on the plane of Oblivion and enjoy fucking with the world of mortals simply for the laughs. Many of their quests involve doing morally ambiguous things in order to gain their powerful Daedric artifacts. These quests were some of my favourites because of how hilariously sick and twisted they really are. Do a few and get a taste of delicious evil for yourself.
You can tell a lot of love was put into this game. From the awe-inspiring soundtrack, to each carefully detailed, differently themed city, village and dungeon. Everything just pulls you in so well and feels lovingly handcrafted. Each city has a different theme, for instance there’s a mining city that’s built on top of dwarven ruins, so everything in the city builds around that concept. Some cities are richer than others and the way they look represents that, making all of the holds feel unique, almost as if they could exist in the real world. The entire game world has a very Norse/Scandinavian vibe, which helps cement this feeling of plausibility despite all the magic stuff. The game does have it’s fair share of bugs, as with any Bethesda release. Sometimes quest objectives won’t update, making them incomplete. This only seems to happen with the misc objectives though, which don’t really count for anything and are just radiant quests. Thankfully I never encountered the problem with any of the major quests, otherwise I would’ve probably quit the game. Luckily a lot of the bugs have been patched out since the game’s release and there’s not much left over. NPC’s can sometimes behave sporadically, there are some clipping issues in combat, especially in the slow-mo kill cams, and if you’re not careful it’s entirely possible to get stuck in the geometry of the world. There are no truly game-breaking bugs though, which is a good thing. It’s just silly little things that break immersion, but they can create some hilarious moments.
Overall, this is a truly amazing game. Engrossing, full of rich lore, rewarding, time consuming, and most of all just tons of fun. I’m sure most gamers have already played through it and either loved it or hated it, but if you’re one of the few who haven’t yet played it, then you should give it a try, especially if you enjoy RPG games. The Legendary Edition is out with all the DLC included, so why not pick it up if you have a few years of your life to spare. Apparently, you can also get every perk in this edition, which isn’t something you can do in the base game. I had to choose my perks painstakingly to make the most of my perk points, so I’m kinda sad about that. There’s no way in hell I can restart the game though, I’ve invested way too much of my time already. Now, I’m gonna go dive back in and see if I can’t finish off the game already… Wish me luck.
Conclusion: 5 side missions out of a billion (nah, it’s still 5, don’t worry)
RANDOM MUSINGS 