Okay Geek Farm
PC - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim review
Alex Tretrop
Ah Bethesda games, they’re always so special. Huge open worlds to explore and huge amounts of entertainment are in all of their games if you can deal with the large amount of bugs and issues those games were riddled with. And here we are at the fifth Elder Scrolls game, a series that has become ridiculously popular since its inception, and it really doesn’t get much better than this. Bethesda has made their newest trek into the snowy north of Skyrim it’s most memorable and effective yet with fantastic graphics, design and, as always, the best sidequests in the buisness bar none. Not only does Bethesda meet the huge bar they’ve set for their series, they’ve exceeded it by leaps and bounds.
Story
From Morrowind onwards, the Elder Scrolls seems to have started a tradition with the way each game begins. You wake up as an unnamed prisoner being taken to your death for an unknown crime and, after a short tutorial, are given free reign to do whatever you want, whenever you want and however you’d like. Skyrim is no different in this respect: You create your character just as your sent to the chopping block but after making your escape through the almost required tedium and linearity of the opening dungeon, the game gives you free reign to explore anywhere in Skyrim, the frozen northern landmass of Tamriel. With the ever present threat of the dragons running rampant throughout the world… Oh, who am I kidding, I just ran in the opposite direction of the quest marker and explored the world for a little bit. And my goodness, what a world it is.
It’s interesting that I’ve never really enjoyed the main quests of Elder Scrolls games. Most of them feel like afterthoughts in the grand scheme of your 80+ hour journey as the characters, missions and places you go never really reach the magnificience of the side quests that you embark on. While the main story is of a decent length, introducing that you are the last of the Dragonborn, a mortal race that can absorb the souls of slain dragons and focus them into “Shouts”, which are essentially strong spells that can really change the tide of battles, is a really interesting concept and one that is explored fairly effectively in the beginning of the game as you journey up the tallest mountains in the game and also take part in some interesting and varied dungeons, each with their own stories to tell as you explore them. While it never truly reaches a peak of any sort, with forgetable characters and a little too much going on between them, it’s a very serviceable story which provides a nice chunk of content to enjoy and, by the end, you really feel like you’ll be able to take down some of the toughest dragons with ease. All in all, after Oblivion’s god awful, repungnant stench of a main quest, Skyrim’s looks like a delicious cake in comparison.
But let’s be honest here, Bethesda is known for having the best sidequests in the buisness bar absolutely no one and, in Skyrim, it’s come to the point where, after 80 hours of playing, I still have about 20 - 30 quests in my journal to do. And you know what’s great about all of them? It’s that they all feel sufficiently different enough to warrant doing. What’s absolutely brillant about Skyrim in particular, is that it succeeds in adding context into just about anywhere you explore. Similar to the Vaults in Fallout 3 but on a much larger scale, as in addition to characters giving backstory on an area, you might find books, writing on walls or rooms inside that give you insight into the backstory. It’s seen here on a massive scale and it’s fascinating at just how effective if it can be if you stop for a moment to read the absolutely astonishing number of ingame books you can find all over the place.
Getting into specifics, you have the ability to join any or all of the guilds in the game, from the fan favourite Dark Brotherhood to new one’s like the very Warrior/Viking group of Companions. All of these guilds provide you with wildly varying experiences too and all contain their own stories that can last the length of other full games in their entirety. While there’s a wonderful sense of variety in these guilds, this negatively effects Skyrim’s ability to create a structured narrative. Along with it being such a large game, you’ll find yourself moving to and from a ridiculous number of places in your travels, most of the time leaving a handful of quests to collect dust in your journal until some later date. The large amount of NPC interactions don’t really help this fact either, as almost every quest has some new character or group associated with it, making it hard to connect with them as a whole. Now don’t get me wrong, a few of them have good personalities and dialogue but you’ll end up forgetting many of the characters just because of the sheer volume of things they do. For example, the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood questlines were some of Bethesda’s best storylines that they’ve crafted but I can only remember one standout character’s name from at least 15 hours of content between the two factions.
Alongside the fact that you’ll be forgetting characters, we need to talk about them a little more as well. Skyrim undoubtedly has the best dialogue of any Elder Scrolls game yet, which means that all of it isn’t painfully terrible. There’s not one point in this game where you’ll want to jam your eyes out from hearing Brother Jauffre’s voice actor every five minutes. Overall though, many of the NPCs are made a little more interesting through smaller things like their interactions with your character and the variety of dialogue between all of them. While it isn’t all that noticeable, it definitely makes for a positive experience since you’ll naturally be seeing lots of characters as you explore the massive world of Skyrim.
Gameplay
And just what exactly will you be doing as you explore this lovely landscape? Skyrim starts in the usual manner, you create a character to represent yourself but you’ll immediately start to notice an important, and more importantly, excellent change in the way you play the game. In past Bethesda titles, you were forced to specialize in a variety of skills early on while Skyrim just improves the skills you choose to use with them all contributing to an overall leveling bar. You immediately notice the difference as you aren’t forced to be the typical class archetype in any way, shape or form when you play through the game. I played through the game as a sneaky assassin who used a variety of axes and maces. Sure, it may not be optimal, but the game doesn’t punish you for trying anything out. Alongside this system also comes the addition of a Fallout style perk system, where you can dump points into a skill of your choosing whenever you hit a certain milestone. The more perks you put in, the higher you can get into the numerous trees as you advance in level. It’s a nice way to reward a particular playstyle that you know you enjoy, even if the freedom of choice isn’t really adhered to with this mechanic.
Primarily however, that sense of wonder really translates well into gameplay as you’ll be battling creatures both big and small as you explore and discovering new, interesting places for your character to plunder and hang around in. You’ll be doing this with a new combat system that feels much improved compared to the old style. They give you free use of the two hands you have for whatever you see fit; want a pure mage? Equip yourself with fire in both hands or any other mix of the elements. People who enjoy playing characters that are more up close and personal can choose to use two swords, shields or add in some magic in one hand with another. The possibilities here are really excellent in all respects and it’s great that Bethesda truly succeeded at letting you play any way you like without confining you to a chosen role throughout the entirety of the game like they did in Fallout 3 and most of their previous games.
Most importantly perhaps is the effect that the newly returned Dragons have on Skyrim’s gameplay. Anytime your exploring the world, this potential encounter presents itself in spectacular fashion. The first time you see a dragon land and attack makes a huge impression and they’re hulking beasts that require quite an effort to take down. And when you do destroy it, you feel a huge sense of accomplishment that doesn’t really diminish the numerous times you’ll be attacked by one.
On the downside, the melee combat in particular still feels clunky and simple. Generally mashing the button will win you the day and the game never gets outright challenging unless you try a gameplay style that’s a bit more unorthodox, which definitely can provide you with some challenges in survival.
Visuals/Audio
Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series have always prided themselves on having an enourmous world with interesting aesthetical designs but, technically, their last few games are showing the considerable age of it’s Gamebryo engine. I’m very happy to report then, that Bethesda has taken some major steps to really up their game in this area. Technically, the world is no longer a chunky slouch, with the view distance for things up close as well as things far away looking quite brilliant. The mountanous north of Skyrim is well represented in this respect, with the plentiful amount of interesting structures really just begging you to explore them. When you get up close however, some of the textures can look a bit low res alongside some of the further vistas popping in when you get closer. Regardless however, I feel that Skyrim really takes large strides in making the world of Tamriel just that more believeable. Simple things like snow getting heavier as you ascend a particularly tall mountain, an aurrora appearing during the night, and a lovely amount of variety in the areas you’ll explore really help make up for Skyrim’s technical issues, which are not as prevalent as they were in the previous games.
Even better than that is that they’ve solved Oblivion’s problems of repetition with ease in Skyrim. Wheras you’d see only a handful of dungeons that all looked fairly identical in Oblivion, Skyrim’s dungeon usually bring something original or different to the table for each and everyone you enter. And there are quite the number of them that you’ll just stumble upon too. After 90 hours, while you’ll begin to see textures used for the environnments start to repeat, Bethesda still introduces completely different dungeon designs alongside an interesting gimmick for each of the hundreds you can find each time you sit down to play. Similarly to this, the towns and cities you’ll stumble into all bring out the Nordic (read: Viking) architecture in each, meaning you’ll be seeing lots of battle brothers, wooden villages and large axes. And here’s the thing, the developers always keep the illusion that you’re in the frozen north of the world well and alive, with there always being some snowy peek off in the distance or a cold storm brewing off in the distance. However, this is offset by just enough places that are more of your typical fantasy tropes, from old dwarven ruins and grass lands that made me feel like the game had lots of variety in its areas while also keeping it firmly planted in your mind that some of these places looked cold. With such a fantastic amount of places to visit, the hours you’ll pump into Skyrim just exploring these fantastic vistas will be astronomically high.
Moving on to the subject of audio, the first thing I think of is the music because it’s absolutely fantastic. From the game’s utterly brilliant main theme, which builds in power about as fast as your anticipation to play the game, to the slower, more atmospheric compositions for when you explore the world. The key thing to notice here is that it never abruptly switches and there’s enough depth and complexity to each song to ensure that you don’t get tired of them over such a large amount of game time.
On the other hand, if you know Bethesda, you know that they’re dialogue work has been the polar opposite of their music. I mentioned Brother Joffrey above but I’m happy to report that the voice work that is delivered here is like something out of heaven for a Bethesda title. This basically means that all the voice actors are decidely average, with, thank god, no real sticklers or too many repeat voice actors among the large crowd of people you’ll meet in the game. In all my playtime, I can count the number of outstanding voice actors on about half of my left hand, which is still dissapointing considering all of Bethesda’s phenominal work in other areas.
Final Thoughts
Bethesda’s finally succeeded in making the game they’ve been trying to make since their creation. While their previous efforts were still great games, some of their combat felt clunky, the gameplay wasn’t as open minded and their worlds just weren’t as well realized in comparison to Skyrim.
With such a vast and detailed world to discover, I’ve pumped in a huge 120 hours to just see the whole thing. As you explore you’ll come upon some fantastic side quests in most of the guilds around Skyrim and some not so fantastic ones like the main story. The graphics are sharp and detailed and the music will absolutely stay in your head for months to come. While the usual Bethesda tropes of bugs are present and the average voice acting are ever present, Skyrim is just such a joy to playthrough that you’ll always want to keep playing.
Pro’s
- Unbelievable world
- Excellent Graphics and Aesthetics
- Awesome Music
Con’s
- Main Story is still weak
- Voice Acting is a mix between average and mediocre
- Skyrim is still a very buggy place
Of all the experiences in the past year, Skyrim really stands out to me as one of the finest. It’s incredibly well made, exceedingly huge and bursting with interesting content that really blows Bethesda’s last few games out of the water. They’ve said they’ll be taking some time to develop more meaty DLC and I can’t wait to sink even more hours into such a brilliant title.
///5///
