Review: The Elder Scrolls – Skyrim

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It speaks a lot to both the vastness and glory of Skyrim that even after about 40 hours of adventuring, I’d rather be playing it than reviewing it.

You know how in most games, you can either definitely say that you’re in World 3 – 1 out of 8? Or if the game is an RPG of sorts, you still have a relative sense of how close you are to the end? Playing Skyrim, you will never experience those thoughts. I have no idea where I am in the overall story of the game. All I know is that as in life, in Skyrim the journey is as much fun as arriving at the destination.

The story

Skyrim is a harsh, nordic world beset by war, harsh terrain, and dragons. The game opens with you (the as of yet, unawakened Dragonborn, part of an ancient bloodline of dragon slayers) bound and on a wagon, being taken to a military outpost and having your fate decided upon along with three other captives. Two of them belong to a group called the Stormcloaks, who support Skyrim’s independence and who are fighting a civil war against the Imperial Legion, a group of jerks who want to impose order to Skyrim’s unruly nordic people. In doing so, the Legion intends to steamroll over all aspects of life including government and religion. Say goodbye, Talos.

Aside from the main story, there are countless other micro stories that are happening in the world: people with missing family members, items that need to be delivered, rings that need to be stolen from one person and planted on another, daring escapes, secret summons, and many, many more.

Beastiary

Skyrim is a world teeming with fauna as diverse as its flora – the most important of which are ancient dragons who are rising once again and doing their damnedest to remove humans (et all) from the world. Dragons are the main focus of the game, and a constant threat you have to deal with. They may appear out of nowhere, their arrival punctuated by a screaming cry, and try to destroy you. Sometimes you’ll be traveling with teammates so you’ll have help in dealing with them, but sometimes you’ll be alone and have to fight them yourself. Sometimes two at once. Fights with dragons aren’t impossible battles to win, but they’re not a walk in the park either, especially for characters like mine who are stealth-focused and prefer archery to old fashioned hack and slash.

Sometimes it’s fun to approach a bandit or evil mage lair, see a dragon appear and watch the two fight it out. Often the mages will reduce the dragon’s life a bit and the dragon will wipe them out completely, making easier for you to walk in and clean up (and loot!) two messes easily. Also, in Skyrim, dragons are a renewable resource: they can’t be permanently wiped out, nor are their arrivals scripted. You’ll just hear them coming and duck for cover. Know that if you kill one you haven’t removed 1/7 from the world, they keep coming until you (assumedly) finish the story and seal them up forever.

Protip: to this end, killing dragons and collecting their bones and scales is a great way to make money. Knowing that there is an unending supply of them means you can safely sell items looted from them and be sure there’ll be more where that came from in the future.

A couple of particularly dangerous enemies in the world in addition to the dragons include hagravens (half woman, half bird creatures that experiment with the magics of the world and are adept at both physical combat and pummeling you with magic attacks) and (perhaps in a move to keep Stephen Colbert away) particularly nasty bears. Humans can be jerks as well, especially mages. Of course, challenge depends on your level and character play style. Dudes with huge axes will find it easier to deal with packs of wolves than frail archers like mine will.

Firing ‘er up

Within the first five minutes of Skyrim, you’re presented with murder, beheading, rampant destruction, and escape. This brief period of time is a great introduction to the flavour of the world, showing you how combat, looting, and simple mechanics (ie: doors, equipping, etc.) work.

Then you make your way through some mountains and boom: you are alone in a huge world with sweeping vistas, impassible terrain, and a realization that you can set foot on 96% of what you can see. Not only is Skyrim impressively big in terms of size, but when you learn that the game has an “infinite quest” system in place where the game continues sees where you’ve been and where you haven’t and hints at adventures accordingly, you can’t help but feel overwhelmed. One of the greatest parts of Skyrim (as with Oblivion before it) is making your way to an objective on the map and discovering another area (a mine, a shrine, a camp, etc.) on your way – and hearing the little drum roll that sounds off when you find it (which would make an awesome ringtone or something. Call me, Bethesda!).

Quests can also be discovered by reading books scattered around the world – and there are a ton of books. In books alone, the amount of extra content Bethesda has put into the game is incredible. Some books contain only a few pages and others many more. Some will boost your stats by reading them, others will unlock side quests, and still orders (like The Lusty Argonian Maid) will provide lots of unimportant entertainment or hints about the world, its enemies, and history.

Combat

As was the case in Oblivion, combat in both first and third person feels a bit “floaty”. You’re constantly trying to judge your distance to a target – and its distance to you when being attacked – and there can be a few times when you’re swinging at air. You get used to judging these distances pretty quickly, especially if you constantly use the same weapon but it can be a bit annoying at first. To combat this (see what I did there?), I play stealthy characters who can pick people off from afar with archery with the hope that they’ll be taken down before we need to break out spells and close-combat weapons.

Bethesda has done something awesome with combat, a “favourite” system that allows virtually every item you’re carrying to become hot-swappable by pushing up on the d-pad. Doing so pauses the game and lets you choose any favourited item in the list, then returns you to battle with it equipped (minus a brief animation of putting the first item away and pulling out the second one). You can put anything in this area, spells, items, swords, bows – whatever you want. You’re also not limited to having favourite items in combat-only scenarios. Do you have a key that you use all the time? Or a pair of gloves that let you pick locks easier? Swap to them and get going.

Controls

The game mostly makes use of three buttons: one to bring up quests, stats, and data management (the Start button); one to manage inventory, magic, levelling up, and maps (the B button); and the right trigger (combat). Other buttons allow you to jump and interact with items in the world for sure, but the three most-used buttons are those. Even in the controls (as with favourites), Bethesda has done something awesome here. You press the B button and you’re given a cross option to choose items, etc. Instead of selecting it and hitting the A button, you just hold in the direction of the cross and you enter the sub screen. It feels great, like Bethesda has removed a “click” from the process of accessing items, and made it ever-so-slightly easier to get at your goods.

The Start screen and the Map screen have a cool shared functionality as well. Sort of. First of all, it seems weird that your quest log and your map are in two different places (access via two different buttons). Skyrim gets around this by letting you access your map screen, then press Start to access your quest log from within the menu (and vice-versa). It’s a cool idea that adds to an all-around feeling of more rapid access to data.

Another button (the A button) allows you to interact with 90% of the world. This is particularly dangerous if you play a thief-style character. You can literally pick up (and therego, walk off with) nearly everything in the world. What’s cool is that when you pick something up the screen with show you the approximate value of the object as well as its weight, letting you determine if it’s worth picking up or not. Skyrim (like other Bethesda RPGs before it) does away with traditional RPG fare by imposing a carry weight limit on your character (which can be increased by leveling up your stamina).

Characterization

Every character is based on one of 10 playable races, each with their own staring perks, whether it’s a bonus to stealth, poison resistance, underwater breathing, etc. Players can then spend forever tweaking their appearance until they get it just right. Everything can be adjusted including skin tone, dirt on the body (and its colour), hair styles, and body size. Even nose depth can be tweaked. Appearance does nothing to the game itself, however (at least in my experience people react to your race, not to the colour of your warpaint) and most of the time – especially if you’re like me and play in first person mode – you’ll never see your character. Spending the time tweaking the appearance of your character is fun, but not necessary.

Graphics

The visuals in Skyrim are stunning. Often I would just set the controller down and look off into the horizon just to take in the grand view. Despite it’s limited colour palette (Skyrim is a very northern area, much of which is covered with snow and rock after all) every aspect of the world is truly spectacular. In some areas, tall pines spring up from between impassable rocks and in others, sulfurous springs jet hot water and air into the air. You can see fish jumping upstream as awesome waterfalls pound water into rivers below. The ground is covered with moss and lichen and brooks babble underfoot. Snow falls gently one minute as you cross mountain passes, and then suddenly buffets you with harsh-feeling bitter snowstorms.

Underground, things are equally cool and really feel like Bethesda is able to play around with a lot of colour. In some cases, it’s almost opposite to most game world. Typically, the overworld is bright and cheery and the underworld is gray and dismal. Here, the underworld (especially underground grottos, throne rooms, and magic hallways) can be punctuated with colours and vibrancy not seen above. Yes, many tunnels are brown but it’s the way some of the are visually presented that are great.

Additionally, Skyrim’s undergrounds can be just as epic as the overworld. In one area, I discovered a sword and it unlocked another side quest. I took the sword into a grotto and used it to unlock what I thought was simple treasure chamber. Upon entering, I was blown away by the sheer size of the place (and then again by the magic I was hit with by the monsters therein).

Sound

I’m not an audiophile in any way. I’m the guy who makes a point to load an iPod with songs and bring headphones and then forget all about them all day long. To me, Skyrim’s music and audio is a perfect match to the world. While you play, you aren’t tapping along with an ongoing audio score, you’re really encountering the natual sounds of the world that are merely hilighted with a sweeping soundtrack. That blending of the aural into the world of Skyrim is really a compliment. The music doesn’t sound out of place at all.

The game uses audio to punctuated scenes like combat encounters (which in a huge world can come from anywhere) and when you stumble into dungeons. Even the voiceovers, which in Oblivion may have felt a bit stiff, are great here. From the people the cries of attacking dragons, from old crones barking orders at children to mages chanting evil dirges, the game is decked out with great audio that never quits. Once in a while you can notice that it feels like they got 50 voice over actors (especially with kids) and they are starting to be reused a bit, but you quickly forget once new quests start bubbling up.

Glitches

I’d heard about glitches before Skyrim was released: missing textures and floating objects and crazy strobe lights. Playing through the game, I’ve certainly encountered a few of them (this after downloading and installing the title update that was available on XBox Live at midnight on launch day). Having played Oblivion and Bethesda’s other recent RPG, Fallout 3 I was expecting glitches. At this point, if a Bethesda RPG wasn’t released with glitches it’d feel like another company worked on it. It’s going to sound weird, but the glitches are almost always the exact same (missing textures, weird floating, and mis-animated objects) and almost feel like Bethesda trademarks, like they’re supposed to be there.

So far, I’ve encountered only one game-stopping bug. Early on when you go to get the first dragon shout there is a ring puzzle you need to solve with the golden claw. When I arrived at the puzzle the rings were immobile, meaning I couldn’t rotate them to solve the puzzle. Turning to the web on my trusty iPad, I discovered that it was a known bug. The solution was to “reload” the area by leaving and coming back, thus forcing a refresh via an auto-save and it worked like a charm.

Speaking to the glitches, Bethesda has said that they are working on another title update for the game that will be released for 360, PS3, and Windows at the same time.

Glitches be damned

With all the complaining I’ve been doing to friends lately about the glitches and weirdness in Battlefield 3’s single player campaign, it seems weird or even fanboyish that I’m giving Skyrim such high marks. Skyrim isn’t perfect, but it’s the overarching package itself that makes it a must-have for role playing fans.

Getting lost in the game is an easy thing to do (both literally – it’s immense – and chronologically – resurfacing having finished just one dungeon only to be surprised that two hours have transpired in real time is common) and the glitches are so few, but are so outlandish that the almost seem to enhance the game rather than detracting from it. In Battlefield 3, I found the campaign to be boring (so much so that eventually I tried to play through levels without firing a single bullet) and the glitches were just more stabs at an already perforated canvas. With so much going on in Skyrim the glitches don’t detract in any way.

Conclusion

Skyrim is a wonderful game that like other Bethesda games before it is stuffed with an incredible amount to see and do. It’s very easy to get lost wandering its harsh tundra and jagged mountains, or combining ingredients together to crafting potions using Alchemy, or breaking magic artifacts to use their components to build better ones through enchanting. In Skyrim, you’ll encounter vampires, werewolves, assassins, thieves, crooked businessmen, old ladies hiding secrets, ancient nordic evils, puzzles, traps, spiders, and more. Like I said, I’ve spent nearly 40 hours with Skyrim so far and have been doing so much adventuring and wandering around that I honestly forget what I need to be doing in the main quest to keep the story going along.

In my opinion, fans of role playing games absolutely need to own Skyrim – and chances are they do already. If you’re still on the fence hopefully this review convinced you to go for it. And if you just bought it, be sure to take at least a month off from work and/or send your family on a nice long vacation so you can embark on a truly epic hero’s journey with no outside distractions.