Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!
J.R.R. Tolkien
Skyrim is a vast game. But not only a vast game, a vast place as well.
There is no doubt that Skyrim had massive anticipation (“hype”) on the build-up to release. Many gamers (including myself) were watching and re-watching videos of Skyrim and lavishing in any detail released about the game, no matter how small or large the detail. Even pre-release, there were cries of “Game of The Year” and many saw the game as the one-and-only; the game that would suck away the social lives of many. Indeed, a day or two before its official release, reviews from game journalists were unleashed, many awarding the game perfect, or near-perfect, scores, only cementing the idea to many that Skyrim would be unlike anything before it (at least in the RPG genre). Admittedly, I played Skyrim the entire weekend of its release (quite literally). Nearly three months on, I am still playing the game, having clocked in (at the time of writing) well over one hundred and twenty-two hours (although I only started playing again recently after a three week hiatus on the brilliant Battlefield 3).
Before I proceed further, I should point out that the only “full” Elder Scrolls games I’ve played have been Oblivion (including its expansion pack, “The Shivering Isles”) and Skyrim, respectively. I have only played a very small bit of Morrowind – nowhere near enough to draw a comparison, though (although, I’d love to play it, old as it is) – hence, my main comparison in this review will be that of Skyrim and Oblivion/The Shivering Isles.
Since the beginning, I have been playing as a Khajiit (I’m currently Level 42) – a feline race in the Elder Scrolls lore hailing from the province of Elsweyr. My main play-style is that of a mage/thief/archer (if anything, it could be narrowed down even further to just thief/archer – I use magic but not much of it). What’s different about Skyrim compared to Oblivion – and other traditional Fantasy RPGs – is that there aren’t any classes to choose from at the beginning – you play the game as you wish, developing your own play-style as you play (or playing a variety of styles). In a way, I like this method because it means I don’t have to start a whole new game if I suddenly decide that I want to be more of an axe-wielding fighter than an archer. However, it may not go down so well with those who prefer the more traditional RPG route, akin to that of Dungeons and Dragons, of choosing a class and playing solely in that class. The issue doesn’t bother me personally an awful lot because I’ve been playing the same style throughout the whole game anyway although I can see how “purists” may feel a bit miffed at the exclusion of classes. However, this is somewhat compensated for by the inclusion of Guardian Stones. These are large standing stones (usually in groups of three) scattered throughout Skyrim and which grant the player certain skills and abilities, or help to improve an existing skill (the Mage stone helps improve Magic skills, the Thief stone helps improve stealth skills, the Warrior stone helps improve combat skills and so on). The downside to the Stones is that you can only have one active at a time – if you choose the Mage Stone, you adopt its attributes, in turn losing the attributes of the Stone you previously had active.
In the main story, and throughout the game, you are a Dragonborn – a Dovahkiin – a person born with the soul of a dragon. This gives you the ability to absorb the souls of dead dragons and use them to unlock Shouts which you read from Word Walls scattered throughout the world (and which are very often guarded by a dragon). Shouts grant you special abilities such as slowing down time, unleashing fire, freezing an opponent, detecting nearby beings (heat-seeking of the Fantasy world…), calling upon an ally from another world and even calling upon a Dragon (both of which help you for a while). There are three elements to a Shout and you can use Dragon Souls to unlock each one – however, once you Shout, there is a delay before you can do so again – the more powerful a Shout, the longer the “recharge”. The most popular one, spread thanks to the Internet, is that of Unrelenting Force. What’s impressive is that these aren’t just English, German or other localisation words – there is a complete Dragon alphabet, language and even font.
The environments of Skyrim are a joy to explore and wander about. While I loved Oblivion’s traditional, Western Fantasy setting (rolling green hills and lush forests), the landscape of Cyrodiil (the main province in the game) often felt “same-ish”. The lush green was amazing, don’t get me wrong, but there wasn’t much variety in the environment (although, in fairness, I thoroughly enjoyed the environments of The Shivering Isles, small that world was compared to Cyrodiil). Skyrim, however, is much different (in a good way). I will admit, before release, I somewhat expected Skyrim to be nothing but snow – in the same way that Cyrodiil was practically nothing but forest – but I was pleasantly surprised to find that that was not the case. Certainly, there are many snowy areas in Skyrim and the snow effects are incredible – snow realistically falls and is blown about by the wind – there is so much of it at times that it blurs the world around you (you can even see individual flakes of snow if you stand still). However, there are many areas in the game that are not snow-covered. The further north you travel, the more snow you encounter, whereas areas in the west are much more barren, brown and rugged – lifeless areas devoid of settlements or homes. There are swamps where the trees are grey and crooked and sweeping tundras where cover from an attacking Dragon is non-existent. Mist smothers mountainsides and, running alongside a river, you can very often see a haze develop as the rain falls. The sound of wind is very often present and as you walk over snow you can hear it crunch. Of course, there are green forests as well which, like all the other forests, have an occasional fallen tree and tree stump to jump over and leaves which gently glide and swirl to the forest floor. There is no doubt that the world of Skyrim is much more grey than that of Cyrodiil (and feels a lot more hostile) but it is by no means less beautiful.
The towns and cities of Skyrim are just as varied as the physical world. Whiterun, in the centre, is quite an isolated city with a lot of Norse architecture – the same for Morthal north-west of it (most of Skyrim’s towns and cities reflect Norse/Viking architecture). Markarth, on the West of Skyrim, consists of grey stone and is quite claustrophobic. Solitude, in the north-west, is a port-town situated on a pinnacle of rock (which often reminds me of Minas Tirith) and is home to Imperial influence in Skyrim. Dawnstar in the north is another port-town but is quite shabby. Winterhold in the north-east is a somewhat run-down city, home to the College of Winterhold – which, like Solitude, sits on a pinnacle of rock. South of Winterhold is Windhelm – a great fortress of stone with a shanty area inside of its walls where Dark Elves live – the Nord citizens of Windhelm, harbouring xenophobic beliefs, refer to them as the “grey-skins”. South-east lies Riften, home to the Thieves Guild and which has a river flowing through it – reflecting the surrounding environment, it is more-or-less full of autumn colours – brown, gold and yellow. Lastly, in the south, Falkreath is a town hidden in the forest among tall evergreens and has a very open feel to it – you don’t pass through any gates.
The terrain of Skyrim is much harder to traverse than Oblivion’s – indeed, in some places of Skyrim, snow and brambles cover the surface of the road, making it hard to follow. In Oblivion, you could take a short-cut by, more-or-less, heading off the road and into the forest. In Skyrim, there are quite a lot of mountains to overcome, particularly in the south and north-east. This can make your journey by foot even longer – and sometimes more frustrating – as you try to find a way up (or around) the mountainside. In my experience, it’s harder to jump up the mountains in Skyrim than those in Cyrodiil. It perhaps isn’t helped much by the fact that the skill of Acrobatics is no longer present, like in Oblivion – in Oblivion, I could (quite easily) jump up the side of the Jerall Mountains near Bruma – in Skyrim, it’s not that easy as the experience is more like climbing a real mountain (the reason being, I think, because the mountains in Skyrim are much steeper and higher than those in Cyrodiil).
Not only is the physical environment of Skyrim a joy to explore but its citizens and creatures are, in my opinion, much more interesting than Oblivion’s. Trolls, wolves, spriggans and rats look much fiercer and menacing and bandits are more fun to fight (even if they do often come out with, “You’ll make a fine rug, cat!”). My only criticism towards the world is that it feels too barren at times. There have been times when playing the game that I’ve travelled (on foot) from one end of Skyrim to the other and came across, quite literally, one or two creatures or thieves (although, in fairness, I’ve found that I encounter many more enemies in the West and North of Skyrim). It’s good in that you can explore the world without any real danger of your exploration being rudely interrupted but, as some posters on the Bethesda forums stated, it can feel lonely at times. Saying that, there is no doubt that the world is geographically huge. Unlike in Oblivion, you can sprint in Skyrim. Although my sprint level is much higher now than when I first started, it still takes me a long time (in real world terms) to get from West to East or North to South – you can spend some coin to use the services of a horse and cart – although, these are controlled by an NPC and you don’t get to experience the actual journey. You can, of course, still Fast-Travel to places you’ve previously discovered, just like in Oblivion. To be honest, I try to avoid Fast-Travel – I think that if you excessively use it, you not only miss out on opportunities to improve your character but you also miss out on the astounding beauty and scale of Skyrim itself.
To help you along in the world, you are given a 3D map which you can zoom in and out of (a physical, paper one – with only the major routes and cities on it – comes with the actual game – at least, my copy of the game did). To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of the in-game map (the physical, paper map is gorgeous with more of a rough texture than the slighter smoother Oblivion map). While the in-game map is nice to look at, showing real-time weather in different areas as well as the actual geography of Skyrim, I have found it to be more of a hindrance than a help in practical terms. For instance, say you are given a Quest – a Quest arrow appears at the location of it on your map – you look to see where the location of the Quest is and see that it looks quite close – only on closer inspection do you find that the location is actually behind the 3D mountain, not on it. Oblivion’s in-game map was a simple, flat one but it worked well and I didn’t have (and still don’t have) any issues with it. For Skyrim, I can’t help but think that Bethesda thought, “Hey, cool aesthetic feature!” and didn’t think of its practicality. To me, they should have stuck with 2D for the map – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Many people who play RPGs do so because they love doing Quests. And of these, there are many. There is the Main Quest, Side Quests and Miscellaneous tasks (the nature of which mostly involve you finding and collecting things, or killing a bandit leader – some do, however, evolve into larger Quest-lines – the Dark Brotherhood Quest-line, for example, starts out as a Miscellaneous task). By-and-large, the Quests are fun and quite rewarding (sometimes you get a nice sword, get an attribute increased or even just receive coin – for some Quests, however, you can’t help but wonder why you bothered going to all the trouble once you get your “reward”). The characters and people you encounter in the world, and in the Quests, are very interesting – some are nice, some are nasty and some are just plain nuts. A criticism of Oblivion was that you often heard the same voice actor in several roles (which was true). I must admit, the problem seems to have been alleviated in Skyrim – in my experience, I quite rarely hear the same voice actor time-and-time again, the exception being the town guards, some of whom sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger (seventy voice actors were used for Skyrim, whereas only seventeen were used in Oblivion and The Shivering Isles – thirteen for the former, four for the latter, according to IMDb).
If anything, there are two Main Quest-lines: one involves you saving the world from the prophesied return of the Dragons, the other has you fighting in Skyrim’s civil war with either the Stormcloaks (a group wanting Skyrim to be free from the Empire) or with the Imperial Legion (a group who believe that Skyrim should remain in the Empire).
To be honest, I didn’t really enjoy either of the Main Quest-lines – the Dragon Quest-line was fun but far too short with a very abrupt ending – even-so, the story was mostly boring (I doubt it’ll be winning any writing prizes soon); the Civil War, on the other hand, mostly involved going to, and taking over, Forts with your fellow men (and women) – these expeditions were fun at first but soon got tedious – you do, however, on two or three occasions, get the opportunity to attack a city held by the enemy. I actually enjoyed these – there were catapults and lots of NPCs on-screen – it felt like a real siege (I joined the Stormcloaks in the game but I’m assuming the same is true if you join the Imperial Legion).
If I had to describe the ending to each Quest-line, however, I would call them anti-climatic (especially the Dragonborn one). I don’t want to spoil the stories too much but I didn’t think they had much closure to them. I find it baffling because, usually, the Main Quest is the highlight of an RPG – it takes centre-stage (at least, it’s supposed to) – Side Quests, strictly speaking, are just that: asides – things to keep you playing the game a bit longer after you’ve completed the Main Quest. To me, a lot of the Side Quests were (and are) much more interesting and engaging – not only the stories and objectives but the characters as well – I didn’t find myself caring much about the characters in either the Dragonborn or Civil War quest-lines. Not only that, but I found the Quest-lines to be very linear, although this is an issue I have in general with regards to The Elder Scrolls’ Main Quest-lines – very often, you’re set on a linear path and can’t determine the outcome of the story in any significant manner – you’re very often “the good guy” with only limited leeway morally (Knights of The Old Republic and Dragon Age: Origins did a better job at that, in my opinion – maybe Bethesda should take a leaf out of BioWare’s book).
By-and-large, the game-play of Skyrim is incredibly fun. Combat has much more “weight” to it than Oblivion. You can hear arrows whistle from your bow (or whizzing past you from an enemy) and the sound they give when slamming into an enemy’s flesh is intensely satisfying to hear. While one-handed combat has been improved from Oblivion, there are still times when it’s hard to know if you’ve truly hit your enemy. Blood splatters out but, other than that, there aren’t many other indicators (apart from their health-bar) to tell you if you’re damaging an opponent (perhaps dismemberment was excluded to avoid raising the age-rating of the game further). Skyrim also sees the inclusion of two-handed combat. You can now dual-wield one-handed weapons and spells – dual-wielding spells makes the spells more powerful (but, as a result, drains more of your Magicka – or magic) – dual-wielding one-handed swords inflicts more damage. You don’t have to dual-wield the same spells (or swords) – you can, for instance, use a healing spell in one hand and a fire spell in the other.
My impression of the magic in the game is that it takes more of a back-seat than in Oblivion. Some on the Bethesda forums (I visit the place quite often!) have suggested that this is because of the nature of Skyrim itself – it is the home of Humans – a hardy people – who view magic as something alien (in fact, I remember stumbling across a Nord Mage in the College in Winterhold – a Mages’ Guild – who disclosed to me the same opinion – they believed in the power of magic but their family didn’t). Indeed, in the town of Winterhold itself, many of the citizens blame the town’s misfortunes on the College – a lot of the town was swept into the sea aeons ago, but the College survived with little damage – hence, many of the townspeople believe that the Mages were involved in some malicious intent. Some spells that were in Oblivion, like opening locked doors, are now gone – spell-making is no longer present either. The spell effects are very impressive, however – healing produces a golden orb in your hand, or you can use that same hand to shoot bolts of lightning (akin to BioShock).
If combat isn’t your thing, you can chop wood, blacksmith, enchant weapons and armour or just simply fish. Alchemy makes a return in the game though is slightly different to how it was in Oblivion. In Oblivion, you needed a Mortar and Pestle (and some ingredients) to create basic potions (with the addition of Retorts, Calcinators and Alembics). What I loved about Oblivion’s Alchemy was that you could do it anywhere, any time (provided enemies weren’t present). In Skyrim, you can only do Alchemy at an Alchemy table – like Oblivion, however, eating raw ingredients reveals one of their properties. Personally, I much prefer Oblivion’s Alchemy (I was even a Master of it at one stage).
Another curious thing I’ve noticed removed is that of damage to weapons and armour (as far as I can tell). In Oblivion, your weapons and armour had “health”, representing their condition – the more a weapon was used, the more it deteriorated – the more blows a piece of armour took, the more it deteriorated. After a certain time, you needed to repair your items either yourself, using repair hammers, or by paying someone else for the job. In Skyrim, your weapons have damage, weight and value numbers (or, in the case of armour, armour instead of damage…) but no “health”. What this means, essentially, is that you can head into a dungeon without fear of your sword or shield breaking. While this sounds appealing (and it is, in a way), I do miss its exclusion. For me, having weapons and armour have condition gave the game a strategic element – you couldn’t head into a dungeon “bows blazing” if the condition of your bow (or armour) was extremely low – you would engage in combat only for your bow or armour to break in the heat of it. While this was perhaps a pain to some, it never bothered me because repair hammers were (quite often) easy to find – even so, you could always loot your enemy and take their sword if yours was about to snap.
In Skyrim, you can have a follower alongside you – you can give orders to them and kit out their inventory to make them more effective in battle. It’s nice having an extra pair of hands to help you out when you’re overwhelmed with enemies, or even just for the company as followers sometimes tell you the history and ways of a race. When I first read about the follower system, my first thought was that of babysitting – I thought that if you had a follower, you’d have to constantly monitor them (“The Sims: Skyrim”). In general, though, your followers don’t need much (if any) attending to – they follow you and you can dismiss them at any time. Granted, the system is quite shallow compared to that of Dragon Age: Origins’, in which you could tell individuals in your group what to do in various scenarios (e.g. do this when an enemy is detected) – sometimes in Skyrim, your followers will give your position away if you’re trying to sneak past undetected, block your line of sight or block your path entirely. Even-so, followers are often random characters – in Dragon Age, you could learn about the pasts and stories of those in your group; in Skyrim, that’s somewhat non-existent.
I must admit that I am quite disappointed by the UI (User Interface) of the game. One thing I loved about Oblivion was that you could see your character beside your inventory – you could rotate him/her and check out your equipped armour and weapons. Not only that, but I think the actual layout of it was much better. In Skyrim, while you can see the object you’ve selected beside the menu (and it’s nice being able to zoom into and rotate the objects), you can’t see it on your character unless you exit the menu and enter third-person view. Your Inventory basically consists of lists (categories include Weapons, Apparel, Potions, Scrolls, Food, Ingredients and Books) – this is fine if you don’t have much equipment or loot, but it can be a pain having to scroll through loads of items to find the one you’re looking for – perhaps a search bar would have made the navigation process easier.
Like I said, I have the PS3 version of Skyrim. If you’ve been following the (gaming) news over the past couple of weeks, you will have no doubt heard (or read) many reports of PS3 gamers encountering crippling lag. I am sad to say that I, too, have been affected by said lag. At times, it is barely noticeable – the frame rate drops a little while the environment is loading – at other times it’s very noticeable, to the point of the game being unplayable and unbearable. To my knowledge, the Xbox 360 and PC versions have been unaffected by this issue. Granted, it mostly happens when I’m out in the world but, seeing as I spend most of my time there, it’s a nuisance I could do without. Bethesda say they have fixed the lag with their upcoming 1.4 patch but, like many, I am going to wait and see.
The ultimate version of Skyrim is, I believe, probably that of the PC version. I say “probably” because I haven’t got the PC version. The release of the Creation Kit will be soon, allowing users to create modifications to the game (even to the extent of completely overhauling it). If you have a powerful enough PC, I’d definitely recommend getting Skyrim for it, if anything just for the “Mods”. I remember flicking through people’s creations for Oblivion and the vast majority of them were incredibly impressive and it was great seeing the passion and depth many had towards their work – no doubt the same will be true with Skyrim. For us console users, there will most likely be official add-ons in the near future and, from what Bethesda have said, they are going to be “meaty” (no more horse armour!). In the meantime, however, I am quite content with what I have – I have done many Quests but there are still many dungeons and forts to be raided and many dragons to be killed.
To conclude my review, I definitely think you should purchase Skyrim if you haven’t done so already. The art, design and detail are incredible, the characters are interesting, the dragons are incredibly fun to fight and the Quests come in all shapes-and-sizes. Although I didn’t touch on it, the music of Jeremy Soule is captivating in the menu (I say “in the menu” because, admittedly, I keep the music turned off in-game, just because I like hearing the sounds of the environment).
To be honest, I wouldn’t say that Skyrim is the definitive Fantasy game ever made (or even the definitive RPG for that matter) – from a technical standpoint, it has a lot of niggles that still need ironed out (and hopefully will be in upcoming patches and updates) – from an artistic standpoint, it is near flawless, in my opinion (there are probably things about the game that I’ve completely missed or haven’t yet discovered).
Indeed, I may find it hard-pressed to go back to Cyrodiil because, if I went there, I can’t help but think that I would miss the land of Skyrim…
