Skyrim

Sweet Jesus on a jet-ski, it's taken me a long while to compile my thoughts on this game into one rambling blog entry, but here we are; done at last.

Before getting into the emtional rollercoaster that is this review, I'm going to talk about something related first:

Hype


I speak of course of the months and months of speculation, conversation, and sometimes even masturbation, about a new upcoming game release. I've found that, with most things, hype is usually bigger than the release itself. Most of the time a film or game will be hyped ad nauseam until there is no acceptable outcome for the film or game in question than to be the biggest, most earth shatteringly spectacular creation to be hewn from code known to man.

Such was the case with Skyrim. Whilst I wasn't a fan of any of the other Elder Scrolls games, I quickly caught the Skyrim bug after seeing a few gameplay promos, YouTube vids and TV spots, showing what my good friend Ben observed to be "the best in-game representation of D&D" he'd ever seen. And, as my pre-order later that day would suggest, I agreed.

The competition, in the sense that it was released only a few days earlier, to Skyrim is Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. A fair few people might be of the opinion that these two games divide gamers into "either/or" camps, but this is not the case, thankfully. Whilst not a fan of Modern Warfare 3 myself, (ergo, I shan't be buying it) I know of many people who are planning on buying one, and then the other.

Lets talk statistics. Within the first 48 hours of retail MW3 sold 6.5 million units, that's enough for 1 in 10 people in the UK to own one. Skyrim sold 3.5 million units in the same time period. Each game retailed for anywhere between £25-£50, meaning that the vast majority of gamers would probably only be able to afford one or the other. This is where the claims of "rivalry" come from. Thankfully, Skyrim did well in sales (and continues to do so) and whilst I myself haven't enjoyed a CoD game since Modern Warfare 1 (I used to be an Admin for a PC clan no less), I bear no ill will to those who do enjoy it. Primarily because nobody can honk words like "n00b" and "super-saiyan-fagzilla" at me when I'm playing Skyrim.

What the sales figures of Skyrim prove is that the gaming consumers are still a varied and multi-genre enjoying market, and just because MW3 sold at obscene rates, doesn't mean that this is all the gaming industry should be churning out because it thinks that's all we want to consume. I am parroting the well respected and well informed views of one Mr Jim Sterling, Esq. of The Escapist's Jimquisition and Destructoid fame, in order to illustrate my point:

Bitches Love Jim's Chainsword and Shades Combo



Anyway. On with my review.


The Coming


11/11/11, the big day.
Having pre-ordered Skyrim on PC from Tesco.com for the low, low price of £26, I fully expected the game to arrive on 10/11/11 (because Tesco don't give a flying fuck about release dates) Hyper-excited about the game's arrival at precisely 11am, I back-flipped my way to my PC, carefully rammed the disc into my not-always-behaving drive and booted the executable, only to find......

Fuck you Steam.


Yeah, that's right, because this is a Steam activated game I had to wait until 12.01 the following morning to play, although the nice people from Steam did let me install all the files just to rub salt into the wound.


The Second Coming

So midnight rolled around, I pounded a pint of sugary tea and set about launching the game. What greeted me was wonderful. As with all Elder Scrolls games, so I'm told, Skyrim begins with you incarcerated for some vague crime against the ruling classes for which you are nearly beheaded:

Last time it was for shagging the Emperor's wife and daughter at the same time before playing a rock guitar solo on the desecrated corpse of God


Suddenly, dragons.

Very pretty dragons, as well.


And that's the intro really, to go any deeper into the story would take me even more time and effort than I've already spent on this review, so just fack orf and play the damn game. Go now, go with my blessing and promise you shall not be disappointed. Its like reading a several thousand page book, only instead of turning pages (or thumbing your Kindle) you hack apart creatures and sell anything that isn't nailed down to anyone with any bloody Septims left. From this point on-wards the game develops into a cross between a medium-to-severe narcotics addiction and The Lord Of The Rings, After Dark. Well, that was my experience anyway.

Let's get critical.


Visuals

Whilst I've already said the dragons look amazing, they kind of had to, what with being a major selling point and game feature. Other character models, creatures and enemies are beautifully composed. There are great levels of interaction between NPCs, creatures and the environment which they occupy. For example, there are Mammoths on the plains of Skyrim, being herded by Giants. These creatures are programmed to follow set behavior depending on what they are interacting with, be it each other, your character, or other NPCs and creatures. This behavior is adaptive and alters flawlessly in whatever environment the creatures find themselves. Even when the game bugs, and the mammoths begin to fly, they still wave their trunks around like they're sniffing flowers and such. In essence, I was very impressed with the way stuff I wasn't looking at, paying attention to or interacting with carried on being interesting, interacting with other objects and basically just being well made. Another example being, I dismounted my horse, ran over to pillage a chest I'd found and as I turned around I was greeted with this:

This is Shadowmere, my trusty steed, who fears no bears

My horse had decided it, being born of shadow and chaos, was bored chewing on grass, and found a bear to kill. And he did as well.


The environment itself suffers from Bethesdaism, which is in no way a bad thing. Players of previous Bethesda titles, such as Fallout 3, will be aware that in order to present the player with such a large and loading-screen free landscape to roam in, the graphics will not be the best around. This trade off is perfectly acceptable to me, and in most cases preferable to a more linear game trying to pass off being a sandbox by curtailing the players adventures with invisible walls, un-fordable rivers etc. That having been said, the game world certainly isn't ugly, by no stretch of the imagination.

Everything The Light Touches....



Longevity


A quick dip into this before the Gameplay section, as that's the main course.

In reference to my earlier point: SHOCKING! A GAME WITHOUT MULTIPLAYER SOLD WELL, D:

My first play through of Skyrim has taken me a grand total of 90 hours SO FAR, and I can predict at least another 20 to go. That works out at 24p per hour of gameplay. And that's all single player, kids. Not to mention I completely ignored magic with my first character, so my second is probably going to eat up another 50-80 hours.

This guy just doesn't have time for magic. Especially when an axe will do the same job


That having been said, I do think I'm going to leave Skyrim for a good few months now. Primarily because I know what happens, and to get the full enjoyment from a game like this discovering the story as you make progress is key. This is not a slight on the game, more a slight on my perpetual funemployment status.


Gameplay

Bear with me here, dear readers, as I attempt to be concise.....across five subsections.


Combat
My first contact with the Elder Scrolls series was a brief hour long stint of Oblivion on Xbox 360 a few years ago. I found there to be very little I enjoyed, and was particularly put off by first person meleé combat. This was my primary concern with Skyrim. Thankfully, improvements have been made. My character was a male Orc, specialising in two-handed, BAMF, battle axes, and so I can only review what I've experienced. Mostly, hitting things until they die and letting my heavy armour and high health absorbing all the damage in the process. Seemed to work most of the time. Because of my choice of weapon, I have barely any experience of using shields, blocking or any of the more devious methods of dispatching enemies in meleé, such as sneak attacks, poisons and the like, but from what I've heard they are all equally as well done and I look forward to using them all during subsequent play throughs.

Ranged combat centers around bows and spells, the latter of which I have limited experience with. Bows, on the other hand, are a favorite of mine. They are so well done in Skyrim that I have spent hours creeping around the countryside hunting deer, just for the hell of it. In first person the bow and arrow are across your field of vision, giving an accurate aiming system and indication of the strength of shot by how far back you draw. In third person the crosshairs becomes your aiming system and, whilst I vastly prefer first person, third person is most certainly useful when surrounded, or quick-firing at multiple enemies.

Needless to say, this didn't end well


There are five disciplines of magic in Skyrim: Conjuring, Alteration, Restoration, Destruction and Illusion, and for the most part it appears to be very easy to either play a general Mage, using spells from all classes, or a specific type of magic user, such as a Necromancer who raises the dead to fight for him, or a Summoner who calls various atronachs to deal elemental damage to their enemies. In essence, if you can think of a character or archetype from any WRPG game, or indeed film/TV show set in a similar world, you can streamline your play to become that character. I know of people playing as Legolas from The Lord Of The Rings and Havelock Vetinari from the Discworld Series, for example. There are even certain people who are managing to play as a pacifist, and still succeed with the main story quests!
(here's the link to a YouTube vid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2d2KRIUYCM)

You can even be a werewolf. A kick-ass, teeth'n'claws, blur of furry death


Shouts
By finding words of the dragon language, and then by killing dragons to absorb their souls, your character can learn to use Shouts to make use of a multitude of attacks or abilities, such as breathing fire, becoming invisible, changing the weather or sprinting through traps. I found the shouts, whilst integral to the main story, to be pretty mundane. I only used them as a last ditch attack if I was about to die, or in certain situations where you are required to use them. Some are pretty pointless, depending on what race you play as. For example, the Wood Elves can calm animals that attack them and turn them into allies, and there's a shout for that. They're there, and they have their place, but they're nothing special and don't really interest me much.


Quests
Within the game there are three types of quest: Story Quests, focusing around the return of the Dragons to Skyrim. Side Quests, given to you by the various factions present in Skyrim, such as the Mage's College, Thieves Guild, Dark Brotherhood of Assassins and the opposing sides of the Civil War. And Miscellaneous Quests, given to you by NPCs, by finding items, visiting areas etc, these are usually the least rewarding and least time consuming of the quest types, though some do have great rewards, and many can take surprising twists.

For example, I wandered into the town of Falkreath, and was given a quest by an NPC to find his missing dog. I was busy with other quests at the time so I ignored his request at first, but as I wandered around outside the town I came across his dog, Barbas. Who proceeded to talk to me. By the time I'd finished the quest he gave me I'd travelled about a third of the way across the map, slain a nest of vampires and been rewarded by the Daedric Prince of Wishes with this [-->], a Masque of +20% Prices, +10 Speech and +5% Magika Regeneration. This level of unknown depth to certain quests was very compelling.


Experience
What a splendid system of progressions Skyrim has. Truly brilliant. There are 18 different skills, from smithing and enchanting weapons, across the five magics, archery, sneaking, lockpick etc and at any time your character is rated from 1-100 in each skill. The more you use a particular skill, the closer to 100 that number becomes.

This is inspired, as it means, very simply, "the more you use, the better you get, the better you are" with each skill. This does mean its perfectly possible to farm certain skills to reach skill level 100, but that in itself is still a great idea. If you decide that your character should be the best weaponsmith next to Eorlund Gray-Mane in all of Skyrim, then you can be just that, providing you put in the effort to get there.



All smith and no play make Eorland dead inside

Once enough skills have been increased your character level increases, up to a cap of 75. With each character level comes the reward of a Perk Point. These Perk Points are used to unlock different bonuses or upgrades to alter how you use a skill or to further improve its affect on your character. For example, Perk Points can be used to increase the damage resistance of armour, the damage done by weapons, decrease the magika cost of spells or make locks easier to pick. Because of the level cap there are only a limited number of Perk Points available, and so you can never buy all the perks (although it is possible to have each skill at 100) This means, whilst there are no classes defined by skill level in Skyrim, there are those defined by Perks. Realistically, I found investing my Perk Points into only 3-5 skills enabled me to fully reap the benefits. With regards to the benefits of spreading your Perks out over a wider variety proving just as effective, I cannot say.

Yeah, I farmed smithing to make this set of Dragonplate Armour. Worth the 700 Iron Daggers I made.

There are flaws with this system, however. Especially for my character who, very early on, decided shields were a waste of his time and both his hands should be used for making things die of death. Because of his lifestyle choice, changing combat style proved difficult. Having spent so much time perfecting how to decapitate an enemy with his axe, he found wielding a bow, or a fireball spell, not as effective at removing limbs due entirely to the fact that he had not been removing limbs this way for the entire game up until this point. This made him very sad, and he decided to bug his way into the ground up to his waist and stay there even though there was a bear eating his face.

What my narrative illustrates is the one flaw with the experience system in Skyrim. Doing things until you're great at them is a good reward system, but as you progress your way through the game, increase in character level, the game and all its inhabitants level up with you. Should you choose to change combat style from meleé to magic, for example, your spells will be vastly underpowered and you may have trouble killing anything at all. This means that the further through the game you progress, the more streamlined you become, unless you attempt to kill each enemy with a different type of damage, in which case I suggest you making a bloody decision and just get on with it.


Dragons
As previously stated, they are beautiful beyond belief, but they are also incredibly well designed. Their interaction with the environment and with other characters as you strive to strike them down and harvest their souls is stunning. For example, this bad boy:

This scaly individual saw fit to attack me in Solitude, and as you can see is perched on the city walls seeing fit to demolish all who oppose it with torrents of fiery death. The dragon proceeded to NOT land, whilst burning buildings and various NPCs until I whipped out my bow and started shooting at it. Only then did its attention turn to me, and it landed in the courtyard and attacked me. This seems to be a pattern with dragon fights. A few strafing runs and hovering to blast fire and frosty death at you before landing. Landing has always proved to be their undoing, owing to the fact my character is a BAMF with a Two-Handed Legendary Daedric Battleaxe. which kills all dragons in 3 strikes. This illustrates that the dragon combat is fluid, depending on what environment you find yourself going toe to talon with one in, as well as what weapon you favour most. Dragons also provide a wonderful centerpiece for the main story, something I have found to be incredibly well written and paced. Plus dragons. I will say though, after killing 32 dragons to date, they have now become a nuisance. Primarily because they pose no threat to me and just end up getting in the way of whatever quest I'm on.


Conclusions
So then, if you've managed to read through all of that I suppose you're expecting some climatic conclusion, with proclamations of undying love for all who worked upon such a jewel of gaming? Well, mostly yes, those are my thoughts, but not ALL of them. In its entirety, this game is wonderful, at LEAST an 8/10 if I were Metacritic, but there are some flaws. These flaws, whilst not massively experience-altering, are there and I did notice them. All in all though, a very well made and well presented WRPG with enough scope for several hundred hours of gameplay, in a class of your own crafting. Plus Dragons. Do get it if you're a fan of anything Bethesda have ever made, RPGs in general, or dragons.





And Finally....
Its worth noting a game's success by retail figures, reviews and scores on websites such as Metacritic, but there are other ways to measure success. With Skyrim, memes are one such way. FunnyJunk, 4Chan and other sites are plagued with Skyrim-related hilarity these days, be it:

Or:

Or Even:

Not To Mention:

The fact that in just less than a month (at time of blogging) the game has integrated itself into internet-based culture surprisingly fast, and that is testament to its quality and the impact that it has had upon everyone who has played it.

Gone are the days of Shoop De Woop, now is the age of the Fus Ro Dah.

So say we all.