Has the monstrously-anticipated Skyrim delivered on the hype, or is its spell on gamers a dud?...

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is not an easy game to review. Its vastness defies any attempt to sum it up in just one piece of writing. I should also probably point out that I haven’t actually completed it yet. With most games, to write a full review without seeing it through to its conclusion would be a travesty, but with Skyrim I hope you will understand when I say I simply haven’t had the time. That’s not to say I haven’t played it a lot either. Since early morning on the 11th, my PC has done almost nothing but display the beautiful mountains, rolling pastures and gloomy dungeons of Skyrim. But even if I had played the game for twice as long as I already have, I still wouldn’t have completed it. There is just too much to see.

So, how to review a game that I haven’t seen all of (and probably never will)? Well, first I should say that it is everything that I was expecting it to be, which if you are familiar with Bethesda and the Elder Scrolls series, is sort of a back-handed compliment. The games are vast, enthralling, immersive, epic and usually groundbreaking. But they are also riddled with bugs and weird visual glitches, and the woodenness of the characters and speech has become legendary. This is all present and accounted for in Skyrim, to greater and lesser degrees, but the epic scale and sense of adventure has returned in true form.

The Look

The first thing that comes up in a conversation about a new open-world game is its map size. Skyrim has got a pretty darn big one, but it isn’t the biggest. At around 40 square kilometres, it’s about the same size as Cyrodiil, the setting for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Its rough size is about the only similarity though, as the world of Skyrim is much, much more detailed than that of its predecessor. Skyrim is a mountainous region (hence the name), and because of this the map is crossed with huge ranges of mountains, which are technically passable, but the higher elevations are home to the deadliest monsters, and the thin passes can be treacherous. Sometimes, it is better to just go around. Having to make these choices when travelling across large areas of the map makes the world seem that much more real, and the journeys take longer, so the map feels bigger.

I said earlier that Skyrim was everything that I expected it to be; this may not be completely true, as it did surprise me in quite a few ways. But by and large, things followed the track of one of Bethesda’s epic RPG’s. One way it definitely did not surprise me was with the graphics. The game is very, very pretty. The entire world is incredibly detailed and beautifully presented; foliage and water in particular have come a long way from how they used to look. Water now flows, ripples and bubbles convincingly, while grass sways gently in the breeze. But it does still feel very familiar, based on looks alone the game is a little bit too much like Oblivion. In the characters particularly, the wooden motion and strange, dead-eyed stare is ever present, despite the much improved graphics.

As you travel around the map, the scenery changes naturally, and before long you know roughly where you are simply by what is around you. There is also a seemingly endless amount of mines, huts, caves, giant camps and ruins to explore; you can hardly walk for 5 minutes without seeing some new point of interest to draw you away from your current quest.

But being drawn away from your quest is no bad thing; in fact, it is one of the reasons that I have so much love for Skyrim. It is one of the few games where you can sit down to finish a mission, play for 5 hours, achieve nothing of the mission and still be content. And rarely are these little discoveries pointless or empty, Bethesda expanded the team working on Skyrim to allow more people to be working on dungeons and encounters, to stop them feeling repetitive, and the results really show. Gone are the identical mazes of caverns from Oblivion, or the ‘copy and paste’ feel of the subways in Fallout 3. Now every cave feels unique and adventurous.

The Story

The actual missions in Skyrim are another of the games strong points; they draw you in and tell the story of the game in an accessible and interesting way. In earlier games, a lot of the finer points of the story washed over me, but in Skyrim I really wanted to listen and hear what was happening in the world. Now, I’m not going to go too far into the story for fear of spoilers, but the basic state of the world is that it is 200 years after the events of Oblivion, and the Nords of Skyrim are split by a vicious civil war. On one side are the rebels, striving to keep Skyrim their own and untamed, while the mighty Imperial Army seeks to control the land and bring it to order. Just as you arrive into this complicated and bloody conflict, the dragons awake from their long slumber and begin laying waste to towns and villages, signalling what is ominously referred to as ‘The End Times’.

Amongst all this is you. You are the last ‘Dragonborn’, one who has the power to speak the language of the dragons and unleash unstoppable power in the form of magical shouts. Right from the beginning you are free to make your own decisions on how to progress, who to save and who to fight for. You could play through the game again and again and still not get the same experience from it; such is the diversity and range of the choices available to you.

Who you are and how you interact with the world is also entirely your choice. You begin by picking from one of the games ten races, each with its own talents and weaknesses. But instead of the usual system of having to make a lot of choices about skills and attributes right at the beginning, the game simply lets you start playing. You can use any weapon or armour, and cast a variety of spells from the offset, and it’s how frequently you use these attributes that dictates how they progress. At the end of each skill level you get to unlock a point in one of the many skill trees, to unlock new powers and abilities. This method of progression is much more simplified than before, and while it does away with the problem of making big decisions at the beginning that you may regret, some players will definitely feel the lack of skills like intelligence, agility and athleticism.

On the subject of simplification, the presentation of the game and its menus has changed vastly. Your entire inventory is split into categories on a side bar, while magic, the map, skills and items are mapped to a separate screen. The interface looks good and certainly works more smoothly than on most RPG’s, but it feels very dumbed down compared to the technical nature of games before it. Also, one thing I missed was being able to see the numerical amount of experience I have gained on each level, there is a bar that gradually fills, but that is it, I would have liked to see just how many points I am getting from each kill, and how much closer it is actually getting me to my next level milestone.

Another slight failing of the game is, of course, in the dialogue. As I mentioned earlier, it is pretty well known that Bethesda has a bit of a problem animating characters. Their dialogue is broken, and they stare at you with unnaturally still eyes. All of these problems are much better in Skyrim, and perhaps they only seem so bad because they are expected to be there, but there were definitely a few too many times where the person I was talking to was basically just a puppet reciting some lines.

The Battles

The combat in Skyrim has also not been improved too much. Attacks on enemies often have very little effect, and you just seem to be waving a sword at them until their health bar is empty. Finishing moves have been added though, and they are actually pretty varied, and so stay entertaining for quite a long time. Archery is satisfying and feels natural - the draw of the bow and correcting for distance means making a difficult kill feel very satisfying. Magic is perhaps the most improved area of combat though. Each spell looks great when it is even just equipped in your hand, and casting them results in explosions of colour. The dual-wielding system also works really well with the spells, allowing you to use a spell and sword, spell and shield, two different spells or even combining two of the same spell to use it to greater effect.

The enemies and monsters you can encounter are as varied and different as the places you can encounter them. Giants, mammoths, dragon, wraiths, trolls, sabre-toothed cats, walruses, harpies, the un-dead, werewolves and vampires are amongst them, and even after playing the game for a long time you can still be surprised by what you find waiting for you in a dungeon. The amount of peaceful creatures in the world has also been raised by quite a bit, and even little additions like the fish jumping upstream or the rabbits fleeing in front of you make the world feel that much more real.

The Final Word

There are a couple of other things that need to be mentioned. The graphics are much, much better on a PC than on a console, and it’s pretty noticeable all the time. On the PC, however, there some pretty major flaws with the key mappings, and it can be pretty damn difficult to even equip a spell to your right hand. Sprint is also mapped to the Alt key, something that you have to change straight away to really make it useable.

It is hard to know when to stop writing about Skyrim. It feels like I have barely said anything about the game yet. I certainly haven’t mentioned all the different factions of people in the world, or the huge possibilities granted by alchemy, enchantments and the numerous different parts of smithing. Nor have I touched on the diversity of the towns and cities and their inhabitants, each with their own complex societies and conflicts. To really get an impression of this huge game, you have to play it. The way it draws you in and keeps you involved is something that you have to experience to understand.

In short, you need to buy this game. It is without question the best RPG out right now, and possibly the best game overall. Unless you exclusively play FPS’s, or only have half an hour a day to play it, Skyrim is going to be one of the best experiences you have had on your console. It looks like everyone else agrees too, as it has already sold 3.4 million copies in the first two days of it being available, and that doesn’t even include online downloads. If you haven’t bought it yet, you really, really should.

See also:

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, new live action trailer

Batman: Arkham City review

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 review

Saints Row: The Third offical review

Ico & Shadow of the Colossus review

Next generation Xbox in 2013?

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