by Jeff Francis on Nov 10, 2011
In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim,
the action takes place in the northern
realms shortly after the murder of Skyrim's king.
Civil war
is breaking out and, to make things even bleaker, dragons have returned
to threaten the world. The player takes on the mantle of a prophesized
prophesied hero, a Dragonborn, who has the power of The Voice and can
stand against the dragons.
Personally, I’ve been dying to play Skyrim
since details
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/skyrim/e3/2011/first-look">began
to emerge from E3 2011.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
is one of
my favorite RPGs - the Assassins’ Guild storyline was one of
the best story arcs I’ve ever seen in a computer game - and I
couldn’t wait to get back to the sandbox style of gaming
found in The Elder Scrolls
series. So does Skyrim
live up to the
intense hype?
The freedom of being classless also extends to the sandbox nature of
questing that
Elder Scrolls
fans love. In Skyrim,
you don’t
have to stay within the lines and concentrate on the main quest. Tons
of side quests abound in the game, and if you were feeling particularly
silly, you could ignore the main quest entirely. Multiple factions
exist throughout the realm that you can join, each with their own
unique quests to take. For those intrepid explorers who love to
explore, Skyrim
boasts over 150 different dungeons for you to go
dungeon-crawling in. If you ever get bored with questing (but why would
you?), there are other activities for you to do such as alchemy,
blacksmithing, cooking, and enchanting.
What really makes The Elder
Scrolls V: Skyrim come to life
is the
attention to detail within the game. The NPCs that inhabit the world
have their own lives and as the hours pass each day, they go about
their daily routines. You’ll find people working their
fields, fighting with one another, and talking about events happening
in Skyrim.
You can even get some NPCs to join you as a companion. You
can have one companion at a time, and you usually get them from doing
them a service. Some companions you’ll be able to hire and
there are those that you'll need to impress before they’re
willing to join you. My favorite was a warrior woman, so hot-headed and
headstrong that not even the Companions would take her, who became
available to join me after I beat her in a tavern brawl.
Combat is simple enough, provided you settle into a single combat style
and avoid the temptation to experiment overmuch with different weapons
and spells (swapping can get tedious). The left and right triggers of
your controller control the actions of your character’s
respective hands. You can easily assign different spells, weapons, or
shields to each hand and the game pauses as you swap items. Pushing
down the left stick switches you from first to third person quickly if
you need to bob and weave around in a fight, while pushing down the
right stick makes you go in (or out) of stealth.
Overall, the gameplay of Skyrim
is about giving the players the freedom
to do what they wish to do. Want to play a pure fighter? How about a
thief who steals everything he can get his hands on? What about a
spell-slinging caster who is also adept at combat? Do you want to piss
off this city by looting them like mad, then run and live in another
city? Which factions will you join and how loyal will you be to them?
What quests will you take or decline? The choice is up to you, the
player, and it’s amazing. Skyrim
is the closest
that video games have come to tabletop pen-and-paper
roleplaying.
Weather not only looks realistically miserable in Skyrim,
but it can
affect gameplay. Fighting bandits (or a dragon!) in a snowstorm when
there’s only a few feet of visibility can be daunting. While
I loathe snow in real life (born and raised in Florida), I do admit
that it looks beautiful in Skyrim.
My one knock on the graphics in Skyrim
is that some of the fight
animations can look a bit stiff.
As with the Skyrim's
antecedent, Fallout
3, some of the killing blows
just don’t look all that
special. While there were plenty of times I ran my sword through the
belly of an adversary in slow-mo, there were some instances where at
the end of the fight, my big spectacular finishing move was simply my
axe gently tapping their forehead or chest.
All of the NPCs in the world are voice-acted. While quite a few NPCs
have only a few canned responses, many others have a surprising amount
of dialogue. The vast majority of the voice acting is extremely well
done. - I can only recall one or two instances where the
delivery fell flat.
The ambient sound effects are simply superb. The clash of swords, the
swirl of water, and the chatter of conversation is magnificent. As you
get closer to the source of a sound, it increases in volume. If
you’re sneaking down a corridor, you can hear your enemies
speaking from the next room. As you approach, the conversation becomes
more distinct and louder. The sound is also directional. If somebody is
walking towards you from the left, you’ll hear their
footsteps (or speech if they’re talking) from your left. If
you swivel towards them, the sound flows from the left to center stage.
While other games do hav directional sound, the quality and production
values found in Skyrim
are top-notch.
Cons