Musings on ... Skyrim

Minor spoilers ahead in terms of what you might find in the game.

Click for bigger and check out the gallery at the end.

For those who don’t know, Skyrim is an open-world RPG, set in Skyrim (amazingly) 200 years after their previous game, Oblivion.

Honestly, I don’t think that I’ve spent long enough playing this game to give you a detailed analysis. I delayed this review for a week so I could play more, reaching nearly 30 hours, and still it isn’t enough really. You see, whilst I’ve done a huge amount of things in the game, there are more things that I haven’t done.

So far I’ve; joined the Dark Brotherhood, Thieves Guild, Companions and Empire. I’ve fought bears, dragons, giant spiders, men, cat-people, lizard-men, trolls, sabre-tooth cats, zombies, skeletons, mages, wolves, horses (I may have accidentally shot a horse with an arrow), wraiths, witches and hags.

I’ve used spells, shouts, bows, one-handed and two-handed swords, axes and maces. I’ve shouted people off the edges of cliffs, into lakes, down stairs and into traps. I’ve attracted some zombies by firing an arrow, and then set off a trap they’re standing on with another arrow. I’ve been insta-killed by all of the above, pushed off cliffs, killed by a wheelbarrow (more on that stuff later), frozen, set on fire, shot, stabbed, slashed and poisoned.

 I’ve clambered over mountains, swam through lakes, run through forests, sauntered around towns, crept through dungeons, ridden through rivers and jumped off waterfalls. Along the way I’ve picked flowers, snatched butterflies from the air, collected mushrooms, shot foxes and marvelled at the aurora borealis.

I’ve enchanted weapons and armour, disenchanted weapons and armour, made weapons, armour and jewellery, refined weapons, smelted and transmuted ores, created potions and poisons, discovered effects of ingredients, cooked food and chopped wood. I’ve found incredibly powerful weapons, and used them to great effect.

So yeah, it isn’t like I haven’t spent a while on this game. But still, the list of things I have not done is almost as large, and would probably be larger except that I simply don’t know of some things that are possible.

I haven’t been to the Mage’s College, every dungeon, the highest mountain, the farthest in any cardinal direction or to every major city. I haven’t explored every dungeon I’ve come across, I haven’t found every power stone and I haven’t found every religious temple.

I haven’t created the best armour or weapons, I haven’t found every ingredient, I haven’t made every potion and I haven’t fought every enemy. I haven’t been to every shop I’ve found, every tavern I’ve found or taken every quest which has offered itself to me.

I haven’t used many offensive spells, and certainly know very few of them. I haven’t learnt every shout, every perk or every tactic. I haven’t used two-handed weapons much and haven’t poisoned one of my weapons. I’ve never used a companion and have never intentionally started a fight with a town.

So, we can probably assume that Skyrim lets us do, or not do, a lot of different things. No doubt there are many more crazy and wonderful things to do in the game, and if you want to find every single one then please, be my guest.

But now onto the review proper. Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first. The interface is unacceptably bad. I mean, Oblivions was absolutely terrible, but instead of looking at a good RPG interface, such as Dragon Age: Origin’s, they’ve decided to do something of their own. In theory this would be a good thing, and in some ways it is. It’s certainly a lot better than Fallout 3’s (although that isn’t difficult), and it looks quite pretty. Unfortunately it just isn’t practical at all, requiring users to scroll through huge lists for no reason, leaving massive amounts of blank space. Now fortunately there are already mods out there to fix this kind of thing, but really Bethesda ought to be able to get this kind of thing right by now. The skill screen is particularly egregious, forcing you to scroll through every different skill just to find the one you want, and having possibly the worst method for selecting the perk I’ve ever come across. Throughout the design it seems that they’ve tried to make it very console friendly, but it surely cannot be that difficult to change it for PC. Through just a few simple changes they could make it better for everyone. I mean, it’s taken the modders less than a month to fix it.

There are also a number of bugs present in the game. Some of these are hilarious, such as the aforementioned being killed by a wheelbarrow (in fact all of the physics are kind of out of whack), but some can be annoying. Such as the game crashing every time I tried to fast travel, requiring me to run the whole thing in administrator mode, which is rather annoying. Graphical glitches occasionally pop up, such as bodies clipping through the ground. It also doesn’t look too great. I mean, the vistas involved are spectacular, but when you look at the closer textures it starts to look a little bit dated. Still, most of the time you’ll be staring at the landscape instead, so that kind of thing is certainly acceptable. The AI on your companions can also be questionable, to say the least. They’ll constantly block you, get in the way of your attacks, step on traps, make lots of noise and just generally get in the way of you.

But onwards to the good stuff! The scenery is truly beautiful at some points; just looking at the screenshots gives you a sense of how nice this game looks. It’s probably the first game I’ve played where the world feels like a place you’d want to spend time in. I mean, Oblivion’s world was very nice and all, but it was pretty bland and generic, and uninteresting in general. To be fair, it didn’t have any giant spiders in it.

Oh you Frostbite Spiders, how I hate thee. Bethesda have really gone to town on making them look like the creepiest goddamn thing, and being an arachnophobe makes it almost unplayable at some points. It isn’t just how they look and are animated either, but how they sound. A kind of shuffling sound, which has now started making jump every single time. Oh, and check the bloody ceiling. Spiders occasionally drop down from there, and one of them gave me the biggest jump since I played F.E.A.R.

The combat in general isn’t great. It feels quite weightless to just slash at someone with a sword, and only the power attacks feel properly tactile. Magic feels very powerful though, and dual wielding spells only increases the power you feel. Even dual wielding healing spells makes you feel awesome. I’m playing mostly as a sneaky archer, and I have to say the bows are brilliant. They’re stupidly powerful, the bow I’m using at the moment does something close to 50 damage (which is quite a lot in Skyrim) and I haven’t even enchanted it yet. It’s weird that combat hasn’t gotten any better. First person melee combat was finally done right in Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, but nobody really seems to have bothered to use their system. What I really want is for somebody to use Die By the Sword’s system.

At the moment I’m level 25 or 26, so my character’s pretty specialised. Sneak, archery and one-handed weapons are where most of my points have gone, and I have to say that the perks are almost always cool and/or useful. The way the levelling system works now is also a lot better. Instead of having certain major skills which levelled you up, when you use a skill a lot, you get better with it. So if you like running about in heavy armour with giant axes, you’ll level up those skills a lot. When you’ve levelled up those skills enough, you go up a level and get to pick a perk, as long as you are proficient enough in the skill linked to that perk. Sounds complicated but it’s a really good system.

I am aware that this review is a lot longer than usual, and I still have more to say but you probably get the general idea of what my conclusion is going to be. Skyrim is brilliant. Probably the best game released so far this year. If you can fight through the bugs and get yourself a few good mods then this game is deeply involving, set in a rich world with interesting quests and great exploration. Thoroughly recommend despite the bugs, which will almost certainly by patched or modded.

I thought I'd finish this with a gallery of my favourite screenshots that I couldn't fit in the main review. Enjoy.

Which is your favourite? Personally, I love the one with the dragon and the three fighters. I love screenshots which tell a story as well as look nice.