Skyrim Review - Here be dragons. And a crap ton of other stuff!

The cart rolls into the Imperial camp. I look at my fellow prisoners and take solace in the fact that at least I’ll be dying alongside someone famous, the rebel leader Ulfric Stormcloak. Hey, if you gotta die then at least you can go out alongside a big shot and not just pickpocket Johnny Noname.

The first prisoner is brought forward and, with the sickening sound of meat and bone being cleaved, his head is parted from his body. I’m glad I had a light lunch.

As I stand around wondering how a Breton magician apprentice from High Rock ended up in such a fine mess I am distracted by a passing shadow and the sound of giant flapping wings.

I look up and see something that I know is impossible, but yet there it is. A dragon!

Oh, I don't think these carts are going to Disneyland...

During the chaos of the dragon attack I escaped my captors. Though all sanity in my body screams for me to get out of Skyrim as fast as possible, I feel compelled to delve further into the mystery of the returning dragons. The splendid city of Whiterun is my first port of call and I soon find myself talking to the Jarl of the city himself.

By an incredible coincidence I am around at the exact moment that reports come in of a new dragon attack. Bolstered by some unknown source of courage, I volunteer to help repel the dragon and join a small force of guards, heading out to kill a dragon (I wish I was back at the warm inn studying my arcane books, what madness is this?).

We manage to kill the dragon. Well “we” mostly being the guards. My contribution was mostly approaching the dragon as it was distracted by the guards, briefly draining all my magic resources for a magical flame attack and then running behind the nearest rock to hide.

As the dragon lay dead on the ground something incredible happened. White light erupted from the dragon and shot straight at me. Panic filled my very being, but I quickly realized that I was somehow being… empowered by this light. I have no idea what happened but some of the guards claimed that it showed that I was something they called “Dragonborn”. I don’t know what to make of all this…

Skyrim is a game that you don’t play as much as you *live*.

When Skyrim is at its best it feels like you are walking through Lord of the Rings helping citizens in need, slaying mighty beasts, crafting mighty armor or going on epic quests and saving the world.

Right out of the gate Skyrim makes a point of not being your traditional RPG. There are no set classes in Skyrim. You simply choose to focus your activities on whatever you want to do and your skill will naturally improve. Becoming a mage is as easy as just spending time casting spells. If you wanna be a warrior then simply pick up a sword instead and start chopping up your enemies. Or maybe you want to be a warrior that shoots fireballs with one hand and then charges his enemies with a battleaxe? No problem, just do it and you’ll find your destruction magic and two handed weapon skills increasing.

It’s a really cool system that means you are never forced into restrictive boxes that limit you from being exactly the kind of character that you want to be.

If you wanna be a robe toting master of magic you can compensate for your lack of toughness by having a female companion take all the punches for you. It's the classy thing to do

Skyrim also differs from most games by being incredibly non-linear and open world almost from as soon as you start up the game. Except for a brief introduction sequence you’ll be free to do whatever you want, whenever you want to do it. I followed the main quest line for the first few hours and then I got distracted by some side quests that eventually lead me half way across the world map and set me down the path of the Mage college quest lines.

This is made possible by the adaptive leveling of enemies, which means that you’ll rarely find content that is so incredibly difficult that you have to give up and wait until you’ve become more powerful (the classic “I wonder what’s over he..OH GOD NO, NOT THE FACE!” syndrome of most open world games). This can still happen, but after my first 10 hours of Skyrim I pretty much never ran into that kind of stumbling block.

The main storyline in Skyrim is a pretty standard fantasy affair. It does its job well enough to keep you interested in it throughout the duration, but it’s not going to set your world on fire (unlike giant fireballs, which you should only use at beyond the minimum safety distance, kids!). If you just wanted to barrel straight through the main quest, then you could probably be done with the game in 15 hours or so.

But that would really be missing the point of Skyrim entirely. Most of the fun that you’re going to have playing this game is going to happen as you stray from the main adventure and wander off to find out what’s happening over that next hill or at the end of that dark and ominous looking cave. And there is *always* another hill to climb or another dark cave to explore. The world of Skyrim is so densely packed with content that you couldn’t swing a dead dragon without hitting at least one ancient ruin and two NPC’s with side quests.

It’s not all fun and games with Skyrim though. There is a price to be paid for such incredible amounts of content non-linearity. Many NPC’s will trigger a few different lines of dialogue when you move by them, such as guards acknowledging your presence in towns. This is fine at first, but once you’ve heard the same canned sentence for the 100^th time you’ll be just about ready to send a lightning bolt up the backside of the next person that tells you how they’re not impressed by me knowing a few spells (Here’s a tip: Don’t provoke a guy that can absorb the souls of dragons and fling people through the air using their voice).

There’s also a not insignificant amount of jank going on as you hit the various scripted moments. You’ll be talking to a character that is moving around, going through his canned routines, when suddenly another guy randomly walks up to you and loudly fires off his proximity activated piece of dialogue (“We must hold back the dragons” *walks around the table and looks on the map* “We cannot afford to lose this battle” *Random guard walks into the room and stops three paces from you* “I’m watching you!” *Random guard walks off*…WTF?).

I think perhaps this scene would work better without the homoerotic undertones, but alright...

Before I run out of rant juice I also need to point out that the actual dragon fights, which were supposed to be something of a highlight of the game are actually kind of… lame. The problem is that dragons spend a large amount of time flapping around in the air, looking impressive but doing little but providing you with some dragon themed skeet shooting exercise. And even when the dragons are on the ground you can avoid most of their damage by moving behind a rock or a tree as they fire off their breath attack and then moving to the side of the overgrown lizard and whacking/shooting/magicing it straight in the flank.

All these flaws serve to show you the seams in this impressive world simulation carpet. It reminds you that you are still just playing a video game and there is still a long way to go until game developers can convincingly create a complete world for us to play in.

But if the thought of being an adventurer in a massive world that lets you do everything from decorating your own house to serving evil demon lords or taking sides in a civil war gives you a warm fuzzy feeling inside, then you will be more than happy to overlook the flaws in Skyrim.

I have never experienced a more immersive fantasy world than Skyrim. It would be completely possible to spend hundreds of hours in this game and never run out of things to do. There’s just that much stuff here.

If you absolutely must have a tightly paced story to carry you through a game and you have no interest in a big open world, then you can give Skyrim a pass (in which case I’d recommend “To The Moon” to you, which is an excellent storytelling game).

Everyone else, I hope you have nothing important that needs doing for the next couple of weeks. Prepare to have your gaming soul absorbed by the Dragonborn.

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