Those nights traversing these lands are ones well spent. The
game returns you to the continent of Tamriel, where you explore the northern
realm called Skyrim, home to the Nord race. In these northern regions, snow
flurries cloud your view, and platforms of ice float on the chilled waters.
Nighttime often brings Tamriel's version of the aurora borealis, with its gorgeous
blue and green ribbons stretching across the heavens. Skyrim's predecessor,
Oblivion, featured prototypical fantasy environments--pretty but not quite
evocative of the lore's darker undercurrents. Skyrim embraces its darker
elements. You might feel an eerie chill as you glimpse a half-sunken ship
through the mist, or watch as a dragon comes to life before your very eyes
under the swirling firmament. Skyrim's atmospheric tone harks back to The Elder
Scrolls III: Morrowind, only the hazy dust storms of the earlier game have been
replaced by glimmering snowfall and opaque fog.
These lovely vistas are best seen from a distance. Closer
inspection reveals hard edges, plain painted-on textures, and other visual
flaws that are conspicuous should you seek them out. But like many enormous
games, Skyrim makes a fantastic impression not because its individual elements
are sharply honed, but because they contribute to a grander whole. There's so
much to do that your quest log becomes an embarrassment of pleasures, offering
dozens of choices at any given time, each one as enticing as the next. You
could follow the story, of course, which weaves a compelling tale that casts
you as a dragonborn; that is, the soul of a dragon emanates from within you. As
such, you are the key to discovering why dragons have returned to the land,
terrorizing cities and potentially ending the known world. The tale has you
facing dragons, of course, but also crashing fancy dress parties and scouring
sewers in search of a key figure long assumed dead. It's a well-crafted tale
that makes good use of those fearsome flying creatures that horrify the masses
with roaring gusts of fire and ice.
You can do what you want
Even when you aren't pursuing story quests, though, the core
narrative dogs you as you trot across the land on foot or on horseback. You
might travel to a quaint hamlet only to discover that it's under siege by a
hovering beast. The townspeople join you, aiming their arrows and fireballs
upward, and not all of them may survive the encounter. These battles impress
upon you the terror in which the populace lives, and thus give you a reason to
be a hero to them. But plenty of narrative delights have nothing to do with
dragons, and some of them could have formed the main story of a lesser RPG.
Following an early lead takes you to a lonely house occupied by a single child
with a disturbing request. The story that unravels has you acting as a predator
and eavesdropping from an unimaginably sinister hiding place. Other story
threads embrace the element of choice. You can take sides in the ongoing
conflict between Imperial forces and the rebellious Stormcloaks, and then
assault enemy camps and rescue prisoners jailed by the enemy. And in one
memorable if minor quest line, you can kill a creepy cannibal--or join her and
her cohorts at the table.
It's impressive enough that there's so much to do; it's even
more impressive that most of it is wonderful. Not every dungeon is a joy to
explore. Stone-turning puzzles occasionally bring the fun to a halt, and a few
repeated cave designs could dampen your spirits. But overall, every task has an
excellent sense of context, and surprises lurk around many a turn. Searching
for a lost dog turns into a grander quest than you could have guessed--and
witty writing and voice acting shine some light into this somber world. Even a
simple "go there, kill that" bounty can be a thrill. After all, how often
do you face a towering giant and a couple of woolly mammoths? It's too bad that
as you approach the giant's camp, one of those mammoths might spawn 100 feet in
the air and fall to its death, or land on another mammoth and ride on its back
for a few seconds before sliding off.
So maybe not every surprise is a welcome one. But most are,
and the element of the unexpected is what lures you to explore as much as you
can. The reward could be a great weapon hidden in a locked chest, a gorgeous
vista to ogle, or a book of lore that enhances one of your attributes. Or
perhaps you'll discover words written in the dragons' tongue--an important
discovery indeed. Finding those words is key to using Skyrim's most powerful
spells, known as shouts. Well, they are half the key anyway: you also must
defeat dragons and absorb their souls to activate those shouts. Shouts have
their own cooldown timer and aren't tied to the magicka bar that governs
standard spellcasting. With one shout, you can breathe fire on your attackers.
With another, you can slow down time. Shouts hardly guarantee success in a
difficult battle, but they can tip the scales in your favor. Besides, the
dramatic visual and sound effects of both the discovery of words and the
absorption of a dragon soul are a lovely bonus.
RPG Must Have a Magic
As for standard spells, they come in the usual schools of
magicka: destruction (zap skeletons with sparks!), conjuration (summon a giant
frost atronach!), alteration (light the way ahead!), and so on. You can even
dual-wield spells, going full-on mage, with a glowing ball of fire in one hand
and a summon at the ready in the other. For that matter, you can dual-wield
one-handed weapons, giving you more flexibility in how you form your character.
When you create your character, you choose a race from the usual Elder Scrolls
standbys (Dark Elf, Breton, Argonian, and so forth), but you don't choose a
class. Rather, your skill level with certain types of weapons, magicka schools,
speech, and so on is governed primarily by how you play. Wear heavy armor, and
taking blows gradually increases your heavy armor proficiency. Swing two-handed
weapons, and you get better at using them.
That doesn't mean that you don't wield manual control over
how you progress. Each time you gain a level, you choose to enhance one of your
three main attributes: health, stamina, or magicka. You also earn a single
point to spend on a perk, which might increase damage done with axes or let you
conjure creatures at a greater distance. It's a great leveling system that
forms around the way you play, but allows for tweaking so that you retain a
sense of control. Even just the act of leveling up can be a pleasure due to the
slick and colorful interface that imagines perks as stars in constellations. It
can be a pain to navigate to certain perks; the game often has you flitting not
to the star you want, but to all the ones surrounding it. But considering
Oblivion's cumbersome interface, Skyrim's is a much improved beast. On console
(and if you play with a controller on the PC), thumbstick navigation minimizes
button presses, and you can easily move between your quest log and the main
map. Additionally, you can mark weapons, spells, and items as favorites and
then access them quickly during combat. Certain aspects might be fiddly, but on
the whole, Skyrim's interface is a wonder, considering how much information and
inventory is at your fingertips.
Regardless of how you tailor your character, the action is
entertaining and varied. Trolls, undead draugrs, necromancers, bandits,
witches, ratlike skeevers, and many more foes want to make your hero a zero.
You occasionally feel as if you're flailing blindly rather than connecting your
sharp blade with a vampire's flesh. But this is the tightest Elder Scrolls
combat yet, the visual and audio cues normally providing proper feedback with
your blows and zaps. Some death blows result in Fallout 3-style slow-motion
kills, which retain their power because they're not overly frequent. Movement,
too, has seen improvement: you can now play from a third-person view and feel
like you're moving across the land instead of floating above it. What hasn't
been improved is the friendly AI. It's nice to have a companion along for the
adventure, and you're given one for free early in the story. But companions are
morons, crowding you in tight passages, lagging behind when you need them the
most, and even getting stuck in various death loops caused by spinning blade
traps.
You Can Create Your Own Class Type
If you're the stealthy type, you can sneak about, picking
pockets and breaking into homes. If you really enjoy keeping to the shadows,
you may even wish to contract porphyric hemophilia--that is, vampirism.
Vampires earn some benefits by way of certain spells and status effects, but
also endure particular risks and must feed on unsuspecting victims as they
slumber. But even if you like to wade directly into the fray, you can benefit
from Skyrim's non-combat activities. Lock-picking no longer works as it did in
Oblivion, but takes its cue from Fallout 3, having you rotate a lock pick and
turn the lock to determine how closely you matched the correct position. As
before, you can pick flowers and collect ingredients, and then create potions
out of them at an alchemy table. (Forget mortars and pestles this time around.)
And any adventurer can benefit from enchanting, which lets you imbue your
equipment with certain status effects--though you must use soul gems to
recharge their power.
Many of Skyrim's delights are the touches that occur outside
of the action. Citizens go about their daily lives, selling their wares in
shops during the day and closing down at night to hang out in the pub or head
home to rest. Under some circumstances, they may comment on your rancid breath
or remark on how sickly you seem to look. Children run up and down the streets;
one may even ask for you to stop a bully from picking on him. Citizens move
somewhat stiffly, but with more grace than in previous Elder Scrolls games.
Before, conversations brought the world to a halt and focused the camera on
some character's waxy face. In Skyrim, certain dialogues limit the camera and
temporarily paralyze you in place, but overall, conversations feel more organic
than before--a nice improvement that enhances your sense of immersion.
Skyrim also uses scattered books and references to enthrall
you. You may not be a big fan of reading books in role-playing games, but even
so, you should make an effort here. If you don't feel like reading up on
Tamriel's rich history each time you find a volume, grab it and read it
later--there are a lot of narrative tidbits that deserve to be read. Elder
Scrolls fans will appreciate nods to events in prior games, and everyone can
enjoy the bite-size tales contained therein, about vampires, noble heroes, and
gods that bestow their blessings on their followers. Skyrim takes place
hundreds of years after the events of Oblivion, and organizations you might
remember have been restructured or are shadows of their former selves. But
Tamriel's history is threaded throughout Skyrim's fabric, and some quests, such
as one that begins with an invitation to a faraway museum, are great reminders
of past misfortunes that the world has not forgotten.
It's a pity that Skyrim often breaks the immersion it tries
so hard to create, in ways both minor and major. Some bizarre details are
simply annoying. A character might initiate conversation through the ceiling.
The chatter of nearby characters could drown out important story exposition.
Two shopkeepers standing next to each other may be voiced by the same actor and
repeat the same lines. A dragon skeleton might disappear and then later drop
out of the sky in a new location. A dragon could get stuck in place, flailing
about in the geometry in a mess of wings and tail. For that matter, you could
get stuck in the environment, maybe just by walking into a corner, which forces
you to either quick-travel to a different location (if you're lucky enough to
be outdoors) or load a save game. The game runs elegantly at highest settings
on a properly equipped PC, though you could experience a crash to desktop or
two. The question isn't whether you will experience anomalies--it's a given.
The question is: which ones and how many?
If you've played previous Elder Scrolls games, glitches and
oddities don't come as a surprise. Nevertheless, Skyrim comes in a year graced
with multiple quality RPGs that feature tighter combat, fewer bugs, better
animations, and so forth. But to be fair, none of those games are endowed with
such enormity. Yet The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim doesn't rely on sheer scope to
earn its stripes. It isn't just that there's a lot to do: it's that most of it
is so good. Whether you're slashing a dragon's wings, raising the dead back to
life, or experimenting at the alchemy table, Skyrim performs the most
spectacular of enchantments: the one that causes huge chunks of time to vanish
before you know it.
THE GOOD
- Immense world stuffed with varied tasks to perform
- Dragon battles are a blast
- Lovely art design capped by some beautiful, atmospheric touches
- Enjoyable battles that you can approach in a variety of ways
- Lots of compelling, self-contained stories to experience in addition to the main one
THE BAD
- Glitches and bugs frequently disrupt the immersion
- Friendly AI is often more of a hindrance than a help
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