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The Elder Scrolls has held a special place in my heart ever since I first played Morrowind years ago. I've looked forward to each expansion and new game and Skyrim is no exception. I come to the table expecting a great story, freedom in my role playing, and a more detailed game world than anything else I've ever played. In these respects Skyrim does not disappoint. There are a few snags along the way though...
[cutoff]Story 9/10
In typical Elder Scrolls fashion you start Skyrim as a prisoner, quickly gaining your freedom in the tutorial before being set loose upon the world. Again as usual you're given a push in the direction of the main quest but are under no obligation to actually start it leaving you free to pursue your own goals and go after the main quest at your leisure if at all.
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When you go down the main quest you find yourself to be "Dovahkiin" or The Dragon Born, a person possessing unique abilities and destined by fate to save the world from great evil. Hardly an original theme to either the genre or The Elder Scrolls but executed quite well as has become customary for the series. The details beyond that I'll spare you to avoid spoilers but at no point was I ever disappointed in the story.
The only exception to this would be something I found to be an irritant in Oblivion as well. As you move through the story you're capable of taking many paths to victory, mage, rogue, warrior or any combination of these is perfectly valid. But at no point does the story really give you a chance to go out and explore these aspects of your character. You are completely free to ignore the main quest to do so at any point but you are never prompted to and it often feels as though you are abandoning your duty to do so.
In Morrowind as you traversed the story you were frequently told that there simply wasn't enough information or you were not ready to continue both in the main story and in the various fighter/mage/thief sub arcs and were sent off to do something else and check back later. Neither Oblivion nor Skyrim does this. As a role player it subtracts from the experience for me. One benefit of being sent to pursue lines outside the main quest was it made the game feel more real to have to go and improve. When you can simply walk through the enemies at any level it makes them feel weak. If it doesn't matter if I'm a lowly level 10 thief or a level 40 arch-mage and master of the fighters guild you wonder what makes you so special. It takes the "you are fated to save the world" to far. You end up saving the world because you're fated to, not because you had or gained any particular skill.
Which brings us to the side stories. Without the push to go and explore them I can see many people simply skipping them and never knowing the detail put into each one. The world of Skyrim is enormous, and filled with dungeons, monsters, quests, and NPCs. Everyone in this game has something to say and many of them have quests associated with them. Sometimes it's just a quick "could you take care of this quickly?" and other times you're dealing with a line that sometimes gives the main quest a run for it's money. Playing a character that ignores the main quest is just as valid as running straight to the end and I wish players were given more of a push to explore that.
Gameplay 9/10
Skyrim's gameplay is a masterpiece. It doesn't differ much from Oblivion but it has changes where it counts. The biggest benefit is the versatility in combat. You won't notice much difference if you wield large two handed swords or bows but if you work in magic or one handed weapons the improvements become rapidly obvious. In Oblivion and Morrowind before it you were free to be a spell sword or battle mage and switch between magic and weaponry but you had to actually switch as you could only wield one item at a time.
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Now we are freed from such restrictions with the new dual wielding system you can work with a shield and sword, dual weapons, a weapon in one hand and spell in the other, two separate spells at the ready or double your spells up for extra power. I've not tried it but I suppose you could cast your spells from behind a shield if you were so inclined. All of these have benefits and costs, but it leaves you free to choose what fits you best.
I started out intending to be a sneaky spell-thief, stealing whatever I could and using my magic to augment my kleptomania but that didn't last long. I quickly fell in love with the magic and fell to the dark side. I simply couldn't resist the allure of pretending to be Emperor Palpatine as I slowly closed on an enemy lightning crackling from both hands. As time went on I moved away from the pure mage though, picking up a sword to use along side my magic, generally closing with lightning strikes, taking a few good swings and backing off as I sent my foes to the next world with fire.
The thievery aspects I didn't have too much experience with but mostly felt unchanged or only slightly changed from Oblivion. A frustrating (in a good way) change was the lock picking. Oblivion’s lock-picking essentially consisted of spamming WASD where this felt more connected. You have to find the right position with which to use your lockpick to get the lock open, something easier said than done on the higher level locks. When you go through 20 picks trying to get a master lock open you want to curse the developers but at the same time it feels that much better when it finally clicks open and you get your loot.
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The new leveling system is a bit of an overhaul from prior games though. Classes are gone entirely and birth signs are now moved to various "Guardian Stones" around the world you can activate and change at anytime. The lack of classes is something I appreciate and speaks to the freedom the game gives you to go where you want and do what you please but I miss the birth signs. The birth signs to me always felt like a part of the character, something innate that couldn't change as you went through the world. It was as much apart of you as your race was. It just doesn't feel right being able to change that later on.
The lack of classes brings another slight pang of something missing along with it's new found freedom. Without picking a class at the beginning your character at the start is far more generalized. There are some things you are better at certainly, but for a level 1 there is nothing you are bad at. I would have preferred to be able to select some skills to be improved at the start to simply having every skill start at 15 or higher.
A brand new addition to the leveling is skill perks. Every level you get to select an additional perk, each skill has it's own tree of perks to navigate and each perk has a required skill level. Perks will give you new abilities such as smithing in new materials, or enhance your existing abilities. Overall a nice new addition though the navigation of this new section is a bit cumbersome as I reference below.
Visual 8.5/10
Skyrim is gorgeous. The first time I saw the aurora on a clear night I had to stop and just look for a while. The weather just feels real. I don't know how many times I got caught in a blizzard in game only to pause and go turn my heat up it was done so well. The game manages to capture so many areas as well everything from glaciers to plains, viking halls to ancient abandoned ruins. And with all the varying differences everything seems to fit together and the blocky construction set nature of building is well concealed. Something that can't be said about Skyrim's predecessor Oblivion.
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The aesthetics of the game are also a high point. The raw technical quality of the games visuals isn't that high but it has what it needs where it needs it. It feels like a cold mountainous northern province. It looks like viking halls. You won't find the most perfectly rendered foliage in existence here but you will find a forest, with winding stone steps moving slowly up a mountain side before surrendering to the snow and ice of the blizzard that ravages the peaks.
There are some downsides though. The LOD fall off is irritating at times. There are plenty of places you'll look over an area and then run on down just to say "Oh look there is a building here." A number of times I swam across a river only to have a bridge pop into existence a little ways up stream. Trees and foliage just stop being rendered after a certain distance leaving far off terrain to look flat. It would have been nice to have just a tiny bit more detail in the distance. Instead of not rendering a building at all give me a little 12 polygon something. Just enough to go "Look, a town." is all I ask.
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The only other visual problem I had was the map. Don't get me wrong it's great looking, but it's not a map. It's a mostly top down view of the game world. The 3d nature helps navigate at times but if it wasn't for the overlayed symbols it would be next to impossible to find some towns and cities. And roads are completely unmarked. They just aren't there at all. Frustrating when you can't tell if something is a wilderness area or a traveled road when you plan your route.
Audio 9.5/10
The audio is as close to flawless as I've seen recently. Jeremy Soule has once again brought his immense talent to bear on bringing us a soundtrack worthy of the description "epic". Without sounding like a fan-boy it's hard to give the music the praise I feel it deserves. The skill it takes to do what he's done here, getting the feel of the Nordic strength into the music and yet at the same time weaving in pieces that will draw you straight back to Morrowind when you notice them is beyond my means to judge. I for one will be getting myself a copy of the soundtrack.
As for the sounds of the game the highest praise I can think to give them is that I didn't notice them for the most part. They are just there. The crunch of snow underfoot, the crackling of lightning trapped in your hand, the crash of steel on your shield. You simply don't notice it. Nothing is missing, and nothing is too much. The only thing I could possibly complain about was how loud the crack of lightning was when you cast it but in all honesty: It's lightning! It should be loud.
The voice work is up to Bethesda's usual high standards of quality, getting several well known names involved (Note: I'm well aware of how few lines they record sometimes, the quality of said lines has always been good though). When I got started in the game I almost immediately was struck with the feeling of "Who IS that? I know that voice!". The dialog seemed well written to me and I can't think of a single line of dialog that wasn't voice acted. All in all it seems to me to be exactly what the game needed.
Technical 4/10
Now we get to the part where I have to stop heaping praise upon Bethesda and start ripping them up. In typical Bethesda fashion the game is great, except when it's falling victim to any number of issues preventing you from playing properly. This is the Bethesda way though, every launch is like this and eventually it will get fixed. Some issues are simply unforgivable though.
The consolization of this game is enormous. For a game that shattered the Steam concurrent player count record hitting a peak of over 230 thousand players at once you would think they could bother to make a second interface tuned to the PC. Sadly no. The main menu is a logo and basic game selection info. Not an options menu in sight. No one could possibly want to tweak their settings before going into the game right? Once in game things are simply wrong far too often.
Default controls are mind breaking at times. You have your left and right actions for your hands, but the left button activates the right hand and right button the left hand. This works fine with two handed weapons or in sword and shield combinations where left becomes attack and right becomes block but for any dual wielding actions it's simply confusing. This gets worse when you realize that you have a third slot for your shouts and powers that by default is bound to Z of all keys. When operating in a WASD setup Z has got to be the hardest key on the keyboard to press reliably.
Then we have the mouse. Somebody screwed up bad on the mouse. Clicking doesn't always register. When it does it doesn't always register on what you clicked. I also find in game it feels to slow, in menus it's to fast. Worse than that somehow the mouses vertical movement in game is tied to your frame rate. High frame rate = high speed vertical look. Even monkeying around in the INI files doesn't fix this reliably. It wouldn't be so bad but the frame rate is the most schizophrenic thing I have ever seen. I don't have the best computer in the world but I expect decent and I've seen everything from 11 to over 250 FPS. Which means when it feel like being slow I can't aim at all and when it's at high speed I'm stuck looking at the floor or the ceiling.
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Which brings us to the graphics. Like I said I expect decent out of my system especially when the graphics are not in Crysis territory which these certainly are not. The graphics are good, more than acceptable, especially considering how good the aesthetics are but they are not god among men level and there is no excuse for it dragging my system down to 11 FPS. On top of this textures failing to load is hardly unknown. There are even screenshots floating around of the Dragon in the intro sequence showing bright purple because it had no texture applied. Then there are things that are just blatant mistakes. It took me all of 5 minutes to find a rock rotated so that you could see inside it.
The UI. It has some wonderfully good things. Most of the time all you see is your compass at the top of the screen and your cross hair in the center. Magicka, Stamina and Health bars only show when they are less then full. Enemy info only shows when needed. On the downside it's impossible to tell what equipment/spells you have equipped in your hands without pulling them out to look at them or digging through the menus looking for the tiny "equipped" icon.
Speaking of the menus they are horrendous. You bring up the menu and you get a 4 way cross for skills, map, items, and magic. So far so good but soon enough you find you go left to select magic, and the menu shows on the right of the screen. You go right to select items and the menu is on the right of the screen. A mild irritation but when you get down to it there is enough screen real estate to show both at once and avoid the whole issue entirely. Navigating the menus is frustrating as well it's not always obvious what area of the menu you're in. Which item is currently selected is vague. It's just poorly done.
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Then the fonts are gigantic. Another relic of consolization. It's great if you're across the living room but we're not. This is a PC: the monitor is 3 feet in front of us. Additional problems come in the form of the skills menu. Tracking your current progress on skills is a chore. Selecting perks is frustrating. Clicking doesn't always click, sometimes it moves to another skill. The directional controls don't move predictably in the skill tree. You can't see the status of more than a third of your skills at once and it takes half a dozen clicks to move to the next third.
Then there is things like the FOV. In consoles it's fairly standard to have this set in the 60-70 range, once again because you are across the room. When you are up close to the screen like you are on PC though the standard is 90 and when you have a setup like I do you may even be tempted to bump it up to 100-110. Even 120 is not unheard of but it is a bit extreme. This wouldn't be an issue if there was just a setting to change, but there isn't. You can go into the console to change it, but every time you fast travel it resets. There is a setting in the INI but it doesn't seem to have an effect for me.
On top of all this irritation and the relatively minor mistakes we have the crashing. It's crashed to desktop on me more often than I care to admit and without any apparent reason either. Just running along and Boom! It's gone. I've heard windows sound settings can cause this, anything other than 24bit 44,100hz apparently makes the game incredibly unstable and on top of that I've seen several reports of the sound quality being less than stellar when it is running if you don't have it set right. What causes this I couldn't say but it's irritating at best.
Final Word 8/10
Skyrim is a great game, I'm glad I bought it even at the price of $60. Normally I refuse to pay over $50 for a game but I almost feel like I went cheap by not paying more. However it has some serious flaws in the technical department and the approach to the PC market. Bethesda needs to get their act together a bit and spend the not exorbitant amount of time it takes to build a proper PC interface and do proper testing.
If you haven't already purchased Skyrim I doubt my review will sway you to and honestly I'm not sure it should. At least not until some of the patches are released and issues fixed. You've already missed the brand new release stage so what's another couple of weeks going to matter? On the other hand if you were planning on getting the game and are okay dealing with the issues mentioned above don't let this stop you. It is a great gameplay experience and will only get better once the inevitable wave of mods hits it.
