The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the fifth title in a series of single-player role playing games (RPG) from Bethesda. This series started back in 1994 with The Elder Scrolls: Arena and continued with Daggerfall, Morrowind, and eventually Oblivion. Everyone seems to have a favorite but with the last couple releases, it appears that this franchise is becoming more and more of a powerhouse name in the gaming industry. Bethesda Game Studios has also recently made Fallout 3 with their recently acquired license which was a huge critical and commercial success. This console generation, Bethesda has been leading with quality content and leading the industry with pioneering episodic downloadable content. Can The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim continue the momentum that they have garnered thus far?

The game starts out with you as a prisoner of the Imperial Army in the province of Skyrim, 200 years after the events of Oblivion. You were caught along with a group of rebels known as the Stormcloaks who are fighting for the freedom of Skyrim. Once at an Imperial camp, you are sentenced to death along with the rebels but before your execution can be performed, a dragon arrives and disrupts it. After escaping, you’re now a free man (or woman). Dragons, who were once just folktales, now roam the land. Skyrim is falling into a civil war. It is up to you to choose a path. Join guilds. Take sides in the war. And ultimately deal with the dragon threat. The game has multitudes of stories. The main quest deal with the coming back of the dragons and it is fairly good. The largest issue with the stories is the lack of perceived impact on the world. Despite making what appear to be drastic changes to the world, nothing appears to change. Everything continues as normal. The stories themselves are nice and have depth. The issue is in the execution of gameplay and the lack of the world changing with your actions.

There are some major changes in the gameplay compared with the previous iterations of this series. It is still an open world first-person role-playing but in Oblivion and Morrowind before it, you had to make some big decisions prior to starting the game. You had to pick your race, class, attributes, major and minor skills, and which astrological start you wished to be born under. This set you on a path that was hard to deviate from. Your entire game was practically already mapped out. Here you just pick your class. Depending on your race, your skills will differ slightly but all classes are entirely viable with any play style. Attributes are completely gone. You will no longer have to strategically level your character to make the best build. The astrological signs can now be accessed in the game world by finding and activating stones. Whenever you want to switch, just go and activate another stone. When you level up you simply choose between more magicka, health, or stamina and choose which perk to unlock. In Oblivion, perks were unlocked at predetermined levels with no choice of what it would be. In Skyrim, you get a perk every character level and as long as you meet the prerequisite skill level for a perk in a skill, you can unlock it. This works really well as the entire game is open to you at all time. I started playing a Nord thinking I would focus on dual wielding swords and ended up drifting to become a stealth assassin with my bow with a dabbling in destruction magic. You wouldn’t be able to do this easily before but now you have the freedom to play how you want whenever you want. Every skill is viable from the get go. There is no painstakingly leveling something with the hope of it becoming better later. You’re never penalized for drifting in your path, only rewarded. In Skyrim, everything just works.

Admittedly, combat was never really Morrowind’s forte and was largely fixed in Oblivion. Well, Skyrim continues the evolution and is the best yet. Each hit connects so you will never be frustrated. For melee combat, regular attacks can be done an unlimited amount of times but if you choose, you can execute power attacks. These attacks use up your stamina and will cause a devastating amount of damage. Magic attacks use your magicka. Potions can replenish these two reserves but time will also. The best part of the new combat system is that you can mix and match nearly every system in the game. Want to dual wield swords? Done. Want to wield a sword and a spell? Done. Nearly any combination will work and it adds considerably to the variability of the game. I typically snuck around with my bow and arrow but once I was discovered and enemies got within striking distance, I switched to dual destruction magic or dual swords to kick some ass. The system to switch is elegantly crafted and can be switched quickly via a favorites menu meaning you’ll never leave combat for more than a couple seconds.

Overall the quests found in Skyrim are much better than those found in Oblivion but they never quite ascend to the level of its bests. If you boil most of them down, they are typically fetch quests or kill someone or everyone but the magic of the world makes it all feel okay. The world and its locations all feel unique and handcrafted. This is probably the core difference maker. You have the sense of mystery and amazement as you go from place to place. Similar to Fallout 3, you will sometimes craft your own personal quests like investigating a mysterious structure in the distance or challenge yourself to make it to a specific part of the map. The part that lets you down in the quests and random dungeons are the lack of good loot. The items you receive are almost always leveled to you which mean you never get anything mind-blowing or even worth switching out what you already have. This is similar to Oblivion but some of the guild finales were so masterfully done, you forgot everything that preceded that and unfortunately at the end of this show, nothing comes close to touching the magic that they presented.

Whenever you get a quest, it will go into your quest log. They are separated into major quests and miscellaneous quests. If they are simple one step quests, they will probably be filed in the later. Each one will have a little description and if you wish to pursuit it, mark it as an active quest. This will place a beacon on your map and help guide you to where you need to be. The system works great and the only complaint is that there are so many quests in this title that if you don’t actively complete them, you’ll have tons. Luckily scrolling through them is a breeze and the thought of the game ending anytime soon fades quickly.

One of the issues with Skyrim, and similarly Oblivion, is the leveled loot. Completing a long quest or finishing a long dungeon should reward you with great goodies but you never feel that in this game. They typically are moderately better than what you already have if not worse, leaving you disappointed. In Oblivion, you could beat the game at level 2 because of this system. The challenge in Skyrim is much better balanced but it doesn’t feel as satisfying as the Bethesda Fallout series or Morrowind.

Overall the core gameplay changes to the Elder Scroll format will lead to a lot more fun and a lot more variation than any of the prior titles in this series. The quests are of a higher quality and the combat is the best yet. The problem will be after you sink an immense amount of time into the title and start to realize that the loot is leveled, meaning you will rarely get anything worthy out of sinking a lot of time in a dungeon or long quest. Some will not even be bothered by this but it will displease fans of traditional RPGs. In all though, this game is addicting and most will easily sink over 50 hours in it. If the leveled loot doesn’t bother you, prepare to double that with ease if not more.

We have had some breathtaking games this generation. It seems every year I tell myself that it can’t get any better than this. Well Skyrim proves it does get better. You can still see the telltale ticks of the Oblivion engine under the hood but the comparison between that title and this is simply amazing. The world feels alive. The cities and dungeons all feel unique. The region is mountainous and the view distance is set extremely far. Characters look a lot better and are animated more realistically. Weapons look great. Randomly a death strike on an enemy will trigger a special death animation that looks great. Playing the game in third-person is actually viable this time around but still not perfect. The view angle is also quite narrow so if games like Halo 2 made you feel claustrophobic, this game might do the same. Also there are the occasional graphical glitches but with open world titles, I have never seen one that did not have some present. There was also some rare crashing but it seemed associated with using party chat with a friend because it happened twice while talking to him and never before or since. Considering this is a Bethesda title, the lack of bugs, glitches, and crashes is amazing. Overall, Skyrim is an amazing accomplishment in graphical design, especially considering this is on the Xbox 360 and on a single DVD disc.

Great sound design brings Skyrim to life. The ambient sounds are great and varied. The weapons and magic all sound meaty and powerful. The voice acting is generally pretty good. At times certain phrases can get repetitive and some are over the top. The real ace in the whole is the music. It sends chills down your spin with how well it is produced. It is fully orchestrated and sounds amazing. Game soundtracks have been blurring the lines between game music and movie music for a while but I bet most would find the selection in title to be indistinguishable. Overall, I hope you have a great sound system because this world is beautiful and the sound brings it to life.

Bethesda did an amazing job with this title. The world feels alive with its mythology and detail. Half the fun is just exploring and discovering random events and dungeons. It’s just like Fallout 3 where you saw something in the distance and started your own personal quest to figure out what it is. Then on top of that, there have been a slew of gameplay changes that take the chore out of the Elder Scrolls games. You don’t have to strategically level your character or worry about what class plays best which what race. It just works. On the other side, the game still automatically levels the world to you. It is not as bad as Oblivion but the one that hits home the hardest is the leveled loot. Once you finish the main quests, there is not much to push you to discover the rest of the world without the promise of epic treasure at the end of the rainbow. Now most won’t care about this and even if you do, you will still sink so many hours into this game you’ll be embarrassed to tell anyone. The graphics are amazing. Looking back on Oblivion is truly feels like comparing the first Splinter Cell with Chaos Theory. Even with the same engine underneath, it looks leaps and bounds better. Sound design brings the world to life and the music is beautifully orchestrated. Overall the core gameplay changes to the Elder Scroll format will lead to a lot more fun and a lot more variation than any of the prior titles in this series. This game is simply addicting and most will easily sink over 50 hours in it. If the leveled loot doesn’t bother you, prepare to double that with ease if not more. Be it just a walk through the world or questing through dungeons, Skyrim holds the key to some serious fun.

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