I bought this on Friday. I’ve never really been a fan of Bethesda’s RPGs until FO3. I never could get into Morrowind. I thought Oblivion was a bloated, aimless turd. I liked FO3, but then again I used to live in DC and that may have made the difference. But I decided to pull the trigger on Skyrim and give it a go. So, how does this Oblivion-hater like Skyrim? Read on, but the short answer is that it’s been a long, long time since I put in 28 hours in a game over a weekend.
From a systems standpoint, I know Skyrim is built on the old Fallout 3 engine, but it’s amazing how much they’ve cleaned it up. On my old computer (E6750 dual core @ 2.66GHz, 3G RAM, GForce 460 SE), I’m playing Skyrim on high settings with good performance. I’ve probably had half a dozen straight crashes to desktop, but I was able to start right up. I’ve encountered a couple of quest bugs, but nothing that prevented me from playing. I’ve seen a couple of bugs that I saw in FO3 (stuff floating in mid-air), but that’s been rare.
From a graphical standpoint, I’m amazed at what I’m seeing out of Skyrim. The game runs and looks great. Unlike the Oblivion computer-generated terrain that never looked right, you can tell Skyrim’s world has been lovingly hand-crafted. It’s a brilliant pallet of colors, textures and areas each distinct from one another. Mountains appropriately tower above my character with snow drifting in the howling wind. Butterflies flitter in the breeeze in the lower areas, landing on flowers that can be picked for potions. Massive creatures like Mammoths literally make the ground tremble as they approach. It’s a remarkable achievement in world building. I don’t think I’ve played a fantasy RPG with an open world this good since…dare I say it?..Ultima 7. That’s incredibly high praise from me, but the open world is just that good.
As I left my virtual house in Whiterun, I decided one morning to go mining. I knew (thanks to the hint guide, which is decent) that there were a couple of mines to the unexplored West, so I headed out that way. I figured I’d be there in a half an hour or so. Along the way, I solved a Vampire issue in a town, saw a couple of other towns, explored a cave or two, picked some herbs for potions and hunted some deer. But I kept pushing forward because I wanted to go mining. FOUR hours later, I finally arrived at the mines. The world is that much fun to explore…and it’s that big.
The sounds of the world are superb. The wind whistles through the mountain passes. The bombastic - but never distracting - music plays during combat, then dies down to a whisper that I’ve yet to grown tired of. Voice acting is generally well done, which makes the really poorly spoken lines stand out. But the voices and music really help set the tone in this Nordic adventure.
One of the problem areas of past Elder Scrolls games was the questing. It often wasn’t compelling, or well told, or there weren’t enough of them. It was up to the player to make the story. Here, the quests are quite good. There’s no “!” above quest-giver’s heads, so you’re going to have to do it the old-fashioned way - by talking to NPCs (even the guards). Do so and you’ll be rewarded with well-thought out quests. Most of them boil down to the normal Fed Ex quests (get my sword, deliver this letter), but you’ll often be rewarded with a good dungeon exploration or a beautiful vista along the way. Occasionally, there will be twists, which is why my character can sprout fangs and fur during a full moon. The main quest - of which I’m not that far through it yet - has been pretty good and I’ve almost forced myself not to play it because I want to savor the world. Overall, questing has been pretty average, but that’s a massive improvement over other Elder Scrolls games.
There’s a reason that questing doesn’t have to be the end-all-be-all in a game like Skyrim - there’s always something else to do. There’s so many activities here it’s incredible. Want to build your own armor and weapons? Then start mining, smelting and banging away on that forge. It’ll take a long time to get good, but you’ll be rewarded with some epic armor sets. Want to to bottle fame, brew glory, even put a stopper on death? You can do so…just head out to the countryside and start gathering herbs and other reagents. Cooking, enchanting and even wood chopping are all part of the world. They’re generally well done and help serve as valuable distractions to questing/exploring.
Leveling has been discussed elsewhere, so I’m not going into many details (plus, this is getting long). Suffice it to say I find Skyrim’s leveling system far superior than past Elder Scrolls games. I like how successful skill leveling helps push your character levels. I also like the ability to select talents each level from the many different talent trees. It’s a well-done system that rewards the player for trying new tactics, skills or even just sitting around and crafting.
I’m not done yet, so I can’t put a final stamp of approval on the game. Yet after 28 hours in the game, I can’t wait to get back into it. As it stands right now, I’ve already gotten my money’s worth and there’s there’s still so much to see and do. Boiling my experience thus far down to one sentence, I can sum up my Skyrim time with simply this - I feel like I’m playing one of the best RPGs of all time.
