WATCH THE SKIES
Skyrim is the very first real open world sandbox game I’ve played. I’m aware the Arkham games are sort of sandboxy, but they’re not really the same. (actually Sim City is sort of an open world thing, but also shush). I’m saying this as some of the things I think of as issues with Skyrim are probably issues with this sort of game altogether and I might just not be aware of them because I’m used to my LINEAR NARRATIVE JAPES.
It was really interesting playing Skyrim after Dragon Age II. DAII is, in many ways, a massive departure from traditional fantasy tropes, while Skyrim is very traditional in its story. You are the only one who can save the world, you’re super special and awesome and cool and junk. It’s slightly funny how you can be the chosen one/leader of so many organisations around Skyrim. The plot is fun and engaging, it has a bit of false urgency towards the end, but it’s a pretty standard fantasty plot, it has a few twists and turns but it’s not particularly notable.
What is notable about Skyrim is its absolute vastness. It’s almost too vast and it supplies constant things to do. Once you complete some questlines you can have an endless source of ‘radiant’ quests where you go to a random location to kill a random thing and then come back for gold. There are hundreds of locations in Skyrim, many having multiple levels full of monsters that respawn. There is almost too much content. I have completed the main plot and the 5 main incidental plots but I feel like I have easily missed more than half of the game, there is just so much in it.
Levelling in Skyrim is simply great. You have 18 skills, 6 magey , 6 warriory and 6 roguey. Each one has 100 points, and as you get better at each skill you increase in level. This allows you to increase your health, magick or stamina. Each increase in level also gives you a perk which you can spend to improve one of your skills, so you can make spells do more damage, or make sneaking easier. You can make skills “legendary” multiple times if you want. This resets the skill and allows you to rebuild it if you want to get more levels. It’s simple and effective as a system. There are three crafting skills, so you can make potions, equipment and enchant it and make more powerful stuff as you go on.
Combat is all in real time and you can do it in first person or over the shoulder. You can equip an item or spell in each hand and then you use those items or spells to make the opponents more dead than you. Combat is tricky but fun. Early in the game you can often find the boss of a dungeon is just miles out of your weight class, or stumble upon some super tough foe, but the game does a really good job of levelling enemies so you constantly have a challenge, even at the higher levels.
Skyrim has a great approach to loot. You have a very limited carrying capacity and brilliantly shops have limited amounts of coin and will only buy particular items. So early on, if you find powerful stuff, you won’t meet anyone who can afford it. It makes gathering funds really tricky early on and there’s a real difficulty which I find ace.
The chief issue with the mechanics of the game are the bugs. It’s really easy to save and be unaware of the bugs as they’re seldom game crashing, more just irritating but it’s sensible to have multiple saves unlike idiotic me with an individual one that causes upset regularly.
The vastness of Skyrim also causes its second issue. It’s a bit hard to engage with the characters when there’s so much going on. The voice acting is a bit patchy too, which doesn’t help at all in the developing meaningful relationships with the people of Skyrim. You can get married, which involves putting on a special necklace, having a chat to someone and then you’re wed. It’s a little unengaging emotionally.
It must also be said that Skyrim is pleasingly progressive. A game set in basically Scandinavia has a pretty good excuse for making the majority of its characters white, but does a good job of mixing it up. The world is populated by a wide variety of people and weddings cover any orientation. There’s not really any chainmail bikinis either which is neat. I’ve not really heard much praise for Bethseda on this front and so wanted to just voice it here.
What makes the people of Skyrim really impressive is that they’re all basically alive. There’s a real sense that the world is existing and living without you in this game. You will stumble across animals hunting in the wilderness, if you visit a town people will be in the midst of a daily routine and it’s absolutely thrilling when you see a dragon fighting giants in the countryside and it has nothing at all to do with you.
My personal issue with Skyrim is that the game seems to want you to be more villainous than I like to be in RPGs. There are crime achievements and big side plots from the Thieves’ Guild and (what is essentially) the Assassin’s Guild. I am an achievement obsessive so I did these before reloading over the game, and the Thieves’ questline is needlessly long. Just ridiculously trying. Another achievement gripe, if you make the wrong choice in the main quest and pick the wrong side in the Civil War, you basically lose the chance to get another achievement.
I wasn’t really blown away by Skyrim. I enjoyed it, but never really loved it. I felt oddly emotional distant (when normally I connect emotionally to almost anything). It’s an undeniably dazzling technical achievement and it’s an excellent game, but it’s never going to be one of my favourites.
My Feelings on Things 