Skyrim

Skyrim, everyone has heard of it in fact you may not even know it. The chances are is that if you have been browsing the web or YouTube you have come across a reference without realising. An arrow to the Knee ring any bells? or Fus Ro Dah? According to Bethesda (Developer) they have got 3.4 million retail sales within the first 2 days of its release! Just to give some simple info on the game here is a quick checklist.

• It is available on PC, Xbox 360, PS3
• It is developed by Bethesda
• There are no guns
• You are Dragornborn
• It is Game of the year and deserves it
• The PC Mods are awesome
• To complete everything on the game you can take up to a few hundred hours
• The Majority of people you see will be Nord’s
• Fus Ro Dah
• Skyrim is located just north of Cyrodil and west of Morrowind

Skyrim starts off just the same as any other. You find yourself being captured by the Imperials and stuck in the back of a carriage going towards an imperial stronghold south of Skyrim. Upon arrival you will be confronted by a guard who asks, Who are You? You are then brought to the expansive creation screen which has an even larger selection than the previous installment in The Elder Scrolls Series Oblivion. You first get a pick of 7 races each with different leveled skills to start off. This is the only major decision that has too made early on in the game as your birth sign can be picked and changed any time during the game. The skills level up the same way as they did in Oblivion. The more you use a skill the higher it will get, after you have leveled up enough skills you then get the chance to level up. This lets you choose between Health, Magicka and Stamina. Each time you increase a level you can also pick a perk to enhance your character e.g.  20% more one-handed damage. There are a huge amount of perks to pick from, so many that you can easily specialize your character.

After choosing your characters race, gender and appearance you then have to complete a 20 minute introduction, as soon as this is over your are free to roam where ever you want. There are 9 Major Holds and many villages scattered across Skyrim. You could follow the storyline and go where the next mission tells you or you could climb the highest mountain and explore Dwemer Ruins. The amount to do is unbelievable. After playing Skyrim for over 100 hours my quest guide is still progressively getting more and more full of great quests to do. There are several quest lines, side quests and misc quests all of which are as immersive as the main story.  Bethesda also announced Radiant Story before its release which is an improvement from Radiant AI which was present on Oblivion. These quests are misc quests which are randomly given to you by the game and they are not set by the developers. For example a courier occasionally runs up to you with a letter and some may issue you to help a friend clear out a cave or some may be to deliver an item. These quests are entertaining but can get repetitive after time.

The Graphics on Skyrim have dramatically improved since Oblivion and the Game engine has too. instead of seeing caves which all look the same, each cave has a totally different appearance. Throughout all my playing time i have only come across 2 or 3 caves which look-alike. The same applied to Houses and structures. The Animation on Skyrim is still not perfect but you get more of a feel of satisfaction when you kill someone especially when its a finishing move.

It wouldn’t be long before the topic would be all about Dragons. Yes Dragons are a huge part of Skyrim even if you don’t want them to be they are. Dragons that are not in the story are driven by the new radiant story/AI system. It is random when they turn up and where. Dragon fights are intense and very interesting for the first few times but they can get dull later on as you begin to learn about how the dragon moves and attacks. After killing a the dragon you collect a dragon soul which can be used to unlock dragon shouts. But to unlock a dragon shout you must have discovered it. They can be found dotted around in caves, outdoors and throughout the main questline.

These are the main parts of the game but Bethesda have fitted far much more than previously mentioned. You can cook, go fishing, get married not to mention new great skills such as enchanting and smiting. On top of this there are some great features from fallout 3 which have been brought from Skyrim such as being able to have Companions. This is a great addition to Skyrim and the amount of companions is huge. Companions have different fighting methods  and you can even change what armor and weapons your companion are using! This review could go on for pages if i went into further detail. Wherever you look in the game you come across messages and books which all together will have taken weeks to write. Each book adds more and more depth in to the game.

Before concluding this review I will quickly analyze the combat on Skyrim. Dual wielding is great! This adds far more variety to the game you can have both a healing spell and an ice sword, a calm spell and a fire spell. The list is endless. This is a very cool system and I hope they bring dual wielding on to their next game.

As you can see I have been overwhelmed by all the good points and there are so little bad points about this game. Misc quests getting repetitive are expected because they can not make an infinite amount of quests different. The only other complaints that I can think of are a few bugs but now the majority of the bugs have been fixed. There are a few remaining such as the famous put a basket on someone’s head and steal something and flying in the air when you get killed by a giant. They are not major if anything they are funny and will be fixed in the near future. As well as all the content that is on Skyrim already, DLC has already been announced and is scheduled for release soon and if you are a PC user you will find yourself bathing in content with the thousands of mods already available. Hundreds are added daily and the modding community is consistently growing. If you like RPG games there is no reason why you will hate this game if anything it will be your favorite. My advice buy it while stocks last.