The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Review

• Developer: Bethesda Softworks
• Publishers: Bethesda
• Platforms: PC, Playstation 3, Xbox 360
• Genres: Action, Adventure, RPG
• Release Dates: 11 November 2011

This review is for the Xbox 360 version of the game.

You could use a whole host of words to describe a series like The Elder Scrolls. ‘Vast’ would be one of them. ‘Immersive’ would be another. What you could never describe them as, at least a few years ago, is ‘Mainstream’. All that changed very early in the current console generation, when the fourth in the series, Oblivion, found it’s way onto the Xbox 360 at a time when there was literally nothing else compelling for people to play on their shiny new contraption. This exposed the series to a completely new demographic of console gamers – a lot of them unfamiliar even with the RPG genre, let alone this particular series – and ultimately helped Bethesda become the well-respected company they are today.

Towns now feel like an actual community, rather than just a collection of NPC's.

Skyrim picks up 200 or so years after Oblivion, with a bitter political struggle between the oppressive Imperial Legion and the rebel Stormcloak Alliance raging and your adventurer en route to execution for an unspecified crime. I decided that my character, Rutherford Flask, had stolen the Gold-plated catheter of a rich old mill owner called Basil – but there’s no limit outside of your own imagination. Mere seconds before the axe falls on your doomed neck, an enormous Dragon (previously thought to be extinct) attacks the town. The unexpected hysteria and confusion lets you slip away to freedom, and out into the vast, daunting landscape of Skyrim.

At this point, the game opens up into -quite literally- a world of possibilities.  The key word here, as with Bethesda’s other efforts, is ‘choice’. Choice, choice and buckets more of choice. You can do whatever the hell you want, without any fear of being penalised or punished. Well, at least from a mechanical perspective – you’ll still get arrested if you shoot someone’s cow in the head with a fireball. One main objective will always be present in your quest log, but you’re never forced to follow it. Obviously, you can choose to pursue it immediately if you want, uncovering the epic story of the ‘Dragonborn’ –  but you’re equally welcome to wander off into the wilderness with the sole intention of sticking your Steel Sword of Draining up a Cave Bear’s arse. This is an experience that adheres to your whims, however depraved and unusual they may be.

The character models (such as this Orc) have been vastly improved, though the Elves still look absolutely ridiculous.

Under the hood, a lot of changes have been made to the levelling and class systems since Oblivion, in ways that really feel like a significant step forward for the series. Instead of simply picking a pre-determined ‘class’, you start out as a blank canvas. From there, you level up your skill sets simply by using them. Do you want to be an all-powerful, lightning-flinging battle-wizard? Then throw on some robes and start using destruction magic whenever you can. Want to be a hawk-eyed,  black-cloaked sniper assassin? Then pick up a bow and start sneaking up on your enemies. It’s a tight, entirely organic system that happily supports every possible permutation of play style. Perhaps you want to beef up your two-handed skill to take down Dragons easier? Just put down your dagger, pick up a Warhammer and start swinging.

Achieving a new level will award you a point to spend on your various skill trees (displayed in the form of constellations), which house a few neat perks to help you in your chosen field of combat. Magic and stealth now feel like legitimately balanced career-paths, and perks like zooming in with bows or double-casting a spell (amplfying it’s power) make them a good fallback in tight spots. I never used Magic or stealth an awful lot in games like these, I was always a juggernaut kind of guy, but Skyrim‘s vastly improved class system makes it very easy to try your hand at other paths halfway through a game. The actual combat, should you decide to pursue a melee focused approach, still feels a little bit stagnant – but this is mainly due to the distinct lack of weight or impact behind each strike.

Giants are normally peaceful. Until you fire a lightning bolt at their head, of course.

The newly introduced critical-hit ‘finishers’ add a small pinch of savagery to fights, but not quite enough that it ever feels sufficiently brutal. When was the last time you read a Robert E. Howard novel that went; “Conan swung his Greatsword from side to side like a deranged pendulum while running backwards”. The sooner someone at Bethesda loses their mind and adds dismemberment to an Elder Scrolls game, the sooner I retire from human life and live inside my Xbox.

Another new addition to Skyrim are  ’Dragon Shouts’, which basically act as an additional magical power on top of your equip-able spells. They vary in scope and usefulness – from fire breath to slowing down time momentarily – but it’s always a thrill to unlock a new one and test it out on some innocent livestock. I realised how in love I was with this game when one of my shouts (the already infamous ‘Unrelenting Force’) sent a herd of cows and several chickens arcing through the air like a macabre ballet, and the entire village went completely fucking nuts and killed me.

But let’s be honest, if you played Oblivion – and by ‘played’, I mean ‘sunk between 80-120 hours of your valuable life into’ – then there’s one thing you’re here for more than anything else. It’s not the combat. It’s not the class system. It’s not the graphics, or even the loot. It’s the opportunity to be part of a beautifully rendered world, filled to the brim with mystery, intrigue, danger and even comedy within every nook and cranny you might wander into. What Skyrim fits into one disc on six-year-old hardware is frankly a miracle in itself, and when you actually step back and consider the quality of content it delivers alongside the quantity, the mind boggles. Aside from the main questline there are hundreds upon hundreds of side quests to take part in. Amongst them is a return for the much loved ‘guild quests’ –  including the Thieves Guild and The Dark Brotherhood – but also various smaller objectives that are so inconsequential to the narrative they get filed under ‘Miscellaneous’ in the actual quest log.

I don't think this is going to go well for that guy.

It feels like each individual quest may not quite live up to some of Oblivion‘s more incredible moments, but the stories and settings of Skyrim are of a much higher overall standard than it’s predecessor. It can sometimes feel like you’re buried under a huge laundry list of objectives -a common problem with Bethesda titles-  thanks to every man and his dog wanting to hire you for some rudimentary task or another, but having too much to do is hardly a legitimate criticism for a game where the initial appeal is it’s length.

There are also a few tertiary activities to indulge in when the slaying and adventuring becomes too much for you, such as Smithing, Enchanting and Alchemy. The former is by far the most interesting, as Smithing allows you to improve your weapons and armour at Forges littered throughout the world. As your skill in smithing increases, you gain the ability to forge more epic equipment  like Daedric or Dragon items. Arcane Enchanters allow you to destroy any magical items you have in your inventory in order to ‘learn their secrets’. From then on you can choose to apply that enchantment onto any other weapon, increasing it’s capacity for death. Alchemy, as you might have guessed, sees you mashing up all kinds of claws, teeth and arses into worryingly coloured potions and poisons. In all honesty, you could probably get by without approaching any of these activities, but it is nice to know they’re there if you get overwhelmed by the endless Dragons, Giants and Trolls who want you to die hideously.

Some of the lighting and vistas are breathtaking. Here's Skyrim's version of the Northern Lights.

The new graphics engine sitting at the core of the game is a joy to behold – especially after realising during Fallout: New Vegas how rough the last one looked. It still suffers from frequent glitches, as is par for the course with such a huge open-world game, some of which are downright hilarious (a troll launching you 800 feet in the air in one blow), and some of them absolutely maddening (getting stuck in the geometry and having to load a 2 hour old save). Loading times are absolutely massive, and during some of the more ‘fetch’ style missions that require a lot of fast travelling it can become infuriating to endure them. Installing the game reduces the load times slightly, but also causes severe texture issues for most people on the Xbox version.

Having played Oblivion, and realising at some point that the entire world was populated by about four voice actors, it’s refreshing to see that Skyrim also has a much larger portfolio of actors at it’s disposal. A few repeated lines of dialogue break the immersion sometimes (it would seem every guard in the game has been shot in the knee with an arrow), and it’s also very common for a random NPC to wander into the middle of a conversation you’re having and start talking at you, turning an important speech into a hideous cacophany of noises. In all honesty though, these relatively small niggles are buried under an enormous avalanche of successes and a gorgeous, magnificent world. To give you some indication of how much of a time-vampire Skyrim actually is, I’ve put in nearly 70 hours and haven’t even finished the main story quest yet.

To put it in no uncertain terms, you won’t find a game with as much value for money as this one – I mean, for the same amount of money, you could have accidentally purchased The Black Eyed Peas Experience. What monster would wish that on another human being? If the age of high adventure and the clash of steel on steel gets your blood pumping, then Skyrim might be hardcore pornography. Aside from a few technical flaws, it’s an absolute triumph in almost every way, and you’re doing yourself a disservice as a gamer if you let it slip by in the holiday rush. Now, if you’ll just excuse me, I’m going to make a nice cup of tea and get straight back to hunting rabbits with a mace.