I went to work on Saturday, expecting the worst. Imagine how terrified I was when my fears turned out to be true: the release of Skyrim in Nova Scotia had brought a flurry of costumers just waiting to dive into Bethesda’s virtual crack stash once more, and I was at the front lines. Everything was chaotic, dramatic, over-the-top, and needless, but it was all so worth it. Giving into the hype, I decided to purchase a copy myself, despite having been disappointed with Oblivion years and years ago.
Thank God I did.
Having only put roughly eleven hours into my game so far, I can only give a modest impression that doesn’t quite capture just exactly how good this game is. I don’t even think a full play-through could justify an accurate review. All I know what to say is the game is exceedingly excellent, raising all bars that Bethseda had set in terms of gameplay, quality, and storytelling in Morrowind and Fallout 3. The game also dramatically improves every facet of Oblivion, choosing to reinvent the once boorish conversation elements and polishing the spectacle of the series’ signature real-time combat. Skyrim is extremely satisfying in these regards. Hell, even the trademark Bethesda bugs are seemingly squashed, at least in what I’ve played so far.
The randomness of the Elder Scrolls games would sometimes lead to some pretty punishing bugs and infuriating save-losses, but in Skyrim it seems the developers have fixed these problems to a large extent. For example, I traveled to the College of Winterfold to learn magic and, lo and behold, one of the game’s many, many (superbly designed) dragons descended to rain chaos upon the school of mages. I’m not completely sure if this was a random event, but the encounter handled itself pretty well and gave the illusion that it was unscripted. The only problem I have (and this is a very minor problem at that) is that the dragon’s skeleton spawns in a totally different place in the school than where I murdered its sorry ass. And it does this every time I go to the location. I made sure I drained the bastard of all its loot, but its empty carcass still insists on chilling in the courtyard, and every NPC in the area just pretends it’s a giant ornament.
Another minor pet peeve is the save system, which I both applaud and despise. For some reason, I absolutely hate getting killed. The actual act of dying, however, doesn’t really bother me, but the process of reloading auto-saves that you know are five or ten or twenty minutes behind is kind of grueling. Now, I realize that Bethesda has tried to remedy this by including three auto-save slots, but it still doesn’t record your game data fast enough. The intervals need to be smaller, like one to three minutes short so that I don’t lose my patience and have to start from the dungeon entrance again. Granted the game is so streamlined and rewarding that this is really a non-issue, and you shouldn’t have any problems at all if you save compulsively, which this game really encourages.
Otherwise, Skyrim is a beautifully crafted game. Well, so long as you overlook some technical infidelities like blurry textures, but again that’s hard to judge considering the bug that’s currently present in the Xbox version of the game that prevents textures from loading. The art direction is still fantastic despite this ongoing glitch: everything looks like it belongs in the world and everything meshes together well. It’s extremely pleasing to my eyes, except for the rare instance of climbing a mountain with geometry and textures that resemble an obscure N64 game.
Play it, as soon as you fucking can.
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