Skyrim
The USA today gives it four stars. G4TV states, “One of the best games ever made.” IGN gives it a 9.5 out of 10. The list goes on and on, The Elder Scrolls VI, Skyrim, is a fantastic game and I couldn’t agree more. Skyrim is the greatest Elder Scrolls game to date and I will never forget it. It’s my childhood game and will be forever with me, for I knew it before it began. The game itself blows all others out of the water: Oblivion, Far Cry, and yes, even Fallout. And, perhaps the best thing about Skyrim, I never get bored, which spells the end of many a great game.
When I was little, I always pretended to be in a medieval realm with my sister. I usually was a dwarf (because I was small) and my sister, an elf. We always had loads of fun traversing landscapes filled with wild creatures (squirrels or birds) and unsuspected allies (our dog or a parent). One day, I thought, if only this could be real, I would be so happy, peaceful, and thrilled at the same time. And then it did. When I saw the trailer for Skyrim, my eyes teared and I could only watch through blurred, awestruck vision as the protagonist, the Dragonborn, used The Voice to quell a dragon and I could have sworn it struck me as well. There was no way I was going to let this game slip through my fingers. I bought it for 60 bucks and I can say with 100% confidence that no one regretted the same decision that I made.
Ever since I bought Skyrim I was connected to it. This game is unbelievable. The landscape itself is astronomically insane, the province of Skyrim, or otherwise known as the Fatherland, is a mountainous, wild region, and it’s where the game takes place. It seems pretty hard to create mountains, rivers, valleys, and forests right? But they did it perfectly. Todd Howard, the game director of Skyrim,stated in an interview that every design was hand drawn and then computer generated into the game. They also generated the sound, nothing is silent in Skyrim: the rivers gurgle, the birds sing, the deer grunt and snort, the wind whistles through the mountain passes. The first person experience seems as if the gamer can reach out and touch the bark or feel the splash of the water as they dive in. The tundra looks like tundra, The mountains definitely look like mountains, the cities are always a hive of vivid activity. No blockiness or smudged textures are ever present. Every detail is crisp and clear as if this world is the real world.
Another amazing quality Bethesda, the makers of the game, has mastered is the gameplay. The world flows seamlessly. The gamer can easily flit from one conversation to another or end one with a swift sword stroke. Combat in general is extremely smooth. No lag is ever created during combat so the gamer feels as if it is reality. The controls are simple, the right trigger controls the right hand while the left trigger, the left one. This allows for numerous combinations of weapons are able to be equipped. The gamer can easily wield a sword and shield, or two swords at once, want magic in both hands, sure, magic in one with an axe in the other? Why not. They can even go fisticuffs and punch people to death. Not only are there numerous weapon combinations, the enemies themselves also are diverse: giants, mammoths, undead, hostile animals like predators, wizards, bandits, and of course, dragons. Skyrim can also be very challenging. The combat difficulty can be changed at any time, even in combat. Dungeons can be very tricky and a little frustrating, but not nearly as bad as Zelda. In fact, I’d say Skyrim is somewhat in between Zelda and GTA, but it has so many more features that it probably isn’t.
Everything about Skyrim is amazing, but I feel that the best part of Skyrim is it’s freedom; the gamer can do absolutely anything. When it starts off, the gamer can choose his preferred race, each with its own unique skill set. Then he can continue from there and hone those skills or try out new ones. He can follow quest lines or simply go roaming and adventure the wild and vicious region. The gamer can basically do anything they want: they can invest in a shop or steal from it, he can make potions or enchants weapons and armor to increase their value, he can learn how to be invisible or charge in with a giant club. Another factor that makes the game great is how long the game is. There are 244 quests and 150 dungeons in Skyrim, based on Bethesda’s game facts. To shed some more light, it took me about 30 game hours to get my character to level 48 with about half of the major quest lines completed, that is crazy! Coming back to the leveling up portion, which I believe makes the game great and adds to it’s longevity. Each time the character levels up, it earns 1 perk point to spend a perk on a perk tree. The higher the skill on a certain skill, the more perks the character can earn. They can’t just learn expert destruction spells with level 22 destruction, but they could if their skill was around 70. Each time a skill is increased, it adds to the character’s total level and helps it level up. As shown, it takes a considerable amount of time to level and only adds to the game’s life. Personally, I like my character to have all the perks I want it to have before I complete a quest line for there are bosses for each quest line and I want my character to be it’s strongest so it can face the strongest character in the questline. The gamer is so caught up in getting their character that good that the chance of finishing the game or being bored by it is slim to none.
Skyrim will always have a place in my gaming career because somehow I knew it was going to be good before it was created, the game itself is spectacular, and because of it’s sheer ability to keep the gamer in his/her chair for as long as possible. Sadly Skyrim does have an Achilles Heel; it’s loading screens are rather long. But even then Bethesda filled them with neat little fun facts about the game with a nice picture to complement it. Skyrim is one of the greatest games ever made and I highly recommend it to anyone. One thing is for sure, those who do buy it won’t take “an arrow to the knee.”