ErikaSzabo
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Think back to the beginning of The Elder Scrolls series when Arena first emerged on store shelves. The cover had it all: a scantly clad blonde barbarian babe flirtatiously leered in the forefront as a mage, knight and warrior stood anxiously, ready for combat. Arena never actually looked quite this epic – the graphics were crude, with landscapes represented by blocky, coloured squares. Luckily, gamers overlooked the crudeness and went for the big picture: the spirit of it all. Arena was a novelistic and participatory experience: a world.
This sense of escapism is what sets the series apart from most other Action RPGs, providing gamers with a myriad of spells, abilities, actions, classes and locales to choose from. The experience is extremely daunting, to say the least, but that’s never stopped anyone interested in playing the series. Since its inception, Elder Scrolls has reached monumental heights, establishing itself as one of the most important series out today.
The fifth installment begins with you bound and on your way to the chopping block for a crime you may or may not have committed, and what follows is an intricate story about civil conflict, history and myths. The province of Skyrim has many options in store, with an endless array of mission-based side quests and class building. The choice is yours what you do on your path – the possibilities are tremendous.
Unlike the past installments in the series, Skyrim has completely removed classes, instead aiming for a perk tree system where the more you use particular skills the more experience points you accumulate to use in the perk tree. For instance, if you use lots of destructive spells you gain Destruction points to use in that particular perk tree in your Skills menu, this way you can increase the power/range/status effects of your spells. New perks can only be unlocked when you level up and you only get the opportunity to use one perk per level. Of course, you always have the option of saving your experience points for later level ups in order to use more than one, but it doesn’t really affect the gameplay in any way.
Another cool new addition is the ability to dual-wield – whether it be dual weapons, weapon and shield, weapon and spell or dual spells. It adds a little bit more variety in your attack choices and makes battles less redundant and mindless. And if that weren’t enough, you also have the option of using your dragon shout ability, which isn’t considered a spell so doesn’t need to be exchanged with anything else.
With that in mind, it’s a given that we talk about dragon battles. It should come as no surprise that these battles offer some of the most epic moments in the game – although technically every aspect of this game is pretty epic whether you’re sneaking through heavily guarded estates or searching for sacred heirlooms in long-abandoned ruins. While these battles offer some added variety, they unfortunately do start becoming repetitive after the first few fights. Of course, dragon fights are fairly seldom so that sense of repetition doesn’t linger for too long.
The crafting system is another new addition, or rather expansion, to the Elder Scrolls series, something that will seem all too familiar if you’ve played Fallout: New Vegas. Throughout the game you will find several crafting tables, whether it’s one based on enchanting, smelting, blacksmithing, armouring, sharpening and many more. While you had the option to craft in past games there was never this much variety.
The character design in Skyrim is another very notable feature, and a good one at that. This time around the characters are smoother, more stylized compared to the somewhat terrifying realism of Cyrodiil’s fine folk in Oblivion. This style much better suites the fantasy atmosphere and while the experience becomes engrossing regardless of the graphical prowess it’s still a nice touch to an already expansive and atmospheric game.
Several changes have also been made to the user interface of Skyrim, with some better than others. Skyrim’s minimalist UI is a nice change of pace in the series, but because the status menu has been wiped from the game screen (unless you’re actually using your stamina, magicka or losing/gaining health in which it will appear on the bottom half of your screen) monitoring your status can be a little tedious in that you constantly need navigate to the menu in order to see it. Not only that but the menus give you sparse details on what you carry. While Oblivion’s UI was awkward enough, at least it provided you with more info. Of course, the UI does become easier to deal with in time, but only because you have to deal with it. One addition that is actually more helpful than annoying is the quick selecting, a returning feature in the UI. This time around it’s done so by favouriting different spells etc, which you can then access on the directional pad. While those are only a few of the many UI features, they definitely are the biggest losses and gains.
Personally, I don’t think these changes were made in happenstance either, Bethesda clearly had a goal to “commercialize” the series so it would better suite a wider audience. Skyrim is still a very elaborate game, but compared to installments like Arena, Daggerfall and Morrowind, this installment in the series is much more watered down and seems as though it’s trying to steer away from the hardcore niche fantasy RPG setting. That’s not necessarily a bad idea either, in fact, it’s a strategic plan at that, but the experience does become more self-contained and loses substantial content (though you would never believe it). What’s ironic is that while these changes are made to make the game more accessible, they also make the experience more cumbersome.
Of course, take that thought with a grain of salt. Skyrim is an immersive game and is a definite improvement from Oblivion for many reasons but once you start comparing the newer releases with the old, conflicts can’t help but arise. It’s something that many of us don’t want to think about, but being aware of the changes and limitations doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. Besides, if you enjoy the game, you enjoy the game – it’s as simple as that.
This new installment in The Elder Scrolls series truly makes you feel as though you are in an entirely new world. That world is immersive, atmospheric and, at times, challenging. While there are definitely some very apparent problems (the glitches aren’t even worth mentioning, they’re pretty much a given) there are also many wonderful new features in store too. But one of Skyrim’s biggest accomplishments, one that distinguishes it, has to be its deep-rooted spirit, a spirit that’s been absent since the release of Morrowind. Skyrim is well worth the time and patience, it’s just a matter of discovering those moments of wonder and fantasy.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is available on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. You can find this mesmerizing new addition to the series on Future Shop's product page.
