Spearheading a year of evolution, revolution, and profound gaming excellence, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a pristine role-playing game that gets almost everything right. What Skyrim doesn't do right, it does it in the rightest way possible, allowing for an experience beyond anything ever before expressed in the gaming world.
As a gamer, I have tended to go for more casual, easy-going, multiplayer centric games in recent times, playing games like LittleBgPlanet, Fifa, and Rock Band (although I have played Infamous and Uncharted). For this reason, Skyrim was a completely new experience for me. Having never touched an Elder Scrolls game, Skyrim made me feel somewhat left out from a long-running tale of lore, myth, and fantasy. Luckily, this game is idiosyncratic enough to allow gamers to jump in and play, as it refers to ancient lore from previous games while containing a Lord-of-the-Rings-esque story if it's own. Skyrim's graphics are solid, it's music flawless, and it's gameplay astounding. But what makes Skyrim stand out is not it's production value or it's thrilling combat, it's Skyrim's awe-inspiring amount of missions, allowing hundreds of hours to be drafted into the game- each of of them more exciting than the last.
GRAPHICS
Bethesda's games are not usually noted for their graphical intensity, but they have always been solid. Everything in Skyrim is polished and the world looks amazing in it's full wonder. Some parts if the game are prone to glitches, with the odd frame-rate stumble now and again that becomes more frequent as the game progresses and the save file enlarges. With this easily patchable flaw aside, however, Skyrim is graphically impressive- it's presentable, atmospheric, and well-toned.
SOUND & MUSIC
It is impressive how Bethesda had the time to put in over 100 locations, 1000 missions, dozens of dragon boss fights and thousands of NPCs into a game and still produce an astounding soundtrack. One of my friends actually mistook the sounds of my brother playing Skyrim for the music from the Lord of the Rings- revealing the power of the music, the epic symphonies that are instrumental to the behemoth that is Skyrim. This titanic soundtrack is boosted by good weapon sounds, great ambient effects, and fitting (yet increasingly repetitive) voiceovers.
STORY
In Skyrim you get to create your own character. You choose the looks and race and name, and then begin life as an adventurer. The story takes place in the titular realm, Skyrim, where a bloody civil war is raging, only made worse by the revival of the long dead dragon race. You, the last of the almighty "dragon borns" must use your power of the "voice"- the language of dragons, to use "shouts"- dragon powers, to defeat the dragons and put an end to the madness. On the way you can help out many of the local Jarls (akin to mayors or governors) of towns, become Thanes (nobles) of towns, help out civilians, join guilds (The Thieves Guild, the Companions Warrior Guild, The Dark Brotherhood, and many more). Along the way you'll do missions in a plethora of locations, buy horses, houses, weapons, items, armor, food and animals, and tone your skills in fighting, magic, lock-picking, and many other areas. You can even get married, become a student, and fight villains from trolls to vampires, You'll meet witches, mammoths, pilgrims, salesmen, and priests, and you'll go to and escape jail, bribe guards, and hire guards of your own. Skyrim is something else- a game that could only be gotten if you went to an alchemy lab and mixed Fallout, The Sims, Grand Theft Auto, Lord of the Rings, and Final Fantasy into one game and multiplied it by ten. Skyrim is 9000 times better than Duke Nukem Forever and it spent half the time to create. It's incredible.
GAMEPLAY
Control-wise, Skyrim is nothing new- L1 and R1 are the attack buttons (each hand respectively), and each can be equipped to combat weapons or magic powers (however there are powerful but slow two-handed weapons). Players can use first or third person, and have the ability to pick up items, talk with people, jump, run (a stamina bar checks this), wait, sleep, move items, sneak, lock-pick, attack, travel to locations, shoot arrows in first person, train in skills, absorb dragon souls, do magic, climb mountains, swim, aim, steal, cheat, lie, help, and heal all with the use of a fathomable control system. The combat is fun- although I think the melee combat is superior to the bow and arrow combat. You can explore catacombs, castles, dungeons, shops, houses, fortresses, lakes, rivers, mountains, barrows, farms, mills, mines and villages, on the way killing bandits, hunting deer, rampaging as a were-wolf (you read that right), doing good deeds for the king, and, of course, dragon-slaying. The game has an autosave feature and a manual save one, the manual one working to the players' advantage the majority of the time, and players can travel on foot, in carriage, on horse, or through teleportation depending on the location or the availability of transport. Weapons vary- axes, swords, daggers, bows, war hammers, and shovels among others, and destruction magic, dragon shouts, and good ol' fight-fightin' are also always avilable. Magic powers are upgraded and discovered as the game progresses, and range from healing to creating light to summoning the ghosts of animals (akin to Potter's patronuses). As missions continue, new options become available, and your inventory largens. Watch out as there is a weight limit (a good reason to buy a house to store stuff in). To talk of the gameplay in full would be to write a 900-page novel, but you get the picture.
REPLAY VALUE
Overall, Skyrim is devastating to the chances of a better RPG to be made anytime soon, but I know nothing of RPGS and I've heard a lot of hype about Mass Effect 3. With a millennium of gameplay available here, gamers really couldn't do better.
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