The Elder Scrolls franchise has been a staple for the RPG genre for quite some time now. Skyrim builds on top of what made the previous titles great while reworking some core features.
The game is good. From a strictly objective point of view, the sheer amount of production value that's gone into it makes it a Class-A title. It looks fantastic, the game world is huge, the voice acting is overall very good and it's just easy to get into.
There's a catch, though.
What Skyrim offers is not for everyone. Any TES game attempts to diffuse the line between video game and roleplaying, and it does so by creating an open world with tons of content and dropping the player into it.
Most games don't take much from a player, other than his/her presence and control input. It might be more or less challenging, surprising or rich, but the story and everything else in the game is scripted, rendering the player more of an observer than an actor in it. Skyrim tries to fight this linear approach by letting you do whatever.
The flipside is that in order for the player to achieve that much freedom in the game, there aren't any solid structures in terms of story, gameplay, decision-making, character development or consequences.
This pattern applies to every aspect of Skyrim, such as quests. With a few exceptions, there's not much in the way of awesome scripting or storytelling. Just a bunch of people asking you to kill someone or fetch an item from some ancient ruins. Even the main quest feels underwhelming and short, when it should be an epic tale of dragons and chosen-one-ism.
To sort of illustrate how the game does not hold your hand, there's the nowadays very popular moral choice bit. We're used to games presenting us with a moral dilemma that will have some tangible consequence. Choose to save Jack, get him as a companion, but Jill dies. Save Jill, Jack's Guild of Awesome Peeps will become hostile towards you. Kill both, get the gold and unlock the bad ending. Skyrim does not work this way at all. At one point, I was jogging along in some city, minding my own business, when a guy walks up to me and asks for my assistance investigating a house. We went in and I got myself mixed up with some sort of demonic lord that forced me to kill this guy. Then, he sent me to look for some kind of priest and lure him into a trap. He died too. I got a cool mace as a reward. Never heard from the demon dude again. Now, in the eyes of a traditional gamer, this made me evil. I killed at least one innocent person. But in Skyrim, there was no consequence. No negative karma points. No bad ending. No Jack becoming hostile towards me. Likewise, there was no dialogue choice to let me back out of the quest. No way to not kill the innocent guy or kill the demon instead. No way of concluding the quest differently. So how does that work? Well, if I really wanted my character to stay good and pure, I had the possibility to just not do the quest. I'd still have it in my quest log and I wouldn't have gotten any sort of reward for being "good" but at least I wouldn't have done the demon's bidding.
Again, freedom vs. structure.
The point is, what your character becomes, the reasons for his actions and how he is judged, is up to you and you alone. The game will not slap you in the wrist for being bad or reward you for being good.
Thus, Skyrim turns out to be a conflictive, confusing and boring game for some and a very enjoyable blank canvas with endless possibilities and replayability value for others.
One other anecdotal illustration. Since I'm really bad at real roleplaying, I decided to keep somewhat of a journal in a .txt as I played the game as if my character was writing it. During the time I was doing this, I enjoyed the game immensely. I made up a story for my character and it was heaps of fun. At some point, due to poor writing skills and lack of creativity, I couldn't follow through with it and just kept playing the game. After a while, the game just became absolutely tedious and repetitive. To me, this made very clear that the more creatively, intellectually and emotionally invested you are in the game, the more rewarding the experience will be. Skyrim is a clean slate. If you can make it work, it's going to be one of the most rewarding RPG experiences that you'll have, but it does take some effort and imagination getting there.
As I approach the end of this review, I realize that reviewing a game like Skyrim is pointless in itself, because there's not much to review. Every player should have a different experience when playing it, because the game bets on the player to do just that: be whoever he wants to be and do whatever he wants to do.
If you're looking for a game that gives you the freedom to do anything and actually *roleplay*, give it a go. If you want solid storytelling, structured content and to be awe-struck by what you're seeing on the screen, try something else.
The game is good. From a strictly objective point of view, the sheer amount of production value that's gone into it makes it a Class-A title. It looks fantastic, the game world is huge, the voice acting is overall very good and it's just easy to get into.
There's a catch, though.
What Skyrim offers is not for everyone. Any TES game attempts to diffuse the line between video game and roleplaying, and it does so by creating an open world with tons of content and dropping the player into it.
Most games don't take much from a player, other than his/her presence and control input. It might be more or less challenging, surprising or rich, but the story and everything else in the game is scripted, rendering the player more of an observer than an actor in it. Skyrim tries to fight this linear approach by letting you do whatever.
The flipside is that in order for the player to achieve that much freedom in the game, there aren't any solid structures in terms of story, gameplay, decision-making, character development or consequences.
This pattern applies to every aspect of Skyrim, such as quests. With a few exceptions, there's not much in the way of awesome scripting or storytelling. Just a bunch of people asking you to kill someone or fetch an item from some ancient ruins. Even the main quest feels underwhelming and short, when it should be an epic tale of dragons and chosen-one-ism.
To sort of illustrate how the game does not hold your hand, there's the nowadays very popular moral choice bit. We're used to games presenting us with a moral dilemma that will have some tangible consequence. Choose to save Jack, get him as a companion, but Jill dies. Save Jill, Jack's Guild of Awesome Peeps will become hostile towards you. Kill both, get the gold and unlock the bad ending. Skyrim does not work this way at all. At one point, I was jogging along in some city, minding my own business, when a guy walks up to me and asks for my assistance investigating a house. We went in and I got myself mixed up with some sort of demonic lord that forced me to kill this guy. Then, he sent me to look for some kind of priest and lure him into a trap. He died too. I got a cool mace as a reward. Never heard from the demon dude again. Now, in the eyes of a traditional gamer, this made me evil. I killed at least one innocent person. But in Skyrim, there was no consequence. No negative karma points. No bad ending. No Jack becoming hostile towards me. Likewise, there was no dialogue choice to let me back out of the quest. No way to not kill the innocent guy or kill the demon instead. No way of concluding the quest differently. So how does that work? Well, if I really wanted my character to stay good and pure, I had the possibility to just not do the quest. I'd still have it in my quest log and I wouldn't have gotten any sort of reward for being "good" but at least I wouldn't have done the demon's bidding.
Again, freedom vs. structure.
The point is, what your character becomes, the reasons for his actions and how he is judged, is up to you and you alone. The game will not slap you in the wrist for being bad or reward you for being good.
Thus, Skyrim turns out to be a conflictive, confusing and boring game for some and a very enjoyable blank canvas with endless possibilities and replayability value for others.
One other anecdotal illustration. Since I'm really bad at real roleplaying, I decided to keep somewhat of a journal in a .txt as I played the game as if my character was writing it. During the time I was doing this, I enjoyed the game immensely. I made up a story for my character and it was heaps of fun. At some point, due to poor writing skills and lack of creativity, I couldn't follow through with it and just kept playing the game. After a while, the game just became absolutely tedious and repetitive. To me, this made very clear that the more creatively, intellectually and emotionally invested you are in the game, the more rewarding the experience will be. Skyrim is a clean slate. If you can make it work, it's going to be one of the most rewarding RPG experiences that you'll have, but it does take some effort and imagination getting there.
As I approach the end of this review, I realize that reviewing a game like Skyrim is pointless in itself, because there's not much to review. Every player should have a different experience when playing it, because the game bets on the player to do just that: be whoever he wants to be and do whatever he wants to do.
If you're looking for a game that gives you the freedom to do anything and actually *roleplay*, give it a go. If you want solid storytelling, structured content and to be awe-struck by what you're seeing on the screen, try something else.