With the
release of the Special Edition for Skyrim, I think it is about time I did a
real review of Skyrim and its DLC content. The Good, the Bad, the Subjective
and so forth.
So, to
repeat a question I asked in my Fallout 4 review, where does one even start
with an entity like Skyrim? It’s individual merits as a game? It’s relation to
the previous installments of the Elder Scrolls series? Or that it seems to have
ushered in an age of Open World games?
Well, the
last option I will probably skip, because I don’t really care that much about
the impact it had on the games industry. The other two options are more
interesting, for me anyway.
To note, I
will try to keep this review spoiler free, but I may slip up a time or two.
The Opening
Now, I said
I would try to avoid spoiling anything, but, in my defense, the opening of the
game is not a spoiler. It’s the fucking opening of the game.
One of the
problems discussing the opening has to do with the Dragon attacking Helgen,
because there is a real argument to be had about whether or not it should have
been included. The pro side could say that establishing the Dragons as a threat
this early in the game helps set the stage for the Main Questline. The ones
against it could argue that it spoils the surprise for the rest of the game. Me,
I don’t mind that it is there.
But what
happens during the intro sequence is not as interesting as what happens at the
end of it. I, and a lot of others, had a problem with just how involved you got
with the fight against the Lord of Destruction in the intro to Oblivion,
because the whole “help me save the world” thing is dumped on your lap
immediately. So does this happen in Skyrim?
To put it
simply, no, it doesn’t. You can start that storyline if you follow Ralof or
Hadvar to Riverwood, but the gameworld opens before you get there, and they
will give you a line about how the two of you should probably split up. So you’re
free to fuck off to Falkreath or something if you want to avoid the Main
Questline.
The opening
in Skyrim establishes more than Morrowind’s do, but whether this is good or bad
is up to personal taste. There was something kinda funny about being a prisoner
pardoned by Emperor Uriel Septim VII on the condition that you’d report to one
of his Blade agents. Only for you then to go off the rails, forget the whole
thing and probably sell the package you were to deliver to random merchant X,
without the Blades and Imperial Legion coming after you. Makes you wonder what
the Emperor was thinking. It is also implied, or outright stated, that he has
done this before, so maybe he hopes to turn Vvardenfell into Australia.
But, at the
end of the day, the player in Skyrim is in Helgen when it is attacked by a
Dragon (yes, I know who the big, black and bad dragon is, but I’m not naming
it) and may or may not get involved in the mess that follows.
The story
Yes, with a
lower case s. Apparently. I think the main storyline of Skyrim has some good
ideas, but it is not as fleshed out or paced as well as I would hope. Still,
not too bad a timepasser.
It does,
however, seem to reward those who already know some stuff about the Nordic
religion over those who don’t.
Setting
This is
where most of the effort seems to have been put, at least when it comes to
writing. Between the books, NPC dialogue, visual storytelling and drawing on
the lore established in the previous games, Skyrim does quite a nice job
establishing the setting. If one has a keen eye and ear for details, there is a
lot to learn. And many things are not so simple as they originally appear.
Religion, for example, or the civil war. Whatever you do, always remember that
people and books talking about the civil war are biased or even outright lying.
It is a good idea to gather as much information as you can and compare.
I really
don’t want to go into too much detail about this though, because I think it is
best experienced.
Guilds
There are
four major factions in Skyrim, apart from the civil war questline; the Companions,
the College of Winterhold, the Thieves Guild and the Dark Brotherhood.
I am glad
to see the guilds being shaken up a bit since Oblivion, and I hope they do more
with that in the future. With the Mages Guild having fallen apart and the
Fighters Guild apparently not having a presence in Skyrim at this time, it
opened for other perspectives, which is nice. I also like that the Thieves
Guild and Dark Brotherhood start in a less-than-stellar place, to reflect how
things have changed for them.
However, it
is important to say that the guild questlines are like the Main Quest in one
important aspect; they have good ideas, but aren’t paced that well. I still consider
them enjoyable, but in the interest of fairness and objectivity I will grant
that point.
Freedom
Something I’ve
ranted on quite a bit with Fallout New Vegas is that almost everything is tied
to the Main Quest. Well, this is not the case in Skyrim. The option to skip
everything regarding the main questline is there.
Now, there
are some quests that are affected by this, of course. If you don’t advance long
enough into the main questline, Dragons and Shouts are not enabled, and there
are a few quests that are triggered after certain Main Quests are done. You are
also unable to complete the civil war questline without doing the first stages
of the Main Quest. If you don’t mind being unable to do these things, however,
it is entirely optional.
The Levelling stuff
Talking
about the stuff related to your character is where most of the comparisons to
older games tend to take place. I think it is the simplest thing to compare
between the games too.
One of the
things that made many fans scream betrayal was the removal of attributes and
classes, and I sort of understand why. They are so common in RPGs that they are
expected to make an appearance in one way or another, and, more importantly,
they were part of previous games in the series, so they were expected to make
an appearance here too.
I think the
knee-jerk reaction to their removal did a lot to sour the system from the word “go”
for a lot of players. That is not to imply that Skyrim’s character system is
some masterpiece, because it isn’t, but I don’t think it gets a fair
consideration by a lot of fans of the older games. Nor do I think the attribute
and class system of the older games gets the scrutiny it deserves in a lot of
cases.
I touched
on this in the my post about classes between Morrowind and Skyrim specifically,
but I think it bears repeating. The attributes in Morrowind and Oblivion have
way to high starting values compared to their max values. Even if you start
with the low value of an attribute, 30, that is a meagre 5-7 levels (4 with
grinding) behind someone starting with 50, in a game that goes to about level
50 (Oblivion) or 70 (Morrowind), and you get those levels returned to you in
other attributes. You also increase attributes too often, in that you must increase
3 every time you level up. It doesn’t take a genius to see that this leads to a
lot of blandly stated characters after a few levels.
There is also
the matter of class skills and non-class skills not being differentiated in any
way that affect their usefulness and make them unique.
But this is
a review about Skyrim, so how does Skyrim do levelling? With the removal of
classes and attributes, surely a lot must’ve changed. Eh, not really. Well, it
does change in some aspects, of course, but the basic idea of picking a skill
and getting to work to level up remains the same. You just aren’t forced to
make that decision on the fly with little to no knowledge of how those skills
will actually play out, like the previous games.
The
attributes being removed and perks being added, however, does have a lot more
gameplay impact. Or so people like to say.
If I am
being real, I have a hard time seeing what the system in Skyrim is lacking
compared to the older ones, beyond the specific implementation. Everything the
attributes did remains in the game, they have just been worked into different
perks, base stats or mechanics.
Take for
instance willpower. In Morrowind it gave stamina (or fatigue as it was called,
but I will just say stamina for simplicity) and a chance to resist certain
types of magic. In Oblivion it gave stamina and increased your magicka regeneration.
In Skyrim, you have magic resistance worked into the Alteration perk-tree and
magicka regeneration in the Restoration perk-tree. Stamina is increased as a
base-stat, and also happens to give some carry-weight if you do. Meaning that
the stamina base stat also covers the non-damage elements of the strength
attribute from previous game.
And there
are things like this for everything. Damage is covered by perks in said weapon
type, less staggering is a heavy armor trait, more health, stamina and magic is
covered by the base-stats. Movement speed, which many points to as being
removed, was worked into the sprint mechanic. If you have a high stamina, you
can sprint a lot and therefor you can move very fast across the land. Similar
thing happened with Hand-to-Hand, though to a lesser extent. You can increase
your Hand-to-Hand damage in the heavy armor perk-tree, though sadly there are no
power attacks to unlock for it.
Of course,
none of this means someone has to like the implementation of said system. That
remains subjective. However, I do think it is unfair to claim that Skyrim
removed the effects of the attributes when they simply worked them into a new
system. And given that it has both magicka regen and magic resistance, it
worked both versions of willpower in, rather than just one of them.
One thing I
fail to see the objections to, however, is that Skyrim allows for more
specialization than Morrowind and Oblivion. Like I pointed to before, class
skills and non-class skills behave the same way, as long as they have the same
skill level. This is not the case with Skyrim.
Well, okay,
there are no “class skills” for Skyrim, but we do have perks and perk-trees to
allow us to pick the skills we like and want to get better at. And the simple
fact at the end of the day is that the perks do more to differentiate the
skills your character is supposedly defined by than the classes ever did. It
also allows for fundamentally similar characters to level very differently,
which really wasn’t possible with the attributes in previous games without
intentionally picking suboptimal stats. And, hey, I can pick suboptimal base
stats and perks in Skyrim too, so the previous systems doesn’t get bonus points
for that.
However, as
I alluded to earlier, I don’t think the levelling system in Skyrim is a
masterpiece. The baseline mechanics seem to mostly be fine, but a lot of the
perks are very basic and uninspired (like the attributes were). I still think
the result is leagues above how it used to be, but I do hope they continue to
experiment with the model. Which I think they will do. Fallout 4 shows, if
nothing else, that they aren’t afraid to try new things with the character
systems.
Characterstyles – Combat,
Stealth and Magic
Combat, as
far as mechanics go, have improved nicely. In addition to the improvements made
between Morrowind and Oblivion, where the Dice-Roll model was replaced and
player interaction was increased to allow for “power attacks” and active
blocking, Skyrim also adds the option to bash an opponent, have the Dual Hand
system and sprint.
The general
idea behind the system as it currently works is that the player decides what to
do and the character decides how effective that action is. And I think this
works nicely.
Now, I know
that there are many who do not like this level of player interaction, and that’s
fine. But that is a decision BGS made regarding the series with Oblivion, so I
will judge it on that. I will not judge it for not being a Dice-Roll system,
for the same reason I won’t judge Pillars of Eternity for having a Dice-Roll
system. It is simply not the thing the game tries to be.
I’ve seen
some argue that the Dice-Roll model is “more complex” or “deeper”, but I have
no idea what they are on about. I really do think any such evaluation has to be
made on a system by system basis, not in principle.
People have
made the argument that Morrowind’s combat is deeper though, and I know those
people are talking out of an orifice more appropriately used in hardcore
pornography.
I really do
not see how having the damage of a weapon mostly static, then determining the
effectiveness by how often you’re able to hit is “deeper” than having the
accuracy static and the effectiveness determined by how high the damage gets. I
don’t see how a chance to have a block trigger is “more complex” than deciding
whether or not you want to block and have the character determine how that
turns out.
Someone
would probably talk something about the chance to dodge attacks, but that is
actually present in Skyrim. The 100 skill level perk in the Light Armor skill
gives you a chance to dodge incoming physical attacks. It is not readily
available from the get-go, but you can’t say it isn’t there.
Stealth is
alright in Skyrim. The NPCs seem smarter about it than in Oblivion and the
Sneak skill have been revamped to give the player a bigger chance of actually
killing someone from stealth. One of the problems with previous games was that
a lot of enemies simply had too much health to allow for a proper stealth kill.
High sneak also unlocks the ability to do a silent roll and pressure plates won’t
trigger if you walk on them.
Magic, on
the other hands, is more of a mixed bag. Mechanically, it has improved from
previous games, benefiting from the Dual Hand system and perk trees nicely.
However, there is a limited selection of spells available, and many of the old
spell effects like Weakness to [Element/Magic], Fortify [Skill/Stat] and Damage
[Health/Magicka/Stamina] (elemental damage is still in magic, however) are now
exclusively found in potions.
Looking
back, I think they wanted to remove a lot of the redundancy in the system by
doing this. That said, Skyrim’s spell list still seems a bit short. That’s not
to say there haven’t been some improvements. Wards, the passive perks,
different secondary effects for fire/frost/shock, necromancy spells, spells to
take control over other people’s summons, rune and cloak spells does offer some
variety unavailable in previous titles. But the selection of spells seems
underwhelming.
Graphics
Don’t come
to me for that, go look at some screenshots or gameplay videos. I’m sure there’ll
be some out there by now.
DLC
There are 3
DLCs for Skyrim; Dawnguard, Hearthfire and Dragonborn. They all come with the
Special Edition, so you have no reason to not pick them up. But I can say a few
words on them anyway.
Dawnguard
is a questline that adds a number of location to the Skyrim mainland, not
unlike the Knights of the Nine for Oblivion. It introduces a new vampire form
available to the player and rebalances werewolves.
Hearthfire
is a small DLC that adds 3 locations where one can build homes, though it is
important to remember that this is not settlement building in the Fallout 4
style. But they are nice little settlements regardless. It also adds the option
of adopting homeless children if one has a home for them.
Dragonborn
is the largest of the three and takes place on Solstheim, an island north-east
of Skyrim’s mainland. This is the same location as Morrowind’s Bloodmoon DLC
and people who played that will see how much the island has changed in the 200
years since we went there. It has, like many BGS DLCs, some of the best story
and setting elements. Highly recommended to spend some time on the island.
Conclusion
I could
write a lot more on Skyrim, but it’d mostly be in spoiler-territory. The TL;DR
is that I do recommend Skyrim.
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