50 Years of Video Games: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (PS3)
Open world game designs had captivated the broader gaming audience since Grand Theft Auto III showed its potential in the 3D space, but one issue with making these large areas that were free to explore is populating them with interesting content. Even an excellent game could end up having very little to do in the wide spaces it offered and even in Grand Theft Auto there was a bit more emphasis on “making your own fun” than finding meaningful content in areas that aren’t tied to major story missions. Over at Bethesda Game Studios they were gradually figuring out how to better flesh out these spaces with games like Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and in 2011 they presented their latest open world adventure: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The frigid land of Skyrim with its Viking inspired culture was not large just to make travel longer nor was it expecting you to amuse yourself with short-sighted diversions like causing violent trouble. In this realm there are an abundance of little stories to attach yourself to, plots big enough to fill their own game that you may never even find and adventures that ask for more than just combat. While there is a main story line to follow, the side content is so rich and well crafted that on my first save file for the game I put in nearly 40 hours doing almost exclusively side content, never even getting to the 5th quest in the main plot that still had almost 20 hours of content on its own to experience. The freedom to follow your curiosity and pursue what interests you without any content stretching itself out simply for length turned this video game world into one with literally hundreds of hours of engaging content once you include the three DLC packs as well, so it’s little surprise that the footprint it left on the industry ended up enormous.
Because of the freedom the game allows you to embrace even fairly early on, the main story isn’t quite as important as it might be for some games, but all adventures in Skyrim do begin the same. The player awakes on a cart to the city of Helgen where they are to be executed, having crossed the border at an unfortunate time and now finding themselves prisoners alongside the man who killed the Empire’s appointed High King of Skyrim. As you step forward to the executioner’s block to meet your maker, a dragon descends from the sky, the first seen in the world in ages, disrupting the execution with its attack and giving you and the other prisoners a chance to flee. Once out of danger… the world is pretty much your oyster. You are no longer obliged to pursue this main story line any further and not because you can simply wander around indefinitely. You can walk all throughout Skyrim, each major city often containing some sort of conspiracy, mystery, or feud you can assist with, sometimes even able to choose to aid the morally corrupt if you so desire. You can head off and join one of the many guilds who each have their own lengthy process of introducing you to their ranks and increasing your renown in that group, you can involve yourself in the civil war between those loyal to the Empire or assist the local Nords in returning Skyrim to its ancestral people. Even hours into the game after you’ve completed multiple little plots the game will then start unlocking Daedric quests for you where this setting’s version of demons involve you in their affairs, their trickery and unpredictable nature leading to plots where your resolve is tested or reality is twisted in unearthly ways.
Sticking to the main plot will introduce some of the important elements of this world to you though, one major one being that your character is what is known as the Dovahkiin. When the game begins you are free to customize your character as you please, able to adjust many elements of their appearance and select from a range of fantasy races. A few are simple variations on humans while others like the Khajiit feature heavy feline features and the elvish races have distinctive facial structures. While technically each race has a few advantages, none of them are so great that you’ll feel boxed into picking one for such boons. The reptilian Argonians can breathe underwater for example, but rarely do you ever have reason to be underwater, and while the Breton resist magical damage a bit better than most races, the Imperial might be the better choice since they sometimes can find extra gold when looting. The Orc admittedly does get a little shafted in that their only benefit is a once-per-day rage power while other races get similar things and inherent powers, but the game’s other systems can allow for growth to offset any choices made early on. More importantly, you are free to be what you desire and even pursue different approaches to battle like melee, archery, and magic with the only thing you are truly locked into being your status as Dovahkiin. A being with the blood of dragons, this grants you the power to utilize special Shouts you learn across the land. Separate from any skill you’re cultivating, the Shouts can be things like an incredible blast of force to send enemies flying, elemental blasts of breath, or even the power to call upon aid from nearby animals or even a dragon.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a first-person action game, although you can set its camera to be third-person if you find it helps with your particular play style as well. Regardless of how you choose to play, your character’s two hands are vitally important as they both can wield different powers or weapons. Many battle options exist and can be mixed and matched, your proficiency in them growing through use. A person who uses one hand to wield a blade and the other to cast magical spells will have their character slowly grow more adept at that fighting style, but there is nothing preventing them from dual wielding two axes and be just as skilled or going full offensive magic for a bit if its seems situationally advantageous. If you do start using a bow, two-handed weapon, or special magic powers like conjuring and alteration though, they will still need use to grow, but you won’t ever lose skill in any one area and can swap between them as you find your preferred method of fighting. Perks are gained from leveling up that flesh out how such skills can be used and make them more efficient as well, the player having even more of a hand in choosing how specifically they want to build their power up. Different weapon types and spells can lead to variety even within the style you settle upon, but there are admittedly a few nudges from the battle systems in place that lead to some strategies seeming superior. While there are plenty of health potions to find and they can be used instantly if you pause midfight to guzzle them down, its much more convenient to invest in restoration spells since they aren’t tied to limited resources and well-timed pauses. The magic system is split into a few different schools that level up separately, and while you can gradually improve things like how much power spells use, some schools of magic like Conjuration are shafted because while others only need to worry about the magic power drain, Conjuration powers often have very short timers. You can summon an ally or create a weapon out of thin air with this school of magic, but they often last for only a minute or two when exploring a dangerous area and even battles with large enemy groups or bosses take much longer. On the other hand developing your skills in stealth and archery can lead to a quiet killer that deals bonus damage for being unseen and this can overcome many dangers in your way with greater ease than getting up close and personal with something like an axe. While some are definitely harder to make work though most battle styles are valid in most situations, enemies simply being harder or easier based on how their advantages and disadvantages line up with your chosen method of battle.
Skyrim is a land chock full of places to go, and while at times it can feel like snowy tundra and caves full of the undead men known as Draugr are fairly common, that seems more a factor of where you start rather than where you can head. Some parts of Skyrim are verdant forests while others wide plains, you can find the icy floes up north that are cold and barren or find the surprisingly warm springs more southward. A town like Markarth is carved from stone while Riften rests atop the river that flows through it, and Winterhold’s devastated town sits in odd contrast to the mage college that looms out on an outcropping untouched. While spiders and Draugr are admittedly common, plunging into the clockwork ruins of the Dwemer reveal automatons who pose new dangers, and deeper still below Skyrim is the iridescent underworld populated by less civilized elves known as Falmer with their weapons of hide and taste for flesh. All of the land does feel like a truly united setting, no unusual deviations from the idea of a cold northern region but the breaks away from the frost-covered rocks reasonable with a good amount of space to ease into those transitions naturally. Truly the most common enemy is likely other people like yourself, be they simple bandits out for coin or people with story reasons for opposing you. Since they utilize the same weapons and skills as you they can pose a wide variety of dangers and can be paired together to pose a threat harder to address than relying on the usual tactics, with some special boss characters given unique powers as well. Enemies are also scaled in strength so that while you can start killing some more easily, you’ll never be such a powerhouse that you invalidate the danger of the game’s battles. While exploring the wilderness wild animals may strike as well, but the dragons can prove a most fearsome foe if they appear overhead. Powerful even when a nearby city’s guards swing in to help, their sometimes basic attack patterns don’t make them any less dangerous, and with their souls providing you power for new Shouts its hard to resist the chance to charge in and try to take them on.
Admittedly there are probably a few too many caves with Draugr and spiders still, but making progress and completing quests isn’t just a manner of killing the creatures and people in your path. Exploration has built into it an addictive loop where you progress forward some, face whatever enemies lie and wait, and then begin to loot them or the nearby area. Gold is primarily earned this way, either by finding it itself or carrying what you can with you for selling. You do have a weight limit so something like the expensive bones of a dragon also limit how much you can carry until you sell them, so even though the environment has an absurd amount of objects you can pilfer, you need to be selective and grab what either has value or might aid you in another way. Potions, books with stories about the world or its history, ingredients for enchanting and alchemy that also has its own skill leveling system, and equipment can all be found while searching around, with lockpicking sometimes barring you from better finds unless you can balance your own competence in the small associated minigame with any boons gained from leveling up that skill as well. Going from battling to looting in a short but steady cycle keeps exploration involved even when you’re not trying to kill something, and many areas try to inject a bit more into the process like small puzzles. You will start to recognize a few puzzle formats like stones with symbols on them that need to face the right way but even these are iterated upon properly so they’re not the same each time. Traps, secrets, and more enhance even plunging exploring an area you had no reason to visit beyond your own interest, and you can always come across new quests while in a seemingly innocuous side area as well.
The many stories in Skyrim can also ask more of you than battle and provide rewards greater than gold and new equipment. One series of quests can grant you the power to become a werewolf if you so desire, working your way up to positions of importance can lead to you getting property in the city or the ability to recruit a companion to fight alongside you and carry extra items. You can get a horse to travel faster even though the map already lets you instantly travel to previously visited locations provided you’re safe and outside when picking them. You can get roped up into a quest where you are sent to a mine for slave labor and need to organize an escape with none of your usual weapons, or you can find yourself needing to wine and dine at a fancy party while secretly investigating the premises. At times if your words are persuasive or intimidating enough you can completely skip a part of the quest where someone was demanding a favor of you or willing to fight, and sometimes if you explore enough on your own, you might even meet someone and learn you already grabbed the item they wanted or defeated something that was causing them trouble. You can accept a truly enormous amount of quests, although while many have creative concepts, multiple battles, or special places to explore, some are much smaller and humbler. Someone might want you to find some material for them or deliver an object, and while these aren’t really there to be interesting, they do add a few more things to do while in town or visiting a character to get some extra gold between more substantial major quests. For the most part the game also tries to prevent you from missing out on a chance to do a quest. Naturally some will preclude doing others, picking a side in the Imperial and Stormcloak war means you can’t switch and do the other half, but taking over forts and doing city sieges is just another new angle for the action to take that does capture the greater expected scale of such things than the small looting and fighting cycle common elsewhere. If you join up with an assassin guild and start killing people you will naturally find the quests your victims offered are no longer available, and sometimes a glitch or two might just lock you out for no clear reason. However, for the most part the game does try to give you the chance to experience most of the content, with even the people around the world at least paying lip service to your deeds even if they can’t be too flexible in their reactions or they’d risk raising questions of why some quests don’t lock you out of others.
As mentioned there are some glitches in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, an unfortunate truth no matter what your platform of choice or version you’re playing. Some are mundane like someone’s dropped bow slowly drifting up into the sky while others like crashes can lead to lost progress so manual saves and multiple files are wise to make. Still, most of the adventure will run smoothly even if you notice something odd with a system on occasion, and the stories told across the land are definitely worth seeing. The Civil War is presented with more nuance than one might expect, the Stormcloaks presented as more interested in the struggles of the common people of Skyrim but also revealing that they do have some nationalistic tendencies that wouldn’t be best for any beyond the native Nords. The Imperials do rule with a tight grip over Skyrim but do so with law and order mostly rather than needless cruelty, but they are representative of a foreign power’s intent to keep the empire subjugated. Characters like Jarl Balgruuf, the man in charge of the first major cities you’re likely to find Whiterun, can become familiar thanks to multiple quests tied to him and his people only for you to realize he might not be on your side in this war. Every line in the game is spoken to make things feel more alive save for when people around town repeat the same thing a bit too often or share voice actors clearly, but it can lead to moments of more impact like hearing the dragon’s different manner of speech or the way the Daedra try to manipulate you. At times the world of Skyrim can feel so vast you can never do everything you want to, and at others you come to realize how you’ve come to known a city so well that each place becomes a memory. Truly, this setting has the kind of complexity and layers needed to make it seem like a lived-in world rather than just the space a video game takes place in.
THE VERDICT: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is teeming with things worth finding, interesting gameplay challenges, new locations, a wide variety of plots with their own sets of characters and different conditions for completing the quests tied to them. Your character grows into a warrior of your own design as your use of abilities rewards you with more competency with such skills and the way you interact with the many fleshed out quest lines can change based on your input and your abilities. Meaningful content can be found in every city and the world in general nails a balance between creative fantasy and worldly realism while also offering a fluid chain of battle and looting to keep exploring its dangerous parts engaging as interactive entertainment. A few glitches and moments of repetition can’t really dilute the impact of having so much worth doing that even a main plot about fighting dragons with magical shouts can be sidelined for stories with their own compelling concepts and modes of completion, Skyrim always seeming like it has more ideas waiting around the corner.
And so, I give The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for PlayStation 3…
A FANTASTIC rating. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim feels like the kind of long-lasting adventure game that one could commit to for years of their life, there still being content to find even after you’ve completed a main story. The main plot tying into your role as Dovahkiin and the return of dragons does a great job of taking you through new ideas on what the game can offer, the dragon fights, atypical quests with less of a focus on combat, interactions between characters, and exploration of different areas to show Skyrim isn’t all snow and Draugr. The fact you can still get an excellent experience out of the game by deliberately forgoing this curated main plot without having to invent your own forms of entertainment just goes to show the attention given to the plethora of additional stories to be found in the well-realized world. It’s easy to get absorbed into the satisfying loop of pushing through an area and grabbing goodies for sale or improving yourself, and with most dungeons having some shortcut or separate exit the backtracking through areas devoted to action is minimal. Fights can take many forms simply because you can bring many means of battle with you, but the enemy types, arrangements, and framing like in the city sieges make the core action work no matter your strength while the different quests make sure you are still engaging with other gameplay types than simply fighting your way through the world. Hundreds of characters go about their daily lives and can intersect with your activities in a variety of different and interesting ways, most of the minor stuff usually clearly meant more as something to do along the way while the major content is well crafted and guides you to new experiences well. Ambient music can add an air of peace to exploration while powerful chanting makes a dragon fight feel epic even after you’ve killed quite a few of them. There is truly a wealth of content and features that it’s hard to condense it all into a nice readable review and yet the game doesn’t feel too complicated in the moment to moment play. It can hit a snag if some little glitch crops up and some things like dragon fights could be deeper if they weren’t sharing the spotlight with a region’s worth of activities, but the freedom to find adventure all across the land means you can always turn towards something new if what you’re doing now isn’t clicking at the moment, a fulfilling and rewarding journey able to be found even if all you do are optional quests.
While adventures in open worlds weren’t really anything new by this point, the fact the world was so captivating in itself really helped elevate The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim beyond just being the latest game to utilize the concept. It was accommodating where it needed to be but filled its space with so much to do that getting sidetracked was just as interesting as sticking to the expected path. It is a role-playing game, but leveling up and stats exist mostly to benefit you rather than restrict your ability to face certain foes. It has since been rereleased time and time again since its 2011 launch and its ideas iterated upon in other games that realized the strengths of this game’s approach to progression and setting design and yet it hasn’t become outdated since it executed those ideas excellently. At the time it was seen as the king of giving you an open immersive fictional world to explore and it was certainly a title well-earned, its innovations more in how it utilized ideas with potential rather than inventing something new or really changing the direction Bethesda’s RPGs were already heading. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is certainly a phenomenal adventure with more worth doing than many will ever even know exists within it, and the fact so many can still immensely enjoy it as it is rereleased time and time again serves as a testament to how much craft was put into making this fantasy setting feel like an inhabited and multifaceted world.