Conversing with Dragons

This is a gaming related post. If you don't want to read about it, well, dont. But you didn't need me to tell you that...

All in all, I probably had a good Christmas.

I received a copy of Skyrim, which has finally widowed my long suffering girlfriend and confined her to lingering somewhere just outside my field of vision as I slash through legions of undead vikings with the enthusiasm of a five year-old on crystal meth. Unfortunately, I also had some bad news. Primarily, everyone I have ever known is very likely, if not empirically dead. My homeland has been destroyed by a massive catastrophic event involving a meteor, and any survivors have been enslaved by hideous lizard-folk who took the opportunity to put the boot in, which is not particularly 'peace on earth and goodwill to all'. I also got a Terry Pratchett book, so on balance, it could have been worse.

I am, of course, referring to the events of Skyrim, the latest offering in the Elder Scrolls series. Being more specific, I'm talking about stuff that took place in the book The Infernal City, which are mentioned in Skyrim. Without going into tremendous detail, Skyrim comprehensively dealt with the issue of Morrowind being the best Elder Scrolls game ever by destroying the island of Vvardenfell, killing everyone you ever met, wiping out anywhere you'd ever been, and invading the bits you'd only vaguely heard of. Anyone now wishing to play Morrowind has to deal with the crushing knowledge of everything being inevitably rendered pointless.

So how about Skyrim, eh?

I used to play Morrowind, then I took an arrow to the knee

Recovering from the horrendous soul-crushing disappointment of Oblivion, Skyrim is actually quite a good game. I suppose your standards are pretty low if 'quite a good game' involves any degree of effort on the part of the developers, but hey. There are a few notable good points, and a few terrible issues that range from funny to 'I want to destroy the earth' frustrating.

Plot

The plot of Skyrim follows the usual epic fare of all Bethesda games. After stopping the rise of dead gods in Morrowind, and stemming the flow of daemons into the world in Oblivion, you expected this. So no one needs to worry too much about spoilers when I say the primary goal of Skyrim is to halt a dragon-related Apocalypse from scouring all life from the earth. This becomes immediately apparent in the first five minutes of the game, whereby a dragon turns up and kicks the everliving fuck out of a lot of people, destroys a town, and flies away twirling his evil mustache.

'Wise men put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances.' Ralph Emerson had obviously never encountered a world-destroying dragon.

'Wise men put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances.' Ralph Emerson had obviously never encountered a world-destroying dragon.

Graphics

Despite some opinions that Skyrim's graphics aren't as fantastic as they could be, I personally think the game is really well rendered, with beautiful scenery, well thought out landscapes that feel suitably alien*, harking back to the otherworldly feel of Morrowind. The creatures are a vast improvement over earlier fare, looking dangerous, being dangerous, and generally better animated that Morrowind, where you generally felt the monsters had a shared genetic trait of being comprised entirely of boxy bodies and sharp edges. You still suffer from the unfortunate Super Persistent Predators, which will chase you for miles across the countryside to the exclusion of almost everything else.

Gameplay

Skyrim is a vast improvement over Oblivion in almost every respect. The menus are easy to navigate, although getting your head around some new tricks can be quite intimidating. Speaking of new tricks, you can dual wield weapons, smith armour and perform menial tasks to work for a living. Surprising as it sounds, what’s been lacking from these games has the ability to actually go out and get a job. Acrobatics has gone, which makes me happy and sad for the same reason - I can no longer jump over a city. Enhanting is back, although it is still performed at altars, but these are more plentiful than Oblivion. Combat is quick and brutal, with new kill-scenes and improved power attacks and critical hits. I doubt I'd be far from the truth in saying that everything about Skyrim is superior to Oblivion. But then again, that'd be like expressing surprise that light moves faster than a paraplegic sheep.

It isn't without problems, though.

Skyrim, like previous Elder Scrolls games, suffers from the complex nature of 'the Duality of Man', which loosely translates like this. It's a good game to play, but if you're a serious role-player, you're probably going have a problem with it. Like most RPGs, the majority of the game involves making unconnected moral decisions and killing almost anything you encounter inbetween quests like 'collecting mushrooms for nuns' and 'helping old ladies cross the road'. So if you're serious about becoming a questing knight, a learned-scholar or a evil wizard, you're going to have to make do with the fact that you're occasionally forced into playing an unpredictable schizophrenic psychopath whilst attempting to perform both good and evil actions at the same time.

The other jarring thing, apart from the AI - listed below - is the occasional bouts of repetative dialogue that becomes amusing after awhile. There is a montage available on Youtube of numerous city-watch telling me, "I used to be an adventurer like you, then I took an arrow to the knee". The internet being what it is, this has created a meme involving people getting kneecapped by an opportunistic archer. The other thing of debatable humour is the introduction of Dragon-Shouts, a special power used do various things like super-sprint, stun, and change the weather. 

No, really.

The problem with credibility comes from the fact this ability has never been mentioned before. It just appeared in Skyrim, and everyone takes it at face value. Imagine the surprise when people told me that someone important had been killed by it. In hushed, conspirital tones, a nervous farmer whispered: "He just walked in and shouted the High King to death." He shouted him to death. I'm sorry, it's just too much to take seriously. As the name suggests, Dragon-Shouts are used to fight dragons, mainly. Forget swords, magic, or arrows. A good politics student would be able to tell you the only reliable way to beat a forty-foot fire-breathing monster is to shout at it. When a dragon attacks you, it shouts back, resulting in a bizarre and often fatal slanging match. The whole concept is just surreal.

Everything Is Going To Kill Everyone

If there is one thing that Skyrim suffers from and benefits from in equal measure, it is the radiant AI. In some cases, people will rush to your aid, step out of the way, or otherwise do things - like farming, talking ect - that make the game more enjoyable and more realistic. They will also react to things you do, like telling you to stop running into them deliberately or throw stuff all over the floor.

Sometimes this can spectacularly backfire and generally gives the impression that everyone is permanently on edge. I once accidentally set fire to a chicken belonging to someone nearby. They leapt from their seat and came at me with a knife, causing everyone in ten yards to grab weapons. Less than twenty seconds later, seven people were down, two were fleeing and my companion was enthusiastically tackling three more with a complete disregard for the sanctity of life. Until she was smashed in the head by a comedy-sized mallet, which took her down like a sack of spuds. The final chicken related death-toll was nine, after I put an arrow in someone's eye.

Levelling and Perks

Unlike it's predecessors, Skyrim has condensed skills down into a more managable, if not disappointing, amount of things to do. All contribute towards your overall level, which is a refershing change from other games that involve following a set course and grinding out the same stuff repetitively. They also included Perks, which have been changed from the Bethesda game Fallout 3, thank-god*. They now don't have too obvious effects on the actual game itself, while still being worth doing.

Unfortunately, the levelling system still doesn't appear to work for everyone. At one point, I was jumped by a group of bandits, a perfectly balanced scenario for someone at my level early on in the game. However, they had obviously failed to accomodate for simply how dangerous a horse can be. While I fought for my life against one of them, my faithful steed Percy set about the remainder, killing three men and chasing a fourth one off into the distant forests. The entire situation left me feeling a little big emasculated by my preffered mode of transportation. Now I walk everywhere to ensure Percy doesn't run off and slay any giants or anything.

"Come on you bastards!"

Bugs

The main problem with Skyrim are the number of bugs, which is not really something you want in a game that's been on the cards for five years. My personal favourite involved one that caused my super-wise mentor to utter the line 'So, you have come to me for help in completing the game. Listen carefully, young one, for I will only say this once', before he was unceremoniously catapulted into the sky, disappearing into a thunderstorm that raged miles above the earth, and leaving me completely devoid of advice and unable to progress.

Summary

I'm not far into Skyrim but I'm already enjoying all of the fancy new features, shiny new places and innovative ways to kill people. It has already beaten the amount of time it took for the repetative factor to kick in on Oblivion. It's new, exciting, and with the exception of bugs that can completely ruin your life, it makes for a good game. Fans of the Elder Scrolls series, or RPG's in general should enjoy it. People who don't want to get stabbed for breaking an unspoken social convention by super agressive peasants, do not enjoy wholesale genocide, or are unreasonably afraid of dragons should probably avoid it.

*Compared with Oblivion's setting: Generic Feudalism in Europe

* Fallout 3 was a good game, but the Perks were ridiculous. Unfortunately, I was unable to resist the 'exploding people' Perk that, well, caused people to explode. Which can be fun, but gets tedious quickly, causes problems when trying to distinguish body-parts for the purposes of looting corpses, and upsets your housemate no end. Skyrim removed the ability to chop up dead bodies, though, which means I can no longer hack the limbs off dead hookers. This is probably for the best.