The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Save the land of Skyrim from being annihilated by dragons

Release: November 11, 2011 (PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360)

By Ian Coppock

Like a lot of gamers who have too much time and imagination on their hands, I love role-playing games. I love the massive worlds they more often than not encompass, and I also love the chance to take a silent character and create my own narrative. Such is the reason I love the Elder Scrolls series, and such is the reason I love Skyrim, its latest installment. Skyrim is a game made by Bethesda Softworks, who are well-known for creating massive worlds with dozens if not hundreds of quests. My friends and I denote Bethesda games as having their own scale and category, and I denote Skyrim as the best of these games I've played thus far.

The Story

Skyrim takes place in an epic fantasy world similar in many ways to J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth. The game focuses on the land of Skyrim, a Scandinavia-like realm of snowy mountains, lush tundras and mead halls. As with the previous Elder Scrolls games, you begin as a prisoner who has been incarcerated for an unspecified crime. In this case, your character has been arrested by the Tamrielic Empire, the governing body of Skyrim.

You create your character during his or her imprisonment. Players can pick from one of ten races, each of which have their own strengths and weaknesses, and can modify almost one hundred facial features.

Just as your character is about to be beheaded by an imperial headsman, a massive dragon comes out of nowhere and begins destroying the town you've been taken to. No dragon has been seen in Skyrim for centuries, creating true panic and giving you a window to escape. You can choose to escape the town with either the rebels you were arrested with or the soldiers who just tried to kill you, a choice I found to be blatantly obvious. 

Anyway, after escaping, your character is free to do as he or she sees fit in Skyrim. You can go your own way and do one of dozens of miscellaneous quests, or embark upon the main storyline. I opted for a combination of the two, but we'll stick to the main story for now.

Hey, dude? I'm not just saying this to distract you from decapitating me: you might want to look behind you...

A few missions after escaping, your character finds himself or herself helping the city of Whiterun against another dragon attack. Your character succeeds in slaying the beast and is to be Dragonborn, a person with the body of a mortal but the soul of an immortal dragon. Dragonborns are nothing if not prophecy fodder, and I was soon wound up in an epic quest to destroy the dragons and bring peace to Skyrim.

As a Dragonborn, your character can absorb the souls of dead dragons and use them to learn deadly magical powers called Shouts. Shouts allow you to do everything from slow down time to set towns on fire, though you have to learn the proper shouting words first.

Another crucial component to the main story is the civil war that has engulfed Skyrim. 200 years after the previous Elder Scrolls game, Oblivion, the empire has fallen on hard times. Whereas it once governed all nine provinces of Tamriel, it now only governs three, the other six having gone their own way or fallen under the control of hostile powers. You can choose to help the native rebels make Skyrim independent, or help the empire keep control, a choice that neither side can claim the moral or geopolitical high ground in, making for a more interesting story.

Just in case gigantic, fire-breathing dragons weren't enough of a problem...

As with all Bethesda games, Skyrim's main story is the largest in a pile of many, many jewels. The game features side quests that you can play for money, artifacts and powerful alliances. You can also join various factions, like the Thieves Guild or the Companions warriors' group, and play questlines that more often than not see you become the leader of those organizations. You can also do more mundane quests, like chopping firewood for money or killing the local bandit.

The amount of quests in this game is almost ludicrous.

If you're like me and you can't resist a good narrative, Skyrim gives you the chance to make your own. I constantly extrapolated my character's personality and motives through the missions I played. Since my character can't talk, I chose to express him through actions, outfits, allegiances and moral decisions. It made for a long and action-packed story, but not just because of my OCD. Skyrim's quests and main storyline are well-paced, though the latter felt a bit skeletal to me. I understand that the goal of Elder Scrolls games is to mess around in a big world, but the main story felt looser than Oblivion's tightly woven narrative.

Oh yes, and take my advice: download the Hearthfire DLC. This $5 pack lets you build your own house, allowing you to gather resources and have a place to stay without the cost of using inns. I also recommend your character get married, for no other reason than your digital spouse will give you free stuff, free food and lots of money (a commentary I'm sure is not lost upon my married readers).

Hearthfire lets you build your own house and is very user-friendly in its interface.

Hearthfire gives you surprising free reign in creating the house of your dreams. You can also adopt orphans and hire everything from bodyguards to bards, which I felt added to the richness of my character's narrative. The Dawnguard DLC, in which your character must stop a cult of vampires from destroying the sun, is also quite good, though rather pricey at $20. I haven't tried the Dragonborn DLC for similar cost reasons, though I hear it's also enjoyable.

The Dawnguard DLC adds much to the world of Skyrim.

Overall, Skyrim is a gem with a few flaws, but a gem nonetheless. I found it a worthy sequel to Oblivion and a strong game in its own right. There's not as much character development to be had with a silent protagonist, but perhaps that responsibility is supposed to fall upon the gamer. Your actions, decisions and quests all determine how others see your character just as much as how you see him or her.

The Artwork

Skyrim's artwork will pull you in almost immediately. I've played plenty of games that had large and beautifully detailed environments, but Bethesda has created the most alive landscape I've ever seen with Skyrim. Tall, snowy mountains encapsulate lush vales full of deer, saber-toothed tigers, and many varieties of bees and butterflies. 

Skyrim gets creative with its wildlife.

Salmon jump up river rapids and glowing mushrooms adorn cavern walls. In the tundra region I was delighted to find herds of woolly mammoths, as well as fireflies, mountain flowers, geysers and flocks of brightly colored birds. Wind whispers through the pine needles of alpine forests, while deer, moose and elk stalk the glens for food. 

Skyrim is alive in a way most video games aren't.

In Skyrim's cities, people talk, laugh and carry their goods from place to place. Market stall owners call out to you while vending their wares, and priests give sermons from their A-frame temples. Mead halls featuring giant feasting tables can be found throughout Skyrim. Your character can collect mead, ale, salmon steaks, apple pie, cooked beef, cinnamon rolls, wine... (slobber).

NOM. Both for the food and for the amount of detail.

Anyway, my point is that Skyrim's environment is nothing if not living. It's one thing for an environment to be detailed, and quite another for those details to be alive and interacting with one another. I found such a world more in Skyrim than any other game I've played. You'll want to play it as much to explore this world as to do the actual quests and main storyline.

Should I get it?

Even if you're not that into RPG's, I urge you to consider Skyrim. The gameplay is fun and intuitive, and the world is massive. You're also getting a lot for your money. I found my copy of Skyrim for about $20 and it took me 80 hours to do the main story, faction quests and a lot of the side quests, though I've got a lot more to explore. There is a recurring glitch in Skyrim in which you may find people hovering a few feet in the air, but this makes more for laughter than gameplay issues. I guess there are poltergeists in this land. Bethesda is also releasing a legendary edition of Skyrim next month that encompasses the main game and its three DLC packs all for $60, which, considering that the DLCs altogether cost $45, is another deal you might consider. In any case, get Skyrim. It can become a time sink if you're not careful, but it's a very slow-burn fantasy game that I love.