((INTRO))
Do you like CRPG? Are you a CRPG fan? If you are, you've most likely been eagerly waiting for Skyrim, even if you didn't like Oblivion or Bethesda games in general. Does Skyrim deliver?
Let me begin by saying "Move over Oblivion, the new Emperor arises to the throne."
A long, painful wait for the most anticipated CRPG of my life is finally over. The new era of CRPG is upon us and the reign of Skyrim begins.
((NEW ENGINE / PRESENTATION))
New proprietary 'Creation Engine' created by Bethesda doesn't improve graphics by night and day when compared to Oblivion and Fallout 3, however, it is specifically tailor-made for Skyrim and all the future TES and Fallout world, and improves just about everything related to gameplay, combat, animation, magic and lighting effects, shadow effects, textures, character models, facial models, graphical fidelity and the world in general.
Gone are the instability and limitations from Gamebryo Engine that shows the cracks at the seam of the massive gameworld from Oblivion and no more god-awful SpeedTree that made vanilla Oblivion quite sterile and often mundane to explore. People and monsters do not look like they got the ugly stick treatment. Facial and character models are the most impressive upgrades from Oblivion. Animations are no longer stiff and awkward and much more fluid, realistic and natural animations boost the feel and flow of movement and combat. The details of textures are very impressive. You can even see things like hair on the skin, scar, vein on human body.
The game world is all hand-crafted and hand-placed; no more auto-generated bland plants and environment. There are 5 major cities and a dozen or so minor towns, villages and settlements along with over 100 points of interest. Every dungeon is hand-crafted and has its own unique looks and layouts, similar to Nehrim. The size and number of variation of dungeons are so impressive with contents and details. Many dungeons have a puzzle or two to solve, hidden traps to avoid, unique boss-type enemy at the end waiting for you with better loots to claim, like in Nehrim. There are over 130 dungeons in Skyrim and many many of them are absolutely gigantic.
The environment effects are much more natural and realistic. Weather and water effects are dynamic. Trees, plants, flowers and leaves are also dynamic. Birds, butterflies, animals and fishes are everywhere. Everything in the game looks more organic rather than synthetic. Skyrim is rugged and mountainous region, generally covered with snow and ice but divided into several different environment zones that will make the game much diverse to traverse and the world feels larger than it already is in style of Morrowind. The world feels so much more organic and less synthetic. Skyrim is one heck of a beautiful and lively place to get lost in.
Overall, details, density and natural fluidity are the main focus in the presentation department over simple graphical fidelity, which by the way is handsomely improved over Oblivion and Fallout 3.
Jeremy Soule composed once again all the scores in the game and the third iteration of his mysterious and melodic Morrowind main title theme is transformed into rousing, heart-pounding Skyrim title theme. A couple of tracks from Morrowind and Oblivion also returns. The dialogues are done by over 70 unique voice actors.
((DRAGONS))
Were you tired of close-shut the gates of Oblivion? Will you be tired of dispatching dragons, plenty of them in different abilities? They are mighty difficult foes you will face to level up and gain new powers to finish the main quest. They are non-scripted dynamic creatures hovering around the world of Skyrim, looking absolutely menacing yet gorgeous to look at. Conquering the legion of the dragons headed by Nordic god of destruction-reincarnate in a gigantic draconic form, Alduin, is basically your main questline in a nutshell. Something tells me you'd rather mingle with these dragonlings than daedra from Oblivion in Cyrodiil or Dagoth Ur and his followers in Vvardenfell.
((CHARACTER PROGRESSION))
This will be hugely controversial among some of the fans of the previous entries but you only create your character but not the class. The class will be dynamically formed over time by how you play your character, like in Gothic Trilogy and Nehrim. Character progression in TES series has always been 'more you do better you get' as opposed to more traditional xp-based level-up; you level up by gaining experience points on your major skills that improve when you use the skill more. Only now the whole thing is completely dynamic.
Skills have been reshuffled and condensed. There are 18 skills available, 3 shorter than Oblivion (mysticism, athleticism and acrobatics removed and absorbed into other skills to chop off the redundancy) and merged into warrior, mage and thieve skill sets. You don't pick any specific class anymore and no birth sign. You now become who you play. You play with sword and shield, you'll become proficient in being a warrior. You play with magic, you'll become proficient in being a mage. If you play with sneak attack and range weapons, you'll become proficient in being a thief. This is indeed a superior system over the traditional 'choose your class' at the beginning that could in turn royally screw you for picking up the wrong skill sets that hinder you from leveling up properly.
Minor skills have been completely axed, but instead perks are implemented into each skill set that encourage you to focus on specializing smaller area of your chosen skills. There are over 270 perks available but you'll be lucky enough to get one third of them during single playthrough.
Perks, somewhat similar to the ones we had in Fallout 3, are here to make leveling up interesting and diverse that will ensure additional replay value in creating different character in the subsequent playthrough. Bethesda chopped up all the redundancy and reshaped the skills with actually more depths to each skill with perks. You now have full active control of leveling up your character throughout the game rather than simply choosing limited number of set skills in the beginning and passively watching your progress till the end.
There are also three attributes strength, stamina and magika.
((MENU / INTERFACE))
Now this also will become quite controversial among PC gamers crying foul that menu system has been watered down toward consoles. This time, Skyrim is indeed made for consoles first, therefore all the interfaces are tailor-made toward gamepad. For gamepad, the new menu and interface system are quick and intuitive. It works very well.
What Bethesda has done with the new menu system is that everything is now fully 3D and visual. Skills, magic, items and map interfaces are all fully navigatable in 3D. Every item, weapon, armor, tool, plant, flower, cloth in your possession can be inspected by zooming in / out and rotating in 3D. Skill tree looks quite similar to those of FFX, XII and XIII. What the new menu system offers is a quick, easy access to any part of menu like i-Phone GUI.
However, these changes benefit only gamepad. Navigating menu on keyboard and mouse needs quite a getting used to and frankly even clumsy and cumbersome at times. Fortunately, hotkey functionality and customizations are available for PC and once inside the menu, you can freely use mouse pointer, but using menu on PC with keyboard and mouse can cause some backlash from the PC community. I got used to it in the end.
Map in Oblivion looked generic?; no problem, we'll give you the entire topographical world map that works like Google Earth and your in-game journal is accessible in the map menu. Items and magic look generic in the inventory menu?; we'll make every single item and magic in 3D model you can toy around and admire. You want stats? Look up, stats are everywhere, literally up in the sky, in the form of ultra cool-looking constellations. HUD is very minimalistic and infos shown only when necessary then disappeared again.
((GAMEPLAY))
3rd person view is no longer mere vanity mode where you check out your cool gears but now a viable and capable combat alternative to TES signature 1st person mode. And combat in Skyrim is more visceral than Oblivion. Melee, magic and stealth combat all got nice improvement and shooting hundreds of arrows while backpedaling your way in 60 mph are no longer possible. The combat is now more dynamic and tactical with 5 different combinations of your weapons and magic abilities in each hand. Magic effects are finally more than slow trails of orange and blue balls, and they are actually fun to use this time. Each magic has different type of manifestation that enact different effect, and they are much useful here than in Oblivion. Combat move is more articulated and has more weight behind it. You have some cool-looking random finishing moves available depending on the weapons you use and the types of mobs, shown in slow-motion like in Fallout 3.
New Radiant Story System and newly improved Radiant A.I. make the game much dynamic and enhance the open-endedness (not open world-ness) only TES has been known for. To make things more interesting, the game will keep track of your activities and dynamically link all the non-main quests and dungeons to your level and progression, directing you to more appropriate and fitting locations with matching enemy types and loots. Each location is unique but how and where you are directed to is now completely unpredictable, meaning more replay value. NPC interactions with the world and to one another are much more dynamic, lively and realistic.
Read more ›
