The ancient home of the Nords, Skyrim, teeters at the brink of destruction. With the death of High King Torygg, the flood gates of civil war break loose, and brothers are slaying brothers across the frozen tundras and rocky crags. Many Nords wish to free themselves of the Empire’s grasp, which has been in decline since the Oblivion Crisis 200 years previous. Many others want to grasp upon the unity and safety offered by the Empire. A great prophecy has been foretold in the Elder Scrolls; one that foretells the return of Tamriel’s primeval darkness, the Dragons. The scrolls also tell of the coming of a mortal born with the soul of a dragon, the "Dovahkiin" or Dragonborn. One who will have the power to permanently defeat his greatest foe and end the dark reign of the consumer of worlds: Alduin.
Your journey will be full of many perils. Just as remnants of the kingdom’s shadow guardians, the Blades, will offer their aid, crafty agents of the Thalmor seeking to advance their own cause will impede your quest. Find knowledge and prove yourself, Dragonborn and even the revered Greybeards will allow an audience to learn of their ancient Draconic arts.
Now great adventurer, free yourself from bondage; take up blade or spell, bow or axe; fulfill your destiny or watch as the world ends around you.¹
Welcome to Skyrim.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the fifth installment of Bethesda Softworks’ award-winning series of RPG titles set in the mystical continent of Tamriel. Like its predecessors, Skyrim is a very open-ended game. You are not forced into a liner path of progression; instead, the entire province of the Nords is open to explore at any point you wish. Hundreds of quests, over 150 dungeons, and hordes of enemies will keep the player busy for countless hours, even if they choose not to pursue the main questline of the game. Skyrim is what the player wants it to be.
Your Character
At the beginning of the game, you will be prompted to create your character. There are a wide variety of features to manipulate; your character can be one of ten unique races, male or female, with different advantages and drawbacks. Choose to be a stalwart Imperial, a lithe Khajiit, a brutish Orc, or anything in between. The sheer number of possible tweaks to your character’s look lets you mold just about any sort of character.
But it doesn’t end merely at your character’s appearance. Skyrim’s character development system has been radically altered from the methods of Morrowind and Oblivion, two earlier titles in the series. Like the games before it, the player does not gain experience in the traditional sense, as in World of Warcraft; instead, your character has two sets of “levels”. As the player, you can practice various skills to increase your skill levels, which will both increase that skill’s potency and add experience to your character level. Maxing out your character level experience bar will advance your character level by one.
However, unlike Morrowind and Oblivion, class selection (choosing the skills and attributes that your character will be most adept with) is no longer used. Instead, the player can utilize perk points gained upon increasing their character level to advance their mastery of a particular skill tree. With this system, you can choose to become a fearsome warrior, a powerful mage, a stealthy thief, a legendary craftsman, or any combination thereof. In other words, your character is whatever you choose it to be, and he or she will not be hindered by inefficient level-ups that plagued the residents of Morrowind and Oblivion.
Aside from basic leveling and allocation of perk points, you can further define your character’s potential further on in the game. One can opt to become a vampire or werewolf, or join a guild that suits his or her tastes. Some may prefer to adopt the persona of a virtuous hero, while others revel in the thrill of murdering indiscriminately. No matter what you choose to do, the land of Skyrim will change and adapt to the choices you make.
Combat
Skyrim bases combat on three attributes: Health, Magicka, and Stamina. Health is the standard “HP” system for nearly all RPGs; should your Health drop to zero when in combat, you will die. Magicka is the substitute for “mana” in similar games; your Magicka reserves dictate how many spells you can cast. Stamina governs how long you can sprint, the number of strong attacks you can make, and how much equipment you can carry.
You have a multitude of options in combat, depending on your preferred method of killing. One-handed weapons can be combined with shields to play a defensive role in battle, or two weapons can be wielded together to maximize damage output. A single two-handed weapon might suit your needs, or perhaps the allure of sniping a foe at long range with a bow or magical spell appeals more to you. Each type of weapon has distinct advantages and disadvantages; for example, one might encounter an enemy that is resistant to standard weaponry, yet falls easily to spells that utilize fire. Another might be immune to fire entirely, but vulnerable to the bow. Adjust your tactics to fit the given situation, and improvise when an opponent’s weakness cannot be easily exploited.
Skyrim introduces the concept of Shouts, which lets the player imbue their voice with various magical effects, all of which can turn the tide in an otherwise hopeless confrontation. For example, if you are faced against a powerful foe atop a cliffside, you could use a particular Shout to push them off the cliff and avoid battle entirely! Before you can use a Shout, however, you must first learn the words for it; these words can often be found in dungeons across the province of Skyrim, so be sure to explore wherever you can to learn them all.
However, even with the myriad of options at your disposal, sometimes you’ll find that you just cannot progress without being overwhelmed by enemies or other obstacles. Should you find that an area is too difficult for you to explore without perishing, you have a few modes of recourse. You can recruit various followers, AI-controlled allies that will fight alongside you for a fee (or even for free). Other times, you may want to return to the area when you are a higher level, but enemies in Skyrim will often become stronger as you do. If all else fails, you can modify the difficulty settings to make a particular encounter more manageable. As with everything in Skyrim, the choice is yours.
Mods and Plugins
Perhaps the greatest reason for the ongoing success and longevity of Morrowind and Oblivion is the sheer amount of gameplay-enhancing mods; it’s inevitable that Skyrim will also enjoy the benefits of mods. Should you become bored with “vanilla” Skyrim, there are hundreds of different mods of any given type that you can install to rejuvenate your playing experience. You can enhance the textures in the world of Skyrim to make a high-resolution world; add a bevy of new weapons, armor, and general items; modify and even create new enemies, skills, towns, dungeons, and quests; and do essentially anything you could ever dream of to breathe new life into a previously dull adventure.
Resources
UESP.net: A wiki-type reference site dedicated to the Elder Scrolls series, with enormous amounts of information.
This reminds me i still haven't played through oblivion yet. Anyway, great news about ES 5! Oh and does anyone know about the new title from Bioware? It was meant to be unveiled during the same awards.
Et Eärello Endorenna utúlien. Sinome maruvan ar Hildinyar tenn' Ambar-metta.
Bosu United States. December 12 2010 12:43. Posts 3162
Hopefully this one will be as good as Morrowind, Oblivion was disappointing. But seeing as this is a Bethesda game, I'll only be playing it a year or so after launch, when the countless game-breaking bugs and/or minor gameplay annoyances have hopefully been fixed by patches or mods.
On December 12 2010 12:43 Bosu wrote: Oblivion was terrible, but I still enjoyed it. Which doesn't make sense, but thats the way it is. Can't wait to play skyrim.
pretty much this. although i don't think it was quite THAT bad, oblivion wasn't exactly great either but still kept me playing for hours after hours with its pretty much endless stuff to do =/ excited for this definitely
Yeah, on release Bethesda games are usually pretty bad compared to how polished they become a year or so later with third party mods to fix a lot of the question mechanics and bugs. OOO is probaly the greatest mod (new game essentially) I've ever played barring maybe Magna Mundi for EU3.
I'm really excited for this, here's hoping Bethesda pulls out a quality gem and doesn't flake out on bug fixing and other issues.
TheAngelofDeath United States. December 12 2010 13:33. Posts 2027
On December 12 2010 12:43 Bosu wrote: Oblivion was terrible, but I still enjoyed it. Which doesn't make sense, but thats the way it is. Can't wait to play skyrim.
pretty much this. although i don't think it was quite THAT bad, oblivion wasn't exactly great either but still kept me playing for hours after hours with its pretty much endless stuff to do =/ excited for this definitely
Yeah lol. Pretty much in the exact same boat. Hated the plot...and couldn't stop playing. TT
"Infestors are the suck" - LzGamer
SnK-Arcbound United States. December 12 2010 13:40. Posts 2182
Hopefully they go back to everything morrowind, skills and everything, and port it to the new graphics engine they are using. That should be the base for the new game.
No autoleveling mobs, maybe fast travel between only major cities. Give me back levitation and jumping, make magic casters more viable at low levels (it's fucking impossible to kill anything with 10 damage on touch spells). Improve the magic casting, there are so many additions they can add now (longer and shorter casting animations to simulate a "cast time".), one and two handed spell casting to make a mix between oblivion fast casting and morrowind casting and weapon switching. I want more spells, more skills (that are useful, unlike enchanting), not less! I also enjoy the crippling of limbs from fallout, and it would be amazing if they could add that to the game some how so it isn't just face rolling into enemies and clicking really fast. More spells like blind and confused that alter your interactions, anything that makes combat more interactive. Hopefully they will do some voice acting, and reading, because I really don't like listening to the same 10 voice actors using different voices. And I want an epic storyline! Oblivions was boring and short.
They have many of the great beginnings, and many good improvements they can make. I would enjoy seeing what other people think could be improved.
edit: oh and change back stealing, how the hell does anyone know what's stolen? I like the morrowind version where people know when something is stolen and will attack anyone selling any item of that type.
The design can't be any more boring then Oblivion, Imperials pretty much spell boring. I'm very happy that even though it's a sequel, it's not in Cyrodiil.
I am very exited for this one.
Teraldent Bulgaria. December 12 2010 13:43. Posts 89
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muse5187 December 12 2010 13:02. Posts 1115
