Skyrim. A Review After the Polish has Worn off.

Three weeks have passed since Bethesda released the newest title in its ongoing The Elder Scrolls franchise, TES V: Skyrim. I've played it extensively since then and enjoyed it immensely. It's a great game, that's for sure, and it's been praised to the skies and even higher in most pre-release reviews. It's sold like a bajillion copies for the PC and for consoles, and I'm glad Bethesda is making back the money they invested into creating this game. 

This being said, I think now is the time to take a closer and more objective look at what Skyrim really has turned out to be. The first exciting rush is gone, most of the exploration is done, and the major quest lines have been solved. I've thrown close to a hundred hours at this game and now feel confident to give it an objective review.

To make this short, this game has major issues.

I think the depth of the factions and their interactions is one; it seems to have been almost totally ignored. Which really is a shame for a game that uses a civil war and the intrigues between noble families as its setting. Even if it doesn't amount to anything, it's the kind of stuff the game should present you with, very frequently. It's not just the Legion, it's endemic to the whole game. I'm still in the middle of the exploring part of my first playthrough, so I really don't mind that much right now, but after all is said and done, this sadly seems to follow the line of great Bethesda sandbox game where you're really ending up not doing all that much in the sandbox.

And that's what infuriates me with Bethesda: this sort of... half-assedness. I would understand it if the game engine couldn't handle it. But if the long history of modding BethSoft's games has shown one thing then it's that the engines can handle that sort of stuff, and very well so!

It's not just the Legion: your actions should have tangible consequences for the world!

Dragons. Been there, done that. Giants are more intimidating.

Thoughts about this issue always bring me back to Oblivion. There was this one side quest where you were asked by a bunch of settlers to help them with two goblin tribes in the region, and if you did and later came back to the settlers, you'd see the changes you affected (twice, I think) in so far that their tents were replaced by farms and farm land and the like.

So far, what little I cared for in Skyrim, these changes haven't happened. Sure, I'm the Thane of Falkreath and stuff, but neither can I influence decisions there, nor do the people care. For that matter, something should happen with those dragon skeletons I leave behind. One's right in the town square of Falkreath - and nobody notices or cares.

If you disrespect the law, you disrespect me!

General NPC comments are fine, but your impact should be greater than that, especially since they neither take your level nor your accomplishments into account.

The comments by the various town guards are especially egregious in that regard. "No lockpicking here, you thief!" or "So you're an alchemist? Brew me an ale!" or the ever-present "If you disrespect the law, you disrespect me!" are just a few of them.

Disrespect you? Brew you an ale?! I kill near immortal Lich priests for breakfast, you wankers. I'm a level 45 dragon killing murder machine and the Thane of every goddamn settlement that dares to call itself "town". I've probably killed three times the population of Skyrim worth in bandits and draugr. It'd be nice if you didn't disrespect me! Otherwise I might feel tempted to shout you to pieces, you worm!

Lack of Response, Lack of Immersion

Look at Falkreath and the situation there. The game even tells you that the old Jarl has been replaced against his will, and you immediately realize the new Jarl is a corrupt douchebag whose hold is run by his Aldmeri "advisor". Perfect hook for intrigues and quests with an impact on the actual setting. But do we get that? Nooo.

Killing you... not so softly.

In the smaller settlements it really isn't too bad, like that one small mining village where the miners do their work, sit around the fire in the evening, then go to bed. But once you're in bigger settlements that very basic structure becomes apparent in many cases, because half the people really don't seem to do anything other than stand around and basically walk in a large circle. Conversations between each other there need to be more frequent, as do activities. I'm getting the feeling that in this regard the game always seems to stop short just one step of being really great.

Some of the more important NPCs would need more work (the Battleborns and Greymanes, for example; they would need more conversations amongst each other, possibly scenes where they meet in front of the Jarl to discuss/argue things; only problem here would be the voice acting, or rather, the lack thereof).

We also need more people on the road, be they refugees or merchnt horse carts with guards and the like. The intro scene shows that horse carts work, so why not implement them in the game? You could even use some of them for mini quests like escorting merchants from one village to another.

This game clearly has all the tools and ingredients ready for a superbly immersive experience: just as Oblivion and FO3 had these things. Since we know the depths these games can achieve via the construction kits, I'm left to assume that it isn't a technical issue, but has to be one of writing. And that, quite frankly, is lacklustre, and since it's the third game in a row with that kind of problems, apparently an ongoing issue at Beth. If writing storylines for all these sidequests is a problem, hell, I volunteer to help out!

I mean, what's the point in creating these elaborate worlds with really intriguing backstories when your hero's actions barely have consequences? I want to see the Battleborns and Greymanes scheme against one another. I want to them see in the Jarl's hall. I want to be able to take down the Thieves' Guild and rid Riften from it's corruption. I want to go to the shrine of Boethia, tell them how deplorable I find them and eradicate the cult from Skyrim. I want to get into the power struggle between the old and new Jarl in Falkreath. As Thane of Falkreath, I want to lead soldiers against the bandit and monster infested holds in that region and have them establish guarded outposts. I want to [i]see[/i] the world work, not just read about it in the admittedly great in-game books. I want my character to be privy to things. I want him to [i]matter[/i].

I can understand simplification for game play reasons (I'm really glad they ditched the whole repair routine, for example), but please, Bethesda: you're making an RPG! When did you wake up one morning and thought "Gee, let's make those quests less involving and interesting" was a good idea?

(Un-)Balancing
Secondly, there are some balancing issues. I'm usually not too keen to comment on core gameplay issues, especially since they are minor issues in Skyrim that could be solved rather easily, but just imagine this:

You are a level 30+ character decked out in custom-made equipment easily worth 5,000+ gold pieces. You are a combat god who frequently deals with dragons. Your armor rating is so 200+. And then you get killed by a levelled bandit character with an iron great sword in three strikes.

No. Just no.

This isn't how this works. Some kind of buff bandit leader decked out in all kinds of looted equipment, that I could accept. But the above mentioned bandit mook? Sorry, that's just the game cheating, especially because I cannot achieve the same effect with a weapon that does like ten times the damage of that iron great sword! I know the reason for this is Bethesda's effort to keep the encounters competitive, but really? The point of me being level 30+ should be that low level mooks would rather flee than face me - or, that if I do face something generic as bandits, I'd wade through them like the Grim Reaper himself. In a way it's worse than in Oblivion, where wayside brigands ended up being equipped with gear worth enough to buy half a village. But at least those guys had the gear and skill to actually be able to harm me. In Skyrim, they don't (have the gear and money) and yet tend to bitchslap me.

Locational damage - in case it even exists, I'm not sure - is hazy at best, since it seems to be pure chance whether or not a hit to the unarmored head does more damage than a hit against other parts of the body (I tested that with a long series of headshots). That takes some of the finesse out of any fight, since in effect you either begin to spam arrows in your enemy's general direction of simply wail on them with whatever melee weapon you have. While the fights themselves were worse in Oblivion, the fight dynamics in that sense were better developed there.

Levelling
A large part of the levelling process also seems to be either consciously defunct or outright broken since increasing your skill score has no obvious result anymore. It's all about the perks, and about unlocking level barriers of the perks. It doesn't seem to matter whether my score in a particular skill is 0 or 60, or even 100. Unless I spend perk points on it, the whole things isn't worth a damn, and that's a damn shame for sure. Perks should add a bonus to your command of a skill, but they should not be the sole defining part of that skill! There should be a serious and obvious difference between me wielding a two-handed weapon with a skill of 20 and a skill of 60 - but there isn't. Likewise, there should be a major difference between the effects of a firebolt spell at skill level 25 and skill level 50, regardless of perks!

But there isn't! Or, at least I don't realize there is. A perk should be something that rewards you or steers you into a particular direction to specialize a skill. But it shouldn't be the be all and end all of the skill itself. What's the point in me grinding my skills up to 100 if all I get for it in return are a couple of perks and not an actual effect of the skill increase?!?

It's like your training kung-fu or karate: what should happen is that you get gradually better as you train (your skill score increases), and your master then one day hands you a ticket to Nepal where some monks will teach you some extra punches (you get a perk).

What ostensibly does happen is that you train your ass off to no effect, then you're sent to Nepal and BAMM! Perks. Tiger-Eagle Claw of Death, motherfrakker!

Sorry, that's just lazy. Increasing your skills should have tangible effects, even if it's just a 1% efficiency bonus per skill point.

Beautiful. Empty. Unresponsive.

The Giant Empty Sandbox
There seems to be a certain disconnect between parts of Bethesda's development teams. While a great and very colorful world has been created, while literally dozens of ingame books tell background stories or just nice stories for the player, while a political setting has been created that could very well serve as one if not the most fascinating playgrounds ever, after 20 days with the game, after exploring all dungeons and caves and castles, after having scrubbed off the surface of Skyrim, I come to the conclusion that there is little more to Skyrim than that surface.

Quests lack even the most simple options, 8 out of 10 times railroading the player into decisions and quest notes he or she otherwise would have no inclination at all to follow. Mind, I'm not talking about the main quest here; as an author and a former GM I'm aware that to make the overall plot work, players have to be gently prodded into certain directions.

Werewolves. Another one of far too many paths the player
is railroaded into (the "choice" is either become one or abandon
a whole quest line, keeping it unfulfilled in your quest log;
Great "choice", eh?).

But that's not what I'm talking about in relation to Skyrim. By far not the only instances of it, but the most memorable ones are the Daedric plots. Daedra - god-like demon princes - are revered secretly by some across the land, and in your travels you stumble across them after a while: you meet a cannibal in a cemetary, you witness a berserker attack hapless travellers on the road, and so on. So far, so good. Those are the hook-ups. But, guess what? You can't do anything about them!

An example? Sure! The cannibal in the cemetary you were sent to investigate? You can't kill her, oh no! She just leaves and invites you to her new sanctuary. So you go to the sanctuary, and guess what: you have to clear it from some undead. Once that's done, she sends you to bring her an innocent man to be sacrificed and eaten. At no point in that quest are you given a conversation choice to deny any of her requests, let alone one to tell her that you'd much rather kill her demon-worshiping cannibal ass!

A true sandbox RPG, especially one in such a fine sandbox as Sykrim, should leave the choice to the player. Hell, except for crucial main plot twists, it should leave every choice to the player! I played around a bit with the GECK, the construction and modding kit for Bethesda's (Obsidian's) last games. Dialogue and basic quest choices aren't exactly hard to create, not even for somebody like me who is effectively scripting-illiterate.

But the Modders will fix it all! That's what I got told half a dozen times over at the Nexus forums. And sure, they will fix some of things. But you'd have to be as thick as a rock if you really believed they would fix the whole immersion issue. I love the modding community, but let's be honest for a moment here: 90% of what the modders do is related to: player houses, graphical improvement, weapons' variety - and sex (primarily in "Nude" mods, and most likely in establishing some prostitution routine). How many will actually be spending time and efforts into fixing and expanding quests, into creating a more vibrant world into, well, actually working with the intrigue-riddled setting Bethesda gave us?
Identically, some of the defenses that have been brought up whenever the shortcomings of the game have been discussed are downright amusing:

I'm amazed by people that aren't enjoying Skyrim.
It seems some of you have forgotten that games are meant to be fun, not filled with complexity. You are focusing so much on some of those details that you cannot enjoy the game, you are ignoring the bigger picture.
You are literally destroying the fun for yourself. The game is fun, you thinking that it's over-simplified, dumbed down, lifeless or just plain boring is you focusing on details so much that you start being frustrated.
You should accept the changes, stop being an elitist and enjoy the game.

So I should expect a game that set out to create a living world with intrigues and politics... to be simple and dumb? I didn't buy Skyrim because I wanted a hack'n'slash dungeon crawler, even though the game does a good job at that. If that's the only thing you are looking for, go and get Dungeon Siege or one of the Diablo series! The game is fun, yes. And it could have been way more fun had it played with the net it threw out right at the start of the voyage: a living world where your choices matter and influence things.

In fact, Skyrim in its current state is far less than modded Oblivion. And that it truly sad given the length of time between games and the fact that while modders enjoy what they do, they shouldn't HAVE to do it.

People seem very complacent about the fact that modders are going to fix everything that is wrong with Skyrim. And, while that is obviously going to turn out to be true, am I the only one who is pissed off that the bare bones of Skyrim requires so much repair and improvement?

And don't get me started on the AI companions. For one, they constantly stand in the way (and usually in such a manner that makes it impossible to evade them), they trigger every single one of the very obvious traps (which I neatly bypass), and worst of all: they have zero personality. Literally, like, none at all.

The world is empty and lifeless. Where are the travellers on the roads? The people chopping wood in, well, the woods? The hunters and other adventurers (who, admittedly, do exist, but in really negligeable numbers)?

Things don't change. Towns and villages don't change. People don't change. Skyrim is far better than Oblivion in some aspects, but in that regard it seems to be your typical Bethesda game: they built a great sandbox and left it at that. And all things considered (the subpar grafics, the lack of immersion, the - at best - mediocre writing) this simply doesn't cut it anymore in 2011.

I will still put some of my hopes into the modding community. But unless Bethesda sets out to remedy some of this game's shortcomings with patches or DLCs, I'll have spent money on one of their products for the last time.


Edit: by the time I'm publishing this entry, Bethesda's "Patch" 1.2 has supposedly majorly fucked up the game. Keep doing that, guys, keep doing that. What's the worst that could happen to your customer base, eh...?