Skyrim & Me: The good, the mad and the (b)ugly

The Elder Scrolls series has always held a very dear place in my heart; from the moment I first ventured in to the empire of Tamriel and in to the province of Morrowind some 10 years ago (I know what you’re thinking: ‘holy crap!’), I was well and truly hooked.  From the immersive gameplay and stunning environment, to the endearing bugs and glitches, Morrowind was, in my opinion, an utterly fantastic game and Oblivion followed suit in all its more polished and epic greatness.

These are games I have dedicated a borderline-insane number of hours to, given up social events for, risked vitamin D deficiency for…so you can imagine my excitement at the announcement that Bethesda were once again returning to Tamriel to add a 5^th instalment to what is undoubtedly my favourite gaming series of all time.

Since its release only 2 and a half months ago, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has gone on to sell over 10 million copies around the world, has earned universal praise and spawned countless internet memes.  It is without doubt my favourite in the series and, in my opinion, Bethesda’s greatest work.

Now, I’m not going to go over the story or anything like that as I’m sure the majority of people reading this will know the deal; I am simply going to talk about my experiences with the game, share some funny anecdotes and stories and sum up my overall feelings now that I have largely gotten as much as I think I want to from the game, so here goes nothing….

Firstly, the character customisation options in Skyrim really are mind-bogglingly vast – you really could spend hours honing facial features and skin tone and build to get just the right character or likeness (see below image).  I didn’t spend so long on this part and made pretty much the same character I’ve used for all of the games so far – a female Dark Elf – with only a change of name and a few extra facial features (like some bad-ass red war paint), Lellith (thanks to boyfriend Leeman for the 40k inspired name) and I were ready to venture in to the world of Skyrim for the first time!

"If it bleeds, we can slay it"

Now, I would like to commend Bethesda on the simply beautiful world they have created – the imposing mountains, flowing rivers and vast, snowy plains are absolutely stunning and accompanied by composer Jeremy Soule’s score is just, to me, gaming perfection and unlike most other open-world games, actually makes me *want* to walk between my destinations rather than “fast travelling” from place to place.

Just one of Skyrim's many breathtaking vistas

Another big reason for walking around and exploring is, obviously, the numerous dungeons, mines, caves, lairs, ruins, puzzles and crypts that seemingly litter the environment – this is what I spent the first 5 or 6 hours of my game doing – walking around, venturing in to every nook and cranny I came across and, for the most part, getting my ass handed to me on a plate!

I learnt very quickly that approaching one of these guys as a level 1 will end in being launched in to orbit and plummeting to my death!

Jackpot!!!!

I levelled up pretty quickly through doing lots of side-quests and training and after reaching level 19 I decided to tackle the game’s main quest. That really is one of the beauties of these games – you don’t have to play things in a prescribed order and you are not in any way forced to do so by any quest limitations etc, you really can make it your experience.  For example, I started a lot of quests that I simply wasn’t good enough to finish (god damn you, Falmer scum!), therefore I abandoned them halfway through and went off to do other tasks I was good enough to complete and returned to the abandoned quest once I’d levelled up a bit (or stolen a kick-ass weapon from the Jarl in Whiterun ).

Alduin in Sovngarde

Now, as for the main quest, I thoroughly enjoyed it and at no point did it begin to feel laborious, however I must say, I was expecting the final battle with Alduin to be far more challenging than it was (I have played on Adept difficulty for the entirety of my journey thus far) as it was over in the blink of an eye, but perhaps that is just down to the fact that I’d concentrated on levelling up quite a lot beforehand and had, ahem, ‘aqcuired’ some pretty sweet weaponry and armor.  In any case, I found the entirety of the main quest extremely enjoyable and it is probably my favourite of the three Elder Scrolls games I’ve played.

Skyrim’s side-quests are, for me, what really makes this game and I have had so much fun doing them so far.  Stand outs for me have to be the Mage’s Guild (or College of Winterhold as it’s known) and the Thieve’s Guild (which takes insanely long but every hour of the 12 it took me was a genuine joy).  This is a game with 100 hours of potential gameplay time, which is truly staggering in itself, but to make almost each and every hour of this as brilliantly immersive and thrilling as they are is a remarkable achievement and one that I think is completely unmatched.

As for the bugs that have now come to be synonymous with Bethesda’s work, Skyrim has plenty of them, however nowadays they are nothing compared to the days of Morrowind. Before Autosave became a feature of these games, if you had been particularly engrossed in a quest and hadn’t slept or manually saved the game for a while, literal hours of progress could be lost forever by becoming trapped in a shrub (yes, this actually happened to me).  I also recall sinking through a mountain path and finding myself stuck in a nightmarish white void from which there was no escape!

Skyrim’s bugs have, for me, been far less frustratingly punishing and far more entertaining and I for one find them really quite endearing. There’s nothing like talking to an NPC who is spazzing out on the spot, watching a dragon fly backwards across the sky, watching a chicken walking in thin air or see people falling from the sky for no apparent reason.  I also had an arrow stuck clean through my head for several days of gameplay time before it finally disappeared!  The bugs and glitches of today, for the most part, provide us all with unique, hilarious anecdotes and go some way towards making what already feels like a bespoke experience even more ‘yours’.

I’m not normally one for forcing my game opinions on people as everyone is different, however Skryim is a game I would urge everyone to pick up and give a go, it really has something for every kind of gamer out there – whether you like to run & gun (just replace the guns with destruction magic) or play it stealthy, whether you want to loot & steal or play it industriously, whether you want to be a hero for the masses or a master criminal – Skyrim will provide an experience for you!

As you can probably tell, I could literally talk for hours and hours about this game, I could dissect it, provide an almost walkthrough-like analysis of it….but for the purposes of this casual gaming blog, this is where I will end my first article.

Skyrim is, in a word, remarkable, and was undoubtedly my GOTY2011 (sorry, Portal 2).

And of course, I cannot possibly write a blog post about Skyrim without an inclusion of the following in some way, shape or form….