The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Review

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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Well, the issue is that few "RPGS" really are RPGS anymore, what's being called dated is pretty much what defines the genere. Doing things like giving the player character a voice tend to get in the way of more important things like character creation and choosing to be what you want rather than being given a character. It's incredibly disconcerting to have a clear idea of who your character is, and then have a voice that doesn't fit, or crap shooting out of his mouth that you don't think fits. The only game that even tried to find a compromise was actualyl a third person sandbox shooter... "Saint's Row 2" in fact, but since then nobody has picked up the torch of having multiple voiceovers for the main character to at least give you some kind of choice there.

As far as the level of NPC animations and such, I think that's a matter of the scale of the game. It's easy to say "I want all these ultra-expressive supporting characters" but understand in a big game, especially a sandbox, the game has to track all of this stuff at once and it's going to choke the system. Your looking at a situation where you have a choice of epic scope and limited NPCS, or limited scope and epicly developed trivial NPCs.

I think to an extent "Rage" is the flipside of the coin, you had all kinds of expressive NPCs that people have been praising, but you also have less stuff going on around those NPCs at any given time, it's just tracking less with a far less complicated engine allowing for it to have those kinds of details.

I don't think it's Skyrim being dated, so much as the give and take of modern technology, with people wanting to have everything at the same time, when we just don't have powerful enough personal computers in the hands of enough people to make it a viable course of development.
 

NewYork_Comedian

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Nov 28, 2009
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I wonder if modders or patches will be able to give the NPC's more physical motion when speaking. If thats the case, then that will just make the game even better. Cant wait for midnight soon enough.
 

lacktheknack

Je suis joined jewels.
Jan 19, 2009
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You know what sells it to me?

The ending bit, where the fire spells caused explosions.

TOO MUCH WANT! D: If only I wasn't in university...
 

Odjin

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Nov 14, 2007
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undeadsuitor said:
Odjin said:
In Oblivion at last you could not trigger the main story to ignore all the Oblivion portal crap but here you can't.
Are you sure? Because I remember reading an article that said that the dragons wouldn't appear until a few story missions in. Has that changed?
They wrote back then they want to force people to see (and have to deal) with a dragon at a given interval (with other words, spam them on you). And this dick-move is quite logic seeing as:

- they mutilated the TES-lore (take some lessons with Akatosh about why retcon sucks)
- they mutilated the game-mechanics (important skills/abilities removed and added crappy "mixtures")
- they still haven't understood combat (two-hands is a nice idea... but if the basic combat sucks two-hands just doubles the suck)
- their character system is still the biggest joke in existence (animations? emotions? motives? what for! we are Bethesda-sucks!).

Worst part is that reviewers still kiss their buttocks instead of actually saying how much crap they brewed together. They should drink some "intelligence" potion the next time... maybe then they manage to get back to good game-creating. But one can dream I guess.
 

Shamanic Rhythm

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I have to say, I'm a little disappointed with this review. It tells you almost nothing given two constraints "I don't want to spoil it" and "The game is too huge for me to describe". But what's left over are a) describing fairly normal RPG conventions as though they're ground-breaking (you can spend points in talent trees to improve skills! Wicked!) b) an extended anecdote that fails to replicate the tension of the event and ultimately has probably happened to anyone who's been ganked by adds in almost any RPG you can care to name (happened all the time in Oblivion, actually), c) a number of what seem like fairly justifiable quibbles with the game taking up the last third of the review, but then giving the game five out of five? I'm not complaining about the score, but when you give something that kind of grade it renders any criticism you made kind of trivial.

For me, this was a poor review because it didn't tell or show me anything that Bethesda themselves haven't already tried to sell us via marketing. There's no sense of the game actually being evaluated, because just saying "the story is epic" without giving any details because you don't want to spoil it is just akin to all the hype. Furthermore, it's not helpful because while Bethesda RPGs are always very epic in scope, sometimes that length is just padded out with bland, randomly generated scaling content - this was a huge problem in Oblivion, most notably. Yet that's not really given any consideration beyond a "this will irritate some people" towards the end. Bethesda games are also noted for their bugginess, and yet there's no mention of any bugs or corresponding lack of bugs.

Basically, I want to like Skyrim, but based on reviews like this I get no assessment of the game, just a "play it for yourself and find out".
 

Zay-el

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Apr 4, 2011
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Odjin said:
If this is crap, then I honestly wish to see what constitutes as a good game, in your opinion.

Also, has any of the TES games had actually good combat? I know people love to harp on Oblivion a lot, only to forget the nice little days of Morrowind, where you stand in front of a Cliff Racer and stab-stab-stab until a red blot appears.

And again, what 'good game-creating' times do you keep referring to?
 

ReiverCorrupter

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Jumwa said:
Deviate said:
I just wonder, with all the dragons in the game, will a sneaky archer still be viable, or will it be gimped in such fights?
According to PC Gamer's review, no, your sneaky archer will not be gimped in the slightest. They make explicit point of that in fact.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/11/10/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-review/

Or maybe it was Rock, Paper, Shotgun's review:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11/10/skyrim-review-pc/

Either way, seems no, not at all.
From what Bethesda said in some of the pregame details archery is actually a lot more powerful than it used to be, with only one or two arrows being lethal. So actually a stealth archer might be one of the most powerful classes. The downside being that you can't backpedal quickly anymore so you can't keep running and shooting them as they come at you. Also I don't think you can carry that many arrows either.

The real question is how they balanced the stealth aspect of the game. Remember how you could essentially make yourself invincible in Oblivion by wearing all chameleon enchantments? If your chameleon stat was over 100% you could smack someone in the face repeatedly and they couldn't fight back. I wonder if they fixed that. The NPCs should start swinging randomly or run away if they're getting hit by something completely invisible, but I guess that's a fairly complicated thing to program.
 

MikeWorks

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Oct 25, 2011
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Some more reviews:

9.7 from gamrReview [http://gamrreview.vgchartz.com/review/49112/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/]
9.4 from Nowgamer [http://www.nowgamer.com/xbox-360/xbox360-reviews/1124801/elder_scrolls_5_skyrim_review.html]
 

svenjl

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Mar 16, 2011
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About an hour in...no dragons yet :)
Combat feels a bit more chunky and methodical. Lovely controls on the 360, everything works brilliantly. Game looks great for the most part. NPCs are much better in terms of animations and voice acting, and the dialogue so far is well written. The menus are a huge improvement on Oblivion. So my first impressions are very very positive. Now I just need real life to pause for the next 18 hours or so.
 

Elf Defiler Korgan

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Apr 15, 2009
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Steve Butts said:
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Review

Bethesda's latest is a true RPG epic that asks you what you want and then gives it to you.

Read Full Article
So Steve, you were caught in a battle against two sides, wizards dug-into defences and a dragon, and you survived? I thought as much. This game is pretty to be sure, a great solo fantasy adventure, but it sounds way to easy--none can beat your Mary Sue!

I also really don't like that you can get good at everything over time. So your warrior can also be an arch-mage? And a sneaky thief, and a potion-brewer? This is starting to get a bit ridiculous here, verisimilitude shattered. I knew it wouldn't put any restrictions into place, wouldn't want to risk people being offended or having different types of characters, because by the end of the game, we are all going to pretty much be the same--save cosmetic differences. We will all be warrior-mages-stealth-masters and potion-brewers.

Ptah!
 

ReiverCorrupter

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Jun 4, 2010
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I say old chap said:
Steve Butts said:
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Review

Bethesda's latest is a true RPG epic that asks you what you want and then gives it to you.

Read Full Article
So Steve, you were caught in a battle against two sides, wizards dug-into defences and a dragon, and you survived? I thought as much. This game is pretty to be sure, a great solo fantasy adventure, but it sounds way to easy--none can beat your Mary Sue!

I also really don't like that you can get good at everything over time. So your warrior can also be an arch-mage? And a sneaky thief, and a potion-brewer? This is starting to get a bit ridiculous here, verisimilitude shattered. I knew it wouldn't put any restrictions into place, wouldn't want to risk people being offended or having different types of characters, because by the end of the game, we are all going to pretty much be the same--save cosmetic differences. We will all be warrior-mages-stealth-masters and potion-brewers.

Ptah!
This is a common but misguided complaint. There is an ultimate level cap, which means that you can only unlock a limited amount of perks and only have a limited amount of magic, health or stamina because you can only choose to increase one perk and one stat each each time you level up. Thus once you hit the level cap you're stuck with the stats and perks you have, though you can still level up your skills. That means that if you haven't increased your magic much when you hit the cap, you'll never be able to cast the highest level spells no matter how high your skill in magic gets, nor will you be able to unlock the perks that makes certain techniques like fire or ice more cost effective. Or alternatively, if you focus solely on magic before you hit the level cap then your character will always be vulnerable, no matter how much you increase your melee combat skills. Even if you reach 100 with swords you still won't have the powerful finishing moves unlocked by the perks. Or even worse, you won't be able to unlock the perk that decreases the amount of fatigue when you swing your sword, which, when combined with the fact that you haven't increased your stamina or strength and endurance, will keep your character from being effective with swords, even if the skill level is 100.

Also, if it's anything like Oblivion you should be able to scale the difficulty from the menu. Plus, while most creatures are leveled to you, there are bound to be many enemies and areas that will kill low level players.
 

Deadyawn

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Jan 25, 2011
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I'm pretty sure all I picked up from this video is that Skyrim has lock picking from the new fallouts. And for this I am grateful.
 

Infernai

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The Almighty Grigard said:
Ruwrak said:
draythefingerless said:
Ruwrak said:
draythefingerless said:
Deviate said:
So, I've gone from being 'meh' about all the Skyrim hype until these last two days where I've been... well, this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9eGtyqz4gY

I just wonder, with all the dragons in the game, will a sneaky archer still be viable, or will it be gimped in such fights?
I dont think Stealth is an option when it comes to killing a dragon....
Maybe you can poison it's tea?
Thats just stupid and silly......i mean, how are you supposed to know whats poisonous to a dragon?

Probably it's own blood. So ask him if he can donate some blood for the bloodless dragons fund. Then poison his complimentairy tea with his own blood.

Gah why don't people get this!
How can it's own blood be poisonous to itself? So it will die from it's own blood entering it's own bloodstream? In that case, we are all walking dead. :D
And then Dovahkin was a zombie..
 

Jumwa

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Jun 21, 2010
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ReiverCorrupter said:
From what Bethesda said in some of the pregame details archery is actually a lot more powerful than it used to be, with only one or two arrows being lethal. So actually a stealth archer might be one of the most powerful classes. The downside being that you can't backpedal quickly anymore so you can't keep running and shooting them as they come at you. Also I don't think you can carry that many arrows either.

The real question is how they balanced the stealth aspect of the game. Remember how you could essentially make yourself invincible in Oblivion by wearing all chameleon enchantments? If your chameleon stat was over 100% you could smack someone in the face repeatedly and they couldn't fight back. I wonder if they fixed that. The NPCs should start swinging randomly or run away if they're getting hit by something completely invisible, but I guess that's a fairly complicated thing to program.
100% chameleon had the same effect as making you 100% invisible, but with the ability to do whatever you cared to without breaking it.

If you stacked enough spell effects to get it, it wasn't unintentional. Not really something in need of fixing, IMO. Don't like it? Don't do it.
 

Cody Holden

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May 4, 2011
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Odjin said:
Without giving anything away, you really need to kill dragons in this game
This had been the death-blow to this game from the very beginning. Whoever knows TES-lore even a little bit knows how much of a franchise-backstab (TES-lore backstab) this is.

...snippity...

EDIT: And no, retcon doesn't count... retcon is crap, and this game is the pinnacle of retcon <.=.<

Couple of things:

1. You're really not giving the game a chance to explain itself there. Maybe do that in the future? Especially with lore?

2. I'm not too familiar with the lore (only played the games, and only since Morrowind), but it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch, in general, to say that the dragons are mad at humanoids, or Tamriel, or they're just a**holes now. I mean, they're dragons. Unless the "backstab" is somewhere else, in which case please illuminate me.