It’s a return to the sword and sorcery video game genre with the latest in The Elder Scrolls series named The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim!
The game is brought to you by Bethesda Softworks and developed by their Bethesda Game Studios. It’s directed by Todd Howard and utilizes the Creation Engine. Musical score is composed by Jeremy Soule. The game is developed for the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. It is due for release on November 11, 2011 and is a first-person shooter, single player RPG, with a third-person viewing option.
At first glance it looks like a movie. That’s good because when it comes to magical stuff like wizards and dragons and so on, the more realistic things look, the more impact the game has. Added to that a good story, strategy and player friendly challenges and you then have the solid ground on which a good video game can be built. That’s what this game offers right from the start. As a matter of fact if it just had the open world landscape and main character traveling around looking at things in this graphics detailed game, that would be fun enough but you know you just can’t travel around a medieval environment without doing medieval magical stuff.
There are wizards to un-wiz, dragons to battle, ogres and trolls, werewolves and a host of other baddies that come about for you to battle. The dragon fighting alone is so awesome that if the game just had running around and fighting fire breathing dragons that would be the hook up right there.
However, that’s not as simple a challenge that this game affords. In other words, you’re going to have to go to work. We won’t give out too much regarding the leveling strategy as that’s part of the fun of playing a role game like this. Finding out as you go along what you’ll need and have to do to earn rank, develop abilities, get weapons and allies. We can report though that one of the cool parts of this game is that not only do you get over 200 perks along the way but when you get weapons, you get to forge your own. So not only do you get magical powers called magicka, you also get to make your own weapons. This gives an almost endless sort of combination of skills you need to battle the big bad dragon and his hench monsters or whatever you call them.
There are five primary cities you venture to and that would be more than enough adventure right there but there are also a number of smaller hamlets and villages you can go through and do things that take place in this game. It’s also 200 years after the last game of the series, “Oblivion” so familiar players can just kick back and enjoy the fun. Familiar fans know the routine but that doesn’t mean you won’t have your medieval cut out for you. The amount of menu options, battle moves, spells, weapons, and more are huge.
To remember all this stuff is enough to make a game in itself. Now to use them all in tandem when some giant ogre or pack of demon wolf things are attacking you is quite a task. One of the funny, surprising, and challenging parts of the game are the various groups of dragons that appear. Just like if someone let the local dog pound cages open and dogs would just run around the neighborhood, that’s what happens with these dragons as they’re not scripted.
They just show up out of nowhere and start all kinds of trouble. Sometimes they’ll just fly by or walk past but other times they might attack you or maybe like a deer nearby. This type of interaction is a wild card so it makes that no two gameplays will ever be exactly alike giving a longevity to the game. Its replay value like this that will help Elders Scroll enter our Top 10 RPG PC games of the year.
Regarding graphics and design, at first glance we felt the game looked handcrafted and lo and behold we came to find out the art designer Matt Carofano had directed it to be so. See, this is quality craftsmanship that shows the development team really listened to fans and raised their own bar of excellence.
Your protagonist is you who grows and develops skills along the way has a lush and ample environment to explore. The details and lighting, costumes and more are just fine even though I didn’t like the first helmet. If we want to battle evil elf eating monsters we want a helmet that has kick-butt written all over it.
Anyhow, you can alter your appearance and again it calls for knowing that menu as you level up. Again about leveling up, it may take you some time but if you’re smart and think before you choose, you’ll be more powerful early on and then can maximize your weapons and skills. Top 10 RPG game? Time will soon tell.
