» Wed May 09, 2012 6:36 pm This is going to be something of a longer review than normal. Most reviews for games can be summed up as “I loved it, you should buy it, nine stars! I liked it except for (reasons), you should consider it, 8 stars. I hated it, don't buy it, 7 stars.”
Not so this one. I'm going to go through each area of the game, note what I find in a relatively objective manner, and I'm not going to hold back even if I do enjoy the game.
If there are two things I could gain by writing this, one I hope for is that you'll enjoy reading it. Or at least find it mildly interesting (or infuriating as the case may be). Two is that Bethesda's employees will read it, and perhaps get more feedback on specific aspects than the typically useless “Critic” review.
So without further ado, here we go:
Art:
There's something that bothers me a lot about some of the art in this game. There's a lot of hints of, how else to say it, copying from distinctive art. The Lord of the Rings movies are one of the most obvious... not just influences. But even before the game came out most could tell Whiterun was a city largely copied from the final, set version of Edoras from the movies. Not even from the beautiful http://www.dana-mad.ru/gal/images/Alan%20Lee/Calendar%202007/alan_lee_cal2007_08.jpg; but from stills of the movie or some such. Now, I have no problem with drawing inspiration from or etc. How else would anyone create something interesting? Creativity does not spark out of nothingness.
But the amount too which the "borrowing" is taken can make the game feel more like a half drawn copy; rather than an original, thoughtful piece of work. But it's not just the copying. It's the... culture; the detail and thought put behind the art itself. For all the tiny details Bethesda's world builders managed to put into the world, many of the actual textures and models and etc. feel rather vague and generic. The giants feel like they could fit into almost any generic fantasy setting with giants and no one would blink, the same goes for a lot of the creatures.
To take it back to what is obviously a large inspiration for Skyrim's art directors; if you wanted to copy something from The Lord of the Rings movies it should have been the advice and dedication of the artists that worked on it. To quote Alan Lee, one of the most influential artists from those movies and popular fantasy art in general, "Good art should tell a story." The giants in Skyrim could have a story to tell, and it's a shame they didn't.
As for the actual creation of the textures and models. Those are solid if unspectacular, pretty much business as usual for Bethesda. There's a nice solidness, a good sense of proportion to everything. It's not RAGE or some other game with lavished detail and attention. But it gets the job done and done well. Except that the textures, which repeat awfully. But I'll partially chalk this up to the games somewhat poor graphics engine.
The big exception to this however is the animations. Once again Bethesda has made minor improvements to one of the most important aspects of any CG effort. Animation is what sets the near legendary studio Pixar's visuals above pretty much all of their CG cartoon competition; it's what separates Avatar and the like from the Uncanny Valley. That creepy feeling you get when you're watching something that looks human but doesn't move right. And once again another Bethesda's game comes with stiff, unnatural looking animation. Somewhat better than before; but a far, far cry from the likes of Uncharted 3 and it's beautifully and smoothly animated compatriots.
A note on music:
Skyrim's music system has expanded nicely. With specific tunes for exploration depending on the time of day; as well as music for taverns and other such niceties it feels like a solid step up. As for the score itself, I've discovered after a lot of stupid arguments with friends the musical taste is extremely personal. I'm sure there's plenty of people who will agree, disagree, and be in between about whether the score is good. But you can still put in your own music, so there's not much to complain about.
The World itself:
So, the most important part of any Bethesda game is the world itself. If there's not stuff to find and collect and kill and explore then it's just not going to work. Not for their style anyway. And the good news here is that Bethesda is as good as ever, if not better than they've ever been.
NPCs have more life, and now actually have a bit of personality to go with it. Details and little interesting things to find abound. There's plenty enough dungeons and similar areas to go around, and they're more varied and/or larger than ever. Even if there are a few less than Oblivion they all feel more interesting, so it doesn't feel like it matters.
But there is a disappointment, and that's how cramped the world feels. When Oblivion came out it was huge in comparison to other game worlds. But it felt cramped as well, you couldn't walk two minutes without tripping over a “mysterious” ruin or cave or some such; taking some of the excitement out of it. Another town could be all of a four minute walk, or about a couple city blocks to compare it to the real world.
Unfortunately Skyrim is no bigger, and other games have it positively dwarfed for grand size and epic feel. The game that comes to mind here is Red Dead Redemption. Towns felt like they were a good distance away, things felt isolated in a vast expanse that was only meant to cover the southern end of single US state and a bit of northern Mexico. Switching between the two, and to then have Skyrim portend to be an entire country feels just plain off.
After complaints of Oblivion feeling repetitive I can understand the desire to keep the map the same size and make sure there was more uniqueness. But that didn't necessarily make it a great decision.
The Other half of the Graphics Equation, and other Concerns
Skyrim could be a game from 2008. And not a very well constructed game, for all of that. I've never seen shadows so blocky, they look like their made of legos. Textures repeat to a horrid degree, ruining areas and times that might otherwise have been pretty. Characters might not look as bad as Oblivion, but they still look ugly. Bethesda has yet to manage one's that look like Half Life 2, a standard set seven years ago.
Pop in is horrible, feet seem totally unconnected to the ground, rain falls through the roof. There's just not much I could be nice about even if I wanted too. Beyond maxed out setting on my decently high end PC look no better than what other games on our increasingly creaky old consoles did 3 years ago.
And this isn't even beginning to mention the load times. While every other game tries to decrease load times and frequencies Bethesda's got worse with Oblivion from Morrowind and stayed there. It's annoying on the pc, and I can't imagine how slow consoles manage to load different places. Frankly it's embarrassing.
Combat and Numbers:
If there was one hope I had for Bethesda's next game after playing Fallout 3, it would be yet more enjoyable combat. Unfortunately Skyrim doesn't deliver the same solid enjoyment of virtual violence that Fallout 3 did.
More to the point, Skyrim's combat feels caught in between the desire to be an action game and a stats based game. And it doesn't really have enough of either. The combat feels only minorly “physical” or action oriented. Blocking is just a button press that requires no timing, there's a tiny bit of aiming involved with a bow, but there's nothing that really tests the reflexes of anyone that's played games for any decent amount of time.
This wouldn't be bad at all if there was some more intellectual input to the whole thing, giving at least some part your brain a bit of a workout. And while, with sprinting and such, there's more of a management game to keeping your stamina up there's still not enough there to feel like I was ever truly having a great time with the combat alone. I could still just retreat a lot, bashing things over the head till they died and for the most part have it work.
Combined with the games lackluster and often strangely distributed progression path I couldn't help but feel a bit frustrated with the whole thing. If I want to carry more I've got to wear heavy armor, but what if I don't want heavy armor? The lack of traditional categories like “strength” have caused things you'd normally expect to improve with such categories to instead be attached to somewhat arbitrary stats you might not really want to take the time and effort to improve in.
Which means in the end a good portion of the combat's fun comes from the context of the whole thing. “I'm fighting necromancers, or a dragon, or whatever!” But this isn't enough to actually make it fun.
Writing
It's a good thing many people primarily play Bethesda games by creating their own stories in their heads; because if they had to rely on Bethesda's story telling the company might have broken up long ago. Oh look, I'm the chosen one and a wise old man knowledgeable in how to teach me about my powers is going to help me save the world from the implacable prophesied menace! Oh wait, there other
If they could have, Bethesda's writers would have made your character an orphan with a bad childhood and a thirst for adventure. And never do any of the well established tropes either stray particularly far from predictably or get any particularly deep or interesting characterization.
An example (Spoilers): Walking into the town of Falkwreath (is that right? Going on memory here) I found a sad man with a sad story. It was obvious within 2 seconds that the story was about a werewolf and that I could become one if I went through the quest the right way despite the thing being set up as a “Mystery”. It felt like being bludgeoned on the head with foreshadowing, even as the character lamented ignorance and bafflement.
Me and the person watching me were laughing about it the whole way through. And I'm fairly certain “giggling fits of laughter” wasn't the intended effect.
The Pc Port
This deserves a special mention. As I said, by every account I can find Bethesda sells as many copies on the pc as it does on either of the consoles (if not more). So to then have a UI that's frustrating to use, as well so little attention paid to trying to get the game to run on the pc feels both insulting and bizarre. Better can definitely be done.
I am a Damned Mountain Goat
Once again the “physicality” of a TES game is, non existent. Giant cliff with an 89 degree slope? Yeah, you can stand on that, no problem. Hop down what might have been imposing cliffs all you want, there's no danger.
Carts weigh about one pound and get flung off at the touch, while other objects can't move whatsoever. Arrows don't seem to drop at all, enemies react to your sword swings with nothing more than grunts. Oh and there's no “athletics” or “acrobatics” skills, which brings me to...
Now with even Less Character Customization!
Morrowind was a game with a huge variety of skills and stats, so much that it almost overwhelmed. You had birth signs, racial stats and abilities, 23 skills to level up and eight stats. That's a lot of stuff to keep track of if you're a min/maxer type, and a lot of variation in character (at least at low levels) for everyone else.
Now the skill list is down to 18 and “Stats” are non existent. Replaced with “Perks” that for the most part do little more than what advancing in skills should do anyway. Want to be a fast character? Well everyone's pretty fast, don't worry about it since there's little way to be any faster. If you've ever played a TES before and dreamed that acrobatics would be a worthwhile skill, turning your character into a fantasy spiderman, well now it's gone and there's no real way to improve.
And what if your favorite fantasy character is Tyrion Lannister? Or maybe “Captain” Jack Sparrow? Sorry, none of that. “Speech” is so watered down it may as well not exist. Which is a shame since so many recent games (such as Deus Ex 3 and L.A. Noire) have managed to improve upon and make interesting “speech” in games. Thrown weapons, crossbows, spears, what are those?
One of the biggest strengths of the TES series, the vast array of character types players could create, has been diluted to the point of mixing in between the “Warrior/Rogue/Wizard” archetypes. And that is truly a shame.
I AM INVINCEEBLE!!!
Or at least that's what it feels like. Highest “difficulty”? No problem. After all just about every enemy can be “solved” by walking backwards while using double magical flamethrowers on them. It took me less than three hours and three levels to wander into a dungeon, defeat it's boss, and find that one the games legendary weapons is in the back. And I'm only level 3, yay!
There are the giants, which do tons of damage. But for the most part the game is so easy it saps much of the potential fun out things. And I was playing on “Expert” difficulty for those wondering. Switched it to “Master” after that and still haven't found a real challenge to a lot of things. I can understand “Easy” games, but this game can be just plain unengaging.
On Kleptomaniacy
Once again you can steal half the objects in the world, and my what a vast array there is to steal too. Every dead body, dungeon, and house has a vast array of objects to shove into your near infinite bag that's kept who knows where.
But if you wanted a challenge? Now that's another thing entirely. The first time I broke into a place and stole something was half by accident. Wandering into a longhouse I found unlocked at night I sat in the throne and pretended I was the king, mwhahaha!
But once that bit of fun was done picking over the sleeping residents possessions was as easy as if they were dead. There was all of zero tension of being discovered after I accidentally ran full tilt into a man's well lit room and nary did he stir a wink. Grabbing everything he owned was as then as simple as pressing “E” on everything and then wandering over to grab everything else in the place.
Was I not supposed to be in there at night? No idea, no one said anything. What's more is I discovered how to tell what doors were locked and what weren't by accidentally trying to pick a lock about two feet from a guard. Who didn't notice a thing. Obviously by level two I was a master thief! And the whole affair never really gets anymore challenging.
Conclusion:
Pros (What Bethesda did right)
Highly detailed, living world
Tons and tons of stuff to do, more quests and collectibles than you can shake a stick at
So much loot, even bugs are loot!
Construction set!
Cons (What Bethesda did wrong)
Smallish world size, that feels ever smaller with every new and larger release from other open world titles
Loading... walk to another building, loading...
Wonky visuals (outdated, repeating textures everywhere, stiff animations, “borrowed” art design)
Smaller skillset than ever
Still as easy as going to the bathroom, even easier assuming... things best left unsaid
Totally unengaging combat
Bethesda has made a big, fun, and enjoyable game; if you play it in the “right way”. But with the “right way” is something very specific. It's that “create your own stories” and “use your imagination.” If you're doing anything else the fun is severely dampened all around.
Frankly, I miss the Bethesda that made Morrowind almost a decade ago. I miss the company that had load times that were perfectly acceptable for the detail and platform. That had graphics that were solid for the time, that had memorable writing and ambition to spare. After Oblivion I'd wondered where that company went.
Fallout 3 gave a better glimpse of that talent, and there's some of that in Skyrim as well. But it's still not the same thing as the overly ambitious, and still in many ways more interesting Morrowind.
