» Tue May 29, 2012 1:39 am First of all: Dragons. I love the addition of dragons. Not only are they integral to the main story line, but they have introduced a new and enjoyable combat system to the game. I must have killed more than 40 dragons using various builds throughout my different characters, and I still think they are the most enjoyable encounter in the game. They still have room for improvement (they could have special attacks like grabbing the player and letting them fall from a height) but I am more than satisfied with their implementation as it is.
Unfortunately, seeing dragons fly around merrily blasting away guards and my characters brings to surface a gripe about the game: the player's lack of flight. I know it's mentioned as a limitation of the engine but I fail to see why since there's already a console command for it. Is it impossible to include a spell that grants the exact same thing without the "cheating"? I know you're not supposed to fly over walls into "closed" cities, but is it too difficult to cover the top of those cities with an impenetrable wall of force or something similar? There's even an in-game explanation for such an implementation: you could say the cities have activated ancient Nordic wards designed by the people of the first war against dragons.
Leveling feels a lot more natural in Skyrim, and after the "must get at least two x5 multipliers before I hit the new level" nightmare of Oblivion, it is refreshing and well received. In none of my characters did I ever feel the need to game it with moves like "I'll just stand in town for hours crafting hundreds of junk weapons to improve my smithing". Of course, the problem with attributes (and how they should improve as you level up) was not actually solved, it was simply ignored by way of removing attributes. It removes a level of immersion from the game (I want to see the speed difference -both in running and weapon swinging- when I create a super speed hungry Argonian and a slow brutish Orc). A better system might have been imitating something from Daggerfall: set the number of attribute points you want to spend on level up at character creation, and if you want more points per level, it makes leveling up harder. This could even be dynamic, so you can change it every level as you play.
With the removal of attributes comes a new type of customization: perks. Initially, I really enjoyed the skill tree approach because I really like the "level up and gain new abilities" in other games as well. However, as I played through the game, I realized something: I wanted to keep creating new characters to experience new play styles. In previous games, this was unnecessary: your first character could excel in any skill if you worked hard at it. I am not talking about effectiveness of a skill here, but rather the functionality. For example, if you want your spells to be silent or your destruction spells to stagger an enemy, you need to have picked up the relevant perk during your levels. A character who has been swinging a sword for 50 levels and wants to delve into the quirky perks of magic is in tough luck: it's not impossible but after a certain point level ups (and as such perk gains) occur really slow. Where in previous games you could be a master in everything, in Skyrim you have to choose a path and plan out your character. While this is not inherently bad, one of the aspects that set the series aside for me was the ability to become a master warrior/thief/mage all at once, and I feel that has been diminished (perhaps significantly).
Many skills have been merged and some have been dropped altogether, leading to fewer skills in general. This has become a bad trend of the series: every new game "dumbs down" the skill system further. I believe dropping/merging certain things here and there is necessary (Daggerfall had separate skills for swimming, running and climbing, which kinda feels like an overkill even though it's more realistic) but I want the freedom to make a character run especially fast or jump to ridiculous heights or kill things with their fists (the latter is still possible, but not all of us envision a monk fighting with 5 kg metal boxing gloves, nevermind the fact that none of the combat trees support unarmed).
Speaking of merging and dropping, removing custom spell creation was, in my opinion, one of the worst changes made to the series. I do not know the reasons behind the decision (and whether it's console related) but having only one effective direct attack fire spell (since they are upgraded per tier) is pretty lame. Why can't I have a spell that creates a blast of cold but burns the target over time? Or an explosive ring of fire that burns my entire mana but also turns me invisible? You could make crazy combinations in previous games (especially Daggerfall) and that depth is lost here. It feels like the next step will be to reduce magic into two schools, combat and utility, and reduce the number of spells even further according to those categories (I exeggrate). Unfrotunately, following the destruction tree, I felt like I had only 1 fire/cold/lightning spell, and I was simply getting damage multipliers at certain skill points.
Enchanting has become an entirely separate school by itself, and that is a really nice change. Not having to learn spells from other schools or cast unrelated spells to improve your enchanting skill has been a really good change to the game mechanics. Unfortunately, I think the kinds of enchantments and where you can put them is severely limited, to the point where it is confusing and not fun at all. It is sad we can't craft regeneration rings or helmets that provide night vision. This is one of those things that takes every from the depth of the game (and it is not actually making it easier to understand or making it new player friendly in my opinion). Smithing is a great addition though, and I'm surprised I've played this long without it (I mean during the series, not Skyrim in particular). The fact that it's not simply for item crafting but also improving (thus avoiding the "this skill is useless since everything you can craft drops already" situation) shows good design.
I had a sort of "meh" reaction to Dragonshouts. They are sort of there, available but not really necessary. If there were more shout related puzzles in the game they'd certainly see more use (I've only encountered one such puzzle until now). Perhaps if some pillar puzzles were replaced with dragon shouts, and you'd have to get a specific shout to proceed in certain dugeons (would fit thematically as well, having certain dungeons locked to all except the Dragonborn). I'm sure their effectiveness (and your enjoyment of them) depends on a person's playstyle, but since they are on a static resource (they all need time to recharge which cannot be improved) they are more like conditional boosts. If you could disenchant the amulets that reduce their cooldown and make your own enchantment versions, they might have beeen more fun for me (getting them to recharge really fast and running around breathing fire like a dragon would have been fun).
The main quest felt better compared to that of Oblivion, I'm not sure if that's merely because there are dragons involved. It feels less "all over the place" compared to Oblivion though, feels more focused and progressive (not having to run around from city to city shutting down semi-randomly generated dungeons may be related). The civil war conflict interjects at some point, but it didn't put such a pause to the main quest for me (had already finished it) and having another quest line intervene with the main story was actually interesting. I was totally expecting to ride a dragon, but I think if the final battle could be done on dragonback it would have been much, much better (even if it were a pre-scripted flight combat with you only able to land attacks and not actually in control of the dragon). Again, why we can't haz flying
Overall, I enjoyed Skyrim and I feel a lot of things have improved. I just feel that more and more, the series is dropping certain gameplay elements which made the games unique and fun. Even though it's still a great game, I can clearly say I had a lot more fun playing around with the previous games compared to Skyrim (even when you factor in the [censored] monster leveling system of Oblivion).
