Review: Skyrim (Xbox 360)

Category: Open World, Action RPG
Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
Released: November 11, 2011
Platform: Xbox 360
Price: $39.99
Also on: PS3, PC

As a veteran of mostly linear Role-Playing Games (RPGs) dating back to the Super Nintendo "Golden Era" of RPGs (see: Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, etc.), I was initially turned off when I found that Skyrim gives players no true direction (with the exception of the Dragonborn path that can loosely be called the "main story"). Being a gamer from this era has trained me to think that there should always be a main plot that I follow at my leisure. Not that having options is a bad thing; the BioWare series Dragon Age handled this "choose-which-adventure-you-want-to-pursue-in-any-order" style very well. And Skyrim is similar in that I can also choose any quest I want to tackle at any time, but in this case, I don't have to do any of it at all, and for completionist like myself, this concept is overwhelming -- there is too much to do. And in some cases, it's not always that interesting. But that's okay because you can always skip the boring stuff, as I learned.

After about 25 hours of playing Skyrim, boredom began to set in. I took a week-long break and then came back to it, and after a week off, I found that my problem was that I was comparing Skyrim to every other RPG I've ever played, which was my mistake. This isn't really an "RPG" as I know it. Instead, Skyrim is more of wandering "adventure," and from that perspective, I really started to enjoy the world that was created for me. I put another 40 to 50 hours into the game (totaling around 80 hours play time overall) before I was more or less forced to quit the game for good (more on that later).

The world of Skyrim is a massive, filled with snow-topped mountains, dragons, and about a dozen or so other types of monsters that are just waiting to be slain because you are the last Dohvakhin (a human with dragon blood that can both speak with and slay the beasts), and you wield a plethora of weapons and magical powers in any combination you like. You can choose any "class" you prefer, be it a mage, warrior, thief, archer, or any other typical RPG standard. The game allows you to experience your adventure from the first-person and third-person perspectives (but it's obvious based on the lack of fluid character animation that the developers intended first-person play).

My overall experience with Skyrim has been a mixed bag. At times, I was amazed by what Bethesda had put together, and at other times, I felt like they just took the easy way out. Now before you start lighting your torches and grabbing your pitch forks, let me explain. It's obvious that a game of this scale takes a lot of work and an insane amount of development time, but my time scouting through Skyrim was lacking something. While you will find more attention to detail to the environment in this game than possibly any other game out there on the market (with the exception of maybe Grand Theft Auto VI or Red Dead Redemption), there are some other important details that were never even considered. For example, despite the amazing environment, the citizens of Skyrim are absolutely boring, and the animations are stale at best. Not once did I get a believable performance from any character in Skyrim. Not every game has to have superb voice acting or facial character mapping like the way L.A. Noire did, but it would be nice if (1) the characters' mouth and head movements matched the conversation that they are speaking and (2) Bethesda hired more than the same 10 to 15 voice actors to speak every single person you interact with in this game. There were cases where I spoke with two different people in the very same town, and they had the exact same voice. (Maybe they were twins? I don't think they were supposed to be since they looked nothing alike). Again, you can fall back on the same crutch that "this project is such a large scale sandbox game," but really, it's kind of a bummer when a game is more interesting while your character hikes through the woods than when he or she interacts with the characters that progress your quest.

The city awaits you but you'll find much more interesting things out in the wilderness.

But the real sore spot that made me quit the game was the glitches. I can't stress how disappointing it is to spend 80 hours on a game that breaks to the point you can't complete certain quest lines. Again, with a project of this scale, a few hiccups are bound to happen (just do a simple search for "Skyrim glitches" on YouTube to see what I mean), but it really shouldn't if Bethesda is actually dedicating a decent amount of time to play testing and debugging. If the company's previous games are any indication, then it does not. And that's ultimately was what stopped me from playing Skyrim. The game was broken for me after all that time.

To sum up, there are good things and bad things about this game; it's hard to give a solid "yes" or "no" if I were asked to recommend Skyrim, but I would lean towards "it's worth a try" because there are a lot of good things unfortunately mixed in the with the bland and bad. The truth is: Skyrim is a beautiful world to explore; I was amazed by the beauty of the virtual Nordic world; the incredible detail from the smallest snow flakes to the grand, towering mountains is a lot to take in -- it leaves a lasting impression. But also, I was annoyed by the lack of direction and development given to the citizens and villains within this amazingly detailed world. That opinion never really changed as I played through Skyrim: pretty world, pretty boring people in it. I never once felt attached to the lead character that I created; he was just an empty shell that I used to get from point A to point B. But the longer I played Skyrim, the less I cared about its individual characters and the more I cared about the one "character" that matters the most — the world of Skyrim itself ... at least up until the game broke it, and my adventure abruptly was suspended forever.

My Recommendation: Give it a try, but be patient
(and save often to avoid nasty glitches)