So, we don't have a Skyrim thread yet.
I got this game right before the price point dropped from sixty bucks to about thirty, and a week before a Bethesda sale on Gamersgate, too. Still, I have to say, it was a worthy purchase.
My thoughts on Skyrim so far: (wall of text, vague spoilers)
Spoiler: show
First, the good. Combat is very fun and well-implemented - I love the dual-wielding system. Do you choose a shield for some protection and shield bash, another weapon for extra damage-dealing but also forgoing the ability to block, or do you opt for a spell to complement your stabbiness/survivability? It also lends a whole new dimension to spell casting as you can mix and match a lot of different styles. Smithing is also very involving, I probably spend as much time smithing as I do dungeon-crawling.
Skyrim feels like a real place, where I never felt the Imperial Province was anything but a game space. I don't know exactly how big Skyrim is in-game, but it feels much bigger than Oblivion's Imperial Province. It's chock full of beautiful vistas - probably second only to Just Cause 2 in my opinion.
The lore of the world is well-done - Skyrim manages to feel like more than just Scandinavian fantasy expy. The way the different layers of history influence the landscape and interact with one another feels very true to history, and I appreciate the mature way they dealt with the aftermath of the Oblivion Crisis. And the in-game books are amazing as always. I've spent what feels like hours just reading books on the history of Tamriel.
However, I feel the same way about a lot of Skyrim's writing that I felt about the Fallout 3 DLC The Pitt. They set up a mature and morally ambiguous situation extremely well, then completely cop out when it comes to the execution of the missions. It feels like I didn't get a 'happy ending' for a quest not because there's no inherently good solution, but because of lazy quest design.
For instance there's that whole very racially-charged situation with elves and Nords and imperials that the game painstakingly sets up, but a few offhand remarks aside your race makes zero difference in the story. You can join the explicitly anti-elf Stormcloaks as an elf and it will make literally no difference. It's revealed in a book that Ulfric massacred the population of Markath - men, women or children - that didn't actively resist Madanach, but this hugely significant event in the recent past is never brought up once by anyone in Markath or elsewhere, and you never get to call Ulfric out on this either.
Or take the Forsworn conspiracy plotline. It's a brilliant set up - we're shown and told that the Nords oppress the native Reachmen, the savagery of the Forsworn in retaliation, the stranglehold the Silver-Bloods have on Markath. And the prison quest starts promisingly. Then Madanach tells me to kill this snitch, and I think, sure, I need to get out of here so I'll play along for now and suddenly I'm caught up in an escape and I'm an ally of his. It's exactly like in the Pitt, where refusing to kidnap a baby unquestioningly means I am with the brutal slavers putting down the slave rebellion. And after that... except for a few offhand remarks by citizens, nothing changes, and there is no follow-up whatsoever.
This kind of extends to quest design in general. I understand that dungeon-crawling is a staple of the genre, and that's fine, but Skyrim really leans in this waaay too much. The quest to retrieve a lost sword? Kill a bunch of bandits in a cave. Quest to gain access to Dwemer ruins? Kill a bunch of spiders in a cave. The quest to join the Bard's College? Yep, kill a bunch of draugr in a dungeon. Even most of the daedric quests are "go kill stuff in a dungeon".
After the two Fallout games' fleshed-out followers, the followers in Skyrim are less than satisfactory. The housecarls, for example, lack even the most rudimentary backstory, and even the random people you can recruit as followers are bland thralls. I'm playing an Orc, and am currently travelling with Borgakh. I paid her dowry, and in my head there's some chemistry going on between my rootless cosmopolitan Orc and the traditional Orc shieldmaiden as we mow through beasts, bandits and undead. But the game gives my imagination nothing to work on. She gets like one character-specific quip, and that's more than most followers get. There's literally zero difference between Lydia and Jordis other than their name and appearance.
And the level-scaling problem is much, much better than in Oblivion, but it's still a problem, somewhat. The world design of Skyrim encourages you to try to do everything, but you will start to struggle in the late game if you have too many points in non-combat skills like lockpicking and speech, or if you're simply a generalist. Thankfully unlike Oblivion's game-breaking level scaling, it's not that hard to stay competitive without gaming the system.
Skyrim feels like a real place, where I never felt the Imperial Province was anything but a game space. I don't know exactly how big Skyrim is in-game, but it feels much bigger than Oblivion's Imperial Province. It's chock full of beautiful vistas - probably second only to Just Cause 2 in my opinion.
The lore of the world is well-done - Skyrim manages to feel like more than just Scandinavian fantasy expy. The way the different layers of history influence the landscape and interact with one another feels very true to history, and I appreciate the mature way they dealt with the aftermath of the Oblivion Crisis. And the in-game books are amazing as always. I've spent what feels like hours just reading books on the history of Tamriel.
However, I feel the same way about a lot of Skyrim's writing that I felt about the Fallout 3 DLC The Pitt. They set up a mature and morally ambiguous situation extremely well, then completely cop out when it comes to the execution of the missions. It feels like I didn't get a 'happy ending' for a quest not because there's no inherently good solution, but because of lazy quest design.
For instance there's that whole very racially-charged situation with elves and Nords and imperials that the game painstakingly sets up, but a few offhand remarks aside your race makes zero difference in the story. You can join the explicitly anti-elf Stormcloaks as an elf and it will make literally no difference. It's revealed in a book that Ulfric massacred the population of Markath - men, women or children - that didn't actively resist Madanach, but this hugely significant event in the recent past is never brought up once by anyone in Markath or elsewhere, and you never get to call Ulfric out on this either.
Or take the Forsworn conspiracy plotline. It's a brilliant set up - we're shown and told that the Nords oppress the native Reachmen, the savagery of the Forsworn in retaliation, the stranglehold the Silver-Bloods have on Markath. And the prison quest starts promisingly. Then Madanach tells me to kill this snitch, and I think, sure, I need to get out of here so I'll play along for now and suddenly I'm caught up in an escape and I'm an ally of his. It's exactly like in the Pitt, where refusing to kidnap a baby unquestioningly means I am with the brutal slavers putting down the slave rebellion. And after that... except for a few offhand remarks by citizens, nothing changes, and there is no follow-up whatsoever.
This kind of extends to quest design in general. I understand that dungeon-crawling is a staple of the genre, and that's fine, but Skyrim really leans in this waaay too much. The quest to retrieve a lost sword? Kill a bunch of bandits in a cave. Quest to gain access to Dwemer ruins? Kill a bunch of spiders in a cave. The quest to join the Bard's College? Yep, kill a bunch of draugr in a dungeon. Even most of the daedric quests are "go kill stuff in a dungeon".
After the two Fallout games' fleshed-out followers, the followers in Skyrim are less than satisfactory. The housecarls, for example, lack even the most rudimentary backstory, and even the random people you can recruit as followers are bland thralls. I'm playing an Orc, and am currently travelling with Borgakh. I paid her dowry, and in my head there's some chemistry going on between my rootless cosmopolitan Orc and the traditional Orc shieldmaiden as we mow through beasts, bandits and undead. But the game gives my imagination nothing to work on. She gets like one character-specific quip, and that's more than most followers get. There's literally zero difference between Lydia and Jordis other than their name and appearance.
And the level-scaling problem is much, much better than in Oblivion, but it's still a problem, somewhat. The world design of Skyrim encourages you to try to do everything, but you will start to struggle in the late game if you have too many points in non-combat skills like lockpicking and speech, or if you're simply a generalist. Thankfully unlike Oblivion's game-breaking level scaling, it's not that hard to stay competitive without gaming the system.
tl;dr, amazing mechanics and lore, less than stellar quest design and non-existent follower personalities. Overall definitely an improvement over Oblivion.