Respect Your Elder

I've been playing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for about a month now. I just this week completed the "main quests," the most prominent storyline in the game. I figure it's about time for me to give my official review of the game.

I miss epic, open-world games like this. The Ultima series (specifically, Ultimas IV through VII -- parts 1 and 2) were my very favorite games as a teenager, and I feel like today, games of this type are too few and far between. They've been crowded out in the modern market by MMORPGs, which in my view nail the MMO part and tend to fail miserably at the RPG part.

Skyrim (like its predecessors) is a grand return to a world where it's all about you, the player, and the character you create. You save the freaking world. You rise to leadership of guilds. Yes, you do occasionally get tasked with menial MMO-type mini-quests to "collect 20 of this thing," but these are quite rare compared to epic, big story quests.

The environments are wonderful. Different cities have distinct looks. Prominent battles take place in beautiful settings. There's a satisfying and diverse array of enemies to fight (including dragons, yes plenty of dragons). The scale, scope, and arc of the story deliver everything I want from one of these games.

I've spent over 100 hours playing Skyrim so far, and despite completing the main storyline, I suspect I'll be playing it at least another 20 before it finally fades out and gives way to some other game. So needless to say, yes, I liked it. Loved it. Obsessed about it, starting at least 1/3 of my conversations with friends with "so this one time... in Skyrim..." It's a great game.

But I do have to mention a few quibbles.

First, the game doesn't do nearly as good a job with character as it does with story and environment. There are a few memorable characters in the game, and the designers certainly knew which ones they wanted them to be, because they're voiced by the likes of Michael Hogan (Colonel Tigh from Battlestar Galactica) and soon-to-be-Oscar-winner Christopher Plummer. But the vast majority of the characters in the game have bland personalities and forgettable names. (Though there is an internal consistency to the way they're named, at least.) Basically, the game goes with breadth and not depth in the character department.

Second, the actual climax of the main storyline is a bit disappointing. Without spoiling much for people who want to experience the story themselves, I'll simply say that the final confrontation feels very similar to a confrontation that occurs roughly two-thirds through the main story. The finale did not feel like "the most epic fight I had in the game." Not even in the top 5, really. I'm not equating "difficult" with "climatic" here, but I was hoping for "distinct." Other confrontations I had in the game felt more memorable to me.

Third, the well-documented bugs plaguing the PS3 version of the game are a sticking point with me. I received the game for Christmas, and the first thing I had to do was exchange it for the Xbox 360 version before I opened it -- I didn't want to face the problem I'd heard about: "you'll play it fine for a while, but after enough hours of gameplay, your frame rate will be crippled to unplayable." It's unacceptable to ship a game on a platform and not truly support that platform. It would have been better to simply cancel the PS3 version altogether and just release the game on PC and Xbox 360 than to ship what was ultimately an unplayable game. Rumor is that the patch soon to be released may finally fix the problem, though this claim has been made with previous failed patches. Selling an unplayable game to people for nearly three months seems unacceptable to me in any case.

Those complaints may sound strong (particularly the last one), but I'm going to ultimately grade the game an A-. And that right there should tell you just how much I've enjoyed everything else about Skyrim. It's been a bulldozer pushing out of the way almost everything else that normally fills my free time.

And I haven't minded one bit.