A spoiler filled review of Skyrim

[joshtheme]

And there I was, in armor black as the night with vicious looking spikes pouring out of it, my mouth agape at the dozens of dragons flying above my head. The snow swirled about me as Parthunax, my friend and trusted adviser, landed beside me. He spoke to for a time and then departed, never to be seen by me again. I was left astonished and awed, while I realized "Holy crap, that ending was awful." However, before I even get to the ending, allow me to elaborate my experiences, in medias res:

 

I began by finding myself a prisoner, waking up on the back of a wagon that had a surprisingly good suspension. I looked to my front and I saw a guy talking at me, I looked to my right and I saw the fabled Ulfric Stromcloak, leader of the esoterically named Stormcloak Rebellion. Presumably, whatever transgression I had committed was on par with this wagon full of hardened criminals because when I arrived at the wagon's destination, Helgen, I was ordered to be killed just like the rest of them. I guess they take illegal boarder crossings into Skyrim seriously. Fortunately, they are more forgiving of slaughtering masses of people as an assassin, as I found out later on.

 

Moments before the axe was to be brought down on my head, I was saved by a dragon that attacked the town. I fled, racing into the imperial keep, jumped out a window and found myself with a choice: follow one of the Imperial Guards to safety, a fine chap named Hadvar, or follow Ralof, the man who I woke up to on the wagon. Being of the orderly sort, I followed Hadvar who led me out of the burning town, now mostly destroyed. He then informed me that I should go to a nearby town and look for work.

 

At this point, let me say I continued to roll through the main story line. I went to a barrow to go there and fetch a golden claw. I went to a watchtower to go there and kill a dragon. I went to a town, climbed metric crap ton of (according to wikipedia a metric crap ton, or MCT, is equal to 7000) stairs, and talked to some old guys who showed me how to magically yell at things. Allow me, for a moment, to digress about the shouts, or Thu'um. There are 20. Most of them are truly unnecessary, and instead of finding a way to make use of the ones already in the game, they shoehorned 3 shouts only to be used a plot devices a couple of times. Yes, I'm talking to you, Clear Skies, Dragonrend, and Call Dragon. There was once in my play through of the entire game where the way to solve the puzzle was by using a shout not created for only the purpose of solving that puzzle. The one I used most frequently? Whirlwind Sprint so I could run across the world a little faster, every 35 seconds or so. The fact is, that many of these shouts had comparable spells. So, that leaves me wondering, aside from a personal desire to play a pure mage character, why would people choose to play as a pure mage when a warrior or a thief can harness many of the same effects?

 

Anyway, then the old men sent me to a dungeon to go fetch a bauble, only in the bauble's place there was a note that directed me to go to a tavern and rent a room. How a thief managed to get this trinket, leave a note, and not disturb a SINGLE ONE of the enemies that I had to struggle against intrigues me, as they are surely more capable for whatever quest they are enlisting me to help them with. So I went to the tavern, and was surprised that the owner of the tavern is the one who left the note. She then tells me she is one of the last blades. She sends me to some burial site, to go there and kill a dragon. The dragon I kill is not the same one who managed to rescue me by accident, but I do see that one. By the way, this is the last time I saw Alduin, his name, until near the end of the game. It is difficult to hate a villain who A) saved your life, and B) never ever talks to you until you're trying to kill him. Can't really say I blame the dragon for wanting to kill me back.

 

For the sake of time, and knowing that I'm going to get a couple of TLDR's for going through the trouble of writing this up, I proceeded through the game until I thought I was about 1/3 of the way don'e with the story. In fact, I was probably closer to 2/3 or 3/4.

 

I cleaned up some side quests. Surprisingly, many people keep their most valuable family heirlooms in dungeons. Who would have thought that the undead/bandits/animals/deformed elves make effective security systems? By the way, if you add dragons to that list, you have just encountered 98% of the bad guys in the game. And guess what? Killing (adjective) bandit who has more health than (arbitrarily lesser adjective) bandit does get slightly repetitive. However, I will say that combat is where the game shines for me. I genuinely did enjoy double wielding a vicious looking daedric sword that I forged myself in my right hand and a ball of fire in my left.

 

If you noticed so far, most of the quests are go here and fetch or go here and kill. The same is true for the side quests. I suppose I can't complain about the Dark Brotherhood, because your an assassin, so 'go here kill this' kind of comes with the territory. But what I could spend forever complaining about is the crappiness of Dark Brotherhood quests. But I won't, its been covered elsewhere. Suffice it to say that by the end, every character you enjoyed dies for one big plot hole of a reason, then you have to rebuild the sanctuary. Except by rebuild the sanctuary, I mean spend lots of money on a house that is inconvenient and out of the way, and then do the same quest over and over and over and over and over again.

 

The end of the game came on as sudden as a heart attack. I found out that the quest that I was on was about to send me into one of the last two real dungeons of the game to fetch an Elder Scroll. Done. Come back, use that elder scroll to view history and learn a Shout that can harm Alduin. Done (that scene was enough to make the game unreplayable, 5 minutes long and unskipable. Go make a sandwich. The voice acting is laughable, and it does almost nothing to move the story forward as you had already learned about the events exactly as you see them unfold.) Now fight Alduin who convieniently knows I now know these words that can do him serious harm. Done. Why did he decide after I discovered his kryptonite to attack me, when it has been indicated throughout the game that he knows who I am and what I am trying to do? But that's nitpicking. Moving on. Capture a dragon and interrogate him to find out where Alduin fled to. Capture a dragon. Capture an effing dragon. That should be one of the hardest effing things I've done up to that point. Nope. Three fast travels and four conversations later, the dragon was captured. By the way, this is where I found out that Parthunax, the good dragon who has been helping me since I met him, actually used to be bad. Now I have to kill him? Yeah I ignored that entirely. Why did that seem incredibly sudden and rediculous? Listen, you don't need a betrayal in every story for it to be good. I know, its Jungian. I know its Shakespearean. I know it is a hallmark of many of the epic tales of old. Leave it alone.

 

So, now I compel the captured dragon, who conveniently had misgivings about Alduin the entire time, to fly me to Alduin's base, the last dungeon. I have to go through this dungeon, and into the Nord afterlife and kill Alduin there, because that is the only place he is vulnerable I guess? It was never really stated why he could die there but not in the mortal plane. Done. Now I walk around this vally for a little bit, find Ulfric Stormcloak there, whom I killed during my time as an Imperial Soldier. As a very quick aside, I was promoted to Legate by the time I ended the civil war, but no other imperial soldier seemed to know that after it happened. So Nordic afterlife is full of dead heros, but until I came along, they were not allowed to fight Alduin the dragon for no stated reason, except "We are not allowed to fight him, so says Shor, our god... who isn't around right now, but feel free to leave a note or something if you have any questions." So, I recruit the three Nordic heroes who originally banished the dragon to begin with, except this time we kill the bastard. We killed him exactly the same way that I killed the other 20 or so dragons that I fought throughout the game. That was it. Alduin, the World Eater, dead in about 90 seconds.

 

And there I was, in armor black as the night with vicious looking spikes pouring out of it, my mouth agape at the dozens of dragons flying above my head. The snow swirled about me as Parthunax, my friend and trusted adviser, landed beside me. He spoke to me for a time and then departed, never to be seen by me again. I was left astonished and awed, while I realized "Holy crap, that ending was still awful."

 

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In summary:

 

Was it fun? Absolutly at times. Did I enjoy playing it? Yes, at times. Did it consume my life since I got it on the 12th? Yes. However, I barely scratched the surface of how repetitive this game was. There were some moments of true brilliance. I enjoyed the final quest for the Dark Brotherhood. I thought that the civil war story line had some interesting parts. But most of the quests were abortive. I would get to the climax of any story line, and whether or not it was satisfying is kind of irrelevant. Remember when I said I was promoted to Legate but no one noticed? That's how it was with almost every single quest.

 

The world design was ridiculous: see Falkreath. I have not done, nor do intend to do, all of the side quest but I would say I played a significant portion of the game. Never once did I find myself having to go to Falkreath. I just went there to explore it. I talked to the Jarl, talked to the blacksmith, left, and never came back. This is one of the main cities of the game, and there was no reason for me to go there. Speaking of going somewhere, just moving around the often beautiful landscape could be a challenge. Rocks at ankle height would stop you dead in your tracks, but hills at an 85 degree grade wouldn't slow you, until you hit an invisible wall. I must confess to getting so irritated by having to walk around a mountain to get somewhere, that I have turned on noclip to just move over the impassable terrain.

 

I've read online that "The stories are so big in Skyrim, Bethesda couldn't possibly have each one fully fleshed out with a satisfying ending." To that I say, even though it might be buggy, I can't wait for Obsidian to start work on The Elder Scrolls: New Vegas.

Edited November 17, 2011 by joshtheme