I have been quiet on the blog and socials as of late. Full-time job, night course, family, and the holiday season have been keeping me occupied. However, behind the scenes I have been working away on the blog. Oh yes! I have dumped about 40 hours into Skyrim for a new "Did I Miss Out".
It all started when I recently completed Fallout 4 for the first time and wrote a DIMO post on the Bethesda hit. The moment I finished the last main story mission in Fallout 4 the first thought I had was "Skyrim". I really enjoyed Fallout 4 and I love fantasy games so I figured it was a good opportunity to transition to Skyrim. So I crawled out from the post apocalyptical world of Fallout, into the mysterious world of Tamriel.
The Elder Scrolls is a long standing series from Bethesda with multiple iterations going back to 1994. Besides a brief foray into Elder Scrolls Online I have never played an Elder Scrolls title. Does it make sense to start with the last major game in the series? Probably not, but I felt like I couldn't call myself a true gamer without at least trying Skyrim. It has become a huge part of the gaming pop culture. Its been ported several times to the new machines which I think is a testament to the games quality and popularity. So this is where my Tamriel adventure begins in the region of Skyrim.
Skyrim is a fantasy based action RPG with all the familiar characters you expect to see from such a game, Mages, elves, and the like. Skyrim is a northern mountainous region with sprawling forests and snowy tundra. There seems to be some civil unrest as rebel Nords are taking aim at their Imperial occupiers. This is where you are plopped into the story. You are mistakenly arrested accused of being a rebel and sentenced to death. Just before you meet your maker though a dragon attack disrupts the execution and you fight your way out. You end up going to Whiterun to warn the Jarl and a second dragon shows up to cause havoc on the village. You help slay the dragon and its spirit gets sucked up into your body. This is when you find out your a Dragonborn, some kind of human with dragon blood or something. You are then sent on your journey to learn the ways of the dragonborn and take on this wave of dragons that have shown up to cause problems for the good people of Skyrim. I am not doing the story justice but these are the notes I jotted down while playing.
The gameplay takes a little bit to get used too. The default is first person and how I think the game is meant to be played but I prefer third person. I want to see all my cool armour and feel like a bad ass. Its an action RPG so everything is in real time. You have a combination of physical weapons and magic at your disposal to lay waste to the fiends in the wilderness. As you level up you can upgrade your health, stamina, or magicka and a character perk like armor smithing or magic casting. I have to say I found Skyrim challenging. It is one of those games you have to constantly be saving because you are always dying. I also felt like my attacks where not really that powerful. I think you need to utilize all the different potions that provide buffs that I just always forgot about. The quests are entertaining and you meet a bunch of interesting characters throughout. I played through two of the guild quest lines and got to become a full patched member of their gang. I guess one thing I was not a huge fan of was the lack of good loot. There is a ton of loot when you kill an enemy but it was never better than what I was already equipped with. I prefer the dopamine rush in games like Diablo where you slay a demon and he drops a sick new chest piece. I feel like the only good gear comes from what you craft.
There is three major areas of crafting in Skyrim. Smithing, Enchanting, and Alchemy. Smithing is the ability to take raw materials and make armour, weapons, and shields. Enchanting is where you take a piece of armour or weapon and enchant it with a magical ability. Alchemy is all about potions. You take items you have harvested from your travels and try to combined them together to make a magic potion that may help you in battle. Everytime you craft something new your level increases for that profession. This allows you to unlock more options when its time to level up like the ability to craft Elvish armour. Oh, and don't forget lock picking! Lots and lots of lock picking.
Graphic wise the game is very beautiful and I think still holds up today being a game from 2011. There are beautiful mountains and wooded areas. There are vast caves to explore for minerals and large fortress to attack and loot for items. There is wildlife like dear and foxes in the world along with bears and wolves that get a bit aggressive with the hero of this story. Had a bear totally wreck me. The villages and main towns are really nicely done. They have a great high fantasy feel and are full of NPCs just going about there pre-programmed lives. I was tempted to throw on some visual mods to enhance the experience, but I kept it vanilla.
I put about 40 hours into the game and beat the main story line. I know I barely scratched the surface of what this game has to offer. There is probably a 100 more hours of gameplay left to squeeze out of Skyrim. At the end of the day I will agree I missed out on Skyrim in 2011. To be fair I am not sure me in my 20s would have been patient enough back then to give Skyrim a chance. It is a long game and a lot of the things take time. Collecting a bunch of herbs and mushrooms to make a potion I don't think would have been my jam back then. So I am glad I played Skyrim later in life.
That's my take on the infamous Elder Scrolls V Skyrim. Let me know what you think of Skyrim in the comments or on social.
Like always thanks for stopping by and stay safe out there gamers.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the intellectual property of the Bethesda Softworks company
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