The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (PC)
note: This review is of the game in the condition as it was released (1.01) on November 2011 and will not be edited to reflect the game's current quality.
One should be wary that there are now patches that fix some of the issues talked about in this review (while breaking some other things, an inevitable fact in the world of programming.)
Bethesda has also released a high-res texture pack as a free DLC that *should* fix the glaring texture inconsistency I talked about.
"They have worked so hard on the game and it shows, it's just a shame the PC iteration received the cold shoulder from Bethesda."
Let me get this out of the way first: the PC version of Skyrim is a rushed-out-the-door console port that's unfortunately holding back a fantastic game underneath. While looking at it from the perspective of a PC player and now a wary follower of Bethesda I feel very disappointed that they did not even try to prevent it from happening. Beneath the unpolished state of release and the console characteristics forced on the PC version, there is quite a game to be had however. The problem is that it's these easily fixable issues that often interrupt the flow of the game or transform what should be simple tasks into inconveniences, making it less enjoyable than it could be.
Skyrim improves upon the series in certain areas and it should be commended for this, but it should also be called out for allowing other areas to deteriorate in quality.
The first component of the game to be judged is the most apparent one: graphics. The lighting in this heavily modified Gamebryo engine has evolved; a multitude of objects will cast shadows now which can liven up a scene or give away an enemy's position. The radiosity has been strengthened and beautifies both interiors and exteriors with realism not seen in past titles. Effects have taken on a whole new life, whether it's the lighting exploding out of a caster's hand or the illuminating fire emitting from an earth oven in the middle of a longhouse. Another marked improvement is the icy water found throughout Skyrim which makes multiple appearances: within dungeons as guiding streams, in the outside as rivers that will sweep you away, waterfalls and dangerous rapids as well; it looks much fiercer now whereas in Oblivion it seemed as if in a state of slumber. The animations easily put Oblivion's to shame, partly because Oblivion's animations didn't set the mark high at all, and partly because Skyrim's animations are just great, whether you play in third person or first.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
With FXAA off, the game can suffer from visible jaggies even at 8x antialiasing whereas enabling it will hide them completely by adding a smooth blur to everything; a blur that isn't too off-putting but at the same time doesn't feel like it's the best solution for high-end PCs. Shadows even on High will display serrated edges and require some much improvement. The viewing distance still retains some of the "wasteland" when looking out to a far distance, which Oblivion also suffered from. The far-away terrain can sometimes look like basic geometric polygons, especially when looking down from a tall mountain. Some of these things can often be ignored thanks to the generally well-made landscapes mixed with mountain fog. Weather effects have been strengthened in Skyrim and they look absolutely stunning. Light snowing will transition into a blizzard which will give the impression of a very cold, ghostly, almost haunted feeling wherever you are. Rain, as always, is present here and has of course been improved; it's always a good time to trade blows under the ominous gray skies. Whether one likes to admit it or not, graphics do play a substantial role in immersing the player and Skyrim's graphics do not fall short when it comes to this, although of course it absolutely requires the help of other components such as music and voice acting which I will discuss later. However there is one matter I would like to bring up when it comes to the graphics, and it's one of the most important components, because even if your game has incredible lighting you still need textures to cast it on.
The biggest problem with the graphics are surprisingly the textures, and it's the main reason why I can't say the graphics are a straight evolution from Oblivion (a 6 year old game) but are still an overall improvement. To keep it concise, there is a lack of uniformity when it comes to texture size & quality. When exploring around the world you will find extremely low-res textures right next to normal res textures, this intermixing results in the bad textures popping out at you like a zebra among elephants. It's also worthy to note that many of the 'normal textures' aren't high res themselves, so the game generally suffers from heavy pixelization for certain things while, in contrast, a rock next to a blurry looking wall will look extremely detailed and high-res. In this way the graphics do have a roller-coaster feel to them and might detract from the immersion, which doesn't neccesarily require you to look at everything under a magnifying glass.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Don't misunderstand me though, the problems here are largely technical, because the art itself is generally beautiful and very well-done. I suspect that many of these problems are byproducts of not only development primarily intended for consoles but also of a lack of polish with the release. Character models are really a huge improvement from Oblivion, although it's a bit hard to escape the same facial structure with some races. If anybody remembers when they first released the 3D head shots of all the races months before the release, you can recall that the noses had a graphical anomaly on them that resemble what happens when you stretch polygons too much. Lo and behold, this anomaly made it into release, so upon character creation all of your characters will have something odd on the tip of their noses, between eyebrows and on the chin.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
The first thing PC players should notice when starting up the game is heavy mouse input lag, a phenomenon commonly associated with poorly done console ports to the PC, and to make matters worse this is only the first salvo of a large barrage of technical issues that only the PC version fires at you. The remedy to this first problem is usually to disable vertical sync, but this option could not be found anywhere within the game. To start off, you are not allowed to change graphic settings within the game except for fade distances. The launcher will give you the option to do so before you start the game, but vertical sync isn't found here either. It's a bit disillusioning that the way to change such an important & common setting to all PC games is by finding an obscure command in the internet which you'll put into an obscure .ini file. Even after fixing a cursor that feels like it's sliding on grease, Skyrim's software mouse has a mind of its own and likes to change acceleration/smoothness/dpi depending on where you are, which I suspect is linked to FPS values. Mouselook in interiors with 100 FPS feels different from looking around with 70 fps outside. Why can't we just have raw mouse input and call it a day? It's also worthy to note that some buttons in interfaces and some menus cannot be clicked on by the mouse, especially during character creation, you have to use the WASD keys here. Other menus are very unwieldy with the keyboard; selecting diagonally placed perks in the skill tree turns into an ordeal with the keyboard. Basically, the game will often force you to choose between the keyboard and mouse at its own leisure when both should be made to work. The PC version has a lot of difficulty with integrating the base periphals of the platform it's for and this is one of the most damning evidence that this is a careless console port.
If you're one of those people using Realtek audio (which is a VERY common integrated audio solution found in popular motherboards), you'll also notice that Skyrim is whisper-like quiet, even with the master volume set to max. Other programs on your PC will sound normally except for Skyrim. After running through 4 different solutions to this problem I finally found one with no downsides and it consisted of changing the entire audio config to 5.1 surround and to disable all speakers except left and right (keep in mind I'm using a headset, just to give you a clue of how bizzare this solution is to an even more bizzare issue that shouldn't be there in the first place).
I am finally ready to sit down and enjoy this game but, after a couple of minutes playing, another technical issue tackles me. I'm running a dual-video card setup (SLI) which seems to produce a frequent black flickering in the world while in outdoor areas only, it also cuts off the sound when it happens. While NVIDIA did release an SLI profile for Skyrim in their latest beta patch, all the kinks have yet to be worked out, which is something I felt they could've worked with Bethesda on beforehand. Hilariously enough, the temporary solution to this issue is to enable vertical sync. No more flickering, but you guessed it, the input lag returns with vsync on. At this stage the game is basically offering me to pick between bad and worse. So I have to continue playing the game with this thorn on the side until Bethesda get around to fixing this.
The game itself is marred by a wide assortment of gameplay bugs and glitches. I can tell you about many instances where I've walked into an interior such as a tavern or inn, only to be met by the sound of a banging noise coming from an indiscernible location (it wasn't the bard's drumming). This sound will continue while you're talking to the patrons or just exploring around, while random objects such as plates or carrots will unexplainably pop out of thin-air and go flying across the room. After a while the floor will have a few items littered about and some will continue to glitch around the area. I'll often find NPCs walking through several vases that are fallen on the floor, etc. I've walked out of a village to be met face-to-face with the huge skeleton of a dragon I killed miles away. I've also had this problem where my character will enter a continuous animation loop of her unsheathing her sword. For some reason, mudcrabs and/or small streams will trigger this. Enemies will also jump up and down rapidly in place or float in the air at times, until you get close to them and it corrects the issue. I've had enchant charges on weapons disappear completely during a buggy quest that would like to teleport me around, etcetera ad nauseaum. Now these bugs don't neccesarily stop you from playing the rest of the game, but they do break immersion and some of them will stop the questline you're on dead on its tracks. Some are worse than others, and they can get so inconvenient at times that it can set off minor rage sessions especially if you're really into the game.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
The world of Skyrim feels so alive. As you walk down a forest path, flocks of birds nesting in trees will fly off into the horizon, the trees rustling and dispersing leaves at their abrupt exit. Hares will dart about the undergrowth and you'll occasionally encounter elks with kingly displays of antlers. Schools of salmon will shoot out of the water within mighty rapids, trying desperately to push upstream. At this point it would not surprise me to see a bear come along to catch them, because that's how believable Bethesda has made Skyrim. This humbling presence of nature makes it seem like the land is a very sacred place, despite all the unearthly creatures and undead tucked away beneath it.
Of course animals aren't the only things you'll encounter in the wilderness and along the roads. Whereas in Oblivion you'd see the odd Black Horse Courier galloping about and maybe even an imperial horseman patrolling the area, in Skyrim you will meet many different assortments of people that won't attack you on sight like regular bandits: your garden-variety courier, noblemen en route to weddings, acolytes of different gods (some hellbent on destroying any daedra they see), soldiers from different factions who would likely kill each other if they met along the road, and many many more. These encounters keep things interesting and add to the general immersion as well as giving you a better idea of what life is like in Skyrim; it propagates the illusion of the world continuing to exist without you, even when you delve into a deep underground dungeon, far away from any sign of civilization.
An often unsung improvement over Oblivion are the tasks you can dedicate yourself to whenever you're not busy wrecking squishy things with your weapon or magics, or inversely, getting wrecked yourself (giants I'm looking at you). In this latest Elder Scrolls you can keep yourself busy by smelting ore into ingots, tanning hides and turning them into light armor, woodcutting & mining, mixing an astronomical list of available ingredients into a variety of potions, enchanting & disenchanting, and even cooking all the meat you extract from animals in the wild. All of these devotions serve to improve your character and your playing experience. They can make the difference in combat as you're able to have the latest armor way before the shops start selling them while having powerful enchants on weapons and being able to resist elements and replenish stamina with just a drink. Even if you decide not to partake in these crafts you'll find many NPCs, even enemies, who devote themselves to them, as such the crafts never truly vanish from the player's perspective; they add believability to an already immersive world because there will be less NPCs that are just simply walking around aimlessly in town doing absolutely nothing, which was something that Oblivion is heavily culpable of.
The journal is a step down from Oblivion. While the predecessor took care to add detail to even the most mundane tasks as well as keep record of all that you've done, it seems Skyrim is content on simply streamlining the entire thing, providing one liner description/directions for main quests and side quests that would otherwise have lengthy dialogue and important significance & history attached to them outside of the quest log. I also dislike the fact that the game funnels all the lesser tasks into one 'Misc' category which actually gives the appearance that all these tasks are different steps of the same quest but are in reality entirely different from each other and are, again, full of simple one liners such as "Visit X" "Talk to Y". There is now no significant reason to linger about in the journal except to quickly mark places on your map, as most of what is written there is not worth reading and extremely concise. If the journal was renamed to quest log (or shopping list) it would have a more accurate name based on what it currently offers the player.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
The UI itself is a poorly organized system that places a lot of emphasis on scrolling up and down extremely thin lists with hidden information which could otherwise be easily displayed in empty screen space that is never really used by the game. Where did the good old display of your character go? When was it ever decided that was a bad idea and needed to be replaced by a gigantic 3D model of the item? When you equipped anything in previous titles, the character display would instantly show you the difference, instead of having to exit out of the UI, scroll out to third person view, sheathe weapons and then rotate around with the mouse. While the 3D view of the selected item is a welcomed addition, it's badly implemented and taking up too much screen space. What really gets to me here is that the interface plants its roots into a 4-button menu which looks like this:
Now, what does this remind you of? Does it remind you of a console controller's D-pad? If it does, you're on the right track. We will never really know the amount of influence taken from consoles and implemented into the game's designs so that the game fits like a puzzle piece when played on consoles but if the game on the PC version sometimes feel like you're trying to put a square peg into a round hole, you might have an idea as to why.
Dungeons in Skyrim have been blessed with higher levels of variation by Bethesda. It's enough that I can safely claim that one can go dozens of hours without realizing the dungeon you're currently in is using perhaps the same texture palette or the same room layout as the dungeon you finished yesterday. In Oblivion although there were never any two dungeons that were the exact same, you felt like you've visited the same old fort a hundred times before. Many dungeons in Skyrim also have two entrances that can act as exits which means that, depending on the route you take with your second or third character in the world, you could be doing the same dungeon you've cleared in another playthrough but in reverse, effectively reducing the lack of repetitiveness. Both the variety in the use of texture and lighting plus the actual layouts of these dungeons is evidence that Bethesda can learn from their previous titles and massively improve on the aspects. This is why it surprised me to no end how they allowed such obvious technical issues to go unchallenged into release.
The living, breathing world I've previously described is fortunate enough to be accompanied by a component that really stands out in this game: the score! Jeremy Soule comes out stronger than the Dragonborn here. He manages to catch both the wonder of traveling the tough northern lands and the frantic brutality of face to face combat, while not forgetting behind the mystery of certain gloomy areas or the bustling of town life, the wonder of looking up at the starry night sky and feeling completely lost. At times I will actually find myself extending the task I'm doing just so the track that's playing is allowed to finish, some of them are really that great. You'll know when a dragon is in the vicinity because the music will warn you by changing accordingly, the warlike Nordic chanting slowly fades in, and then you know you're in for a crazy battle.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
The voice acting shares my same thoughts as the animations, there was plenty to improve on from Oblivion and they did it well. More variety is a breath of fresh air, spiced with several accents as well, some of them similar but still wholly welcomed. The only true flaw here is some of the delivery falls short and could use more character and attitude but it still remains leaps and bounds over Oblivion. Some characters will even have speech impediments such as lisps which add to the overall quality of the voices.
The writing is fair, not amazing but fair. It's acceptable enough to keep you immersed and in the game. The writing will of course vary between dialogue and in-game books; some of the books contain magnificent lore and well-written tales, some of them better explaining the situation Tamriel currently finds itself in and its history. A couple of characters do have their moments when it comes to dialogue. Some of their battle cries will get you pumped or have you burst out laughing: the result of the writing working in close tandem with Skyrim's improved voice acting.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Combat has been improved from Oblivion but it also isn't a night and day difference. The new perks here make a bit of difference, such as time slowing down when you're blocking the enemy's power attack. Some combat depth is added with better blocking techniques, dual wielding, perks, more dynamic spells such as flamethrowers instead of the same old fireball and of course the good old dragon shouts which are able to do a variety of things such as sending a target flying or making them reluctant to enter combat.
I have a love-hate relationship with the insta-kill animations, or the 'fatality' animations. While the added gore and violence is welcomed in my book (thank you very much for the M rating Bethesda) and the animations are well-done, I don't like how the transition from controllable combat to uncontrollable animation is very rough and just does not 'click'; the game will often interrupt me mid-swing and trigger an uncontrollable animation. Sometimes they occur when the enemy is very low on health, sometimes my character just kills the enemy outright when they are at 60% or 70% health. It's very unpredictable and you'll learn to hate it when the enemy can use it on you, partly because it's extremely unfair. Let it be clear that the only enemy that has committed one of these insta-kill animations on me has been a named boss at the end of a dungeon, but they worked pretty much the same way as when I trigger them. What is unfair about these is that when I was fighting the boss, I had a shield, but all it took to trigger my instant death was for him to begin the swing. I did not have a chance to react accordingly or block the attack which I'm very sure would not have killed me. In this way I do feel that insta-kill animations are not working the way they should be, even if the added gore is indeed cool.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
One difference to note over Oblivion is the changed level scaling, which can directly translate to an easier or a harder time depending on where you go. Entering a camp triggers a fight with bandits that were easily dispatched but I could not say the same for their lethal chief, nor the tougher bandits which go by a different denomination, such as 'outlaw'. To contrast, I've wandered into areas with mages or giants that wrecked me quite easily while I could barely do any damage to them. You really need to be careful where you're going and what you're fighting or you're going to find yourself dead quickly. In a way this is a welcomed change because it lessens the player omnipotence that was rampant in Oblivion. Sure, you can still clear out camps of marauders, but there will still be enemies that will clean your clock easily. Some encounters require you to drastically change your tactics; where I would normally charge in with sword-and-shield and mop up, I would find myself retreating and finding cover, trying to use the terrain to my advantage while I picked out each enemy from the group. The only problem so far with the difficulty scaling is that there is a certain level of homogenization that will increase confusion as to whether you are prepared for the dungeon you're in or not. There's been a couple of times where I've wandered into a place and the enemies had generally the same name, no different denomination to distinguish one from the other. Some of them were going down in one or two hits, it was incredibly easy, but I'd encounter others, with the same name, who needed about 9 or 10 hits and they would do massive amounts of damage as well. Bringing a companion can change things drastically because his/her presence is able to divide the attention from a group or a particularly tough mob and prevent you from taking all of the damage but I'm not sure if the game recognizes that you're with a companion and changes the difficulty accordingly.
Weapons have been largely improved from Oblivion despite the combat system being essentially the same. Bows no longer shoot marshmallow arrows that lose altitude incredibly fast and deal relatively poor damage. They are now the lethal and silent killers they should've been. Two handed weapons deal insane amounts of damage at the expense of being incredibly slow and easy to evade. Even one handed weapons retain significant differences within their own category: maces will deal the most damage and ignore some of the armor but have the slowest swings, axes will deal intermediate damage and cause a bleed effect while having medium paced swings, swords will deal less damage than maces or axes but are faster than they are and are generally good all-around crit weapons while daggers are the fastest but deal the least amount of damage and are still the bread and butter of characters which invest in Sneak. These differing characteristics make each weapon set-up especially great for dealing with certain types of enemies. For example, I would bring a mace and a shield to a fight against a heavily armored foe because the mace would allow me to bypass armor where other weapons would not. The improved weapons allow the player to change up their gear according to what they are fighting, bringing in more thinking/planning into combat rather than just picking up whatever hits the hardest and mopping up everything. However, it's unfortunate that the game needs some extra balancing because it's apparent that some set-ups are noticeably stronger than others for all situations rather than just for some.
All in all, this game will be something far better down the road with a few patches tacked on, even without the use of any mods. Right now it's very apparent that it's a poorly done console port masking a game with a lot of potential, talent behind it and tons of work put into it. I just wish some of that work went into making it ready for the PC. I wholeheartedly expect to devote hundreds of hours on it, but definitely not in its current state. There was bound to be a fundamental problem when you're developing for consoles, streamlining things for them, making it more accesible for them and simple to use with a controller, and then after all of this trying to release the same game with these characteristics for the PC as well. The PC version is exhibit A of what happens when you try this: an excellent game with a lot of dirt obscuring its true quality. They have worked so hard on the game and it shows, it's just a shame that the PC iteration received the cold shoulder from Bethesda.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Positives
- Beautiful art, vastly improved animations & character models
- Great music, More variety in voice acting
- Immersive, living world
- Good storytelling
- Entertaining combat, difficulty can surprise you at times, weapons/magic work well
Negatives
- Release lacking in polish
- PC version is a glorified console port
- Mutitude of bugs and glitches which break immersion
- Numerous technical issues only found in PC which do affect gameplay
- Overly streamlined aspects such as UI, quest log
-
8 out of 10
(mixed reactions but generally good)
Originally Posted by SgtScooter
