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Skyrim - the good and bad bits (slightly spoilery)
14 years ago
General
AKA "My two cents: a short and shite review"
I got the game on saturday. I grabbed a hard copy from EB, and was pleasantly surprised that it was a WHOLE DOLLAR cheaper than the steam version, which seems a bit odd really. The funniest part was that it installed directly to steam anyway, so I kinda feel like I owe them a dollar, heh.
Still, I'm rather happy it did the steam thing - means if I ever lose the cd I can reinstall from scratch so long as I keep the cd key. woo.
Sadly, my computer is a five year old pile of poo so the game took a look at it and slapped on the learner plates - "Graphics set to low quality"
YAY. Weirdly, the game is a dead ringer for a slightly less chunky Oblivion at low graphics quality. There's a lot missing in the details, but until I get myself a new beast of a machine I'll be playing SkyBlivion. Moh well.
Gameplay... Actually pretty damned fun. It's more of the same if you're used to playing elder scrolls games, though swapping space and the E key for jump and 'use' AGAIN was a bit of a dick move. Wasn't it reversed for oblivion? I think it uses the morrowind key combo, which shits me a little because I always run up to doors with monsters biting at my arse only to jump up and smack my head on the ceiling before feeling mildly annoyed and pressing E.
The combat's similar to normal, though being able to see the monster's health bars clearly is a very nice addition, though dodging and moving about is a bit like wading through jellied poo now that the athletics and acrobatics skills don't seem to exist anymore. I used to spend hours running around like an idiot in the previous games so I could dodge around the battlefield like a scaly ninja.
My main peeve is the interface. It's very, very clunky. It feels far too much like a console to PC port rather than a nice, sleek PC beast with dynamic menus and good use of the many and varied keys on a keyboard. Magic is a hugely poignant example of this. As far as I've found, there's no key combo for switching smoothly between magic and weapons, and the magic menu is confusing and pointless. The way you learn spells is more irritating than previous games too.
The inventory screen is more of the same, just an endless list of text. Is it bad that I actually liked Morrowind's inventory system better than Oblivion or Skyrim's? You could see all your items laid out in a grid, which you could resize as you wanted. You could also sell as many items as you wanted at a time, rather than the 'one at a time' nonsense in the two latest. Bah.
Also on the item front - what's with removing most of the customisability from armour? It's just 'armour', boots, gloves and helmet now. Gone are the days when you could be wearing a piece from every set, including different left and right pauldrons and gloves. Morrowind was awesome for that. Seems they've also totally done away with polearms, which would really annoy any Nords I'd think of - no hunting with spears? It's a little strange, the item system seems to have been cut down a lot, but in the areas it didn't need it. Sure, you can still go around stealing every bit of rubbish, flatware (but not cutlery!) and clothing from someone's house including a cartload of perpetually-fresh produce, but if you want to run around in just pants, you're out of luck. Apparently in Skyrim, every outfit is a unitard. Good thing they don't seem to need to pee, or things would get awkward.
Shouts baffled me for a bit - The first one you learn is kinda cool. You learn the word, then the first dragon you bring down gets magically eaten by screen burn and you absorb its soul like a dry humanoid sponge. The soul automatically unlocks the shout word. Unfortunately, as I went arond learning words and killing various dragon shaped monsters, my active shout list never seemed to get any longer. I was stumped - was it particular dragons for particular words? Was I missing something? ... yes. I was. You actually have to unlock the shout words manually using the souls like some form of spectral currency. "OI, AKATOSH. I'm buying this word. One freshly killed dragon soul (your children are fun to kill, by the way.) coming to you in the mail, COD." Completely breaks any immersion from the whole 'mystical powers of the dragonborn' thing. Why they didn't just have a soul activate a random word when it was absorbed defeats me. Sure, it's nice to choose, but it feels silly and arbitrary considering the words you find are pretty random as it is. Meh.
Hm. What else? Stuff I like! Ooh, crafting. Smithing in particular. Being able to mine ore, turn it into ingots and make armour, trinkets and weaponry from it is rather awesome. Seems slightly hilarious that you're able to craft perfect "ancient" elven and dwarven armour at a shitty town forge with limited skill, but hey. At least you can get your hands on the stuff. That is, once I located a goddamn smelter. Took me a whole day to find one, and my pockets were so full of iron and silver ore you could have heated me up and made a rather fetching statue.
As far as the story goes, I'm slightly perplexed by the so called 'fall of the mage's guild.' A lot of what's happened since the Oblivion crisis seems to have been glossed over, nobody talks about it and you don't really have any idea how much time has passed. It seems like it's been a long time though. Oblivion had a lot of references to the Nerevarine from Morrowind as if it'd just all happened recently, but Skyrim's references seem to be to some bygone age. I suppose it fits with the elder scrolls lore and history that time jumps around like a hot rabbit, but it'd be nice to have a greater insight into how things tie in. Considering how in-depth the elder scrolls mythos is... Really, have you read up on it? It starts at the creation of the goddamn universe and has so much interplay between the 'spirits' (aedra and daedra, Lorkhan etc.) and how they created the mundane at great cost to themselves and all, and has a very comprehensive history of the races and beasts of the world. Very cool to read up on, actually.
uh, yes. side-tracked there... Considering the depth of the mythos, it's a bit irritating when it seems to have been almost entirely ignored from a historical point of view. Sure, there are ruins. Sure, there's a reference to the heart of Lorkhan, but it all seems a bit disjointed and hard to find, as if the designers just dropped in the odd reference rather than actually knowing the full story. I dunno, it's a very minor gripe and a RIDICULOUSLY geeky one, but I really love the elder scrolls :P
Oh, and giant spoiler, but also slightly irritating - Elder scroll = magical plot-solving mcguffin, as usual. FFFFF
Ok, I'm done. Heh.
... Art to do, then I'll go play more. Exploring Dwemer ruins is still as much fun as it always was :P
EDIT: OH GOD I FORGOT. These aren't Nords, they're munted Canadians. The accent is HILARIOUS.
I got the game on saturday. I grabbed a hard copy from EB, and was pleasantly surprised that it was a WHOLE DOLLAR cheaper than the steam version, which seems a bit odd really. The funniest part was that it installed directly to steam anyway, so I kinda feel like I owe them a dollar, heh.
Still, I'm rather happy it did the steam thing - means if I ever lose the cd I can reinstall from scratch so long as I keep the cd key. woo.
Sadly, my computer is a five year old pile of poo so the game took a look at it and slapped on the learner plates - "Graphics set to low quality"
YAY. Weirdly, the game is a dead ringer for a slightly less chunky Oblivion at low graphics quality. There's a lot missing in the details, but until I get myself a new beast of a machine I'll be playing SkyBlivion. Moh well.
Gameplay... Actually pretty damned fun. It's more of the same if you're used to playing elder scrolls games, though swapping space and the E key for jump and 'use' AGAIN was a bit of a dick move. Wasn't it reversed for oblivion? I think it uses the morrowind key combo, which shits me a little because I always run up to doors with monsters biting at my arse only to jump up and smack my head on the ceiling before feeling mildly annoyed and pressing E.
The combat's similar to normal, though being able to see the monster's health bars clearly is a very nice addition, though dodging and moving about is a bit like wading through jellied poo now that the athletics and acrobatics skills don't seem to exist anymore. I used to spend hours running around like an idiot in the previous games so I could dodge around the battlefield like a scaly ninja.
My main peeve is the interface. It's very, very clunky. It feels far too much like a console to PC port rather than a nice, sleek PC beast with dynamic menus and good use of the many and varied keys on a keyboard. Magic is a hugely poignant example of this. As far as I've found, there's no key combo for switching smoothly between magic and weapons, and the magic menu is confusing and pointless. The way you learn spells is more irritating than previous games too.
The inventory screen is more of the same, just an endless list of text. Is it bad that I actually liked Morrowind's inventory system better than Oblivion or Skyrim's? You could see all your items laid out in a grid, which you could resize as you wanted. You could also sell as many items as you wanted at a time, rather than the 'one at a time' nonsense in the two latest. Bah.
Also on the item front - what's with removing most of the customisability from armour? It's just 'armour', boots, gloves and helmet now. Gone are the days when you could be wearing a piece from every set, including different left and right pauldrons and gloves. Morrowind was awesome for that. Seems they've also totally done away with polearms, which would really annoy any Nords I'd think of - no hunting with spears? It's a little strange, the item system seems to have been cut down a lot, but in the areas it didn't need it. Sure, you can still go around stealing every bit of rubbish, flatware (but not cutlery!) and clothing from someone's house including a cartload of perpetually-fresh produce, but if you want to run around in just pants, you're out of luck. Apparently in Skyrim, every outfit is a unitard. Good thing they don't seem to need to pee, or things would get awkward.
Shouts baffled me for a bit - The first one you learn is kinda cool. You learn the word, then the first dragon you bring down gets magically eaten by screen burn and you absorb its soul like a dry humanoid sponge. The soul automatically unlocks the shout word. Unfortunately, as I went arond learning words and killing various dragon shaped monsters, my active shout list never seemed to get any longer. I was stumped - was it particular dragons for particular words? Was I missing something? ... yes. I was. You actually have to unlock the shout words manually using the souls like some form of spectral currency. "OI, AKATOSH. I'm buying this word. One freshly killed dragon soul (your children are fun to kill, by the way.) coming to you in the mail, COD." Completely breaks any immersion from the whole 'mystical powers of the dragonborn' thing. Why they didn't just have a soul activate a random word when it was absorbed defeats me. Sure, it's nice to choose, but it feels silly and arbitrary considering the words you find are pretty random as it is. Meh.
Hm. What else? Stuff I like! Ooh, crafting. Smithing in particular. Being able to mine ore, turn it into ingots and make armour, trinkets and weaponry from it is rather awesome. Seems slightly hilarious that you're able to craft perfect "ancient" elven and dwarven armour at a shitty town forge with limited skill, but hey. At least you can get your hands on the stuff. That is, once I located a goddamn smelter. Took me a whole day to find one, and my pockets were so full of iron and silver ore you could have heated me up and made a rather fetching statue.
As far as the story goes, I'm slightly perplexed by the so called 'fall of the mage's guild.' A lot of what's happened since the Oblivion crisis seems to have been glossed over, nobody talks about it and you don't really have any idea how much time has passed. It seems like it's been a long time though. Oblivion had a lot of references to the Nerevarine from Morrowind as if it'd just all happened recently, but Skyrim's references seem to be to some bygone age. I suppose it fits with the elder scrolls lore and history that time jumps around like a hot rabbit, but it'd be nice to have a greater insight into how things tie in. Considering how in-depth the elder scrolls mythos is... Really, have you read up on it? It starts at the creation of the goddamn universe and has so much interplay between the 'spirits' (aedra and daedra, Lorkhan etc.) and how they created the mundane at great cost to themselves and all, and has a very comprehensive history of the races and beasts of the world. Very cool to read up on, actually.
uh, yes. side-tracked there... Considering the depth of the mythos, it's a bit irritating when it seems to have been almost entirely ignored from a historical point of view. Sure, there are ruins. Sure, there's a reference to the heart of Lorkhan, but it all seems a bit disjointed and hard to find, as if the designers just dropped in the odd reference rather than actually knowing the full story. I dunno, it's a very minor gripe and a RIDICULOUSLY geeky one, but I really love the elder scrolls :P
Oh, and giant spoiler, but also slightly irritating - Elder scroll = magical plot-solving mcguffin, as usual. FFFFF
Ok, I'm done. Heh.
... Art to do, then I'll go play more. Exploring Dwemer ruins is still as much fun as it always was :P
EDIT: OH GOD I FORGOT. These aren't Nords, they're munted Canadians. The accent is HILARIOUS.
at least that's how my games have worked thus far.
The way to switch between magic and weapons on the PC, or have magic in one hand and a weapon in the other, is to assign them to your Favorites, and then hit the Q key to assign those favorites to keyboard numbers.
Like for me I have Restoration on 1, Flames on 2, Mace on 3, Bow on 4.
*am being sneaky leezard*
*sneak sneak sneak*
*hearing talky noises, captions identify as bandit, hit 4, draw bow, wait for someone to appear*
*if not, creep forward*
*shoot arrow at talky man, sneak attack, yay!*
*get charged by talky man's four friends, yikes! Arrow, arrow, too close for arrows!*
*hit 3, which brings up my mace and whatever spell I had at the time*
*smack, smack, get away, get away!*
*run out of stamina*
*tap 2 twice, hold down both mouse buttons*
*GETAWAYGETAWAYGETAWAY*
*tap 1, hold down button to heal while I walk in between lootable corpses*
That's what I've been able to piece together so far.
The Thalmor really did piss me off in this game, though thankfully there don't seem to be that many of them, they're just a sort of insidious elven magey-spy network of people who like getting in the way. Nice!
...actually, strike that. they ARE Melnibonéans.
Lol my friend didn't want it so he gave it to me; I just hope my pc can handle it lol.