It has been 5 months since the release of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim , and over those 5 months I have put in 300 hours across 3 characters. Am I done? Not even close. I haven't touched the story. I haven't done any guilds. There is so much content I might never get around to the main quest. Well, that's not likely as that is what I am most excited about doing next. So what have I been doing? Exploring. I play on Master difficulty which made things challenging at first but now that I am at level 77 most of the combat is trivial.
Walk around and before long you'll find a number of beautiful ruins Previously my favourite game of all time was The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion , and I spent 300 hours on that game over 5 years. Now with Skyrim I've covered the same amount of time in just 5 months and Skyrim has replaced Oblivion. I'm not exactly proud, but I had a lot of free time on my hands. I became unemployed and went in to hospital in October, and Skyrim helped me perk up and enjoy my free time. As I said in a previous blog, unemployment sucks kids.
Before I share my final thoughts about the game, here are the previous blogs I've written involving Skyrim.
First I suppose I should show you my character. I name my RPG character after one of two things. Phoenix Wright characters or Fonts. My first female character was called Maya Fey, and my current character is named after the font Bebas Neue an old, bearded high elf. I have always played high elves in Elder Scrolls. I'm not sure why, I don't normally like elves but they have an incredible proficiency for magic. Especially in Oblivion. Looking like a Ninja Maya Fey Skyrim has a very balanced approach to gameplay in that it doesn't limit you, unlike something such as Kingdoms of Amalur. Sure, you can respec in that but in Skyrim you can be the best at everything all at once. That is what my character is. At level 77 everything except archery and two handed are maxed out. It is so liberating having such choice.
My previous characters were pure mages but this time I went from an archer to a pure mage, to a mage/sword fighter combo. Chopping and burning are a satisfying combo. My weapon of choice is the daedric sword Dawnbreaker and a mod spell called 'massive sparks'. Even on Master difficulty I kill almost everything in one or two hits with the sword. I am using modded armour, a retextured version of the Nightingale Armour.
My main advice to anyone still waiting to play Skyrim is explore. There is a massive world to explore and unlike Fallout it is filled with ruins, dungeons, cities, inns. Everything you expect in a fantasy RPG. Unlike Oblivion they aren't all the same. They are still constructed from tile sets slotted together, but each place is different and tells its own story. So often you will stumble upon a quest just from entering a dungeon but another feature that I really enjoy is when the story is implied. You won't get something to register in your quest log, but you might stumble upon a journal, or a body and you can work out what went on. So much fun. One that springs to mind is a lighthouse filled with dead bodies and falmer. There is a slight quest hint to help you along but it is fun to just stumble upon and figure out through diaries.
Look at all those locations! That isn't even close to all of them. Everything in Skyrim is styled very specifically to fit the lore and climate. In Oblivion each town looked very different in terms of architecture but in Skyrim things are very similar in the smaller holds but there is the stone fortress of Winterhold, the regal elegance of Solitude and the ancient dwarven city of Markarth. All very nordic and look appropriately freezing cold. The same can be said for the ruins, which look ancient and filthy. I really do miss something on the scale and design of the Imperial City, or the port town of Anvil... especially when I consider how great they would look in the newer engine.
The Grey Beard's temple, High Hrothgar The atmosphere from the new and improved lighting and weather effects is incredible. Oblivion gave me a great sense of immersion, like I was living in a fantasy world like I never had before. Skyrim goes much further and really drew me in. Sure, I have a ton of graphical mods enabled that alter pretty much everything from weather patterns to textures and lighting. I don't think that is a comment on me not liking the game as it is, but there is always room for improvement. Bethesda put out a fine product, they couldn't refine it forever or tune it to my preferences. At least with mods I'm free to pick and choose.
Approaching a lit building in the dead of night. Kind of peaceful.If I had to pick my favourite thing about Skyrim it would definitely be the atmosphere and immersion. A lot of that has to do with graphics as well as game systems that let you and all the NPCs live a 24 hour life. The world itself feels very alive pretty much all the time. Quests and interesting locations all around you, a ton of voice acting and enemies. Patrick already said this on the bombcast, but one of the more interesting experiences is walking in to a dungeon and finding a guy who is drugged up and insane, believing he is a ghost after spending years just pretending so he could find an artefact. At the end of the dungeon you find the exit backs on to the room he was living in. A tragic irony.
A woman with a broom in her boob? Not even the strangest thing I've seen in Skyrim I've had giants, skeevers and horses try and take down a dragon. Even my dog had a go. I wish there was some gradation of aggression. The AI is either passive, fully aggressive or scared (fleeing). My dog should not just jump in to 'combat' mode and relentlessly attack anything. As hilarious as it is, I might prefer my dog to run away and return home. I think it'd be cool to come home and find my cold, injured dog.
Skyrim is known for being glitchy, and that has led to very sketchy moments like backwards flying dragons, flying drauger, NPCs with wood stuck to their head, bodies flying through the air like a rocket and so much more. The annoying variations are quests glitching, events not triggering, items falling through the world. Thankfully, on the PC you can fix any problem if you know how. The console allows you to spawn an item or person, fly through scenery, force quest checkpoints to trigger, bring dead NPCs back to life (I was told by a daedric prince to go and talk to somebody, and the quest marker lead me to a dead person... so I had to resurrect him).
It would really suck to play this on a console without mods or access to the developer console. It offers so much flexibility.
I have to talk about dragon again. They are the best thing in Skyrim. Incredibly well modelled, animated, though not especially textured (I have a mod that adds 49 more dragon textures so that is no longer a problem). One of the coolest things is the effect of their flesh burning off and leaving behind a skeleton. If only their bones didn't seem so rubbery. I am seriously impressed with the dragons in this game, especially with how dynamic they are and not fixed scripted moments. When I first brought a dragon crashing down to the ground and it slid past me with a cloud of dust I felt incredibly powerful, which Skyrim is good at doing.
Fighting on a snowy mountain top is a great feeling...Hey! How ya doin'!? The problem with the dragons in Skyrim is a lack of variety. There are several kind of dragon, scaled to your level. Once you reach level 50 you face the hardest dragons of the 'Ancient' variety. The diverse dragons mod adds quite a few dragon variants that not only look different, but have different abilities. Some can knock you over, others summon daedra, and there are also twins that fly together. Not just the look, but the combat in the battles lack variation and this mod fixes that.
Images
Here are some of the other screenshots I've taken in Skyrim.
Gallery
Conclusion
Skyrim is easily one of my favourite games of all time. Yeah yeah, you're probably sick of hearing about how great it is and the dirty hipster inside of you wants to hate it because it's cool. It is totally fine to not like the game, however, but that doesn't make it bad. Me liking it doesn't make it good, but Bethesda clearly went above and beyond with this game. The most cynical of publishers wouldn't necessarily let a developer put so much work in to a game that sells for just as much as a 4 hour Call of Duty game. There is so much content it is amazing, and why I can forgive a lot of the faults. They just don't matter to me. I can overcome them.
Now that I have reached the 300 hour mark I feel no need to keep talking about the game. I will soldier on in silence. See you when the first expansion comes out!
Please leave comments and such. Always fun to read.
72 Comments
Good read. I have mainly two things to say: 1. I'm fascinated by your fascination by things that get pretty old 50 hours in. You're 300 hours in and still find it charming how dragon skin burns and leaves a skeleton behind. I envy you for maintaining that sense of novelty and fascination, better than being insta jaded like I am. 2. I've clocked 97 hours in the game, still have many quests to finish, much more quests to stumble upon, a lot of perks to unlock and items to find, but I simply can't play this game anymore, and I attribute that to two main reasons: A) The game is WAY too dependent on Nordic ruins. It saddens me that Bethesda created this 'album filler' where you have to explore a Nordic crypt and either farm kills on weak skeletons or get raped by powerful ones. I am sick to my stomach of the moldy looking walls and wooden staircases of those crypts, and looting those skeletons to find 5 gold and a Nordic sword every time. How do you deal with that bullshit? B) The loot is so goddamn underwhelming. It's always 5 or 10 gold, a potion or two, and a gem. Is there a loot mod somewhere?
Loot does suck. A shame, but it doesn't bother me now that I've taught myself not to care what I pick up. It is just fodder for gold. I make all my best stuff.
I'm just not jaded. I love the dungeons... and the dragons too (sorry). The amount of variety they do have is incredible considering the scope of the game. The dungeons don't bother me because unlike Dragon Age 2 it makes sense that a lot of the locations look the same. A crypt is a crypt. The layouts are a lot more varied than in the past.
Nothing is as exciting as it was in hour one, but I still enjoy it.
Good read. I have mainly two things to say: 1. I'm fascinated by your fascination by things that get pretty old 50 hours in. You're 300 hours in and still find it charming how dragon skin burns and leaves a skeleton behind. I envy you for maintaining that sense of novelty and fascination, better than being insta jaded like I am. 2. I've clocked 97 hours in the game, still have many quests to finish, much more quests to stumble upon, a lot of perks to unlock and items to find, but I simply can't play this game anymore, and I attribute that to two main reasons: A) The game is WAY too dependent on Nordic ruins. It saddens me that Bethesda created this 'album filler' where you have to explore a Nordic crypt and either farm kills on weak skeletons or get raped by powerful ones. I am sick to my stomach of the moldy looking walls and wooden staircases of those crypts, and looting those skeletons to find 5 gold and a Nordic sword every time. How do you deal with that bullshit? B) The loot is so goddamn underwhelming. It's always 5 or 10 gold, a potion or two, and a gem. Is there a loot mod somewhere?
Loot does suck. A shame, but it doesn't bother me now that I've taught myself not to care what I pick up. It is just fodder for gold. I make all my best stuff.
I'm just not jaded. I love the dungeons... and the dragons too (sorry). The amount of variety they do have is incredible considering the scope of the game. The dungeons don't bother me because unlike Dragon Age 2 it makes sense that a lot of the locations look the same. A crypt is a crypt. The layouts are a lot more varied than in the past.
Nothing is as exciting as it was in hour one, but I still enjoy it.
I agree with the other guy that there are way too many caves and ruins to explore and it does get old after a bit, also, the loot does suck. Still, there's a certain satisfaction when you get a kill cam or level up a skill.
I've spent about 300 hours myself playing Skyrim across three characters (141 hours with one character on the 360, 164 hours across two characters on the PC) and I still find myself playing an hour or so of it on a consistent basis. To be fair, most of that is to check out the plethora of mods that come out everyday/week (the way my game looks today is probably vastly different to how it looked even a couple of weeks ago.) I've largely abandoned the 360 version due to long load times, and lag due to memory limitations (I tried going back to it a couple of times but couldn't get past the lag). But yeah, the world is definitely what makes Skyrim such an immersive experience. I mean I feel that games like KOA: Reckoning have more enjoyable gameplay but exploring the world in that game is just plain boring/dull, while I never get tired of exploring the world in Skyrim, even when I've already explored pretty much all of the important areas and dungeons in the game.
@Flawed_System: I have a mod that ups the killcam frequency (and doesn't limit it to the last guy in a group). It also adds new animations, first person and third. It is the most rewarding thing about the combat now that I one shot pretty much everything. Now that they've added killcam to magic and archery those are more fun too.
Thank you for writing this, I'm very tempted to go back and play through the game with mods this time. I really enjoyed reading every book and journal I picked up, they add so much context to the environment and often take you places you wouldn't find by accident. I remember getting especially excited if I found a note frantically written in blood, or one that gradually descends into insanity and gibberish. I feel sorry for everyone who clicked through all the dialogue and didn't read a single thing the whole time, that right there negates over 50% of the atmosphere in my eyes. I have a friend who does this, clicks through every piece of dialogue and text in the game to get to the next battle. Needless to say he became a vampire at level 11 and never used a guardian stone till his character was over lvl20, which is also about the time he learned you can sprint.
I was just reminded of this video from the official Giant Bomb channel, made by our own Matt Kessler. You should watch it, maybe consider doing some of them.
@AhmadMetallic: After playing borderlands I find loot to be underwhelming in a lot of games. I really wish more games would incorporate randomly generated loot that does unique shit and has a unique look.
@Flawed_System: I have a mod that ups the killcam frequency (and doesn't limit it to the last guy in a group). It also adds new animations, first person and third. It is the most rewarding thing about the combat now that I one shot pretty much everything. Now that they've added killcam to magic and archery those are more fun too.
Yeah, I play on 360 so no mods for me. Still is satisfying when you decapitate someone, wish they added in limbs and other stuff too, would've made it even better.
Edit: Thanks for posting that video. Now I can find all the locations. Think I found maybe four.
170 with my first character. Completed all the main quests, guild quests, most named side quests and explored 75%+ of the dungeons. Made a 2nd character that was all rogue, thief and stealth....was tough at first but now is way too easy 30 hours into it. Not being able to sell all stolen goods makes the thief part of it suck tons. Made third character that is more of a Hunter/Ranger class. Only using bows, one handed axes, and healing spell. Not doing any of the main quests and only parts of guild quests to get items and NO quick travel! So far my third character is my favorite and becoming my main. The no quick travel adds a whole new layer to it as you run into all kinds of things on the paths you take!
I honestly can see my self playing this game up until the day Elder Scrolls VI comes out! Each different character makes it an entirely new game and I still stumble upon caves or dungeons I didn't on my first play through! It's somewhat peaceful not having to fight a dragons and walking to each location rather than just a load screen. If I get bored of my current character, I can always do a new one and focus on a different skill. Long breaks between characters helps too as you do tend to run into the same caves every so often!
200 hours and level 44. But 300 hours? No guilds, main quest anything? You are missing out. If you are starting with guilds, grab hold on to the Thieves Guild. Easily the best guild in the game next to the Dark Brotherhood.
200 hours and level 44. But 300 hours? No guilds, main quest anything? You are missing out. If you are starting with guilds, grab hold on to the Thieves Guild. Easily the best guild in the game next to the Dark Brotherhood.
I've seen some of the thieves guild. I prefer the vibe from Oblivion where it is a bit more robin hood, street urchin kind of thing. They seem very organised and power hungry. I'm sure it'll be fun though.
200 hours and level 44. But 300 hours? No guilds, main quest anything? You are missing out. If you are starting with guilds, grab hold on to the Thieves Guild. Easily the best guild in the game next to the Dark Brotherhood.
I've seen some of the thieves guild. I prefer the vibe from Oblivion where it is a bit more robin hood, street urchin kind of thing. They seem very organised and power hungry. I'm sure it'll be fun though.
You get awesome Light Armor at the end of the quest line too.
300 hours in Skyrim is at least 24 hours of loading screens.
On PC, especially with an SSD, loading is almost instant. I've never been able to read a tooltip.
Yea PC is the way to play this game. Better game all around for it. Still, even with the PC and all the mods available I only have maybe 40 hours total with 3 or 4 characters. It's not a bad game, but it just doesn't get my blood up while I'm playing it. Maybe some day it will click with me. Oblivion and Morrowind were the same way. Especially Morrowind. Elder Scroll games tend to bore me for some reason.
So I bought it at launch as I was super excited for it, it was going to be the best game ever made. However I got the PS3 version, so as you can guess things didn't go great. It was ok for 20 or so hours but I started to notice really long loading times and other bugs, so I decided to stop until it got fixed. It didn't get fixed for an appalling few months though, which by then my desire to play Skyrim had faded. I have tried to get back in to the game at least 10 times, it is always the same aswell. I start a new character, play for a few hours then get bored, all because of the stupid PS3 issues.
I'm jealous of you for being able to play it for that long and have done all you have done, I hope to be like you some day.
So I bought it at launch as I was super excited for it, it was going to be the best game ever made. However I got the PS3 version, so as you can guess things didn't go great. It was ok for 20 or so hours but I started to notice really long loading times and other bugs, so I decided to stop until it got fixed. It didn't get fixed for an appalling few months though, which by then my desire to play Skyrim had faded. I have tried to get back in to the game at least 10 times, it is always the same aswell. I start a new character, play for a few hours then get bored, all because of the stupid PS3 issues.
I'm jealous of you for being able to play it for that long and have done all you have done, I hope to be like you some day.
Replaying content can be a drag. It sucks for PS3 users, but I couldn't find it in myself to call it a bad game because the PS3 version is busted. Maybe it isn't the bugs, maybe the game just isn't for you.
Build a gaming PC, get the PC version. Life will be good.
So I bought it at launch as I was super excited for it, it was going to be the best game ever made. However I got the PS3 version, so as you can guess things didn't go great. It was ok for 20 or so hours but I started to notice really long loading times and other bugs, so I decided to stop until it got fixed. It didn't get fixed for an appalling few months though, which by then my desire to play Skyrim had faded. I have tried to get back in to the game at least 10 times, it is always the same aswell. I start a new character, play for a few hours then get bored, all because of the stupid PS3 issues.
I'm jealous of you for being able to play it for that long and have done all you have done, I hope to be like you some day.
Replaying content can be a drag. It sucks for PS3 users, but I couldn't find it in myself to call it a bad game because the PS3 version is busted. Maybe it isn't the bugs, maybe the game just isn't for you.
Build a gaming PC, get the PC version. Life will be good.
So because of this blog I ended up caving in and giving Skyrim another go, I created a female Dark Elf called Fia. I decided on not focussing on one combat skill, instead I am playing with one handed, archery and destruction. I've also decided against getting a house, instead if I won't use it I just chuck it or sell it. Where as before I would bring everything quest related back and it would ultimately be a hassle. I'm did just enough of the main quest to unlock the dragons into the main world and then just went exploring, not really focussing on anything and I think I did better for it.
Because 10 hours in (3 sessions later) I am hooked again, I am really having a great time at last, I'm enjoying it the same as I did the first time It came out. I hope to keep on playing it and honing my skills and watching my character grow, thank you very much!
@Hizang: I'm glad, and I hope it carries on being fun for you. I had this obsession (which you can read in my 140 hour Skyrim blog) where I had to have one of everything, similar to your collecting fetish. One of every weapon, and every uniquely named thing. I stored them in different areas of my house to categorise them. On this character I only keep uniques in one chest. Everything else I can make thanks to some amazing smith mods. Shame you don't have access to that on PS3.
Just be careful about where you put your perks. 80 perks out of 250. I have almost all of them thanks to mods but I would recommend the smith and enchanting perks over all others.
72 Comments