MWA 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 - Skyrim

Playing catch-up once again because life.

And yes I know this game is older, but fuck you because I've been playing Oblivion in the intervening years because rebuilding your PC every time an Elder Scrolls game comes out is fucking expensive.

So after playing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for about a month now (after being informed that it would not run at all on my graphics card), I have chosen my two favorite new features.

1) Random dragon attacks
These keep the world in a constant state of flux, instead of being able to predict every monster and enemy encounter as in previous Elder Scrolls games, to say nothing of ANYONE CAN DIE in full swing. Especially since most of the landscape is mountainous, and you'll hear them a loooooong way off. This creates a sense of anticipation and realism, especially if you're currently fighting a group of bandits. It's a worldwide wild-card effect that keeps you on your toes no matter where you are.
It also means that if you're using the Smithing skill tree, you have an endless supply of dragon bones and scales with which to make the game's best non-overpowered type of armor and weapons.

2) Cinematic kills
These are just really freaking satisfying. Whether you're plowing through hordes of generic bandits or finishing off a dragon, this feature makes full use of the game's graphics capabilities.
Also I can never stop myself from yelling "FATALITY!!!" in my best Shao Kahn impression every time it happens.
Or "HEADSHOT!" in my best Unreal Tournament impression when it happens with a bow and goes into arrow-time.

And now for the two new features I hate the most.

1) No skill tree for "Athletics" and "Acrobatics".
Remember how several paragraphs ago I said the dragon attacks add realism?
Well here's where that balances out, unfortunately.
The removal of Morrowind and Oblivion's "athletics" and "acrobatics" skills makes the game feel unrealistic at a base level, since no matter how many times you jump or how much you run, you never get better at jumping or running.
This becomes even more frustrating in the early parts of the game, when you have to hoof it (or pay for a carriage) to the major cities before you can use fast-travel.


2) Fucking Frostbite Spiders.
Gah.
I thought my childhood arachnophobia had faded, but freaking spiders coming out of the freaking ceiling when I'm freaking sneaking.
Especially the boss-sized ones that can't fit through the door you used to enter their room.

Which, ironically, demonstrates my #3 pick for best new feature.
Neither Morrowind nor Oblivion created a real sense of "boss" enemies, aside from the main-quest bad guys.
Dragons, dragon priests, big fucking spiders, eight-foot tall undead kings, and my personal favorite Potema the Wolf Queen all create a grander scale of combat to cap off a harrowing dungeon or ruin crawl.

Especially combined with the Word Walls which not only provide an epic backdrop to many of those dungeon battles, but provide a different kind of reward for winning, Shouts.


So let's talk about Shouts.
This new mechanic has me torn.

On the one hand, it's awesome that Skyrim's hero isn't just a guy/girl who happens to be a reincarnation of somebody cool (Morrowind), or who happens to survive a trip through a gate to hell (Oblivion).
As with the boss battles, Shouts and the lore behind them give a more epic scale to the player character and his/her role in the world.

You're not just good with a sword or magic or a bow or all of the above.
No matter what playstyle you choose, you will always have Shouts at your disposal to enhance that playstyle, if you're willing to hunt them down and kill a lot of dragons to unlock them.

On the other hand, the degree of variety in Shout effects (super-sprint, fire breath, slowing time, changing the freaking weather, forcing animals in the area to help in combat, increasing attack speed, disarming an enemy, summoning lightning bolts, summoning A DRAGON, etc etc etc) reduces the player's need to rely on his/her chosen playstyle.

This can be especially true for magic-based characters, though Skyrim contains an entire arsenal of spells new to the series.

That being said, it's great to employ a three-pronged attack by wielding a sword in one hand, a spell in the other, and having a damaging Shout equipped.
Especially if all three are fire-based, and you're fighting...pretty much anything that isn't a Flame Atronach.
It remains to be seen if fire magic is overpowered.

Which is a feature I never would have expected to see in an Elder Scrolls game:
Different elemental magics serving different purposes.

I played Guild Wars for years, and always loved how the game employed Fire, Water, Lightning, and Earth magic to serve different roles (burning, impeding movement, hitting multiple targets, and providing armor to the caster, respectively).
Until Skyrim, elemental magic in The Elder Scrolls was basically all the same, unless you were fighting a creature MADE OF the element you were using.
Now we see Fire hitting undead harder AND lingering after casting AND being able to SET THINGS ON FIRE, Ice able to impede movement, and Lightning damaging Magicka.



Of course, Skyrim still falls for an issue that has been prevalent throughout the entire Elder Scrolls series.
One of the series' trademarks has been the degree of character customization, especially in the different abilities of the playable races.
However, a key element of the gameworld's lore has been racial tension.
In Morrowind, Argonians and Khajiit were kept as slaves.
In Oblivion, there were rumors of wars between the Nords and Dunmer.
Skyrim pulls out all the stops, with Nazi-esque elves enforcing their state religion, xenophobic Nords in open rebellion, Dunmer forced to live in ghettos after their homeland was destroyed, etc etc.

...but none of this ever affects the player.
No matter what race he/she chooses to play, no matter where he/she goes in the game, no matter what he/she chooses to do.

Because Skyrim's story contains so much ramped up racial tension (to the point of violence repeatedly), this lack of effect upon gameplay becomes that much more glaring.

One of the few, small ways in which Skyrim at least improved the feel of the series in this area is that at least the native Nords aren't pulling a "No True Scotsman" on you.
They actually greet you like you're in your homeland.

Which is only noticeable because the previous two games didn't even go that far.
In Morrowind, playing as a Dunmer still got you treated as an outsider by other Dunmer because your character supposedly wasn't born there.
Oblivion wasn't as negative, but it also didn't do anything on the positive side if you chose to play as an Imperial.


There's one final feature which I feel I have to address.
It isn't explicit in the game design, more of an overall sense within how the game is set up.
One of the other trademarks of the Elder Scrolls series is the ability of the player to play as EVERYTHING.
Be a sword-swinging, spell-slinging thief who saves the princess.
The series' skill trees allow the player to become proficient in whatever he/she is willing to devote practice to, which was and is a huge step up in realism from the EXP of yesteryear.

That being said, Skyrim is the first to truly push the player to focus on becoming proficient in a small number of skills via its skill perk system, in which the player is able to unlock abilities related to the skill as he/she becomes more proficient in it.
Which is hysterically ironic, given that Skyrim is the first Elder Scrolls game to be truly classless.

Instead of choosing a class (or building one of your own) which has a small number of skills which determine when you level up, Skyrim lets you level up whenever you raise any skill or skills a certain number of times.
The skill perk system guides you to focus on a small number of skills to achieve maximum output (whether weapon damage or sneaking or the kind of materials you can smith with, etc.).

This becomes especially true with the weapon skills.
One-Hand and Two-Hand both contain unlockable perks which allow you to turn a cinematic kill into a cinematic decapitation.
Yeah.

So since I'm running out of time before I have to go be productive, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim totally lives up to the hype.

Here's hoping for an Elder Scrolls VI: Summerset, or Elsewyr, or Black Marsh, or Akavir....good God this game world still has a lot to explore!