

And in one memorable if minor quest line, you can kill a creepy cannibal-or join her and her cohorts at the table. You can take sides in the ongoing conflict between Imperial forces and the rebellious Stormcloaks, and then assault enemy camps and rescue prisoners jailed by the enemy. Other story threads embrace the element of choice. The story that unravels has you acting as a predator and eavesdropping from an unimaginably sinister hiding place. Following an early lead takes you to a lonely house occupied by a single child with a disturbing request. But plenty of narrative delights have nothing to do with dragons, and some of them could have formed the main story of a lesser RPG. These battles impress upon you the terror in which the populace lives, and thus give you a reason to be a hero to them. The townspeople join you, aiming their arrows and fireballs upward, and not all of them may survive the encounter. You might travel to a quaint hamlet only to discover that it's under siege by a hovering beast. It's a well-crafted tale that makes good use of those fearsome flying creatures that horrify the masses with roaring gusts of fire and ice.Įven when you aren't pursuing story quests, though, the core narrative dogs you as you trot across the land on foot or on horseback.

The tale has you facing dragons, of course, but also crashing fancy dress parties and scouring sewers in search of a key figure long assumed dead. As such, you are the key to discovering why dragons have returned to the land, terrorizing cities and potentially ending the known world. You could follow the story, of course, which weaves a compelling tale that casts you as a dragonborn that is, the soul of a dragon emanates from within you. There's so much to do that your quest log becomes an embarrassment of pleasures, offering dozens of choices at any given time, each one as enticing as the next. But like many enormous games, Skyrim makes a fantastic impression not because its individual elements are sharply honed, but because they contribute to a grander whole. Closer inspection reveals plenty of hard edges, ugly painted-on textures, and other visual flaws that are awfully conspicuous should you seek them out. These lovely vistas are best seen from a distance. Skyrim's atmospheric tone harks back to The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, only the hazy dust storms of the earlier game have been replaced by glimmering snowfall and opaque fog. You might feel an eerie chill as you glimpse a half-sunken ship through the mist, or watch as a dragon comes to life before your very eyes under the swirling firmament. Skyrim's predecessor, Oblivion, featured prototypical fantasy environments-pretty but not quite evocative of the lore's darker undercurrents. Nighttime often brings Tamriel's version of the aurora borealis, with its gorgeous blue and green ribbons stretching across the heavens. In these northern regions, snow flurries cloud your view, and platforms of ice float on the chilled waters. The game returns you to the continent of Tamriel, where you explore the northern realm called Skyrim, home to the Nord race. Those nights traversing these lands are ones well spent. Now Playing: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Video Review
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Prepare for many sleepless nights to come.īy clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's Many of them are ones Elder Scrolls fans will probably see coming, but they're ultimately a low price to pay for the wonders of a game this sprawling and enthralling. If you know Bethesda Softworks' previous games, you might be unsurprised that Skyrim is not a land without blemish, but rather harbors any number of technical glitches and frustrating idiosyncrasies that tear open the icy veil that blankets the land.

Yes, Skyrim is another enormous fantasy RPG from a developer that specializes in them, and it could suck up hundreds of hours of your time as you inspect each nook and crevasse for the secrets to be found within. A side quest that starts as a momentary distraction may turn into a full-fledged tale that could form the entirety of a less ambitious game. In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, you take up arms against dragons, and your encounters with them are invariably exciting-yet depending on where your adventure takes you, such battles may not even represent the pinnacle of your experience. The province of Skyrim might be frigid, but the role-playing game that takes place within it burns with a fire few games possess.
