Game Highlights: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

With E3 behind us and the looming drought of the summer months fast approaching I thought I'd start writing about some of the games I'm looking forward to later in the year. Skyrim is without a doubt the game I'm looking forward to the most this year as an Elder Scrolls game can keep me occupied for many months at time and the latest being touted as having over 300 hours of game play I can't wait to stick my teeth into this mammoth of a game and maybe whack a few whilst I'm in there. For those who have never heard or never played an Elder Scrolls game let me give you a simple summary of the series: They are open world fantasy RPGs which let you do whatever the hell you'd like to do. Want an epic story? Do the main quest line. Want to be a fighter for hire? Join the fighters guild. Like to murder people for a living? Kill someone and join the dark brotherhood. Want to explore? There's a whole world out there with sights and wonders to behold just set out in a random direction. Want Armour for that horse? No well there's DLC for that too if you change your mind! There's so much content packed into these games with so much to do and have fun with that they are just impossible not to love, even some of the glitches and bugs in the game added to my enjoyment!

My first experience with the series came with The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, back in my high school days me and my friends had been getting into The Lord of The Rings books and films and expanding our scope on the fantasy genre. One of my friends told me of this Xbox game he picked up called Morrowind describing this huge fantasy world open to exploration. Naturally I jumped at the chance to pick it up and play it, spending many nights I should of been doing homework playing the game. This game was like nothing had seen before with a whole new world with a rich aesthetic. Some of my fondest memories of Morrowind were just going about doing quests for the imperial legion in as many towns as I could find with an outpost. Or exploring dark dungeons having panic attacks when terrifying daedra attacked me from nowhere. Or the fear that got distilled into me when I failed to be sneaky and hearing someone whisper "what's that" whilst seeing their shadows flicker in a lamp lit corridor. I had never experienced anything like Morrowind and has become one of my favourite games of all time and I have never completed the main quest line of it due to the fact that I enjoy going about doing my own thing.

After spending countless hours in Morrowind I was more than anxious to play the follow up Oblivion which is also one of my favourite games of all time because of how it kept the essence of what Morrowind made special to me but improving on it in countless ways. No longer was I forced to wade through countless paragraphs of text in conversation now every character was voiced, graphics greatly improved, mounts, great quest lines. There was just a lot of content packed in there that I loved. But enough about the past the future is where it is at with the elder scrolls series and that future is looking very bright. If you haven't seen the E3 demo of the game have a look on YouTube for it to see how insanely awesome that game looks. Bethesda is making a few changes to the series with you no longer having to be bound to a certain class before you've played the game allowing you to experiment and play the way you want to. Bethesda are also implementing a perks system Ala Fallout to help you specialize your character. That plus the changes to the leveling system where the skills you use the most help you level up quicker are big bonuses in my opinion as it frees up the experience letting me play this game however way I want and not slowing down my leveling just because I prefer to use Swords and Shields all the time. Another feature that has me glued to my computer screen searching for more tid bits of information is the Radiant AI and the Radiant Story elements with AI being more believable to how side quests can be altered. The idea that the AI in this game is going to analyze where I have been and try to send to me places I haven't explored and avoid sending me to locations I have already been is just brilliant it's a way of opening up more locations that I might have ignored on my travels and letting me find fresh new experiences. Also with Bethesda implementing an in game economy of sorts and your actions can make a town prosper and flourish or doom it into an economic pit of despair and poverty by burning down it's lumber yard allows for more immersion in that your actions will affect these peoples lives it's great stuff and I for one hope they can pull it off.

I could talk all day about the features and what's new and what has been changed but just check out the Skyrim page for all the juicy features you can get your hands on, but Dragons are the main thing on my mind with this game and how they're going to be a game changer. Both elder scrolls I've played have given me countless hours of enjoyment but I've always felt that I was the alpha male in these games, but now dragons maybe challenging that mantle and I like it. Dragons in Skyrim are not scripted encounters they are fully fleshed out and left to their own devices doing whatever they want, attacking towns, hunting, flying in packs, just generally being bad ass! Encounters with these flying beasts are going to be a treat and a test "Fight or Flight" is the best term I can think that has been described for when you take on a dragon or dragons in some cases and that helps create a new dynamic for me one I'm not use to in this series. Sure I've died and had my ass handed to me when playing past games but I've never felt the need to flee from something and that's what I'm looking forward too the most the unpredictable dragons that could strike at any moment and to feel fear if I have to flee, if Bethesda can change the dynamics of the game and turn me from the Hunter to the Hunted at any moment then Skyrim should be the Ultimate Elder Scrolls experience for me. 11.11.11 Can't come quick enough for me.