The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

When we first dove into this game and stabilised our footing, fully explored various aspects of the land and became the best at our skills, we briefly considered modifying our site code to allow a score higher than 10. When that didn’t work out, we settled on giving it its 10 and decided to use this space to tell you it deserves even more than that. Just know that this review — any review, really — cannot do this game justice.

This game is huge. There are hundreds of quests, thousands of books and millions of options… the list goes on. You can put literally hundreds and hundreds of hours into Skyrim. We’ve done it with Oblivion, its predecessor, and we’re already well on our way to putting as much time into this title. Why? Well, because we can; that’s the beauty of Skyrim.

The thing about there being so much in the game, though, is that it makes it hard to review. How is the average reviewer supposed to review this entire game while meeting a deadline? It’s just not possible — that’s why we have two, after all. Together, we have done plenty in Skyrim, and there are even more things we haven’t done.

To clarify: Traci has played over 50 hours, starting off as a basic warrior and deciding to switch to a thief at the last moment. Robert’s spent 25 hours and still hasn’t quite made the decision where he wants to go, evenly spreading out his skills. Both have become professional assassins, trained mages and seasoned veterans within a fighting guild. Both have substantially stickier fingers after involvement with a group of thieves. Both have enchanted swords, acquired companions, looted shipwrecks, and killed random travellers, skeletons, daedra, wolves and bears. Oh, and dragons. Did we mention dragons?

There’s an excellent place to start: Dragons. You begin the game as a dragonborn, or a descendant to dragons. Coincidentally, dragons are roaming around Skyrim and attacking the place for the first time in ages. We won’t delve too greatly into the main quest, but you can pretty much figure out how it goes. You learn you’re dragonborn and a legendary serpentine reptile swoops in no matter what you’re doing: walking through the lush forests of southern Skyrim picking Nirnroot, talking to a guy outside Riften to end your quest only to be wildly interrupted by a fight. It’s all fair grounds for those dragons. And you can fight them — yes, you can, and that’s where the game gets great. Fighting dragons is easily the centrepiece of Skyrim, and it’s worthy of its place at the forefront.

It would actually be important to note something unusual in this year’s Elder Scrolls iteration. It seems like, at least to us, that there is almost a second main quest nested in there. As becomes obvious within the first hour of the game, Skyrim is being torn apart not just by dragons, but by the Nords and the Imperials engaging in civil war, and you have the option to pick one of the two sides and help bring your legion’s glory to the high throne. While this does intertwine with the main quest at a certain point, that it starts out so separately from the main purpose of the game and that you need not necessarily pick a side makes it so much more involved than other guild quest lines. Like we said, this game has it all.

The series as a whole has its own trademark style as far as the game world is concerned. Bethesda is notorious for making enormous landscapes that the player can freely explore, and Skyrim is its largest attempt yet. Dotted throughout the map are all sorts of location types. Aside from the nine holds throughout the landscape, you can access lakes, rivers, caves, mines, forts, bandit camps, shrines, mountains, stables, settlements, stores, castles and so much more.

Folks who put hundreds of hours into Oblivion will likely remember how much longer it felt like they were playing due to the tedious design choice for the dungeons; we certainly remember that sense of deja vu as we walked into a dungeon across the map and wondering if we’d stepped inside some kind of transportation portal. Incredibly, such a great amount of design labour went into handling the dungeons this time, and we’ve not yet come across a single mine or cave that seemed even remotely similar to one earlier in the game. Each building has its own personality and characteristics you can look back on without the confusion of which cave you were thinking about.

The next best part is that each landmark is fully interactive, most likely inhabited and usually contains all types of useful items, such as clothes, jewels, weapons and armour. Whether you buy, steal or find these goods, it’s all yours for the taking — and the selling for sweet, crisp gold.

Let’s not forget the NPCs that make up the game. Another vast improvement over Oblivion, each town now actually features life going on while you’re adventuring around the country. Every NPC has his own tale to tell and his own interests and abilities. You’ll likely come across two people having an argument on the street or a group gathering where tense discussion is occurring. These NPCs truly bring the world to life. They ignore the fact that they’re background characters — they won’t hear of it, they’re not interested in playing a boring role — and they go on about their day to day business. Some may make an honest living as a merchant or a farmer while others might be master thieves. It’s really difficult to convey just how much the characters add to this game.

Of course, the quests contained within Skyrim will easily please even the harshest critics. Combined, we’ve spent over 75 hours within this game, and neither of us have scratched the surface of the main quest. It’s not because it’s really long and rich with content, but we simply haven’t wanted to do it. Neither of us have ever really been phased by the main quest line in the Elder Scrolls series (we’re more of the side quest sort). Did we mention there are a ton of side quests?

To break it down, we have the guild quest lines, which include what is essentially a mages, fighters and thieves’ guild, along with our personal favourite, the Dark Brotherhood. There are quests to obtain from city Jarls, random quests from city slicker that wind up being both fast-paced and rewarding in addition to finding longer, more indulgent quests from folks all around Skyrim.

The quest system in this game is like a wild, rampant tree; starting one quest might trigger subquests, a host of optional goals and ultimately, brand new adventures. It’s possible to spend hundreds of hours just trying to complete the list of side quests, each one of which test your character. Replay value is also very high since many quests have different outcomes.

Indeed, Bethesda could have done with more voice actors, but we kind of like the feeling of familiarity in the game; it’s nice. It’s difficult to get that with such a gigantic game, but they’ve hit the nail on the head.

Being such a massive game, it’s inevitable that bugs would occur, and they are there, but they’re mostly harmless and some even pretty hilarious.

For example — aside from that glorious video you just watched — NPCs who start speaking to you when you walk a little too closely to them think it’s their right to just walk into your home so they can finish your sentence. It’s fine, we weren’t just about to sit down for some delicious grilled leeks, feel free to walk right in and say hello.

With Skyrim, finding a solid, consistent fault is really difficult, which means it seems to us like Bethesda has accomplished their mission. It’s just unfortunate we can only touch upon these aspects so briefly. It’s been out for over a week now, and we’ve just barely scratched the surface of what there is to do. We’ll both be playing this stunning game for many months to come, though, just like the previous games in the series.

Is Skyrim the best Elder Scrolls game yet? Traci says yes, but Robert says no; Oblivion still has a hold over him like an old friend, and he can’t let that go. What we can both agree on, however, is that Skyrim is definitely one of the best games we’ve ever played — and will continue to play for a long time.