I think I’m doing it wrong. I’m playing this game on the PS3 while the definitive experience was always going to be on the PC. And the reason for that is tragic—the user created mods will probably populate this game with content that’s actually worth exploring.
Skyrim is an open world exploration game about showing off how much talent resides within Bethesda. The record-setting titanic amount of pointless fantasy novels scattered across libraries or random coffee tables around the world attests to the focus on filling the world with stuff to see rather than focusing on making these things actually worth seeing.
Maybe exploration is the wrong description for this game. Exploration implies discovery and adventure, but there are little of both to be experienced. There are the standard thousand-year oaks and snow-topped peaks, but everywhere is paved and already discovered. And where it’s not paved, it’s often inaccessible. Certain mountains cannot be scaled because of a conveniently placed cliff. Elsewhere in the grasslands, where there’re no previous footsteps, there’re also no point in going there. There’s no discovery because there’s nothing to discover. Things are either already mapped and named or uncannily empty and meaningless—you’re just another person waiting in line for the theme park ride being told to go from point to point with no real sense of purpose or motivation.
And the lack of motivation permeates the whole experience. The characters talk like robotic answering machines, and the conflict doesn’t feel immediate—even the biggest threat that has supposedly gripped the entire population in fear and pandemonium can be easily defeated given a few arrows.
And when nobody really responds to the events in the world, the suspense of tension and stakes are vaporized into a digitized nothingness. The sense of “playing a game” is never more apparent in any other experience. And it’s impossible to be immersed in the game when even the people in the game don’t really care about what’s happening. Quick, some dragon is burning the village down! Oh wait, the bar’s still open and people are still picking apples at the market. Perhaps I’ll take a nap first.
For a game that’s almost completely about exploring the possibilities of a Tolkien-inspired world, Skyrim is disappointingly disjointed and lackluster. The journey is simply reduced to mere running around large areas of emptiness to do nothing with people who don’t really care about the conflicts that feel superficial and distant, like watching a news report about a war taking place somewhere far away. Consequently, the game is reduced to the basest level of a sandbox—it’s where players go to do things without really having any reason to do anything. But then you look up, and let the heavens take your breath away—and for a while, Skyrim is beautiful.
Recommend: No