Introduction - Before the game...
My first introduction to Skyrim was on a Notch's blog (Founder of Mojang, he made Minecraft, etc) and how Bethesda was suing them for copyright infringements as the name of Notch's next game was called Scrolls. Naturally, I supported Notch, as since Bethesda's game was called "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" and most people were, at the time, nicknaming the game "skyrim". How you can confuse "Scrolls" and "Skyrim" is beyond me.
Although, after seeing the post-production screenshots, I figured that it couldnt be that bad of a game. My brother, Ben, got it for christmas and here's where things really annoyed me.
Installation
Skyrim on PC runs through Steam, just so you know, and as such that means that my brother and I supposedly could only run one copy on his computer, well, being the technical genius that I am, I found a way around that that I probably cant post here for legal reasons. Never the less, it really annoys me when a company is so strict on product distribution that you cant have multiple copies at home on your computers to share with siblings. Oh well, their doing the best that they can.
The game itself
Originally, I was skeptical about playing Skyrim due to a number of forseen problems, but I'll address those later. I'll start with the merits of the game.
Game positives
The detail that Skyrim offers its players is incredibly amazing. The game contains practically no linear path to the story whatsoever and players are free to go off and do whatever the heck they want whenever they want (Excluding a few certain things). The free playability comes after you finish the tutorial, which includes escaping from a freaking huge dragon called Alduin who apparently wants to eat the world... Yea... He must be really hungry.
The game also has a very well created chat system for interacting with NPC's. Typically your given a list of questions and responses to what a NPC talks about, however saying certain messages can often change how another character thinks about you. Your conversations with others actually get to the point where you can change the outcome of war.
Game Negatives
While admittedly, the game does give players a large amount of places to discover, a major issue eventually arose with me was that it eventually became too easy to win battles. The game does level enemies in new locations to your average level, but the problem that I always ran into was that they were not tough enough after a while and that it eventually got to the point where killing dragons involved about four-five slashes from my sword and bang, easy kill. The end result is a character who could probably destroy the world better than the main antagonist, Alduin.
Bugs Bugs Bugs. Skyrim is FULL of them. While any and all games across the expanse of Earth do contain bugs, Skyrim might as well take the award for the game with the most bugs that has been sold worldwide. Most bugs are hard to avoid and some of them even go as far as making it impossible to continue the main campaign, which by the way is really annoying. Often fixing the bug requires the player to reload from the most recent savegame, but in some cases it requires the player to acess the game console, a feature only available on PC, leaving Xbox and PS3 players stuck in problematic spot. If your curious as to just how many bugs there are in the game, take a look at The Elder Scrolls Wikia. Roughly every page related to Skyrim has a special section on bugs related to a character, a quest or even just items.
Skyrim is a good game and gives the player hours upon hours of playing ability. If you get bored of fighting, switch to smithing or enchanting or alchemy or... you get the picture. The big downside is that eventually it gets way too easy and bugs can often prevent the finishing of quests or even the game. My final result is 7/10. I'd be happy to give it an 8 or 9 if they'd fix so many of the bugs.
