Skyrim is the very definition of pure unfiltered SOUL. What else needs to be said about Skyrim that no other person has dared to say before me? It is quite simply one of THE games of all time.

Skyrim takes place 200 years after the events of Oblivion, Bethesda’s other classic gem, where the player is put into the shoes of their hand-crafted Dragonborn Chad or Chadette. A civil war has taken place between the Imperials and Stormcloaks, and your character begins their journey at the helm of their disarray. (I still remember, to this day, when Ralof said “Hey, you. You’re finally awake” to me on my first playthrough.)

After a dragon accidentally helps the player narrowly escape their own execution, you soon find out that not all Nirnroots sing a pretty tune. Turns out that dragons have been extinct for centuries and now they’re back. Once you meet Balgruuf, it’s over. He orders you to fight an incoming dragon before it wipes out the city of his people. Reluctantly, your character participates, only to find out that they are in fact what we would call a Dragonborn, also known as Dovahkiin. (For those who didn’t know.) These rare somebodies are people born with the blood of Dragons and therefore can wield the same powerful magic. Fucking banger. It is now up to you, the player, to play the game and stop the dragons in order to say that you have beaten the game.

With a healthy level of jank, you could say that the gameplay loop of this game has aged quite poorly. And I would agree. There is no shortage of unfun first person combat to be found here, in fact, there is literally so much of it. However, the jankiness of it all is what gives Skyrim that rough edge charm we all know and love, and therefore I would say that even though it’s a 2011 game, it’s actually held up quite nicely. It’s not often you see me praising an old game that is THAT old, so you just know that it has to be the peak of the RPG medium.

I really think this game gets a lot of heat nowadays for really no reason. Have you ever considered that maybe this game is supposed to be a fucking mess? Just download a truck load of mods and exploit the enchantment table in order to deal 1247083927028238 contact damage on the Bandit Outlaw preventing you from progressing through the cave. It honestly takes a lot of skill to beat this game without it crashing at least 764 times with all the mods you’ve downloaded, so maybe just get better at the game before giving up on it. You seriously have no idea what you’re missing and I actually threaten you to give it another chance. Jankiness is an element that can be bested with both time and practice and was in fact intentionally put into Skyrim in order to challenge the player’s ability to keep their cool. I admire Todd Howard for shaping me into a better man.

Did you know that the term, “I used to be an adventurer like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee” actually came from Skyrim? You can trigger this event when walking around town and speaking to any generic guard. Not even M’aiq the Liar knows that one.

Now let’s talk about some of the mid level designs. Ugh, if I have to complain about something it would be in this area here. Everytime I walked into a Dwemer ruin, I wanted to take all my anger out on Lydia again. The Falmer? The Automatas? The one big dungeon that’s almost as big as my Mom’s house? They make me want to drop this kino from a 10 to a 9 so bad, but I am a much stronger person than that. The nice thing is that you don’t have to go through them very often, but hoo-wee if I had ever seen bad design, it’s that. Not sure what the game devs were thinking with that one.

Disregarding that, some parts of this game really make you feel like you’re truly on crack cocaine. I mean, there’s really no way to fling yourself into the air without dying in real life so baiting a Giant to do it is like the next best thing. I took off all of my clothes, got 10,000 bounty in each town for killing the merchants and not even a single NPC gave a shit. It really made me feel like I was crafting the RPG adventure of my dreams. I once ignored all of the main quests and drank so much Skooma that I instantaneously died right in front of Delphine, and I’d do it again too. Anything to stick it to that bitch. There is no way she can convince me to do Spoiler, ever. Also, did you know that the dragon Paarthurnax is voiced by Charles Martinet, the original voice actor for Mario?

I really wish that I could play this game for the first time again so that I could become the ultimate Skyrim racist on my first playthrough. I was too nervous to go that route the first time, but I really think I missed out on something special there. Oh well, there’s 17 re-releases of this game that I can do that on!

Trophies: 76
Playtime: 20 minutes
Graphics: Potato
Music: Based

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdvClO0qYlcfWVA6WXd3oczS3hZSko-Zi&si=SFytVGI9TK3jm_Uk

Here are my scores for those who don’t know:

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- A complete and utter masterpiece. The best thing I have ever played. I will be thinking of this one for generations to come. I got a tattoo about it on my back and will be naming my children after the main characters.

⭐⭐⭐⭐- It’s dogshit. I’ve never been more insulted in my entire life. If I could refund it I would but Steam’s horrible refund policy prevents me from refunding games after 65 hours.

⭐⭐⭐ - Anyone who likes this game should be imprisoned on death row. You are genuinely the worst person who ever worsted.

⭐⭐ - I wouldn’t even accept this as a gift. What are you? Anti-Santa?

⭐- It’s woke.

Happy April 1st, everyone!

After eons of thieving about, my efforts were requested. A strange man halfway across the continent wanted to speak to me. He offered to pay me if I managed to plant incriminating evidence on someone who wasn't honoring a trade agreement. This "evidence" came from a separate, shadier individual with an asking price of a thousand coins. Like the gentleman thief I was, I calmly and maturely bartered with them: "fuck you, I'm stealing that shit." And with one swipe of her pocket, I did. After bum-rushing the safe I was now incidentally granted "permission" to access, I found myself scuba-diving for a small blue bottle. This was the key. After much deliberation, I tried to silently bum-rush the ship I was meant to plant this on, only to be met with a wall of boxes I couldn't climb without phasing through solid objects. No worries, I'll get it next time. Job well done, and after less than two hours of traveling, I was met with the client that started this all. Expecting my reward, I spoke with him, to which he responded by telling me that the man whose life I had thrown into jeopardy for petty reasons was already behind bars. Strangely, I didn't see any guards hastily dash in that direction, and the 24-hour news cycle doesn't exist in this universe, but I trusted him.

Worse yet was when I broke into a scientist's office to transcribe a journal written in a foreign, ancient language from beings so oppressed by their adversaries that they became cave dwellers out of survival. After less than a cursory glance at the text I had gleefully and meticulously taken for granted, the client knew exactly what he was looking at. I would think it takes longer than that, but you do you.

But I've saved the worst for last. After slitting the throat of a man in broad daylight for the shadowy organization—sorry, 'family'—I joined after gutting the owner of an orphanage, a courier pops up. I'm about to mount my horse and get out of dodge before anyone questions the blood when all of a sudden, I'm being handed a letter thanking me for my good deed seconds later. Do letters work like texts in this universe??? Were they invisible? Does this universe have a method of time travel that you can access at the snap of a finger?

I know this is probably going to sound like a headass, "why doesn't gasoline degrade in The Last of Us if it's so realistic?" take, but I genuinely find this type of storytelling to scrape under the bare minimum, and that's me being exceptionally polite about it. Trying to waive the baffling incoherence of Skyrim's timescale by saying "But it's an RPG!" is a worse excuse than any of the lies I told my teachers in high school when I didn't want to do my homework. "It's an RPG," but do you honestly expect me to believe that that guy picked up a wordy ass book and read it faster than Johnny 5 could skim through a dictionary?

The questions that linger about how time works in the universe of Skyrim are indicative of the package as a whole. The absurdly quick way in which events play out belies the beauty of the world presented, flexibility of RPG mechanics, and enjoyable quest lines. What ultimately shifts Skyrim into an atypically addictive guilty pleasure for me is that the foundation that all three of those reside on is hardly stable. It would have been generous to call the stealth mechanics here dated when this came out, and time has done that no favors. There are areas you'll end up overthinking on a playthrough with a Sneak-oriented character. Occasionally, the solution is to literally walk in front of the characters you're supposed to be sneaking around and hide in the corner before they go back to their positions. Using daggers, stealth kills are merely tolerable. Using a bow, it becomes gratingly tedious. Combat outside of stealth doesn't fare much better. The biggest issue a game that features both third-and-first person perspectives will inevitably run into is that some actions work better in one perspective over the other, and combat is a fantastic example of this. Owing to its default setting of first-person, the combat here has all of the functions of a basic hack-and-slash game but with none of the style. The option to block and dual-wield weapons are in there, but there are only ever two types of attacks with any melee weapon and the option to parry is non-existent. Magic is probably the most diverse option to go for, but the least straightforward. All in all, everything works out fine, but nothing is exceptional. You bring your own fun into Skyrim.

I don't hate Skyrim, though. In my very first review for this several years ago, I said something along the lines of it not being a classic. I also didn't know how to use the skill tree and thought it didn't function properly, so I was an idiot. With years behind me doing this now and having played some of the games that have followed in the wake of this, I do believe it is a classic. But not in the way that something like Citizen Kane is. We seem to revere that definition of "classic." It ushered in the new, but it's so damn good that it holds up even after all is said and done. But, to be honest, I have just as much appreciation for the classics that are flawed. Backwards flying dragons; modlists that keep breaking; mountains that I climb by noclipping; obviously discreet conversations that throw aside law and ethics being discussed in spaces where law enforcement has an active presence; relying on your bloodthirsty companion to do all of the combat for you while they insult you for moving slightly too fast while sneaking around; the disappointment of realizing your one invisibility potion stops working the moment you attempt to pickpocket someone. All of this is in here, and although the game can be generally whatever, I wouldn't have it any other way.

I used to be a lore guy.
I used to get so caught up in the specifics of details interlocking and having causal relationships to each other. Skyrim has none of that. Instead it has vibes. It's all vibes. When I was younger I tried to dig too deep and was resentful of what wasn't there. I'd kit it out with a billion mods and try to make it something it wasn't. Some games that could loosely be thrown in the same genre - New Vegas, Disco Elysium, Baldur's Gate, are novels with added dimension. Their art is text; the game around them is just their interface. In this realm, Skyrim cannot compare. But why would it? It's not literature, it's a virtual diorama. It's a gorgeous landscape accompanied by the beautiful soundtrack of Soule that, somehow, no matter the angle, is always serene and mystical.
I convinced myself I despised it, yet every few years I boot it up and go for a lovely little stroll around a familiar old countryside. There's a reason this has become such a totemic piece of culture.

For all that people have lambasted Skyrim for its fundamental flaws, myself included, it is a game that thrives in its smallest moments. After reading Proudlittleseal's lovely review, I decided to give Skyrim a long delayed replay and try to appreciate it on its own terms. I ignored the Skyrim that has aged least well; the series of overly scripted questlines in which the same five voice actors blandly talk over each other about how the Player is the only one that can save the world from Alduin /Eye of Magus/ Stephen Russell. And instead I played the Skyrim that has more in common with the scuffed fantasy paperbacks from charity shops that I used to love for their sincere and uncomplicated adventures. Helping a witch turn on her coven. Having a drinking contest in Ivarstead only to wake to the disapproving glare of a Priestess in Markarth. Investigating a conspiracy only to escape the city with a bounty over a 1000 septims. Assisting a Priest of Mara in leaving his past behind so he can travel by my side. The old hermit who led me to a cavern the size of a small nation. Skyrim thrives in this picaresque framing where every character, dungeon or encounter organically weave into a journey that becomes more than the sum of its parts. In a genre I've come to associate with bloat and busywork, its just refreshing to play a game that cuts all that out and lets me embrace the wanderlust that got me playing rpgs in the first place. Its far from perfect but I see its value now.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

The Good:
- Phenomenal score
- Excellent world building
- Extremely engaging gameplay loop

The Ok:
- Varied quality of voice acting

The Bad:
- General feel of ‘unfinished’-ness

Conclusion:
Skyrim is one of the most famous games of all time, and it’s easy to see why: it’s absurdly easy to sink hundreds of hours into it. Despite looking antiquated even when it was released, it effortlessly immerses you in its world. The mechanics, while generally simple, allow for very flexible play styles, and encourage experimentation. The multitude of quests, varying in both complexity and length, means that there’s always something to do. The main story admittedly isn’t hugely interesting, but if you choose to engage with the lore, it can be a much richer experience. The voice acting quality varies, almost hugely. Due to the nature of the sheer size of the game, voice actors repeat all the time, and it’s not uncommon to hear some awkwardly delivered lines. Still, I think it adds to the charm. However, by far the biggest flaw in Skyrim is the general unpolished feel. Bugs and glitches abound, and while most are harmless, a few are really annoying. Most textures are rough, animations are stiff, and it’s almost too easy to exploit the mechanics. Despite all that, though, I still love this game. It’s by far the best ‘pick up and play’ open world experience I’ve discovered. The narrative experience isn’t great, but I don’t know any other game where you’ll think “man I’d like to use this weapon with this enchantment”, and then proceed to spend literal hours grinding away to do it, enjoying yourself the whole time.

i don't think i will ever truly escape this godforsaken game. this is one of those games that i'll play everyday for 1-2 months straight, forget about it for 8 months and do it all over again. i first played the original version of this game when i was 11 (i am now 18) and it's impacted my life in ways no other game has ever been able to achieve. If you (somehow) never played skyrim, it's a very good introduction to the elder scrolls series (i would also recommend oblivion), especially considering the modding community is absolutely HUGE so you never truly run out of things to do. 10/10 i love you farkas please marry me

>stole a horse
>went into the mountains
>saw a vampire
>dropped off my horse , to check it out
>killed the vampire
>return to my original spot
>no horse ??????
>sad , i see how much i gotta backtrack
>almost half the map
>10/10 gaming experience

Um jogo que joguei no dia do lançamento, depois tentei varias e varias vezes sem sucesso ao longo dos 11(12?) anos de existencia do game. E sei lá, eu sou bem dificil pra RPG, tenho muito problema com ansiedade e falta de foco, acredito que nao sou o unico que sofreu com isso kkkkk e o com skyrim é complicado, pra mim ele simplesmente te joga no universo e vc é livre pra fazer oq quiser, porém essa liberdade pode ser tenebrosa pra quem é iniciante no estilo.
Aí foi isso e blablabla até esse ano, sei la oq q deu que do nada eu baixei o game e entrei com o pensamento "sem pressão"...mudou TUDO
minha unica obrigação no game é explorar, e isso pra mim é oq torna skyrim magico, o game é LINDO e perfeito...masmorras, buracos, cavernas, tribos, bandidos, monstros, PUTA MERDA CARA.
eu nao quero terminar o game, nao quero ter 100 mil horas, eu só quero continuar explorando cada canto até o dia que eu dizer chega.

Zerei Skyrim incontáveis vezes no PS3, sem mods, e naquela época, era revolucionário para mim. Tantos lugares para explorar, NPCS para conhecer e inimigos para se enfrentar.
Hoje em dia, jogando as versões mais recentes no PC, tenho uma impressão ainda melhor do jogo.
Sim, o jogo é repleto de bugs, o que os MODS ajudam bem a melhorar, porém, não completamente. A maioria dos bugs de Skyrim são mais visuais e engraçados, com poucos sendo algo que quebra uma quest ou algo do tipo, e para os pouquíssimos assim, sempre existe um mod para consertar.
A trilha sonora do jogo é simplesmente sensacional, o dialogo com os NPCS, as side quests, tudo muito a frente de seu tempo. Uma obra-prima atemporal tornada divina com a adição dos melhores mods já criados em toda a história.
O combate original do jogo sempre foi meio paia, a maioria das pessoas sempre acabava apelando pro arqueiro stealth, porém, com adição de alguns mods, se torna um dos jogos RPG com o melhor sistema de combate de todos.
O que torna Skyrim realmente FENOMENAL não é apenas o jogo, mas sua insaciável comunidade, que até os dias de hoje, continuam tratando com amor e carinho essa íncrivel obra-prima de 2011.
Um jogo tão fantástico que, mesmo com a Bethesda sempre trazendo algum update pra ferrar com a vida dos criadores, seus jogadores se recusam a deixa-lo morrer.
Os diálogos de Skyrim são outro ponto impressionante do jogo, destacando alguns como os Greybeards, Paarthurnax, e até mesmo Alduin.
As vezes eu queria poder esquecer Skyrim só para poder joga-lo novamente, como se fosse a primeira vez.
Tempo de jogo: 554+ horas

I feel like I say this every time but damn if there was a game I was certain I wasn’t gonna like upon revisiting it, Skyrim would’ve been my number one choice. It’s a big budget western game made by the developers of all of my least favorite Fallout games, it simplifies the remaining Elder Scrolls RPG systems even more than Oblivion did, and, I mean, it’s just so lame to be like “I LOVE SKYRIM” in 2023. BUT JUST LOOK AT WHAT HAPPENED!!!

Basically, as much as Skyrim’s design builds heavily off of Oblivion’s, it’s setting and mood are much more reminiscent of Morrowind. Not that it feels the same, Morrowind is all alien and ash-covered, where Skyrim is all vikingy and snow-covered. It’s a more classic setting for sure, but there’s a lot of unique flavor on top that Oblivion simply didn’t have, with its throwback-to-daggerfall tone. There’s a culture to explore, a land to learn, and a complex system of faction relationships to untangle, whether they be classic TES guilds or almost Fallout-ey political factions. What’s really great about these factions is that the division between them, the civil war that sets the scene for the game, is incredibly morally ambiguous, in that classic way that no matter who wins, so, so many people lose. Morrowind had wonderful factions as well, but the factions in Skyrim feel more active, more direct, like you should choose a side even if you don’t really want to. The flora and fauna are less varied and less… strange than Morrowind’s, but put Oblivion’s collection far to shame. All this to say Skyrim feels fleshed out and thick in the places Morrowind did, in all the places Oblivion felt thin and repetitive.

The design systems Skyrim continues from Oblivion aren’t my cup of tea generally, but they’re also not the kinda things you can walk back. In particular, the non-diagetic fast travel cat is out of the bag, and the amount of people who want it removed and/or the game designed to be fully playable without it is.. not that large, and it was certainly tiny back in 2011. However, in the recent versions of the game, there’s a survival mode you can enable. Basically, it makes you need to eat, sleep, and stay warm, and removes your ability to fast travel. Since I wanted a more detail-oriented experience than my fast-travel-laden sprint through Oblivion, I decided to try it out, and honestly I’m glad I did. While it’s suuuuuuuper tacked on and clear the game is not built around it at all, for most of the game it was great to have to plan my routes, stock up on food, and make sure to rent a room every time I went into a city. I used the carriage to travel from city to city all the time, and would hide out in caves along paths if I was getting too cold. I would definitely recommend trying it out, but also being ok with turning it off at certain points of the game (at one point I almost froze to death during a particularly long story-required dialogue on top of a mountain). It’s dumb and tacked on for sure, but putting it on during the early and mid game really accentuates the rpg elements of the game, and makes you treat the world as a place instead of a backdrop.

Really my only large issues with the game are that 1. they really needed to hire more voice actors, so many (sometimes major!) characters have one of two voices and it really hurts the immersion, and 2. for a special edition rerelease of one of the most successful games ever made, wow there’s so many bugs and weird bad-feeling failure modes. Like, and this is carried over from oblivion, if you’re walking up a slope and it becomes too steep to walk up, you just stop. You can’t jump, but you can move laterally?? And if you stop moving you VERY SLOWLY slide down the slope. Feels terrible. Also like, the shouts and the magic are tough to use in a pinch, as their animations have strange timings and the shouts in particular just like, don’t happen sometimes. I’m ok with this kinda stuff in general, and most people know skyrim is buggy as hell, but it’s also wild that it’s so buggy at this budget and level of success.

But yeah, broadly, Skyrim is a return to form while still keeping the grandeur of Oblivion, in a way I’ve never really seen a studio pull off before. It feels bigger and more streamlined, but also well detailed and deep if you look at it, and most importantly it lets you know “HEY, LOOK AT THE DEEP COOL PARTS, DON’T JUST GLOSS OVER THEM”. It’s considered and well made and goddamn I feel so lame for gushing on Skyrim lmao

Skyrim will remain a classic in role-playing games, even now, with all the technology at our disposal, it's challenging to surpass Skyrim. Whether through exploration, the map, music, or the overall atmosphere, everything is well-executed. There are numerous ways to approach the game, you can choose to be an assassin or a powerful barbarian charging into battles, and much more. The remarkable aspect is that you can experience all of this in the vanilla game. By adding mods that enhance the game's few minor drawbacks and add additional content, you get the perfect game that can last a lifetime.

Personally, if someone asked me, "If you could have only one game to play for the rest of your life, which would you choose?" I would choose Skyrim without hesitation.

This is why Skyrim, regardless of the year, will remain a timeless classic.

Note: this review looks incredibly long, but there’s a stopping point midway before I start laughing about the DLC’s. You can choose your own adventure.

The entirety of the Skyrim experience can be summarized by what it’s like to level the Enchanting skill. Starting the game, you know you want to create powerful magical gear, so you run through the starting quests to begin your collection process. You scrounge every soul gem, pick up all the enchantable items, delve into caves to find new magical effects, and slowly build up your capabilities. Watching the skill steadily rise and using it to make better gear feels immensely rewarding, and you keep on adventuring and working until you reach the very top. Once you’ve reached the goal and made powerful gear that lets you blast through everything with ease though, what do you do now?

As simple as the question is, it’s one I really didn’t have a good answer for when I did my replay for its upcoming 10th anniversary. Why bother exploring those caves and dungeons anymore, when they won’t give me anything better than what I just made? The only joy the simplistic combat offers is in toying with enemies who have no way of opposing you, but there’s only so many times you can shout bandits off cliffs or paralyze them into goofy poses before it starts getting old. There are tons of quests to do, but most of them involve putting you back into a dungeon full of boring draugr, all for the sake of gear you have no use for. The guild quests and main story are slightly better, but their narratives are incredibly basic at best, like the Mage’s College questline for a magical lampshade of no real significance. At worst, you have something like the Thieves’ Guild questline, which is laughably nonsensical at every turn. So, the only thing left for you to enjoy after establishing your build is the expansive wilderness, which to be fair, has a lot of wonderful locations that are worth discovering for their own sake. I applaud how each region feels distinct enough to where you can tell where you are without looking at a map, and the zones flow smoothly enough to where it never feels blatantly artificial. It’s a great place to explore, but walking around isn’t a very expressive activity. RPG’s are all about player expression, building a character, roleplaying, and making decisions, but once you get past those initial hours of setting up your build, there’s no escalation in challenge or roleplaying stakes at all. You just wander the countryside until you run out of interest, and then the experience ends with a whimper instead of a bang.

I don’t want to sound like I really hate this game though, or that I’m trying to be fashionable with criticism of a popular game. There are completely valid reasons it’s popular, with the aforementioned beautiful land to explore perhaps being the most significant. Simplicity can also be a draw of its own, and within the genre I have yet to find a better name for than “after-work-with-a-beer-and-a-podcast-games”, it’s hard to beat. However, I can’t praise a game because it leaves me unengaged enough to do other things at the same time. I was hoping for an RPG that was just a little more enchanting.

This might sound familiar if you’ve read my New Vegas review, but…
Addendum on the DLC (includes spoilers):
The date listed for this completion is for a replay, which was also the first time I played the DLC, so here’s the DLC for the review. Just like last time, this will be longer than the actual review, and this is where I drop all pretense of being clever and just joke my way through, like a self-indulgent oversized dessert to the main course.

I just said I wanted to avoid sounding like I hate this game, but Dawnguard makes that job difficult. Knowing the first DLC would be all about vampires, I made my character a vampire at the first opportunity. However, the first mission of the expansion is to join the vampire hunters, who welcome a stranger with skin as pale as death and eyes aflame with lust for blood. This doesn’t paint a flattering picture of the organization this whole thing is named after, and the quest involves killing a pile of vampires I should be allied with. It was as if I was fully onboard with this elaborate scam of getting common folk to pay vampire protection money to people who had never actually seen a vampire before. This became doubly hilarious when I rescued the vampire companion introduced in this DLC, Serana. When speaking to her, my character seemed surprised she could tell I was a vampire, even with the aforementioned unmistakable features, and was equally shocked when being told Serana is a vampire herself, when it was painfully obvious after two seconds of looking at her. When following her to the spooky vampire castle, we ran across a few Dawnguard patrols, but since I hadn’t formally accepted the vampire lifestyle yet, they weren’t hostile to, or at all interested in, the two vampires leading the way to the ultimate vampire base. The first time my vampirism was fully recognized was when speaking to the Dracula stand-in, who declared that I wasn’t a REAL vampire, and had simply contracted a lesser version which doesn’t count. My first task after being correctly re-vampired would be to collect a special chalice containing the ultimate blood that was so special that it powers up super vampires. But here’s the kicker: that super blood is how I contracted vampirism in the first place, the game just didn’t have a contingency for that happening. The location with that blood also contained a reference to the magical chalice I was meant to use, but claiming I had seen it before resulted in being called a liar and that there was no way I could have known about it.

In short, the DLC had failed literally every single opportunity for roleplaying. I was utterly amazed at how something as simple as “this character is a vampire” was so thoroughly bungled by an expansion about being a vampire, in a game that already had vampirism to begin with. To make matters worse, the rest of the quest content is incredibly mediocre. You’re told to find an elder scroll, which leads into a quest to find two other elder scrolls, one of which is the same one that’s used in the main story. After another quest to actually read them, you learn where a magical macguffin is, and obtain it in a quest that requires you to run across the map to fill up a jug of water five times. Then, you kill Dracula. If I was amazed before, my reaction to the end of this DLC lacks adequate words. Did it really not include any interesting areas to explore? Did it really not include any deep quests at all? The Soul Cairn was cool to look at and all, and the vampire transformation is sorta cool (albeit mostly useless), but is that really all this DLC offers? Honestly, this might be my least favorite expansion Bethesda has ever released, but I won’t be able to confirm that until the 10th anniversary of Fallout 4.

Dragonborn starts off a lot better, with an original premise about an entire island being slowly brainwashed by someone of incomprehensible power, who is backed by the Daedric prince of knowledge that drives men to madness. Seeing Morrowind again was also a nice start, but as I got deeper into the DLC, I too began to go a little insane. When a quest began to run all over the island and purge the evil from five stones, nightmares of filling that damned water jug flashed in my mind, and the subsequent dungeon involved wandering around to collect five dwarven cubes. At the end of this journey into collectathon madness, what resulted was a final showdown that was the same as any other fight in the game, with the villain slashing at me ineffectually with a sword as I blasted him in the face with thunderbolts. For a DLC about the mind, control, and knowledge, reducing the final encounter to a slap fight feels like a missed opportunity.

Finally, Hearthfire. People may forget this DLC even existed, but Bethesda charged money for it, so it gets a review whether it wants one or not. It’s about building a house, and there are three plots of land to choose from. After that, you collect supplies like lumber and stone, and create the house via selection in a menu. When it comes to the aesthetic or architecture, you have no choice, and the only room for personalization is in which wings you add, such as armories or greenhouses. When it comes to furnishing, it works the same way: you collect supplies and simply buy the items in a menu, without an option for where they're located or what style they should be. For an expansion that exists thanks to the explosion of crafting games, the amount of player expressiveness is incredibly low, with options restricted to “yes” or “no” on a list of prefabricated inclusions. If you want a hunter’s lodge, too bad, you get a normal looking house. If you want to have a basic home attached to a large training ground for warriors, or to live in a specialized study all about research of the arcane, too bad, you get a normal looking house. Also included in this DLC is adoption, where you can furnish your home with a robotic facsimile of a child, who has no significance other than saying hello whenever you decide to visit. I would go on about the oddness of this inclusion, but this small, hilarious paragraph from the wiki says everything I could ever say about how absurd this whole mechanic is:

“If the child's parents are killed by the Dragonborn and the crime is noted by the guards or observed by the child, adoption may not be possible. Children may be "aware" that their parents were killed by the Dragonborn even if the crime was committed while hidden, rendering adoption impossible.
It is possible, however, to guarantee adoption after killing a child's parents. Immediately after committing the crime, by bribing the guards and (magically) calming the child for a certain period, it is possible for children to reach the "acceptance" phase, when it becomes possible to open dialogue with them again. They say things such as "(sigh)," and "What...what am I gonna do?" and at this point, it becomes possible to adopt them.”

If the main review and all this DLC ranting point to one flaw in Skyrim, it’s the total lack of meaningful player expressiveness. The roleplaying is minimal in every regard, and the game is only held up by the fun of exploring the wilderness. No amount of vampires, Morrowind callbacks, or robotic children can fix the fact that the RP part of this G is underwhelming. Whether the exploration actually does make it all worthwhile, well, I guess you’ll have to go on the journey yourself to find out.

And wow, at the end of my New Vegas review I noted that it was too long and hoped everyone reading would have a good day, but this is even longer than that one. To you heroes who love to read, I grant you a plenary indulgence. I really thank you for, appropriately enough, indulging me, and for trusting me with your time.

NOTA: 9,75

E que maneira de iniciar 2024, completando um dos jogos que sem dúvidas vai ficar marcado para mim de maneira indescritível.

Skyrim me introduziu ao universo criado pela Bethesda, descrito pela franquia Elder Scrolls e sinceramente é fenomenal, a mitologia nórdica misturada com fantasia é um mix perfeito, a história principal nem precisa de grandes reviravoltas, o fato de seu personagem ser um dragonborn e ser capaz de matar, montar, interagir com dragões (criaturas em que eu admiro muito) Já é o suficiente.

Se caso não fosse suficiente, a quantidade absurda de sidequests sensacionais que esse jogo têm é surreal, diferentes possibilidades, altamente recompensadoras (as Dlcs então, melhores quests do jogo) enredos muito bons, descrevendo mais sobre o universo com crenças, raças, grupos. Um universo inteiro interagivel.

Sobre sua jogabilidade, um combate que parecia datado claramente me fez explorar cada canto do jogo na dificuldade lendária e utilizar tudo que fosse possível para vencer batalhas que pareciam impossíveis, as possibilidades são tantas no combate também, embora eu tenha focado em magia.

Sobre gráfico e performance, o jogo é ótimo graficamente e sua direção de arte é impecável para a época ( o design de Sovngarde, meu deus) infelizmente o jogo tem problemas de performance até hoje mas mau da pra dizer que são problemas, poucas quedas ( mod de perfomance boost ajudou). A trilha sonora não é tão presente, porem é bem memorável nos momentos mais impressionantes.

Eu diria que a progressão do jogo é o único item que eu poderia criticar, apesar de ter seu lado bom, já que é preciso utilizar a maioria dos atributos para ganhar xp e subir de nível, não se comportando como um RPG normal ( embora existirão casos que subir de level pode ser menos interessante do que algum loot) e favorecendo a flexibilidade de builds, por outro lado, em níveis maiores será mais difícil upar, meio que forçando a troca, se não como consequência o jogo pode acabar um pouco repetitivo também.

De maneira geral é isso, tem momentos que eu paro pra pensar se realmente não é mentira que esse jogo foi lançado em 2011, pois é como retirar leite de pedra, e agora entendo o hype para um próximo jogo da franquia, são RPGs como Skyrim que me faz amar esse gênero pois são eles que demonstram o que pode ser feito aproveitando completamente esse gênero. Recomendo infinitas vezes, não é todo jogo que pode introduzir uma experiência como essa.

Skyrim is Bethesda's best game. Accessible enough for casuals who just want to become the Dragonborn and in-depth enough for hardcore fans of the franchise as my friend would say.

The world of Skyrim is absolutely beautiful, I feel I can walk almost anywhere in the map take a screenshot and it would be nice enough to have as a desktop background. There's cool weapons, armor locations, companions, and player choices that can help you shape the character you want to play as that effect parts of the world. Skyrim also has some of the best DLC of any game, 2 of which rival the story of the main game and the other made me realize how fun it can be to build a house for the character you've crafted.

Full credit does not go to Bethesda in this part but the mods available in Skyrim on PC and to a lesser extent Xbox is astonishing and there's something for everyone. Want DLC sized content with new areas and characters? New amour and weapons? New characters that are fully voice acted and have their own quests and interact with the world around you Upgraded textures that change the environment of the game? Want to make this game A for adults only? Want to basically be an anime protagonist? Would you like if bears sounded like Banjo from Banjo-Kazooie? If you said yes to any of those things there's a mod for you and many can be applied at once.

What is there to say about Skyrim that hasn't already been said?

A great RPG released on everything but your toaster.

A great game if you haven't played this yet please do