izigame.me

I want to touch on the gameplay and vibe. For one I think Skyrim's longevity is partly due to Jeremy Soule's absolutely breathtaking soundtrack. Not necessarily melodic but haunting and captivating. Secunda and Sovrngarde are my favourites. Unfortunately, Jeremy Soule was accussed of sexual harrassment by two different women so it's kind of hard to take in the soundtrack unabashadely these days. I wonder if Bethesda will bring him back for ESO:VI? Probably! The general sound design is great too, swords and hammers and spells are great, but birdsong and wind and rustling leaves make Skyrim feel alive. The sound of the Thu'um used by draugr is great and I never get sick of its otherwordly quality. Outside of audio, the art design is wonderful. Graphically it has aged, it's clearly not a PS4 or PS5 game but the style and realism achieved in 2011 for a game this size is genuinely very impressive. The veins and hairs on character's arms, and the texture of leaves, shine of metal on armour is brilliant. The game still looks good, and it sounds amazing. What breaks the world of Skyrim is actually playing it for longer than like, a single questline. Look, ALL games have gameplay loops, that's how they're made. When you enter a vault in Fallout: New Vegas you know you're probably going to be shooting something, and you know you're probably going to get some loot. The difference is that loot and enemies are skilfully woven into the fabric of the dungeon. Weapons in Vault 34 are found in the armoury. Raiders on the road from Mojave Outpost to Nipton are named gangs that have resorted to highway robbery because of NCR displacement. They're not just bandits because bandits exist in fantasy, and there isn't just a chest of randomly levelled generated loot at the end waiting for me. You can walk past a draugr burrow and go "Nah not interested" because you know what's inside waiting for. Zero surprises. Soul gems, draugr, ancient nord weapons, a draugr scourge or deathlord, and maybe a word wall. Areas exist as corridor gauntlets for progression more than they exist to populate a world. WHen you've not played Skyrim for years it can be exciting to go back, KNOWING you might get a cool new sword or whatever. But especially at higher levels what's the point? The rewards are never interesting, and almost certainly not worth it. It's padding. Skyrim boasts unlimited quests in the forms of assassin contracts and thieving jobs, but they're meaningless tickboxes. There's no character and no story. And that's what makes up 90% of Skyrim's runtime.
What makes the gameplay loop feel so frustrating is that even outside of the bad story and boring gameplay is that there are so many nuggets of cool and interesting lore. I noticed this in both the DLCs, mainly Dawnguard, but more than once in the base game too. The Civil War has a clearly thought out backstory in the form of the Great War against the Thalmor and the White-Gold Concordant. Ulfric claims to be rebelling against the Empire because of the Thalmor's religious persecution of Talos worship. By Imperials Ulfric is called a murderer because he used his Thu'um to kill High King Torryg... but he did actually challenge him to a duel, which Torryg accepted. Does that make him a murderer? Others criticise the Stormcloak rebellion as a racist one, as a "for the nords by the nords" type of thing. Certainly many of the nords in Windhelm treat the dunmer badly, and there are a lot of dunmer in Skyrim because it was the first place west to go from Morrowind after Red Mountain exploded. Certainly Ulfric might not be racist himself but he absolutely weaponises the racism of his countrymen. So he doesn't seem like a goodguy, but it is true that the Thalmor are kidnapping people from their beds and persecuting their worship and that's a form of colonialism! The Empire say they are biding their time and keeping the Thalmor out of Skyrim... but are they? They have an embassy right there! The Civil War feels like a genuinely complex piece of lore with no clear correct choice for who should win. You might remember doing everything you can to save the Empire in Oblivion and Skyrim challenges that by showign you a weakened Empire who don't protect their own people. Maybe Ulfric really is the best they have? Anyway I sided with Ulfric because his name is cool, his VA is good, and his first spoken line in the game is "Legends don't burn down villages" which is a dope as fuck first line someone can have. Furthermore, the dragon lore is fire! Dragons breathing fire as them speaking the word - and concept of fire - into existance with their voice and language is incredible. There's a line somewhere about how a dragonic debate is always a physical battle because of the way language works. The Blades tell you that you have to kill Parthunaax because of the war crimes he committed under Alduin, and when you speak to Parthunaax about this he explains that the nature of Dovah is to dominate. He talks about how you must feel like as Dragonborn, which is true, as the gameplay incentivises to kill and to enjoy it! He talks about how he meditated on the concepts of Thu'um and the deeper meanings of these words and overcame his base instincts. He asks you is it better to be born good or better to overcome your evil nature? And the guy is voiced by Super Mario! (He even sounds a bit like Wario if you listen closely enough). I was really surprised to find even a bit of lore in the story here that I liked but I was genuinely engaged with what Parthunaax was saying. Frustratingly you can't really talk to him about much more than this, and you certainly can't raise this as a conversation piece with Esbern and Delphine. As such, these unique characters end up just... falling out of the plot, and it feels really bizarre that they do! The best bit of Elder Scrolls is the lore, where it gets weird and strange. More than once on this month long playthrough I found myself on the wiki looking up bits of lore because there was so much good stuff. I hated fighting the forsworn, but then learning about them and realising they were a native people to the Reach (not quite Breton, not quite Nord, but something inbetween) who tried to have an independant kingdom based in Markarth before Ulfric deposed them? The war crimes Ulfric committed against these indigenous people? Does that justify their gurilla warfare against literally ANYBODY on the street? There could've been SO much more exploration of the Forsworn, they should've been an entire questline outside of Cihdna Mine, and it should've been mandatory for the Civil War to deal with them!
Skyrim is finished and it left me wanting... not for more, but for something different. When I remember how cool the dragon lore is and how cool Parthunaax is I get so excitied. I wish there more of that. I read a novel spin off of Oblivion about a giant flying castle with a underground sentient swamp called the Sump and was like, hell yes, this what Elder Scrolls should be about. The scrolls are awesome! I love how little is given away about them, makes them so much better! Makes me want to go back. Having played Dragon Age Origins lately I'm like, I know what fantasy with characters and story can look like and it's NOT Skyrim, sadly. Which is a shame because it does get close, in these small, minute moments. Unfortunately boring gameplay, bland characters, the same voice actors all the time, just let it down. I think of the daedric princes and how cool they should be but as characters who speak they disappoint. All of them repeat this idea of "kill my last champion and be my new one" because the moment Todd Howard has to right characters he shits himself. I have to assume Parthunaax was written by someone else lmao