Reviews// The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

The enforced choosing of a class at this point has been rightly omitted and instead you level up your skills in Illusion, Conjuration, Destruction, Restoration, Alteration, Enchanting, Smithing, Heavy Armor, Block, Two-handed, One-handed, Archery, Light Armor, Sneak, Lockpicking, Pickpocket, Speech, and Alchemy as you use them.

This means you get a tailored skillset rather than having to use a bow and arrow for three bloody weeks to level up because you, erroneously, thought a stealthy role would be fun when you created your character. Once you start levelling up, you can select perks from the constellation-based skill-tree, and you start off levelling up quickly (though not so fast that I didn’t get my arse handed to me by bandit chiefs, cave bears, sabre-toothed tigers amongst others, forcing me to experiment with conjuration, destruction, blocking, sneaking and good, old-fashioned running away). Apparently the levelling slows down after a while, but it seems like they’ve made sure people won’t feel the need to just grind away to level up quickly or jump everywhere to get their Acrobatics up (not Aerobics even if you wanted to, actually – Nords don’t wear leotards).

Once you are, at last, given some freedom, you start to get a real feel for the environment, despite the 360’s sub-optimal graphics (I can’t wait to see this on the PC!). The jagged mountains, pine trees and distant towns look good and there’s depth to the view with clouds and far away mountains peeking through the mist. With the HUD scaled back to just one map bar at the top of the screen, there’s a real sense of immersing yourself in the game and it’s only when your magic, health or stamina fall below their maximum that they appear on screen.

So, I go gambolling off down the hills and across the valleys, skipping through the heather and catching butterflies... which I then realise automatically strips their wings, leaving its body in short but highly-embittered death throes on the hillside. You can also catch glow worms (for their thoraxes), salmon (mid up-stream leap!) and rabbits. Unlike Skyrim's predecessor, when flowers and funghi are harvested a certain amount of them disappear. It's a nice touch, if a little overdue.

It’s at this point that I start wondering: why am I not enjoying this? Then it slowly dawns on me. The little added touches: the stream that feels like it’s pushing you along at different speeds depending on the current, the bitter wind which depletes your health when you’re too high up in the mountains, the rain, the miserable bastard villagers always whining about their lives – they’re making me depressed. Skyrim is gritty, dirty, damp. I live in Yorkshire. This isn’t escapism.

Then the faults start jumping out at me. The character dialogue screens are still a pain. The AI have so far only had one option each. The combat still feels uncontrolled when it comes to melee weapons and you can’t narcissistically admire your own glory in the start menu when you equip items. You can’t shoot underwater, so slaughterfish have me legging it (with a nipped bottom) from river exploration. A woman stops in the middle of a doorway and I can’t push her out of the way. The woodcutting, blacksmithing and weapon enhancing are boring... so probably quite realistic, actually. Riverwood seems to be so named because that’s all they bloody have. My 360 even crashes when I’m going gorge walking.

But I slog on because, dear reader, I’m a trooper, and I refuse to believe that this is all they’ve got for me. I take on missions, speak to townsfolk about rumours, have skirmishes with bandits and start to notice instances of my own begrudging approval: 'Hmmm, that two-handed greatsword feels really weighty when I swing it,' 'Ooh, they’ve got Fallout 3-style lockpicking; that’s good; no more saving before every chest,' 'Slowed-down kill-shots, that’ll please the masochists,' 'My footsteps sound different depending on how sneaky I am...'

And then I kill a dragon.