Developed for ther PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 by Bethesda Game Studios

Published by Bethesda

Rated "M" for Mature. Contains blood and gore, intense violence, sexual themes, and use of alcohol

 

I walked into a tavern and stepped up to the bar. Video game controls being what they are, I missed my mark slightly and stumbled into a nearby chopping block. A large axe, set into the wood, teetered and came loose. “Watch out!’ cried the bartender, as the axe head toppled past myself and the other patrons on its way to the floor. This is the astonishing level of detail in Skyrim, an epic two hundred-hour game in a world vast with everyday details that have nothing to do with the main story. The furniture is not bolted to the floor and characters are not mannequins waiting for response triggers. Everything has a life of its own.

Skyrim is winter country, a land of burly men in furs who speak with Scandinavian accents about Gods of war and a Hall of Valor in the afterlife where heroes go. It’s very close to Norse Mythology and the armed soldiers who occupy some of the larger cities are very close to the Romans who once invaded the hunting tribes of ancient Britain. This mix is used to tell a sword & sorcery adventure where dragons now terrorize the land and a hero, that’d be you, is born who is the only one who can stop them.

In a world where everything has its own story, the main adventure can become quickly sidetracked as you live out a virtual life. Some players will get married, others will end up in jail. Some will settle into a suburban house, others will become a headmaster and take quarters within the local college. Some players will be followed by well-armed companions, while others will turn into werewolves when night falls. Your game will be very different from mine.

Your hero is your own creation. Male, female, short, tall, beautiful, or ugly. You can be a talking cat person who can see in the dark or a wood elf who can befriend animals, the possibilities seem endless. Every choice is part of an all-in-one skill package of mage, thief, warrior, and archer. There is no group, you are the fellowship and for each of these skills there’s a thieves guild or a wizard’s college with a major adventure for you to use them on.

Fighting is much as it is in shooter games, there are no menus instead you aim and pull a trigger to swing a sword, loose an arrow, or cast a spell. In the main dragon-hunting story you’re given words of power to shout at enemies and these are the easiest to use.

Missing from the game is a sense of moral choice. There are different paths, but rarely are they clearly good or bad. When the land becomes gripped in a Civil War, you’re asked to choose sides, but both armies are so flawed that you’re forced to be a pragmatic hero instead of a righteous one.

In the end it’s the little moments that the fill the game’s eternal world. The wheezing fox that tip-toes past you along the path of a picturesque snow-tipped forest, the looming giants who quietly tend to herds of woolly mammoths in the valleys, and the imposing walruses who stand against blizzard winds in the north atop ice floes that clearly belong to them, not you. If I told you that, curled about the peak of a snow-capped mountain, there is a dragon who wants nothing more than to have a quiet chat about philosophy, perhaps you could understand how easy it would be to visit this game, week after week, for months, even a year.