Preview: Three Things You're Gonna Love About "Skyrim"

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Three Things You're Gonna Love About Skyrim

You could watch three episodes of “The Walking Dead.” You could take a ride to the mall, get a fresh haircut, then go home. You could take a date to dinner, get a good night kiss, maybe even sneak in a few extracurriculurs.

There are a lot of things you could do in three hours, but making true headway in Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is not one of them. Yeah, yeah, I’m well aware that one of Bethesda’s own QA team members smashed through the game in two hours and 16 minutes, but the dude wasn’t exactly taking time to enjoy the beauty of the world.

It’s entirely – maybe even highly – possible that you’ll spend your early hours with Skyrim waltzing around the open world and doing an amazingly fun next to nothing. Elder Scrolls games have always been deep, and Skyrim due out in just a few weeks on Nov. 11, is no different.

I know so, because I recently spent three hours with the game. And while a part of me wanted to prove I could join Bethesda’s QA team, too, I couldn’t help traipsing around Skyrim without a care in the huge open world.

Some Things Never Change

Ready to be a prisoner again? Five years ago, you began playing Oblivion as a prisoner, and you’re in the same role here in Skyrim. My demo began about an hour after the actual start of the game, just before the world opens up. After a brief character creation portion – which could easily take three hours by itself in a truly in-depth playthrough – I settled on a male elf with bluish hair.

Bethesda has made subtle adjustments to its overall formula, adding polish and glitz to its menus, but some things remain the same. Series fans will love the consistency, and appreciate the disappearance of some super-silly inconsistencies.

You’ll still level up skills by using them, but some of the more abused skills have been removed. I never made enough money to buy a horse, so I spent my three hours running around the world, yet I never earned an upgrade to my Athleticism skill. That’s because there was no Athleticism skill.

But after clearing a side dungeon out – albeit one that was off the path of the main quest – I saw my One-Handed battle skill improve.

One other great improvement? Persuasion now feels far more natural. Gone is the cheese wheel-style menu that was so easy to figure out and so pointless to use; now, it’s a far more natural multiple-choice menu that offers full hints.

More Combative Combat

The Elder Scrolls series has improved its combat with each game, and Skyrim’s battling is easily the most natural. Oblivion improved hit detection, but battling still felt synthetic. Anyone who played that game remembers hitting an enemy and running around instead of parrying, more like a boxer than a mythic warrior. But that won’t happen here. Trust me, I tried.

Combat is tighter. Your backpedal is slower this time; the only way to really break combat is to turn and rush away in a dead sprint, leaving your backside easily exposed to attack.

That means you’ll need to learn to defend using a new system. Left and right triggers correspond to your left and right arms, a general battling system that has plenty of freedom. You can easily hold a sword in one hand and a shield in the other. Blocking doesn’t happen statically or automatically; you’ll need to time the block of your shield with each oncoming hit, a far more engaging method of battling than Oblivion’s.

The system offers a nice sense of freedom, allowing you to easily equip a magic spell to your “off” hand or a shield, and eventually you’ll unlock the ability to dual-wield spells. It all easily caters to multiple battling styles.

There are also some nice visual flourishes. Get in the right situation, and the camera will leave the first-person mode and pan out for a cinematic finishing move. Is it Arkham City? Not exactly, but it is a nice reward for dispatching a thug when the final blow actually shows your sword slashing clear through him. 

It's Bigger And More Beautiful

Cyrodil was big. But everything about Skyrim is bigger.

I noticed that even before trekking to the first town, Riverwood. Upon exiting that first tunnel and walking around Skyrim, I instantly noticed the varied topography. This is a jagged world, with hilly paths and far more detailed textures. Even the little things – the grass and rocks – show far more detail than they did in Oblivion.

It’s also an incredibly vast world, and as usual, Bethesda provides complete freedom for your every exploratory desire. I wandered to six different places – a skeleton-infested cave, a bandits’ hideout, and a shrine among them – before finally heading to Riverwood.

It took me awhile to get to Riverwood because everything along the way looked so detailed, and Bethesda really worked hard to make this world come alive even more realistically than the well-crafted area of Oblivion. Within five minutes of leaving the underground, I was greeted by a handful of citizens walking the other way, carrying slaves. The moment I spoke to them, they told me to leave them alone.

A little farther up, I came upon a group of giants – and promptly ran away. Then there was a troop of wolves that pursued me, hoping for a quick dinner, I would guess. Compared to Skyrim, Cyrodil was almost barren.

Once in Riverwood, I was greeted by NPCs who actually looked like, well, people. Remember all those ugly, we-just-got-facelifts folks from Oblivion? Bethesda has worked hard to clean those deficiencies up. Whether human or Khajit (saw a few of them outside the city) or what, all animations were smoother, and the faces conveyed actual emotions, not Botoxed ones.

Riverwood itself was also vast. It’s annoying that houses and taverns still seem to have loading times, but it’s a worthy tradeoff since the visuals look so much sharper this time around.

This, of course, only scratches the surface of what Skyrim offers, but hopefully it’s enough to whet your appetite before the full game comes out next month.