The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim -- All-In-One.

I've completed the Xbox 360 version of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Skyrim was developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. I thought the 140 hours I spent getting through Oblivion and its expansion Shivering Isles was about the max I'd ever spend in a game without any online aspect. I spent 190 hours in Skyrim. In that 190 hours I earned all the achievements of course, but I also found all the words of power and collected all the dragon priest masks. I also made the best weapon and armor set I could possibly make. I'm sure if you wanted to you could cut that time by well over half and complete everything major there is to do in the game. But to me that goes against everything Skyrim's design represents. Skyrim's design represents freedom of choice. Once you're through the opening quest you're free to essentially do what you want. Of course the game points you in the direction of the main storyline, but you're free to turn around and head off in any direction you so choose. You're free to explore the world and discover what's there to be discovered and that's exactly what I did. I ignored the main quest for thirty hours or more. I ended up discovering over 340 named locations within Skyrim. That's cities, towns, villages, mills, glades, caves, towers, forts, encampments, ruins, dungeons, and more. There is a lot discover and explore within Skyrim. The sense of freedom within how you can explore the world extends to the combat. Skyrim's leveling system is based on action and not experience points. You don't get a set value for killing any enemy or completing quests. You level up by doing. You want to level archery? You're going to have to use bows in combat. The same thing goes for one-handed weapons like swords and daggers. You want to level up the two-handed category then you're going to have to actually go use great swords and battle hammers and the like. This applies to all of the types in Skyrim. Such as each of the different classes of magic like destruction and illusion to heavy armor or light armor. It also applies to crafting. You'll need to enchant items to level enchanting or smith items to level smithing. Each time you level up one of these it adds experience towards your character level. Once your character level goes up you're able to add ten points to either health, magic, or stamina and you're able to spend one point on a perk within one of the types. So to actually make use of having leveled archery, you're going to have to spend the point to unlock the perk that makes bows do 20% more damage for example. You're going to unlock perks down the archery skill tree. This system allows you to create the character you want to create by actually doing what you want to do. But it's quite smart in that it's balanced so you can't just do everything. The higher your character level, the more experience you're going to need. So you'll have to pick and choose what skills you'll want to make use of. To be a jack-of-all-trades you'll have to be a master of none. To be a master in archery and stealth you'll need to ignore other skills entirely. For its genre, Skyrim is a visually impressive game. The world looks amazing. Skyrim's snowy forested mountains and tundra looks great and is full of rich detail. The NPCs are far more detailed and lifelike than they were in Oblivion. The wildlife and enemies are also greatly improved. Musically the game walks the line between ambiance and rousing score quite well. You'll spend large amounts of time with just the ambient sound and it works wonderfully. When the score comes in it has far more impact. One of the complaints about Oblivion was the voice work. Not that it was bad, just that it had the same five actors handling hundreds of NPC voices. Skyrim alleviates this a little bit. Instead of the same five actors you now have fifteen actors handling hundreds of NPC voices. Although these fifteen are more versatile and seem capable of bringing different character voices to the table. Outside of the repetition of voices, the voice work is well done and is a good fit within the Nordic theme of Skyrim. Not everything within Skyrim is a wonderful experience though. I have two complaints. One is in how buggy the game is. The complexity of large sandbox titles is no longer a valid excuse to me. Bethesda is famous for releasing horridly bugged software and Skyrim is no exception. You will have a quest bug out on you. Nobody I know that's played the game has escaped having some quest or another glitch out on them. The other complaint is with the AI for the dragons. All dragon encounters play out identically. They all exhibit the same stupid behavior. It takes what is meant to be an epic encounter down a few notches to something less than special. I truly enjoyed my time with Skyrim. It's not perfection by any means but it is a significant improvement over Oblivion in pretty much all aspects. As long as they keep gaining ground between iterations it makes it easier to overlook the imperfections. I'm giving The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim a 9. After 190 hours I just sort of want to veg out and not really start anything. I have no idea what will be next...