Dear Reader,
We all knew “Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” was going to be popular, but selling 3.5 million units in two days and outpacing “Modern Warfare 3” on Steam goes beyond “popular” and into “hot damn” territory. And yet, the thing that amazes me most about ES5 is that it has converted me, at last, to the “Elder Scrolls” brand.
I have logged dozens of hours with both “Morrowind” and “Oblivion,” begging either game to make a believer out of me; neither could. Even if we set aside Bethesda fondness for beating up on you in the early, formative hours of play experience, I could never get right with the clunky melee combat or laughably bad character animations. I could sense a quality engine under the hood, but the moment-to-moment realities of the experience cooled any rising ardor.
“Skyrim” blasts away that indifference for two reasons. First, Bethesda finally has the pure technical muscle to make an ES title huge and beautiful, instead of just the former. Second, although I remain critical of what passes for swordplay here, magic is a blast, the new inventory system is a revelation, and the ability to freely designate what’s in your left and right hand blows my mind. As a result, the game is now a tactile pleasure for me instead of a purely theoretical one.
So, congratulations, Bethesda. Preaching to the faithful is all well and good, but converting new followers is an achievement worth bragging about.
_AA
somebody alert the authorities, i got criminal intent
4 Comments
Myself and a few others are playing on PC and it seems to be riddled with problems that I’m not sure the consoles are experiencing. I’m hoping a patch the size of Australia in bits is presented sometime soon.
Really? What problems?
Some issues, we speculate could be due to the steam overlay. For instance some dialog is inescapable and you have end up having to back out to main menu. Many other things I’ve experienced are minor but take away from the experience, e.g., animations are screwy, levers/pullies do not work occasionaly until reloading save, when ever smithing the metal is on a completely different axis so it looks like I have a white hot metal shlong, and on and on.
This sums up some of the issues:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/11/16/the-strange-frustrating-mess-that-is-skyrim-pc/
Drunken-mouse has definitely been a big problem for me. I have yet to experience a smithing shlong but that just sounds hilarious 🙂
I’ve never bought a game on multiple platforms, but I’m seriously considering shelling out for a PS3 version, and shelving my PC version to play the inevitable mods down the road… though it kind of pisses me off that Bethesda is just throwing it to the modders to fix their shitty PC interface.