Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

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**update, March 16th, 2012**

So, I recently began playing this game again because, for all its problems, I still love it. My ps3 downloaded the latest 1.4 patch which seems to have fixed the game. After eighty hours of play with no lag it seems like the latest patch has made the game playable even after the save file is 8mb. Only twice did the game freeze on me and a glitch seems to be preventing me from finishing the Forbidden Legend mission which is really annoying. Other than that, the game plays beautifully, even after hours of continuous play. I decided to upgrade my rating back to the original five because, for all the problems the ps3 version had, this game deserves it.

*Original review with updates*

Before I begin, I should point that I'm still a recent convert to Elder Scrolls fandom, having never played Morrowind, let alone the two before that. In fact, I only played Oblivion for the first time this year. Oblivion was the first open-world RPG I'd ever played and was also the only one that took me months and months to get tired of, having little patience for RPGs longer than 60+ hours. Once I was hooked, I wanted Skyrim as badly as anyone else because I knew that even if it was only better than Oblivion by a factor of 1.1 it'd still be a godly masterpiece.

With that said, this will mostly compare the two, Oblivion and Skyrim.

For starters, the character creation is more stream-lined and simpler than Oblivion's while still giving nearly infinite choices. I admit the character creation in Oblivion was a bit of a joke since none of the races looked very appealing in the first place and looked more like rejects from a low budget CGI movie. The Dark Elves didn't look menacing, they looked like red-eyed Keebler elves; the Argonians looked like anthropomorphic iguanas and everyone else looked like dolls.

Skyrim's character's look real and beautiful this time, and fine-tuning their features is easier since all the slider bars go from 1-5 or 1-10 instead of a mind-numbing 1-50. Coloring your Argonian is no longer a chore that involves fighting with the color sliders every step of the way. If you want a rainbow colored Argonian you can do it. Eyes are no longer off limits either, nor are scaring or face-paint if so desired.

One big thing that may disappoint some is that they took out the birth-signs. However, it's still possible to have different astrological effects added to your character via stones that are scattered across Skyrim's landscape, much like the one's in Oblivion that could grant your character another greater power.

The number of skills has been reduced from 21 to 18. At first glance this may seem like they dumbed it down but they really didn't. Each skill has a number of perks that can be unlocked with every level gained. Such perks include reduced magicka cost on different schools of spells or the ability to zoom in on targets in archery. There are more than 200 different perks to be unlocked. However, since you can only unlock one perk per level and go as high as level 80 it's impossible to unlock them all. This will make deciding what kind of character you want to be all the more challenging since you can only specialize in so many things, unlike in Oblivion where you could make a cheap, jack-of-all trades character.

You level up as you increase your skills, just like in Oblivion, but unlike Oblivion you don't have to senselessly grind other skills to make a balanced character. At level up, you decide which attribute you want to raise, Health, Magicka or Stamina. Speed, strength and endurance no longer factor in, every thing is more simplified. Some may not like this, but I say less is more. You can focus more on game play and less on tedious grinding to raise all your stats like someone with OCD.

Here are a few example of how the new skill perks work.

One-handed affects both bladed, axe and mace weaponry. Again, this may seemed dumbed down but the unlockable perks in the One-handed category include skills like increased critical hits with blades or more bleeding damage with axes or the ability to ignore armor rating when using a mace. This way, you won't end up with a character that has high attack power with a sword but low attack power with an axe like in Oblivion. That seemed dumb! You can specialize in one type if you like and still fight effectively with the other type.

Want to do more damage with fire magic? Unlock a perk in Destruction that increases the power of fire spells. Other perk exist for Frost and Shock as well. Be a fire mage, or a Frost mage, or even unlock them all if you want! Just keep in mind that perks aren't free; what you specialize in effects how you play.

Unlock a perk in archery that slow down time while zoom in on a target. Bullet-time, anyone?

Smithing is also fun. This time around, equipment doesn't break down in the field. This may seem unrealistic but no more so than reparing your equipment without a forge! Seriously, being able to repair equipment everywhere in Oblivion, even in a cave, was silly. It's much more gratifying in Skyrim. Smithing includes smelting, for melting down ore into the raw materials needed for crafting; tanning for turning your pelts, the spoils of so many killed animals, into leather for armor; and forging, for creating your own weapons and armor. Lastly, you can also super-improve your gear and you don't have to have level 75 Smithing to do so. The higher your smithing the more you can super-improve weapons and armor, making continual upgrades throughout the game so a piece need never go obsolete, at least until you get the ability to make better equpiment.

Skyrim's graphics are a great improvement over Oblivion's already great looking graphics. Sparks will fly off in random directions from torches. Shadows, patches of light and reflected fire light will change shape with the ever dancing candle flames. Smoke from fires will be carried off in one direction by the wind, and the snowy gusts on mountains trail will look real enough to make you feel cold just watching. While in a cave, I came across a grotto with a water fall. I had to stop a moment just to look at it, it looked so real...

People in town and the city will get dirt on their faces while working and then later have clean faces when coming down from the day. Dust, snow, water, it all looks good.

While making my way through a cave, a saw the giant shadow of a bandit imposed on the wall as he stood in front of a fire. It wasn't scripted either, it was real time. That's impressive.

There is one annoyance, though. When traipsing about the wilderness, you can still see the grass grow in the distance as a new area is loaded. This is one leftover from Oblivion I could have done without. If anything, it's more noticeable because you're already looking at the gorgeous environments. I bet PC users with lots of ram don't have to deal with that.

People have more interesting things to say. Once, while using healing magic on myself on a bridge a passing Imperial soldier said, "practice your fancy magic somewhere else!" I had to laugh at that. Of course, people will still start talking some random sound byte like autonomatons should get even 3 feet close to them. Also, I was really hoping you could make your character get drunk somehow. What's the fun of having beer and mead if your character can stumble around!

The so called Dovakhin helm is actually just an iron helmet. There's a video on Youtube of "Dovakhin" in a bar but I've seen him, he's not Dovakhin, he's just some random guy wearing an iron helmet. Just thought I'd tell you that.

Fighting dragons is certainly more stimulating than closing an Oblivion gate. While I didn't mind shutting down Oblivion gates I could still understand if somebody told me it was tedious and monotonous. The dragons seem to be anything but. The dragons will fly around in circles for what looks like kilometers while you wait for them to come around for another attack. Sprinting from area to next, desperately trying to catch up with it while painfully aware of your own earthbound limitations really makes you feel like you're fighting a dragon. It usually has the upper hand and sometimes it's all you and the city soldiers can do just to wound it.

The environments in Skyrim are more fun to trek on foot since the world of Cyrodill felt relatively flat with civilization always in walking distance. Skyrim is a lot more rugged, and dangerous.

3rd person mode is a little more improved but you'll still want to stick mostly with 1st person. These games were just designed for 1st person and won't work better any other way. This isn't Dark Souls where 3rd person combat was intense and deep (and I had to make that comparison just to break the ice brought up by haters between both games. They are both great in their own way! They're also too different to compare. Please, compare this to another open world game) Using magic is a lot more fun since you can shoot a stream of magic until your enemy is dead. Shooting ice magic may as well be like spraying liquid nitrogen from your palm. And seeing your character use a finishing move against on opponent makes combat all the more fun. I swear that in those short cinematics I can see my Argonians fangs as he smiles or grimaces or whatever while shoving a sword through a bandit's chest.

The story is more interesting this time around. I praise the Elder Scrolls for creating a universe that is deep, well crafed and genuinely fascinating, but let's face it, the main story in Oblivion boiled down to nothing more than a few fetch quests and other easter egg hunts. Skyrim's story has characters that are remarkably deep, especially with the top-notch voice acting! This is a breath of fresh air from the typical stories involving moody, tormented emos with existential problems in other games *cough Fail Fantasy 13 cough* There's politics, religion, conspiracy, an ancient prophecy, and an uneasy desicion whether to support an empire or a rebellion. Do you support the empire, which has become the puppet of High-Elven racist supremecists who want to stamp out the worship of Talos, the patron deity and founder of the empire? or do you support the Stormcloak rebellion who want to preserve the worship of the cannonized god-emperor while paradoxically fighting the same empire which he himself created? Desicions, desicions...

And if the desicion which side to support seems obvious to you just keep in mind that nothing is black and white. The Empire only participates unwillingly with the High Elven Dominion and the leader of the Stormcloak Rebellion is no saint either.

The world itself has more detail. The Nords are truly what you would expect teutonic vikings would be. The Bretons are Celtic like mystics who are somewhat savage in their worship of evil witches. The Redgaurds are the Elder Scrolls equivalent of the Moors; a sophisticated, manly warrior race with curved sarasin sabres. The Imperials look more Roman like. Olive colored skin and imperial legion armor that looks like Centurian armor. They even have Latin ranks in the Imperial legion such as Preator and Preafect and Queastor. My favorite race, the Argonians look more dragon like while the females look velociraptor like. Nice!

The RPG aspects are phenomenal. Wether you're out taking in the gorgeous enviroments or walking around a city, quests can happen unexpectedly. And quests have their own story lines. In one town, I was running around, doing some detective work, interogating people, trying to solve a mystery involving some corrupt gaurdsmen and their connection to a resistance movement living in the hills; one of the players of this story was called Nepos the Nose (sounds like a Dick Tracy villian!). Then I got in too deep, got framed for murder, was sent to prison and had no choice but to conspire with one of the conspirators inside to escape. That was fun.

And Deadric quests are amazing. Unlike Oblivion where you had to seek out the shrines or cults and ask for a mission, in this game they have a way of finding you! You won't even know you're doing a quest for a dark god until you're already in! Then you have to make a moral desicion whether to go through with it or not but no matter what you can usually expect some kind of reward.

And that's how this whole game is. It's amazingly organic. There are so many surprises and points of interest. This truly is a Role Playing Game. Technically, those Japanesse ones I grow up on don't even count, not that they weren't good they were just stories on rails. This game is limitless, it will make your head spin. It makes Oblivion look small!

Be warned, once you start playing you won't want to stop!

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I have never had such a love/hate relationship with a game before in my life. I feel like I could write 10 pages on this topic, but here is the most succinct version I can muster.

First 40 hours are an incredible, immersive experience. The most complex and comprehensive RPG I've ever played. I wish it could have gone on forever, but...

At a certain point (varies based on save game file size), the game starts to go horribly, horribly wrong.

Frame rates drop drastically, making the game unplayable. A system reboot is required every 1-2 hours for this one issue.

Game locks up the PS3 on loading screens, forcing a hard (and potentially damaging) reset to your console

Quests do not complete / quest items do not go into the inventory / rewards are not properly assigned

Enemies exhibit bizarre and unintended behavior that can create problems with quest completion (e.g. Dragon Souls not being absorbed properly)

Game locks up the PS3 during random conversations with NPCs

Game locks up the PS3 upon entering or during combat, especially missions with lots of followers

The worst part about all of this has been the response from Bethesda. After being "made aware of the frame rate problem" (assuming you believe they didn't know about this before), Bethesda issued a patch that solved the problem...for 3 days. All this patch does does is delay the onset of the exact same problem as before. What's worse is that it also introduces a huge set of new problems that weren't there before.

In my opinion, this colossal failure by Bethesda goes beyond incompetence. This was malicious, deceptive, misrepresentation of a product. Prior to the game's release, they withheld PS3 copies of the game from independent game review sites. However same review sites had access to both the XBox 360 and PC versions of the game. The only logical conclusion is that they were aware of the problem, and did not want game reviewers to have enough time with the game to figure it out and raise a flag. In addition, Bethesda negotiated a nice chunk of cash for a timed exclusive for the DLC in favor of Microsoft (PC,XBox 360). After all, the DLC is basically useless to anyone on the unplayable PS3 version, so might as well try to maximize profit by selling it to Microsoft under the guise of a competitive advantage.

Here is my advice:

Do not under any circumstances buy this game for PS3

If you own multiple consoles, CAUTIOUSLY spring for the PC or 360 version of the version of the game

Know however, that there are reports circulating that speculate the XBox 360 version will experience the same problems as the PS3 once the player has racked up enough playing time.

If you already own the PS3 version, bring it to GameStop for a guaranteed 30 bucks credit before the end of the year. Put the 30 bucks towards another game that actually works (Uncharted 3, MGS HD collection, Batman Arkham City, preorder of Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning)

In the future, wait at least a couple of months before buying products from Bethesda. Treat this company with extreme caution.

Buy Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Now

First and foremost, I do not recommend getting this game (especially for the PS3) as there are too many problems. I do not want anyone feeling cheated as many have felt; therefore, I cannot recommend this game despite it being a great game. The game has too many broken quests, too many glitches, too many game freezes, too many concurrency issues, and too many other problems to be enjoyable. The game suffers from gameplay-crippling lag once the save file gets pretty large. Recently, a patch was released to address this; however, it didn't help that much--they only bandaged up the issue, not fixing the core problem. In fact, it has caused more frequent freezes and has caused certain game dynamics not to work properly. According to a recent interview with the Fallout: New Vegas developer, Joshua E. Sawyer, the lag issue is caused by the game engine's incompatibility with the PS3's divided memory pool, where 256MB is used for system resources and the other 256MB is reserved for game resources. This is not the PS3's fault at all... it is the poor implementation of the game engine. The game engine was designed for shared memory pools--that is why this problem does not exist on the Xbox 360, because it has 512 MB shared memory. In my opinion, Bethesda poorly implemented the engine to work on the PS3 and did not do much to optimize it--it's a lazy implementation practice. The game would run just as nice as the Xbox 360 version, and perhaps better, if only they would have taken their time to optimize the game engine for the PS3. Because this is an implementation issue, it will MOST LIKELY NOT BE FIXED. It was a problem for Fallout 3, Fallout NV, and now Skyrim. It hasn't been fixed in previous games, so why would it be fixed in Skyrim? I'm pretty sure Bethesda acknowledges this, but chooses not to even touch the engine on the PS3, as it will require a lot of time and resources.

I tried to give this game a chance despite the many glitches, including the notorious lag problem related to save file size, but now I've completely lost faith in the stability of this game. With over 100 hours logged into the game, the game froze on me yesterday, corrupting my save file. This is absolutely absurd how a game can be released in such an UNSTABLE condition. Believe me, the game is a wonderful game--while it is working.

I'm not going to try to ignore the issues anymore, and perhaps am going to seek a refund. I strongly do not recommend the PS3 version of Skyrim to anyone, as it is very broken and very flawed--with some issues I know won't be receiving a fix... Again, this is a very lazy practice on behalf of Bethesda. They should have never released this game in such a poor state. They should have fully tested the game, but even so, I'm sure they knew about the engine flaw well before it was released. I feel ripped off, cheated, and devastated by this... and I feel I won't be buying anymore Bethesda games in the future.

My heart goes out to those who don't have internet access for their PS3, because they are stuck with the original version of Skyrim , with even more broken quests than ever... Seriously, Bethesda, why release a game that one cannot complete, (instability and broken quest chains) when it should be fully tested and fixed BEFORE RELEASE.

**Update** (Thanks to user "The Reverend" for the information regarding the FTC)

If you feel cheated of receiving such a broken game and feel that Bethesda knew about these problems before the release of the game, please visit the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) website to file a complaint. There have been suspicious business practices under Bethesda. For example, have you ever seen ANY official PS3 footage before the release of the game? Also, most reviewers, including IGN, only have received Xbox 360 copies of the game for review from Bethesda. IGN had to actually purchase the PS3 version on launch day to conduct their review. I'm not into conspiracy theories, but there are hints here and there that indicate Bethesda did not want the public to see the performance of the PS3 implementation of the game. It is possible that they most likely did not want the lag issue of the PS3 version affecting the overall average review score for Skyrim. While this is all speculation, as mentioned before, if you feel upset and/or cheated with

the state of your copy of Skyrim and believe that knowingly releasing a game in such a broken state isn't a good business practice, please file a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission.

Every consumer has the right to file a complaint if not satisfied. To file yours, google "FTC Complaint" and the first result is the official FTC complaint form.

Read Best Reviews of Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Here

*** please read the 12/9/11 update below this article ***

PS3 users:

Bad news: This is why you may want to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (protecting consumers):

A) the game came with game-breaking bugs that prevent users from finishing it

B) it was not stated on the retail-box that an internet connection is required to get the game to work properly in the first place (we're not talking patches/updates but major, crucial modifications necessary for an even adequately acceptable gameplay experience)

C) retailers won't give consumers a full refund if they choose to return this defective product (defective due to the publishers negligence)

D) Bethesda's latest patch (1.2) has done little to improve the issue and has, in fact, in most cases caused even more grief. Scaling down graphics detail (particuarly landscape-fade-in and dynamic lighting effects) to cover up memory leaks is poor programming and a slap in the face for every gamer who marveled at the (former!) graphical beauty of the game before installing the latest patch. Read the threads all over the WWW and Bethesda's own forum and you'll know just how poorly the game performs and negatively affects your PS3 hardware if you're really unlucky.

E) Bethesda does not show enough of an effort to admit, address, pinpoint and fix the problems. The omission of minutely detailed changelogs of the recent patches and the silence on part of Moderators, the official web-page and Bethesda representatives regarding the issue have an unacceptable impact on the trust-relationship between the company, consumers and even its most loyal fans. Furthermore, the lack of transparency regarding the mountaineous issues at hand is professional negligence at best, willful ignoring of consumer-rights at worst.

F) the vast complexity and production value of the game is no excuse for glitches that undermine the overall gaming experience to a point where gamers spend more time on forums looking for help and support than using and enjoying the actual product! Most of the bugs could easily have been detected and fixed with another month or two of intense testing on all platforms. Again, we're NOT talking about minor quest glitches, but a game that stutters to a complete halt and becomes UNPLAYABLE after 15-20 hours or so!! Some dedicated fanboys keep defending Bethesda on forums, stating that their trailblazing in terms of complexity and quantity of a game's open-world-structure is an excuse for major bugs ("would you rather have progressive game-design or perfect stability?"). Then, how come ROCKSTAR can do it and Bethesda can't? How come all GRAND THEFT AUTO games and READ DEAD REDEMPTION were stable, playable and finishable from the get-go? The answer: ROCKSTAR actually cares for their customers enough to put their games through months of beta-testing before they release them. Bethesda apparently doesn't.

Enough is enough. Consumers should not function as cheap beta-testers who pay $60.00 only to end up helping the game-industry tidy up the mess they create by prematurely releasing products until the so-called "Special Edition" gets released. Consumers have every right to demand fully functional products for their hard-earned money.

If you buy a new car, you don't just sit still and bide your time, either, when the car-dealer keeps promising you that it might actually start working properly in a couple of weeks when they release a patch. According to the "lemon law" you are entitled to receive a car of the same make/model that works or a full refund.

If the retailers (understandably) refuse to give a full refund for a product that was malfunctioning before it shipped out to them, it is up to us consumers to hold the Publishers accountable.

Elder Scrolls V Skyrim COULD have been a great game. Maybe it will be a year from now by which time forum-geeks have helped the game-company fix it free of charge. As for me, I have paid my $60.00, I'm not on Bethesda's payroll and I'd like to be able to play the game now instead of feeling like I got robbed and lied to.

*** update 12/9/11 ***

patch 1.3 has been issued, which reportedly will still not fix the issues for PS3 users that make the game unplayable/unfinishable after a certain amount of time. For the most part this patch seems to remedy the problems the previous patch caused. Congratulations!

Bethesda's PR department have done their very best to minimalize and sugar-coat the issues, digging their grave deeper and deeper in the process. When the Titanic is already halfway sunk, why not admit that the ship isn't perfect instead of handing out cookies to the passengers and singing campfire songs pretending reality is just a matter of how you market it? Backwards flying Dragons, which cannot be defeated anymore are called "amazing". Users who spend over 80 of the (promised!) 120+ hours of game-play and then run into problems are labeled "excessive players". Constant slowdowns, freezes and hard-drive crashes are called "occasional frame-rate drops". And to toss some more salt into our wounds, Bethesda's advice to PS3 users is (among many others) to get a faster hard-drive or to never dispose of items outside buildings or chests or (here comes the fan-favorite) to skip in-game-time for 30 days until the save-file resets the item management aperture, freeing up memory so the game may start running a little smoother for a short period of time or not. Nice going, Bethesda! Considering that you can only skip 12 hours ahead in a row and each *wait* takes about 30 seconds to complete. So let me get this straight: I, the player, am supposed to sit there, press the select button, adjust the wait time, press X, wait for 30 seconds, then do it again 60 times in a row??? Any other hoops you ask players to jump through to play this mess? We can balance a basketball on our nose, too, while we're playing, if it helps...

*** End of update ***

Want Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Discount?

I'm a 31 year old gamer. I've spent countless hours with Mario, Kratos, Drake, Batman, soldiers, mages, insects, ninjas you name it. All of those hours involved a common factor: fun. Either you approach casually or competitively to gaming you always want a experience that involves fun. After 60+ hours with Skyrim I have experienced the lag and glitches. I have read reviews on Amazon about this game in wich players say: "It's broken and I can't play for 10 minutes but I'm still giving it a try".

I don't know about you but I have to work for the 60 dollars I spend on any game and I want to get as much fun as I can. I don't pay for pieces of the game, or a game that crashes your system as you get further, or a game full of broken quests. Have we reached the point were marketing kills quality and fun? Sure, the press and the media gave Skyrim the tittle as game of the year in the VGA 2011, you think they care about our problems as gamers? I think not. Sure, we are expecting a solution from Bethesda but they say that is a small problem on a small group of people. If you mess up at least apologize otherwise you're saying that people don't deserve respect and answers for the mess you caused. I work on a restaurant and I don't charge the people for half the meal or tell them that their drinks are going to arrive next month. Let's demand fun and quality people. There are a lot of tittles out there (Batman AC, Uncharted 3, Zelda SS, etc) that prove a commitment to deliver and entertaining experience, I'm happy for these teams and I support them by buying their product. Value quality gaming and value your money.

(Sorry about my grammar I'm from Latinamerica)