AREN BERGSTROM
& BRYN BECKER

rating: ★★★★★

In Skyrim, dragons are your fiercest enemies. But they're no match for the Dragonborn.

The moment you turn on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, you might as well kiss 100-plus hours of your life goodbye.

Skyrim is the latest entry in the massive open-world RPG Elder Scrolls series from Bethesda, the developers behind Fallout 3. The Elder Scrolls games take fantasy video game storytelling to preposterous heights. Tamriel, the world of the games, is a massive, fully-explorable continent populated by nine different races and various fantastical monsters. This latest entry in the series takes place within the province of Skyrim, a wintry, northern mountain region home to the Viking-like Nords.

As the game begins, you are a prisoner being led to your execution when suddenly a dragon appears, the first of its kind seen in an age, and all havoc breaks loose. (Obviously dragons are one of Skyrim’s main selling points.) At the beginning of the game you determine your race, choosing from ten different races like Dark Elf and Nord with various unique abilities, and customize your physical appearance.

Whenever you level up throughout the game, you can increase magicka, health or stamina, and unlock abilities in your various skill sets, like One-Handed Weapons and Healing. Your individual skills in Skyrim are determined by how much you perform that individual skill. For example, if you always kill enemies using your bow and arrows, your Archery skill will improve steadily. If you opt for two-handed fireballs, your Destruction skill will improve.

Everything you do in Skyrim is up to you. There is a overarching quest narrative about a civil war between the Imperials, the ruling race of the Empire, and the Nords, which allows you to take a side and determine the course of the war. More importantly, the main quest explores your identity as the Dragonborn, a mythical saviour with the power to defeat dragons and absorb their souls, who is destined to save the Empire. However, even with these main storylines, you determine the game’s pace and sequence of events.

You can join the various guilds (warriors, mages, thieves and assassins), focus on the main storylines, do random quests that appear from interacting with the hundreds of A.I. characters, or merely wander around on your own, exploring dungeons, trading in villages, fighting bandits and stealing from people living in secluded cabins.

The first-person combat system has been refined and for the first time in the Elder Scrolls series, the third-person perspective is functional enough to actually be a viable gaming option. On the whole, gameplay has improved from Oblivion thanks to a new graphics engine and a parsing down of extraneous mechanics.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is as immersive a game as you can get. You will lose yourself in the hundreds of quests, seemingly infinite storyline permutations and vast geographical world.

This latest incarnation of the Elder Scrolls features an even more robust and expansive crafting system than any previous iteration of the series. Players can specialize in blacksmithing and enchanting, which allows them to fashion some of the most powerful magical weapons in the game. Sick and tired of that rusty iron dagger? Why not enchant it to launch fireballs at your enemies with each strike. Or how about a bow that sucks the very souls out of your targets? Anything you can equip on your character can be enchanted, raising the player’s badassery level to new heights.

Bear in mind, this badassery will promptly plummet when you take a break from enchanted daggers and fierce dragons to explore some of the more, er, domestic adventures to be had in Skyrim. You are given the option to buy property in a variety of locations, ranging from slummy to opulent, which you can then decorate as you see fit. And you had better hope you’ve got a nice place to settle down after a long day of dragon slaying, especially if you’re planning on tying the knot with any of the eligible bachelors and bachelorettes just waiting to be swept off their feet by the Dragonborn.

Skyrim introduces a new gameplay feature that is unique to this entry in the Elder Scrolls series: the Thu’um, or dragon shouts. By discovering ancient inscriptions on “word walls” scattered around the vast game world, the player can tap into the language of the dragons, channeling their words and voice into powerful magical attacks and abilities. These shouts consist of the obvious, like a sizzling fire-breath, and the more obscure, like the ability to clear the sky of clouds, slow down time or even mark an enemy for death. The choice of which of the 20-some dragon shouts to specialize in and when to make use of each different type is entirely up to the player.

There are a few technical issues that seem to continually be a thorn in Bethesda’s side, but it wouldn’t be an Elder Scrolls game without the ridiculous glitches. Random texture errors regarding environment and characters, super-powered giants that cause you to rocket off into space when they hit you, characters that randomly fall from the sky and the infamous ability to place buckets on people’s heads, making them blind to your thievery and other activities are all present.

To top it off, your horse has the inexplicably fantastic mountain climbing skills of a veteran Sherpa. To be fair, these issues are somewhat expected when dealing with a game of Skyrim’s scope.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is as immersive a game as you can get. You will lose yourself in the hundreds of quests, seemingly infinite storyline permutations and vast geographical world. It’s also easy to get lost in a game world when it’s this beautiful.

There are few games like Skyrim. Bethesda’s greatest triumph is in making a game that is so engrossing, it can literally replace your life. Video games have always aspired to be virtual reality. Skyrim gets as close to that goal as any game ever.

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Photo: Bethesda Softworks