Skyrim: First Impressions

It’s Friday 11/11/11 at 5 am. Chances are you or someone you know has spent the last few hours depriving themselves of sleep in order to play Bethesda’s newest game, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.I am among the few who put common sense aside and decided to play Skyrim when I should be doing other “more important” things like sleep, or get ready for my show I have to do in a few hours. But no, I wanted to dive head first into this wondrous game the moment I got it in order to give you people a heads up on whether the hype surrounding Skyrim was true. And I’m glad to say so far it was.

(Keep in mind this is a first reaction and not an actual review. A game like this which promises over 100+ hours of gameplay would take me forever to complete due to the hectic nature my life tends to take. I plan to have a full review up as soon as I can, but for now I figured I’d give you a little sampling to see if this is something you may like to purchase. I also am playing the game on Xbox 360 for those who are curious.)

This game is huge. I spent a good 2 hours just wandering around and exploring when I first started the game, completely ignoring the advice of an NPC who gave me my first quest. I found a mine occupied by bandits, a wandering minstrel who sang me a tune, and overtook a bandit’s campsite. And I was having a blast. The sense of adventure was captured in this game very nicely as I wandered the mountainsides pondering what lay ahead of me.

Combat is a bit clunky, anyone who’s played Fallout 3 or Fallout New Vegas knows what I’m talking about. It is better than both Fallout’s combat though, enemies seem to actually block where you hit them at times. But at the same time you don’t feel like you’re actually swinging a sword against an orc in your face but instead just swinging it haphazardly in the air in front of you. It would have been nice if the animations of enemies responded more than they did, but it’s only a minor annoyance, one that you quickly forget about.

I had help forgetting about this thanks to some magic. Literal magic. The game boast an impressive number of spells in your arsenal, but being only a Level 6 High Elf I have only had the opportunity to play around with a few. So far my two favorite are Flame and Raise Zombie. The first allowing me to shoot a stream of fire from my fingertips, and the second lets me reanimate the deceased and have them fight alongside me.

One of the big calls of the game is the dragons. Battles with these beast are supposed to be big climactic events. Sadly I have yet to face one truly. I won’t spoil the story but I have encountered one already.

The first true dungeon I went through did not disappoint. Throughout were traps and puzzles, a great change of pace from simply killing enemies and proceeding to the next batch that needed dispersed.

Being a Bethesda game I expected bugs and glitches galore. I did encounter a few so far. The texture for a river was partly missing and it led me to stumble directly into the water leaving me very confused until I figured out what was going on. I also was in someone’s basement when they tried to talk to me form upstairs leaving me seeming to be having a conversation with a wall due to the way the camera reacted. But once again these are only minor annoyances when compared to the overall fun Skyrim has brought me so far.

Is it the perfect game, so far no. But it is a hell of a lot of fun. Will the game hold my attention to the very end or will I grow bored of the land of Skyrim? Right now I’m leaning toward hours of fun.

Now if you’ll excuse me I think I’ll go try and see if I can’t find a dragon to kill before bed. Who am I kidding, I probably won’t be going to bed tonight.