The RPG That Won't Die
[Modern Review] Bitten by the Skyrim bug, again.
Decades ago, the RPG landscape was split in two: Western role-playing games like Baldur’s Gate, Fallout and Ultima ruled the desktop but on consoles, Japanese role-playing games like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest and Shin Megami Tensei ruled the roost. In the late-1990’s and early 2000’s that started to change and the vast leaps in the power of video game consoles facilitated a Western invasion.
Starting with Diablo in 1998, some of the biggest Western RPG’s of the day began to make their way to consoles. One of these RPG’s: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, had been closely intertwined with the Original Xbox since Bethesda first became aware of the machine’s existence and would become one of the most successful games for the console, releasing there exclusively just a month after the PC version in North America and selling over 1.3 million copies: the #16 best selling game in the entire Xbox library. If you grew up in the 2000’s like me and were a big console gamer then you know the rest of this story, JRPG’s began to look more and more antiquated with their turn-based combat, laughable voice-acting and traditional levelling systems while Morrowind and Oblivion gave us vast, handcrafted 3D worlds, dozens of factions to join and a truly life-consuming amount of content.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has been ported so many times and has become so ubiquitous that we’ve had a horseshoe effect and I get the impression that the game is somewhat hated today, no doubt helped by Bethesda’s less than stellar run in the past decade. But I remember a time before Skyrim, I remember playing Oblivion for long hours into the night in the 2000’s, I remember the excitement leading up to 11.11.11: the November 11th 2011 release date for Skyrim, I remember rushing home from school and being absolutely ecstatic to tear open the cellophane on my copy of Skyrim for the Xbox 360. This game was all me and my friends played for months and months afterwards.
RPG reviews have always intimidated me because these games take forever to beat and I don’t feel as well-versed in the genre as I do in strategy or shooters but I know that RPG articles do very well here on Substack and that there are 2 games in particular I’ve been requested to tackle (you know who you are) so before I hop off the deep end, I want to cover a few role-playing giants I know well already.
Sit back and join me on the chopping block at Helgen.
As The Scrolls Foretold
It is year 202 of the Fourth Era and Tamriel is in chaos.
In the two centuries since the Oblivion Crisis in The Elder Scrolls IV and the end of the Septim Dynasty the Empire has entered a prolonged period of decline.
In the East, Argonia, formerly the province of Black Marsh, has been independent since the Oblivion Crisis and rules free of Imperial influence, even going as far as to conquer much of south Morrowind. To their north, Morrowind, de jure a part of the Empire but de facto independent, has been ravaged by the Argonian invasion, the impact of the Baar Dau meteor at Vivec and another eruption of Red Mountain triggering an outpouring of Dunmer (known to men as Dark Elf) refugees across the continent.
In the West, the Breton homeland of High Rock remains a loyal province of the Empire in large part due to its decentralised and quarrelling nature but the vast land of Hammerfell: the province of the Redguards has ceded from the Empire. In the years since Oblivion, the Empire waged a long and savage war with the High Elf Aldmeri Dominion, the Dominion did not convincingly defeat the Empire but they were able to impose the White-Gold Concordat: a controversial peace treaty that Hammerfell rejected, forcing Cyrodiil to disavow the enormous desert province.
The Aldmeri Dominion spans the southernmost provinces of Tamriel: from the High Elf Summerset Isles to the Woof Elf Province of Valenwood and the Khajit province of Elsweyr, split between the Kingdoms of Anequina and Palletine. They bide their time, waiting to once more assault the Empire.
It’s within this wider geopolitical context that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim takes place and in this icy, rugged northern province that a vicious civil war is being fought, ostensibly about Nord identity and religion but really it is for the fate of the Empire. On one hand, Western Skyrim: loyal to the empire, cosmopolitan and revolving around the deeply Cyrodiilicised city of Solitude; on the other side is Eastern Skyrim and their so-called High King: Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak of Windhelm, a usurper yes but fiercely dedicated to his homeland, nationalistic, loved by his subjects and determined to uphold Talos worship: the worship of the deified first emperor of the Septim Dynasty, outlawed under the White-Gold Concordat.
To make matters worse, long-dead dragons are coming back to life and attacking towns and cities all across Skyrim and it’s the player’s job to discover why.
The Stormcloak Rebellion isn’t as in-depth or politically complex as the central conflict in, for example, Fallout: New Vegas but it’s one I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed and identified with. I am British, more than that, I am one of the first generations from one side of my family not to be born in Scotland and my hair not being red like some of my other close relatives was a point of gentle joking when I was a child, as young as 6 I was marched up the steps of the National Wallace Monument in Stirling; I can tell you my clan motto and which clan I belong to as well as where they lived historically. Scottish Independence, Brexit, Northern Ireland: these are sensitive political issues in the UK that still have a big question mark over them; just 3 years after Skyrim came out, Scotland held its independence referendum after all. Both in myself and in the context of Elder Scrolls lore I can understand that pull between the chilly, rugged north and the cosmopolitan south and this in-game conflict only mirrored real life more as the 2010’s in Britain dragged on.
The return of the dragons isn’t really discussed anymore by The Elder Scrolls lore enthusiasts but this conflict and the ramifications of it are still the subject of multi-hour video essays.
For The Masses
Skyrim, like Doom, Minecraft and Resident Evil 4 is one of those games that has become notorious for the sheer number of ports it has received and the plethora of platforms it is playable on; jokes like Skyrim: Smart Fridge Edition have been floating around for years.
I myself started with the original Xbox 360 version on 11.11.11 and still own that copy today, in 2016 I got the Skyrim Special Edition for Xbox One which introduced the Creation Club, mods on console and some graphical touch-ups, particularly in the lighting department. For this review I’ve been playing the new Anniversary Edition port on Switch 2 which has sufficed well now that the horrendous launch issues have been mostly patched out. This version has no mods and includes a lot of Creation Club content without the ability to opt out but the graphical improvements are very nice and I love the console and the potential for portable play so I’m not too bothered.
I’d have to write an Old Testament-sized article if we were to go over the minutia of every port, so rather than do that I’m just going to select what I think is the worst and then the best way to play.
Skyrim launched at the tail-end of the 7th console generation and pushed both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 to their limits with either version having some seriously choppy performance and muddy textures. The PlayStation 3 edges out the 360 as the worst because Bethesda’s games were given a greater amount of care and attention on Microsoft’s consoles (who they have always enjoyed a strong relationship with) as such, the PlayStation 3 retains Oblivion’s save-file bug and generally suffers from worse performance and lower levels of polish than its 360 counterpart. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, anyone who was gaming in this era will remember that the PS3 pretty much always had the worst versions of cross-platform titles, like the PS2 before it.
I also want to give a dishonourable mention to Skyrim’s disappointing VR port, that version shines when modded but fails to take full advantage of the technology in its vanilla state. It would have been nice to see Bethesda refine and perfect their VR versions over the years and port Starfield too but considering VR is looking dead outside of niche projects and sim-enthusiasts and has produced barely a handful of must-plays in the decade since the Oculus Rift I’m not holding my breath.
The PC has always been the home of Bethesda’s RPG’s: The Elder Scrolls began on the desktop, the fabled modding community is based on the PC and with the future of Xbox looking bleak it seems TES fans will coalesce once again around its traditional home. While the gap between PC and console couldn’t be more narrow today, the desktop still offers the highest potential fidelity and performance; a full keyboard and mouse setup makes menu navigation and quickly switching spells and equipment much less grating as well.
In side to side comparisons the PlayStation 5 version doesn’t look significantly better than the Switch 2 port, since the Switch 2 version is being actively updated as well I’d pick that over PS5 if you want to play on console, just bear in mind there are quite a few sound bugs still and that vegetation has a lower render distance. I went this way because modding doesn’t bother me and I have always been a console gamer predominantly, though I do own Skyrim on PC and play that version on occasion.
Finally Awake
The famous and endlessly memed Skyrim opening with the character creator included.
Skyrim opens seemingly at the end of the civil war with the player, a gagged Jarl Ulfric, a loyal Stormcloak rebel named Ralof and a cowardly horse thief all crammed into a rickety Imperial wagon on the way to the southern city of Helgen to be executed. Most players have seen this cutscene a million times and even if you’ve never played Skyrim there’s a strong chance you know the words “Hey you, you’re finally awake.” Uttered by Ralof but I’d like to point out how in just 5 minutes, Bethesda skilfully and simultaneously introduces new players to the world of Skyrim, updates returning players on the state of the Empire (who are the quasi-protagonists of the series besides your character) and establishes the motives behind the Stormcloaks while allowing both sides of the civil war to be seen in a sympathetic light.
Ralof points out the Thalmor agent presiding over the execution as a symbol of the Empire’s subservience and corruption, this lets the player know how dire things have gotten since Oblivion; on the contrary, Ralof also says soon after that the Imperial fortifications around Helgen made him feel safe as a boy, implying that the Empire has historically been good to Skyrim and its people.
Legate Rikke: the female legate and right-hand to General Tullius organising the chopping block has the horse-thief shot in the back by archers for attempting to flee despite there being no evidence of the man being a rebel, meanwhile Hadvar: the rank and file legionnaire who asks the player their name (prompting the character creator screen) is sympathetic to you no matter what race or gender you pick; the Empire is not made up of brainwashed, totalitarian forces, its rank and file consider the morality of their actions and they have the confidence to allow the citizenry to observe the entire affair at Helgen rather than having Ulfric dispatched behind closed doors.
The worldbuilding of The Elder Scrolls: its depth, scope and the richness of Tamriel’s history are the series’ defining traits and it’s moments like these, the fact that both sides offer you a path to safety in the Helgen dragon attack and the differences between Western Skyrim versus Eastern Skyrim that make Skyrim’s main conflict so compelling; the main character of Skyrim is the province of Skyrim itself and once the return of the dragons has been dealt with in the main quest it’s up to the player to decide which Skyrim they believe in most. Skyrim isn’t just a reactive world but a proactive world. The villain of the Dragonborn expansion tries to have you taken out before the player even sets foot on the island of Solstheim and apart from one recurring, fatal flaw in the guild quests which I will cover later, the factions of Skyrim treat you: the Dragonborn, as a powerful weapon to further their designs on Skyrim or as a useful idiot with a special talent, not as the centre of their world.
In The Legend of Zelda, most JRPG’s or The Witcher, people know and/or fear you as the chosen one with a legendary blade, a legendary reputation or a divine blessing. In The Elder Scrolls? The guards want you to shut up when you do your dragon shouts, most people are quick to insult you for coming close and in certain parts you’ll be called an n’wah and a s’wit casually in the street. They don’t care what you can do, they care what you can do for them.
All this talk of war, politics and the return of the dragons: something akin to the end times for the Nords, gives The Elder Scrolls V a darker tone than its predecessor. These are not the sunny woods, grassy meadows and flowery hills of Oblivion’s Cyrodiil, Skyrim’s roads are infested with wolves and sabre tooth tigers and every city has some kind of dark undercurrent or tension, whether it be Windhelm’s race-relations and mysterious murders or Whiterun’s neutrality being eroded by two feuding clans and its Jarl’s every move being scrutinised for signs of betrayal by both sides of the civil war.
It’s a shame then, in the midst of all this great worldbuilding that Bethesda forgot to add the actual war part of civil war; outside of the civil war quest line, you will see no battles, no signs of armed conflict nor signs of large-scale troop movements. No camp followers, no marching troops, no mass burials, nothing. You are told over and over about impacts of a war and battles that are not happening and that is an immersion-breaking issue.
Vistas Of Nirn
While Skyrim’s graphics have undergone a set of overhauls since 2011 to bring them up to modern standards one thing that has been consistently excellent in these 15 years is the game’s art-style.
Skyrim is often mischaracterised as a Viking game and while Nordic influences are apparent there is much more going on. The Reachmen with their horns, furs and animal teeth are of a distinctly Celtic flavour, the hold guards and a lot of the architecture has a more Anglo-Saxon flavour as well, in fact, every hold has its own unique flavour and generally speaking, the further West you go in Skyrim, the less Norse it gets. Markarth almost reminds me of Petra.
The world of Skyrim is one of exceptional natural beauty. Whether you’re crossing tundra, ice fields or alpine woodland I can guarantee a great view around every corner and a striking sky at night.
No amount of screenshots I take will ever be able to do the province of Skyrim justice but rest-assured, what it lacks in animations, texture details, character modelling and modernity it makes up for in sheer wallpaper potential. If you’re into the dreaded cosy games then I imagine you could get a lot out of Skyrim’s homebuilding and life-sim mechanics like marriage and adoption; turn the difficulty down to Novice and the game is trivial, you could even try to be a pacifist using spells that pacify wildlife and people.
Unfortunately, I do feel that most weapons and equipment are dull compared to their equivalents in previous games. Skyrim’s iron and leather armours look better but the Imperial Legion have gone from wearing these Hellenic-inspired suits of heavy armour in Oblivion and an awesome samurai and centurion mash-up in Morrowind to the most boring, knock-off Roman looking stuff possible; steel and elven are two other armour and equipment sets that suffer a downgrade too.
I will concede though that Skyrim has the best ebony armour in the series and the steel plate set is pretty awesome too.
The state of Western culture being what it is, Skyrim was the last major Bethesda game composed by Jeremy Soule, whose career was ended in 2019 by severe allegations, allegations that were so serious that he was never taken to court nor charged with any crime, still, he was certainly guilty of scamming people with a Kickstarter and that one-two punch was enough to unmake him as one of the premier video game composers. Soule has practically vanished since with Dragon Age and Fallout composer Inon Zur the likely replacement for the next game.
All of this does put a damper on what is (Oblivion and Morrowind included) a trilogy of video games with some of the greatest music ever. Playlist after playlist exists on YouTube of Skyrim ambience and soundtracks but here are some of my personal favourites.
Secunda always seems to find me when I’ve arrived late to the inn at Ivarstead or am walking below the glowing Northern Lights far in Northern Skyrim. This is my favourite piece of music from the game and like Kynareth’s Wings or Nerevar Rising from Oblivion and Morrowind, hearing takes me right back in time to all those hours I spent when the game was new.
Skyrim’s version of Nerevar Rising (which became the theme song of the entire franchise) is called Dragonborn and might be my favourite rendition of the song. Every time I hear Dragonborn I’m taken back to when that first trailer dropped and the internet lost its collective mind and to the thousands of times I’ve booted up the game and lingered a while on the menu to hear the chorus drop.
Dragons in The Elder Scrolls are not animals or monsters but sentient, smei-divine beings, as such Bethesda invented an entire conlang for the dragons in Skyrim, with a script that looks similar to cuneiform. It’s a thing of beauty when they let the choir go absolutely ham in dragon tongue. I’d like to explain the context behind this one but I’m trying to avoid spoilers.
A Dragonborn For All Seasons
Of the estimated over 90 million copies sold of The Elder Scrolls franchise, Skyrim makes up at least 60 million; statistically speaking, 2/3’s of the fanbase may have only played Skyrim.
One of the big reasons for this is that Skyrim, for better and for worse, smashes the traditional limitations of the RPG class system and allows you to play any build at any time and on any character while removing complex character building sheets and stats screens. 10 Hours in, if you decide you’re not enjoying your stealth archer build you can head to the nearest smithy, buy yourself a sword and either start playing that style of combat the hard way or pay trainer to get your skills up to scratch.
It’s hard to even put into words the amount of different ways you can choose to play Skyrim. There are characters I took through this game that I still look back on fondly: the Wood Elf archer with light armour and a two-handed sword, my Orc brute in full heavy armour, heavy weapons and using zero magic; my favourite character is one that has been committed to my memory simply as ‘The Dark Lord’ I played this Dragonborn from early 2012 to late-2013 when I finally put down Skyrim for a few years. This guy was somewhere in the region of level 90, I had done every evil ending for the DLC’s, was the master of every guild and woke up at 5am before school every week day to max out my schools of magic, I would fly a dragon from town to town wearing daedric armour with Miraak’s mask melting people with the Master level Destruction spells.
For this playthrough, I chose to mix it up a bit. I still used a mage-type character: my preferred way to play TES games but I turned on the survival mode and decided I would only use plain clothes and a dagger besides the usual magic; I took up alchemy for the first time as well when I usually avoid it. The survival mode was clearly grafted onto a game that isn’t quite built for it and the lack of fast-travel has burned the road between Whiterun and Ivarstead into my brain but I’ve had a lot of fun taking it slow, stopping to take in the sights… and filling up my Switch 2 SD card with screenshots. I usually pick a Breton for the extra magical ability or a Dark Elf so I’m not a filthy s’wit but this time I played as a Nord for roleplay reasons.
All of this freedom does have some major downsides. The attributes system from classic Elder Scrolls is completely removed to facilitate your constant build swapping; it wouldn’t have been possible to cast any worthwhile spell in the past if you had chosen Intelligence as your dump stat. This has the effect of making Skyrim characters feel like generalists rather than specialists and makes Skyrim an Action-RPG rather than a true Role-Playing Game in my opinion.
Speaking of magic… it’s absolutely garbage in Skyrim. An entire school of magic was removed along with spell-crafting and many of the wackier spell-types like those that work on touch, now every school of magic is a linear set of spells you buy your way through as your skill improves. Levitation? Gone. Water-walking? Restricted. Unlocking spells? Gone. In the space of 3 games magic went went from the ultimate mage power fantasy in Morrowind to being a glorified ranged weapon. To make matters worse, it’s generally agreed upon that of the 3 archetypes: a warrior, thief or mage, a pure mage build in Skyrim is the weakest. Give me my burn on touch spells back damn it.
Let me pull my punches for a minute because I like what Skyrim does with the levelling system.
In between Oblivion and Skyrim (2006-2011) both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas released; the latter was not developed by Bethesda but it is for all intents and purposes Fallout 3 with a different map and written by a different studio that understood the IP better. In Fallout, you unlock a perk at each level: a little bonus or ability that’s tied to your attributes and skills, for example, you might get 25 extra action points in V.A.T.S or the ability to eat corpses to restore your health; Skyrim has these perks too and they fit in well.
Alright, I’m back to laying in the punches. To give Bethesda credit, Fallout 4 and especially Starfield have enjoyable combat but prior to those games, it was a mixed bag and Skyrim is no different. The execution animations improve things but like in Oblivion, melee combat in Skyrim gives the sensation of swatting the air in front of an enemy rather than making any contact; there is no parry or dodge, you simply move, block, swing and hope for the best. The stealth archer build is widely considered the most powerful in the game so if the combat bores you and magic isn’t your thing then there is fun to be found in pulling off impressive shots from afar and dispatching enemies in silence… or you could choose to get by turning enemies on each other, or by summoning mythical creatures with Conjuration; in Skyrim, you can play in virtually any conceivable way.
As a Dragonborn, a couple of hours in, you will gain access to Dragon Shouts. You acquire Shouts by learning words of power from ancient ruins and then slaying dragons to unlock these abilities with their souls. Unfortunately, only Whirlwind Sprint, which is useful for cutting down travel time in Survival Mode and Unrelenting Force, which sends enemies flying with ragdoll physics, ever get much use for me but your mileage may vary.
Blacksmith, Tailor, Stormcloak, Spy
Warning: This section contains heavy quest spoilers
The biggest issue with Skyrim isn’t its stripped back RPG mechanics or bland combat but its poor writing and questlines; there are exceptions of course but in general Skyrim’s faction questlines don’t hold a candle to those found in Oblivion.
In Oblivion and especially Morrowind, each questline would have a certain amount of entry-level dirty work attached: a set of quests that were quick, gave you an early game boost in cash and taught you what the guild was all about and as you progressed through the mundane work your rank and reputation within the guild would grow and the player becomes more privy to the machinations of guild leadership. Being a member of the Fighters Guild or the Mages Guild was a career in the world of Tamriel. Not in Skyrim, the bar for entry is rock bottom and they’re desperate to hand you the keys.
In the College of Winterhold quest line you find a magical orb in a Nord ruin and instantly become the star pupil; the rest of the quest line sees you appointed a special emissary for the Psijic Order and tasked with stopping this artefact: the Eye of Magnus, from ending up in the wrong hands. This quest line is short and generally feels boring compared to the Oblivion Mages Guild where you had to stop the return of a powerful necromancer. Even if you only know a single spell, you and not the seasoned instructors of the college, end up as the Arch-Mage.
The civil war questline, no matter which side you pick, plays out much the same except you defend Whiterun and attack Windhelm as the Empire whereas you attack Whiterun and siege Solitude as the Stormcloaks. Likely due to hardware constraints, none of these feel like genuine, large-scale medieval battles and that disappointed me even as an 11 year old; the civil war is dripping with lore implications and long-term consequences but it’s hard to imagine someone with only a surface-level knowledge of TES lore caring when the conflict in-game is this bland.
I enjoyed the twist in the Companions questline and in The Dark Brotherhood where you become a werewolf in the former and can decide to betray the Brotherhood and wipe them out in the latter but once again it all leads to you easily taking charge after a short and contrived series of missions. In Skyrim, it is possible to be the leader of every major guild all at the same time and that is incredibly lazy; it makes no sense for the player to ascend to the peak of some of these organisations. At least in Oblivion you had to put in some serious grinding to reach the top, here these guild questlines feel shorter than ever. If TES VI doesn’t reintroduce the old class system and attributes back then I’d at least like to see guild ranks and level requirements return and to be restricted based on your prowess at a specific set of skills or perks; as Arch-Mage, the player should be required to have at least 1 school of magic at Master level. In Skyrim, you feel like the protagonist of the story rather than a member of an organisation working your way up.
The main quest has the same systemic rapid pace and immersion issues. While in Morrowind you were a newly released convicted recruited by the Blades to get to the bottom of the Corprus disease and to promote Imperial interests in the fringe territory and in Oblivion you worked to end the Oblivion Crisis and to secure the Septim Dynasty, in Skyrim, the main quest is a mad dash to slay Alduin where your Dragonborn training at the hands of the Greybeards lasts 5 minutes and this story isn’t half as long as in the previous 2 games.
Only you can recruit members for the Blades and rebuild their ranks… the Dragonborn is every faction’s saviour. The dissonance between the trademark Elder Scrolls hostile NPC’s and the factions worshipping you as Christ is jarring.
Sovngarde Awaits
Skyrim isn’t my favourite TES game. If you ask me on a Monday it might be Morrowind and it could be Oblivion on Tuesday; I can’t decide between those two but I know Skyrim isn’t on the same level. The RPG elements are too stripped back, the quality of the questlines takes a backseat to facilitate plots that fulfil the hero fantasy; I don’t find the ancient Nordic ruins as interesting to explore as those left by the Ayleids in Oblivion’s Cyrodiil and my favourite way to play the game: as a mage, has never been weaker than it is in Skyrim.
On the other hand, there’s no denying that the beauty of Skyrim’s world, the compelling nature of its central conflict, the freedom you have to play the way you want, 3 excellent expansions and the simple boyish joy of fighting dragons has given this game immense longevity and makes Skyrim supremely enjoyable even if it doesn’t quite measure up to past adventures.
It’s become fashionable to hate on Bethesda since the abysmal launch of Fallout 76 and the overhyped Starfield and many of the complaints aimed at Bethesda’s game design began in Skyrim, regardless, 76 is in my opinion the only truly bad game Bethesda has made and even Skyrim: The Elder Scrolls’ 3D era at its weakest is still a brilliant accomplishment. Skyrim gets ripped to shreds online on a regular basis now but it’s easy to criticise The Elder Scrolls V when it was the pioneer. When The Witcher was still a niche eurojank title on PC, Oblivion and Morrowind were already delivering immersive 3D worlds on a massive scale, collecting GOTY awards like postage stamps and for many people, The Witcher 3 was just filling the void the long wait between Skyrim and The Elder Scrolls VI, presumably set in Hammerfell, has created.
The RPG landscape may have moved on from Bethesda and their style of game design but Skyrim, its vibrant modding community and still highly active player base remain to ensure this classic endures.
TL;DR: Skyrim is a step down from Oblivion and Morrowind but unparalleled freedom, a gorgeous world, rich lore and a near bottomless supply of quests to embark on and dungeons to pillage means it still deserves classic status. The writing could be better and the casualisation of the RPG mechanics leave a bad taste in the mouth but Skyrim surpasses its predecessors in other ways, particularly in its soundtrack and expansions.
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100% agree about the faction quests. The Dawnguard and Dragonborn DLCs had some meat to them, but the standard factions feel like joining a D&D group that's been going for 20 years. Everyone's desperate for new blood, and the DM is obviously just trying to hand the keys to someone else. Nothing like Morrowind, where you had to put in serious work to rank up.
On the other hand, I remember making a Khajiit paladin named Roombas-the-Skooma, and my holy quest was to do all the skooma in Skyrim before anyone else could. Pretty rare to have that level of freedom in an RPG.
Solid review!
A solid summary of Skyrim.
I really enjoyed it. But I play CRPGs almost exclusively, and yeah you have to be relaxed about the combat and character development limitations if you’re a fan of the genre. You mentioned the joys of the stealth archer - that was my build the first time I played, and it is genuinely a blast. Later attempts at different builds - not as much fun.
The quests suck, generally, particularly the wizard school one. I remember my thoughts when I unintentionally became archmage in like 2 seconds: uh-oh. The game suffers big from a usually fatal development choice: the refusal to gate off ANYTHING from a player. Your character is a priest? No worries, you can still lead the assassins guild. Brainless Orc barbarian? Archmage it is. Don’t bother lockpicking anything: the fact that there’s a lock on a container by definition means there won’t be anything great in it.
There were two quests, though, that were genuinely top-notch: the first quest where you catch the notice of the assassins guild was actually pretty wild, and the somewhat self-made quest to gather all of the game’s artifacts. They’re usually hidden behind zany quests.
The spin-the-wheel randomly generated quests suck from the jump (I really hope developers have given up on that concept). I don’t like arrows and question marks and compasses pointing me where to go, and I hate fast travel everywhere. It makes the world tiny. Crafting was ok. Fun but pointless.
But the world was gorgeous and exploring it never lost its excitement. Battles with either dragons and giants never stopped being magical: it’s been 20 years and I can still remember how intense it was battling dragons with my bow. And stripped down or not, the character builds were fun. Those things alone saved the game completely to me.