Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Review (Xbox 360/PS3)

I think I’m getting old. I mean, I’m only twenty-something, but already I’m constantly cranky, my back is often sore, I hate all the music the kids listen to and I just can’t get past the idea that there’s something off about that Skyrim. It’s not something obvious; Skyrim succeeds in all the same ways that Morrowind and Oblivion did before it and it does manage to improve on a few key systems as well. Of course, the usual flaws are also still pretty much there, but no more or less so than before. And yet, I can’t escape this nagging notion that the balance has tipped and that, in this latest installment, the Elder Scrolls series has somehow lost its magic.

Yes, I know I’m crazy, but here we go with the rant anyway.

Here I am on my recent trip to sunny Skyrim.

I began Skyrim optimistically enough. And like all the other games, you start by picking one of the ten races. This time, I decided to go with Argonian because if you think about it Argonians make no sense in this context. Skyrim is the home of the Nords after all, which is to say the home of a human race based heavily on old Viking lore; they live in a vast and frozen wilderness, which is troublesome (one would imagine) for the Argonians because they’re reptiles; they’re cold-blooded and thus ill-suited to frigid environments. And to the game’s credit, you don’t see too many Argonian NPCs scattered about. But there are a few, a proud few who scoffed at physiology and sought to stake their claim in this hostile land. And, damn it, I wanted to be a part of that.

And that’s the appeal of the series, right? That each and every player gets a chance to tell their own story in this world. Each of the three main games so far has granted you a number of factions you can join, guilds and plots to follow so that ultimately everybody’s path through the world would be different. With Oblivion and Skyrim, the destinations will be largely the same (as the factions are fewer and more accessible than those of Morrowind), but the routes are still distinct. So those familiar with the series won’t be at all surprised that Skyrim blindsides you with scale from the moment you start the game. There are so many things to do and so many places to explore that you’ll be too busy to realize very few of them are any good.

And this is where the age thing comes in. Because I’m not entirely sure whether this is a problem unique to Skyrim or if I’m just romanticizing the games I played as a kid. Take the main quest: I’m pretty sure there’s been a gradual decline in quality with these throughout the years. Morrowind’s was basic, but functional; and it had a certain religious element (i.e. Nerevarine as Second Coming) that made it interesting. It also gets points for having Red Mountain be accessible to the player right from the start. Oblivion began pretty well, but once you head into the final conflict, you were assailed with cheap, pointless “plot twists” and a cliffhanger ending. Fallout 3 also started well, but it went downhill fast after you reunite with your father.

Skyrim’s main quest functions very much like the previous Elder Scrolls games. There’s an ancient evil and you and you alone must unite the world to stop it. Blah, blah, blah. I’m sorry, but this is just so rote an idea that it’s hard to get interested and Skyrim does nothing, nothing whatsoever, to spice it up or give it any semblance of life. You tend to move through a simple series of basic objectives until you reach the end. And it follows the traditional macho fantasy formula down to the last digit without variation. First, there is the ancient enemy risen again to destroy the world. Then we have the one hero with the power to fight against it who must venture forth to claim the one convenient anti-ancient enemy superpower that is crucial to ending this craziness. And that’s it. Completely. That is the whole story. That’s not a plot, that’s an outline, that’s the basic skeletal framework of narrative upon which ideas are meant to be strung. But that’s as deep as Skyrim takes it.

Here I am taking in the sights.

Again maybe this is just me, but the worst thing to ever happen to fantasy was that it became a genre. It used to be a storytelling tradition designed to recraft mythology, to escape the bounds of the scientific world and tell tales that couldn’t be told otherwise. Since Tolkien – and more so since Peter Jackson’s reworking of Tolkien – fantasy has become a rigid and unmoving rehash of the old ancient evil/epic battle formula. Permanently trapped in the Middle Ages, it has never been allowed to be weird again. And because it’s a genre, we don’t look to these things as clichés, as things to be shunned and scorned and their proliferators cast into the streets and stoned. No, we see them as traditions, as safe and cozy and familiar things we can curl up in whenever something bold makes us feel uncomfortable.

Falling back on a traditional framework can be fine of course, but there has to be something more to it. Whether it be memorable characters, well-crafted set-pieces, anything. But no such thing appears in Skyrim’s main plot. Most of the characters are dull and mouthy and at times contradictory (one guy near the end makes a “stirring” speech about putting aside petty politics to save the world and then 30 seconds later refuses to help you further until you kill an allied character in symbolic justice for crimes committed centuries past. And he does this without so much as a hint of irony).

As for set-pieces, the most potentially interesting one involves time travel, but all that does is remind us why sometimes a decent cutscene is infinitely better than in-game narrative progression. But then there are also the unscripted (i.e. completely random) dragon encounters, which, yes, okay… dragons are about as unimaginative a fantasy genre nemesis as you could ever hope for and this is again filling a very traditional Elder Scrolls niche once held by The Blight and the Oblivion Gates in being an ever-present element that adds heft to the threat of an unresolved main quest. But these actually sometimes work very well. There are the obvious problems associated with entirely randomized dragon attacks, such as the expected issue of some players seeing almost none of them while some never catch a break. But there are other, less-inevitable, things, such as dragons interrupting scripted events (like the opening tour of the College of Winterhold), which jacks up NPC AI and forces you to reload a save.