In late 2022, I decided to play and finish all the Elder Scrolls games to come out on PC (Arena, Daggerfall, Battlespire, Redguard, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim). Part of why I decided to do it this way was to see how the series changed over the years. All good things must come to an end, so they say. Here we are then, at Skyrim. Let's delve in.

Before anything else, I just want to say that my game was fairly vanilla, I guess some people would call it "Vanilla+" with mostly patches, fixes and technical improvements (script extender, no 60FPS cap and so on) and very little to no gameplay tweaks.

As far as presentation goes - if Morrowind was unique, and Oblivion was familiar and quaint, Skyrim truly is beautiful. They really outdid themselves with the environments and the landscapes. The first time I saw the lake next to Riverwood I just kind of stood there in awe, and that feeling didn't really subside over the 200 or so hours I took for this very thorough playthrough.

The music is of course part of the equation, featuring some of Jeremy Soule's best work, and Morrowind music making sparse returns also adds a bit of nostalgic flare. Sound design is also massively improved from Oblivion.

As far as voice acting goes... it's a mixed bag. Some characters are stellar, but when it's bad, it's bad. People make fun of Oblivion, but at least Oblivion was corny in a funny kind of way, while here, a lot of voice acting is just... off. A lot of the wannabe Scandinavian accents sound like a Czech person imitating a Finnish immigrant.

Questionable voice acting aside, the meat and potatoes of any RPG, to me at least, is the quests and the progression. As far as quests go, this is still what this series does best. My only issue is that you are given very little agency on accepting and declining quests. They just get added to your journal after overhearing a conversation or speaking to an NPC. I found this incredibly annoying, and so "The Choice is Yours" and "Hide those Futile Quests" were the only two gameplay mods I had installed.

Despite the fact that the College of Winterhold questline is laughably short, the other factions offer more depth and content, especially the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood. The side content in general, really is mostly quality and plentiful, if a bit shallow in some aspects. Skyrim is MASSIVE. There are so many quests and incidental interactions that I spent the first, I don't know 100 hours or so just doing Daedric quests, College of Winterhold quests, Civil War questline, Mara's Temple, derping around Dwemer ruins, it really never seems to run out. Make your own fun and "ooh, what's over there" is still THE way to play the game, IMO. Like Oblivion, it sadly falls prey to over-reliance on quest markers, and I still find it annoying how quest givers very rarely (if at all) elaborate on where you're supposed to go and expect "look at map marker" as a default way to figure that out. Some questgivers give "radiant" quests which are endless and randomly generated, which I found a neat little nod to Daggerfall but are otherwise just basic fetch/kill quests, mostly. They do, however, entice you to explore if they're part of a larger questline, which is always a good thing. There's also a lot of very black-and-white decisions which I'm not a fan of. It seems the game only gives you the option which makes you out to be Mr. Goody Two-shoes or a complete nutjob. While some quests offer many ways of completing it and have different outcomes, I wish there was more nuance to the quests, like in Morrowind and even Oblivion, but this problem isn't so prevalent as to ruin an otherwise enjoyable questing experience.

I mentioned progression, so allow me to touch on that. There are no more attributes, just Magicka, Health and Stamina and you know what? After spending hours min-maxing in Morrowind and Oblivion just so I could cast a decent spell or carry around more stuff or not die in two hits as a mage, I actually like this system. There, I said it. Skills were always king since Daggerfall, and attributes never were as important in ES games as people make them out to be. The "use it and improve it" system is still as liberating as ever, although my favourite way to play, as pure mage as possible, has been gimped a LOT. The absence of a spell maker hurts. The return of proper Alchemy and Enchanting makes up for it a bit, and the crafting in general is miles ahead of any other ES game. The perks system is pretty neat although not all perk trees are created equal - spending perks in Lockpicking, for example, is nigh-useless since the minigame is so easy, whereas Destruction has a perk at skill level 40 which staggers almost ANY enemy in the game if hit by a dual-cast spell. One cool addition is the "Legendary" system, where upon reaching 100 in a skill, you can make it "Legendary", returning the perks spent and resetting the skill to 15. This way you can keep leveling your character without being forced out of your playstyle. And the flexibility of this system and the ease of changing proficiencies is another great strength. This is where the roleplay lies in this game. Tired of maging? Grab a sword and hack away! Wanna be a sneaky Thief for a bit? Grab some lockpicks and sneak around at night and you’ll be Garrett in no time.

Sadly, racial bonuses and abilities are mostly forgettable, the differences at creation are so minor that they barely matter since you can outlevel most of them in minutes. This is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it gives you the freedom to play any race and be good at anything, but on the other hand, it makes the races barely relevant beyond a cosmetic choice. Gone are the days of "pick a Redguard if you want to be good at melee" or "Altmer or Breton is the best choice for a mage". Another thing I dislike is that everybody is kind of stoked on you all the time or they just don’t react to your presence the way you’d expect. People you’ve done one quest for will solemnly profess what a great friend you’ve been, while guards will make fun of your “fancy magic” even if you are Arch-Mage of Winterhold and can turn them to dust with one spell. I get that this was done to make the game more accessible, but it really does suck out what little roleplay this game has in the first place. The roleplay is, as I mentioned above, still strong in the gameplay department.

Speaking of everybody being stoked on you all the time, I'm really not a fan of the main story. This whole »chosen one« routine has been done to death and then some and there's really nothing interesting here. I might just not find dragons all that interesting or something, but to me, the whole Dragonborn arc is just so… boring. The DLCs are a bit of an improvement, but even still, like Oblivion before it, I enjoyed the world and its tons and TONS of lore, not to mention my own lollygagging, more than I did the main quest. It’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but I just feel the rest of the game is more engaging.

As always, I will say that if you don’t like an aspect of this game enough (like I disliked the forced quest addition), you can always mod out pretty much anything. Really. This doesn’t make the game impervious to criticism, but once I again I urge you to give mods a go if one small thing is preventing your enjoyment.

All in all, after 18 months of more or less exclusively Elder Scrolls games, I have to say that despite its many shallow moments and lamentable cut-downs (give me back my spellmaker, Todd), Skyrim still very much deserves to sit on the pedestal many people have put it on. I have to admit, enjoying Daggerfall, Morrrowind and Oblivion so much, I went into it expecting not to like Skyrim, and I ended up falling in love with it regardless. Having played so much Elder Scrolls, I think I'm going to take a break, but I have a hunch it won't be long before I once again hear "Hey, you, you're finally awake".

In late 2022, I decided to play and finish all the Elder Scrolls games to come out on PC (Arena, Daggerfall, Battlespire, Redguard, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim). Part of why I decided to do it this way was to see how the series changed over the years. All good things must come to an end, so they say. Here we are then, at Skyrim. Let's delve in. Before anything else, I just want to say that my game was fairly vanilla, I guess some people would call it "Vanilla+" with mostly patches, fixes and technical improvements (script extender, no 60FPS cap and so on) and very little to no gameplay tweaks. As far as presentation goes - if Morrowind was unique, and Oblivion was familiar and quaint, Skyrim truly is [i]beautiful[/i]. They really outdid themselves with the environments and the landscapes. The first time I saw the lake next to Riverwood I just kind of stood there in awe, and that feeling didn't really subside over the 200 or so hours I took for this very thorough playthrough. The music is of course part of the equation, featuring some of Jeremy Soule's best work, and Morrowind music making sparse returns also adds a bit of nostalgic flare. Sound design is also massively improved from Oblivion. As far as voice acting goes... it's a mixed bag. Some characters are stellar, but when it's bad, it's [i]bad[/i]. People make fun of Oblivion, but at least Oblivion was corny in a funny kind of way, while here, a lot of voice acting is just... off. A lot of the wannabe Scandinavian accents sound like a Czech person imitating a Finnish immigrant. Questionable voice acting aside, the meat and potatoes of any RPG, to me at least, is the quests and the progression. As far as quests go, this is still what this series does best. My only issue is that you are given very little agency on accepting and declining quests. They just get added to your journal after overhearing a conversation or speaking to an NPC. I found this incredibly annoying, and so "The Choice is Yours" and "Hide those Futile Quests" were the only two gameplay mods I had installed. Despite the fact that the College of Winterhold questline is laughably short, the other factions offer more depth and content, especially the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood. The side content in general, really is mostly quality and plentiful, if a bit shallow in some aspects. Skyrim is MASSIVE. There are so many quests and incidental interactions that I spent the first, I don't know 100 hours or so just doing Daedric quests, College of Winterhold quests, Civil War questline, Mara's Temple, derping around Dwemer ruins, it really never seems to run out. Make your own fun and "ooh, what's over there" is still THE way to play the game, IMO. Like Oblivion, it sadly falls prey to over-reliance on quest markers, and I still find it annoying how quest givers very rarely (if at all) elaborate on where you're supposed to go and expect "look at map marker" as a default way to figure that out. Some questgivers give "radiant" quests which are endless and randomly generated, which I found a neat little nod to Daggerfall but are otherwise just basic fetch/kill quests, mostly. They do, however, entice you to explore if they're part of a larger questline, which is always a good thing. There's also a lot of very black-and-white decisions which I'm not a fan of. It seems the game only gives you the option which makes you out to be Mr. Goody Two-shoes or a complete nutjob. While some quests offer many ways of completing it and have different outcomes, I wish there was more nuance to the quests, like in Morrowind and even Oblivion, but this problem isn't so prevalent as to ruin an otherwise enjoyable questing experience. I mentioned progression, so allow me to touch on that. There are no more attributes, just Magicka, Health and Stamina and you know what? After spending hours min-maxing in Morrowind and Oblivion just so I could cast a decent spell or carry around more stuff or not die in two hits as a mage, I actually like this system. There, I said it. Skills were always king since Daggerfall, and attributes never were as important in ES games as people make them out to be. The "use it and improve it" system is still as liberating as ever, although my favourite way to play, as pure mage as possible, has been gimped a LOT. The absence of a spell maker hurts. The return of proper Alchemy and Enchanting makes up for it a bit, and the crafting in general is miles ahead of any other ES game. The perks system is pretty neat although not all perk trees are created equal - spending perks in Lockpicking, for example, is nigh-useless since the minigame is so easy, whereas Destruction has a perk at skill level 40 which staggers almost ANY enemy in the game if hit by a dual-cast spell. One cool addition is the "Legendary" system, where upon reaching 100 in a skill, you can make it "Legendary", returning the perks spent and resetting the skill to 15. This way you can keep leveling your character without being forced out of your playstyle. And the flexibility of this system and the ease of changing proficiencies is another great strength. This is where the roleplay lies in this game. Tired of maging? Grab a sword and hack away! Wanna be a sneaky Thief for a bit? Grab some lockpicks and sneak around at night and you’ll be Garrett in no time. Sadly, racial bonuses and abilities are mostly forgettable, the differences at creation are so minor that they barely matter since you can outlevel most of them in minutes. This is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it gives you the freedom to play any race and be good at anything, but on the other hand, it makes the races barely relevant beyond a cosmetic choice. Gone are the days of "pick a Redguard if you want to be good at melee" or "Altmer or Breton is the best choice for a mage". Another thing I dislike is that everybody is kind of stoked on you all the time or they just don’t react to your presence the way you’d expect. People you’ve done one quest for will solemnly profess what a great friend you’ve been, while guards will make fun of your “fancy magic” even if you are Arch-Mage of Winterhold and can turn them to dust with one spell. I get that this was done to make the game more accessible, but it really does suck out what little roleplay this game has in the first place. The roleplay is, as I mentioned above, still strong in the gameplay department. Speaking of everybody being stoked on you all the time, I'm really not a fan of the main story. This whole »chosen one« routine has been done to death and then some and there's really nothing interesting here. I might just not find dragons all that interesting or something, but to me, the whole Dragonborn arc is just so… boring. The DLCs are a bit of an improvement, but even still, like Oblivion before it, I enjoyed the world and its tons and TONS of lore, not to mention my own lollygagging, more than I did the main quest. It’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but I just feel the rest of the game is more engaging. As always, I will say that if you don’t like an aspect of this game enough (like I disliked the forced quest addition), you can always mod out pretty much anything. Really. This doesn’t make the game impervious to criticism, but once I again I urge you to give mods a go if one small thing is preventing your enjoyment. All in all, after 18 months of more or less exclusively Elder Scrolls games, I have to say that despite its many shallow moments and lamentable cut-downs (give me back my spellmaker, [i]Todd[/i]), Skyrim still very much deserves to sit on the pedestal many people have put it on. I have to admit, enjoying Daggerfall, Morrrowind and Oblivion so much, I went into it expecting not to like Skyrim, and I ended up falling in love with it regardless. Having played so much Elder Scrolls, I think I'm going to take a break, but I have a hunch it won't be long before I once again hear "Hey, you, you're finally awake".