The Elder
Scrolls V: Skyrim
RRP: $59.99 | Website: www.elderscrolls.com/skyrim/ | Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks | Genre: Role-playing game
I
t begins as it has so many
times before. You arrive in your
new fantasy home a prisoner. A
faceless, nameless would-be hero
(or villain, if you like to swing that
way) armed with a tale that’ll soon
be yours to weave and mould as
you see fit throughout the countless
hours of gameplay you’re about to
embark upon. The experience is
yours. The choices are yours. The
world is yours. This is gaming at its
most grandiose, offering a newschool, mainstream-appeasing
RPG, but one draped in old-school
ideals. This is The Elder Scrolls
V: Skyrim, and here be dragons.
Studies show that dragons
automatically make anything they
appear in at least 25 percent more
awesome. And yet, Skyrim doesn’t
even need these winged reptiles
to be a magnificent showpiece of
what gaming is capable of when
people ditch the modern combat
crap and scripted spectacle
shenanigans, and instead dare to
dream a little bigger.
It’ll be familiar fare to anyone
who’s played the fourth Elder
38 The OverClocker Issue 18 2012
Scrolls title, Oblivion, but bear
in mind that this is not a direct
sequel to that title; it’s actually
set 200 years after the events that
transpired therein. But whereas
Oblivion had an alarming number of
fans of the third Elder Scrolls title
(Morrowind) scratching their heads
and wondering why Bethesda
had forsaken them while the rest
of the gaming world wondered
what it was they were whining
about, Skyrim manages to find
a happy medium between those
two fantastic previous entries. It’s
a long-running series, see, one
that’s feverishly followed by droves
of die-hard fans who could argue
Elder Scrolls lore for an entire
fortnight without running out of
steam. These people also like to
whinge about their opinion that the
newer titles can’t live up to those
that came before, but I think you’d
be hard-pressed to find a fan of
the series (or even just someone
who loves RPGs in general) who
can’t accept Skyrim as being an
absolutely phenomenal roleplaying experience.