facepalm from AI programmers
around the world. When you’re
joined by NPC companions, they’ll
happily get stuck behind rocks,
recklessly dive in front of your
sword swings, blindly stumble into
traps that you carefully navigated
past, and generally be totally
brainless nutjobs, albeit totally
brainless nutjobs with impressive
armour and weaponry should you
outfit them accordingly. Enemies
are similarly daft, making it much
too easy to exploit poor pathfinding
and such to ensure easy kills when
facing enemies who’d ordinarily
be able to craft a nice rug out
of your remains after killing you
with a single attack. It’s become
customary to see shoddy AI in Elder
Scrolls titles, however, so it’s oddly,
erm, comforting to see it here.
Bugs and dodgy AI are not what
you’ll remember once you’ve
sunk dozens of hours into Skyrim,
however. You’ll remember defiantly
swinging your piddly sword at
enemies you had no hope of
defeating before spectacularly
meeting your end. You’ll recall
unleashing torrential arrows at
a dragon lining up for its final,
desperate strafing run of fiery
doom before shouting it to death
atop a snow-capped mountain.
You’ll be left with fond memories
of that time you accidentally
unleashed a fireball in the middle
of a crowded marketplace and got a
bit of totally undeserved jail time for
your obviously accidental troubles.
You’ll remember your companion
Lydia and the good times you had
together prior to her inevitable
demise, probably because she got
in the way of a power attack you’d
just performed. It’s only the great,
the goofy, the gloriously beautiful
moments you’ll remember here,
and Skyrim has those and more by
the mammoth-load. It’s easily one
of the best RPGs ever created, one
that’ll keep you busy for ages and
will stay with you long after you
finally stop playing and move on to
the next big thing.
[Dane Remendes]
Would you buy it?
Definitely. Especially because I
already bought the Collector’s
Edition, which raised my
Awesome Score by at least 50
points, I’m just sayin’.
The Score
9/10
2012 Issue 18 The OverClocker 43