The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

I feel like there's a pattern to how people enjoy Elder Scrolls games.
Your first Elder Scrolls game is absolutely breathtaking and amazing. It's a vast world that you get absorbed into, and you remember it very fondly.
The games before it feel very archaic and borderline unplayable.
The games after it remove everything you loved about the game, and dumb down every possible thing "to appeal to a broader audience". Each game seems to sell better than the last, so maybe they're onto something.


My first Elder Scrolls game was Oblivion, so all of my comparisons will be against that game. Is Oblivion perfect? No, but I love it to death.


The most important thing in an RPG is the quests. You can set aside mediocre gameplay if you're engrossed into the world and what you're doing.
In Oblivion, you had to claw your way up every single guild and faction. You may have found the Emperor's son and stopped the Oblivion crisis, but what have you done for me lately?
Here is a direct comparison of each and every equivalent faction in the two games:

Fighters Guild/The Companions:
Oblivion: Your boss does not respect you in the slightest until you've proven yourself by completing many contracts and cleaning up after your guild buddies.
Skyrim: Clear out two draugr/bandit dungeons and you're let in on the Companions' deepest, most tightly-kept secrets.

Mages Guild/The College of Winterhold:
Oblivion: You have to work your way from below the bottom to even get into their headquarters. You have to do favours for all the important people before you get access to the good shit.
Skyrim: Cast one spell and you're in. Then from then on, you're the chosen one once again. Note: You do not actually have to cast the spell if you pass a speech check.

Thieves Guild:
Oblivion: You have to meet them at midnight in the "Garden of Dareloth", and you really have no way to know what that is. You're invited by a mysterious note after you're done serving time, or you have to bribe a beggar. You go through, steal a bunch of shit, on your own and for people, and the final mission is to steal a Goddamn Elder Scroll. This was a big deal before Skyrim handed them out like candy.
Skyrim: In broad daylight, some guy walks up to you, regardless of your reputation, and says "you like to steal stuff???? me too". There is one quest that requires you to steal something, one that requires you to plant something, and the rest are draugr dungeons. Wow.

Dark Brotherhood:
Oblivion: You kill a man, and you're approached in your sleep by a dark figure who invites you to join their brotherhood of assassins.
Skyrim: In Windhelm, you hear rumours of a boy trying to contact the Dark Brotherhood. You enter his house, kill the old lady he wants you to kill, and then you're kidnapped in your sleep by the Dark Brotherhood's 'leader', Astrid. This doesn't work for a variety of reasons.
1. Most characters who would get to this point would just kill Astrid and leave.
2. If you do kill Astrid, you're given the location of their Sanctuary via a note on her person. With this, you can choose to wipe out the entire Dark Brotherhood. However, the most likely character type to want to wipe out the Dark Brotherhood would never be able to, as a good character wouldn't have killed the old lady to begin with.
Also to note: You can wipe out the Dark Brotherhood, a shadowy organisation most people insist doesn't exist, but you cannot wipe out the Thieves Guild, who operate brazenly in broad daylight.


Outside of factions, Oblivion's sidequests still shine way brighter than Skyrim's.
In Oblivion, one quest takes you inside a painting to rescue its painter. One quest has you go to an island and run through a death gauntlet some guy is kidnapping people to run through for money. Another has you enter the nightmares of a guy and conquer all his fears.
Skyrim has draugr dungeons.



The dungeon enemies in Oblivion were pretty varied. Depending on the quest, you could fight goblins, skeletons, bandits, ghosts, trolls, daedra, you name it.
In Skyrim, every dungeon is a draugr dungeon. Sometimes you need to solve the same door puzzle using a claw over and over.


Both games have terribly ugly character models, but Oblivion's character models are unique and memorable in how terrible they are. Skyrim's are just bad.
Skyrim also removed attributes and spell creation, meaning you can't up your magic and speed to go fast like Sanic or walk on water* any more.
*Unless you buy the DLC and wear the proper boots.

TES' fifth main installment in 17 years was Skyrim, ostensibly their mature statement but in reality a sterile blockbuster that continues their trend towards storytelling, action and production at the cost of depth. This streamlined adventure favors a universal freelancer-like build with minimal influence from character creation. It's no longer an RPG in that there's no particular 'role' to follow, as differences among elements and weapon types feel trivial, and better customization is determined by enchanting, smithing and alchemy skills (that - alas, rely too much on menu routine). Without Acrobatics or key alteration spells, navigation is reduced to endless jogging, sprinting and mountain goat-ing towards a single point if one isn't fast-traveling already, like Daggerfall with fewer incentives. On the other hand, this contains their best-feeling combat (not exactly an achievement), and their OST and visuals continue to impress (until the next step in graphical tech arrives). Despite the cinematics and setpieces of their main campaign, it is telling that two of its peaks involve exploration: dwemer ruins and the 7000-step climb.

Is this an objectively good game? Is such a thing possible? Who cares? Not me. It was the first open world, first RPG, first Elder Scrolls game I ever played and I love it to bits.

and my favorite game of all time

It goes without saying that this is an undeniable force in the history of video games. The world building goes so deep that it makes you want to go back and play the others to experience some more of the history and lore. The characters are mostly unique. There are hundreds of NPC's all with unique things to say. The quests are very well written. I am so captivated by some of the side quests that I actually prefer them over the main quests.

You can be whatever you want in this game. I feel what most open world rpgs get wrong is that there are many limitations and very little to do other than fetch quests (looking at you Ubisoft). Skyrim doesn't have that problem. In addition to the base game, the developers make it so easy to add additional content in the form of mods which just further plays into my point that you can do whatever you want in this game.

The music is outstanding. The graphics were great for its time and become modernized with each new special edition re release. The DLC is a perfect example of devs actually trying on DLC, instead of tossing in some boring afterthought for money. The gameplay mechanics are really the only bad part of this game. It's very easy to just shout and hack and slash your way through, but the rest of the game makes up for that. This seriously is a game I will be replaying until I die or they somehow top this with Elder Scrolls 6. That should speak to it's quality.

roba ripetuta e buggata. combattere i draghi fa schifo