A half an hour spent in Skyrim

Bethesda, the folks behind Fallout plus various other titles, came to NYC earlier today. And they brought with them a work in progress build of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which I got an up close look at.

For starters, I am woefully unfamiliar with the Elder Scrolls games, and therefore was not a part of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. All my diehard role-playing fans certainly ate it up, whereas I passed (though mostly because it was also an early 360 title, and I was somewhat of a late adopter).

One main reason, despite dabbling with JRPGs, is the whole notion of doing whatever the hell you want, and it having an affect on everything. Which sounds great on paper, but seems daunting. And other similar games just seemed, from afar, really cumbersome and clunky. Sorry, but I liked the handholding that offerings from Square and similar parties provided. That was, until they tried widening the scope and scale of their title, to compete with Western offerings, yet still kept things ultra rigid. All of a sudden, that focused path became quite cumbersome, as well as boring.

Meanwhile, Skyrim appears to offer the entire world on a plate, one that’s easy to digest and not headache inducing. Though before going into all that, the first thing that stands out is the graphics. Dear God, they are GORGEOUS. Every single element in the game is there to be examined, up close. Gone are the days of mountains that are just window dressing; you see it? You can go to it. And I realize that such things have been in gaming for a long time, but never has everything looked legit beautiful, as well as fully realized.

Speaking of looks, I guess another reason why I never touched Elder Scrolls beforehand was the perspective, so thank God for the new third person camera. The Bethesda rep explained that this was mostly to make European gamers happy! Certainly helps me out, given my issues with motion sickness as it pertains to first person views (it’s an Asian thing… hence why I wouldn’t be surprised if Elder Scrolls all of a sudden gets a few extra plays in Japan or Korea). Though no matter what view you chose, when a particularly epic kill takes place, the camera will pull back to show all the gory details. Something that I was told was borrowed from Fallout 3′s VATS system.

Though what I was truly afraid of before has either completely done away, or was never an issue to begin with: the interface is super simple and approachable. Basically, each hand does different things, and they’re tied to the trigger buttons. If your right hand has a sword, RT will swing it, and if your left hand has a shield, LT with raise it. Your magical abilities also stem from the palms of your hands, and if you know multiple spells (and you will), one can go double fisted. In fact, if both hands have the same spell equipped, it can have double the effect or damage!

Oh also, one can assign “favorites” to the d-pad. Everything from weapons, to items, even specific spells. And we’re not talking just a limit of four, for each direction, but basically as much as you want. It’s hard to explain without visuals. But let’s just say that the interface is super easy to understand… and very Apple like, in how one access folders and items nested within on the Mac. Again, it’s tricky to explain.

Things are far less locked in as well; as has been always the case, everything is governed by a particular class or character type one adopts, which affects your proficiency in things, as well as the kinds of abilities adopted. But one can make a change if one realizes that they enjoy this more than that which was chosen, via birthstones that are found throughout the game. Another thing that has bugged me about games in which you can do anything is how you’re actually punished for choices made way early on, so problem solved. There’s 18 different skills to chose from, which can be leveled up to various degrees. Each new ability that comes as a result is called a “perk”, though I wasn’t able to find out if they get lost when one changes their skill.

I only got half an hour with the game, but it was quite the jam packed thirty minutes. Walked around a very serene countryside, then made my way through a village, populated with all manner of folks, even animals. I asked if one could have a pet in the game, and was only told that Dogmeat was pretty popular in Fallout, so… Anyway, I eventually ended up in some cave, up in mountain that I had previously seen in the distance. As foes were taken down by bow and arrow from afar, I noticed time had slowed down… one of the aforementioned perks I spoke of.

Though in addition to magic is a totally separate set of mystical energies call dragon shouts. It’s connected to your character’s back-story; apparently have dragon’s blood in your family, or something like that. Anyhow, unlike regular magic and everything else, the only way to enhance and grow those abilities, you have to capture dragon souls, and that’s only achieved by taking them down. They reside all throughout the lands, and you’ll have all sorts of encounters, some pre-scripted, some completely random. Easily the best part of the demo was, while trying to take down a giant, one was out of the blue swept away by a dragon wanting its lunch!

So yeah, color me extremely impressed. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is due later this year, with an easy to remember street date: 11/11/11. In the meanwhile… I’ve got plenty of other previews coming real soon. Whenever there’s a big trade event in Cali (actually two: E3 and SDCC), everyone makes the trip to NYC for those that couldn’t make it. So tomorrow will be my Namco Bandai report, with Sony and Microsoft shortly afterward.

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