Review Elder Scrolls V

1. Elder Scrolls V Review
2. Review Elder Scrolls Version
3. Review Elder Scrolls Online Greymoor

The Elder Scrolls has always been popular among RPG fans, not because of it's stories but the scale of the world and the unimaginable amount of content. Skyrim does not disappoint, but the story is. Elder Scrolls V Skyrim review. Elder Scrolls V Skyrim is the the massive RPG from Bethesda Game Studios, but is it big enough to steal headlines from Modern Warfare 3? Update: The first DLC for. In The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim Special Edition, you can dual-wield weapons, dual-wield magic to make more powerful versions of it, use sword and shield, single and double-handed weapons, and so on. It's also filled with a variety of different enemies and some look amazing in this new graphical update, whereas other are a little ho hum but. Read our review of the PC version of Skyrim VR on Rift and Vive right here. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR released on PSVR November 17th, 2017 for $59.99. You can also look for it in a bundle.

You may have heard that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is amazing. It is. What you may not have heard, at least not as prominently, is that it's also a buggy disaster. Going into a game this enormous and helmed by a development team that is, shall we say, not winning any awards for technical aptitude anytime soon, you expect that not everything will be sanded to silky smooth perfection, and I can accept that if it's just surface-level stuff like dragons getting stuck in walls and so forth. But Skyrim hits you with big, game-breaking stuff: the crashes, the gaping holes where parts of the environment forgot to load, the late-game puzzle that can only be solved by entering the wrong solution. Call it 'endearing' all you want, but when I have to replay a significant chunk of a dungeon because I need to retrieve a plot-important item from a corpse that fell through the floor, well, that's the sort of thing that shatters the illusion that Skyrim otherwise tries so hard to build.
It's so bad that in any other case, I'd urge you not to support it. By making Skyrim so successful, we've sent publishers the message that it's okay to ship unfinished games. Trouble is, Skyrim is so good, and so unique in a present-day industry that is entirely too obsessed with offering shallow spectacle, that I'm forced to recommend it regardless. Bethesda is sloppy, but they can afford to get away with it when their products are this incredible.
It feels weird saying that, because Skyrim is the first Bethesda game of this ilk that I've actually played from beginning to end. (I specify 'of this ilk' because we're disregarding crud like Brink.) I played The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind when bigness was all a game needed to impress me, but for all of the time I invested, I never actually finished it. I was in awe that a game world could be that big, that convincing, but between the repeated NPC dialog, the boring dungeons and a battle system that still revolved less around skill and more around behind-the-scenes dice rolls, the illusion never held strong. Bethesda have since been tightening the screws but have failed to connect in the same way they almost did in 2002 – Oblivion for being too bland, Fallout 3 for being too grim.
But I finished Skyrim's central questline, and I'd nearly doubled my playtime once I'd finally decided to shelve it and move on to the next game. That it's big goes without saying. That it's beautiful, doubly so. But that's not the same as giving me a world that I actually want to explore, inch-for-inch, nor is it the same as laying the groundwork for gameplay that's still entertaining after fifty, seven-five, a hundred hours. Bethesda's triumph here is in finally delivering a game that I can enjoy and admire in equal measure. It's as much fun to play as it is to experience.
It is largely about a war between the Imperials and the rebellious Stormcloaks. You can side with either and ultimately lead the effort to take back (or keep) Skyrim, though the game begins with the Imperials trying to behead you for something you didn't do, so why anyone would elect to join their military, I don't know. It's not your primary concern anyway, because: DRAGONS! Thousands of them! Yes, The Elder Scrolls represents one of the few branches of swords-and-elves fantasy in which dragons aren't commonplace, so when one shows up to crash your execution party, it's evidently a big deal. What's an even bigger deal is that your character is a 'dragonborn,' meaning that he (or she) has the ability to absorb the souls of fallen dragons and harness their powers.
So, yes, you fight a number of dragons in Skyrim. Sometimes they're scripted battles; sometimes you'll be wandering through a field when suddenly a large dragon-shaped shadow passes beneath you, accompanied by a loud whoosh overhead. I'd say Bethesda trivializes these encounters by making them so plentiful – even the final boss is just another dragon, and by that point you can slice through them in 30 seconds, tops – but many of the game's earlier dragon battles rank among the most intense and rewarding moments I've experienced in a game in the last several years, particularly when I stumbled into an area of the map I shouldn't have been exploring yet, got attacked by a dragon that I was in no shape to defeat, and then spent the next ten minutes or so running through the rigid mountains that comprise most of Skyrim trying to lose it.
The bulk of Skyrim's plot has you searching for ways to suppress the dragon threat, and that involves doing some spectacular things that I'd rather not ruin, but don't get too caught up in it. At one point, I needed a jarl's help to pull a particularly insane (but necessary) stunt that would involve putting his people at risk. But since his city held a potentially strong strategic position for both sides of the civil war, his residents were already at severe risk on a day-to-day basis. As such, he refused to lend a hand until the Imperial/Stormcloak conflict – which I'd been largely ignoring for the 40 or so hours I'd spent on the game until this point – had been settled. I could practically hear Bethesda berating me for trying to rush through this game too quickly.
That was one of two such instances, in fact. The second was when I'd cleared the final dungeon, beaten the final boss, watched the final cutscene… and then the game continued like normal with no credit roll. 'What?' Bethesda seemed to be saying. 'You think just because you've finished the central storyline, you're done? Do you know how much work we put into this thing?'
Skyrim really is enormous – this is the sort of game where you could be given a quest to raid a dungeon and retrieve an item when you've already raided said dungeon on your own time and have said item in your inventory – and it takes a certain level of skill to ensure that every square foot of a world this big is equally as gorgeous as the next. What's important, though, is that for as much as Skyrim borrows from standard Tolkien-esque fantasy – Whiterun is basically a carbon copy of Peter Jackson's vision of Edoras, for example – it still feels distinct. There's this underlying sense that the titular region is long past its prime. You'll explore numerous ruins of long-dead civilizations (the dwarves are long gone, but their twisted machinery is still alive and kicking), and the races that inhabit present-day Skyrim all either seem to be engaged in bloody warfare or don't belong to begin with, such as when I passed a group of camping Khajiit who informed me that they are creatures of the desert, and that the north wind chills their bones.
It's very cold – in the thematic sense, though the snow certainly helps. Skyrim is one of the increasingly few Western RPGs to understand that 'dark' is not synonymous with 'edgy,' and its sheer prettiness prevents it from being as oppressively bleak as post-apocalyptic DC was.
I was struck by one detail in particular. In Skyrim's deepest, darkest, dankest corners, you'll encounter the Falmer, a species of blind goblins that dwell underground and attack explorers. Ordinary enough, right? But then you learn that the Falmer were once a proud, intelligent race known as the Snow Elves, and that their present state is the result of centuries of Dwemer slavery deep below the mountains. What's more, a major battle in Skyrim is set next to the statue of Irkngthand, which we're told is the only known visual representation of that lost culture. Imagine that. The Falmer could have been your run-of-the-mill, throwaway subterranean enemy, but Bethesda instead gave them centuries of history, turning them into downright tragic figures. Our lone glimpse of what these feral beings used to look like makes it all the more poignant.
It's that extreme Bethesda attention to detail, combined with their drive to deliver huge, hearty single-player experiences, that makes it so easy to overlook Skyrim's unfortunate technical mishaps. If the game has another shortcoming, it's that Bethesda cut plenty of necessary corners in bringing such a rich game world to life. NPCs are all voiced by the same handful of actors. Conversations between characters are stiff and static. The game's few 'set pieces' fall flat; a late-game battle to conquer a city feels small-scale and unconvincing. These are all acceptable issues, and in fact, it's refreshing to see a game focus more on depth than spectacle, and to work so hard to really give players their money's worth out of the box. But it raises an interesting question: Now that Skyrim has both perfected the framework (with satisfyingly physical combat to boot) and proved the series' blockbuster potential, how will Bethesda fine-tune the franchise from here? Skyrim enthralls me now, and makes me even more excited for what's to come. It's not a perfect game, but The Elder Scrolls VI may very well be.
4.5/5

PS4

Published on November 6th, 2016 | by Shael Millheim

Graphics

Value

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Xbox 360) review by Suskie. It's very cold – in the thematic sense, though the snow certainly helps. Skyrim is one of the increasingly few Western RPGs to understand that 'dark' is not synonymous with 'edgy,' and its sheer prettiness prevents it from being as oppressively bleak as post-apocalyptic DC was.

Summary: The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim Special Edition is what happens when old is made new again! It almost became epic for this game!

One of the most epic RPG's returns to the world of gaming with The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim Special Edition as Bethesda take this classic game and increases the graphical capabilities thanks to the power of the PlayStation 4 and XBox One consoles. So at its core, the game is basically a mirror image of the original but with much nicer graphics. Given that, the new Skyrim boasts some graphical advancements that include improved draw distance, weather effects, lighting (e.g. volumetric) and special effects that does make the title look more modern but certain elements in the game like the characters, inside of buildings do look a little on the average. But when compared to the original, this new incarnation still boasts the wow factor, especially with all the diversity in the environments.

Further, this version also allows for mods and even contains all the DLC such as Dawnguard and Dragonborn to give you some great value for money. That's right, there's quite a few mods available to install in this game that range from minor adjustments to some truly world-changing differences. Sure PC gamers may be saying we had this years ago and the graphics but hey, console players didn't and that's why it works so well on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. You can even turn dragons into ‘Thomas the Tank'. Hopefully this will be a sign of things to come that will allow more console games having access to mods but compared to the XBox One, the PS4 has only half the mods (around 100) available. On the PlayStation 4, I also found the game quite responsive and the mapping of controls onto the controller works very well. The quick save is very fast and the save system has been revamped to find what file you're looking for.

In terms of story, The High King of Skyrim has been murdered, the world is at breaking point and even worse, an ancient evil has been awakened. To make matters worse for the player, you start the game as an ‘innocent' prisoner that's been sentenced to death and before being executed, an exciting and terrifying scene takes place, really showcasing early on the true magnitude of pure awesomeness that is this game. Before I know it, I'm jumping down into a burning building, swinging swords, and looting bodies during all of this chaos and that's just the start. Needless to say, you have your work cut out for you!

So having played the original before, I still had to stop and just look around for quite some time at random points in my first few hours of playing The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim Special Edition. Simple things like water and trees amused me to no end and are complete works of finely detailed art in this game, as is everything else. Shadows are cast everywhere, the sky is a beautiful thing to behold, and you could even see the stars peeking through the clouds at some times. While I decided to do some hardcore mountain climbing, I looked over at the sky and saw one of the most stunning things in my early experience with Skyrim, the Aurora Borealis. So many things catch my attention as I wander around the map – different climates in the various sections, wind picking up particles on the ground and blowing them away, random animal skulls in the middle of nowhere, and countless other things that make this game just feel as massive as it really is. Cgi in blender.

On the fighting side of things, I find the more creatures I come across the more I want to play with different weapon combinations that are now at my disposal. In The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim Special Edition, you can dual-wield weapons, dual-wield magic to make more powerful versions of it, use sword and shield, single and double-handed weapons, and so on. It's also filled with a variety of different enemies and some look amazing in this new graphical update, whereas other are a little ho hum but nonetheless, there's plenty to find and fight. The combat does feel a little dated but it still quite playable.

Also, you're able to change up your magic and weapons is a breeze to deal with, and I love the incorporation of showing finishing moves on enemies at some points, giving beautiful takedowns their moment of glory. No matter what type of fighter you are, you will be able to play exactly the way you want in this game. So whatever style you play, that is what your character will become. Want to be more of a thief type? Then play like one. Fighter? Mage? Those skills increase as you go along and use them accordingly, and as you level up you choose different perks in each skill section, shown as colorful constellations that you gaze up to for guidance. This means you're not just limited to class but the combinations are quite diverse.

Moving on to some other fun aspects of the game itself, one thing that I do love is the way that lock picking works.
Instead of the frustration of dealing with the tumblers, you now literally feel around the lock using two your picks, moving each individually carefully until the lock rotates and opens. If you rotate them more and more to where they won't open, the controller also vibrates more and more until the tension results in the picks breaking. If you want to find those treasures and weapons, make sure you ‘study' lock picking because there's a boom to be found in The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim Special Edition.

The soundtrack of the game is brilliant and really captures that RPG atmosphere and whether you're a hero or a ‘villain', it's integral to the game and helps with the immersion factor. The sounds that you hear while fighting dragons, other creatures, and just all of the audio in this game is quite impressive and clearly has been shown as close attention to as every other aspect of this epic work of art. Another word about sound is that the voice acting is quite good and there's plenty of dialogue in the game.

Final Thoughts?

The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim Special Edition is a really good game on the PlayStation 4 and Bethesda have done a remarkable job at giving it a fresh facelift but also keeping the amazing story and gameplay. Apple mac running windows 7. Sure, some things feel a little stiff and lacking finesse of something like The Witcher 3 but it's quite a detailed world from its culture, denizens that populate this universe and very rich story. Lastly, the amount of time you could spend in this game is practically endless and the only potentially bad thing is that you could lose sleep because you won't want to stop playing.

Fruit loops audio software. Key Features

• Epic Fantasy Reborn. Skyrim reimagines the open-world fantasy epic, pushing the gameplay and technology of a virtual world to new heights.

• Live another life, in another world. Play any type of character you can imagine, and do whatever you want; the legendary freedom of choice, storytelling, and adventure of The Elder Scrolls is realized like never before.

Cool 3d drawing ideas. • All new graphics and gameplay engine. Skyrim's new game engine brings to life a complete virtual world with rolling clouds, rugged mountains, bustling cities, lush fields, and ancient dungeons.

• You are what you play. Choose from hundreds of weapons, spells, and abilities. The new character system allows you to play any way you want and define yourself through your actions.

Elder Scrolls V Review

• Dragons return. Battle ancient dragons like you've never seen. As Dragonborn, learn their secrets and harness their power for yourself.

Review Elder Scrolls Version

Review Elder Scrolls Online Greymoor

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This is it. Bethesda had finally done their homework by listening to their fans, researching into what worked and not thus far in this most complicated genre of all, what made Morrowind so much deeper and more memorable than Oblivion -- and they released what is probably their best and most consistent game yet. All things considered, it is also among the best role-playing games ever made. But Bethesda needed all their blood, sweat and tears, all the hard experience from Arena to Fallout 3 to pull this feat.
Skyrim is best described as a distinctive, homogenic experience in a persistent world. I think it is best played in huge chunks, in a wide-eyed, semi-meditative state, which is a prerogative of open-world RPG's, this pinnacle genre in video gaming. I'll try to break down the best components of this experience:
- As much as the vast open-world formula permits it, Bethesda creates free-roaming NPC's with true characters -- even if only some of them really stick out and even fewer are memorable. As expected, characters who are relevant to the main plot are fleshed out the most: Ulfric Stormcloak, his second-in-command Galmar, Esbern, and our clandestine associate Delphine, perhaps most of all. What is great though is that some of the less important characters end up being quite memorable too: Ancano, the mysterious Thalmor emissary in the College. Madanach, the disgruntled leader of the Forsworn. Kodlak Whitemane, the Companions' elderly foreman who even writes a lengthy diary that we can discover. And when I finally lost my loyal sidekick Lydia in some dungeon after days of doing quests together, I felt a genuine sense of emotional loss (even if she wasn't one of the more memorable NPC's), a very rare feeling in computer games.
- Politics are realistic, complex, convoluted, frustrating, as they should be. The internal and external struggles of the various factions are not sugarcoated for the player, it's all laid out as it is, and we need to figure our own way around the relations. The Empire, the Thalmor, the Stormcloaks, the Forsworn, the Blades, the Greybeards -- all their destinies are intertwined in a realistic way, all have their respective agendas that the player needs to figure out with minimal to no handholding. The fact that Skyrim's political landscape is not simplified for easier digestion is one of my favorite aspects of the game. It's a subtle, mature feature not advertised with hype, yet it helps the immersion tremendously.
- Many of the conversations are deep and involving -- for a Bethesda game. They are excellently written and often quite long, which is taken for granted from some other developers like Obsidian, but it's a very pleasant surprise coming from Bethesda. The crucial negotiation scene in High Hrothgar reminded me of the Castle Never trial scene in NWN2, as it achieved the same kind of tension, gravity and drama, which is absolutely awesome for a mostly non-scripted open-world role-playing game. Skyrim is probably the very first open-world RPG that lives up to the challenge posed by Obsidian's offerings in terms of dramatization and tension.
- Many of the quests are creative, exhilarating and unorthodox. The main plotline is haunted by a sense of wonder and is graced by many (scripted) scenes that are bound to be remembered as some of the most memorable scenes in gaming: the first dragon hunt at the Whiterun guard tower; the reading of the Elder Scroll on the mountaintop; the dragon trapping in Dragonreach; the greeting and cheering of a dozen flying dragons after the final battle. And Blackreach, a vast, eerie, otherworldly cavern with abandoned structures is one of the top 5 ingame locations i've encountered in a game EVER. Outside of actual real-life adventure travel, it is probably only open-world RPG's that are capable of achieving this sense of wonder, since it presupposes the element of boundless exploration in an intriguing region. It also presupposes a capability of sensing wonders in the players themselves, something that many jaded gamers of today seem incapable of -- in real life or virtual.
- There are about 330 books in Skyrim, and while I haven't read all of them, I took the time to read quite a few. This is part of why the game is a triumph: not one of the books is shallow, boring or badly written. Sure, most of them are brief 3-4 page essays, but this has to be one of the first games that takes its own book reading feature very seriously. You can spend several hours just browsing through the ingame books and not be bored. What's even better is the way the books' material ties in directly with the actual gameplay. In most RPG's, ingame books are disconnected from the actual gameplay. Here, they complement it. You can read a lot about Alduin or the Wolf Queen, for instance, and later you get to meet both of them.
- Some towns are architecturally awesome and feel alive with daily bustle. Markarth and Whiterun, especially. I liked the vibe of Solitude and Riften as well. Again, this would not be such a feat in a 'hands-off', closed-world RPG, but the fact that even towns are awesome and realistic in Skyrim makes the end product all the more irresistible.
So the game is not only huge and open-ended, but it includes characters, quests, books and towns with the high quality of smaller scale closed-world games: it's the culmination of the best of both worlds, not unified successfully until now. This is what makes Skyrim a milestone and a masterpiece.
I finally got fed up with all of it around the 100 hours mark. That's quite a feat as the vast majority of contemporary RPG's stop being interesting (and usually run out of material) before 40-50 hours of gameplay. At this point, I couldn't stand to endure another bandit-infested fort, another Nord village, another steampunk Dwemer ruin, another mission update and so forth. It was too much, as Skyrim's world is very homogenic. You'll find the exact same non-scripted stuff at the southern tip as on the icy Northern reaches. Thus Skyrim's geographical and thematic realism is a mixed blessing; it can get grating, repetitive, predictable. But it's a long enjoyable ride until that point.
The skill system is radically simplified and streamlined, clearly the influence of mainstream console gaming (which itself is a blight on role-playing games). Much had been said about the classless system and the lack of skills like acrobatics. While all this can be interpreted as a dumbing down of game mechanics, I found that it doesn't hinder immersion, in fact maybe it promotes it: much like in a real-life adventure trip, in Skyrim all you need to really worry about is the actual surrounding environment instead of stats and dice rolls.
The Skyrim province and culture is quite blatantly inspired by Medieval Scandinavia, right down to the names and the looks of the people. I wish Bethesda took a more original approach than just 'vikings on steroids'.
I've used the already-famous SkyUI mod almost from day one, because I found the original UI insufferably dumbed-down and console-y. Its inventory management was so simplistic and awkward, it felt like it belongs to a lesser game.
Oh, the bugs. The 1.4 patch still failed to squash a number of serious show-stoppers. But us open-world RPG fans learned years ago that a major game is considered an 'immature' release until it lives to see its first or even second birthday. By then the inevitable barrage of official and unofficial patches will have probably helped it to thoroughly playable status. (VTM: Bloodlines and Gothic 3 are prime examples of why it is useful to wait at least 2 years after initial release.) Judging by that, I'm sure I'll return to Skyrim around 2014 for another playthrough.
'We're checking [Skyrim] out aggressively. We like it. We're big admirers of [Bethesda] and the product. We think we can do some wonderful things,' says Bioware co-founder Ray Muzyka. That has to be the ultimate praise, even if it comes from an increasingly uninspired developer that has spent the last few years spiraling down from failure (Mass Effect 2) to failure (Dragon Age 2) to sellout (The Old Republic). Here's hoping that Skyrim will change the development path of RPG's for the rest of the decade, bringing back both Obsidian and Bioware to the right track.
Let's face it: Skyrim is an important moment in game history. Its success and greatness prove to the entire industry that hardcore, epic games are not only actually marketable, they are plain cooler than anything the more casual Wii/PS3 market can come up with. This is going to be a great decade for hardcore role-playing game fans.
5/5