As with, I believe, most of the rest of the world, I was turned on to R&G Are Dead through the brilliant film with Gary Oldman, Tim Roth and Richard Dreyfuss. A philosophical romp through existentialism with bits of Shakespeare thrown in? Rock on. Unfortunately, it wasn't until years later when my old high school put on a production that I actually got to see what it was like on an actual stage. Fast forward again and I finally get to see it as a professional mainstage show at the Bathhouse Theater, and while my love for the play was strengthened, I have to say the show itself left me a little...underwhelmed.
For those not in the know, R&G Are Dead is a play by Tom Stoppard about the two aforementioned characters in Hamlet seemingly stuck in an existence where they have no idea what's going on, only vague recollections of why they're there, and are constantly just waiting for something to happen. And in the meantime, they philosophize. Hamlet and the other members of Elsinore drop by from time to time to shift the action, but leave R&G more or less helpless in their search for meaning. There are also some very significant interactions with the troupe of actors, often putting into question just what kind of reality they, and we the audience, are in. It's frenetically paced and definitely worthy of more than one viewing, as the first time you'll probably be just as lost in the ramblings as the two main characters. However, every time after reveals such wonderful little snippets of text and subtext that make it enjoyable each and every time.
The real problem with R&G Are Dead is that not only is it a play of many words with abstract interpretations, it's also fairly hard to find variation in simply because everything has to be so tight. Compound that with the fact that it's a really long play, and you start to realize how hard it can be to stage while still adding your own spin to it. And unfortunately, it's a problem that simply wasn't addressed here. Yes, both of the lead roles were played by women, but otherwise there was simply nothing distinguishing about the show to set it apart. Don't get me wrong, it was still a good performance, but coming from a place where I've already seen the show on film and on stage, there simply wasn't that much different for it to stand up.
Part of it came down to 2/3 of the leads, and part of it was, alas, directorial. Before I launch into that, however, I do need to give the appropriate round of applause to Angela DiMarco, who did manage to make the character of Rosencrantz her own and did a superb job. But in this play a great Rosencrantz is nothing without a great Guildernstern as a bouncing board, and Alyssa Keene to me failed to find her character. Ros and Guild are basically mirror opposites of each other. Ros is fairly care-free, simple in mind, and happy to just go with the flow. Guild, on the other hand, is a rational thinker, constantly trying to apply rules and reason to the inconsistencies around them while trying his damnedest to keep a hold on where he is and what has happened. Keene's performance certainly held that irrational conviction to rationality, but lacked the stability, the...gravitas if you will, to balance out and provide counterpoint to Ros. As for the arguable third lead, the leader of the Players, Heather Hawkins simply fell flat because she played it like it was any other part she's played (though she has certainly had some brilliant performances before). She played it rationally, but the Player is anything but rational. The lines given are so full of bravado, mixed with control and manipulation of R&G, but Hawkins' tone and personality were anything but. There was a kind of quiet control to her, but it just didn't fit. She never made me believe she had "been there before, and knew which way the wind blows."
However, as I said, the other half of the faults I found in the play lie with the direction of the dear Shana Bestock. There were repeated and frankly incomprehensible instances of upstaging here. Both the Player and Guild had some powerful lines and speeches that were spoken to the back wall where most of their impact was lost because of the staging. I was also disappointed to see some of my favorite moments happen and then seemingly disappear without a second thought because the pacing was kept so fast. In such a play where words and timing are essential, it must be remembered that sometimes the pauses between words are just as important as the words themselves. But here there was little room to breathe, and the focus seemed to be on finishing the play in two hours and getting through all those words instead of playing with the words and subtleties.
As much as I rag on it, it was still a good performance. It's very easy to completely mess this show up, and despite my complaints they still managed to make it comprehensible (which is a feat in itself) and fun to watch. It just seemed to be lacking the spark it needed to truly make it shine.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead gets a 7/10.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Coriolanus
It's always amusing to me how obscure plays tend to have their seasons where suddenly everyone decides to produce the same one. This year it's Coriolanus, with both Seattle Shakespeare's play and the movie with Ralph Fiennes. I haven't seen the movie (yet), so just to ease confusion, this review is for the play.
As one of Shakespeare's more obscure shows, the plot probably needs some clarification. Rome is in conflict. On the outside they face the armies of the Volscians, but inside the people are revolting after enduring famine and taxes while the rich have nothing but surfeit (sound familiar?). They place most of the blame on a Roman general named Caius Martius. He's the best soldier in the army, has quite the temper, and thrives for battle especially against his greatest enemy Tullus Aufidius of the Volscians. Upon hearing their complaints he basically shuts them all up by being intimidating and saying they don't deserve corn if they don't fight in the war. However, he quickly hears of battle abroad, and upon single-handedly destroying the town of Corioles and going right from there to fight and defeat Aufidius in the field despite his injuries, he returns to Rome and is given the honorary name of Coriolanus. Convinced by his mother that he should run for consul, he is soon embroiled in politics that do not suit his prideful and angry nature. Forced to turn to the people of Rome and "mildly" ask for their voice, he instead balks under the absurdity of having to show his scars to them and beg people who he essentially considers base cowards for their consent to be consul. Spurred by his insolence, and by two tribunes of the people (Brutus and Sicinius) who do not want Coriolanus with their power, the people revolt and take back their word, and banish Coriolanus for his traitorous slander against the people and the consuls. In vengeance, Coriolanus seeks out Aufidius and begs to join his army and help them sack Rome. Seemingly putting his hate aside, Aufidius gives Coriolanus half his troops for the purpose. Wreaking havoc across the land, word soon spreads of the joined forces, and the people's consuls are rebuked for banishing him. In one final effort they send all of Coriolanus' former friends to try to get him to change his mind, but he hears none of them. It is only when his mother, wife and son come to call that he finally relents, and on advice of his mother, brokers peace. But...this is a tragedy after all. Upon settling the peace and returning to the Volscian capital, Aufidius confronts him and calls him traitor for failing to grasp Rome and giving up their advantage because his mother told him to, and then slays him, seemingly leading the way for war once again.
It's a brutal, violent, and highly political story, and it's really a shame it isn't produced more. However, it is still obvious why it isn't. The character of Coriolanus is really unsympathetic, and so you don't really feel bad when his throat is cut. Also, in the style of its main character almost all emotional or "human" moments that you find in most of Shakes' other tragedies are pushed to the side or severely limited. He's a wonderfully conflicted and tortured character, especially around his mother, but there are almost no soliloquies or internal monologues going on here. As the tribunes say about him, "His heart's his mouth: What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent". What this essentially leads to is a play disconnected from all but fury. It's as if we the audience are Coriolanus' wife: emotional, searching for his heart, and doing all we can to stave off such blatant anger. But the play responds as Coriolanus does, holding us for brief moments, but otherwise losing itself in its passion.
I muse over all this because despite my lack of emotional connection to the play, I still enjoyed it. The actors were all exceptional, especially Mike Dooly back in fine form as Aufidius after a mediocre turn as Theseus in Midsummer. David Drummond in the title role was also a prime example of how to take a part that's mostly shouting and find the levels and complexity in it. The real star of the show, however, was Therese Diekhans as Coriolanus' mother Volumnia, who displayed some wonderful mastery of manipulation alongside an absolutely unwavering conviction in her beliefs. A mother of Sparta if ever there was one.
It's just fascinating for me to look back on this play, trying to gauge my reaction to it, realizing that it was a wonderfully performed play with a beautiful set with these highly detailed paintings on the pillars and constantly shifting boards on wheels and hinges sharing the color theme, and perfect sound design. However, despite getting my adrenaline pumping...there wasn't really anything that seemed to stick, as it were. There was a lot of rage, a lot of panic, a lot of high emotion...but it's like watching a giant flame that impresses you with how bright and hot it is only to burn out all the quicker and leave nothing but the memory of how bright it was.
I'm having trouble putting this into words, but what can I say, the play left me a little torn. By no means was it bad, and you should all go see it while you can, but while the performance was wonderful and asked for my emotional involvement, the play itself rejected it and asked me to simply marvel at this legend of a man who was great...and terrible. In the end...I think the performance won out.
Coriolanus gets a 9/10.
As one of Shakespeare's more obscure shows, the plot probably needs some clarification. Rome is in conflict. On the outside they face the armies of the Volscians, but inside the people are revolting after enduring famine and taxes while the rich have nothing but surfeit (sound familiar?). They place most of the blame on a Roman general named Caius Martius. He's the best soldier in the army, has quite the temper, and thrives for battle especially against his greatest enemy Tullus Aufidius of the Volscians. Upon hearing their complaints he basically shuts them all up by being intimidating and saying they don't deserve corn if they don't fight in the war. However, he quickly hears of battle abroad, and upon single-handedly destroying the town of Corioles and going right from there to fight and defeat Aufidius in the field despite his injuries, he returns to Rome and is given the honorary name of Coriolanus. Convinced by his mother that he should run for consul, he is soon embroiled in politics that do not suit his prideful and angry nature. Forced to turn to the people of Rome and "mildly" ask for their voice, he instead balks under the absurdity of having to show his scars to them and beg people who he essentially considers base cowards for their consent to be consul. Spurred by his insolence, and by two tribunes of the people (Brutus and Sicinius) who do not want Coriolanus with their power, the people revolt and take back their word, and banish Coriolanus for his traitorous slander against the people and the consuls. In vengeance, Coriolanus seeks out Aufidius and begs to join his army and help them sack Rome. Seemingly putting his hate aside, Aufidius gives Coriolanus half his troops for the purpose. Wreaking havoc across the land, word soon spreads of the joined forces, and the people's consuls are rebuked for banishing him. In one final effort they send all of Coriolanus' former friends to try to get him to change his mind, but he hears none of them. It is only when his mother, wife and son come to call that he finally relents, and on advice of his mother, brokers peace. But...this is a tragedy after all. Upon settling the peace and returning to the Volscian capital, Aufidius confronts him and calls him traitor for failing to grasp Rome and giving up their advantage because his mother told him to, and then slays him, seemingly leading the way for war once again.
It's a brutal, violent, and highly political story, and it's really a shame it isn't produced more. However, it is still obvious why it isn't. The character of Coriolanus is really unsympathetic, and so you don't really feel bad when his throat is cut. Also, in the style of its main character almost all emotional or "human" moments that you find in most of Shakes' other tragedies are pushed to the side or severely limited. He's a wonderfully conflicted and tortured character, especially around his mother, but there are almost no soliloquies or internal monologues going on here. As the tribunes say about him, "His heart's his mouth: What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent". What this essentially leads to is a play disconnected from all but fury. It's as if we the audience are Coriolanus' wife: emotional, searching for his heart, and doing all we can to stave off such blatant anger. But the play responds as Coriolanus does, holding us for brief moments, but otherwise losing itself in its passion.
I muse over all this because despite my lack of emotional connection to the play, I still enjoyed it. The actors were all exceptional, especially Mike Dooly back in fine form as Aufidius after a mediocre turn as Theseus in Midsummer. David Drummond in the title role was also a prime example of how to take a part that's mostly shouting and find the levels and complexity in it. The real star of the show, however, was Therese Diekhans as Coriolanus' mother Volumnia, who displayed some wonderful mastery of manipulation alongside an absolutely unwavering conviction in her beliefs. A mother of Sparta if ever there was one.
It's just fascinating for me to look back on this play, trying to gauge my reaction to it, realizing that it was a wonderfully performed play with a beautiful set with these highly detailed paintings on the pillars and constantly shifting boards on wheels and hinges sharing the color theme, and perfect sound design. However, despite getting my adrenaline pumping...there wasn't really anything that seemed to stick, as it were. There was a lot of rage, a lot of panic, a lot of high emotion...but it's like watching a giant flame that impresses you with how bright and hot it is only to burn out all the quicker and leave nothing but the memory of how bright it was.
I'm having trouble putting this into words, but what can I say, the play left me a little torn. By no means was it bad, and you should all go see it while you can, but while the performance was wonderful and asked for my emotional involvement, the play itself rejected it and asked me to simply marvel at this legend of a man who was great...and terrible. In the end...I think the performance won out.
Coriolanus gets a 9/10.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Skyrim
Well I've played an undisclosed but inordinate amount of hours playing, it's probably time I actually sit back and review this puppy. And by puppy I mean massive RPG. Practically the same thing right?
Before I proceed to heap inordinate amounts of praise on this game (because yes, like the rest of the world I really liked it), let's get some history out of the way. Back in the dinosaur years around 1996 a little game called Daggerfall came out, also known as Elder Scrolls 2. Knowing almost nothing about games besides whatever my friends were playing (and a couple Star Wars games like Dark Forces that I had), Daggerfall caught my eye from the bargain bin and I decided I was going to try to expand my gaming horizon. And boy did it expand. I mean, by swishing your mouse in a certain direction, your sword swung in that direction. It was the greatest gaming innovation I had ever experienced. Sure the whole fantasy world and hard to decipher story was interesting and all, but come on. It was basically the predecessor to the Wii.
But as with all games Daggerfall eventually fell from the list of games I played and was practically forgotten when I finally got around to playing Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. But Morrowind was not so quick to fade. Oh no. Despite the fact that the entire game was basically swamps and a mountain, I played the crap out of it. I loved every bit. The story, the locations, the immersiveness of it. Especially the Bloodmoon expansion, which provided a nice change of scenery along with a very early glimpse of what Skyrim would be like. Sure it had its issues, but it was still one hell of a game.
So anticipations were high for Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. And don't get me wrong, I still logged countless hours on it, but I enjoyed Morrowind more. To me, Oblivion got rid of a lot of the great things from Morrowind and didn't add enough improvements to make up for it. By all accounts it was a more well designed game, but the main story especially left me wanting as it focused more on helping someone else save the world than it was about you. I will also never really get over the zooming in on those godawful facial textures during dialogue.
Now Skyrim comes along, and starts promising to fix every problem with the past games. Better, more varied combat. Hand-crafted dungeons instead of the repetitive randomly generated caves. A better game engine with prettier graphics and fewer bugs. A new and improved leveling system with perks. And DRAGONS, which have been clamored for from the beginning. It promised us the most immersive RPG to date. Did it deliver?
It's fair to say that you all know by now it lived up to those expectations and more. I easily throw my hat in with the crowd that calls Skyrim one of the, if not the, best games ever made. So why should you keep paying attention? Because I still have some major gripes with this game that don't just boil down to "OMG IT'S SO BUGGY" as everybody else who gives the game a negative review seems to say. First off, maybe I'm just one of the lucky ones, but for me Skyrim plays like a dream. Sure there are some menu issues and the occasional follower glitch, but for the most part I have no issues with bugs. Instead, what I have issues with are what people should be having issues with, and that's the actual gameplay.
For those who are still unfamiliar with what Skyrim is all about, you are placed in the shoes of the last Dragonborn, an individual blessed by the gods that has the power to use the language of dragons (in the form of "shouts") and can absorb the souls of dragons to gain their power and make sure they can't be resurrected. However, you only discover this after waking up riding in the back of a carriage, arrested and on the way to execution after having been found near the border with a group of rebels and their leader, Ulfric Stormcloak, and being saved from execution by the timely intervention of a giant dragon out of legend burning down the town. After hunting down that dragon and getting some vengeance, you absorb its soul and learn that you are the Dovahkin/Dragonborn. From there, you're basically free to roam about the world, or continue to discover where the dragons have come from, and why you've been sent to stop them. You can also take sides in the civil war between the Imperials who are trying to maintain their hold on Skyrim, and the Stormcloaks who are trying to reclaim their homeland.
There are of course many other quests and things to do in Skyrim, like joining any or all of the 4 guilds: The Companions (Fighter's Guild), the College of Winterhold (Mages Guild), the Thieves Guild, or the infamous Dark Brotherhood (assassins). You can also aim to become Thane of the major cities, a mostly honorary title that simply involves helping out the townsfolk and owning a home. And then there are the literally infinite number of miscellaneous and radiant quests you can pick up, which are usually more simple quests (kill a bandit leader, slay a dragon, etc.) that lead you to areas of the map you might not have explored yet. It's a big game, with no shortage of things to find or do, just like its predecessors (though even more so as you can get endless amounts of quests).
There are, however, many things which make Skyrim much different from its predecessors. The first is combat. This time around you can dual-wield weapons, spells, or both for a giant variety in how to approach each encounter. It rewards experimentation, but also allows for you to face any fight in the way that simply feels right to you. Enjoy just rushing in and hitting everything that moves? Two handed weapons. Prefer more strategic fights? Switch up between holding a shield and sword and maybe toss some spells. It's a very fluid system (with fun Fallout 3 style finishing moves thrown in) that provides a great deal of versatility and replayability.
The second, and my vastly favorite improvement, is the leveling system. In the previous titles the idea behind leveling was that you would get better at the skills you used, and those in turn would help you level your basic stats like Strength, Dexterity, etc. However, it really failed in practice simply because the way the math worked you had to be really careful which skills you increased during each level if you wanted to maximize your results. This was especially disastrous in Oblivion as the enemies leveled with you, so if you weren't managing your leveling well, suddenly you were facing normal bandits wearing glass armor and weren't really prepared for that. In Skyrim, however, they simply did away with attributes altogether. And the amazing thing is, by throwing away what has been such a staple of most RPGs for years and years, it actually accomplished what the series has been trying to accomplish all these years. You get better at the skills you use, you can use perks to add bonuses to those skills, and it's all amazingly intuitive and easy to manage. You stop worrying about what you're doing and just play how you want to play, and you're rewarded for playing that way.
However, there are definitely some changes I'm not happy about. Spellcrafting is gone. I understand it broke a good deal of the previous games (especially the well loved levitation spell in Morrowind), but not being able to make my flamethrower hands more powerful except with perks is a little frustrating. Skyrim is a game that begs you to experiment with it, and so to not provide it with the spells makes me sad. Another change seems to be a drastic reduction in enemy types. Going by the wikis, there are about 30 different types in Skyrim while there are 46 in Oblivion and 49 in Morrowind. Most of the time in Skyrim you will either be battling a wolf, a bear, a bandit/vampire, or a draugr (undead). Less often but still frequent are spiders, trolls, and dragons. It just felt really repetitive. In a game where you're expecting people to log hundreds of hours of time in a game world, you'd think you'd want a greater variety of enemies, not drastically fewer. You would also want more region-specific enemies than "snow" and "not snow". There are like 9 different climates in this game. More than the flowers should change.
Another enemy gripe I have is actually one of the selling points of the game: dragons. They were made out to be these epic battles between man and beast where each dragon reacted differently to the location and situation. In reality, each dragon fight plays out exactly the same. It spams you with either fire or ice breath from the sky, then when you hurt it enough with ranged attacks or when it lands you run up and hack away at it until it falls. Sure, the first time you do it it feels pretty epic, having to run around and try to lure the dragon to the ground, escape its breath, and dodge its bites and tail swipes at you. But that's the first time. Second time, still feels pretty epic, but it plays out the same way. By the third time, I was looking for something different to happen. By the fourth, I was a little bored. And from the fifth onward the only reason I would fight a dragon would be if I had to either from a quest or from it randomly attacking. It became a chore instead of an epic experience, and fighting a dragon should never seem like a chore. There are, I think, two reasons it devolved. One, each dragon fights the same. You'll come across several different types and levels of dragons, some more challenging than the others, but each one goes through the same exact pattern. Two, there are simply too many, which ties into the shouting system.
I love the shouts. I think they're a lot of fun. Each one is essentially a power that lets you do things like breathe fire, or slow time, or disarm foes, and each shout has three words of power associated with it which can be discovered through various "word walls" scattered around the map. There are 20 shouts in all, some of which are simply given to you through the main quest, but for all the others once you learn the word from the word wall you need to spend a dragon soul (collected by beating a dragon) to actually use it. So say that you learn 4 shouts from the story that you don't need to spend souls on (I think it's 4...), that leaves you with 48 dragons you need to kill to fully level up your shouts. Even if I'm remembering incorrectly and give some allowance, you have to kill at least 40 dragons. Even if you don't care about leveling up your shouts, the point is they had that in mind when designing how many dragons to put in the game, so you'll be seeing a fair share whether you want to or not. So if you're hopping into Skyrim for the dragons, be forewarned, they're really not as cool as they should be simply because it seems like they're treated as just another type of creature inhabiting these lands and not the epic mini-boss battles they were made out to be. In fact, by treating all dragons the same, even the final boss (a dragon) comes across as just another dragon battle where you just hack away until it dies.
The main stories in general suffered a bit in this game. While the dragon storyline has some interesting history and twists in it, the final battle kind of ruins it all (though the awesome scene after helps). And as for the civil war, forget any interesting politics or policies, you choose a side, capture a couple forts for that side by defeating a certain number of random troops that continually spawn until you win, and then capture the opponent's main city in the same way and force them to surrender. Add to that that both sides are basically assholes with little reason to choose their side but plenty of reason to fight against them and you get a storyline with little to no investment in the outcome, especially because the big determinant of the war (how Skyrim will fare against the elven Aldmeri Dominion) won't be addressed until some future point (one would assume in DLC). It basically boils down to "Hooray we won!" and no answer to the question of "Now what?"
"But Zach," you may be thinking, "if you hated the main storylines and the dragons, which is what the game is essentially sold on, how can you still call it one of the best games ever made?" The answer is simple. In Skyrim, it's all in the details.
The laurels of this game essentially rest on all the extra stuff around. What about all those handcrafted dungeons? Well...most of them unfortunately still look pretty similar to each other. The good news, however, is that the ones they decided would matter to the story or other big quests (read: the ones they paid attention to and didn't just crap out in 5 minutes) are AMAZING and tons of fun to explore. How about radiant questing? Wish there was more variety than "Kill bandit leader/dragon/giant at [insert location here]" but it does its job to facilitate you exploring new regions and finding new and interesting things. And as for all those new and interesting things scattered throughout the world? Main reason for playing this game. They obviously spent the greatest amount of their time simply fleshing out the world environment and adding all sorts of hidden treasures around. I spent probably around 100 hours with my first character and I still didn't discover every location. Mind you I didn't specifically try to, but there was so much else to occupy my time I didn't have to either. Despite the fact that Skyrim is technically smaller in landmass than Oblivion, it feels much much larger because more care went into crafting it.
I know this is a long review, with a lot to take in, and there's still a great deal I didn't cover, so I'll try to sum up here:
The Good:
-The world is very well crafted, as are the dungeons they actually spent time on.
-Tons of new things to discover/explore
-It all just looks so...damn...pretty
-Combat is versatile, with no wrong way to play
-The guild quests (especially the Dark Brotherhood) are tons of fun
-The leveling system is the best and most accessible it has ever been.
-100 hours will fly by and you'll still have more to do
-Despite the fact that there isn't any spellcrafting, spells are still a ton of fun to play with. I literally giggled with delight when I got a spell that summoned an exploding dog made of fire.
The meh:
-Radiant questing is repetitive but serves the goal of getting you to explore
-Fast travel is useful to have, but gets too easy to just skip to your goal and focus on the arrow on your compass instead of the world around you
-Enchanting, smithing and alchemy. Just kind of blah. Wish there were more interesting effects.
-Perks. Sure they make you better, but there's nothing that interesting to them besides one where you can behead people with a power attack. Wish they had included some perks for fun like in Fallout.
-The dragon storyline. There are some fun twists and turns and interesting history behind it, but the final battle being the same as all your other dragon battles kind of ruins it.
-Shouts. There are too many to know what to do with (especially as using one requires a recharge time before you can use another), but most of them are really fun to use.
-The Guardian Stones scattered around the map provide some neat abilities that can vary up how you play, but some are obviously much better than the others and you'll probably find yourself sticking to only one or two.
The bad:
-The civil war storyline. Boring from both sides (haven't finished the Imperial side yet, but for the most part it has been the exact same as the Stormcloaks side), especially because each side only has one good reason to fight for them but plenty of reasons to fight against them.
-Followers. Useful as mules, but their highly repetitive dialogue, tendency to step in front of your sword swing, and inability to follow you over an edge can make them major annoyances.
-Dragons. Epic the first time, boring the rest since they all fight exactly the same way and you will encounter a lot of them. They become annoyances and chores to fight instead of epic enemies.
-Fights in general can get pretty repetitive and boring as there are much fewer enemy types this time around.
-No spellcrafting. Grr.
-Every potion weighs .5, instead of the scaled weights they've had previously where the weight depended on the ingredients used to make it. This makes carrying a wide variety of potions as I like to do much more unfeasible.
Overall this may sound like a fairly negative review, which honestly I kind of wanted to slant it towards as it's all to easy to come from playing this game and simply say "OH MY GOD IT'S JUST SO AWESOME." To me, without a doubt it is the best Elder Scrolls game, and one of the best games ever made. That doesn't mean it doesn't still have its problems, but to be honest, a good deal of the problems I have will probably be adjusted or fixed with mods once the Creation Kit is released. Oh, and this is all not to mention the fact that it appears the entire continent of Tamriel has been built into this game, which means the modders (if not Bethesda themselves) can start incorporating both Oblivion and Morrowind into this game, as well as all the other countries that haven't yet been explored. Which means this game will never end. And frankly, I'm okay with that. If they would've tried the same thing with Oblivion, I don't know if I would've been as happy simply because to me Skyrim fixes the one thing I've always had trouble with, and that is the leveling system. So who knows, maybe we'll finally get what Elder Scrolls fans have always dreamed of...an entire continent to roam.
Until then, I'm more than happy to stay in Skyrim and explore every last nook and cranny.
Skyrim gets a 10/10.
Before I proceed to heap inordinate amounts of praise on this game (because yes, like the rest of the world I really liked it), let's get some history out of the way. Back in the dinosaur years around 1996 a little game called Daggerfall came out, also known as Elder Scrolls 2. Knowing almost nothing about games besides whatever my friends were playing (and a couple Star Wars games like Dark Forces that I had), Daggerfall caught my eye from the bargain bin and I decided I was going to try to expand my gaming horizon. And boy did it expand. I mean, by swishing your mouse in a certain direction, your sword swung in that direction. It was the greatest gaming innovation I had ever experienced. Sure the whole fantasy world and hard to decipher story was interesting and all, but come on. It was basically the predecessor to the Wii.
But as with all games Daggerfall eventually fell from the list of games I played and was practically forgotten when I finally got around to playing Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. But Morrowind was not so quick to fade. Oh no. Despite the fact that the entire game was basically swamps and a mountain, I played the crap out of it. I loved every bit. The story, the locations, the immersiveness of it. Especially the Bloodmoon expansion, which provided a nice change of scenery along with a very early glimpse of what Skyrim would be like. Sure it had its issues, but it was still one hell of a game.
So anticipations were high for Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. And don't get me wrong, I still logged countless hours on it, but I enjoyed Morrowind more. To me, Oblivion got rid of a lot of the great things from Morrowind and didn't add enough improvements to make up for it. By all accounts it was a more well designed game, but the main story especially left me wanting as it focused more on helping someone else save the world than it was about you. I will also never really get over the zooming in on those godawful facial textures during dialogue.
Now Skyrim comes along, and starts promising to fix every problem with the past games. Better, more varied combat. Hand-crafted dungeons instead of the repetitive randomly generated caves. A better game engine with prettier graphics and fewer bugs. A new and improved leveling system with perks. And DRAGONS, which have been clamored for from the beginning. It promised us the most immersive RPG to date. Did it deliver?
It's fair to say that you all know by now it lived up to those expectations and more. I easily throw my hat in with the crowd that calls Skyrim one of the, if not the, best games ever made. So why should you keep paying attention? Because I still have some major gripes with this game that don't just boil down to "OMG IT'S SO BUGGY" as everybody else who gives the game a negative review seems to say. First off, maybe I'm just one of the lucky ones, but for me Skyrim plays like a dream. Sure there are some menu issues and the occasional follower glitch, but for the most part I have no issues with bugs. Instead, what I have issues with are what people should be having issues with, and that's the actual gameplay.
For those who are still unfamiliar with what Skyrim is all about, you are placed in the shoes of the last Dragonborn, an individual blessed by the gods that has the power to use the language of dragons (in the form of "shouts") and can absorb the souls of dragons to gain their power and make sure they can't be resurrected. However, you only discover this after waking up riding in the back of a carriage, arrested and on the way to execution after having been found near the border with a group of rebels and their leader, Ulfric Stormcloak, and being saved from execution by the timely intervention of a giant dragon out of legend burning down the town. After hunting down that dragon and getting some vengeance, you absorb its soul and learn that you are the Dovahkin/Dragonborn. From there, you're basically free to roam about the world, or continue to discover where the dragons have come from, and why you've been sent to stop them. You can also take sides in the civil war between the Imperials who are trying to maintain their hold on Skyrim, and the Stormcloaks who are trying to reclaim their homeland.
There are of course many other quests and things to do in Skyrim, like joining any or all of the 4 guilds: The Companions (Fighter's Guild), the College of Winterhold (Mages Guild), the Thieves Guild, or the infamous Dark Brotherhood (assassins). You can also aim to become Thane of the major cities, a mostly honorary title that simply involves helping out the townsfolk and owning a home. And then there are the literally infinite number of miscellaneous and radiant quests you can pick up, which are usually more simple quests (kill a bandit leader, slay a dragon, etc.) that lead you to areas of the map you might not have explored yet. It's a big game, with no shortage of things to find or do, just like its predecessors (though even more so as you can get endless amounts of quests).
There are, however, many things which make Skyrim much different from its predecessors. The first is combat. This time around you can dual-wield weapons, spells, or both for a giant variety in how to approach each encounter. It rewards experimentation, but also allows for you to face any fight in the way that simply feels right to you. Enjoy just rushing in and hitting everything that moves? Two handed weapons. Prefer more strategic fights? Switch up between holding a shield and sword and maybe toss some spells. It's a very fluid system (with fun Fallout 3 style finishing moves thrown in) that provides a great deal of versatility and replayability.
The second, and my vastly favorite improvement, is the leveling system. In the previous titles the idea behind leveling was that you would get better at the skills you used, and those in turn would help you level your basic stats like Strength, Dexterity, etc. However, it really failed in practice simply because the way the math worked you had to be really careful which skills you increased during each level if you wanted to maximize your results. This was especially disastrous in Oblivion as the enemies leveled with you, so if you weren't managing your leveling well, suddenly you were facing normal bandits wearing glass armor and weren't really prepared for that. In Skyrim, however, they simply did away with attributes altogether. And the amazing thing is, by throwing away what has been such a staple of most RPGs for years and years, it actually accomplished what the series has been trying to accomplish all these years. You get better at the skills you use, you can use perks to add bonuses to those skills, and it's all amazingly intuitive and easy to manage. You stop worrying about what you're doing and just play how you want to play, and you're rewarded for playing that way.
However, there are definitely some changes I'm not happy about. Spellcrafting is gone. I understand it broke a good deal of the previous games (especially the well loved levitation spell in Morrowind), but not being able to make my flamethrower hands more powerful except with perks is a little frustrating. Skyrim is a game that begs you to experiment with it, and so to not provide it with the spells makes me sad. Another change seems to be a drastic reduction in enemy types. Going by the wikis, there are about 30 different types in Skyrim while there are 46 in Oblivion and 49 in Morrowind. Most of the time in Skyrim you will either be battling a wolf, a bear, a bandit/vampire, or a draugr (undead). Less often but still frequent are spiders, trolls, and dragons. It just felt really repetitive. In a game where you're expecting people to log hundreds of hours of time in a game world, you'd think you'd want a greater variety of enemies, not drastically fewer. You would also want more region-specific enemies than "snow" and "not snow". There are like 9 different climates in this game. More than the flowers should change.
Another enemy gripe I have is actually one of the selling points of the game: dragons. They were made out to be these epic battles between man and beast where each dragon reacted differently to the location and situation. In reality, each dragon fight plays out exactly the same. It spams you with either fire or ice breath from the sky, then when you hurt it enough with ranged attacks or when it lands you run up and hack away at it until it falls. Sure, the first time you do it it feels pretty epic, having to run around and try to lure the dragon to the ground, escape its breath, and dodge its bites and tail swipes at you. But that's the first time. Second time, still feels pretty epic, but it plays out the same way. By the third time, I was looking for something different to happen. By the fourth, I was a little bored. And from the fifth onward the only reason I would fight a dragon would be if I had to either from a quest or from it randomly attacking. It became a chore instead of an epic experience, and fighting a dragon should never seem like a chore. There are, I think, two reasons it devolved. One, each dragon fights the same. You'll come across several different types and levels of dragons, some more challenging than the others, but each one goes through the same exact pattern. Two, there are simply too many, which ties into the shouting system.
I love the shouts. I think they're a lot of fun. Each one is essentially a power that lets you do things like breathe fire, or slow time, or disarm foes, and each shout has three words of power associated with it which can be discovered through various "word walls" scattered around the map. There are 20 shouts in all, some of which are simply given to you through the main quest, but for all the others once you learn the word from the word wall you need to spend a dragon soul (collected by beating a dragon) to actually use it. So say that you learn 4 shouts from the story that you don't need to spend souls on (I think it's 4...), that leaves you with 48 dragons you need to kill to fully level up your shouts. Even if I'm remembering incorrectly and give some allowance, you have to kill at least 40 dragons. Even if you don't care about leveling up your shouts, the point is they had that in mind when designing how many dragons to put in the game, so you'll be seeing a fair share whether you want to or not. So if you're hopping into Skyrim for the dragons, be forewarned, they're really not as cool as they should be simply because it seems like they're treated as just another type of creature inhabiting these lands and not the epic mini-boss battles they were made out to be. In fact, by treating all dragons the same, even the final boss (a dragon) comes across as just another dragon battle where you just hack away until it dies.
The main stories in general suffered a bit in this game. While the dragon storyline has some interesting history and twists in it, the final battle kind of ruins it all (though the awesome scene after helps). And as for the civil war, forget any interesting politics or policies, you choose a side, capture a couple forts for that side by defeating a certain number of random troops that continually spawn until you win, and then capture the opponent's main city in the same way and force them to surrender. Add to that that both sides are basically assholes with little reason to choose their side but plenty of reason to fight against them and you get a storyline with little to no investment in the outcome, especially because the big determinant of the war (how Skyrim will fare against the elven Aldmeri Dominion) won't be addressed until some future point (one would assume in DLC). It basically boils down to "Hooray we won!" and no answer to the question of "Now what?"
"But Zach," you may be thinking, "if you hated the main storylines and the dragons, which is what the game is essentially sold on, how can you still call it one of the best games ever made?" The answer is simple. In Skyrim, it's all in the details.
The laurels of this game essentially rest on all the extra stuff around. What about all those handcrafted dungeons? Well...most of them unfortunately still look pretty similar to each other. The good news, however, is that the ones they decided would matter to the story or other big quests (read: the ones they paid attention to and didn't just crap out in 5 minutes) are AMAZING and tons of fun to explore. How about radiant questing? Wish there was more variety than "Kill bandit leader/dragon/giant at [insert location here]" but it does its job to facilitate you exploring new regions and finding new and interesting things. And as for all those new and interesting things scattered throughout the world? Main reason for playing this game. They obviously spent the greatest amount of their time simply fleshing out the world environment and adding all sorts of hidden treasures around. I spent probably around 100 hours with my first character and I still didn't discover every location. Mind you I didn't specifically try to, but there was so much else to occupy my time I didn't have to either. Despite the fact that Skyrim is technically smaller in landmass than Oblivion, it feels much much larger because more care went into crafting it.
I know this is a long review, with a lot to take in, and there's still a great deal I didn't cover, so I'll try to sum up here:
The Good:
-The world is very well crafted, as are the dungeons they actually spent time on.
-Tons of new things to discover/explore
-It all just looks so...damn...pretty
-Combat is versatile, with no wrong way to play
-The guild quests (especially the Dark Brotherhood) are tons of fun
-The leveling system is the best and most accessible it has ever been.
-100 hours will fly by and you'll still have more to do
-Despite the fact that there isn't any spellcrafting, spells are still a ton of fun to play with. I literally giggled with delight when I got a spell that summoned an exploding dog made of fire.
The meh:
-Radiant questing is repetitive but serves the goal of getting you to explore
-Fast travel is useful to have, but gets too easy to just skip to your goal and focus on the arrow on your compass instead of the world around you
-Enchanting, smithing and alchemy. Just kind of blah. Wish there were more interesting effects.
-Perks. Sure they make you better, but there's nothing that interesting to them besides one where you can behead people with a power attack. Wish they had included some perks for fun like in Fallout.
-The dragon storyline. There are some fun twists and turns and interesting history behind it, but the final battle being the same as all your other dragon battles kind of ruins it.
-Shouts. There are too many to know what to do with (especially as using one requires a recharge time before you can use another), but most of them are really fun to use.
-The Guardian Stones scattered around the map provide some neat abilities that can vary up how you play, but some are obviously much better than the others and you'll probably find yourself sticking to only one or two.
The bad:
-The civil war storyline. Boring from both sides (haven't finished the Imperial side yet, but for the most part it has been the exact same as the Stormcloaks side), especially because each side only has one good reason to fight for them but plenty of reasons to fight against them.
-Followers. Useful as mules, but their highly repetitive dialogue, tendency to step in front of your sword swing, and inability to follow you over an edge can make them major annoyances.
-Dragons. Epic the first time, boring the rest since they all fight exactly the same way and you will encounter a lot of them. They become annoyances and chores to fight instead of epic enemies.
-Fights in general can get pretty repetitive and boring as there are much fewer enemy types this time around.
-No spellcrafting. Grr.
-Every potion weighs .5, instead of the scaled weights they've had previously where the weight depended on the ingredients used to make it. This makes carrying a wide variety of potions as I like to do much more unfeasible.
Overall this may sound like a fairly negative review, which honestly I kind of wanted to slant it towards as it's all to easy to come from playing this game and simply say "OH MY GOD IT'S JUST SO AWESOME." To me, without a doubt it is the best Elder Scrolls game, and one of the best games ever made. That doesn't mean it doesn't still have its problems, but to be honest, a good deal of the problems I have will probably be adjusted or fixed with mods once the Creation Kit is released. Oh, and this is all not to mention the fact that it appears the entire continent of Tamriel has been built into this game, which means the modders (if not Bethesda themselves) can start incorporating both Oblivion and Morrowind into this game, as well as all the other countries that haven't yet been explored. Which means this game will never end. And frankly, I'm okay with that. If they would've tried the same thing with Oblivion, I don't know if I would've been as happy simply because to me Skyrim fixes the one thing I've always had trouble with, and that is the leveling system. So who knows, maybe we'll finally get what Elder Scrolls fans have always dreamed of...an entire continent to roam.
Until then, I'm more than happy to stay in Skyrim and explore every last nook and cranny.
Skyrim gets a 10/10.
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