How Engaging Exactly is Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for Xbox Is?

One might assume that deeply personal and captivating single-player experiences are dying out. It’s easy to think this way when we live in a world saturated with first-person Xbox games about shooting where campaigns continue to grow shorter and have superficial multiplayer tacked-on as a crutch in an attempt to elongate or cling to relevance. Well, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is here to take a stand and let the gaming world know that amazing single-player experiences are still here and very-much alive. This stand begins surprisingly with a lot remaining the same since the gates of Oblivion were closed. Much like its predecessors, you can still look through every nook and cranny, you still have a gigantic world to explore, horses are still all-terrain vehicles and you still kill enemies and strip them down to their unmentionables.

But for how much that has remained, even more has changed; most notably with character creation and customization. As in Oblivion, there are still the traditional Elder Scrolls races of Argonian, Nord, Dark Elf, and so on. The difference being that during character creation is that you no longer choose from primary and secondary skill attributes or a birth sign. Now, that might sound like it’s missing all the character customization and RPG elements you care about; but it’s not.

Those elements are still in the Xbox game, they’ve just been changed a bit. Like birth signs for example, are placed around the open-world on stone obelisks; one can be activated at a time for specific beneficial effects, or some birth signs from previous Elder Scrolls can simply be found in the skill trees as a perk. Perks points are distributed to benefit specific disciplines; like improving weapon damage or lowering the cost to cast spells. Perks have also made previously broken or intangible gameplay styles either much more fun or impressively realized. Like the ability to take a breath to slowdown time and zoom-in with a bow or huge damage multiplayer for daggers; making the previously mundane weapon-type extremely lethal. To acquire perk points you have to level up.
As is accustomed in the Elder Scrolls franchise, level increases come with practicing and honing abilities through their usage, not with experience points. So, if you want to be a great blacksmith, then go hit the forges.

You want to have crazy lightning spells, and then get all Darth Hideous on some faces. Just as in real life you get better at stuff the more you do it. Now more than ever, with the use of the vastly improved dual-wielding system, you can hone multiple skills simultaneously. The system allows a weapon to be clenched in each fist or a healing spell in one hand while frost flies from the other. The play-styles and character customization are very malleable which really pronounces the attitude The Elder Scrolls series hasalways tried to express, which the idea of open-endedness is.

The ideals of being an open-ended experience don’t stop at character customization and combat, your gaming freedoms are also ingrained in the very way you go about taking your created character through the land of Skyrim to reveal the legend of the Dragon born. The legend, of which, is tied directly into that combat and adventuring. In Skyrim, you are the Dragon born; the mortal with the blood of dragons who is able to kill the great winged serpents and absorb their souls to perform powerful shouts. These shouts do more than just tie into the story however. As they’re obtained, shouts allow a range of new abilities like spanning gaps previously inaccessible or tearing dragons down from the sky. With the way shouts become part of the adventure in addition to gameplay; this is easily Bethesda’s best main storyline to date; making the narrative feel fully realized and less of an afterthought. Really, all the content in general is superior to previous entries; could seriously write a review for every major story arch in the Xbox game. Like, the Thieves’ Guild, the Dark Brotherhood, the Mage’s College, the many different Demi-God quests with the Daedric Princes, the school for the Bards or the Civil War brewing over religious suppression; Skyrim is simply a lively nation filled with substance and a countless amount of fruitful endeavors to become part of in a beautiful land to do it. Throughout Skyrim’s entirety, developer Bethesda has really found a harmony of design choices that all coalesce into a single, united identity of gameplay, art and execution.

From the way the main story is filled with metaphor of how powerful speech and language can be which is then tied into the gameplay through shouts as the dragon born shapes the nation of Skyrim with a powerful voice, to the beautifully foreign structures of a Gothic and Viking stylization that populate the landscapes, to the very way the music meshes with harmonious harp strings that are complimented by a primal Viking choir; every aspect of Skyrim brings all its ideas and intentions together to create an individual experience that becomes the player’s unique world. Simply put: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is one of the greatest single-player role-playing games ever created. You shouldn’t miss it.