At My Limit: Skyrim is Overrated

Over the past year, I have created 7 characters, completed the Dark Brotherhood quest line 3 times, the College of Winterhold once, and the other guilds twice. I finally got around to playing the main quest line just recently. I have over 300 hours logged on this game. Over the past year, I realized something, Skyrim is overrated.

The Pros

Skyrim is fun. It has a good size free roam fantasy sandbox to explore and a good number of dungeons to delve into. You get to play a legendary hero, that you create for yourself. The graphics are significantly better than the previous games, and its nice to have actual talent trees to upgrade your character with instead of just leveling up a skill till you get a static bonus like in Morrowind and Oblivion. The combat system is greatly improved from the previous games, as is the interface. Another nice feature is the new companion system, where you can actually have a non-player character follow you around while you quest. And dragons, who doesn't want to slay dragons? 

The Cons

Lets face it, Skyrim doesn't really give much to hold onto after the first 50 hours of gameplay. Is that a bad thing? No, most single player games are lucky to get 50 hours of gameplay out of me. But Skyrim's predecessors have lasted me 100+ hours before reaching boredom. Why did I spend 300+ hours on skyrim then, do you ask? Well, I really tricked myself into liking it. I sat there eating up every dungeon, quest, random encounter, and conversation, till I realized that there really wasn't that much to the game. But let's talk about what's really missing from the game.

First up, is Magic. There really aren't a lot of magic spells in the game. In fact, most of the time, there's just a specific spell for each element every spell level. And the utility spells are few and far between, and most of them are useless save for a few laughs. Where did all the fun spells go? Oblivion had a lot more spells than this. Morrowind even gave you spells to fly!

Now lets talk about the quests. Most of the quests lack an overall sense of grandeur. The main quest line can be finished in under 10 hours. Most of the guilds take less than 10 hours to complete. All of the quest lines sort of fizzle out at the end. You have this epic sense of build up, and then after you finish it you're left with a sense of "that's it?". Even the various side quests and quests for the Daedric artifacts are really bland. Questing in Skyrim feels like playing World of Warcraft, alone, in a closed in world.

The game also tends to be fairly buggy. Quests that can't be completed because the conversation option that triggers the next step disappears. People that follow you around constantly triggering conversations. Dragon bones falling randomly out of the sky and blocking important areas. Items or corpses that fall through surroundings. Graphics randomly disappearing allowing you to see through areas. And upon its release there were massive save state glitches where it would delete your saves randomly.

Skyrim feels like it was dumbed down to meet the needs of a broader audience. But really, since when did "fantasy sandbox role playing game" become a genre that new gamers got into every day. Where are the diseases? I get bit by a ravenous rat and I'm absolutely fine? If you wanted to dumb the game down, why not add in a "hardcore mode" like in Fallout New Vegas, for those who wanted more challenge? I still like Skyrim, but the game is really overrated, and it bothers me. Hopefully the next Elder Scrolls game will put a little more meat on its bones.

Why is this post so short? Why was there no review this week? Well, to put it simply, tis the holiday season. And I've been very busy. Next week everything will be back on schedule. Thanks for listening to my somewhat shorter rant on Skyrim, hope you enjoyed.