Playing Oblivion, I marvelled at its pile of systems on systems, set loose to let stories emerge unexpectedly. Your place in the world is a complicated calculation drawing on all your actions and characteristics, from people’s attitudes through to the exact prices they’ll charge you. I also talked about the chances it offered to reward patience and contemplation, the tranquil breaks of its slow journeys where the game happens on the way to other plans.
Skyrim has all of the same things too. Its main quest tips the balance, though, towards the latter. Even as it starts off with a thwarted execution and a dragon attack, it shows a greater confidence in leaving things up to the player. It’s built around a more imposing and remote setting, wowing less with bustling cities and more with its sheer scale. A big empty land makes for all the more moments of quiet beauty. It builds on that with an understanding of stillness to match Red Dead Redemption’s.
Within the first few missions, you fight a dragon, and you climb a lot of stairs. The dragon is impressive, and leaping out of the way of its bursts of flame feels appropriately dicey. The stairs, though, are the more dramatic part. It’s just a lot of stairs in the snow, but talked up in dialogue as the seven thousand steps, and given the room to breathe, it acquires just the right kind of epic heft. The ending to that is a fairly familiar set of plotting, essentially getting inducted as a Jedi as step one in a chosen one prophecy. The recognition of what can be done with the journey, the commitment to less being more, feels more new.
Not to say that it’s all epic. You can deal with just as many petty concerns (and petty objects) as ever. When you’re sent on a treasure hunt it comes over all Uncharted with journals to read clues from and stones to move to match symbols, but unpredictable human interaction is still at the centre. Rescue a guy from a giant spider and he mocks you as a fool before running away. “Why should I share the treasure with anyone?”. Venture further in and you happen upon his corpse, treasure helpfully included.
Skyrim integrates its different parts and moods better than ever. Moving away from Oblivion’s separate dungeon dimensions is an indicative choice, allowing the epic and mundane to more happily occupy the same space (and presumably make it hit a bit harder once you do eventually leave the normal plane). The bits I’ve seen so far are, I dare say, not sufficient to show me the totality of why people love Skyrim. The fact that so many do has helped create a situation where I have my pick of formats to get to know it better on, its rereleases showing no sign of slowing down. I expect other things to emerge. I haven’t climbed much of the mountain (albeit more than 42% of players) but I can already see the appeal of its sights.
Top of the charts for week ending 10 December 2011:
Top of the charts for week ending 17 December 2011:
