You start in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on a prison wagon, quickly you learn that you are a prisoner and you are heading to your execution for your involvement with the stormcloaks. The stormcloaks is a rebel group fighting against the imperial army, Ulfric Stormcloak the leader of the stormcloaks is with you on the prison wagon. Upon reaching your destination after taking a ride through some beautiful scenery you enter Halgen.
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| Skyrim Opening. |
After you get out of the prison wagon you enter your character customization screen. Normally I wouldn't consider character customization part of the story but it is so expansive and even what race you pick influences whether someone might love you or tell you to go shove it. In character customization you pick between 10 races; Argonian, Breton, Dark Elf, High Elf, Imperial, Kahjiit, Nord, Orc, Reguard, Woodelf. You will not have a problem creating a decent looking character and they even have presets to make your life that much easier.
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| Character customization menu. |
The world of Skyrim is a world filled with prejudice from being a mage to even what race you pick will influence what happens to you, what people think of you and alike. For example, when I went to the college, (which I will hit on more later) I was talking to the other students and there was one that was disappointed I was not a Nord. Nords inherently don't dabble in magic much because they have a very strong physique so they are much more suited to bludgeoning helpless people to death.
Around Skyrim you will find many books these books will expand the lore, teach you things, or can even just be funny story's, there are hundreds maybe thousands of these books laying around everywhere, you can find them from robbing a library or even on guy torn to shreds by wraiths in deep dark dungeons.
To continue after you escape your execution (due to intervention by a huge dragon burning the guards to pieces), you start running around the city trying to escape the dragon as it rips people apart eats them and burns them to death, eventually you meet up with a guard from earlier who cuts your bindings lose so you can work together to escape through a underground tunnel.
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| Dragon attacking Helgen. |
After you escape the clutches of the dragon you find yourself in a small town of Riverwood being helped by the guard's relative a blacksmith, (this is assuming you went with the Imperial instead of the stormcloak.) the blacksmith wants you to send for help due to the dragon that just raped a entire city in a couple minutes. Of course how can you decline when the blacksmith gives you everything in his inventory and most things in his house for free.
A hop and a skip later (more like a marathon run later) and you are at the modest town of Whiterun, where you do a few jobs for the Jarl and then you learn a dragon is attacking a watchtower nearby. Upon reaching the watchtower to lend assistance you face a epic battle with a giant flying dragon *starts humming Mission Impossible theme song*. After you finally manage to slay the dragon through a long grueling epic battle, strangely enough your body starts to absorb the dragon's soul into you, where you learn you are a Dragonborn.
Dragonborn are people who control, "The Voice" which is basically speaking in the language of the dragon. There hasn't been a dragon in ages so the fact that there is a Dragonborn is a amazing thing and people will often vocalize their amazement, over and over, till you start wanting to stab them violently to death.
From here on out you must learn to master your gift and discover your destiny, I won't ruin anymore of the story, but just let me tell you now, you'd much rather experience this story then hear about it on my blog.
Focusing on the combat of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The combat is fairly well done you can use your left and right hand whether you have a spell in it a sword or a shield all you have to do is press it, holding down the button will usually opt for a more powerful attack at the cost of speed and stamina, as well as pressing down both attack buttons at once will usually attack with both weapons or both spells at once.
When you cast 2 spells at once if you have the talent to dualcast in that school of magic they will combine and create a even more powerful spell, however this is only possible with 2 of the same spells, for instance Fireball and Fireball. If you take Shock and Flames however they will not combine but this can still be just as effective, since you can combine varying effects to give yourself a edge.
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| Dualcasting the Flames spell. |
But whether you choose to use spells, swords, daggers, or even bows you will always have shouts which work as sort of a pseudo magic, the effects range from pushing everything back, to slowing time, to even calling down a dragon to rip your foes apart. In total there is 20 shouts scattered throughout the world to find on walls, and ontop of that each shout has 3 levels of power, or 3 words. You are not required to use the highest level of a shout but if you do you will suffer a long cooldown time but there is nothing more satisfying then being at the end of the line only to come back by completely devastating your enemies with a shout.
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| Flame Breath Shout. |
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| Destruction Tree. |
Depending on which way you decide to play you can go to 1 of 4 organizations to help improve your character. The College of Winterhold helps you improve and hone your skills as a Mage, The Dark Brotherhood will help you hone your skills as a assassin, The Companions will help you improve as a warrior, and last The Thieves Guild will help you in all your dastardly deeds. Of course you could choose to go do all of them, but if you are a warrior that uses heavy armor it may be a bit difficult to sneak around to accomplish the Thieves Guild's goals.
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| At the College of Winterhold. |
Each of these organizations gives you a extensive storyline where you can improve your armor, skills, weapons, these side storylines will take a large amount of time to complete so they aren't something you will just walk into and complete in a a hour or two you will really have to be committed to growing your character if you want to finish them. Also at the end of these you will have the option to complete randomly generated quest to get money, or just for entertainment, there is a infinite amount of these quest which makes for amazing replayability.
As you kill dragons you will absorb their souls which allows you to use the souls to unlock the words of shouts you've learned from walls. Though that isn't the only benefit of killing dragons they also give you a lot of money, if you keep killing them sometimes to the point of where you may have to much money and can't find anyone who has any money to sell your dragon parts to. You could also use these dragon parts to forge dragon armor if you plan to level up your smithing.
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| Absorbing a Dragon soul. |
There is also things called Guardian Stones located around the map 13 of them I believe, each will give you a special effect, some will improve the rate at which you learn mage skills or warrior skills, while others will help you carry more junk, some will even give you the power to bring the dead back to life, while others just help absorb damage so you don't become the dead but you can only have 1 active so you will have to choose wisely.
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| Thief Guardian Stone. |
Unfortunately I couldn't help but feel there was a few things off with the combat, such as the companion AI, they will generally run right in front of your spells without any regard for their own lives, Sometimes they aren't even there entirely other times they randomly pop up out of nowhere, among other annoyances. Also the spells I couldn't help but feel were a tad overpowered, with healing it was basically impossible to die unless I got 1 hit killed.
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| Headless Character. |
There is also the bugs, sometimes you will fall through floors, get stuck in doors, see things randomly flying into outer space for no apparent reason, and the things with the companions, sometimes you get stuck in really difficult dungeons with no way out except you fight through. These things can be annoying at times, but they don't really make the game unplayable or anything, a certain amount of bugs is excepted in such a vast open world though, and will probably be fixed overtime.
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| Hammer floating into the sky for whatever reason. |
But even after the combat the world is just so expansive there is so much to do, you can go crafting pick up alchemy, or blacksmithing, even enchanting, turn raw materials into profit but hunting elk then turning their hide into usable leather. The crafting system is fairly expansive and you can discover a lot of recipes even after that, there is even a crafting tree in the constellations you can level up to get better results from blacksmithing or whatever trade you are doing. If you want the best armor in the game you will really have to make it though, leveling up smithing and enchanting, you can create some amazing armor and weapons.
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| Crafting Armor. |
With alchemy you can discover potions and certain uses for herbs by mixing and matching herbs testing out possible combinations to create interesting effects. If you choose you can even eat one of the herbs to discover some of the herb's attributes, assuming it doesn't kill you first. With blacksmithing you take yourself through the crafting process as you take raw ore, smelt it to a bar, then craft it into a weapon, then you can even use the grinding stone or worktable to upgrade them further.
But if you wish you can just roam around the map, the world you see from afar is not a backdrop anyplace you see you can travel to if you wish, there is so much to see and explore, there is hundreds of dungeons, thousands of quest untop of infinitely generated side quest, there is hundreds of hours of game play available to you and that is before mods. I could sit here and talk about it all day long and how great it is but really you should just go buy it, because I would really recommend this game to anyone even if they aren't a fan of RPGs I think this the game to start getting into them.
Story - 10.0
Excellent story, keeps you involved and wanting more.
Gameplay - 9.0
Great gameplay, though overpowered magic and bugs felt like it held it back.
Graphics - 9.5
Amazing graphics, though sometimes there is some awkward animations and graphical glitches.
Audio - 10.0
Beautiful soundtrack, Most times you won't even notice it since blends with the game so well.
Replayability - 9.5
While near infinite replayability, I felt myself not really wanting to restart since I put so much time into my character.
Overall - 9.6
