It's been a while since my last post. Nearly a month, in fact. I've spent most of the last several weeks, sadly, playing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Why do I say "sadly"? I'll get to that.
I have only a passing familiarity of the Elder Scrolls series prior to this year's Skyrim. I briefly played Morrowind on the original XBox console, and finding it tedious, I tucked the disc away in a drawer and promptly forgot I ever I owned the damned thing.
The next game in the series, Oblivion, which, much to my chagrin, was not a videogame adaptation of Phantasm: OblIVion, was released before I owned an XBox 360, and I never had a burning desire to pick it up after I joined the next generation of console gamers.
I finally caved and picked up Skyrim because a) I am a sucker for pseudo-viking Scandinavian stuff, and b) I was desperate for a solid RPG experience, since Dragon Age II was such a letdown, and Mass Effect 3 doesn't come out until March.
I'm very selective when it comes to videogames. I used to be much more accepting when I was a younger lad. I'd play just about anything once, as an excuse to pass the time over a long weekend. After high school, and the death of the Sega Dreamcast, I nearly stopped playing games. I eventually picked up a Nintendo Gamecube, but I focused almost entirely on Super Smash Bros. Melee, because it was a fun way to waste a few hours at a time with my pals, mercilessly beating the crap out of each other while we listened to Audioslave and Queens Of The Stone Age albums.
In time, I owned an XBox, and fell in love with Bioware's Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic. This was the kind of RPG I had been waiting for. The sense of freedom, the engaging story, and the endearing characters were a revelation for me. This game blew me away. And it ruined me for most other games.
I could never go back to JRPGs. I could no longer connect to them. I had no affection for action games, or stealth titles. Car combat was yesterday's news. Basically, at this point the only video games that I would even consider playing were new titles from Bioware and Rockstar. And aside from the odd Fable sequel (a franchise with "diminishing returns" written all over it) or the now-defunct Rock Band franchise, this still holds true. I'm not much of a gamer, honestly. My interest lies primarily in a very narrow cross-section of a vast and ever-expanding medium. And I'm happy with that.
So why did I use the word "sadly" regarding my recent exposure to the time-sink that is The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim? Considering I've spent over 70 hours playing the game, I obviously can't say I hate it. If it didn't work for me, Skyrim would have joined its predecessor in that long-forgotten drawer of broken dreams weeks ago.
No, I suppose my sadness lies in the game's narrative, or rather, lack thereof. I've had a lot of fun dungeon-crawling, setting fire to camps full of unsuspecting bandits with my smoldering hands, and slaying dragons with a glowing mace forged by a terrifying devil-prince from another dimension, but there's no real emotional connection there.
Any companion you convince to accompany you on your vague quests never grows as a character. You never learn anything about these people. Sure, you can marry various people throughout the massive world the game provides, but even that is inherently hollow. You don't get to know your future spouse. You wear a special necklace, ask them to marry to you, then she moves into your house and spouts the same three lines of dialogue every time you interact with her. Do you understand? No connection.
There are no real dialogue choices in conversations with the myriad NPCs, aside from the odd "persuade" and "intimidate" options, which add nothing of note. It's highly disappointing, and creates a barrier for me, preventing me from really engaging with the game on an emotional level higher than the pure visceral thrill of shouting your enemy thirty feet into the air, sending him careening down the side of a mountain. Which is fun, to be sure, just not ultimately fulfilling.
As for the game's story? You're supposed to be a prophesied hero of legend, fated to engage in mortal combat with Alduin, the terrible devourer of worlds, to save the world from ultimate ruin. But because of the almost insane amount of things to do in the game, from numerous long and varied sidequests, to the ability to spend hours and hours working as a blacksmith or an enchanter or a lockpicking master thief, the sense of urgency that should exist in the main quest simply isn't there. For pity's sake, one NPC tasked me with traveling the world and picking flowers for her. That's just too much for me.
I played two missions in the main quest line before I decided to explore the landscape a bit. After getting sidetracked for 40 fucking hours wandering the world of Skyrim, involving myself in various guilds and whatnot, when I finally returned to the main quest line out of sheer boredom, I burned through the actual meat of the story in three hours. Three hours. That's shocking.
And I felt no sense of accomplishment when all was said and done. Alduin was dead. I was the ultimate badass. And I didn't care. It all felt so hollow. At no point during my lengthy playthrough of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was I ever engaged in the story or characters. Now that I'm on the other side of this, I actually regret spending so much time playing this game. That is why I use the word "sadly".
It's my fault for playing, though. Nobody twisted my arm. I subjected myself to this willingly. So I'm the idiot. But I doubt I'll be playing any further chapters in the Elder Scrolls saga. Despite my problems with Dragon Age II, I still cared about the story. I was invested in the characters. I wanted to reach the end. And I don't regret playing it in the slightest. So Dragon Age II wins.
When I decided to log on and grace my dwindling readership with a new blog entry, I know I didn't intend to use said blog entry to rant about a video game. I had a point, but that will have to wait for the next entry, where I will begin my required holiday-themed drivel. That will be later today, so stay tuned. Or not.
Either way, I'll be here, silently weeping.
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