Prepare to lose track of time once again. Chris Capel’s the guy shouting at dragons

I’ve got a confession to make: I loved the last two Fallout games, but Oblivion bored me to tears. While the Capital Wasteland and Mojave Desert held an interesting and unique universe, Tamriel just seemed like clichéd fantasy to me. I spent hours desperately trying to like it and at the end I felt I was wasting my game time. Therefore I feel I’m the perfect man to check out Skyrim. If you loved Oblivion you’re going to love this even more – but what if you wanted to like it but couldn’t? I am the type of person Bethesda has to convince.
 

My, what big eyes you have...

We begin as all great adventures do – by carefully moulding our face, picking a name and deciding whether we want to be a tiger or not. I quickly skipped all this to get to Skyrim itself. Quite foolishly some people spent ages on this character creation screen, so much so that the nice Bethesda reps had to point out that their game time was limited so they better hurry up and get to the actual game. The creator seems even more comprehensive and time-devouring than Oblivion’s, so I’ll be having lots of fun with that. Y’know, if the game convinces me to buy it.

The game starts as all Elder Scrolls games start – with you as a prisoner. Unlike the last game however I wasn’t given any plot details, particular quests or any way of escape involving a captain of the Enterprise. Luckily for me however I appeared to have been locked away in the most incompetent prison in Tamriel, as despite a very sturdy locked door the back of my cell has a huge hole in it. I headed out through my convenient escape tunnel (Andy Defresne is so jealous of me right now) into the snowy realm of Skyrim.

Wow. While the general texturing might be showing off the 360’s age a bit, Bethesda have focused on making their game look better than Oblivion the only way they conceivably could have – through huge, jaw-dropping vistas. The ‘wow’ factor upon stepping out into one of Bethesda’s worlds gets better every game, but I don’t know how they’re going to improve on this. A wide sweeping valley with snow-topped mountains, ancient towering architecture created by a long-forgotten people, a river running through the bottom of the valley, towers and villages in the distance… if one phrase sums up Bethesda’s games, “spoiled for choice” comes to mind.



I actually had two playthroughs, for one single decision: left or right. Left first, towards a nice abandoned bandit camp. I stripped a nice tapestry of any usable materials (why? Because I could), pilfered a nice axe, and tried the new lockpicking minigame on their ill-guarded treasure chest. Well, I say “new”, it’s actually the Fallout lockpicking method, involving moving the left stick to ‘aim’ the pick and the right stick to apply force. A successful pick later I’d gained a nice new fire-resistant shield… which I quickly had to equip as I was set upon by the bandits returning to their camp, who understandably weren’t too pleased to see me.

I simply can’t remember the combat being this fun in Oblivion, even though it seems to control in a similar way (especially with a sword and shield). It’s still hacking, blocking, slashing and backing off. It took me a little while to work out how to make weapons ‘favourites’ for quick selection – you simply press ‘Y’ on a weapon in the menu to make it a Favourite, then you can cycle between them by pressing the D-Pad. Hopefully PC gamers will still be able to assign weapons to the number keys like in Fallout, but this is definitely handy. And definitely fun.
 

Off into the snowy mountains I went!

Doing a bit of a wander I found several people on my travels, some friendly, some not. I don’t know how indicative this demo will be of the final game, but I never went long without something of interest happening. Good. I discovered an interesting ruined tower on my travels, which turned out to contain a treasure chest... and a powerful Spriggan who attacked me with nature-based magic. Fight wood with fire, that’s my motto, so I changed my shield for some destructive magic. It seemed to work fine, then I remembered that I could use the same spell in two hands for double the power, so I did that and created a massive flamethrower that torched the Spriggan - and drained my Magicka quickly. It died just in time, and some lovely herbs were mine. Yay.

There was a town nearby so I ventured in. The character models and animation have taken a vast, vast step forward from the lifeless mannequins of before. These people look actually believable. However, I did notice a chicken that seemed lifeless, so I decided to cook him with my fire. It turned out she’d simply got stuck, and the village guards don’t take kindly to strangers roasting other people’s poultry round this parts. Still, at least the guards are not going to be psychic this time. Blasting a chicken with fiery death in the middle of the town in front of several guards doesn’t require them to be though.

Right, second playthrough, let’s go right into the lovely valley. I tried to cook the fish jumping the creek but couldn’t quite manage it, but I did find an inviting cave filled with bandits. However, I’m sad to report one of the things I didn’t like about Oblivion raised its head. You see, in both Fallouts every single location you find has some sort of story to uncover. This was just a nice cave with some bandits and a bit of loot, and nothing else, which may be fine for a lot of people but that utterly bores me. I don’t want loot (unless it’s really really special), I want to find out more about the world I’m exploring. That’s what makes finding locations interesting for me, why I prefer Fallout 3/New Vegas to Oblivion and why I got bored of the last Elder Scrolls game. Hopefully this will improve in the final game.

After killing a few more powerful bandits in a desperate fight to the death my time was up, and I really don’t know what to think. The world seems more interesting than Cyrodiil (less typical fantasy and more Beowulf-y), and it’s certainly more beautiful despite the aging 360 hardware. Combat is improved, the inventory system is easy to navigate, and levelling up seems to be much more intuitive now. Oh, and people actually look like people now, which is a huge plus.
 

I think you have something in your eye...

However, I’m worried Skyrim will still fall into a few of the traps that put me off Oblivion. Until I get stuck into the story and game proper I won’t know for sure. I think I’ll be getting it, and truth be told I am excited for it, but I still need some convincing to love it like so many people certainly will. That part’s up to you, Bethesda.

Most Anticipated Feature: If I said anything other than ‘using incredibly powerful magic spells to fight huge dragons’ would you believe me? Exploring every inch of Skyrim is close second.