Skyrim

In the less than 3 weeks since it's launch, I've played far more of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim than is healthy or wise -- especially considering I'm technically still a graduate student with projects and research to work on. I'm level 40, deal 30x damage with daggers when I sneak attack, and can warp the mind of anybody I feel like. Obviously, this says something something about the overall quality of the game.

I like the improved design of the world, which feels sprawling and real and waiting to be explored in a way that Oblivion and even Morrowind didn't. This is especially true in the case of caves and dungeons, which feel much more intentionally designed instead of assembled piecemeal -- which, in turn, makes it a lot harder to resist heading towards every little landmark that pops up while wandering the countryside. I like the mechanical tweaks in terms of leveling, especially the perk tree borrowed and enhanced from Fallout 3. I like the new deathblow animations and heft they add to the otherwise traditionally floaty combat.

What I don't like is the strange way that this otherwise very open game suddenly foists an unreasonable amount of structure on you as soon as you begin a quest line.

By and large, Elder Scrolls games leave you free to pursue them however you like. You can join factions, become the champion of cities, or act as an unattached wanderer picking up odd jobs as you see fit. You can approach missions and jobs whatever way you like -- sneaking around, befuddling enemies, and stabbing them in the back; launching off explosions; and quaffing strength enhancing potions before crashing the gates with your broadsword are just a handful of options.

What you're not allowed to do, though, is make any sort of impact on the gameworld beyond activating the specific series of flags that the developers put in place.

For example (spoilers, obviously):

I joined the Thieves' Guild because, well, that's just something that I always do. I discovered pretty quickly that, in Skyrim, the Thieves' Guild regularly acted as pawns for Maven Blackbriar, a local noblewoman who had the connections to keep them out of trouble. I didn't like this. Not one bit. I actively messed up the first job I was sent on for her, burning down more beehives than I was supposed to, in the hopes of incurring her wrath and maybe starting to turn the guild against her. The result was me not getting paid and her husband sending some wussy assassins after me*

The next mission involved me poisoning the product of a competing mead maker. I tried to think of ways that I could subvert this task -- cleaning out the rodent infestation but keeping the poison to contaminate the Blackbriar brewing vats. No dice. No option to lie to my superiors or report the task as finished before I'd done the final step. I couldn't even kill Maven if I wanted to because, as a quest-giving NPC, she is rendered invincible by the plot.

(end spoilers)

This lack of options defines all of the long-running quest lines of the game. For single jobs and fetch quests, it doesn't seem like such a big deal. But when I'm interacting heavily with a smaller cast of characters for a prolonged period of time, it's strange that I don't really have many options for how my character can behave. Maybe I get a couple of dialog options, but they have no impact, and I'm given no macro-level control over my character's actions.

When a game is telling a story -- even with this game is telling a story, as with the main plot -- this isn't such a huge deal. I can get behind the fact that I'm just an agent driving along the actions that must happen, maybe with a couple of opportunities to change the outcome. When a game actively attempts to be open and leave you most of the control, it's more than a bit frustrating to have that control ripped from you on issues that feel important. Joining an organization, in my mind, shouldn't just be an opportunity to act out a subset of the plot and change the comments that guards make to me as I walk by. It should be a way to define who my character is and make the game world, and not just the game, my own.

I spent over 100 hours playing Oblivion without even really getting started on the main plot. Maybe I was just less sensitive to this phenomenon, but I felt like I was having a truly unique experience in that game. I'm well under that in Skyrim and I'm now to the point where I'm ready to just plow along and finish the story. This doesn't feel like my story in the same way that did, and as much as I've enjoyed playing, I'm ready for it to be over.



*The best part of this pathetic assassination attempt was that they found me when I was chilling at the Wizard's College, where I was already archmage, and my buddies there incinerated them before I knew what was going on.