The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011)

il mio primo Elder Scrolls non mi è dispiaciuto ma ho avvertito una mancanza di profondità, dovuta a quest (principale e gilde) che ho trovato sottotono rispetto ad altri giochi Bethesda. Viaggiare a vuoto non mi dà questa grandissima gioia, visto che preferisco avere degli obiettivi. L'ambientazione nevosa-montana non è entrata nelle mie corde. Per il resto un ottimo gioco di ruolo da provare assolutamente. Voto: 8.8/10

There are a lot of reasons people play video games. It’s a fun, stimulating, often relaxing activity that requires thought and interaction. Fantastic stories unfold in which you carry a level of involvement. It’s a wonderful medium, but beyond that there lies a simpler draw. We want to feel legendary.

There’s nothing wrong with that urge, it’s great. It’s the reason we get jazzed about seeing a movie after watching a trailer. It’s the reason sports highlight montages are so exciting. They seamlessly pack a ton of exciting moments into a single package, and Skyrim is the absolute master of this. Everything in the game is built around the central goal of making you and your character feel like you’re part of a truly epic adventure.

Just watch this trailer and try not to be psyched:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpvM9uwOcUc

Whew, even just watching that trailer gets me jazzed to fire up Skyrim again when I get home. It gives me the vibe of feeling like you’re in one of the Lord of the Rings movies, except more badass. That’s just the trailer though, surely when you get into the game fighting a dragon won’t be that exciting. Yes, it is. The first few times feel just as exciting, mostly because they do something very smart, they ramp up the music. Every time you encounter a dragon the music swells up into full dragon-fight mode, and man it gets me going.

So there’s dragons, everyone knows that about Skyrim, and it is in itself plenty of reason to check out this game. The reason the dragon fights remain exciting, though, is because they happen sparingly, suddenly, and without warning. In the time in between dragon attacks is filled with literally hundreds of hours of gameplay. From questing to crafting to exploring, or modding (oh modding. I’ll get into that later) there is always more meaningful gameplay to do.


Guards keep asking me to brew them an ale, but at this pace it looks like I’ll be making them a Caesar.

I included exploring in the list of things to do, which a lot of people would roll their eyes at, but it really is a gameplay element in itself. This is one of the first games that has a fast travel system that at times I’ve decided to stop using entirely because it was so much more fun to just walk to my destination. The world is immense and totally open. If you can see it, you can probably walk to it. There’s no “track”, there are no invisible walls. The entire world is free to roam, and it is breathtakingly beautiful, and active. A simple walk from one town to another might result in a fight with a bear (which at some points can be just as deadly as a dragon) or a fight between a bear and a troll, or a fight between a dragon and the entire population of a village. The world is alive around you, and it is stunning!


For a town that snows 300 days a year and is full of unapologetic racists, Windhelm sure is pretty!

The game isn’t without its flaws. It’s definitely very buggy. Many of the bugs are by now pretty famous. For example, if you walk up to a shopkeeper and put a bucket on his head, he is effectively blind. You are then free to rob him…..blind, all while he contently sits there beneath his new headwear. Most of these bugs aren’t game-breaking (although some come pretty close) and to some degree they are excusable considering the free reign of this huge world Skyrim gives you access to. All this without me having even mentioned the mods.

Full disclosure, I have put just over 300 hours into Skyrim according to my Steam counter. If I’m being completely honest, it wouldn’t be far fetched for me to estimate that I’ve put another 100 hours or so into screwing around with mods for the game. You can mod ANYTHING. If you can see it, it can and has been modded. There are tons of small things like giving all the vendors in the game a bit more money on hand (the stock version of the game gives the vendors so little it’s almost impossible to sell high value items to any of them) and can range all the way up to massive overhauls of the entire weather system of the game, collections of hundreds of sets of weapons and armor, and a total re-writing of the lighting physics for the game.


Even though it’s two years old, my fully modded Skyrim taxes my PC easily more than any game I own.

There’s just so much to do here. The game has become a completionist’s nightmare and a procrastinator’s black hole. In my aforementioned 300 hours in the game, I’ve hardly put a dent in all the things there are to do in this game, and I’m not talking about grabbing all the trophies or collectibles or anything like that. I’m talking about entire major storylines that I haven’t yet touched because the game gives you the freedom to just take off in any direction and do things in almost any order you want.

I keep creating characters with the idea that they’ll be the one with whom I do everything Skyrim has to offer, but there’s too much. I end up leaving the game for a few weeks, coming back, and deciding I can create a better character. It’s been so much fun though, so who cares.


What? Oh that’s just me fighting a dragon in front of a stone statue, while wearing armor made of dragon bones, holding a sword made of magic energy, while I’m on fire. No biggie.

Watch the skies, traveler.

I used to underestimate this game, and then I took an arrow in the-- Nope. Not gonna go there.

But I actually did underestimate this game once upon a time, and for some reason avoided it despite all the hype. I just thought that it wouldn't be a game that I would enjoy, really. But recently I picked up the Legendary edition, and my first playthrough lasted almost 24 hours. I was appalled by how addictive this game is. The scale of the world and the infinite possibilities. There's just so much to DO that it's impossible to ever get bored of this game.

I'll admit, by the time I got further in the game I started using console commands. I just couldn't resist. When it comes to games I usually am not a fan of challenge and if there's cheats, I'd use em. So I used the "coc qasmoke" command--which transports you to a special room that Bethesda made, and that room contains every single item in the game--and made my character one overpowered bitch, and I used the command that learns every spell. And I also use god mode to boot. #iRegretNothing

And then of course there are the mods. Thanks to several graphic mods my game now looks ten times more incredible, even though my PC has to suffer a little bit because of it. But it's a price I don't mind paying, cause all the mods I've downloaded so far have enhanced the experience greatly. And they really make my character a lot prettier, too. She sorta looks like a bustier Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII now.

I've been playing this game for quite a while now and I'm pretty sure there's still so much for me to explore. If there are maybe some of you out there who were like me, on-edge about getting the game, I highly suggest you do. It's addictive as hell.