Hands-on preview from Eurogamer.net
You must be thinking that playing [The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim](/games?search=The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim) for the first time is an immense pleasure, but let me let you in on a little secret: nothing could be further from the truth.
Though for you, it may be a joy. After all, you'll get to fiddle around with the character editor, explore the world while feeling the long green grass between your fingers, listening to the flow of the river – all before you have to think about heading toward the flickering icons on your compass.
For those who played Oblivion, it was not at all surprising to spend 100 hours in the game, and if you want to really experience the unique RPGs from Bethesda Game Studios, you’ll need about that much time as well. These are games where you can create your own stories, blending exploration of the game world with scripted quests. You can't do this in a weekend or even a month if you're only playing on Sundays.
Meanwhile, at QuakeCon 2011, I was given about 60 minutes to get acquainted with Skyrim. What I felt during that time was definitely closer to panic than pleasure. The best thing I could do in that situation was to choose one path and see where it led me, so stepping out of the character editor (my character turned out to be a clever and sexy Khajiit warrior), I took a fireball in one hand and an axe in the other and headed straight for the nearest mountain.
The ascent to the summit didn’t take much time, but it was quite eventful. Very soon, I encountered some bandits guarding a small tower near the mountainous road. Since my left hand was essentially a flamethrower, I engulfed them in flames, finishing off those who got too close with my axe.
For variety, I switched from magic to shield, deflecting a couple of strikes and replying with a stream of my own, spraying blood around and watching as the axe crushed a skull in a finishing animation. Such finishes happened several times over the hour, and they always looked fantastic.
Of course, I looted my victims in the tower down to their underwear, and it wasn't long before I could barely move, then I was informed that I would have to drop some of the loot or I would never be able to dance again.
RPGs tend to require delving into menus more than almost any other game genre, but while I was fiddling with magic, weapons, and other items, thinking of ways to lighten my inventory, I realized that Skyrim would be a nice exception to this rule.
Its multi-tabbed menu is as easy to navigate as on an iPad, and everything is simple and intuitive. You can add items to favorites, equip them separately in each hand, and examine them in detail.
While I was playing, I found myself rotating items in my inventory multiple times looking for clues to a puzzle or reading some document, and all this could be done without opening additional screens or anything that was more complicated than moving the sticks and pressing one button.
It’s easy to imagine that a system like this could have saved a few hours for people who played Oblivion and [Fallout 3](/games?search=Fallout 3) back in the day. For me, it saved me a couple of precious seconds, so thank you to the Bethesda staff who worked on the inventory.
Stepping out of the tower, I moved further through the falling snow and strengthening wind, and eventually stumbled upon stone steps leading to a wooden door in the rock.
In a sense, I had already been here – in my haste to choose a direction and dive into exploration, I picked the same path as Todd Howard during the game demonstration in April. Nonetheless, I decided to explore this dungeon thoroughly.
If the Bleak Falls Barrow is the setting for an average quest, then it looks very promising – the dungeon is absolutely filled with enemies, traps, and puzzles. There are bandits to eavesdrop on and sneak past – Khajiit can sneak unseen, so I hid in the shadows, aiming my bow at the careless chatting bad guys. There are Draugr, who handle magic just as well as they do swords and axes. There’s a mini-boss battle – a giant spider. There are doors rigged with arrow traps that need to be disabled by rotating totems that serve them as switches. There are pressure plates and levers activating spikes and swinging blades, which help a lot in the fight against Draugr, whose numbers gradually increase.
And your unique abilities grow with use, and over time you gain level-ups. With each new level, you can lift your gaze to the heavens and admire the constellations of perks twinkling overhead, and then, after deciding what to increase – magic, health, or stamina, you can choose an upgrade for the skill you want.
However, you don't have to select a perk immediately. If you come across a perk you want while navigating the constellations that requires a higher level of some skill (for example, Destruction 40 instead of 21), you can always wait until you meet the requirements.
Navigating the dungeon is not hard at all, all thanks to a convenient map that shows the dungeon from above. Despite the name, Bleak Falls is bright and varied – a sparkling underground river runs through the cave, the spider’s lair is adorned with intricate webs, and burning torches illuminate the dusty catacombs, casting soft shadows on the worn stone steps.
Even in these narrow corridors, the spirit of exploration is felt – a mix of adventure and archaeology, fiddling with locks of treasure-filled chests and uncovering the mysteries of ancient relics or rummaging through your inventory for a golden claw with markings similar to those visible on the protruding stone door cylinders.
After a while, Pete Hines, to everyone’s disappointment, asks us to stop playing. I look around and see that the guy next to me is chatting with someone about politics in a tavern. Meanwhile, in another row of consoles, someone is hacking their way through a forest.
Later, Hines tells me that there were 13 players in the room, and they were all doing completely different things. According to him, what he likes about these games is that even when their development is over and he’s been sitting with them for over a year for work, he can still take them home, start them up, and discover something new.
The alpha version we were provided crashed a couple of times for other journalists, but I personally didn’t encounter any bugs. Hines says that some quirks, like stones floating a foot off the floor, are inevitable in a game with such a wide array of possibilities, but the folks at the company are doing their utmost to get better at testing and ensure that the number of game-breaking bugs strives towards zero.
The very short time allotted to getting acquainted with the game prevented me from doing a billion more things. I didn’t really talk to anyone. I didn’t take a single quest. I didn’t fight a dragon (in fact, they were disabled in this version of the game, as were dragon shouts). Honestly, the only thing I apparently managed to do was run up a mountain and then crawl under it.
But what truly looks promising (if we exclude those things that have always been top-notch in the TES series) is that all the game’s details, whether it’s the inventory, combat controls, navigating the game world, even the quality of textures and level geometry – all of it blends so harmoniously into the game that even in the provided draft, one already feels at home after an hour.
To this day, Bethesda has not allowed anyone to play Skyrim, and Todd Howard made that very clear. "I, f***, am horrified" - he said before we turned to the screens and picked up the gamepads. But the truth is that he could let us play a dozen more times, and our experiences in each would be different. Waiting for November will not be easy.
Thanks to Condottiere for the tip on the material