I don't think it's dumbed down at all. If anything I think they added depth and complexity. Skyrim is probably the best example of streamlining without simplifying I have seen yet. The ability to build and customize a character is greater than Oblivion, but easier to understand.

Compared to Morrowind... not sure. Something are obviously more restricted, but the core character building aspect might be just as good or better. Morrowind is a deeper game overall though, without question. Does that mean better? For me it does, but for a lot it does not, and I get that.

Morrowind also had mysterious stuff like stryders to travel, weird vegetation with giant mushrroms. You were in a different context

I have a level 22 Wood Elf Sneaky Archer backstabby Alteration/Illusion guy going, so I have a pretty good feel for the game so far.

Much better than Oblivion. All locations, caves, castles, etc, are unique and different. The world actually feels like a world rather than Oblivions cookie cutter environments. It's less shiny as well so you don't get that rubber feel off people's faces.

Armor looks better, there's more variety even though there are less pieces. But honestly I don't miss the added pauldrons, leg pieces, etc. Smithing is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL in terms of skills, you can make the best items/weapons through smithing, by either creation from scratch or improving existing magical weapons/armor. I guess if you're a mage it doesn't matter, otherwise definitely does.

Combat feels better, I think leveling and skill picking is also better than Oblivion even though it is simplified, it still gives you a lot of flexibility. I think I picked too many skills to focus on in the beginning and my points are being stretched too much, I'm mostly upgrading sneak, archery, one handed, light armor, alteration, illusion, and smithing. I also wanted to do enchanting and and lockpicking and pickpocket, but that was already too much. I think 5-6 skills is a good spot to be in.

Quests are also in general better quality than Oblivion. Just starting Thieves guild and dark brotherhood, so I can't comment on those yet.

EDIT: Oh, and dragons are cake. You really need to worry about Giants and Frost Trolls. They HURT. Although fighting giants is funny, try it out at level 1 and see what happens, its worth the reload.

I just unlocked the perk to improve magical items and I sharpened my two one-handed weapons with +5 damage each man I dont regret picking smithing. It was very punishing at first to have 60+ alchemy/smithing/enchanting but as I learn to use the skills better it really makes me too powerful. I have a full set of +archery damage gear which stacks to approximately 100% increased damage, same thing for one-hand weapons. Add that to the potions I crafted that increase fire resist and bow damage at the same time I take down dragons without having to heal at level 36.

I think the emphasis should be on comparing Skyrim with Morrowind, not Oblivion. Oblivion was an excellent sandbox but a mediocre at best RPG.

I found a talent builder:

http://www.ign.com/builds/the-elder-scrolls-5-skyrim?d=000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000050001110011111100000000000000000000000000000050000000215110001001100000001100005100001101100100100111000001

Thats the set I use, you can reset it and build something else!

Well that doesn't really have anything to do with game depth, but yeah, that was a major plus for Morrowind. Skyrim is a lot more interesting and unique looking than Oblivion was though, that's for sure.

My (long and detailed) Review:

Skyrim is clearly an Elder Scrolls game through and through. Just like Oblivion and Morrowind (and to a lesser extent Daggerfall), it has a myriad of dungeons and cities to visit, places to discover, loads of crap to pick up, crafting elements, etc.

When Oblivion was released, people were quickly comparing it to Morrowind so of course, Skyrim is going to be compared to both of them. Morrowind was still considered to be the superior game next to Oblivion for many reasons (dungeons being randomly created and mostly generic, monsters & loot levelling along with you, the experience system that was broken, the horrible Oblivion gates, etc.) so it's interesting to see how Bethesda are trying to look towards Morrowind for inspiration of how to improve on Oblivion.

DUNGEONS

Dungeons have received a lot more attention as a result and it's clear that a bigger team has been working on them: there's often a small story to be found in every location. Be it an evil necromancer doing experiments, or bandits planning to raid a town, it adds a level of realism to the game where Oblivion just had faceless and nameless arrow/sword fodder. A big improvement? Yes, and ... no. Because Bethesda did it the wrong way. Instead of just sticking to giving areas a backstory or setting, they gave it a ... plot too. A very primitive plot, sometimes involving notes or books to read, sometimes an NPC joining you - but in the end, you'll still end up running down a linear path through the dungeon, finding some side doors leading to treasure rooms here and there, but don't expect any major branching or many large side rooms to explore. Disappointing since they went and killed the feeling of exploration as a result. They also consistently use three tricks to make these completely-linear dungeons work:

- a door near the entrance of the cave which is barred from the other side
- the end of the cave leading to the start of the cave from some elevated position you couldn't get to, only exit (like due to a bridge that falls down)
- another exit which isn't marked on your map so you end up on the other side of a mountain when you leave.

Verdict dungeons: B-

CRAFTING

Crafting has been expanded. Instead of merely alchemy, you can now enchant properly, cook and craft weapons & armour. A good step in the right direction it seems, but here as well, Bethesda makes some mistakes:

For starters, just like in previous Elder Scroll games, Alchemy is mostly useless unless you invest a lot of time into it which means gathering every ingredient you see. Right now, I'm level 25 and I've stolen every ingredient and picked every herb I've spotted and this let me craft about 200 potions. Mostly utterly useless ones, too. Damage health 8 points for example. Sure, you can apply it to your sword and get one (yes, just ONE) hit out of it that does 8 points more damage. Woo, colour me NOT impressed. After those 200 potions I'm still only level 40. Potions only become useful when you hit 60-70 at least, and then you need to get the perks as well.

Not only that, but you won't even know a single property of items you've picked up unless you've eaten it (I'm not kidding). Then you get the first one. The rest, you discover by accident. You have to randomly combine potions until two share a common property and then they will be uncovered. For example, ingredient A has frost resistance, ingredient B has it too, but you've only discovered it for ingredient A. It won't show up in the "Frost resistance" folder unless you mix it at random to uncover the property.

Oh, and you can no longer make potions on the road - you have to find an alchemy station so the biggest benefit of alchemy is gone - if you find a lot of heavy ingredients, it means even more trudging back and forward.

For cooking, it's even worse. You can pick up all sorts of food yet when you actually cook them, the result is incredibly mediocre. +5 health, +10 health ... when you need 3 items that each heal you for +5 health on their own :roll: . Not to mention that these amounts are so ridiculously low, that they serve no use anyway. You auto regenerate health pretty easily and restoration spells are far less hassle.

Blacksmithing is fine although too much a hassle considering what you get out of it. First you mine ore, with an animation that gives me MMO flashbacks (a big muscular guy mining ore as he was afraid to scratch it - so weedy-looking) THEN you find a place to smelt it to bars, and then you can craft it. Of course you need more than just metal - you can need metal straps too, which involves hunting animals, skinning them, then turning their skin into leather and then into straps. For role players this may be fun but so far, I've seen no real use for it because any average dungeon will throw far better stuff at you than you can make, not to mention you won't need to spend hours searching for enough ore to make a single suit of armour. So yes, this is quite pointless too. Oh, and you don't need to gather schematics or anything - it's purely limited by resources. Unlike in Fallout 3 which did it a LOT better.

Enchanting is definitely the most important of the crafting skills because, let's face it, all the best gear is magic. And yes, once again it's flawed. The flaw is of a different nature, though. While the pay off is worth it when you get better, it's very costly to get there. VERY costly. You need to basically destroy magic weapons to learn the magic inside - these weapons are often worth 1000+ gold and you need to destroy dozens of them to learn the different magic. THEN you need to find a good piece of armour or a good weapon and pick the magic to enchant it with. THEN you need to pick a soulgem. The soulgem combined with your skill, determines the amount of charges your item will have and how powerful the magic will be. And here lies another big weakness: you'll find much much better stuff during exploration than anything you could make yourself until you reach level 80 or so. Then you can make stuff on par with just about anything you find. It takes too long, in other words. They should have added limitations that still made it fun.

In the end, while crafting is always a good addition to a RPG for me, Bethesda has clearly not been balancing the skills but rather went for quantity over quality. Cooking is pointless, alchemy and enchanting take too long to become useful and both have other flaws and blacksmithing takes too many resources and effort to be worth it.

Verdict Crafting: C-

GRAPHICS & ATMOSPHERE

Graphics and atmosphere were always the strong suit of Bethesda and while the engine is clearly still Gamebryo with slightly new clothes (despite what they claim), it still looks quite decent for a PC game. It can't hold a candle compared to The Witcher 2 but they still managed to create a vivid and immersive world to explore with the ugly textured hills from Oblivion being replaced by beautiful misty mountains. The music is top notch too, and is a delight to hear. Animations are still pretty horrible, though.

Verdict Graphics: B+

THIEVERY & ARCHERY

My favorite character in any RPG, is the thief. Why? Because they strike from the shadows and are crafty - unlike the dumb oaf sword fighters who only need to block a shield and flail their sword. And if Skyrim did anything right, it's this. Sneaking is hard to pull off but a pleasure to use - it works much better than in Oblivion and it's possible with skill, to take out an entire horde of monsters by doing it properly with a bow and arrow, and retreating at the right time. It's not easy, but it's very rewarding when they never even spot you. Triple damage headshots causing insta-kills even more so. The ability to add poison to your bow, to get up close and steal the armour and swords of your enemy, leaving them in their underwear punching you is great fun to be sure. Downsides? Pickpocketing makes you level up WAY too quickly despite it being pretty easy (and rewarding) to do so.

Verdict thievery: A

(part 2)

MAGIC

Magic can be a lot of fun but it takes a lot of "grinding" to make it powerful. While regular combat is viable from the start, magic is not. You'll very quickly run out of mana and get your ass beaten which means a LOT of people won't use magic for combat but rather for support. That includes me. Spawning a minion to distract monsters so you can shower them in arrows, or create a light in a dark dungeon so you don't have to waste one hand to a torch, using soul trap, etc. etc. are all legit uses that don't require a high skill. The problem is, that these are skills you only use now and then and using magic for combat is pretty much the only way to properly level them up except that it's not viable for combat at the start ... see what I'm getting at? The solution is just using magic at any opportunity you get, even when it's not needed which feels a lot like grinding. Shame about the iffy balancing at the start because it does get more fun.

Verdict magic: B-

MELEE COMBAT

Not much to say here: you can hit, you can block, you can dual wield. It's nice to relieve frustrations but I much prefer a bow myself. Other than that, it doesn't require a lot of skill to use and it's the easiest way to dispatch an enemy provided he's not a lot tougher than you. Archery which I mentioned before, is a lot more rewarding and lets you take on much tougher foes when done properly, but sword fighting is the quickest.

Verdict Melee: C+

AI & NPCs

This was always the weakness of Bethesda and they have obviously made an effort to improve but didn't quite get there. Every NPC you meet still seems to have 2352 relatives all over Skyrim which can be annoying because the voices are even more recognizable than before.. The voice actors didn't even TRY to sound differently. There are more "named" NPCs, though, and they have more lines to say. It makes the world come more alive because of this. So, there's at least a minor victory here to be had.

The AI, though, is still pretty bad. Enemies don't look for cover, they don't try to dodge arrows (they just randomly strafe left and right), they mostly run straight towards you and don't use any tactics.

Verdict: C

QUESTS & DIALOGUE

Quests were already quite good in Oblivion but even better now. A lot of work has gone into some of these, and while many smaller quests are worthy of WoW ("go deliver this, go fetch that"), the larger ones send you all over Skyrim and have great rewards at the end. The books also help give a background to these quests.

The dialogue is also pretty good in quality and mostly well written. It's not on par with the better stuff from Bioware, but it's good and suitable. There's also a lot more of it than before.

Verdict: B+

GENERAL STUFF

While the bare bones are polished, the game has a HORRIFIC UI. Words can't express how badly they fucked up here - keys constantly change function according to the windowly and this unrelated to how you mapped your keys. It makes it a guessing game of which key does what and has annoyed me greatly. Some keys bound to such a key, will render the key useless, meaning that not a single other key will inherit its function. "Rename item" during enchanting, "Favorite" in the weapon screen, etc. which means I had to remap and remap until I found a combination that let me use every function without being tied to the annoying layout they were trying to force on me.

The map is also a bit of a mixed bag - it's slow and has to be scrolled and there's no separate key for a local map so you have to load the world map first, then press the button for the local map. A minimap would have really helped as well. it does look attractive now but you still can't place notes and the only improvement, is that you can now see which locations you "completed" (although I've had two locations where this was simply not true and a quest was still running).

The game still uses a system that tracks your level, too, and while it no longer spawns every monsters according to your level, the entire loot system is STILL linked to it. You'll only find lesser loot at the start and when you level, you suddenly start to find better layers of loot. Vendors won't sell it either until a certain level, which shatters the illusion of a coherent world. A big shame. Why not simply make the glass stuff very expensive to buy, or make it so you need to have a certain level in light/medium/heavy armour to wear it? (Medium armour doesn't exist either by the way)

In the end, Skyrim is a fun game albeit flawed. If it wasn't for the fact that being a thief is a lot of fun, I'd probably have dropped it like I did with Oblivion. With a few balancing mods and a few other improvements, it will become a much more enjoyable experience. I'm almost tempted to put it down and wait for a few months to let mods appear ...

End grade for the game as it is now: B-

PS. I played this on the second hardest difficulty

Enemy mages are pretty good. They will use their shield spells well and run away from you if you get too close. Other than that though you're right, AI is not a highlight.

trolls are the best, you hide in front of them and shoot and they will never move

That's a simple script, not really AI. Like how they zig zag at random in case you want to shoot an arrow - they don't wait for you to aim before they zig zag, they do it constantly. The shield spell is always part of a chain they start - they notice combat, activate shield, then go to find you.

I wish you could use spells as fast as they can - takes ages for the stupid interface to properly equip a spell in one hand and your sword in the other.

I started this today and am completely immersed in the game. It is a wonderful world to explore, so much to see and do, and I am suprised at the variety on display so far (the first dungeon, in particular, felt really detailed and distinct, unlike anything in Oblivion. It also seems like they hired more than two voice actors this time).

I won't go into any further detail on my experience so far as every second I spend writing this could be spend in the game, and I really just want to get back to it.

I do have one question, though: I seem to have been hit with something that has inflicted a 25 % damage penalty with melee weapons. Can't remember what the status effect is called, but is there not someone in Whiterun who can dispel the effect, or maybe I can do something about it myself? (I believe I slept in a bed one time, and it was still there afterwards.)

There is a temple in a building by the big tree in whiterun, there is a shrine in there that will cure diseases. If you are a caster you can also speak with the priestress to train restoration.


good luck!

Well, every enemy behavior in every game is scripted. There is no real "AI" perse in any videogame.