The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Review
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Interface PC game interfaces always suffer when games are created for multiple platforms, and Skyrim is no exception. It has many of the problems you'd normally see in this area, like clunky menu systems, no tool tips, and the inability to name your saved games, but it also has an odd assortment of other issues. Most notably, the game seems to have trouble dealing with a keyboard and mouse. Frequently I'd click on a dialogue option, and the game would choose something different. Or I'd use the mouse wheel to scroll through a list, and suddenly the camera would start zooming in or out. Or I'd press a hotkey to do something, and the game would ignore it. I almost always had to press F at least three times to switch between the first and third person perspective.
But even beyond the PC shenanigans, the interface is just subpar. In some places it seems like Bethesda had no idea what it was doing -- like with the inventory, which is handled via long lists of items, and where it's sometimes difficult to do even basic things like check what you're wearing or sell your excess loot -- and in other places it seems like Bethesda went for "pretty" rather than "useful." The most obvious example of the latter is the world map, which gives you a very high overhead view of Skyrim, complete with clouds. This looks great, but it doesn't show any roads, and it forces you to do quite a bit of wandering around as you hunt for a route up to some of the mountain locations. Finally, as with all of Bethesda's games, targeting from the third person perspective doesn't work very well, but clearly this is a problem that Bethesda doesn't care about (or else they would have fixed it two games ago).
Technical Issues
I've heard of people having all sorts of problems with Skyrim, but it worked pretty well for me. I didn't encounter any dragons flying backwards, or any broken quests, or excessive load times. The game did crash for me a dozen or so times, but given the number of hours I put into it, that's not bad at all, and the autosave feature always prevented me from losing much.
About the worst thing I can say about Skyrim is that it is a jealous game. It doesn't want you checking the Internet or reading your mail or doing anything other than playing Skyrim. That is, alt-tabbing doesn't work very well (it was the #1 cause of the crashes I had), and even if you play the game in a window, it'll keep hold of your mouse and not let you switch tasks. This will be a major problem for me when I start working seriously on our Skyrim walkthrough, but I'm guessing for most people it will just be a nuisance.
Conclusion
If you've made it this far, then you've probably figured out that I wasn't a huge fan of Skyrim. This isn't too surprising, since the elements that I care about in role-playing games don't mesh well with much of what Bethesda typically has to offer in their games. I prefer PC games, the third person perspective, clean interfaces, story-driven campaigns, and complicated character builds (with actual numbers), while Bethesda prefers exactly the opposite. We are not a match made in heaven.
But even so, my issues with the game are mostly a matter of opinion. I found it to be rather large and dull, with way too much repetition and only a handful of interesting quests, but other people might enjoy the sightseeing and the spelunking, and not notice the deficiencies at all -- or not even consider them to be deficiencies. I was one of the few people who enjoyed Hellgate: London, and it's possible I'll be one of the few people who dislikes Skyrim (at least for the first six months, before the critical editorials start coming out). Regardless, Skyrim is a game worth checking out, if for no other reason than to see what everybody's talking about. Just don't go in expecting it to be a nearly perfect RPG, or you might find yourself a bit disappointed.
