To all those who are playing Skyrim I raise my hand in salute. For those thinking about it that haven’t played other Bethesda made games such as Fallout 3 or other Elder Scrolls entries like Morrowind, Oblivion, etcetera – keep in mind this game can be downright addictive.
The game’s ability to grab and hold your attention is, for the most part, a good thing. You can spend over a hundred and fifty hours in-game and still not run out of things to do. Skyrim’s ‘Radiant Story,’ designed to create random quests for players to fulfill on the fly, means that technically you will never run out of quests. (I figured I should warn people given that I’m currently over 100 hours into the game and can’t put the controller down. Check out our official Skyrim review here which talks about just how addicting this game can be.)
Skyrim’s finer details are what bring the world to vivid life like few other games. For example, I’ve made it a point to collect all the books I can find. I do so because they are well written and the backstories and history they provide make the world come alive. Other small but powerful treats, such as visually stunning northern lights and the stone-etched mural in the Blade’s new headquarters, move Skyrim from the realm of ‘well done’ to true greatness. But it’s not all fun and games…
Glitches suck
I’ve now played through over 150 sidequests and all the main missions. The fact that Skyrim has frozen on me twice was no big deal, but broken quests have been another issue entirely. When the time came to assasinate the leader of the Silver Hand to continue the Companions guild storyline and no one was there, well, that was upsetting. Considering that my last save was eight hours and four levels before that, I just couldn’t go back. No matter what I tried, I can’t fix it, so now I can’t complete the champions guild storyline and this genuinely sucks.
That was the biggest issue I have faced, but there are several smaller anoyances like NPCs not using weapons when they have them and just being idiots in general. (My follower running into me, blocking my path in the heat of battle, or disappearing randomly altogether are classic examples.) Also, several quests are imposible to complete because of unknown glitches and all of the side quests for the Bard College have left me carrying cumbersome instruments that I can’t drop and which the bards refuse to take back. There are a few others, but nothing too dramatic.
How I felt when the leader of the Silver Hand simply wasn't there.
I’ll be honest; these issues have had a negative impact on my overall Skyrim experience. Considering I’m a completion junkie, the inability to finish certain quests is particularly annoying. However, despite my displeasure I continued playing and have realized that even major glitches haven’t actually ruined the game. I continue to play and have learned to shrug off my irritation.
And thus I arrive at my closing point that overlooking Skyrim’s faults is exactly the right attitude to have as we play through the game. For every glitch and broken quest there were literally fifty more cool things to do and see. You can choose to abstain from Skyrim as some kind of holy mission to punish Bethesda, but really the only person missing out is you.
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you should save at the very least every hour, this is excluding any auto save. NEVER trust auto save.
Believe me it will, i waited until i was finished my first semester to play because i knew it would take over my life, which it did lol
In all fairness…I don’t think I have ever played a game without it freezing or glitching on me in some way. Yeah, it isn’t a whole lot of fun when it happens, but happen it does. I still have yet to play Skyrim, I just don’t think school would win that battle, but I know that when I do even the apocalypse would take a back seat.