Skyrim Revisited Review Xbox 360

Skyrim is a massive, living breathing open world RPG, and one of the best games on the last generation of consoles. The world of Skyrim is still as impressive and immersive as it was 4 years ago. Even better, it does not feel like I am playing an old game, it feels like an entirely new experience altogether.

If you want to, you can delve straight in to the main story line, learning about why the dragons have returned to the land of Skyrim and how you, as the Dragon born, are tied up in their fate. Of course you don't have to do this at all. In fact you easily spend hours in this world without even going near the main quests. You are given complete freedom. Throughout my own experience, I found myself largely ignoring the main quests. Instead, simply exploring led to me performing evil deeds for the Dark Brotherhood, and working my way through tasks for the Thieves Guild. Aside, from a few needless fetch quests, the majority of missions have been creatively designed, and there are absolutely tonnes of them. You stumble upon quests all the time. Even after 100 hours play, there are still plenty of quests that I have yet to do, and a lot more I haven't even discovered.

You have just as much freedom with what you want to do in the world, as you do in how to approach combat. Being a brutal warrior with heavy armour and two handed weapons, sneaking around using your bow or using all kinds of destruction and conjuration magic, are the main skill sets you could focus on. But why not combine them together by summoning a demon as a distraction while you pick off enemies from the shadows with your bow? A great feature of the combat system is that you can change your play style whenever you want. Unlike Morrowind and other Elder scrolls games, you don't decide major and minor skills at the start. Instead, you become better in a skill when you use it. This means you are not restricted to a certain set of skills, so you can experience all there is to offer if you want to. When you increase enough skills, your overall level increases, allowing you to upgrade your health stamina or magicka. Levelling up grants you perk points, which you can invest in specific skills, such as increasing your damage with one handed weapons or being able to pickpocket more successfully. This is a superb, user friendly system which works seamlessly.

The environments in Skyrim are simply stunning. Every area contains an astonishing amount of detail, from the its vast open world, to its dungeons, pubs, houses and forests. In these places, you'll more often than not be fighting. There are a whole host of different enemies, ranging from rather generic enemies such as rats, bandits and spiders, to demons, trolls and of course the dragons themselves. Dragon encounters, while exciting for about the first five times, do get boring. However, it is useful to fight them as once you've killed one, you absorb its soul to unlock dragon shouts. The shouts that you learn more about from the main story, allow you to detect enemies, slow time, shout ice and many more. I did largely ignore these during combat though. Dragonrend is the only really useful one, as it forces the dragon to stay on the ground. It is good how the dragons interact with the environment as well. If they attack you while you are in a town, they will land on houses, attack its inhabitants and in general create mayhem, which makes for some fantastic moments.

There is so much more to talk about with Skyrim. There are merchants in every city that you can trade your goods for gold, and then use that gold to be trained in certain skills, or you can use it to buy a house, weapons, ingredients to create potions, anything you want. However, most merchants only carry around 1000 gold, so if you have a whole load of things you want to sell, this can take time as you have to visit quite a number of merchants. There are different guilds you can join, a countless number of tombs to explore, cities with loads of tasks to complete, and even daedric gods, that will be familiar to anyone who has played previous Elder Scrolls games, who have you doing evil deeds. NPC's even comment on what you have done throughout the world as you pass by them, acknowledging I was part of the Companions. You can play a key role in the civil war that is going on, choosing to side with the Imperials or the Storm cloaks, and then attacking the opposing sides strongholds. Helping someone may allow you to ask them to follow you throughout the world, helping you in combat and carrying loot. All these things create amazing gameplay, and fully immerse you in the world.

There is a reason The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim got the praise it did. It is a giant open world with a seemingly unlimited amount of things to do. It is all so well done, the hours will fly by while playing this game. The powerful sense of exploration means that this is by far the best Elder Scrolls game to date. Bethesda will have to produce something really special in the inevitable Elder Scrolls VI, to surpass what they have provided us with here.