June 14, 2011 by Paul Curtin
One of the biggest games being shown off behind closed doors at this year’s E3 is Bethesda’s latest Elder Scrolls game, Skyrim. We got the privilege to check out thirty minutes of gameplay from Skyrim, and I’ll be honest, going into the preview, I wasn’t too excited. I’m more of sci-fi and modern genre gamer that likes games like Fallout; fantasy games based on medieval times with swords and spells really just aren’t my thing. But whether you’re a fan of games in the fantasy genre or not, there’s no doubting that Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim looks amazing.
Bethesda is going all out with the latest installment in the popular franchise and have created an entirely new engine, the “Creation Engine”, to run Skyrim. Just as previous games in the series, Skyrim will be a fully populated open world game filled with dynamic environments that the player can interact with. We were shown in our preview how when a player enters a town, not only can they interact and talk with the people in the town like previous games in the series, but they can have a direct effect on things like the town’s economy by destroying objects like stacks of freshly cut trees that the town depends on.
But a new and improved graphics engine isn’t all that Bethesda is bringing to the table with Skyrim; there’s also a brand-new spell system that allows players to dual-fist spells and use both hands to combine spells and make them even more powerful. Players can also choose to hold spells in one hand and a weapon in the other, or hold weapons in both hands. Players can basically change their character’s class at any time by changing the type of weapons and powers they have equipped.
The new interface for the talent upgrade system was also a thing of beauty with talent trees looking like constellations of stars having a vast amount of abilities to unlock; it’s little things like this that show how much detail is being put into the game to make it stand out from the rest. The method of selecting spells is also improved with the ability to quickly switch which spells you use in each hand on the fly.
But the most impressive part of our demo (besides the yeti’s) was everybody’s favorite new addition, the dragons. In our preview, we got to see the player fight not one, but two dragons one after another. After defeating the first dragon, the player was able to consume its power and use the newly received Dragon Shout power to summon a violent storm in order to take down the second stronger dragon. Watching both dragons crash land like planes into the ground was epic and easily the most impressive new feature showcasing the power of the Creation Engine.
After seeing Skyrim at this year’s E3, Bethesda has made me a believer. With over 150 dungeons to raid that equals somewhere around 300 hours of gameplay, a brand-new graphics engine, and so many improvements to the core gameplay, Skyrim looks to take RPG games to the next level and be enjoyable to play. Set for release later this year on 11.11.11, you’re going to want to pick up Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, whether you’re a fan of fantasy games or not.
