Open World Game Review


Skyrim. It was a big hit when released and still is today and in my opinion, is well justified in its
positive acclamation. Skyrim brought Open World exploration and combat to a whole new level
alongside beautifully designed and rendered environments, dungeons and cities where the team has
obviously laboured over designing, to deliver a truly wonderful game to play. However, despite this
success, there are a few shortcomings.

But let’s start with some good. Skyrim sets up and environment that can be fully explored by the
player, if you see it, you can likely go there and if not, you can always try ‘Skyrim Jumping’ on horse back. Skyrim Jumping is where the player spams the jump button to find edges of normally non-traversable vertical areas and land on them, getting them a bit further up and eventually, to the top of the area they are trying to climb. This is great for finding shortcuts and travelling faster. It does, however, run the risk of breaking immersion. This risk is not so with Skyrim’s combat system.

Image retrieved from: http://www.isolaillyon.it/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Skyrim_horse.jpg
Skyrim’s combat system is integral to the exploration of the open world and is seamlessly integrated.
The combat is smooth and intuitive, easy to grasp and always fun despite the lack of variance in
animations and encounters can seemingly happen anywhere. There are around four quick and heavy
strike animations for each close combat weapon type, of which there are only two: single-handed
weapons and two-handed weapons. Despite this lack of variance in weapon type and animations,
the combat system feels so good that there is no sense of repetition. The only criticism I have is that
while encounters are abundant in dungeons, there needs to be more when traversing the open
world environment.

Image retrieved from: https://res.cloudinary.com/lmn/image/upload/c_limit,h_360,w_640/e_sharpen:100/f_auto,fl_lossy,q_auto/v1/gameskinnyc/s/k/y/skyrim-combat-5439a.jpg
Skyrim offers a wide variety of quests alongside the main story line and it is completely up to the
player how they explore this fantastic world. Right from the start the player is given the information
they need to continue the main plot or they can go out on their own and explore the world after the
first sequence of events. The sheer scope of available quests gives hours upon hours of content for
the player to explore and the downloadable content offers even more, this can be a double edged
sword as players like me can be daunted by the prospect of so much to uncover, thus leading to less
players playing the game.

 
Image retrieved from: http://www.psychologyofgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/quest_log.jpg

I’ll often find myself coming back to explore a new area of the game after taking a break for a month
or two or starting a new character to role-play a different type of explorer. And I guess that’s the
key thing and the one thing that stays the same: I always play an explorer, and that’s what Skyrim is
all about, giving the player the ability to explore the world, unhindered and in their own time.




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