The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

"What is better - to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?"

- Paarthurnax

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the fifth installment of The Elder Scrolls franchise. It was developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 in 2011. Years later, the game was released on various newer platforms.

Plot
Set 200 years after the events of Oblivion, the game focuses on a protagonist known as the Dragonborn (or Dovahkiin) a human being with the soul of a dragon and must do battle with Alduin, a god in the form of a dragon who is prophesized to destroy the world. In addition, Skyrim is in the throes of a civil war with the Stormcloak rebels seeking to take over Skyrim and secede from the Empire while the Imperials seek to ensure Skyrim stays a part of the Empire.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) This is basically Game of Thrones: The Game, and actually started as a adaptation of the books. The threat of dragons returning, the Stark like Viking Nords at war with the Lannister like Imperials, and many many nods to the series.
 * 2) Over 70 hours of questing and content.
 * 3) You have to increase skills by doing whatever pertains to that skill (i.e. using an axe increases your two-handed weapon skill). This system basically means that, rather than the player choosing a class given by the game, the game creates a build around the player.
 * 4) Numerous ways to level up, not just by fighting monsters. You can level up by raising skills like lockpicking, alchemy, blacksmithing, and so much more, allowing for a wide variety in the gameplay rather than forcing players to endlessly kill enemies and grind.
 * 5) Leveling up allows you to either increase your health, magic, or stamina. This increase the already large variety of builds that can be made, as health is great for warriors since they are usually in melee combat, magic is great for mages, and stamina is great for thieves for increased sprinting to escape and carrying more stuff to steal.
 * 6) Raising skills to level up also allows players to increase perks in their favorite skill areas, an innovative encouraging players to create a specialized build instead of being a jack of all trades, as you are in many RPGs.
 * 7) Pretty much any playstyle will find at least one faction based around a part of their playstyle. These factions give you unique quests, jobs, followers, and access to special weapons.
 * 8) This is the first game in the series where you actually fight dragons.
 * 9) Defeating dragons allows you to absorb their souls! You can then unlock unique, magical "shouts" (or Thu'um) that you find in dungeons.
 * 10) The Thief skill allows player to use stealth gameplay.
 * 11) Disenchanting items allows you to learn the enchants for other pieces of equipment better suited to the player's class.
 * 12) Players can customize their character in any way they want. There is no wrong way to customize.
 * 13) Some quests allow you to obtain powerful, unique items from the Daedric Princes.
 * 14) Several questlines add their own major story to the game, aside from the main questline.
 * 15) Two other major faction the player can join are the Imperial Legion and the Stormcloaks. The Stormcloaks want to secede from the Empire and the Imperial Legion want to keep Skyrim united to the Empire.
 * 16) In the Dragonborn DLC (that comes with the Special Edition) you can tame and have dragons as your pets.
 * 17) Introduced in Dawnguard are two unique skill trees, one for vampirism noted as "Vampire Lord" and one for lycanthropy.
 * 18) In addition to new powers, joining the vampires grants access to Castle Volkihar - an island stronghold that not only serves as a base, but grants bonuses to vampiric powers and gives blood potions, which heal and count towards vampiric feeding.
 * 19) Rather than spending points to add perks as in the base game, new perks are gained by feeding on enemies with the new powers. For vampires, consuming life blood through a bite power attack or a Drain Life spell causes new perks to be gained; for werewolves, it is consuming the heart when feeding on a dead corpse. This approach allows high or maximum level characters to obtain new perks that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to obtain.
 * 20) As with Lycanthropy, townspeople will attack a transformed Vampire Lord on sight. However, this will no longer happen if the Dragonborn is a regular vampire. Unlike werewolf transformations, the vampire form can be exited at will.
 * 21) Joining forces with Harkon allows the Dragonborn to become a Vampire Lord - the paragon of the species. If the Dragonborn is already a Werewolf, accepting to become a Vampire Lord will remove the Lycanthropy, but it can be regained later.
 * 22) Joining the Dawnguard grants the Dragonborn access to Fort Dawnguard, a large keep said to be hidden somewhere in the southern region of Skyrim. The unique benefits of joining the Dawnguard include various new weapons and armor to fight vampires, including crossbows.
 * 23) Dawnguard introduces several new additions to both ranged and melee combat. The first new addition is the inclusion of Dragonbone weapons, which are stronger than Daedric Weapons. Crossbows are added to the arsenal of weapons at the Dragonborn's disposal. Crossbows remain loaded while running through the world and provide a quicker shot.
 * 24) A plane of Oblivion known as Soul Cairn, an ethereal realm of trapped souls, is a new location that can be visited in Dawnguard. It can be accessed via a mysterious portal in Castle Volkihar.
 * 25) Legendary Dragons are the new maximum-level Dragon class. In addition to Legendary Dragons, new enemies such as Gargoyles, Death Hounds, Armored Trolls can be also encountered. Within the Soul Cairn realm some of the enemies include Bonemen, Wrathmen, Keepers and an undead Dragon named Durnehviir.
 * 26) Dawnguard adds a new character in The Ragged Flagon of Riften named Galathil who can alter the Dragonborn's appearance for 1000 septims. Race and gender are locked, but other facial features can be tweaked.
 * 27) The game has a massive modding community on PC, giving it a nearly endless lifespan. Mods are also available in the special edition on consoles, although they are more restricted, especially on the PS4 version.
 * 28) Epic soundtrack that is perfectly thematic, especially the main theme, composed by Jeremy Soule.
 * 29) It's a me, Paarthurnax! Charles Martinet, who does the voice of Mario, voices Paarthurnax in this game. He teaches you various enhancements to your shouts when you get to meet him.
 * 30) Using the Xbox 360's Kinect voice command feature, the player can send over 200+ voice commands to the game.
 * 31) Hearthfire focuses around purchasing land and designing, building and maintaining a homestead. The option to hire stewards, carriage drivers and a personal bard are also available.
 * 32) The Special Edition has made some improvements from the original.
 * 33) *It is 64-bit and has been updated to use DirectX 11, giving superior stability and performance compared to the original release. The game can utilize more than 4GB of memory without needing modifications.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The game has a very large number of glitches and bugs due to having a very large world. However, only a few will break the game and are often a source of humor. Many of these issues were fixed with patches. The original PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions also had crashing and freezing issues, especially on the latter.
 * 2) * The PS3 launch was a disaster due to a game breaking bug involving severe framerate drops and freezing on saves after playing the game for many hours (dubbed "Rimlag") as a result of the PS3's inferior RAM.
 * 3) Various problems on the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions including low quality textures, pop-in issues, very long loading times, stuttering, and screen tearing on the 360, in addition to the previously mentioned bugs and freezing issues.
 * 4) The characters are extremely forgettable. In fact, the most memorable characters in the game seem to be the ones who have generated memes. Serana and Paarthurnax are the most memorable of the entire game.
 * 5) The Blades are a very weak faction and Delphine and Esbern are very pretentious and overbearingly annoying.
 * 6) The final boss of the game, Alduin, fights no different to any other dragon with only one additional attack which doesn't change the way you fight him much.
 * 7) Much of the follower AI is flawed with followers unable to follow you at times and are likely to activate traps or even attack enemies when you don't want them to. Additionally, they often tend to block doorways, preventing you from getting through.
 * 8) Stealth AI is humorously bad. You can shoot an enemy with arrows and if you remain unseen without killing them, they will be cautious for a moment before saying it "was just [their] imagination" and return to their original state.
 * 9) The game has a very low variety of voice actors. As a result, you will constantly hear the same few voices coming from different characters.
 * 10) Dungeons, while numerous, tend to be rather forgettable.
 * 11) The Special Edition of the game has microtransactions and paid mods via Creation Club. Bethesda also hid the original version of the game from Steam. If you want to play the game on Steam, buy the original version.
 * 12) Vampire attacks on settlements, a feature introduced with Dawnguard, have been permanently disabled in the Special Edition and Nintendo Switch version of the game.
 * 13) The audio quality in the PS4 and Xbox versions are more compressed and had to be patched to rectify this issue.

Reception
Skyrim received critical acclaim upon release. The addition of perks and the removal of the character class system from previous games was praised for giving players more freedom to build an all-around character, while the game received criticism for its melee combat and to an extent the dragon battles. Skyrim also received criticism at launch for its large amount of bugs and crashing issues, mainly on the PS3 version.

Angry Joe gave the game 10 out of 10. It was also the very first western game to get a perfect 40/40 score from Famitsu.

Trivia

 * This game is known by its title alone for short.
 * The game release date is 11.11.11 as seen in the trailer (November 11, 2011).
 * The "FUS RO DAH" dragon shout became an Internet meme.

Videos
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