Reasons we should care about Skyrim

(Picture taken, for reference, from http://snowskadi.deviantart.com/art/. Because it’s a brilliant picture. Moving right along…)

Just days after I complained about massive waves of hype about new games, we get information about Skyrim in exactly the way games information should come: factual, and not especially spoiler-filled.

This is the information I wanted about Skyrim, because let’s face it: the mechanics were where the question marks were. Everyone knows Bethesda can make massive, immersive worlds, but the question with Elder Scrolls games had long been the leveling system; there’s always been a pretty severe dissonance between the type of character you wanted to be and how you went about making sure you’d get enough stat points to be that character. The scaling in Oblivion just made it worse, because there was a real sense you could gimp yourself before you got halfway through the game.

Anyway, it seems like they’re done with that. Reading down this list on VG247 moves this game from the “need more information” pile to the “great success”. Listing everything would be hard; needless to say, it’s basically a laundry list of the features that were egregiously wrong with Oblivion, like the eye focusing conversation system, the level scaling, and the lack of voice actors and dynamic content. Looks like Skyrim is the real deal folks, a combination of the good parts of Fallout 3 with the good parts of Oblivion (yes, it had good parts!).

So, these things cleared up, I can return to awaiting Skyrim’s arrival without a whole lot more information. Though I might peek at Game Informer, because…I want to get a glimpse of how it looks. Just that one picture would do me fine.