Where did we try it out?
Pluto Games’ preview event at Media Rotana, Al Barsha

What did we get to play?
Was the full game, sadly we didn’t get a glimpse of what the PC version looked like. We played on both the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3, not sure what graphical settings was the 360 on, but the PS3 was looking better, but I’m quite sure the 360 version wasn’t running on HD resolution from the xbox’s settings and not the game being at fault.

The game like any Elder Scrolls game, starts with you being a prisoner, in Skyrim though you are in deathrow taken to a Skyrim town for your execution. From there, you are to select the race of your character, gender and facial features. I did not attempt to make a different character and decided to go with the default male Nord (which I assume is the one seen in the trailers). Things happen in the story and you find yourself free in the vast world to roam.

While the world looks lush, green and lively, I was instantly reminded of Fallout 3. Something about the world felt very close to that kind of style (and I don’t mean by aesthetics, because it’s night and day). Menus feel very Fallout 3 too in many cases, must be the typography and such. Like Fallout 3, there is no job class selection, the game seamlessly tailors your character depending on your play style. Which is a good thing, the job classes in Oblivion were complete and utter nonsense, here you can be whatever you want your character to be by just training them in the traits you want.

Back to the game, during my entire playthrough I concentrated on the new dual wield feature, which gave me a major advantage in terms of offense but gave me no way to guard myself from enemy attacks. One other new features in the fighting is takedowns, they act as critical attacks that fatally kill your opponents and have somewhat of Fallout 3′s VAT animation playing as the enemy gets killed (no you don’t pick where you hit the enemy though, it’s all in real time). A small problem I faced with the game was how allies get in your way while fighting enemies, I was fighting an army of spiders, and this guy got in front of me, and absorbed all my attacks while he was fighting the spiders. Thankfully, he did not have any hostility towards me like he would have if this was Oblivion.

The game had a few other modern features, that to some certain extent, I wasn’t entirely happy with. Health regeneration has always been a major turn off for me in games in general, it breaks the flow of the game and renders potions useless unless used in battle, the health regeneration though was slow enough to be bearable. Another feature was sprint, you pressed a button while moving to dash which depleted you stamina bar (to Elder Scrolls new comers, the stamina bar effects your jumping and attacking in the game). This one I was okay with, sprint in many cases can be very useful and is one other way to level up your acrobatics.

As I set foot in the wild I did not give a second thought about roaming through out the world, when I found out that the fifth Elder Scrolls will be in the northern province of Tamriel (Skyrim), I was expecting nothing but a white landscape of snow, and I was completely wrong. There is an unbelievable amount of variety in Skyrim, it really looks like a well thought out natural landscape and it really does come alive, flowing rivers, dense forests, snow tipped mountains and many other attractions. You do have a nice variety of fauna too, while you do see caribou and foxes out in the wild, you can catch fish (with your bare hands) in the rivers, and at night can find fireflies (which you can use for alchemy too).

Alchemy and lockpicking seem to have taken the Fallout route too, no longer can you craft potions anywhere in the game, you can only craft on alchemy tables found in inns, shops and the Mage’s Guild. Unlike the splinter cell style lock picking that was found in Oblivion, Bethesda decided to use the lock-picking found in Fallout 3, where you have the lockpick turned at a certain angle while turning the lock to unlock it. Some might miss the older lock-picking, but this one seems just fine.

I was able to only walk through only one of the villages of the game, Riverwood, towns are no longer separately loaded maps of their own, they can be open without any walls where you can just walk in. You can also pick up jobs that will get you paid and/or items that help you on your quest. While we haven’t noticed it, but from we have heard from sources, that your production in these jobs can effect the economy in the game for better or worse depending on the abundance and scarcity of the items, so there’s a lot to do in the game.

I would have carried on in the game, but I was playing without any save since there was no gamer profile on the Xbox I was playing on and I got killed freeing a random captive by a group of high level guards and a mage.

So What do we think?

I was waiting for this game since after I clocked so many hours in Oblivion, and even then I’ve been wanting to go back to playing oblivion for old times sake. Forward 5 years later, Skyrim is what I expect it to be, a finer tuned, more refined Oblivion with a lot more tweaks and things to do. This preview left me wanting more of Skyrim and I am thoroughly excited about this coming friday to play Skyrim on my PC. People who pre-purchased the game on steam can now pre-load it so they can play the game, the second it’s released.