Clouds fall over my Skyrim

I'm about to commit gaming heresy so you've been warned....


I'm bored with Skyrim.

I actually find the Yoda video more interesting.  Don't get me wrong I was FUS RO DAH'ing with the best of them.  I've just lost interest in the game.

I have no doubt that like the Hobbit movies where every fan thought themselves an analog to their favorite character at their local comic-con there are similarly delusional fans of Skyrim.  I wouldn't even be surprised to see a feature film based on the game in the near future not unlike Doom or Hitman.

There's no denying the quality of the experience with an incredibly detailed and richly textured world.  It's an immersive experience that's captivated millions of players who've invested hundreds of hours exploring the Skyrim gameworld.

I too found the experience engrossing and almost impossible to meter my time with at least initially.  Anyone who thinks they'll just spend a few minutes with the game will soon find themselves with missing hours.  For fans of the medieval fantasy genre, Skyrim holds an irresistable appeal.

I enjoy a good game no matter what the setting.  I thoroughly enjoyed Dungeon Siege 2 but only from the standpoint of adventuring with other players in co-op mode.  Dungeon Siege 3 ruined that for me by trying to be the next Diablo and thus I have no interest.

 I'm not the type to adopt a lifestyle based on one game.  That's why when I look at World Of Warcraft I see an overpriced subscription model with sub-par graphics instead of a cultural phenom that happens to be fueled by a game.

That's where I am with Skyrim.  There's no doubt that Bethesda (the developer) made this game a priority during its creation.  Bethesda was also responsible for the recent Fallout series of games which followed a very similar formula set in a post apocalyptic setting.  Fallout 3 was an engaging experience but it's sequel Fallout New Vegas (which was in development at roughly the same time as Skyrim) was a disappointment only rising to the level of a weak DLC pack.  There's no doubt that Skyrim got the lion's share of the development mindshare but after spending dozens of hours with it I soon lost interest.

Bethesda must be fans of the Hobbit. There's lots of walking in their games.  In fact so much so that many of those hours whiled away are likely spent just trying to get to your next battle.  Yes I know about fast travel but you don't get to take advantage of it till you've actually been to the location.  Which means lots of walking with a few minor battles with woodland creatures and the impromptu ill-tempered NPC. Gameplay like this is almost a signature of Bethesda titles so I shouldn't have been surprised when  it showed up in Skyrim.

Tritton Official Xbox 360 Gaming Heasets

Yes, the scenery in Skyrim is beautiful, the NPC's cleverly scripted and the puzzles challenging   but even Yellowstone national park can get boring if you  stay there long enough.

My other problem with the game has to do with quest scenarios that can be nearly impossible to complete.  About 20 hours into the game I found myself searching for cheat codes.  That's a fail in my book.  I have over 120 hours into Borderlands for example and never found the need for a cheat code.  With Skyrim I just wanted to get it over with after being dispatched a dozen times with no hope of even surviving let alone conquering my opponent.  In one case my low level character was being viciously  attacked by a dragon while I was trapped on the side of a mountain with no hope of escape aside from a console cheat.

That was the beginning of my disenchantment.  Soon I found myself unable to complete quests because of logic bugs or my character being too low a level.  That's a problem if you've been able to advance along the primary quest line and forces you into side quests of varying levels of value.  Simple quests can be fruitful while lengthy quests often prove less so.
I enjoying gaming but when it becomes a second occupation I'm out.  I've spent about 65 hours in Battlefield 3 at this point and it never felt like work.  In Skyrim I kept hoping that if I just invested a little more time I'd get a payoff but it never happened.  Leveling  up was anticlimactic and never gave me the return on investment I was hoping for.

As I said at the start of this article, I'm not a big fan of the fantasy genre.  Perhaps if I was I'd have more tolerance (and patience) with Skyrim but it's just too much work for too little reward.  Fans of the Elder Scrolls series will likely take issue with that statement but I think I've already proved my point.

A friend of mine who also played Skyrim has invested well over 100 hours in the game and completed  it using virtually no cheats.  He found it immersive and engaging and disagrees with much of my characterization of the game.  The difference between him and I is that he was a rabid fan of this game's predecessor, Oblivion and tends to enjoy this genre.  I, on the other hand, have found Star Trek Online very engrossing and have over 60 hours in the game in the past month.  My friend, on the other hand, is bored with it after 4 hours.
That says something.  Just as there are different tastes in everything else so it is with games.  Star Trek Online or Borderlands may not be as richly detailed as Skyrim but they fit a genre that interests me.  Because of that I don't get distracted by technical issues or logic problems as much as I would playing Skyrim or Oblivion.

So that leaves me with two observations about Skyrim.  The first is that it's really just another Bethesda game and isn't much better than any of their other RPG's.   I already swore them off with Fallout New Vegas anyway.  The second is that it's not the high water mark that it's been made out to be.  If it was it would be able to transcend its genre like Angry Birds or Mario Kart  even if they're regarded as a guilty pleasure.
Such ends my heresy.