Checkpoint Breached: Skyrim: Breaking games and breaking down

Christ it's been a long time since my last post. I got a little caught up with work and games I bought over the lovely Winter Steam Sale but I'm revisiting a new classic, Skyrim.

It's been a while since I touched Skyrim, admittedly, the first play through was on a pirated copy. I have since changed my ways and supported my all time favorite game dev, that's Bethesda by the by. Please don't crucify me internet, we've all been broke when an amazing game launched, being a student puts you in a desperate situation. However, playing the pirated version of Skyrim does allow me to make some interesting observations, but more on that later.

Skyrim, where the hell do you start with a game this big? Well this time around, I started at the back. During my Oblivion days, I had a massive issue of not following the main quest line. I just could not be bothered to do any of the boring normal stuff because the rest of the game was way more fun. It got to the point to where I knew exactly who to kill and when to get an invite from the Dark Brotherhood and the game started there. I had the same problem with Skyrim.

Sandbox games are great, provided they're well designed. If the world is boring, I'm going to get bored. Skyrim is no exception, but it does do almost everything right.

Pretty much the last of the main quest line I saw

Now for those of you who were not around, or like me overwhelmed, when Morrowind came out, it's tough to describe the level of depth of that game. But this is where Skyrim almost got it's start.

Here's the run down of how the last three Elder Scrolls games played out.

Morrowind: This game hates you, pick the wrong class, pick the wrong weapons and leveling up will make you weaker, the game carries on and attempts to murder you at every turn and you can brick your whole game by leveling incorrectly. The level of customization is insane, everything about the game is unreal, the armor system, the skill system, the world, the lack of fast travel, the game still hates you.

Oblivion: Combat got a huge upgrade (in my opinion), the game is vastly more accessible but you can still get screwed by the leveling system if you're not careful. Still remains one of my best and often repeated gaming experiences.

Skyrim: Fallout leveling system for the most part, you can kind of get messed up if you try to be a Jack of All Trades but it's more forgiving, the game never becomes impossible as far as I can tell, more focus is spent on making the world interesting.

Skyrim sits nicely in it's niche, the game is playable by non-hyper RPG fans and doesn't require a note sheet to handle the leveling system (looking at you morrowind) but as a result, the experience is slightly dumbed down but it's kind of a good thing, the game is accessible. And, it's much prettier than the previous incarnations

Didn't realize there was two moons

Skyrim allowed me to be who I wanted to be. As I mentioned previously (and at nausea) I like hard games. So I generally like stealth games. Agent 47 and I have a great relationship. So I played a sneaky thief assassin as I have played most other Elder Scroll games and the game more than obliged me. My guilds were still there, the Dark Brotherhood and the Thieves Guild welcomed me like an old friend and the subtle off shoots to the previous games drew me in instantly. I mourned the run down state of my previously glorious Dark Brotherhood and felt for the downtrodden thieves ravaged by a spell of bad luck. Despite my ignoring the main questline, it still showed up in my guilds. They were feeling the affects of the massive civil war going on, the collapse of the empire and it made the experience all the more richer.

I spent 30 hours ignoring the main quest line, and I absolutely love that they let me do that. "Go off an explore, you're still the dragon born, it will be here when you get back."

But you've all played this game, you know how great it is. So here comes the shit you probably didn't see.

As I mentioned previously, I played first on a pirated version. Those not familiar with piracy, you have to deal with some issues when you pirate a game, it's not all it's cracked up to be. Glitches are everywhere, the game can crash for no reason, there's issues. When I first played through, the main quest was glitched to high fucking hell. I had to open the console so many times I lost count. Safe to say it ruined the main story it was so bad. But I put up with it, it's free right? But I own it now and now I'm pissed.

Now, credit where credit is due, Skyrim is massive. There is no way in hell you can test out absolutely everything in the game, it's not feasible. I understand that. I've beta tested more games than I can count and that's why they do that, to find these odd corner bugs that exist in certain situations that may have been missed in QA.

I played at version 1.1, when I played the game this time around, it was 1.8.who the hell cares. The main quest is still glitched to high fucking hell and it pissed me off.

I paid for this game, and all the DLC and the game is still messed up and it's worse this time around. Steam achievements are kind of my weakness, well achievements in general. There's something nice about being rewarded in a completely meaningless way for arbitrary things I did in the game. But here arises my main problem with a glitched game. Being a PC gamer, we have many more options other than "Reload the save and pray" sort of thing you have from a console version, we have the dev console. The only problem is using the dev console in Skyrim can brick your achievements.

I had to break out console commands 14 times during the main campaign, I know, I counted. Here's the process for using the console and maintaining achievements for Skyrim. Save, use console commands to fix the horribly glitched main quest line, save in a different slot, reload the latter save and hope achievements work, if they don't revert to older save and try to figure it all out.

I paid for this shit to work and it doesn't. Going through the main quest was like pulling teeth, I just quit playing a couple of times, that's how much it pissed me off. I would like to note that none of the secondary questlines, and I know, I did all of them, had any glitches at all. The main quest line should be the main focus for QA so I don't have to deal with this sort of shit. If it was a beta, or a pirated copy, I would understand, but this is nearly unforgivable. It's the main quest for fuck's sake.

But I soldiered on and you should too, Skyrim was probably my favorite game of 2011 for many good reasons, but if the retail is no better than the pirated version why should I bother to pay for it?

Here's some more screen shots because I took a bunch and need to use them.