John Berger
Reporter
Skyrim has received perfect reviews. Insidegamingdaily.com said, “Quit your job. Divorce your spouse. Give your children up for adoption. Do whatever you need to do to find the time to play Skyrim.” The video game made half a billion dollars within one month of its release in November. Not only that, half of the copies were picked up within the first two days of the original launch.
“Skyrim is a very immersive game,” junior David Lovas said. “In this game you are given the freedom to live in a world of weapons and dragons. Now that may make the game sound lame, but it’s really not.”
“It’s a really fun game where you can do whatever you want, there is no limit to the players’ creativity,” junior Jack Alexander said.
Skyrim has an incredibly vast gameplay and is filled with endless possibilities. The sheer depth of the game is what makes it so popular. “It has unique qualities where you can do anything. It’s so open and free that you can do anything,” Jack said.
“I think the game is popular because of how open it is, yet you still have a lot of control of what’s going on,” David said. “I also think people like the game because it stays true to the violent nature that appeals to gamers.”
“Being able to customize your own being with seemingly endless changes, ranging from the density of their eyebrows to foot size, is something that everybody wants to do,” freshman Erik Eason said.
Skyrim is the fifth version of The Elder Scrolls video game series, developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. The previous game in The Elder Scrolls series is Oblivion, and while Skyrim is not considered to be a direct sequel, they are considered to be closely related.
The game is set 200 years after Oblivion. It takes place in the fictional land of Skyrim, which is on its own continent and its own planet. During the game, Skryim is in the middle of a civil war. Players can go anywhere in the land as they wish, generally using horseback or foot. Players are given quests which they are to complete, however due to the depth, actually completing the game is said to be nearly impossible. “I like the thought of not being able to finish a game,” David said.
Skyrim was thought of after Oblivion’s release in 2006, but developers did not begin to work on the game until after the release of Fallout 3 in 2008. Skyrim is considered to be somewhat of a successor to Fallout 3, as they were both developed by Bethesda Game Studios. To create Skryim, there were 100 new people working on the game, in addition to the people who had worked on other parts of the series. The developers were able to create tremendous character movement fluidity. Reaction between characters has also been highly praised.
“I think Skyrim serves justice toward its predecessors. The developments are exponential,” David said.
Erik said, “Skyrim doesn’t have a comparison to other games. It is so unlike the other major games, that it’s in its own field. I would say Skyrim is the best game on the market.”
Skyrim’s popularity has skyrocketed since its release, and gamers have found themselves playing the game frequently, finding the game to be very addicting. “When I first got it, I found it very hard to put down,” David said. “Once you start playing, it’s hard to stop. It’s just a good way to pass time.”
“I got the game over Thanksgiving break and I spent the majority of my spare time playing right after I got it,” Jack said.
Junior Nick Campbell agreed. “I got it about a week after it came out. I was excited about Skryim, because I had heard a lot about it,” he said.
According to David, Skyrim took off among NCHS students primarily due to word of mouth. “I started playing because all my friends were playing it,” he said.
According to Nick, he was one of the first people at NCHS to know about Skyrim. “I’ve known about if for awhile,” he said. “I found out about it at first through advertisements.”
Jack credits Skyrim’s popularity to its continuous gameplay. “The thing about Skyrim is that it’s unending,” he said. “There is always so much more to do. The game is never done.”
