A reader admits that he’s not a fan of Skyrim and complains about the story, the combat, the setting, and the graphics.

Encouraged by the recent Reader’s Feature, from someone that admitted to not liking Resident Evil 4, I feel confident in revealing a similarly shocking secret about myself: I don’t like Skyrim. Not only that but I’m convinced that it’s not a good game and that I’m right and everyone else in the world is wrong. Well, okay… maybe that’s not true. I admit I’m in the minority on this and so that almost certainly means I’m wrong, but I really can’t see the appeal.

Let me start by saying I have nothing against the general concept. I like action role-players fine and The Witcher 3 is one of my favourite games of all time, so it’ not the concept that I have an issue with. My problem is that while it all seems like a good idea in theory none of the individual parts that make up the game are very good.

The story is, I think, the lease controversial complaint as… well, what is the story to Skyrim? Something about dragons coming back I think, but I can’t remember if all the dragons are bad or what their deal is. Thing is I’m pretty sure the vast majority of players have no idea either, because if there’s one thing that fans will tell you it’s that they just go off and do their own thing and ignore the story. That’s cool that the game lets you do that, but I think it’s fairly obvious why no one gets drawn in by the narrative.

The open world is definitely the best thing about Skyrim and was pretty unique at the time, which is where I think a lot of the love comes from. Although my abiding memory of exploring its fairly small map is all the jank that so many people just seem to ignore in a Bethesda game. Getting stuck on scenery, weird animation, just generally not very good graphics… I can’t say I ever really enjoyed exploring it. My friend was a big fan of Oblivion (I’ve never played it) and I remember the first thing he sad on seeing Skyrim, is that he thought the graphics would be more improved.

My biggest issue with the game is the combat, which is just straight up awful. First person combat often is, but Skyrim is the perfect example of why you shouldn’t do it. It’s simplistic, it’s hard to judge distance, and there’s no sense of making a connection. It’s also the only real gameplay mechanic in the whole game, so that’s a bit of a problem.

There are no real puzzles, the role-playing elements are basically limited to picking new abilities off the skill tree, and the crafting is absolutely bog standard. The game world and lore is also incredibly generic. There is nothing distinctive or unique about the world of The Elder Scrolls. It’s just a fantasy world with all the monsters and spells you’d usually expect of such a game, and it doesn’t add anything at all to the usual tropes.

It’s not even very consistent about its own features, with the cat people and lizard people seeming completely out of step with everything else and nobody in the rest of the world seems to think it’s odd that they’re wandering around. It’s just a random collection of fantasy cliches that don’t really gel, but because it happened to be the first one to take advantage of new tech it got labelled a classic.

Or at least that’s how I see it. I know, I know… I’m wrong apparently. But that’s okay. I don’t hate Skyrim, I just don’t like it, so please don’t hate me. And for the record, I love Resident Evil 4!

By reader Garnett

The reader’s feature does not necessary represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.

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