To say that I was a fan of Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind would be a massive understatement. I am not sure how many hours I logged into it but it was more than I would probably want to admit anyway. I wasn’t as into Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion but that is only because I have played it slightly less. So hearing about part V made me enormously excited. Seeing screen shots and reading about it made me less excited as it initially looked like Oblivion + as opposed to a whole new experience. At E3 I managed to get into a 30 minute demo of the game and I now realize that still screen shots do this game no justice at all. It is absolutely gorgeous and despite some targeting issues that will hopefully be fixed prior to launch, the gameplay looks to be improved in all the right ways. My excitement is now fever pitched.

The demo we saw was running on the Xbox 360 which was kind of amazing for how much fidelity the textures have and how generally smoothly it ran. The team responsible for this one is the same team that did Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout 3 which is good news as it appears they have incorporated all the best elements from those games and excised the worst. As the team who did such great work with the other titles they clearly understand what things they can play with and what they can’t. Still, they have made bold choices here and don’t seem to be sticking with the same old same old.

The graphics are the most readily noticeable improvement that you can see right away. Pictures don’t really do the game justice as when you see it moving you will pick up on all the details and the incredible particle effects that make the splashes of blood look dynamic and realistic. These same effects also go into the world at large as things like snow are not rendered by the artists but rather populated by the game itself snow flake by snow flake. This is an incredible task and I really wonder how in the hell the 360 is handling it. I shudder to think how many discs this will be but at the same time I don’t really care when it looks this good.

Character models and facial movements have been vastly improved. Morrowind and Oblivion has some SERIOUSLY ugly people in it. Oblivion in particular, for being a next gen title, had characters who’s faces looked like they had been trampled by elephants with poop in their feet. In Skyrim, the character models and facial animations look great and talking to people isn’t like talking to a mannequin at a wax museum that is on fire. It is going to be great to love an Elder Scrolls game where that love isn’t despite the graphics.

Of course there are plenty of pretty games out there that play like shit so graphics alone aren’t enough to up my excitement for this. Some of the gameplay tweaks may make some players nervous but it looks very much like they have taken the elements of leveling and character creation they have been refining in each game and taken it to the next level. There is no character class system so you don’t have to decide what your play style will be before you get deep enough in the game to know. Instead of class, you gain experience in the skills you use so however you play, that is the way you will improve. So you don’t have to worry about building up points to level up so much so you can add extra points in or something. No more hopping everywhere you go or choosing Atheleticism as a skill so that just walking around will help you level. Now you just play and earn experience for whatever it is you are doing. If you decide that you need to focus on something else, just do that for awhile and get it up to speed.

I feel like, if it works, this will be an excellent mechanic and will do a lot more to emphasize the role in role playing when you aren’t hamstrung by some kind of pre-set parameters. Given that the gameplay in the Elder Scrolls games emphasize improvisation and a variety of gameplay styles, this new system will help players fully immerse themselves in that world and give the ability to play the way they would like. I am excited to not find myself in a position where I need a skill that I have ignored and have to go around trying to find skill books or power level just to jack it up.

Taking a cue from their work on the Fallout series, the team has implemented the perk system to give you more variations on skills which provides the same sort of boosts more traditional point systems might offer but in a more organic way. There are apparently 280 perks available which should give you a fairly deep field of customization.

As far as actually applying these skills to gameplay, the name of the game here is variety and you have a ton of different options to choose from as well as being able to change your play style dynamically. The delivery system for the combat is straight forward but kind of brilliant. The trigger buttons control each hand. That’s it. The right trigger controls the right hand. The left trigger controls the left hand. Simple but it opens up so many more options than we had available in the previous titles. Now if you want to use magic in combat, you put a spell in one hand while you have a weapon in the other. If you want to have a sword and shield, you put the shield in the left hand and block by pressing the left trigger. This allows for much more dynamic and on the fly combat that will give you far greater and more precise control than ever before. You can even combine elements to make them stronger. You want to chip away at an enemy with two swords? Put one in each hand and you are duel wielding. If you want to beef up a healing spell, put the same one in each hand and hit both buttons together and you have a stronger spell.

That would be enough to launch this into badass but they have added several extra elements to make it even more awesome. You have context sensitive kills so you can end an encounter quickly if the conditions are right. You have a variety of spells that may need to charge or may be rapid use. Damage done to enemies affect their effectiveness in combat so the more you hurt something the more it breaks down. Enemies will even run if they get too hurt and decide they can’t win.

As if those things weren’t enough to put combat in the stratosphere you also have things called shouts which are learned by killing dragons and absorbing their souls like some kind of dragon based Quickening. These shouts start out kind of basic and small like breathing fire and go all the way up to being able to cause a thunderstorm to bring down lightening. The shouts should really open up gameplay even further and give you even more of an incentive to kill dragons.

So now that we’ve mentioned dragons, apparently there are a fair number of them in the world and encounters with them are unscripted. So you could be doing something else or fighting something else and a dragon will fly up and do its best to ruin your shit. The dragons are beatable, especially as you get stronger but I can’t think of a good time for a dragon to randomly show up and fuck with you. The dragons themselves look pretty awesome and their movements are fluid and lifelike, or at least as lifelike as a mythical creature can really look.

The quest system has also been revamped and made more dynamic. Now available quests are determined by what you have done or haven’t done. In addition to that, the NPCs in the world don’t just hang out  waiting for you to show up and interact with them. Everyone has their own jobs to do and they go about their daily routine whether you are around or not. If you want, you can help them with these jobs for some extra resources or coin, or they will just take care of it themselves. This really gives you more of a sense of belonging to a living breathing world as opposed to just being a collection of statistics wandering through pre-recorded environments.

Of course there are stats and inventory management numbers going on but thankfully the interface has been cleaned up a ton through drop down windows that are clear and easy to manage and understand. You can also set spells to favorites for easy picking and use. Everything about the UI is built to be as easy and unobtrusive as possible. When you are dealing with a world this big and with this much information that really helps. A lot of streamlining has gone on here from the character sheet all the way to completely 3D rendered books you can read.

There is so much good stuff packed in here that it boggles my mind. Bethesda claims that Skyrim offers over 300 hours of gameplay. That sounds a bit high but if it is even a fraction of that I will be in heaven. There were a few frame rate drops and targeting issues I noticed during the demo but there is some time to fix those elements still. Frankly, even if they aren’t I don’t think they are enough to derail all the good going on here. If the rest of the game is as good as the half an hour we saw at the demo then it is going to be one of the most truly epic gaming experiences ever. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is set to release on 11/11/11 and I couldn’t be more excited for it while at the same time a bit sad for the other games released around that time that are going to have be ignored.