My goodness does it feel good to be back. Having watched some of the production videos from the film (found on Peter Jackson’s Facebook page), it looks like Jackson and company are picking up right where they left off with The Lord of the Rings ten years ago. Christ, ten years already?
I’m so bloody excited for this game, so I decided to round up some of the stellar reviews from some of my favourite gaming sites.
I’ve dabbled in Elder Scrolls games before, but they always seemed to be the wrong combination of intimidatingly huge and mechanically clunky (not to mention kind of ugly). Skyrim is the chapter that’s finally pulled me in, and suddenly I find myself smitten with the series. Not just the games, but the lore, and the insane level of thought that’s been invested in the world of Tamriel. I have every intention of seeing this game to its end, even if that demands months of my life. It’s not a perfect creation by any means, but I can happily overlook the flaws for a little more time with my wonderful, deadly Lady. Now if you’ll excuse me, she and I have about 40 open quest lines to resolve, and there are only so many hours in the day for picking off bandits with well-aimed arrows from the dark.
Skyrim can do epic, that’s a given. It is, however, the little things that make The Elder Scrolls V what it is. The game is stuffed to its brim with tiny flourishes that seem so insignificant yet make the world of difference between a game that feels like a game, and a game that feels like it’s alive. Swimming in a river to catch some fish, dropping an unwanted item on the floor and having an NPC “helpfully” return it to you, gaining a trusty follower who comments on your actions and surrounding locations — these are the things that really place Skyrim a cut above the rest. Long after gamers have stopped recounting grand scrimmages against tribes of giants, talk will persist of that time an elf tried to sell a player some drugs outside of town, or the bandits that attempted to scare the hero away rather than blindly attack. To talk of such tiny details in a game where storm clouds can be summoned at will sounds silly, but without these minor touches, the overall ambitious scale would mean much less.
[…]
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is every single reason to love a Western role-playing game, condensed into a single comprehensive experience with nothing lost in the conversion process. It is a game that will drown those who step into its absorbing, overwhelmingly detailed world, a game that will bury you and refuse to let go. Yet your submergence will be agreeable, your burial ecstatic, and the hands placed around your throat welcomed like those of a lover’s. To play Skyrim is to enter into a relationship, one that provides feelings of empowerment, yet demands total submission.
Submit you will, for The Elder Scrolls V is the new zenith of role-playing games and it commands you to look up.
I have to agree. Plenty of games have set out to create open, lively worlds that feel just as human as the one we inhabit. Perhaps none has come as close as Skyrim.
An absolutely first-rate roleplaying game that combines an abundance of content with an abundance of quality. The outdated design elements are unfortunate but not so distracting that it ruins the depth of the story, the openness of the setting, or the visceral joys of combat.
Anyone else getting (or already have) Skyrim?
Wandered into the bookstore the other day and saw this:
It’s a blurb from my review of SHADOWHEART by Tad Williams, right there at the top of the list and alongside some pretty heavy hitting and well known critics. I nearly dropped the book on the floor when I saw it.
I’ve had quotes from my reviews included in novels before, but they’ve always been on the inside (this blurb’s on the cover!) novels that I’d enjoyed, but didn’t necessarily mean a whole lot to me. This, however, is a whole different ball game. Tad Williams is one of my absolute favourite genre writers and has long been an inspiration to myself as both a reader and a writer. I look forward to his new releases with anticipation that’s rivalled by few other authors. To now be a part (however small) of his novel is an absolute honour.
Now, go read his Shadowmarch series. It’s really good.
I’m probably the only person in the world who cares about this, but it was too cool not to blog about. So over the top and cheezy, but also seems shockingly faithful to the original videogames. I’m a huge sucker for the Gyakuten Saiban/Phoenix Wright series, so you can be damn sure that I’ll hunt down a fan-subbed edition of this film once it’s been released.
From Prime Books:
Prime Books is pleased to announce the sale and transfer of ownership of their acclaimed online magazines Lightspeed and Fantasy to John Joseph Adams. Adams, the current editor of both magazines, will officially assume the role of publisher starting with the January 2012 issues.
“With the continuing expansion and success of Prime Books, my attention and time is increasingly consumed by book publishing,” publisher Sean Wallace said. “With John already doing a terrific job as editor, it simply made sense for him to take over as publisher as well. We’re really thrilled that this has worked out for both John and Prime.”
New publisher John Joseph Adams says he is delighted at the prospect of taking over the magazines and looks forward to the challenges ahead. “It’s an exciting time to be involved in publishing,” he said. “Models are changing and so is the readership, and online magazines have a better shot at sustainability than ever have before. I believe the possibilities for growth are tremendous, and I look forward to staying in the vanguard of this new frontier.”
Fantasy Magazine was established in 2005, and has been edited by Sean Wallace, Paul Tremblay, and Cat Rambo, with Adams taking over as sole editor earlier this year. Lightspeed—published by Wallace and edited by Adams—debuted in June 2010 and was a 2011 Hugo Award nominee. Numerous stories originally published in Lightspeed and Fantasy have been reprinted in best-of-the-year anthologies, and Lightspeed and Fantasy stories have been nominated for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Award, and others. Lightspeed’s first year of fiction has just been published by Prime Books in the print anthology Lightspeed: Year One.
I’m very happy about this. Not that Prime was handling the online magazine’s poorly (quite the opposite, actually), but Adams is one of my favourite editors and professionals in the genre, he has wonderful ideas on how to market and present short fiction and his turn around on stories is absolutely tremendous. It will be interesting to see how Adams turns the magazines into self-sustaining entities (without Prime’s money as a backing, as little or as much as that might have been). Either way, they’re two of the best short fiction markets out there and they’re even more firmly in the talented hands of Adams who has been their editor for some time now.
In addition to this news, Andrew Liptak, a good friend of this blog, has been named Editorial Assistant at Lightspeed. Congrats, Andrew!
You can read Fantasy and Lightspeed entirely for free.
