The Evolution of Elder Scrolls: III, IV, V

All I’m going to say about the ones before III ist that they are extremely old and I don’t want to go back that far.

Anyway

TES:III is probably one of the most immersive, story driven, complex RPG game in existence. Just the fact that you can get a “super jump” spell from picking it up off a guy who fatally landed with it right in front of your eyes just says “Whoa.” As well as the merchants in the game having very realistic amounts of money, and they don’t reset the money for a very long time, if at all, if you deplete their supply of gold. Those two are just a couple of examples of how deep the game is.

Next up is TES:IV, also known as Oblivion. This time it came back with tons of upgraded graphics and a couple more features. Many say they “dumbed” it down so they could get a bigger audience, and I partially believe this. In Morrowind there were so many complex things you could do. You couldn’t just rest anywhere, and your magicka didn’t recharge like normal. But in Oblivion, your magicka recharges, you could basically sleep on the sidewalk, and you could fast-travel, which I believe was needed because of the vast amount of land in the world. So some of the new features are debatable while others are obviously a scheme to get a wider player base, which I think is ok. But overall this game includes a great questline, many, many sidequests and tons of things to do, even if you have beaten the game. It deserves every single award given to it.

Skyrim, which will be released on 11-11-11, (crazy date, right?) will supposedly have features from Oblivion and, trying to appease the Morrowind players, bring back some of the previously “dumbed” down features back. Of course it be influenced by the game mechanics from their other RPG, Fallout 3, which they created a bit after Oblivion. The game looks spectacular from a graphical point of view, and the inclusion of dragons is making everyone go nuts. But I’m not too happy with the new “shout” system. As one guy put it, “What if we needed to sneak around? What ‘shouts’ do we get?” So like all games, there will be some awkward moments, but overall I think this will be a big hit with anyone who likes immersive RPG's.