I’ve been trying to find a good approach to making some sort of list to honor the best videogames of 2011. Sadly, I’m only one man and haven’t been able to play every single game of the year. I’d have to leave so many great titles out simply because I didn’t get a chance to try them. Instead, I’ll highlight the best that I’ve personally played on an individual basis. First up: ‘Skyrim’.
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I’m a videogame fan. I celebrate the medium from the best of the best to the absolute worst. Everything can be enjoyed on some level, but it’s very rare that a game completely captures me. One of the very few games to do so was a 1996 Bethesda title called ‘The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall’. It was buggy as hell, crashed every hour or so, and had a completely broken spell creation system that let you become indestructible. Despite all that, ‘Daggerfall’ was the first truly open-world game I played. I could play it however I wanted.<\/p>\n
The followup, ‘Morrowind’, let me down. It didn’t have the size and it didn’t have the right feel. ‘Oblivion’ got closer, but there was still something that didn’t work for me. I didn’t think anything would come close to the glory that is ‘Daggerfall’, but Bethesda proved me wrong last year with ‘Skyrim’.<\/p>\n
I bought ‘Skyrim’ shortly after it came out based on praise from both critics and other people whose opinions I respect, yet I was severely let down when the game started. I was forced to wait while story happened in front of me, without having any control over what was going on, without even getting to create my character first. This was far from the masterful introduction to ‘Fallout 3’. Still, once I was able to create a character and get through the overly-lengthy escape tutorial, things changed.<\/p>\n
Once out of the initial dungeon, you’re free to do pretty much whatever you like. You can venture to whichever town you want, join up with whichever faction you like and completely ignore the main story if you so choose. I so chose.<\/p>\n
One thing that’s become clear about my gaming habits is that if there’s something I can break, I’ll break it. If there’s a way I can play the game that was never intended by its makers, I’ll do it. And when I’m given the choice to either play along a fixed storyline or blaze my own path, consider that path blazed.<\/p>\n
‘Skyrim’ gave me plenty of opportunities to play without having to complete the quest that was handed down to me from the beginning. I got to craft my own stories based on my own gameplay choices instead of being told what to do at every turn.<\/p>\n
My initial character was a magic user named Tussk. When I left the first cave, things got awkward. I accidentally attacked the man who I had traveled with up until that point, but when he turned on me, I had no choice but to slay him. However, as it turns out, I hadn’t really killed him and I had to run to escape.<\/p>\n
I stumbled upon a hut full of spell books and alchemy ingredients. Seeing no one but an old crone, I snatched up the goods, only to find that she was a fairly proficient caster herself. Luckily, she wasn’t as good as me, and I took her down quickly. After an attempted murder and a wholesale slaughter, there was a pretty big bounty on my head. So, I took off towards Winterhold to learn the ways of the mage.<\/p>\n
The really satisfying thing about the story above is that it was created by me through gameplay. It wasn’t part of any quest and it wasn’t told through a cut-scene. Certainly, ‘Skyrim’ has traditional quests and the same kinds of storytelling techniques you get from any other game, but none of it is actually required to enjoy the game.<\/p>\n
People go on and on about the visuals and sound and voiceovers and all the other things that help to define the quality of a game, but it’s the player-driven narrative that really sets ‘Skyrim’ apart for me, and that makes it one of my most highly recommended games of 2011.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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