Can't wait much longer...

You know that feeling you sometimes get when you want something really, really bad? You see something awesome and shiny in a store, maybe you’re really hungry and smell something amazing, perhaps even there’s a girl or guy you’re desperate to be with. Whatever it is you want you almost certainly do not want it as much as I want ‘Skyrim’, I am prepared to fight to prove this.

The initial announcement made me ever so slightly giddy, the subsequent theatrical footage weak at the knees and the gameplay footage you can download for free from wherever you so choose (or simply YouTube) knocked me to the floor, LOOK AT IT! That’s IN GAME! Everything looks incredible, even the damn map is rendered in beautiful 3D representations of the actual topography. It has been a while since I’ve been so stunned by the sheer aesthetic of a game and I could not be happier that it is at the hands of the latest Elder Scrolls game.

My first experience of the series was ‘Morrowind’ and that was fucking brutal and brilliant in equal measure. I lost track of the amount of times I was killed, or cursed, or had to drop half my inventory to be able to move or whatever was going on in the game. I was young, it was ages ago and my memory on specifics is fuzzy. What stays with me is that I loved that game despite how hard I found it.

‘Oblivion’ is the title in the series that most will be familiar with or at least have heard of. Here you have a 100+ hour sprawling open world adventure where all kinds of awesome and crazy stuff can go down. Now I never managed to get round to finishing ‘Oblivion’ or even playing for that long (20 or so hours only) because Fallout 3 happened and boom, there went 100+ hours of my life, but what I did play I enjoyed immensely and I find myself wondering why I never went back, there’s bound to be a reason but again it was a few years ago now and specifics elude me. Regardless it was an awe inspiring experience at the time, the scope and scale of everything was spectacular.

This sense of hugeness is still very much present in ‘Skyrim’ if you pick up a magazine or find a website and read someone’s preview to have this proved. All the big names in video games publications recently got a 3 hour no holds barred playtest of the game with only the main story quests removed so as to spoil nothing. I have read 4 separate accounts of the same event and each describes an entirely unique experience. What was also abundantly clear is that another 100+ hours of my life are now scheduled in for this one as barely scratched the surface seems to be a resounding understatement of the games length and depth.

I’ve been trying to decide how I’m going to play the game, what race I want to play as based on what I’ve seen so far, though I’ll probably be a Dark Elf mage at first, because that’s my go-to race and class, but the free flowing class (or indeed classless) system means if this isn’t working or I simply want a change for a bit I can try pretty much anything else. The potential to dual wield magic, weapons or combination of both makes for a staggering combination of things I want to play around and experiment with.

I’m excited about this release, more so than I have been about any game for a while and with the exception of ‘Mass Effect 3’ in March I am unlikely to be again. I am prepared to go back on those words as soon as Fallout 4 is announced and is using the same engine but even that may not equal the splendour I feel for this sure fire masterpiece. Every day I wake up and it isn’t November 11^th is not good enough, but at least it’s always one less day of waiting.