Bethesda recently released a 20 minute trailer that ended with an epic fight with one of the dragon’s plaguing the world of Skyrim. I was instantly fascinated with everything the trailer had to offer, but felt that the dragon encounter was an easily attainable victory. I recently had a chance to spend a few hours with Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and I found out that a fight with a dragon is nowhere near the easy fight I saw in the trailer.
The dragon I encountered was the same one the 20 minute demo showcased, including the same field and watchtower. However, the fight was nowhere near easy than the one portrayed in the demo. The dragon’s scale greatly outnumbers your own, which gave me a sense of unease and panic as the dragon touched down on the surface. It was spectacular and frightening all at once, but I quickly jumped back in to my character’s shoes and tried different tactics to defeat this ferocious enemy.
My attempt at rushing the enemy proved useless, and for a lack of a better word, stupid. I quickly found myself engulfed in flames, or in the beasts mouth as he finished me off with one foul swoop. It was a lesson in trial and error as I hid away in a tower close to the action, and thought out several tactics in order to slay the beast. A combination of melee and ranged attacks worked well, but ultimately was not enough to win the battle.
I quickly realized that using the environment around me would be my only means of survival. Using the tower as cover while I fire arrows from my bow, mixed with a few rushing attacks with my sword, finally brought the Dragon down. Now of course grinding would have helped me in this situation, as in any RPG title you can think of, but what stuck out to me was the wide variety of tactics I came up with, and the trial and error that came with it.
The battle with the dragon never got old to me, and trust me, I fought the dragon for a while untill I was able to conquer it. It was not the intimidating scale, but the music and mood that Bethesda set for this encounter was the most astounding thing to me. Bethesda has packaged together a fantastic immersive experience that I am excited for all gamers to experience. To further explain my point, in my three-hour demo, my favorite thing to do was avoid conflict, and to just walk the country side and soak up the beautiful environments and amazing score. I don’t always find myself doing this in an action RPG title, but Bethesda has always manged to pull me into this nature appreciation mode, and Skyrim is no different.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim releases Nov, 11 on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.
