Skyrim Remastered

I wanted to take a step back and get away from marketing and promotion for just a minute. Speaking of which, I am not a fan of marketing or self-promotion at all, but it's a necessary evil I suppose. Anyway, I wanted to talk about the remastered version of Skyrim for PS4. I picked it up a few weeks ago and it only took about 10 minutes and I was hooked. I had a copy of Skyrim for the PC back in the day and played the living snot out of it, so I wasn't sure what was going to happen when I started this version. One, I didn't know since I logged so many hours back in the day if I would be bored trying to play it again. Two, I'd never played Skyrim on a console before, so I didn't know how it was going to go. Needless to say, neither one of those concerns turned out to be a big deal because I jumped in with both feet.

I've played both the Fallout franchise as well as the Elder Scrolls franchise and while I love both of them, I like the Elder Scrolls a bit better. I think it hearkens back to my days of paper and pencil RPGs and feeds some deep desire for sword and sorcery, which is exactly how I play my characters in the Elder Scrolls world: one-handed weapon in my right hand, destruction spell (usually fireball) in my left hand. The play is smooth on the controller and looks great on the PS4 (I'm betting the new PS4 4k upgrade makes it look even better).  Another nice bonus, is that the remastered edition comes with all the DLC which I never played. It was almost immediately apparent when I was getting attacked left and right by master vampires (damn bloodsuckers). 

What I like most about the Elder Scrolls, as well as Fallout, is how open the game really is. I could ignore the main quest line and just go be-bopping around doing my own thing for hours upon hours and be content. There's enough content packed into these games to last months and I generally find myself getting side-tracked with my own quests and goals that have nothing to do with the official quest tracks. I've played every Elder Scrolls game out there with the exception of Arena and Battlespire. I remember playing Daggerfall on my old 486 computer and being amazed at how immersive it was (not to mention getting lost in the massive dungeons...I'm glad they scaled those back a bit or started designing them a little better). 

Anyway, long story short, Skyrim is awesome. That is all.