The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Dragonborn

A failed assassination attempt on the Dragonborn hints that an ancient evil has returned to the island of Solstheim, located off the north-eastern coast of Skyrim and north of Morrowind's foreboding Red Mountain. The Dragonborn sets sail for the island and is confronted by a mystery that will take them across the island and into the Oblivion realm of Apocrypha to confront Miraak, the first Dragonborn.

Dragonborn is the third piece of DLC (downloadable content) for Skyrim, the monstrously successful fifth game in The Elder Scrolls. Unlike Hearthfire, which simply added the ability to build houses to the game, and Dawnguard, which was a short, linear quest adding the ability to transform into a vampire lord, Dragonborn is a proper expansion like we used to get in the good old days. The setting is Solstheim, previously the setting for Bloodmoon, an expansion to The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. The island has changed a lot in the subsequent 200 years, with the eruption of the Red Mountain covering much of the southern half of the island in ash. However, the central mountains and the north coast retain that mountainous, sub-arctic feel that Skyrim evoked so successfully.

Dragonborn starts when your character - the Dragonborn - is attacked whilst going about his or her daily business (the Dragonborn questline only starts once you have completed a few of the main storyline quests in Skyrim itself and been proclaimed Dragonborn). Clues on the attackers lead you to a boat moored in Windhelm. The captain - reluctantly - agrees to sail you to Solstheim. Upon arrival in the main settlement at Raven Rock, you are confronted by houses built out of the shells of long-dead giant crustaceans and a wizard living inside a gargantuan mushroom. You are not in Skyrim any more.

The dominant race in the southern half of the island are the dunmer or dark elves, who were allowed to settle on Solstheim by the Nord High King after being driven out of their homeland. After 200 years living together with the Nords and other races, a tolerant multi-racial community has grown up that is a pleasant change after the prejudices of Skyrim proper (where the Nords treat any non-Nord characters with disdain, if not outright hostility). The smaller size of Solstheim - a fraction the size of Skyrim but still big enough to contain dozens of main quests, side-quests and missions, as well as dozens of locations and vast quantities of loot - also allows for a more focused game without sacrificing the freedom the series is renowned for.

As is traditional with the gameplay of the series, you can completely ignore the main storyline in favour of the side-quests. I actually did this for about eight or nine hours, simply traipsing around the island pursuing optional missions or just exploring and checking out locations I'd discovered. Dragonborn does a good job of adjusting to where you are in the main game's quests: being a member of the Thieves' Guild immediately gave me an 'in' to the town, with the local blacksmith being related to one of the senior guild members. A bunch of hunters living up in the mountains have a quest that will only be activated if the player is a werewolf. There are different dialogue options depending on if you play the expansion before or after the defeat of Alduin in the main game's storyline. In particular, Dragonborn improves upon Skyrim by making its NPCs more memorable and interesting than that in the main game. The aforementioned mushroom-dwelling wizard is a total nutjob, with some very amusing lines, whilst it's possible for the player to win the allegiance of a tribe of Rieklings (think of a race of demented Ewok-goblins) who will then follow the player around and randomly help out in combat.

As well as Solstheim itself, the game features sequences set in Apocrypha, the home of the daedric prince Hermaeus Mora. This is an alternate dimension made up of stacks of billions of books, guarded by psychotic librarians known as Seekers (Cthulu-like tentacled horrors). Traversing these chunks of Apocrypha - accessed by the foreboding Black Books - rewards the player with different powers and effects, and is required to find and defeat Miraak. Unlike the repetitive Oblivion Gate towers in Oblivion, these sojourns to Apocrypha are shorter, more concise and more imaginative. You also only need to do a couple of them to finish the expansion's storyline, at which point finding more of them becomes purely optional.

On the negative side of things, Miraak is a dull enemy and the expansion's biggest selling-point, being able to ride around on dragonback, is severely underwhelming. There's also perhaps an over-relianced on draugr (undead) as enemies in the new dungeons, when they'd already become quite played out in Skyrim itself. Fortunately, these make for surprisingly tiny parts of the expansion and it gets just about everything else right, breathing fresh life back into a game that was starting to feel a little stale.

Overall, Dragonborn (****) makes for a very welcome return to the world of Skyrim. The changes to the game's visual style are refreshing, and there's some better writing and characterisation than in its parent game. The expansion takes that everything that worked well in Skyrim and packages it into a smaller, more focused and more concise (though, at well over 30 hours worth of content, in no way tiny) gaming experience. Recommended to all fans of Skyrim, especially those underwhelmed by Dawnguard and Hearthfire. The game is available via Steam for PC owners, PSN for PS3 owners and X-Box Live for X-Box 360 owners.

FALLOUT TV series in the works?

Bethesda has filed a trademark for an 'ongoing television program set in a post-nuclear apocalyptic world', sparking speculation that they are planning to turn their Fallout franchise into a TV series.

The Fallout series depicts a parallel history where the United States built a technologically-advanced future based on the designs and visions of the 1950s, only for this world to be destroyed in a nuclear war between the USA and China in 2077. The games are set between 100 and 205 years later and show the rise of new societies from the ruins of the old one. There are four main games (Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas) and two spin-offs (Fallout: Tactics and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel), as well as a tabletop wargame. The series was created by Interplay and Black Isle Studios, who created the first three games in the series. After Black Isle's dissolution in 2004 (whilst working on a third game in the series), other studios produced the spin-offs for Interplay. Bethesda bought the rights to the Fallout franchise in 2006 and released Fallout 3 in 2008. They then hired Obsidian Entertainment to make New Vegas, which was released in 2010.

Bethesda are currently working on Fallout 4, which will almost certainly be set in Boston (Bethesda researchers have visited the city recently, making notes on its layout and geography), and there is widespread speculation that they will start work on Fallout Online once The Elder Scrolls Online is released later this year.

Bethesda applying for this copyright does not necessarily mean that there will be a Fallout TV series - they may be simply trying to protect against another show being made using the same concepts - but it does indicate they are at least thinking about it. Reactions will likely be mixed. Whilst Bethesda are to be thanked for raising the profile of the Fallout franchise and introducing it to a huge number of new fans, it is also the case that their interpretation of the franchise in Fallout 3 was simplistic, though fun. This was particularly shown up by New Vegas, where Obsidian (consisting of many of the writers and developers of the first two games) delivered both a better game and a considerably more interesting and more nuanced view of the setting. If a Fallout TV series is to proceed, hopefully Bethesda would involve some of the Obsidian talent (particularly Chris Avellone and J.E. Sawyer) in some capacity.

Dishonored

The city of Dunwall and its surrounding territories are ruled by the Empress Kaldwin, a fair and strong ruler. When she is assassinated and her daughter Emily kidnapped, her bodyguard Corvo Attano is held responsible and imprisoned. After six months, a brutal new regime under the Lord Regent has been established and the city placed in a state of fear. When Corvo is rescued by loyalists to the old regime, he is given the tools to carry out a series of missions aimed at removing the Lord Regent, rescuing Princess Emily and restoring justice to Dunwall. But a virulent plague and uncertain loyalties amongst the various factions make Corvo's job a lot harder as he must decide to take the path of blood-soaked vengeance or striking surgically from the shadows.

Dishonored is a first-person action game developed by Arkane Studios, with several of the developers of the Thief, Deus Ex and Half-Life franchises working on it. It is a richly atmospheric game which, refreshingly, rewards you for avoiding violence, chaos and killing (though still allowing you to pursue that course if you really want to).

The game places you in the role of Corvo, a bodyguard-turned-secret agent. You have a variety of tools at your disposal to carry out missions, including magical powers (the ability to blink - teleport short distances - is essential) and equipment including crossbows with sleep darts to knock out foes. You can also knock out unsuspecting enemies with sneak attacks and, if really necessary, use firearms and swords for direct combat. You can also use your magical powers to possess other creatures (including human characters) for brief periods. Each mission is set in a substantial area of the city of Dunwall, with you able to scale buildings using your powers and hide in the shadows from unsuspecting guards, or try a frontal assault option and wade through rivers of blood on your way to your objective. However, using violence and killing people increases the amount of chaos present in the city, which affects the number of guards (and rats) on later levels, and their alertness.

Dishonored's biggest success is its setting, with Dunwall being a grimy industrial city with a tech level more like Victorian England than a traditional high fantasy location. There are echoes of steampunk and China Mieville's world of Bas-Lag in the setting, which is a fascinating place to explore. There are also numerous books, posters, notes and audio logs dotted around the city which unveil its history in some depth and add to a feeling of immersion in the game. The depiction of grimy tenement blocks, rich manor houses and immense official structures (such as prisons, fortresses and fortified lighthouses) is remarkable, giving the game a tremendous sense of place. These settings also reward exploration, with Corvo often able to find bonus items and cash by thoroughly exploring every area rather than blitzing straight through.

The game's freedom has been its main talking point, with players having multiple paths to victory. This is true to a large degree, although there are still only a finite number of ways to proceed. The game is open enough to allow for two or three playthroughs using different styles (to unlock the several different endings), although arguably the game's freedom is not sufficient to justify more than that. With no multiplayer, the game's long-term replayability may be in doubt, though the (often difficult-to-achieve) achievements do help with that issue.

The writing and the characterisation in the game is fairly solid, and there's much amusement to be gained by eavesdropping on conversations from the shadows or spying through keyholes (sometimes learning something valuable that opens up new ideas and objectives). The game gives out an achievement for 'ghosting', which is not only getting through the game without killing anyone but getting through the game without anyone being aware you were even present. Achieving this is highly satisfying. The game also allows you to complete it without ever having to kill anyone, even assassination targets, which is an improvement over the recent Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which was impossible to complete without killing at least three mid-game bosses.

The game is well-paced, with missions taking anything up to three hours apiece to carry out if you are thoughtful and methodical. There have been complaints by some players about the game being too short, although to complete the game in much less than eight hours or so is only possible if you take the frontal assault option, which seems to be missing some of the point of the game. For my first playthrough I took a non-lethal course, methodically exploring each mission to start with and then picking up the pace in the later missions (where there is a much greater sense of urgency to events). This led me to completing the game in just under twelve hours, a very satisfactory amount of game for my money (and also leaving several other endings and playstyles available to be explored).

Dishonored (****½) is an intelligent and atmospheric game which gives the player a lot of freedom in how they choose to approach it and what they want to get out of the game. Surveying a target from a rooftop, coming up with a plan to get in without being seen and executing that plan successfully is great fun; when the plan goes awry and having to come up with a new idea on the fly even moreso. The game does falter a little towards the end, with a sequence set in a flooded part of the city going on a bit too long and the player being railroaded into the nearest thing the game has to a boss fight, but overall this is a rich and compelling game experience.

The game is available now on PC (UK, USA), X-Box 360 (UK, USA) and PlayStation 3 (UK, USA).

Bethesda headed to Boston for FALLOUT 4 (rumour)

It's been widely speculated for a while that Bethesda would be setting Fallout 4 in Boston, Massachusetts. That speculation has gained some credence with reports that Bethesda writers and researchers have been spotted in Boston undertaking research for an upcoming game.

MIT, Boston. Expect to see a Fallout-ised version of this vista if the rumour is correct.

Fallout 3 featured multiple references to the Commonwealth, a small nation established in the ruins of New England following the apocalyptic war. Several characters were featured who hailed from 'the Institute', widely taken to mean the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (or its Fallout equivalent). With Bethesda apparently planning to steer clear of the traditional Fallout stomping-ground of the California/Nevada/Arizona area (the setting for the first two Fallout games and the more recent New Vegas), fans had been speculating that either the Commonwealth or New York would be the focus for Fallout 4 and this now seems more likely.

According to Bethesda, their next game would feature the Creation Engine used by Skyrim (an updated version of the Gamebryo Engine used on all their titles from 2002's Morrowind through 2010's Fallout: New Vegas). Some Fallout fans had been hoping that Bethesda would farm out Fallout 4 to Obsidian, the company behind the excellent New Vegas, whilst they themselves would focus on The Elder Scrolls VI. Clearly this is not the case, with Bethesda now looking like they'll be alternating franchises, perhaps letting other companies come in to handle other projects along the way.

The use of the Creation Engine suggests that Bethesda envisage Fallout 4 as a current-gen title, which is odd given that the new consoles will likely launch no later than the start of 2014 and that seems a little too soon for Fallout 4. It's possible that Bethesda will release low-spec versions of the game for the current-gen consoles and upgraded, more advanced ones for PC and the next gen machines. I doubt Fallout 4 will arrive before the middle or end of 2014 at the earliest, if not later.