The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles Preview

The folks at CVG have published a recent PC Gamer preview of Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles expansion pack.

Above ground, The Shivering Isles is also refreshingly offbeat. The night sky glows pink, garish oddities dot the landscape, and yes, there are even forests of giant mushrooms. The creatures you encounter are also suitably nuts: Frankensteinian Mangled Flesh Atronachs, skimpily armoured Dark Seducers, gurning Painbringers, faceless Stone Knights and lurid, scuttling bugs the size of small cars.

But we can already tell that the highlight of this expansion isn’t going to be the hacking and the slashing. It’s going to be the stories. One city in the Shivering Isles has a split personality disorder, with two copies of every citizen, and it’s up to you to diagnose and cure it. Most (if not all) the NPCs here are certifiable, so your 18 hours are going to be filled with some of the oddest and funniest things you’ll do in an RPG this year.