For the past few weeks, we've all been anticipating the newest patch to Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. In addition to your average maintenance patches, this newest download adds connectivity with Microsoft's Kinect, making it a more interactive experience by all accounts. The new update allows for voice commands as simple as looting a body, as complicated as binding weapons and magic to voice commands, and as satisfying as using The Voice. All the thu'um collected in the game can be used as vocal commands instead of having to fumble through screens to switch between them.
As a Skyrim fan, though not as fanatical as others, I have been awaiting the chance to add this feature to my game since I heard about its addition. I'll be reviewing not only its ease of use, and how intuitive the commands are as well as how the experience might be better or worse for those who've played the game before, and possible changes for new players as well.
I took my time writing this review, making sure I had experienced the new Kinect patch enough to give an honest opinion on the good and the bad. Nevertheless, the Kinect experience has passed the test of time on my end, and we'll take a look at "the good, the bad and the ugly".
The Good: It does absolutely help with game immersion, especially once your character learns shouts. The verbal command structure is not as intuitive for some commands as one would like, but otherwise they did an outstanding job of helping make this game a richer experience. The voice commands easiest to get a handle on are the Quick commands. These are "Quick Items", "Quick Magic", "Quick Skills" and "Quick Map" which take you directly into those respective menus. My most commonly used two were Quick Skills and Quick Map, since the constant leveling and making sure you're going the right direction are the two things I tend to need most. The "Quest" command on the map is useful, and if you have more than one active quest it does cycle between the locations which is also useful. Just make sure you keep your Active quests to a minimum so that you don't cycle between 20 quests.
The "Ally" command is very useful, and a much more elegant way of having your allies perform the tasks they can do without needing to shuffle through several menus and lists in order to get it done. Something as simple as "Ally Follow", "Ally Wait", "Ally Trade", "Ally Retrieve" and "Ally Attack" can be done extremely easily with voice commands, as opposed to the menu system it originally incorporated. Being able to simply look at an enemy and say "Ally Attack" is a wonderful improvement, though now that I have played Mass Effect 3 with Kinect, you can see the sheer difference between the Kinect DLC with its limited ability and the fully integrated Kinect-powered voice command experience that we're sure to (I hope) become used to in the future.
Another new improvement in the Kinect DLC is the Sort By for items. You can, while in a menu, sort by an item's Weight, Name (the norm) and monetary value. This is invaluable when you're over-encumbered and trying to decide what to get rid of. You can go straight to what's the least valuable, or straight to what the heaviest things are so you can decide which one to leave behind if you need to. Some of you don't get over-encumbered as often as me, and to that I say: I have made 'shouting my way to town' into a Thu'um art form.
Speaking of Thu'um, the Shouts in the DLC are wonderful and great for the immersion experience. I don't know if I like that you need to hold the Shout button like a walkie-talkie to use them, but this is only when in the Dragon Language, and it was still an improvement. My only complaint is that it doesn't always hear the shout, or sometimes it does the incorrect level of the shout (in the Dragon Language).You can use the Shouts without holding it down by calling them by their names in English. I prefer the Dragon Language, myself.
Also, for those who Shout and have issues, I've found that making sure you hold down the Shout button for an extra second before and after you shout will help the Kinect understand the shout better. Another issue can be background noise. I tend to play with other people doing other things, so if I'm playing semi-quietly while someone else is watching TV or listening to music, voice commands might get lost in the mix, which is understandable.
The Bad: The "Assign'' command isn't as instinctive as it could be. It helps you assign weapons, magic and items to certain voice commands. Unfortunately, there's a finite and very specific list of names to assign things to. For example, you can "Assign Fire Spell", but if you have more than one Fire Spell (which most mages will have), you can only assign one, so make it your favorite. It can also mis-understand which spell you're trying to assign, and you need to look at the list of assignable names carefully, so you won't unintentionally try to assign a spell to a slot that doesn't exist. You can also "Assign Dagger", "Assign Sword", "Assign Armor" so that you can quickly Equip it from your menu. There is one downside to this that I didn't like, which is that, if your weapon gets shouted out of your hand (as so often happens), you need to re-favorite it in the menu (which isn't new) as well as Re-Assign the voice command. So if you're fighting Draugr scum in a cave somewhere and they keep shouting it to the ground, don't bother re-assigning every time. Wait until you're done in that cave before re-assigning it to voice command. It'll save you some aggravation.
The Ugly: There is a Set Loot Limit command which can be very useful, but it is hard to understand and is not explained well in the PDF release of the commands, a link to which will be below. Setting the Loot Limit, which can be 0, 10, 50, or 100 is to set the auto-loot Value-to-Weight ratio. Auto-looting is definitely in the Good column when you want to grab everything, but messing with the Value-to-Weight ratio can be tricky. If you set it to 0, it will loot everything and that is the default setting. If you set it to anything else, it will only loot things with that ratio in mind: so if it weighs 1 pound, it needs to be worth at least 10 gold, if the ratio is set at 10, for example. I don't know why they did it this way, and its not easy to tweak right away. If you want to mess with the ratio, I'd suggest doing it in a dungeon where you'll be looting a lot so you can tell how the ratio is categorizing your loot more easily.
A more elegant loot method may have been commands like 'Loot All', 'Loot Gold', 'Loot Weapons', 'Loot Armor', 'Loot Books' and 'Loot Quest Items' so that once having looked at what is on a body or in a chest, you could choose by category, but for the those out there who don't want to tweak the ratio, you're better off either looting everything or looting by hand.
All in all, the Kinect DLC still gets a great review from me because of the level of immersion for the shouts.
The Good: 9/10
The Bad: 7/10
The Ugly: 6/10
Overall Score: 7 / 10
Skyrim Voice Command List PDF on the Bethesda Website
