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There are few things less surprising about most fantasy games than how they portray magic, which is a pretty depressing state of affairs given that magic is, by definition, the art of doing the impossible. The impossible, it turns out, has a fairly limited set of applications. By and large, it means hitting foes with elementally-flavoured balls of fire, turbo-charging your stats or zapping wounded allies back to fighting fitness, in accordance with a collection of tactical rule sets derived from the works of Tolkien via Dungeons and Dragons. The flipside of this is that when somebody tries something genuinely intriguing with magic, rather than just adding a few new varieties of debuff, you really sit up and take notice. It doesn't have to be anything dramatic, though shockwaves and particle effects are always appreciated - it can be a relatively delicate matter of characterisation. Take The Witcher's Geralt of Rivia, for whom magic is the equivalent of a dagger tucked into a boot, or chainmail worn under a cloak - a little something extra for sticky encounters that sits naturally alongside his understated prowess with a sword and mastery of potions, befitting of a travelled mercenary who fights with cunning rather than force.
There's no flamboyance to Geralt's use of runes in The Witcher games - no real theatre, even after upgrades, just calm, deadly competence. In the Elder Scrolls universe, by contrast, sorcery is all pomp and spectacle. The shelves of Skyrim's umpteen libraries sag beneath the weight of treatises penned by advocates of one or other wizardly school - academic polemics as believably grandiose or petty as the actual use of magic in combat is clumsy and dissatisfying.
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