As a person with over 800 hours in un-modded Skyrim and almost 1,500 total hours I feel qualified to talk about this beautiful yet broken game. Here’s my delusional look at The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim.
World Building
As a quick overview Skyrim is a Fantasy RPG set in the Elder Scrolls universe on the planet Nirn on the continent of Tamriel in the region known as Skyrim. It takes place during a civil war between the Stormcloaks whom are rebels and the empire who rules over all of Tamriel. The Empire is mostly run by the a race called the High Elves whom have taken over the Empire after a great war between the empire and them which they won. The Stormcloaks are mostly composed of Nords who are native to Skyrim and wish to be free from the empires control and the High Elves rule which they see as oppressive. The player can join either side or can just ignore the war. The player plays as a Dragonborn which is an ancient blessing bestowed upon the few whom Acantosh (one of this worlds gods) has chosen to bless with the power to kill dragons permanently this fact allows the Dragonborn to eventually kill an evil Dragon named Alduin or World Eater who is said to bring an end to the world.
Art
The art of Skyrim is a debated topic but I would describe it as Viking Fantasy. I don’t know if that is a very Academic description but I think it fits. The best example I could give is that of most of the dungeons in the game and they look like this
which to me screams ancient Vikings but with the drauger and their magic it makes it very fantasy looking as-well.
The music shares this weird Genre bending with the art as it is both very upper europey but in some cases very upper asiay in origin this mixture somehow fits the setting perfectly but it also confuses many in the community including me on what exactly it should be called. The Ambient sounds in this game are increadible both in and our of dungeons weather its wind blowing in a cave entrance or the sound of the wind blowing in the trees with birds and insects flying around I cannot remember a time when there was a noise that sounded out of place for where I was. One problem I have with with the sounds of this games is the fact that the city’s are almost unnaturally lacking the sound of other people which is the kind of thing that can pull you out of the game a little.
Mechanics
To begin lets look at the thing very few RPGs replicate and the part that has brought me back over and over again the mechanics and how they relate to the overall feeling and pacing of the game. This begins with a disclaimer though I will try my hardest to describe the way this game feels I have found that this very infrequently truly conveys what a game actually feels like so take everything I say with a grain of salt also GO PLAY THE GAME.
MovementÂ
The mechanics of this game are best shown in its introduction that of the escape from Helgen. So we begin with the simplest of mechanics of most games that of movement and how it carries you through the world in Skyrim their are 4 different states of movement those being; Walking, Slow walking, Jumping, and Running. These four movement options are your primary locomotive options though there are some more infrequent or niche ones. These include Flying and physics boosting though these methods are mostly used for brief story elements and shattering the games physics engine. These movement options are your primary ways of interaction with the world and they are nearly perfect aside from some odd jumping physics I would say that for first person movement its one of the best ever developed for an RPG.
WeaponsÂ
Weapons are the thing that have really brought me back as even in its own series its a stand out its only competition in my opinion are Destiny 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 which are both shooters which should say something about this games combat. But to begin their are hundreds of weapons in this game but they all (generally) fit into 9 categories those being Battleaxes, Bows, Dagger, Greatswords, Maces, Swords, War Axes, staffs, and Warhammers. These weapon mechanics are very good accept for the staffs which suffer from the same issues as the Magic system which believe me we will get to.
Other Interactions
This section mostly focuses on the use of the interact key which is mostly used for talking to NPCs which is obviously very important in a RPG. But the other use of this button is that of picking up physics objects and though this may seem like a small thing having the ability to literally pickup most objects in the game really boost immersion and allows you to mess with the physics engine in interesting ways. This aspect of interaction will not be covered in this article but there maybe an article about it in the future (link).
Story
The Main Quest
To be honest writing this section is painful as though I’ve played this game over 12 times I’ve only played the main story around 5 times and this is mostly due to its while not terrible by any means very lack luster story and very boring primary villain while there are some great moments like Skyhaven temple or Trapping the Dragon at Dragons reach or the summit between the waring powers at the Throat of the World. They just don’t make up for the lackluster fetch quest and final boss fight. And what makes it even worse is the fact that this story is surrounded by smaller story’s that out do it at every point such as the entire Dark Brotherhood questline and the Thieves Guild questline. These “Side Quest” are the part that I come back for each time and their the reason people love this game as much as they do and why it has a community still to this day. And you can see this in its modding community as no one makes mods for the main story and prefer to instead make more for those “Side Quest” I mentioned earlier. One particular event I want to put emphasis on is when the Grey Beards a group of old monks on a mountain scream across the land calling you to the throat of the world is awsome everytime but what is even more awsomeis getting a piece of paper in the mail that looks like this.
And then waking up in a cabin near Solitude with a women sitting in the corner telling you to kill one of the people knelt Infront of you is just on a different level and its honestly one of those events that I will think back on and just thing “Damn that was cool” and it has permanently changed how I look at character introductions ever since.
Apologies I Rambled a bit but I hope that that conveyed just how story rich this game is while still showing how desperate of a state the main story is in comparison to its surrounding content.
“Side Quest”
I will not being going very in depth with each individual questline as that would take far to long but i will tell you what my Personal favorite is and why. My favorite questline is that of the Thieves Guild Based in Riften a Crime ridden city and the guild is obviously not helping with that but this questline begins with you doing a simple job for one of the members of the guild on the street of Riften. And ends with you runnin this Thieves guild as you rebuild the wealth stolen by the previous Guild leader whom you murder half way through the quests this though turns out to not only be a thieves guild but also a “Recruitment center” for a group called the nightingales whom you eventually become a member of this group is used as protectors of a God called nocturnal whom you serve and whom eventually lifts a curse off the guild allowing you and the guild to prosper. Now it may be obvious why I love this Questline but I will explain anyway. This questlines twists and turns are some of the best in the game and the story falls into helping a god so abruptly yet it feels realistic somehow. another reason i love these Quest is the characters as they all feel perfect the perfect amount of mystery while allowing you to still empathize with all of them. One thing I also for got to mention is the gear you get for completing this Questline is arguably some of the best looking in the game.
I hope that that very short description really shows just how unhinged yet down to earth some of the quest can be.
The Spell System
Now to get into the bad stuff and honestly starting here feels like cheating but the spell system in this game is almost unbearable and the sad part is that the actual magic itself is really really cool the problems begin when you realize that trying to beat this game with a pure magic build is nearly impossible this is mostly due to one problem that being the skill tree for upgrading your spell casting ability is so bad that once you get to about level 15 your not gonna be able to kill enemy’s at any sort of efficient rate this problem is made even worse by the fact most enemy’s have some sort of resistant’s to certain magics or magic in general making it even harder to play this way. What makes this even worse is that the Magical College of Winterhold is honestly a great questline but is almost unachievable with a pure magic build which makes the whole questline kind of worthless from a character building standpoint. I personally hate min maxing characters and the like but with magic you have to to even be able to say competitive with the enemy’s which I think is honestly such a waste of potential. Mods thankfully fix this in any way you could imagine either making it just like every other weapons skill tree or making magic over powered and these are honestly some of the first mods I ever added.
Apologies once again it may seem like a small issue but after over 800 hours of playing with no modded magic I have built up quite the pile of hatred for whoever made those decisions.
Final Remarks
I hope that this article conveyed that everyone should really play this game as soon as their able and if Fantasy isn’t really your thing i would definitely check out Cyberpunk 2077 for a more well cyberpunky setting and Destiny 2 for a Free and more Sci-Fi setting.
-Written and Edited by Cullen Mort