Genre: RPG
Year: 2011
Developed by: Bethesda Game Studio
Published by: Bethesda Softworks
Platforms: Every single one from 2011-now
#173
Feeling Like: Skyrim’s the Limit
There are big games, and then there is Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim.
What’s the point of even showing you screenshots? The collective hours played on Skyrim probably exceeds the lifespan of the known universe so I can’t even begin to paint a portrait of what it entails. It’s the de facto first person role playing game, an evolution from classics like Morrowind and Oblivion with improved everything. In 2011, it was revered at launch and mostly everybody agreed it was more than a worthy entry into the Elder Scrolls franchise.
I doubt anybody, even Bethesda, knew how big it would get.
To date, it’s sold 60 million copies, the seventh highest of all-time. It has five official add-ons, but when you start going down the mods rabbit hole, you may never come out. There is an incomprehensible amount of content already available in the main offering. To sample everything on every menu would take an eternity.
I’m not even sure if I liked Skyrim, but I do know that I played 75 hours in 14 days (for you math nerds, that’s over five hours a day, every day, for two weeks straight) and couldn’t think about anything else while I was playing. The shocking part is, I basically bull rushed the main quest. I barely dallied. I didn’t discover a fraction of what others had combed through, and it still took me more than three full days just to get to the end boss.
I get the feeling that if you really wanted to shock gamers of the past, like you went back in time and were tasked with completely blowing their minds about what a video game from the future could be, you’d probably show them Skyrim.
The freedom is unparalleled. It’s not uncommon to hear of players who spend dozens of hours without touching a single story quest, then starting over when they want to make their character look different, or experiment with an entirely new set of skills. I’m more a linear man than an open-world fella, but it’s impossible to deny the allure of doing anything in a living, breathing fantasy world unlike any other.
You’re destined to rule the land as the Dragonborn, or something like that. To be honest, plot and story are not crucial in the least to your enjoyment of Skyrim. It’s so open-ended, in fact, that it’s almost a detriment. If you don’t have some kind of road map, you can just wander aimlessly for hours. Actually, is that such a bad thing?
I sided with the Imperials over the Stormcloaks and the only reason was because Michael Hogan was voicing General Tullius and I can’t say no to Sol Tigh, ever. It’s like siding with Cartman in South Park: Stick of Truth. I may not agree with their morals or justifications, but I want to hear more of them and be near them. It’s about the only time I can stomach siding with an evil empire.
I just kept going, and going. Yes, crafting 100 crappy weapons to get my Blacksmith skill up to maximum seemed like a perfect use of my time prior to becoming a responsible adult. Yes, I will go and check out the Mage Questline and become the uber-leader Wizard person. No, I couldn’t do the Thieves Guild Quest because of a bug. Yes, I was tempted to start the game all over again and do that Quest first. To spend that much time only to reset my progress entirely is normally sacrilegious, but Skyrim has the tendency to scrap any previous personal guidelines. It’s that fun to uncover.
The game still looks amazing 12 years later, and with user-created graphical improvements, the possibilities are endless. Many other developers would kill to have a fraction of Skyrim’s single player success, but very few even come close to sniffing at it. The combat is a bit loosey-goosey for my tastes, the bugs are plentiful and potentially game-breaking, you could argue that the design is wide as an ocean but as shallow as a puddle, but that’s beside the point. When a game’s scope, scale and ambition are this large, of course Bethesda isn’t going to get every detail right. When I hear of all the individual tales from other players, their romances, hilarious quirks the game threw at them, their own journey, I can’t help but think that Skyrim has to be one of the most successful games ever from an overall package point of view.
Is it the best RPG ever? Not for me, the combat system seems too easy to break, the dungeons aren’t anything special and the puzzle variety isn’t up to snuff. But when it comes to a fantasy world filled with wonder, colorful personalities, timeless setting and voice actors like Michael Hogan (I’ll ALWAYS side with Sol Tigh!), very few others even come close.
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