The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (*****)
I can’t tell you how many hundreds and hundreds of hours I’ve sunk into playing this game.
In a word, Skyrim is glorious. It’s a massive, endlessly entertaining, wonderfully intricate and stunningly designed fantasy world where you are the hero. An instant hit upon its release, Skyrim has remained popular a decade later in part thanks to its numerous re-releases across platforms. It either got me through my undergrad or was the reason my undergrad was so hard. For the uninitiated, it may seem like a waste of time. But once you’ve slayed your first dragon in Skyrim, there’s no going back.
There’s three things that I’ve found are a surefire way to get me heart-and-soul head-over-heels sucked into a video game. If it’s an open world format, if you can level up your character by repeating certain actions, and if you can customize your character, I’m yours. Skyrim not only has all three of these, but it has them in abundant excess. The world of Skyrim is so open, you could have a completely thrilling experience without ever completing a single main quest. There are eighteen skills that you can level up, allowing you to build your character the way you want. As for your character’s customizability, you get to design virtually every aspect of their appearance. There’s a million outfits, ten different races, and you can get down to the nitty gritty of deciding what colour eyes you want or how big or small your muscles will be. For people who like telling their own stories in video games, it’s a dream come true. There’s honestly so much to talk about when it comes to Skyrim that I had to categorize my thoughts according to the biggest parts of the game. Let’s dive in.
The Main Quest
Skyrim starts off with you escaping your own execution thanks to the intervention of a dragon. You’re supposed to follow up on this, but you certainly don’t have to. There’s no way to formally ‘beat’ Skyrim – but the closest thing is following the main questline where you defeat Alduin, a big monster dragon. Part of this quest involves you discovering that you’re the “Dragonborn”, a being with the spirit of a dragon or something along those lines. Apart from sounding cool, your title allows you to use “Thu’um”, or speak in the dragon language. In one of the game’s loading screens, you’ll occasionally spot this gem of exposition:
“When a dragon uses a breath attack like fire or frost, it is speaking in an ancient and powerful language. A battle between two dragons is actually a deadly verbal debate.”
It’s one of the more laughable parts of Skyrim lore, but the payoff is that your character has the power to shout so hard you can knock people over. There are many ‘dragon shouts’ you can use, but the blast-people-off-mountains-with-your-voice shout is far and away the most fun.
Part of this questline involves you meeting Paarthurnax, an ancient dragon who more or less serves as your Yoda to teach you more about being the Dragonborn. When I first played Skyrim, I decided to play as a character who wants to destroy all dragons. Let me tell you – meeting Paarthurnax for the first time threw me for a loop. I mean, here I was, trying to be the hero of Skyrim by vanquishing all dragons – and now here was a dragon offering to help? What was I supposed to make of that? And then to top it all off, a group of people called ‘The Blades’ basically told me that I had to kill Paarthurnax. That’s part of the fun of Skyrim – it’s an open world and you get to make your own decisions, but you’re often faced with tough ones. Do I slay the dragon because he’s a dragon, or do I spare the dragon and therefore call into question all of the other dragons I’ve slain?
Anyway, the main quest is fun because there’s a lot of dragon stuff in it, but if all you do in Skyrim is play the main quest, you’re missing out on like 90% of the real action.
The Civil War
So Skyrim’s in a bit of a pickle when you first show up. You see, Skyrim’s basically a province in a larger empire called Tamriel. Tamriel is ruled by the Imperials, but Skyrim’s people (the Nords) aren’t big fans. To make matters worse, Elves nearly took over everybody but finally signed a peace treaty with the Imperials that basically lets Elves walk around like they own the place. Nords aren’t the most tolerating of people, so there’s a fair amount of racism in Skyrim. Anyway, the High King of Skyrim was more or less okay with this set-up, until a guy named Ulfric came in and used that dragon shout I mentioned earlier to throw the king off a mountain or whatever. Ever since, Skyrim’s been at war. There’s the Imperials, who are kinda like the Galactic Empire, and then there’s the Stormcloaks, who are kinda like the Rebel Alliance.
It's a bit more complicated than that, and that’s the fun of it. You have to pick a side, and neither side is perfect. Once you pick, you’re in it to win it. You get to participate in big battles, siege cities, and even kill kings. And at the end, you have to live with the consequences. Sure, the Stormcloaks just want their province to be free of Imperial control, but they’re also super racist towards anyone who’s not a Nord. Yeah, the Imperials are a bit corrupt and out of touch with the people of Skyrim, but they’re also the only thing keeping the provinces organized and safe. I think I always ended up serving the Imperials, but having the freedom to choose was always a blast.
Thieves’ Guild
The different guilds of Skyrim are where the fun really begins. There’s all these different organizations that want you to join, kind of like the club fair during Frosh week at university. The Thieves’ Guild is one of the most fun, for obvious reasons. You get to play as a thief, sneaking into people’s homes, taking stuff that doesn’t belong to you, and loving the life of the criminal underworld. The vibe of the Thieves’ Guild is fun in part because of the grimy underground lair, but also because of the eclectic cast of fellow thieves you meet along the way. And while Skyrim asks you to make more than a few morally questionable decisions throughout the game, most of what happens in the Thieves’ Guild is relatively harmless. I mean, in a world where you’re faced with vampirism, cannibalism, and mass murder on a fairly regular basis, a little petty theft is small potatoes.
The Companions
Of all the major questlines, this one was the least interesting for me. You basically come across a group of mercenaries, and eventually find out they’re a secret brotherhood of werewolves. Sure, you get to become a werewolf yourself in the process, but I never found myself that effective as a werewolf. I will say that the top dog Kodlak turned out to be a real gem. In one playthrough where I was really leaning into the dark options the game had to offer, my character watched Kodlak die and then came across his journal at his bedside. There are a million books in the game – the vast majority of which I have not bothered to read – but I was glad to flip through this, because it had this inside it:
I have received few dreams over the course of my life, but when they come, I have learned to trust them. I have also learned to trust the instincts of my heart, which tells me that [my character’s name] can carry the Companion’s legacy as true as any residing in Jorrvaskr…Only he stands as a true warrior who can keep a still mind amidst these burning hearts.
Given that my character up to that point had lived a life of being hated, feared, or betrayed, this was the first time another character had seen him as anything good. I decided to have this be the ‘Grinch’ moment that turned my character’s life around. Sure, a big part of this narrative was self-generated, but that’s the fun of this game. You get to tell the story you want to tell.
College of Winterhold
Very reminiscent of another wizarding school we’ve all heard of, the thing that made this questline great was Jzargo. If you didn’t spend a lot of time with him in the game, you missed out. Of all the characters who can follow you around and join you in your adventures, Jzargo is one of the best. He’s one of the few characters with a sarcastic attitude towards pretty much everything, and he makes every side quest that much more fun. Other than that, there was always a lot of loot around at the College – and the professors always had lots of money so you could sell that stuff you’d been lugging around for days.
The Dark Brotherhood
This is a quest that I avoided altogether during my first playthrough. At that point, I was trying to always make the right decision. So when I got to the point where I got an invitation to join the Brotherhood, I did the only logical thing that my character could do – I killed the recruiter and began a quest to wipe out this secret group of assassins. It was the right call for the character, but I’ll admit I missed out on a whole bunch of fun quests that way. The next time when I played a decidedly more evil character, this was an inevitable stop. For the most part, you’re not doing anything your character doesn’t already do on a regular basis. The perks are that you get to meet Cicero, the Joker-like character who plays a major role in this questline. You also end up assassinating the Emperor of Tamriel, which is a really fun series of missions. That said, if you don’t feel right about getting paid to kill people, this path most definitely isn’t for you.
Dawnguard
Now this is what I’m talking about. I’ve always loved the idea of vampires, but I’ve never seen an interpretation of them that I’m totally happy with. That is, until I met the vampires of this questline. They’re everything you want vampires to be – wholeheartedly evil, hyper-gothic, and classy to the very end. The aesthetic of this whole path was exactly what I was looking for. In this quest you can play as a vampire or as the vampire hunters, and both are fun in their own way. Serena is the standout character from this questline – a very dry and sarcastic vampire who’s been given more personality than most in the game. I’ve heard if you play your cards just right, you can convince her to cure herself of her vampirism, but I never managed to pull that off. Anyway, I was happy to move into the big haunted castle so I could sneak into villages in the middle of the night. You know, classic vampire stuff. None of this skin-sparkling-in-the-sunlight garbage.
Dragonborn
This questline didn’t appeal to me too much. There are two big segments to this path: an ashy island where everything is grey and dark grey – not very inviting or vibrant compared to the wintry mountains of Skyrim – and an H. P. Lovecraft-inspired dream dimension where everything is either a book or a writhing tentacle. I just didn’t care much for the vibe in either location, so there’s not much I can say about this one. I guess this one did let you ride dragons, but the game mechanic was very underwhelming. When you hear that you can ride a dragon, you anticipate being able to steer – but it’s more like riding Pirates of the Caribbean. It’s gonna happen, but you have absolutely no say in the matter.
Hearthfire
This downloadable expansion probably sucked as much time out of my life as any three of these other questlines combined. It’s basically ‘The Sims’ meets Skyrim, because you can now build your own house from the ground up. The basic design of your home is a bit on the rigid side, but the fun is in deciding which weapons to hang on which wall, which armours to put on mannequins and which to stuff into dressers, and so on. Skyrim is a game where you collect an unimaginable amount of stuff, and having a massive home in which to put it all was loads of fun. I spent way too long organizing my potion ingredients and placing my ‘party clothes’ in one closet while putting my ‘executioner’s outfit’ in another one.
I have so many fun memories of playing this game. From the main quests to the ones you make up for yourself, and from the giants you slay to the characters you meet in taverns, this is a game stuffed to the brim with opportunities for fun. I can’t wait until they release the next one, although I have to admit I probably won’t see my family again for many months after that day. There were so many times during my undergrad that I had some sort of exam or paper coming up, and I would just hear the voices of the main menu calling me back to a simpler world. Sure, this game sucks you into another world so deep that you forget it’s 3:00 in the morning, but it’s never been more worth it than in Skyrim.