The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim review (Bethesda Softworks, 2011, PS, XB, PC, Switch)

I reviewed this on the Nintendo Switch 1, which is bizarre for me.

Skyrim has been out, as I write, almost thirteen years, but, up until recently, it did absolutely nothing for me. I used to find Skyrim unengaging, and its approach of letting the player be a thief-mage-warrior-assassin-chosen-one overwhelming, and a shade dulls. So, I’m surprised that I’ve ended up spending three weeks playing a Mage Thief. It’s become engrossing to the point that, twice, I’ve settled down in bed with it early on in the evening and looked up to find that it’s two in the morning. I haven’t made serious dents in any questline - dragons are knocking about, and I’ve started the Mage College one and the Thieves Guild one, but looking solely at quest progress, I haven’t done very much at all.

The storylines aren’t engrossing, really, but this doesn’t seem to matter, because I’m level 41 and focussed on becoming the best alchemist I can be and the hours just seem to fly by. I had a hand in being a pickpocket but went Legendary on that to trade in the perk points to plough them into speech instead. In this way, I’m trying to play Skyrim like I would a massively multiplayer online thing, like Runescape or Torn (both of which have previously or presently consumed me), but I feel like I’m brushing up against game design decisions designed to present that kind of play. I can kind of understand this - the game is about adventuring, not trading, but I’m not sure that I’m playing an effective role-playing game when the game actively imposes progress in the kind of role I want to play.

My specific issue is that Skyrim’s shopkeepers have a finite amount of gold on them at all times, which depletes when you sell items to them. Early game, my Speech skill (which modifies buying and selling prices) was low enough that I was making bad deals and not running into this as much, but now that my Speech (and Alchemy) is high enough to result in things that I’m selling being worth a lot of money, but not high enough to afford the perks that double the amount of gold that the shopkeepers have available, I can only really sell a couple of things at a time to each one. This was even worse early game, because you start out only being to sell certain items to certain shopkeepers, but I do now have the Speech perk that lets me sell anything to anyone - so long as it’s not stolen. I also have the perk that gives me better prices when selling to the opposite gender, but this now means, because he’s a vital part of my economic loop, that I can’t stuff the Whiterun general goods shop man’s genitals in his mouth for leering at me every time I go in. It is what it is.

Plenty else is also taking me out of the kind of immersion that I was so glad to be in. Having maxed Illusion and gotten relatively far in Speech and Alchemy and Enchanting, and basically nothing else, I’m now terrible at combat despite the enemies being stronger, and this is making actually going back to train combat a pain. I’ve been yeeted into the sky by giants’ clubs and insta-killed by dragon fire. The bits where a dragon eats me are my fault for getting too close, I suppose, but I’m really struggling to improve at combat in the build that I wanted to start with because of the way the game works. This is also partly me having played it ‘wrong’ for a fair bit, in trying to now play it ‘right’, I feel weirdly punished. Turning down the difficulty setting is helping, but the giants can still launch me into the clouds, and the kill-cam is so absurd that it feels like a bug.

There are lots of bugs; It's weirdly easy to level Illusion (spam the Muffle spell), but leveling everything else seems to be slow to the point of tedium. The Nintendo Switch version (the Switch 1, I should say, as Nintendo Switch New One has come out since I wrote this) regularly crashes for me. Alchemy labs invariably become invisible and/or unusable. After hours, shopkeepers have gone to sleep but still spouted their welcome dialogue from upstairs. My character has become stuck in cave scenery twice. Though access to one particular area is supposed to be a reward for completing the Mage College questline, I’m able to freely go in there and take what I want with no consequence, which has made me much less invested in finishing it. I’m on the side of seeing Skyrim as a net positive, but it’s held together by blue tack and string.

The leveling system feels opaque. There are no experience bars or much indication that what you’re doing is beneficial - the levels just go up, which exacerbates the tedium. I’m somehow level 53 in Sneak and I couldn’t for the life of you tell you that I did anything specific beyond crouching every now and then. There aren’t really training methods, like you would have in an MMO. This is maybe not the best comparison to make, but it’s the one I’m best equipped to make. A couple of days before writing this, I’d have said that I was finally taking Skyrim on its own terms, but I was immersed then, overtaken by it, even, and this is now. I do like that I can pay certain NPCs for skill levels, but this is balanced by only being able to do so five times per overall level, and at level 41, in the (honestly pretty neat) pacifistic build I’ve fallen into, level ups are rare and time consuming, and the intense feeling of immersion is becoming replaced with inertia.

So, I’ve gone from bouncing off of Skyrim multiple times, to being addicted to it, to being ready to admit that, though I had tremendous fun being immersed, that there’s enough about the game design that takes me out of my immersion and that I would change to make me think that I’m done for the time being. Having fully upgraded the house in Whiterun, I returned to it, looked around, sat in front of the fire, and felt content with the idea of leaving it there, and I did, and have done. My character, a cat lady, could go out the next day and adopt the kindly beggar girl in the city, to live in my home and be nannied by the Housecarl, but those are adventures for another time - another review, even.

I do think I will be back - killing dragons is satisfying when I manage it, and I’d be interested to get the Pickpocket perk that lets you poison people. For all I’ve criticised here, I have loved this brief dalliance with Skyrim, and just thinking about what I could get up to in it in the future is making me excited. Some of these things are despite the game rather than because of it, but I can see myself being more patient with it after a break. More on this eventually, potentially? I write about games here that excite and energise me, and Skyrim, on this occasion, has absolutely done that, so yes, I think so.

More generally, I’m wondering if this Elder Scrolls awakening is the start of a RPG fanaticism the likes of which you have never seen. We’ll see - I haven’t managed to beat Disco Elysium yet, either, on similar grounds of overwhelm that I now clearly have the capacity to push past.