Unbroken Road: 15 Years with Skyrim

When Skyrim first released in November of 2011, I didn’t know anything about it. I hadn’t heard of the Elder Scrolls series, and didn’t notice any of the hype leading up to the game’s release. I briefly saw a few screenshots of early gameplay and didn’t think much of it. But I did eventually try it, and was immediately hooked. As I’m sure many other players back then would agree, leaving the tutorial area for the first time, stepping out from the Helgen caves and seeing the open vista of mountains and pine trees, there was an instant feeling of okay, I get it.

November 11th, 2026 is the fifteenth anniversary of Skyrim’s release, and I’m taking the opportunity to look back on the past decade-and-a-half with my favourite game, share some of my screenshots, and ramble about a few things that I think make it special.

Before the Storm

My History with Skyrim

I started playing Skyrim on the PS3, not long after it first released. Whenever I wanted to start a new play-through I would create a new user profile on my console to preserve the existing game saves, just in case I wanted to go back to them. Once the maximum number of sixteen users was reached, I would then go back and start overwriting the oldest ones with my new characters. This process repeated over and over for the next five years as I kept playing.

In 2016 I started looking at new ways to play Skyrim, wanting to boost the graphics, and maybe try out some mods. While the game was still great, the PS3 was tired, and I had gotten a taste of next-gen performance with Fallout 4. I was close to buying a pre-built gaming PC when Skyrim: Special Edition was surreptitiously announced, and that October I switched to playing the newly enhanced version on my PS4.

A short time after meeting my now-fiancé in 2019, I bought myself a Nintendo Switch Lite (grabbing a copy of Skyrim on the way to the store, before purchasing the console itself), and then a full-size Switch a few months later. While this became my primary way to play, having so far logged over 1400 hours of Skyrim on the Switch, I also picked up a second-hand Xbox Series S and put in some more time with that system.

All of this is to say that I have a lot of experience with Skyrim, playing it semi continuously for over half of my life, from the age of fourteen to now twenty-nine. Due to my ill-advised PS3 profile juggling, and the overlapping save-games spanning five different consoles, I don’t know the exact number of gameplay hours that I’ve put in to it. But I’m confident that the total lands somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 hours, probably airing on the higher side of that range.

Speaking with Silence

Immersion Through POV

One thing that I don't see anyone else talk about is Skyrim's dialogue system. In Bethesda Game Studio’s previous two games, Oblivion and Fallout 3, when initiating dialogue with an NPC the camera zooms in on the character in question and you are presented with lists of dialogue options. In Fallout 4, the game released after Skyrim, BGS switched to a Mass Effect style dialogue tree, with a third person camera, and selectable speech options that give the gist of what your fully voiced player character then says.

Skyrim’s dialogue behaves more like the previous games, but with the key difference that the player’s point of view doesn’t change. No camera zoom, no distinct third-person POV. This makes speaking to characters in the game seamless with exploration and walking around. It’s a tiny thing but I think it makes a big difference when it comes to immersion. Like the previous games, the dialogue option you chose is the entirety of what you say, as opposed to choosing a type of response and then watching your character recite a longer phrase.

Skyrim also doesn’t have conventional cinematic cutscenes. There are a few times where the player is unable to move and has to watch events unfold; the intro sequence of the game riding the carriage to Helgen, becoming paralyzed by Karliah in Snow Veil Sanctum during the Thieve’s Guild quest line, falling to the ground while Arch-Curate Vyrthur demolishes the Auriel’s Chapel at the end of the Dawnguard quest line, and being immobilized by Miraak upon reading the Black Book Waking Dreams and entering Apocrypha. In all of these moments though, the player is still watching through their character’s eyes.

There is only one scene where the POV of the player is fully removed from their character. Leading up to the climax of the main storyline, the player's character climbs atop the dragon Odahviing, and the player watches as the two of them fly off into the distance. Aside from that one instance, you’re always seeing things from a continuous viewpoint.

Whispers in the Dark

Quest Design & Small Details

Skyrim has tons of fantastic quests. One of my favourites is a small one called Ill Met By Moonlight. When arriving at the gloomy settlement of Falkreath, deep in the foggy pine forests, you find out that a local girl has been murdered by a newcomer to town. Speaking to the accused man in prison, you discover that he is a werewolf, and was seeking a simple quiet life when he accidentally transformed and attacked the child. If you offer to help him, he sends you to hunt down a mysterious white stag in the woods, and upon slaying the animal, commune with Spirit of the Hunt, an aspect of the Daedric lord Hircine. This is one of a very small number quests in the game where you have more than one way to complete it, choosing to either help the werewolf or Hircine’s hunters that pursue him.

While completely unmentioned in-game, the white stag present in the quest is a reference to some obscure Elder Scrolls lore. An in-universe legend tells a story about the ancient Nord hero Ysgramor pursuing the mystical White Stag of Forelgrim through the Armoran Frostwood. Along the way, a Daedric figure disguised as a hare nearly tricks the hunter into becoming an elf by offering him longer ears with which to better hear the elusive beast. Before Ysgramor can be duped, he is saved by a benevolent fox who slays the devious Daedra and sends the hunter on his way.

Ill Met By Moonlight is a great example of how Skyrim’s small details make it so enduring and enjoyable after endless play-throughs. Whether it’s quest design, or environment details, or sound design, or any other aspect, it’s these places that individual developers and designers injected their own creativity and skill where the game really shines.

My favourite faction in Skyrim is the Thieves Guild, as well as the side quests to refurbish the guild headquarters and expand their influence across Skyrim that take place along side the faction's primary story. Other tasks in the game also have you touching base with members of the guild even if you aren't a member, such as asking Brynjolf for info on a missing person during the main quest line or hiring Delvin Mallory to refit the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary, adding to the feeling that the Thieves Guild is expansive and everywhere.

Skyrim also has some wonderful quest names, with a lot of puns and plays on words. A few of my favourites are: The Man Who Cried Wolf, Mourning Never Comes, An Axe to Find, Pain in the Necklace, Impatience of a Saint, Recipe for Disaster (in which you track down and steal the identity of a celebrity chef in order to assassinate the Emperor), Dampened Spirits (where you shut down a brewery by poisoning the mead vats), and A Daedra’s Best Friend (helping to reunite a shapeshifting dog spirit with it’s malevolent master).

Hitting the Books

Skyrim's Literature

There are tonnes of books to be found throughout Skyrim. I don’t have too much to say about them that isn’t better articulated in Brian David Gilbert’s episode of Unraveled on the subject, but it's worth mentioning how expansive and detailed the in-game literature is. As stated in the video, it’s an amazing amount of world building that could be skipped over entirely while still getting a full experience of the game.

A favourite book of mine that isn’t mentioned in BDG’s video is A Game at Dinner. It is a supposed secret letter describing the devious deeds of Prince Helseth of Morrowind. As the book’s foreword describes, the Prince got ahold of the letter, and instead of hiding it, decided to bind and publish it in order to spread his intimidating reputation. I liked the depth that it adds to the world so much that it inspired me to try writing a short fan story as a sequel to it, detailing the interactions between Prince Helseth as his mother Queen Barenziah.

Pieces of the Past

My Favourite Memorabilia

I've bought a bunch of Skyrim merchandise over the past decade, including a figurine of Alduin the dragon, anniversary lithographs, and prints of the official concept art for the game. But the most precious piece of memorabilia that I own is the printed map of Skyrim that came included in the case with my original PS3 copy of the game. In 2013, my Dad took me and a friend to Vancouver's Fan Expo where we met Canadian actor Michael Hogan, of Battlestar Galactica fame. Hogan voiced General Tullius in Skyrim, and signed my map with a quote from his character.

"A hero doesn't use a power like The Voice to murder his king and usurp his throne."

The Jagged Crown

Bethesda After Skyrim

This is something that has been talked about to death. What's happened to Bethesda Game Studios since Skyrim? There are endless videos and commentaries about the current state of BGS, criticizing all sorts of different decisions made and directions taken. Especially in the wake of the mixed reception to Fallout 76 and Starfield, there’s a general feeling that the studio has lost its way.

I try to take a slightly less pessimistic outlook. To me, Skyrim just seems to be a project that came out of a sweet spot for Bethesda Game Studios, rising and growing from the success of previous games in the early 2000s, but also still fairly small, and not yet having lost key talent to layoffs under Microsoft's stewardship. It’s not that Bethesda has forgotten how to make games like Skyrim, it’s that Skyrim was a product of a specific time and circumstance in the studio’s history.

The big looming question is about Skyrim's long awaited sequel, The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel. When the announcement for it was first made, I was obviously thrilled. It was real, it was happening. Now we’re here, eight years later with nothing solid to go on. We got an initial teaser at E3 2018, and the official name reveal on November 3rd, 2026. As of the time of writing this, there is still no concrete release timeline for TES VI, other than that it likely won’t be within the next couple of years. This means that if it doesn’t release before November of 2028, the gap between Skyrim and its sequel will be greater than the time between all previous main series Elder Scrolls game releases combined; Arena in 1994, Daggerfall in 1996, Morrowind in 2002, Oblivion in 2006, and Skyrim in 2011 for a total of seventeen years. I'm still interested to see what the next game has in store, but the long wait has drained some of the excitement.

Chasing Echoes

Nostalgia & New Games

Nostalgia definitely plays a large role in my connection with Skyrim. Or, if nostalgia isn’t quite the right word, the idea that I fell in love with it at just the right time. As I said earlier, I started playing the game when I was fourteen. I was in high-school, I lived in my family home, and didn’t really have much of anything to worry about. Skyrim quickly filled a lot of my free time.

Now, I struggle to get into similar open-world games. There have been a lot of games that people say “If you like Skyrim, you’ll like this”, Monster Hunter, Dragon Age, etc. Friends suggested that I try The Witcher 3 because it’s “just like Skyrim” (and they later gifted me a copy of the game that I still sadly haven’t put much time into). I’ve tried various recent Assassins Creed games, Oblivion Remastered, but nothing sticks quite the same. Part of it is that none of these games, including ones released by Bethesda like Starfield, feel quite the same. They’re like Skyrim in that they’re expansive open-worlds with character customization, but they’re not like Skyrim in the ways that I see as unique.

The other part of why it’s difficult to get into other games is that I just can’t experience games the same way as I did with Skyrim. Approaching thirty years old with work, rent, bills, and university courses means I can’t spend every moment of free time gaming or pulling all-nighters to finish quest lines. Even when there is the free time, I’m often either too tired to fully engage, or I’m putting that energy into something else. It’s not a bad thing, and it’s not like I don’t game at all. I just have a different relationship with gaming than I did before. There might be something that comes along in the future that suits me even better, but I doubt that adult life and priorities will allow for the same level of infatuation or commitment that happened with Skyrim as a teenager.

I still love Skyrim though. I've gone through it end to end so many times, but I don't ever get bored of it. I still manage to find new things that surprise me. The intimate familiarity means it's become good way for me to decompress and empty my mind, and it makes me immensely happy when my fiancé says he wants relax by watching me play. From being a teenager to exploring adulthood, it has a special place in my heart. For all its faults, flaws, and relics of its time, it’ll always be my favourite game.

"Once you've flown the skies of Keizaal, your envy of the dov will only increase."
- Odahviing

Here's to the next fifteen years.