HomeFeaturesThe Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Today, we’re looking at our 2011 Advent Calendar winner,The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
WhenThe Elder Scrolls V: Skyrimcame out I was a student, and I worked in Gamestation (RIP) to help pay for chicken noodles. I remember the hype around it very clearly because Gamestation had a deal where you could buy it for like £22, and I had a sideline going when the stock was low to keep some back for my friends. Apols if you were caught in the crossfire for that, but dragon fever was running high off the back of astill very cool trailer, and shouting Fus Ro Dah was the only cure.
In the years since,Skyrimhas been released and re-released many times, on every conceivable platform. “Arrow to the knee” jokes became de rigueur and hacky almost overnight, and at this point might have horse-shoed back around to being funny again. There are many examples of unrelated games or videos that cut to black fading back up into the opening of Skyrim, in a kind of sub-genre of rickroll. Does it hold up now? Kind of. It’s a really fun, ambitious RPG, with faults - but if the faults didn’t exist maybe it wouldn’t have been as popular as it was.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition TrailerWatch on YouTube
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition Trailer
I should say that I played the Special Edition version of Skyrim, which is on Game Pass and came out in 2021. Even with all the volumentric God rays you can stuff in your tote bag, some of the textures and models look a bit dated, especially compared to the kind of balls-to-the-wall graphical powerhousery that allows for sights as diversely unsettling as the mutant fleshlumps inElden Ringand weirdly horny robots inAtomic Heartto be rendered in astonishing fidelity.
The jank is still there too, of course. The first time I sat down at a table in a new game the action hurled a plate at the fireplace. The way you (and everyone else) loll your limbs around like a crash test dummy whenever the game does physics upon you, the repeating canned lines, and the dead-eyed way NPCs will turn and look at you, were and are all an inescapable part of Skyrim’s charm, and without the jank it would have just been ordinary.
Image credit:Bethesda Softworks
