Why I love Skyrim

A friend... wrote:

Perhaps someday, when you have time or inclination, you could explain why Skyrim fascinates you so? I play Minecraft on occasion and some people love to build Skyrim themed houses, all of which are beautiful. That's about the extent of my exposure.

Well, friend-o, glad you asked. Not only have you given me my evening's topic, but you've also given me an excuse to talk about why I love the things I do.

I suppose any discussion of the game's appeal has to begin with the natural beauty of Skyrim. *cue photo montage*

Bleak Falls Barrow in the distance. Image via The Elder Scrolls Wiki.

 

Aurora and Secunda. Image via The Elder Scrolls Wiki.

 

Whiterun concept art. Image via The Elder Scrolls Wiki.

 

Eldergleam Tree. Image via The Elder Scrolls Wiki.

 

Blackreach. Image via The Elder Scrolls Wiki.

 

Snowclad Ruins. Image via The Elder Scrolls Wiki.

The geography of Skyrim is harshly beautiful. It is a land of jagged edges, soft greens and blues, and hard grays and whites. It has verdant forests, snowy peaks, homey towns, and bustling cities. (Special shout-out to Whiterun, where I'd probably live if it was real. But not in the Cloud District. I don't get there very often.) Then add to this the soundtrack. Now we have atmosphere.

Orchestrated: Atmosphere

Now add to this not just a backstory, but a genuine history spanning thousands of years, if not longer. And it's not a history you are told. It is one you gradually uncover both in exploring ruins and finding long-lost books. Further throw into the mix a wide range of characters, from all places and races, who have their own goals and dreams and problems, to make the world lived-in. Now we have texture.

And then there is the freedom to play. Do you want to be a mage, hurling fireballs at your enemies or conjuring daedra from another dimension to fight them instead? You can. Do you want to be the greatest thief/assassin a country's never seen? You can. (This is not my playstyle, but you are allowed to do it.) Do you want to be a scrappy sword-and-shield Imperial soldier, fighting to preserve the unity of an empire? By all means. Do you want to be, for all intents and purposes, a Viking berserker? Then be so. Werewolf? Vampire? Vampire hunter? Check, check, and check.

Finally comes the story. Imagine a choose-your-own-adventure book. Then imagine that you are concurrently reading tens of them in the same volume. Then further imagine that the freedom is yours to not only choose in which order to read them, still concurrently, but also whether to read them. If you want to take a hiatus to buy/steal all the cheese in Skyrim—somehow this is a thing people do—you may do so. This is why I love Skyrim. It is a well-crafted series of narratives set in a believable, beautiful, and compelling world, with fun gameplay.

Pictured: Skyrim! Dragons! Swords! Fun!

That's all rather generic—many games have well-crafted narrative and are set in a believable, beautiful world, with fun gameplay. There is one moment, though, that stands out from all the rest in my time in Skyrim. It highlights, I think, exactly why Skyrim is so special to me.

The main quest revolves around, in the midst of a civil war in Skyrim, the return of the dragons from near-prehistory. Your character, the Dovahkiin, dragon-born, is the latest in a long line of those with dragon blood, and the ability to speak the speech of dragons (which is how they have their powers). You must end the civil war and unite Skyrim to stop the dragon threat.

There are multiple ways to do this. In my playthrough, I joined the Imperial Legion (the "North" side if Skyrim's was America's Civil War) and ultimately led the defeat of Ulfric Stormcloak, the Jefferson Davis/Robert E. Lee of Skyrim. And the beauty of how this was done is that there was no right or wrong side; you could have joined either and not felt like you did something wrong. Which led to my favorite moment, not just in Skyrim, but in all the video games I've played: the execution of Ulfric. It wasn't my favorite because it was an execution. It wasn't my favorite because I finally defeated the final boss and restored peace and order and goodness to Skyrim.

It was my favorite because I didn't want to do it.

Now, if Skyrim has a problem (other than turning dragons into comic-book level "evil because I'm evil" villains), it is that there are no broad consequences to anything. Sure, if you kill a character or don't save him from death, that will bar you from completing some minor quest, but main characters can't be killed. If you go to jail for some crime, you just need to make sure you don't get caught the next time. There are very few conflicting quests. If you want to start doing things differently than you have been, you can do so at any time.

The main storyline is different. Your choices define politics, friendships, even landscapes, and I made my choices. I couldn't stand the treatment the elves were receiving at Ulfric Stormcloak's hand (Nords are really racist apparently), I didn't see a good reason for Skyrim to break ties with the empire they'd been part of for 600 years, and it didn't set well with me that Ulfric murdered the High King of Skyrim, so I joined the Imperial Legion to fight for the reunification of Skyrim. In spite of all this, I admired Ulfric. I'd spent time in his court and come to understand why he did what he did. I wished he'd remained the Jarl of Windhelm; he would have ruled it well.

But I was committed to Skyrim's reunification, and bound to follow the orders of my superiors. So we attacked Windhelm, the seat of Ulfric's power. After taking the city, we entered the Palace of the Kings, where Ulfric and his right-hand man were holed up. General Tullius, my commander, gave Ulfric the choice of standing down and facing execution in the capital, or fighting and receiving summary execution in combat. Ulfric, man of war that he was, fought. Before he was despatched, though, Tullius asked him if he had any last request. He said, "Let the Dragonborn do it. It'll make for a better song."

My world stopped for probably ten minutes. I didn't want to kill him. He was, in spite of all the reasons I fought him, a good man. Now there was an easy way out. My dialogue choices were "yes, I'll kill him" and "no, I'm not going to kill him". But this would have been a cop-out. If I didn't kill him, Tullius would, and it didn't seem right that the man's request go un-honored.

But I didn't want to kill him.

And so I did two things. First, after ten minutes of deliberation, I ended him myself. A man such as Ulfric deserves to have his last wish honored. But there was something else implicit in the wish. Ulfric wanted a song. He wanted the bards to remember him. And I am a bard, of a sort, and so I wrote one, of a sort.

Ulfric was real. Not literally real, but real in the sense that very good fictional characters are real. And the medium put me not in the position relative to him of observer, as a book would, but of interacter. That is what Skyrim does, and that is why I love Skyrim.