On the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year of the 21st century, the world was graced by The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Bethesda’s crowning achievement, Skyrim remains one of the most influential games of all time, and I think we can safely say it’s most likely the biggest RPG ever made.
I was 10 when Skyrim first dropped, but even I remember how the online landscape was reshaped around it as soon as it came out. It was a nuclear hit, one that Bethesda will not be able to match 15 years down the line. It expanded on Bethesda’s growing ambition to make a massive game, a sandbox where you are free to do as you wish, to build as you want, to join whomever. It was liberating, a breath of cool northern air sweeping over the world of gaming and cementing one word in eternity: dragonborn.
Everyone knows just about every major plot beat from Skyrim, and untold billions of views have accumulated on YouTube and other social media platforms through videos dedicated to its lore, gameplay, and, most importantly, memes. Skyrim suffered, and still does, from the same janky bugs and issues all Bethesda games share, but that somehow made it more charming. The whole package is just good, but it did make a bunch of mistakes and fall short in many areas I wish Bethesda would never repeat.
But it did. It did in Fallout 4, and again in Starfield. But perhaps The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel will break the cycle.
Which cycle, I hear you ask? The cycle of dumbing every system down from game to game, focusing on turning RPGs into glorified first-person shooters (remember the Skyrim with guns joke?) and robbing the world of Tamriel of meaningful stories, characters, narratives and, crucially, choices on behalf of the player that are actual choices that make significant changes to the world state and alter the course of history itself. Skyrim was the beginning of the end for Bethesda’s RPG-ness. Both it and the games that followed took liberty to an extreme, never locking the player into any role to play. There were some exclusive decisions, such as the Stormcloaks vs. the Imperials ordeal, but that’s about it.
The game simply allowed you to do too much, and that stripped both the gameplay down to its barest and reduced the world to a bunch of coexisting groups who, despite nominal conflicts, do not in truth stand in opposition to each other. You shouldn’t be able to join every faction, play every class, do everything under the sun in one playthrough. This is not GTA. It’s an RPG. Give us roles to play. See what Baldur’s Gate 3 has done.
Fifteen years, a decade and a half, and Bethesda is still unwilling to part with its do-everything, be-anything approach, and I hope to God TES6 changes that. It’s not probable, but I pray it’s possible.
Happy Skyrimversary.
