The Art Within Skyrim
Playing Games Like it's 2011
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is my comfort game. Some will watch shows like The Office for comfort. Others will curl up with a book that they have read 100 times. Me? I play Skyrim. Between playing on the Xbox 360 in 2011, to pouring hundreds of hours on the PC, Skyrim has become my comfort game, or my game between games. Most gamers have a game like this in their library somewhere, even if they don’t admit it. There is some peace of mind that can be found in knowing what is going to happen. I could dive into the psychology of this (entering a world where we have actual control over our lives or something), but I’ll leave that to the experts. Instead, let’s just focus on Skyrim and how Bethesda has been able to re-release this game a dozen times on every console for the last 15 years.
By most accounts, Skyrim is Bethesda’s Magnum Opus. Built on the same philosophy as the previous games in the series, Skyrim set something of a benchmark for open world RPGs, delivering a world with impressive scale and surprising diversity. The game is loaded with content, enough that there are some players, like myself, who can safely say they haven’t seen everything the game has to offer. Embracing that, Bethesda released several DLCs, updates and “special editions” extending the life of the game for at least two more console generations. One could even argue that Skyrim has transcended its own existence and now looms over Todd Howard and his studio, forever haunting them as The Elder Scrolls VI toils in development.
But being a ridiculously successful game that many celebrated doesn’t mean it's necessarily art. Despite the cultural phenomenon of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, some film directors scoff at the films and criticize them for ruining the film industry. To play a little devil’s advocate, these directors have a point. The films have crafted an intertextual necessity to replicate some element of them, whether it's the tone, scale, or structure. And Skyrim has had a comparable impact on the industry. Since 2011, more and more games have leaned into open world design. Since 2011, more and more games have embraced a world littered with content, such as secret dungeons and quests. Since 2011, more and more games have embraced a “power fantasy” end game goal. But here’s an underlying question to this whole thing: Why is having an intertextual influence on anything necessarily bad, especially if that influence eventually goes somewhere?
Both the MCU and Skyrim have planted seeds of inspiration that filmmakers and game developers can build on. The early MCU films laid a foundation that now the various creators behind said projects can explore and experiment with new genres and ideas. And other studios have attempted to craft their own interpretation of the various themes of the MCU with their characters and universes (to varying degrees of success). Skyrim, as a contrast, has ushered a new era of the open world game that has led to resounding successes like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring and divisive titles like anything developed by Ubisoft in the last 10 years.
If we consider the first rubbing of archaic paint on cave walls “art”, then Skyrim certainly is too. The ability for a singular game to arguably have its fingerprints on nearly every game afterwards is surreal. Yet, there is something else that Skyrim mastered: freedom.
Only a handful of video games give you the sense of freedom that Skyrim. From the moment your character emerges from the first cave outside of the small village to Riverwood, you are free to do anything you want. Complete the main quest and fully become the Dragonborn? Sure, go ahead. Resolve the Civil War plaguing the country? Absolutely an option. Join a guild? That’s a good idea. Get married? If you insist. Wander around aimlessly? That’s what I did.
The game does not judge. The game encourages. Whereas some games “insist upon” themselves with deep involved narratives and systems, Skyrim “insists” the player does whatever they want to do to have fun. There are not many profound characters or themes for me to dissect aside from a rather cliche “hero’s journey”, but that’s okay. Skyrim remembers that art is also meant to entertain.
And it’s that endearing desire to entertain that leads to potentially the most beautiful part (to some extent) of Skyrim: it’s loyal fan-base. In particular, the modders. Skyrim’s ridiculous lifespan is not the sole result of Bethesda’s insistence on porting onto everything that has wires, but the work of a fiercely ambitious community of mod developers. From bug fixes and quality of life improvements, to texture packs to rework the graphics, to gameplay overhauls, to quest mods both big and small, there is a mod for Skyrim that exists. Some modders have dedicated their free time to curating the mods into entire lists to craft new visions of Skyrim, such as “what if Skyrim was released in 2024” or “what if Skyrim was an old school RPG” or “what if Skyrim was scary.” Bethesda has recognized their work, and for better and worse, have endorsed the modding community in both generous and selfish ways.
The desire to mod Skyrim has served as a gateway to a meta-freedom around the game. Not only can a player be anything in Bethesda’s playground, but they can rebuild the whole field into something new. Modders have reworked Skyrim into a modern ship of Theseus, where it’s nigh impossible to tell what “version” of Skyrim someone is playing when they say “oh yeah, I still play Skyrim” in the present day. But that’s the artistic freedom that Skyrim has inspired. It’s no secret that Skyrim (and Fallout) modders have launched game development careers due to the mods they have crafted.
Art inspires artists. It’s a positive feedback loop. So you can’t overlook Skyrim in these conversations as an “outdated dragon hunting game with bad quests or systems” or something akin to that. It’s dishonest. Instead, it’s the game that inspired so many more people to play games, mod games, and develop games.