I’m playing through Skyrim for the second time right now. Technically, it is my first time playing the game, but I watched my wife play through it when the game first came out. The fifth in Bethesda Elder Scrolls series, Skyrim continues to build on the Bethesda’s formula for a western role-playing game: a large, stunningly intricate and beautiful world for the player to explore and a story-line that centers around saving the world. Having played through three of the previous Elder Scrolls games I’m confident in saying that Skyrim is the best of them and perhaps the best that can be down with Bethesda’s current model. The problem is that while they’ve created fantastically real worlds for the player to inhabit and an engaging story-line for the player to participate in these two goals ultimately conflict with each other. In order for the player to save the world everything in the world must revolve around the player. But, in order for the world to be real the player’s actions must have consequences. There were a number of times I found myself drawn into the story of the game being pulled a long by the narrative when all of a sudden the actions of the non-player characters stopped making sense. I had just usurped a Jarl from his role of ruler as a city, the man was seeking refuge in another city. In the real world the man should be trying to kill me, at least yelling and screaming at me but no there he sat in his “refugee camp” calming describing some event to me. Why? Why would he do that? Well, the main story demanded that this person go through this little bit of exposition, so he was. Ultimately, all the choice and world Bethesda gives the player to explore in Skyrim is an illusion. Skyrim never changes, regardless of how desperately the designers want you to think it does.

I think the folks at Bethesda need to decide on what they want to give players, a vibrant, real, world for them to interact with or an engaging, compelling story line because I think they’ve reached the point where those two paths have begun to diverge.

If they just want to create a sandbox world to explore though that’d be great too. A version of Skyrim without any people or combat would be amazing. You can get lost in just meandering through this game at times. Eric Stephen Allen of On the Stick called the game the best hiking simulator he’d ever seen. I agree with him.

If you want to hear me and a the guys from On the Stick talk a lot more about Skyrim you can catch us right here.