Note: Another ISC article originally posted on our sadly now-defunct website (RIP). This was a retrospective on my experience jumping back into the fray with the ubiquitous and well-memed Elder Scrolls title in Skyrim: Legendary Edition.

We have plenty more video gaming and hobbyist content lined up for the future, so stay tuned! No. I’m serious. There’s already dozens of articles in the works, and hundreds more topics.

Peace, Love and Grindcore xoxo - Brady.

Author: Brady.

INTRO: aka DJHowardSufferingFromSuccess.jpeg.

It's a long weekend this weekend, and I thought it best to make my own contribution to the awesome video-gaming retrospective 'Riffs' provided here via recent newcomers Hamza and Mal.

Now, for where I'm concerned.

The early-2010's release date couldn't have been more perfect timing for the growing side-hustle generated by our we-all-just-started-getting-smartphones-at-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-our-brains interest in sharing some cringe memes with impact font.

For example:

Skyrim cops a lot of memery and flak to this day, and mainly from the PC gaming and Elder Scrolls fandom/community. Y'know - the people who've played it the longest and most frequently.

And rightfully so; whilst removing some of the more obfuscated and janky features that made prior TES III: Morrowind and TES IV: Oblivion a clunky (albeit wonderful) experience, Skyrim goes almost too hard in the other direction. MegaTodd's hivemind rogue-AI decision-matrix programming ordaining this game being rereleased 50 billion times under slightly different monikers to flog the cash cow didn't help.

Neither did the backlash around the gut-wrenching class treachery that is Creation Club (don't get me started, dude).

It paid off for Bethesda, with Skyrim being not only their most successful titles, but one of the most commercially successful RPG video games in human history. The catchall cry of 'neeeer Skybabies, Skybabies hurrurr' by us Morrowboomers didn't help either - no amount of pretentious wine-swirling and bourgeoise-coded upturned nasal cavities could stem the relentless flow of cash and man-hours that this title continues to generate for Bethesda to the current date.

In an interview with IGN (see here for link), Todd Howard (aka IRL Sheogorath) noted that Skyrim had, as of June 2023, sold 60 million copies. This effectively lands it in the Top 10 most successful video games in history - not a small feat given the 4+ decades of the hobby, and the multi-billion-dollar growth projections the industry enjoys per year.

It's evidently a model they felt so successful in employing, they chose to keep things relatively the same for Fallout 4, Fallout and (sigh)... Starfield. Yeah, we can unpack that shit later.

They can do it too, because Skyrim exists in the collective unconscious of our gamer lexicon like The Force, or the The Hist or some other mystical ethereal energy.

Look.

Sure, there feels like a lot that has been unfortunately pared from the apple-skin in favour of mass appeal. And in removing some bugs and jank, in true Bethesda style even the latest version is bug-hell.

FUS-RO-DOWN-REGULATION

In my current mental state and life circumstances, I wasn't really aware how much I wanted and NEEDED Skyrim as a refreshment in order to re-engage with open-world RPG's later down the track.

Inculcating myself into the sneering pretentious Metal-Archives.com analogue that is the self-deprecating but often unironically snobbish Morrowind fanbase, I had been desperate to give that title another go via OpenMW (necessary for a good time on PC, IMO).

That need to play Morrowind turned more into a want, and attempts to subsume myself in my favourite game of all time were just met with inattention, frustration and stress.

But alas, I just... I couldn't, and I can't.

I hate that fact, but I can't. It's a bummer, but it's the reality right now.

And so I sat, kind of distress-tolerating and radically-accepting this background hunger:

1. to play an RPG again 'when I feel up to it' (a day that's been coming since pre-pandemic), and

2. to wait for a setting/environment that won't rely on fighting jank just to re-engage my deeply anhedonic depressed ass.

Come 2024, things deteriorated even further.

I've had a very prolonged and chronic experience of acute stress this year, following some protracted and intense management of both a close person's wellbeing, and managing that on the background of my profession (social worker) and personal mental health/executive functioning being basically shot to Swiss fucking cheese.

My prefrontal cortex is basically that high-rise apartment scene in Predator 2. You know the one, right? The one where they're all skinned and hanging upside down after one of the most hilarious cultural-appropriation-of-Jamaicans-versus-stereotypical-Hispanic-gangsters showdowns where the yautja does a Cartman on them. (i.e., he takes away the chicken-skin like the greedy bastard he is).

Thus I sighed with resignation and basically downloaded Skyrim almost against my will. 'Fine, I'll be That Guy and unironically play Skyrim in vanilla again'. Not that I care what anyone thinks of me and my preferences, but it felt very by-the-numbers to be reinstalling the fifth edition in the series.

Oh boy, how wrong I was, folks. In a great way.

Like the unholy trinity of Vivec, Sotha Sil and Almalexia, I figure it's the blog captain's turn to make this nerd ALSIMVI a proper Tribunal, a triumvirate.

Look upon the heart - and those ripped abs. Sick Elder Scrolls choon courtesy of Young Scrolls on Youtube.

Little primer on my experience with the previous 3 iteratons in the Scrolls canon:

As a 13yo when Morrowind dropped, I had no inclination of knowing exactly what the hell was going on. And could I?!

The fact that it merged traditional d100 dice-roll/per-hit chances for all actions, so many things being contingent on the fatigue bar, both these things more hidden within the manual and on forums than explicitly stated? Yeah.

Add to that I wasn't diagnosed with ADD (ADHD inattentive-type, as it's known these days) until age 31 and Autism until February this year. Coupling those jankier old-school mechanics against a brain prone to frustration intolerance and dipping out early if it's too unworkable? Yeah, I dipped.

Oblivion, though.

Wow. I think I'll have to compartmentalise even just that first moment when you escape from the sewers following the death of Patrick Stu- Emperor Tiber Septim.

To even mildly retrospect on either title and their impact on my current interests and hobbies warrants podcast-length episodes. Not a Riff.

Then, along comes Skyrim.

I'd just relocated back interstate after a really intense acute mental health episode and a subsequent relationship breakup, neither of which we need to get into here. Suffice to say, I was confused, dazed and lacking direction.

And then I grabbed TES: V as a self-treat for the PS3.

Oh, baby. I was immediately hooked.

And just the aesthetic alone! That quantum-leap from the gleeful-but-generic environ of Cyrodil to Skyrim's Scandinavian frost-bitten beauty was an atmospheric treat.

Dual-wielding spellcasting and one-handed weapons resolved a minor cognitive task-switching bugbear of mine, forgoing the need to be spending as much time paused in the inventory menu as I was actually doing anything.

And yes, sure, the combat is arcadey as hell.

But also - so what?

I'm a huge fan of ragdoll physics in games, it brings me great joy.

So to have a central mechanic of the game being able to scream at people and watch them cartwheel through the air off the top of video-gamings' Ural Mountains/Swiss Alps was a level of schadenfreude-joy I still giggle mirthfully at today.

*POV:* ***Euronymous*** *Class. ??Too Soon?? Boo Varg, booo.*

Rather than rewrite the Argonian-esque jungle setting of Cyrodil into a more meat-and-potatoes fantasy world (a decision I'm still mad about today), the whole-hog approach to Skyrim's targeted and enriched setting really helped immersion this time around.

You're no longer staring at elves with jaundice who have the emotional stability of someone with severe untreated bipolar disorder.

You no longer have to play a senseless game of social-skills Wheel of Fortune that is well-intended but just feels off, like you did in Oblivion. See below for examples (fun channel BTW)!

You no longer have to mod the text or go blind furiously reading paragraphs for context and direction, a-la-Morrowind.

Best of all - no fucking cliff-racers.

THANK. GOD.

(Side note - fuck Alex Jones, and I'm thankful for the bankrupting and deplatforming.)

Sure, the dialogue in Skyrim is laughable at times, but that's the price of entry into an Elder Scrolls title. But conversations of passers-by feel less stilted, and more work is done making interactions less.... god.... I don't know.... autistic? As someone with autism, even I struggle trying to relate to the NPC's in Oblivion. Someone get Cyrodil an Occupational Therapist, please.

As for the setting, broadly:

The decision as to whether side with America-fuck-yeah-coded imperialism (something my leftist brain detests and despises) or side with the thinly-veiled-analogue-to-IRL-ethnonationalism-disguised-as-paganism in siding with Ulfric Stormcloak actually makes a moral quandary that I feel tangibly, even up to the current playthrough.

I'm enjoying the fact I can just lift radial-quest objects from people's homes from right under their noses, do some low-level extortion and presto, she's now allegedly the Master of the Thieves' Guild.

I'm enjoying the fact I can utilise the flexibility and lack of railroading for my ADHD. Bored of archery? Time to set everything on fire. Bored of that? It's hammer-time, bitch. Bored of that? Well, luckily for me every 30cm you walk in every direction you seem to get some NPC whisper a side-quest into your ear.

I'm enjoying the fact that everything is low-friction, and if I don't feel like doing the quadrillionth copy-paste Draugr-filled cave, I'mma just pick some goddamn flowers and 'erbs and make serious, serious bank on Alchemy.

Plus, as many times as I've ever played Skyrim - I never finished Dragonborn (shut the fuck up, Hermaneous Mora, OMG), and I never bothered building a house.

Well, for the past two years my stress-relief go-to has been mindless crafting/building sandboxes. So the fact I can go murder some unwitting bandits cause some Jarl procgen-ed a courier to my house while I bemoan running out of iron ingots again, is great.

I mean jeez, man. An RPG trope I've really vibed with alongside the healer-role in the MMO holy-trinity, is summoners. I've always loved the concept of necromancy, it's one of the most metal things about fantasy.

The fact I can go up to some rando stronghold full of racist Nords telling me they'll skin me like the cat I am, yell at me to fuck off we're full etc - and just drop multiple dragons and atronarchs and zombies on their asses, sit back and watch the show?

Dude. Hell yeah.

And the soundtrack.

Oh god, THE SOUNDTRACK.

Bethesda have always put love and attention into their soundscapes, and the ambience of the score melds so warmly into the textured lighting and richly forested biomes of this northern province so gorgeously. If you have ADHD, anxiety or just need something to mellow too, Skyrim's OST is amazing for chilling out, getting tasks done etc. Check the link above, and bliss out.

Lately, I've had some of Those Gamer Moments. You know the ones, particularly in open-world RPG's. Immersive mindful moments where you stop to catch an aurora borealis in-game. Where you're happily fishing by a bubbling brook. Where the neon-green of Blackreach creates an eerie but cosy expanse.

Beyond mechanics, beyond sneering about this and that, it's this emergent environmental storytelling that is such a hit with Skyrim. I'd argue it's possibly it's strongest point.

In short? I'm enjoying Skyrim as much today as I ever did when I first picked it up. I've turned off the unbalanced-feeling Survival mode, but may put that back on later when the power-curve feels too Nerevarine to be fun.

For those of you having a long weekend this weekend, I hope you get some rest and reprieve.

Happy gaming.

[Riffs] Skyrim: AKA How I Learnt To Stop Morrow-Booming and Love The Cat-People.