This is a recap of my foray into Skyrim, which I originally wrote in late 2012 (but have only now decided to post here on BigFooty).
Though it includes details of what my gameplay involved, it mainly focuses on what I personally experienced while playing this game...why not give it a read?
(Well, OK, it's a long-arse write-up, so that's one reason not to read it, but I guarantee you will nevertheless enjoy the retelling of my Skyrim experience*)
* enjoyment not guranteed
I once played Skyrim like you. Then I took an arrow to the knee.
It’s 1:00 AM on a Tuesday morning and I’ve just finished playing the hugely popular video game Skyrim for the last time.
Yes, for the last time, I swear.
I’ve had a long acquaintance with video games, dating back to the Coleco Vision, but I’ve never considered myself a serious gamer (the NBA 2K and Pro Evolution Soccer series have formed the majority of my gaming experience in recent years). Despite my interest in gaming being only casual, I am still within earshot when hype emanates from other, bigger video games. And none came bigger than Skyrim.
I’d seen the fantastic reviews of the game, both from critics and consumers alike, so about a month ago I decided to give Skyrim a shot. I mean, why not? Yes, it wasn’t the sports genre I was accustomed to – it was labelled as a fantasy/role-playing-game, a genre so unfamiliar to me I wasn’t exactly sure what the gameplay entailed.
Zero Hour: The Dragonborn Comes
After starting up Skyrim for the first time I soon realise that this is one of those games where you pretty much go wherever you want to go and do whatever you want to do; an open-world game with epic storylines, quests and combat mixed amongst it all.
But as anyone who’s travelled the paths of Skyrim know, this isn’t just any open-world, it is an absolutely massive open world.
Yep, the free-to-roam land of Skyrim was a daunting place for a new-to-the-genre gamer like me, far removed from my early youth and the looping stages of Smurfs on the Coleco. The swooping bats in Smurfs are now replaced by swooping Dragons, and unlike Smurfs the failure to leap over a small tuft of grass no longer results in instant death (score one for Skyrim on the reality front!).
Hour 1: The Completionist
I start the game talking to every character I come across, choosing each possible dialogue option and accepting all requests for help. From there I visit the nearest quest marker – I don’t fast travel – I want to “smell the fresh air” and soak in this new, unfamiliar world. Of course, it means I am forever running, running, running…
Being the completionist that I am, once I finally reach a quest point I am determined to finish it in in a single gaming session. Not only that, I feel compelled to search through every fallen enemy, urn and cupboard.
And what is my reward for doing this? Usually only a few meagre shards of gold, yet this doesn’t deter me from looking through every future storage spot I come across...I suppose the real reward is getting rid of that nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I had left something unsearched.
I finally clear the Cave/Barrow/Fort/whatever, and I glance at the clock: it’s midnight. “Wow, that went fast” I think to myself, and I finally tear my arse off the couch, legs numb from hours of sitting.
Hour 30: The Addict
I return to the game every night, drawing satisfaction from all things big and small: from the monumental accomplishment of felling a Dragon to the eargasmic sound of an arrow striking an enemy.
I finish an objective and check the clock: Midnight.
“Hmm...well, maybe I’ll just do one more Miscellaneous quest before I hit the sack”, and gaming sessions quickly go from midnight finishes to 1 AM finishes, and the occasional 2 AM finish.
The number of hours before I need to wake up for work the next day can now be counted on one hand. I’m probably playing this thing too much (PES and NBA 2K13 have barely been touched since starting Skyrim), but the game is just too good to put down.
Hour 50: Order Out Of Chaos
After a few solid weeks of nightly Skyrim gaming I realise that my quest list is now longer than my character’s beard…this is getting out of hand.
In order to make things more manageable, I decide to systematically clear these quests one at a time while refusing to talk to anyone I haven’t met before, lest I get one more request to do someone else’s dirty work.
Hour 80: The Tipping Point
After whittling down my quest list, I feel I can now make some real progress. Unfortunately, it’s also given me a clearer view of the scale of the game – at this rate I’ll finish the entire thing in, oh, maybe 1 year’s time.
This inevitably leads to a few more late nights. I begin to sleep on the bus on the way to work in the mornings and am low on energy throughout the day, at times struggling to keep the eyelids from closing while in the office.
One particularly long gaming session ends as I finally shut down my PC at 3:30 AM but instead of feeling a sense of satisfaction over what has been accomplished in Skyrim, I’m instead overcome with feelings of regret and guilt.
It’s evident to me that the negative effects of playing the game are now starting to outweigh the positive, and I tell (or rather, order myself) to delete the game for my own sake…but I’ll do it tomorrow given that I’m tired and I just shut down the computer.
The next day comes and I think about how much more there is left for me to do in Skyrim – I’ve barely scratched the surface of the game. By the time I fire up my PC that night, I’ve reconsidered my self-imposed vow, changing it from complete deletion to instead ensuring I only play in moderation. With that I happily start up the game once more.
Hour 99: The Thrill Is Gone
Things get better over the next couple of weeks – I no longer play ridiculous amounts of hours at a time – but Skyrim has lost its edge in my eyes.
I have an out-of-gaming-body experience, briefly separating myself from my character as I look externally at what exactly this armoured video game man does in his video game world to eat up all these hours: enchanting potions, smithing weapons, organising inventory, sorting out different storage spaces in his house.
In reality, do I ever literally “stop and smell the roses”? No ******* way. But in the world of Skyrim I somehow feel compelled to “stop and harvest the snowberries”.
“Is this gaming?” I ask myself.
Kinda feels like a chore to me, as do the quests I need to complete (a never ending to-do list), with the storyline behind these quests often long forgotten (“Something about the ‘Legend of Red Eagle’? Umm…yeah, ok. Let’s just go to that quest marker and see what happens”).
I fast travel everywhere now, onto the next Cave/Barrow/Fort/whatever and clear out Draugr/Forsworn/Necromancers.
...Lather, rinse, repeat.
I am a wandering, soulless mercenary.
Hour 100: Fear and Self-Loathing in Skyrim
My disillusionment with the game is high.
Perhaps I have backed myself into a corner by doing mostly side quests while losing focus on the main storyline. Perhaps I’m just not the right type of gamer for a game of this genre and scale (best to stick to sports games with their guaranteed outcomes within set time limits).
On the other hand I feel this game is taking my own personal traits and tendencies for order and completionism (not an actual word, but you know what I mean), magnifying these tendencies and then using them against me to ruin my sleeping patterns and prevent me from doing other real-world things I’d planned.
A weak excuse I know, but the game has to take some of the blame, right?...Right?
Despite recognising all this I still get lost in the occasional 4-5 hour gaming session. After one particular relapse into the early hours of the morning, the game throws a mirror on another personal trait: Anger.
My sleeping hours greatly reduced once more, I feel angry and annoyed at myself. How could I let time slip away again? What was I doing the last few hours? Let’s see…making my 10th Potion of Resist Fire that I’ll never use. Dumping items onto my travelling companion so that I no longer move slower than a tortoise…How could I justify wasting my (real-world) time like this?
I get up off the couch and once again my legs feel numb. This was mildly amusing the first time it happened, but now I have an irrational fear that a blood clot has formed in my leg and is currently slowly making its way into my chest.
I scold myself for letting this game affect me physically, then I realise how absurd this situation is: imagine that, a video game making me mad at myself over my own behaviour! It’s like I’m beating myself up a la Ed Norton in Fight Club, but within my mind.
It turns out the numbness isn’t only in my legs, it’s in my head too…moreso than any physical effects, Skyrim is ******* me up mentally and I tell myself that this time “Skyrim has definitely got to go. It just has to.”
Hour 102: It’s Time To Part Ways
The next day I enter the land of Skyrim for the last time and do the usual things – killing bad guys with my trusted sword and shield combination, along with an arrow here and an arrow there.
Upon completing one last quest I prepare to exit the game, when suddenly a Dragon “randomly” appears. Slaying the Dragon seems like a fitting way to end my journey in Skyrim, and after a long battle the Dragon finally succumbs.
So with the loot stolen from its corpse (yes, I did say I was a completionist), I take one last look at the pixelated world around me. I’ve played over 100 hours yet the end still seems so far away with so much left unresolved (I haven’t even picked between the Stormcloaks and Imperials yet!), and now it will stay that way.
Delphine will forever be waiting in Riverwood for my arrival, Lydia will be waiting patiently in Whiterun to join me on an adventure that will never happen, Cosnach will have to find a new favourite drinking buddy…
It’s time for us to part ways. For good.
I exit the game for the final time…and for good measure I then proceed to permanently delete my Save files and uninstall the game from my PC.
I couldn’t complete Skyrim, but that’s not to say it’s a bad game.
On the contrary, it’s a stunningly beautiful and expansive world, a real credit to the developers and writers – I can only imagine the amount of hours spent creating a game of this scale and fashioning such a rich backstory.
But what I’ll take away most from Skyrim is just how much it taught me about myself. The extent of my urge for order, neatness and completeness, perhaps bordering on OCD: these were traits realised via the style of gameplay where free reign is handed over to the gamer.
Other realisations came via my behavioural reactions to the act of gaming itself, behaviour I perhaps was not fully aware of. That I could get so easily addicted to something. That I could get so lost in another world and lose track of time to an extent that could potentially be detrimental to my mental and physical wellbeing.
Yes, Skyrim is a fantastically well put together video game that revealed a lot of answers, not about the lore of Skyrim but about myself.
Only one question remains: "What video game shall I play next?"
Though it includes details of what my gameplay involved, it mainly focuses on what I personally experienced while playing this game...why not give it a read?
(Well, OK, it's a long-arse write-up, so that's one reason not to read it, but I guarantee you will nevertheless enjoy the retelling of my Skyrim experience*)
* enjoyment not guranteed
I once played Skyrim like you. Then I took an arrow to the knee.
It’s 1:00 AM on a Tuesday morning and I’ve just finished playing the hugely popular video game Skyrim for the last time.
Yes, for the last time, I swear.
I’ve had a long acquaintance with video games, dating back to the Coleco Vision, but I’ve never considered myself a serious gamer (the NBA 2K and Pro Evolution Soccer series have formed the majority of my gaming experience in recent years). Despite my interest in gaming being only casual, I am still within earshot when hype emanates from other, bigger video games. And none came bigger than Skyrim.
I’d seen the fantastic reviews of the game, both from critics and consumers alike, so about a month ago I decided to give Skyrim a shot. I mean, why not? Yes, it wasn’t the sports genre I was accustomed to – it was labelled as a fantasy/role-playing-game, a genre so unfamiliar to me I wasn’t exactly sure what the gameplay entailed.
Zero Hour: The Dragonborn Comes
After starting up Skyrim for the first time I soon realise that this is one of those games where you pretty much go wherever you want to go and do whatever you want to do; an open-world game with epic storylines, quests and combat mixed amongst it all.
But as anyone who’s travelled the paths of Skyrim know, this isn’t just any open-world, it is an absolutely massive open world.
Yep, the free-to-roam land of Skyrim was a daunting place for a new-to-the-genre gamer like me, far removed from my early youth and the looping stages of Smurfs on the Coleco. The swooping bats in Smurfs are now replaced by swooping Dragons, and unlike Smurfs the failure to leap over a small tuft of grass no longer results in instant death (score one for Skyrim on the reality front!).
Hour 1: The Completionist
I start the game talking to every character I come across, choosing each possible dialogue option and accepting all requests for help. From there I visit the nearest quest marker – I don’t fast travel – I want to “smell the fresh air” and soak in this new, unfamiliar world. Of course, it means I am forever running, running, running…
Being the completionist that I am, once I finally reach a quest point I am determined to finish it in in a single gaming session. Not only that, I feel compelled to search through every fallen enemy, urn and cupboard.
And what is my reward for doing this? Usually only a few meagre shards of gold, yet this doesn’t deter me from looking through every future storage spot I come across...I suppose the real reward is getting rid of that nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I had left something unsearched.
I finally clear the Cave/Barrow/Fort/whatever, and I glance at the clock: it’s midnight. “Wow, that went fast” I think to myself, and I finally tear my arse off the couch, legs numb from hours of sitting.
Hour 30: The Addict
I return to the game every night, drawing satisfaction from all things big and small: from the monumental accomplishment of felling a Dragon to the eargasmic sound of an arrow striking an enemy.
I finish an objective and check the clock: Midnight.
“Hmm...well, maybe I’ll just do one more Miscellaneous quest before I hit the sack”, and gaming sessions quickly go from midnight finishes to 1 AM finishes, and the occasional 2 AM finish.
The number of hours before I need to wake up for work the next day can now be counted on one hand. I’m probably playing this thing too much (PES and NBA 2K13 have barely been touched since starting Skyrim), but the game is just too good to put down.
Hour 50: Order Out Of Chaos
After a few solid weeks of nightly Skyrim gaming I realise that my quest list is now longer than my character’s beard…this is getting out of hand.
In order to make things more manageable, I decide to systematically clear these quests one at a time while refusing to talk to anyone I haven’t met before, lest I get one more request to do someone else’s dirty work.
Hour 80: The Tipping Point
After whittling down my quest list, I feel I can now make some real progress. Unfortunately, it’s also given me a clearer view of the scale of the game – at this rate I’ll finish the entire thing in, oh, maybe 1 year’s time.
This inevitably leads to a few more late nights. I begin to sleep on the bus on the way to work in the mornings and am low on energy throughout the day, at times struggling to keep the eyelids from closing while in the office.
One particularly long gaming session ends as I finally shut down my PC at 3:30 AM but instead of feeling a sense of satisfaction over what has been accomplished in Skyrim, I’m instead overcome with feelings of regret and guilt.
It’s evident to me that the negative effects of playing the game are now starting to outweigh the positive, and I tell (or rather, order myself) to delete the game for my own sake…but I’ll do it tomorrow given that I’m tired and I just shut down the computer.
The next day comes and I think about how much more there is left for me to do in Skyrim – I’ve barely scratched the surface of the game. By the time I fire up my PC that night, I’ve reconsidered my self-imposed vow, changing it from complete deletion to instead ensuring I only play in moderation. With that I happily start up the game once more.
Hour 99: The Thrill Is Gone
Things get better over the next couple of weeks – I no longer play ridiculous amounts of hours at a time – but Skyrim has lost its edge in my eyes.
I have an out-of-gaming-body experience, briefly separating myself from my character as I look externally at what exactly this armoured video game man does in his video game world to eat up all these hours: enchanting potions, smithing weapons, organising inventory, sorting out different storage spaces in his house.
In reality, do I ever literally “stop and smell the roses”? No ******* way. But in the world of Skyrim I somehow feel compelled to “stop and harvest the snowberries”.
“Is this gaming?” I ask myself.
Kinda feels like a chore to me, as do the quests I need to complete (a never ending to-do list), with the storyline behind these quests often long forgotten (“Something about the ‘Legend of Red Eagle’? Umm…yeah, ok. Let’s just go to that quest marker and see what happens”).
I fast travel everywhere now, onto the next Cave/Barrow/Fort/whatever and clear out Draugr/Forsworn/Necromancers.
...Lather, rinse, repeat.
I am a wandering, soulless mercenary.
Hour 100: Fear and Self-Loathing in Skyrim
My disillusionment with the game is high.
Perhaps I have backed myself into a corner by doing mostly side quests while losing focus on the main storyline. Perhaps I’m just not the right type of gamer for a game of this genre and scale (best to stick to sports games with their guaranteed outcomes within set time limits).
On the other hand I feel this game is taking my own personal traits and tendencies for order and completionism (not an actual word, but you know what I mean), magnifying these tendencies and then using them against me to ruin my sleeping patterns and prevent me from doing other real-world things I’d planned.
A weak excuse I know, but the game has to take some of the blame, right?...Right?
Despite recognising all this I still get lost in the occasional 4-5 hour gaming session. After one particular relapse into the early hours of the morning, the game throws a mirror on another personal trait: Anger.
My sleeping hours greatly reduced once more, I feel angry and annoyed at myself. How could I let time slip away again? What was I doing the last few hours? Let’s see…making my 10th Potion of Resist Fire that I’ll never use. Dumping items onto my travelling companion so that I no longer move slower than a tortoise…How could I justify wasting my (real-world) time like this?
I get up off the couch and once again my legs feel numb. This was mildly amusing the first time it happened, but now I have an irrational fear that a blood clot has formed in my leg and is currently slowly making its way into my chest.
I scold myself for letting this game affect me physically, then I realise how absurd this situation is: imagine that, a video game making me mad at myself over my own behaviour! It’s like I’m beating myself up a la Ed Norton in Fight Club, but within my mind.
It turns out the numbness isn’t only in my legs, it’s in my head too…moreso than any physical effects, Skyrim is ******* me up mentally and I tell myself that this time “Skyrim has definitely got to go. It just has to.”
Hour 102: It’s Time To Part Ways
The next day I enter the land of Skyrim for the last time and do the usual things – killing bad guys with my trusted sword and shield combination, along with an arrow here and an arrow there.
Upon completing one last quest I prepare to exit the game, when suddenly a Dragon “randomly” appears. Slaying the Dragon seems like a fitting way to end my journey in Skyrim, and after a long battle the Dragon finally succumbs.
So with the loot stolen from its corpse (yes, I did say I was a completionist), I take one last look at the pixelated world around me. I’ve played over 100 hours yet the end still seems so far away with so much left unresolved (I haven’t even picked between the Stormcloaks and Imperials yet!), and now it will stay that way.
Delphine will forever be waiting in Riverwood for my arrival, Lydia will be waiting patiently in Whiterun to join me on an adventure that will never happen, Cosnach will have to find a new favourite drinking buddy…
It’s time for us to part ways. For good.
I exit the game for the final time…and for good measure I then proceed to permanently delete my Save files and uninstall the game from my PC.
I couldn’t complete Skyrim, but that’s not to say it’s a bad game.
On the contrary, it’s a stunningly beautiful and expansive world, a real credit to the developers and writers – I can only imagine the amount of hours spent creating a game of this scale and fashioning such a rich backstory.
But what I’ll take away most from Skyrim is just how much it taught me about myself. The extent of my urge for order, neatness and completeness, perhaps bordering on OCD: these were traits realised via the style of gameplay where free reign is handed over to the gamer.
Other realisations came via my behavioural reactions to the act of gaming itself, behaviour I perhaps was not fully aware of. That I could get so easily addicted to something. That I could get so lost in another world and lose track of time to an extent that could potentially be detrimental to my mental and physical wellbeing.
Yes, Skyrim is a fantastically well put together video game that revealed a lot of answers, not about the lore of Skyrim but about myself.
Only one question remains: "What video game shall I play next?"
