I find myself compelled by our seeming collective desire to experience games we have completed and adored as if it were the very first time all over again. Of course, the predominant benefit is the ability to indulge in all the whimsy and joy without the burden of hindsight. One can only be truly overwhelmed by the mesmerizing magic of stepping out of the cave at the start of Breath of the Wild or Elden Ring and beholding the world before them once in their life.
However, I find myself wishing I could replay one game in particular, not because I necessarily want to re-experience that magic it once offered me all over again, but because said magic has been all but eviceserated, lost amongst the discord, the constant exposure, and the revelations we’ve all had about it since it launched 15 years ago. My burning desire to play this game for the first time again stems from an altogether unique issue I find that only it is truly burdened with. It is an incredibly vanilla and obvious choice by many metrics, yet I believe that the reason I wish to re-experience The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is perhaps a little unexpected.
I’ve spoken many times about the rather surprising lack of games like The Elder Scrolls, and, indeed, fantasy RPGs altogether. While we get the occasional title like Avowed, Baldur’s Gate 3, or The Witcher 3, for the most part, grand-scale fantasy games with sprawling environments to explore, detailed world simulation, engaging quest design, and an abundance of secrets to uncover are few and far between. Skyrim has, for the longest time, represented the pinnacle of what this genre has to offer, and few games have managed to match its effortless blend of immersion, magic, and wonder.
Of course, it is for this reason that Skyrim remains one of the few games I’d readily wipe from my memory to be able to play again for the very first time. Getting to experience a game of this scale and ambition within the fantasy RPG is a rare and cherished treat, a once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence that must be savored at all costs. Naturally, I wasn’t aware of just how little the gaming industry would invest in attempting to replicate Skyrim’s success when I first played it, nor really during the many subsequent playthroughs where I rushed through its content with abandon. I had just assumed that Skyrim, much like its predecessors, was the start of something wonderful. Alas, how wrong I was.
I could quite happily prattle on about the wonders of Skyrim, about how its rather staggeringly beautiful first impressions are singed into my mind forever, how its world maintains an almost cozy atmosphere, despite the bleakness of its visuals, how the soundtrack is inarguably incredible and continues to offer me pangs of delightful nostalgia every time I hear it. Skyrim has earned its reputation as one of the best open-world games for a reason, and I needn’t extrapolate further on why. However, it is for all of these well-documented reasons, alongside my own personal ones, that I have endeavored to replicate the feeling it gave me the very first time I laid my eyes upon it.
I have played every edition of Skyrim on every console, each time with diminishing returns. The only time I came even remotely close to recapturing the magic of Skyrim was when I played it in VR, but even then, the experience was fleeting. With each iteration, I ventured across the same lands, uncovered the same secrets, fought the same enemies, and met the same characters, embarking on the very same journey I had over a decade prior. It has made it a little tedious, a little boring, but, perhaps most importantly, revealed the many flaws plaguing Skyrim, flaws I wish I could forget.
Skyrim Has Only Gotten Worse Over Time
I don’t think it is a particularly hot take anymore to state that Skyrim isn’t as good as we all seemingly collectively remember it being. That isn’t to say that Skyrim is bad, as that would be disingenuous; however, I would hazard a guess that anyone like me who has played it more times than is absolutely necessary can attest to the many failings of Bethesda’s alleged magnum opus. These issues become more apparent the further down the Skyrim rabbit hole one descends, the deeper into its abundance of quests, systems, and locales one dares to explore.
The simplicity and repetitiveness of Skyrim’s quest design become clear once you’ve beaten every quest numerous times. The superficiality of its combat and progression gnaws away at you as you once again find yourself defaulting to being a stealth archer. The beauty and intricacy of its world begin to falter the more you poke your nose where it doesn’t belong. Much like how staying in a once warm and comforting hot bath eventually becomes a painfully cold experience that sees you shrivel up like a prune, lingering too long in Skyrim will inevitably result in an unwelcome sense of dissatisfaction washing over you.
Of course, none of this is really present in an initial playthrough. Everything is new and exciting, and much of what The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim did 15 years ago still feels somewhat novel. You can easily overlook some of the more glaring issues and wander right past those hidden within the depths of its poorly crafted code. To live in such blissful ignorance again, to be able to be delighted by Skyrim’s parlor tricks and illusions, much like Dorothy before meeting the Wizard of Oz, would be a truly wonderful experience. It isn’t even a case of reliving my childhood, although I’m sure my rose-tinted glasses and desire to return to a world without responsibility, of which Skyrim played a large part, are certainly a part of it.
Rather, there’s something nice about not being so conscious of everything terrible and still being surprised by occasional moments of magic. I am so critical of everything these days, so aware of the machinations of game design, the troubles facing the industry, I overanalyze every film I watch, every TV show I binge, every video game I play, every book I read, because I’ve been gaming and reading and watching my whole life. I’m so ingrained in all of these hobbies, so accustomed to their tropes and failings that I can’t simply enjoy them anymore, not without first inspecting every corner and crevice to see how the magic is being pulled off.
Replaying Skyrim for the first time would allow me to go back to a time when I didn’t feel the need to do any of that, when I could just enjoy the magic for what it was and not feel as if I had to spoil it. The more disillusioned I become, the more I long for the days in which I was content with simply watching the magic trick play out be amazed without question. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is also one of the most replayable games, ironically, so forgetting it entirely would at least afford me a handful of playthroughs before I’d need to wipe my memory once more. Alas, such technology does not exist, and I’m destined to forever see the cracks in Skyrim’s once shining facade, doomed to delude myself into believing that, one day, I can plaster over them and believe in its enrapturing magic once again.
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