In a fantasy world like Skyrim, there are a bevy of wholly unrealistic things, like magic and Draugr and Orc herbalists. It’s just a matter of how much slack the gamer is willing to cut. The suspension of belief is necessary for anyone looking to enjoy video games. In Skyrim, it’s the bears that are suspended. It it ain’t broken, it’s not Skyrim Suspending belief? No. Hayden Dingman of PCWorld wrote an excellent article on the flaws of open world gaming, and I want to expound on his ideas and discuss how the flaws of Skyrim and open world gaming further degrade each other to subdue the enjoyment of Skyrim’s gameplay with increasing noticeability. Part of this is the mode of creation by developer Bethesda, and part is the souring mechanics of open world gaming.

But there are some things that mods cannot fix.Įven with potential mods propping Skyrim up, the base game engine has not aged as well as one would expect of such a successful title. The mods also polish the many rough edges customary in Bethesda games, greatly improving the ‘quality of life’ of the gamer. Middle-Earth weapon packs, slutty damsel companions, Thomas the Tank engine dragons if you can dream it, it has been made. It’s a whole new world, literally some mods add DLC sized content packs, like the award winning Falskaar, while others make the game look like a next-next gen Van Gogh painting. Then mods came along and transmuted Skyrim from solid silver into glistening gold. Impulsive hoarding, questing in a meticulously detailed world, and the first righteous introduction of dragons in gaming invited players to sink hundreds of hours into Skyrim. Some of its peers like Dragon Age and Dark Souls are respected RPG’s, but Skyrim was comfortably the best open world RPG of the time. Released in 2011, Skyrim was the game of an otherwise relatively quiet year. I spent the next few years spamming the wait button in anticipation of Elder Scrolls: V.

Setting the bar for the next generation of open world gaming, Oblivion was an enlightened interpretation of high medieval fantasy, and touring the quiet meadows and cold grey ramparts to Jeremy Soule’s incredible soundtrack will always be one of my favorite gaming experiences. The genre was young enough that macro scale criticism seemed to lack awareness for the burgeoning methods of development. Hitting shelves in 2006, Oblivion was a marvel of technology and a notable turning point in gaming, touting many innovative ideas and one of the largest, most detailed gameworlds to ever exist. I was 13 when Oblivion released and, man, it really held tight to the last part of my innocence. Now I’m watching a goat fly upside down through the rafters of the Jarl’s longhouse.

You feel the world shift skyrim