The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011)
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a 2011 role-playing (rpg) video game made by Bethesda Game Studios and Bethesda Softworks.
The main quest can wait. A dragon has returned to the northern province of Skyrim, and Bethesda is perfectly happy for you to ignore that for eighty hours. You are the Dragonborn, one of the few able to absorb a slain dragon's power and shout in the old tongue, and the plot will sit patiently wherever you left it.
What you do instead is the actual game. Skyrim is a cold, handsome province of separate holds, pine forest, tundra and buried ruins, with a civil war running through it between the empire and the Nords who want it gone. You can pick a side in that or ignore it too. You can specialise in destruction magic, a bow, heavy armour or picking locks and pockets; you can join a guild of thieves or a college of mages, buy a house, cook, forge, and read every book you find lying around.
The systems are shallower than the presentation suggests and the combat is functional rather than good. What has kept people here for years is the texture: a bandit camp on a ridge you were not heading for, a word wall at the bottom of a barrow, a giant walking a herd of mammoths past while you are busy fighting something else. It is an open world designed to be interrupted, which is exactly why it is still being replayed and rebuilt.
Quick answers
What is The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim about?
The main quest can wait. A dragon has returned to the northern province of Skyrim, and Bethesda is perfectly happy for you to ignore that for eighty hours. You are the Dragonborn, one of the few able to absorb a slain dragon's power and shout in the old tongue, and the plot will sit patiently wherever you left it. What you do instead is the actual game. Skyrim is a cold, handsome province of separate holds, pine forest, tundra and buried ruins, with a civil war running through it between the empire and the Nords who want it gone. You can pick a side in that or ignore it too. You can specialise in destruction magic, a bow, heavy armour or picking locks and pockets; you can join a guild of thieves or a college of mages, buy a house, cook, forge, and read every book you find lying around. The systems are shallower than the presentation suggests and the combat is functional rather than good. What has kept people here for years is the texture: a bandit camp on a ridge you were not heading for, a word wall at the bottom of a barrow, a giant walking a herd of mammoths past while you are busy fighting something else. It is an open world designed to be interrupted, which is exactly why it is still being replayed and rebuilt.
When was The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim released?
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was released on 10 November 2011.
Who made The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim?
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was made by Bethesda Game Studios and Bethesda Softworks.
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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in our writing
- Data / CrossBinge Catalog: Skyrim Refuses to Die Because Players Want Worlds, Not Release Dates
- Companion guide: Bethesda Game Studios: The Elder Scrolls, Fallout and the Art of Getting Lost
- Companion guide: The CRPG: The Complete Guide to Computer Role-Playing Games
- Companion guide: Dragons
A few thoughts on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Start with the score. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Original Game Soundtrack is most of the reason the tundra feels the way it does, and it holds up entirely away from the game. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is the tonal parent for the walking, the landscape and the sense that the map matters more than the plot does. Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon supply the politics Skyrim's civil war only sketches, with Dragons treated as weapons rather than wonders. And Conan the Barbarian is the right correction after two hundred hours of sneak-archer: a cold north, a sword, and no quest log anywhere in sight.
Dragons come back to break a kingdom apart
Skyrim opens with a dragon returning to a province already splitting apart in civil war. House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones build entire sagas around dragons deciding who holds the throne, Brisingr follows a young rider bonding with his own dragon through a war for a fractured homeland, and The Witcher 3 drops you into a realm where politics and monsters are impossible to untangle.
Long, sweeping quests across strange and dangerous lands
Skyrim hands you an entire frozen province and lets you wander toward whatever rumor sounds interesting instead of following one straight path. The Fellowship of the Ring sends its heroes on foot across hostile country toward a single goal, Conan the Barbarian carves a path through sorcery and ruins on nothing but muscle, and Oathbringer keeps its heroes marching toward a war they can't outrun.