On November 11th, 2011 the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim released. To say it was huge would be an understatement. At the time that Skyrim released, Bethesda were still the golden boys of the games industry. The company by gamers, for gamers. Bethesda were beloved in 2011, of the major Triple A devs not even Nintendo had as passionate or devoted a fanbase. Bethesda was famous for its good relationship with its community, open support for people who mod their games at a time when companies were all trying to be exceptionally predatory with DRM as the PC market grew into the mainstream, and, most importantly, for kickstarting a mainstream surge for a very specific kind of RPG.
The more Western style of RPGs had always been relatively popular, but it had issues breaking through to the mainstream. Titles like Baldur's Gate were locked to the very humble PC market in a time before we had a massive uptick in PC gaming. Consoles, which at the time were significantly more popular than PCs as a way to game, were just ill-equipped for the kind of RPGs that were being designed in the west. They were often very mechanically complicated and ridiculously in-depth games that benefitted from mouse and keyboard controls and would not particularly fit well to controllers. They were often inspired or directly made out of systems similar to DnD, with incredibly in-depth stat screens and character creation and gameplay that could be best described as "simulating dice rolls".
Console versions of these PC RPG series would very often take the form of spinoffs, action-role-playing games that invoke a more hack-and-slash style of tactics RPGs which try to invoke the gameplay of these titles by having more grid based gameplay and less emphasis on player autonomy. The RPGs that were typically big on console were, instead, from Japan mostly. Games that have a more simplified, intuitive core gameplay where complexity comes from digging in-depth into what appear as simple system, as well as having a heavier focus on the player as a bystander experiencing the story rather than direct player autonomy within it. Some more Western style RPGs would get massive on consoles, don't get me wrong, the Knights of the Old Republic games were originally Xbox console exclusives, and were Xbox exclusive period for the first several months of their lifespan. But, for many generations, it seemed like the PC was the domain of the Western RPG and console was the domain of the East.
Bethesda, more than anyone, changed this perception. With titles like Morrowind, Oblivion, and most importantly, Fallout 3, Bethesda took this style of RPG and made it mainstream. By taking influence from action-adventure games, first person shooters, and more console-focused RPGs, Bethesda created a solution that would adapt this very Dungeons and Dragons-y design into something more palatable for a wider audience. It was not a translation without controversy, mind you. Bethesda has long been criticized for creating games are too in line with console gamers' needs, removing a lot of the complexity of the previous PC-focused entries in these franchise. But, it was ultimately a decision that resulted in an overall positive reception from both critics and audiences, with games like Oblivion and Fallout 3 often being ranked among the greatest games ever made. Bethesda, in a lot of ways, made the public fall in love with RPGs as a genre, and we still see the effects of this decision all these years later. Basically every game, especially every open world game, has extensive RPG elements to it.
No Bethesda game is as famous or iconic, though, as the fifth entry in the Elder Scrolls series, Skyrim. Released on 11-11-11, still a killer release date, Skyrim very quickly became one of THE video games. Everyone has heard of Skyrim, the vast majority of gamers have played some version of it, and it is one of the best-selling video games of all time (65 million copies sold as of 2026, making it tied for the 8th best-selling video game ever made). It is one of the most important RPGs of all time, one of the most iconic fantasy games of all time, and it is a game that, if you play video games, is a must-play. It is as important to the canon of video games as the Legend of Zelda, so much so that back in the day a very common "who would win" matchup was to pit the Dovakiin against the grandfather of fantasy video games. An absurd matchup as the Dragonborn can't do more than like a heart to Link at any given time but Link can drain his HP down with a single spin attack.
I was part of the Skyrim hype train once upon a time. I never owned it myself, mind you, I didn't have a console that could play it until 2016-ish and by that time I had already come to my conclusions about Skyrim as a video game. But from 2011 until then, playing through a bunch of Skyrim was a common activity when I would stay over at friends houses or when I moved in with my first roommate and he brought his PS3 with him. Shoutouts to my Khajit mage that I'm sure I gave a dumb name but lord knows I'll never remember it. I have played a lot of Skyrim over my life, I've had multiple files that have gone for at least 20 hours apiece and I even almost beat the game on one of my files. It was my first time ever playing a game like this, a massive open world that you could just explore around. It's never been a game I loved, mind you, I always found the map incredibly difficult to navigate and the enemy variety sorely lacking. But I did really enjoy it for much of my life. But, eventually I stopped playing it. Played a bunch of other games in the same genre. Sat with my opinions on Skyrim for a while. And I, eventually, came to a conclusion on my feelings about the game...
Skyrim is a bad RPG.
Skill Trees
I want to start by discussing Skyrim's level-up and Skill tree system, not necessarily because I think it is bad, but because I think it is an important baseline to understand many of my later criticisms with the game. To be honest, I actually do rather like Skyrim's core level up system, at least in theory. So, Skyrim at its core has a fairly standard EXP system. As you defeat enemies, complete quests, and find new areas within the continent of Skyrim, you will gain experience which will eventually result in a level up. Upon the level up, you will be able to increase your stats and gain a skill point for the game's skill tree(s). What Skyrim lacks, however, is a traditional stat system. Stats you would commonly associate with an RPG (Strength, Magic, Defense, etc.) are absent from the Elder Scrolls V, with the only stats the player can increase upon level-up being their HP, their mana, and their Stamina. So how, pray tell, do you become better at, say, swordfighting without strength, or magic without intelligence, or stealth without dexterity? Simple: you level up the specific skill itself.
Skyrim has a very in-depth skill tree system. At any time in the game, but most importantly upon level up, you access the various constellations that are found above the continent Skyrim, with a bevvy of skill points you've amassed from level ups in tow. The skill points can be used to access the stars in each of the constellations, of which there are 18, 6 under each vague umbrella of a class system. They are as follows:
- Illusion - Magics focusing on altered perceptions, either being magic where you change the enemies mood/mind (things like Calm removing their aggression or Frenzy forcing them to go into a blind rage) or Magics which can obscure the user in some way (Invisibility turning them briefly invisible or Muffle hiding the sounds of their movement).
- Conjuration - Magics focused on conjuring things to reality, either by summoning mystical weaponry of other types on the skill tree (Blades, Maces, Bows) or by summoning Familiars to aid you in combat (Wolves, Golems, Fire Women).
- Destruction - Magics focused on pure damage, these are the primary offensive magics in the game and come in three elemental categories, Fire magic (most cost effective, average speed, average damage, usually grant a damage over time effect), Frost magic (average cost effectiveness, slow speed, assaults the enemy stamina as well as health, slows enemy movement), and Shock magic (least cost effective, instant speed, high damage, assaults the enemy magic as well as health).
- Restoration - Healing and Defensive magic, the prototypical "white magic". It specializes in either direct healing magic, wards that act as magical shields the caster has to actively maintain, or magic dealing with harming the undead.
- Alteration - Magic dealing with adding or changing things to the physical world, primarily used for armor spells which turn the caster's skin into resilient material (Wood, Stone, Dragonhide) but also includes things such as creating magical lights or transmuting iron into gold.
- Enchanting - Dealing with imbuing weapons and armor with magical abilities, such as elemental properties, calming or frenzying enemies, or even stealing souls.
- Archery - Dealing with fighting with bows and arrows.
- Block - Dealing with shields and defensive stances in melee combat.
- Heavy Armor - Dealing with bulkier, more defensive, heavier armors types like plate, bone, or dragon.
- One-Handed - Dealing with one-handed weaponry, things like swords, maces, daggers, and any related weapons that you could either dual-wield or wield with a shield.
- Smithing - Dealing with weapon and armorcraft, smelting, pounding, and honing your own blades, shields, and armors from materials you find while adventuring.
- Two-Handed - Dealing with two-handed weaponry, things like battleaxes, warhammers and greatswords, weapons that require both hands to use.
- Alchemy - Dealing with the creation of potions and poisons by mixing various natural ingredients into bottles.
- Light Armor - Dealing with lighter, less defensive, easier to move in armor, such as hide, chain, or leather.
- Lockpicking - Dealing with picking locks.
- Pickpocket - Dealing with stealing directly from the pockets of people.
- Sneak - Dealing with all things stealth, successfully hiding after being detected, sneaking around people without being detected at all, doing sneak attacks such as stealth kills and sniper shots with a bow, things of that nature.
- Speech - Essentially your charisma stat, Speech deals with persuasion and intimidation checks and what kind of deals you get from the shops (i.e., a higher Speech stat means you will be able to buy for less and sell for more).
As you level up, you will be able to expend your skill points to pick perks from these various skill trees. Some of these are technically unnecessary but are beneficial to the point of necessity, the magic skill trees, for instance, all have half Mana cost for the respective spell type and spell level as a skill path, which is useful as naturally magic tends to take up more mana than you are likely to have at any point in the game. Others represent a skill's literal progression system, the Smithing system will lock the ability to make better weapons and armor from you until you progress in the skill tree. And still others are just for fun, like the Lockpicking skill that ensures your lockpicks won't break.
But, you don't simply just choose your perks upon level up, nor is there some sort of overall level lock on certain skills. Instead, you have to actively use the skills you wish to level up. Each skill has its own level up system that goes up when you engage with it, i.e. using destruction magic levels up your destruction, smithing weapons and armor levels up your smithing, etc. This means the player is actively being incentivized to, a, develop a unique build of their own, b, engage with their specific build and not try to be too much of an all-arounder, and c, make decisions on how to play the game based on what their build actually is. If you're specializing in Speech, you'll want to try and persuade or intimidate your way past problems rather than try to solve them in more traditional ways. If you're a mage, you're more likely to find creative solutions with the environment rather than trying to engage with combat.
In theory, Skyrim's core system is genius. It's very intuitive, a very simple cause and effect, but it allows the player a lot of freedom to craft their character and their build however they see fit. It doesn't impose any specific, predetermined build on you, starting every skill on even ground and telling you to find your own path. But there are also direct consequences to how you build, investing in builds takes time and so you will naturally want to invest in a certain play style, as you will directly benefit from honing in on your chosen stat spread. This means, hypothetically, that you are locking yourself into what content your capable of doing by choosing what you wish to focus on. If you are a dedicated mage, you will naturally shy away from questlines that focus on more aggressive, direct gameplay styles. It is, in theory, an excellent RPG skill/stat system, what that makes you choose your build and live with the consequences of doing so. It is the core from which Skyrim could build a generationally brilliant RPG, one that allows creativity with one's builds but forces them to live with what they choose to focus on. It is the potential that Skyrim will fail to live up to in every other facet of its design.
Race
Skyrim's character creator is incredibly in-depth. While nowadays it is very common for character creators to have features like "adjusting the specific angle of your eyebrows to the most minute degree", upon Skyrim's release this was actually pretty revolutionary. The ability to create whatever nightmare demon comes to your head was novel at the time, and who knows, maybe you could even defy the odds and make a character that looks good. It could happen, you never know. But the first selection you must make is choosing your fantasy race. And it is here that we start to see how Skyrim's systems conflict with one another.
There are ten races to choose from in Skyrim's character creator, each representing one of the ten living races in the world of the Elder Scrolls series. There are the more "human" races of the world, the Nords, Bretons, Imperials, and Redguard, who are roughly analogous to the Germanic/Norse people, the Britannic/Gaelic people, the Mediterranean people, and the West African people of our world. There are the elven races of the world of the Elder Scrolls series, the High Elves, Wood Elves, Dark Elves, and Orcs, who are very in line with many classic fantasy races. And there are the entirely unique races of the Argonians and the Khajit, the former being a reptilian race of swamp-dwellers and the latter are a race of desert-dwelling cat people, both of whom are traditionally looked down upon by the other races in Skyrim for racist reasons.
Picking your race is not simply a cosmetic choice, nor is it a bit of flavor to add to your character. Your race matters for gameplay reasons. Each race starts with several boons. They each have a passive ability that is unique to their race. Argonians resist disease, Khajit get an attack buff when fighting in hand to hand combat, Nords resist the cold, stuff like that. Each race has at least one passive ability, with several of the races getting multiple passives and the Argonians getting up to four (although they are all situationally useful at best). Except Orcs, Orcs accidentally didn't get a passive until the special edition rerelease added a Survival mode. Each race also has a unique active ability, something that can be activated once per day to aid them in their quest. Orcs get a "deal double damage" buff, Wood Elves can turn an animal into an ally, Imperials can cast Calm, etc. But the most notable thing about choosing your race is how it buffs your starting stat spread.
Every single race in Skyrim starts with deterministic stats, a stat spread that starts out with boons to stats that are associated with your race. Every single race has a +10 to one specific skill and a +5 to five others, usually skills that would be relevant to certain play styles. High Elves start with boons in every magic stat, with a +10 to Illusion, Redguards start with +5 to skills that would benefit a sword-and-sorcery play style with a +10 to one-handed, Dark Elves start with stat benefits in a mix of magic and sneaking stats with a +10 to Destruction magic. Stuff like that. You gain direct gameplay benefits for choosing a specific race that go beyond simple passive boons and/or interesting worldbuilding implications that would directly benefit your role-playing.
Now, I do not want to enter into the debate on whether or not deterministic stats are good or not. I am not a TTRPG player, I have limited experience with systems that have them, other than Skyrim my only experience with it was Baldur's Gate II where I had to play an Orc Shaman because the game wouldn't let me be an Orc Wild Mage like I wanted. I could see arguments for and against them, but it's really not my place to have an opinion on whether this is something that should be in games. Leave that to the people who actually deal with them on the reg, you know?
Rather, I want to focus on an immediate conflict between Skyrim's skill system and Skyrim's race system. One of the things I lauded the former for was how it gave the player just enough freedom. It starts in a neutral state and allows the player to form their own gameplay identity through how they engage with the game's systems. It is non-deterministic, it is designed to ensure the player has the ability to play their way. The race system, meanwhile, is very deterministic. It is leading the player onto a specific path right from the start based on what they want their character to be. If you looked at Dark Elves and thought "wow, this is such a cool thing to be, I want to be a cool Dark Elf", you are starting with a mix of stealth and magic stats whether or not you were thinking of being a Dark Elf Warrior who beheads enemies with a massive battleaxe.
Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that the game is forcing you into the boxes determined by your chosen race's default stats. That would be lying. The game is starting you out with a potentially beneficial stat spread, a starting build which one may find compelling but can ignore as they wish. If you want to play as an Orc mage and basically look like Travis Willingham next to all his co-stars, go for it, you do you. However, I do think it's notable how much these boons make or break the early game for your intended play style. That additional 5 points is the difference between being able to start off with a better perk in a given skill and having to level that skill up more to earn it. And for a lot of these skills, being able to start out with a higher level perk is massive. It is the backbone of a mage-focused play style, as magic is very costly and being able to reduce spell cost by half is practically the only way to make mage gameplay sustainable. Skills like Pickpocketing are nearly impossible to do without the perks to give you higher success rates.
The game isn't telling you to play any specific play style, but it is nudging you into the boxes that it has crafted for you by giving you too many good reasons to connect with a certain build based on your race. It is telling you "do whatever you like with your build" and also making it so that you are heavily incentivized to prebuild because the advantages you gain from it are too massive to ignore. You certainly can be an Orc mage if that's what you desire, but also you might want to reconsider and play High Elf if you want to do magic, it'll be more efficient that way. It is telling you to play the game your way and also play the game its way.
The Class System is(n't) Real
If you have been paying attention, you'll have intuited that the various skills of Skyrim are kind of under three umbrellas. Magic skills, combat skills, and stealth skills. One might even say that these skills roughly translate to the three archetypal RPG classes. Warriors, Mages, and Rogues. This is not a coincidence. Skyrim utilizes the trappings of traditional RPG classes in order to make a very intuitive system for the player to conceptualize how each skill is intended to be used. It's not a hard and fast rule, mind you, again you have the freedom to build however you want, but it is a structure that Skyrim places to easily communicate what skills are best suited for what play style. Rest assured, dear reader, Skyrim does not have a class system. Well it does but not an RPG class system, the societal class system is a very important note in Skyrim.
There are seven skills under each umbrella, with five unique to the "class" at hand and two that are transitional between classes on the level up screen. Mages receive Alchemy, Alteration, Illusion, Conjuration, Destruction, Restoration and Enchanting. All very obvious magic related skills. Warriors receive Enchanting, Heavy Armor, Block, Two-Handed, One-Handed, Smithing. and Archery. Primarily combat related skills all put under the umbrella of "Warrior", with a couple of the crafting and physical defense related skills for good measure. And finally, the Rogue umbrella, which is Archery, Speech, Sneak, Pickpocketing, Lockpicking, Light Armor, and Alchemy. All the sneakier, stealth based skills, stuff that is about stealing, charisma, and subterfuge. But, this is all this is. Just umbrellas for easy communication to the player. After all, there is no class system in Skyrim, it's all about the freedom to make your own unique build, you know?
So after you finish the tutorial you encounter the class system in Skyrim. Assuming you follow the path laid out in front of you by the person you escape the tutorial with and don't just decide to go off on your adventure, you will quickly come across a group of stones with runes on them. These stones are "Standing Stones", enchanted stones scattered throughout Skyrim that when interacted with will grant the player a passive buff until they interact with another Standing Stone, which will then remove the buff. The majority of these stones are more specific buffs, one of them allows you to gain serpent venom to your attacks once per day, one of them increases magic recovery, etc., but this grouping hold a very specific purpose. They grant you a 20% experience buff to any skill under one of the three umbrellas.
Now, again, you can simply choose not to gain a buff here. Or, if you know what will be the most beneficial for your build, you can choose to gain one of these buffs, level it up for a little while, and come get another. These are not hard and fast classes, it is not locking you into a specific set of skills by choosing your "class". But once again, we are seeing the game push you towards a direction when it also touts that you have a freedom to choose your build. This 20% buff is not-negligible, skills, especially Thief skills, level up very quickly at first but begin to plateau as soon as you reach the mid 30s in your skill level. Without this 20% buff, it's very likely you will go hours of gameplay without a single skill level up, it matters a lot.
The game is encouraging you to by very extremist with your build, to play full Warrior, full Mage, full Thief. It's not something you have to do, but it is something you'll want to do. And not only does this conflict with the game's promise of full control over what role you will play, but it also conflicts with races having deterministic stats in the first place. Many races are designed to benefit mixed builds, lots of mage + thief skills and warrior + mage skills. Only Orcs, High Elves, and Wood Elves are built for one specific class. The game has nudged you in three directions with how your character will start out. It grants you complete freedom over what skills you want to level up, but then tells you "hey, since you're playing this character, you should probably use this combination of skills" implying what your build should be, only to then also be like "but we also would really like you to do a very traditional class system if you want to see any worthwhile gains on any of your skills". And the freedom it grants you is also the freedom to choose not to engage with these systems, not to let the game dictate your play style. But if you make it so that you clearly want the player to stay in the box, giving them ample food and a steady stream of water, saying "the player can leave the box whenever they would like" doesn't count as a defense.
The Guild
As we've just established, Skyrim has a class system. It's not one you technically have to abide by, but it's there. You are heavily incentivized to build around both your race and a certain class as the potential benefits from doing so are so massive that it is difficult to justify playing another way. To compound onto this problem, however, we have the guilds. Skyrim, like a lot of fantasy RPGs, has a guild system. A place for adventurers to gather, find a safe place to rest, meet fellow adventurers who maybe looking for an adventuring party to join up with, and take odd jobs for some extra gold. It's a very common and very useful system to include in an RPG where progression is constant but your opportunities to gain more gold may not be.
Skyrim has three such guilds. I guess it actually has four, but the fourth one is less a "guild" and more a "Dark Urge path". There are the Companions of central Skyrim, a band of warriors who fight hard and drink harder and are likely to be the first guild you encounter within the game. There is the Thieves' Guild in southern Skyrim, a network of thieves and fences who are trying to regain their glory as an organized crime unit. And there is the College of Winterhold in the icy north of Skyrim, a mage college where mages can go to learn and increase their magical powers. Three distinctive guilds to represent the three classes of Skyrim. Once again, incentivizing playing by their rules despite their promises of freedom.
Now, as always, you don't have to do any of this. Two of the three guilds are very out of the way from the majority of where you will be spending the game, as the hub of Skyrim's content is very focused in the middle and western parts of Skyrim. It is very out of the way to even find the guilds in the first place, much less join them. And, I'll grant them, that joining the guilds is a less restrictive process than them being tied to a class system makes it seem like they would be. You can join the Warrior's guild no matter what your build probably is because the only check to join it is moderately difficult one on one sword fight. Which is likely to be a skill you have some expertise in as you find this area early enough in the game to where you probably haven't carved out your build and are reliant on melee weaponry. The mages guild and thieves guild have similar fairly easy checks for membership. You don't have to be specialized in any class to access this content.
But we are once again seeing the game attempt to have its cake and eat it too. It wants you to both have the freedom to build however you want while also pushing you into very predetermined, traditionalist directions with how you play the game. It wants to simplify the experience for an audience that may have never played a fantasy RPG before, establish the basics for them in particular, while also attempting to give the player complete freedom to explore that complexity. It wants to be everything for everyone, it wants to both tell the player how they should play and also tell them there is no right way to play. The Guilds are three of the biggest questlines in Skyrim, a substantial part of the game's content is locked behind a traditional class system, and while you can certainly find enough to do without doing any of them, without playing by the paths the game lays out for you, it's clear it wants you to play by its rules. It doesn't necessarily stamp on your freedom, but it seems like it's putting up a bunch of fences and telling you "you can jump them if you want".
Skyrim Is For the Nords
The very first NPC you meet in Skyrim is a man by the name of Ulfric Stormcloak. Literally, Ulfric is a face you meet so early that you don't have one yet. Your character has not made it to the character creation screen before you meet Ulfric Stormcloak. Ulfric is a prisoner, part of a wagon heading to a stronghold in the center of Skyrim to prepare for execution. Ulfric's crime is treason, he has recently executed the King of Skyrim and started a civil war within the continent. The reason being that Ulfric truly hates the governance of Skyrim
Ulfric believes ruling Skyrim is his birthright, that as the last descendant of an ancient bloodline within Skyrim that is so old that it traces back to the dragons who used to rule this land he should be on the throne, and that the current rulers of Skyrim are little more than puppets to a great empire. Ulfric wishes to bring back a golden age of Skyrim, one where the people are in charge rather than some foreign empire. He wants to reclaim Skyrim for its indigenous people, the Nords, and rule it as the rightful king. And also he's a massive racist who finds other races besides the Nords to be at best necessary evils and at worse trespassers on the sacred lands of his ancestors. Ulfric does not simply believe Skyrim should belong to its native people, he believes that it should ONLY be inhabited by its native people. So goes his rallying cry. "Skyrim is for the Nords".
One of the biggest questlines in the game gives you the option to agree with him. There is a lot that can be said about the Civil War storyline in Skyrim. In my mind, it is a incredibly unnuanced look at a volatile political situation that fails to really make a case for either side being better for the land of Skyrim in any significant way, as it ultimately makes both the Empire and the Stormcloak rebellion motivated by a singular trait that is unambiguously vile. The Empire are authoritarians who rule with a heavy hand and literally have a secret government with potentially unsavory plans for the future of Skyrim. The Stormcloaks are nationalists who believe that Skyrim should be put in the hands of the Nords and should kick out all the lesser races. The Civil War questline is exceptionally childish in my opinion, an attempt to create a political situation with depth and pathos by insuring that the player will not root for any side and ultimately determine who is the least awful for Skyrim basically off a coin flip (it is, unfortunately, the Imperials as they are the relatively less racist ones).
But I want to draw your attention to the battle cry for the Stormcloak rebellion. "Skyrim is for the Nords". Racism is incredibly central to the Stormcloaks, it is not simply a byproduct of their nationalist tendencies. It's a feature. So what does that say about the fact that the player can choose to become part of this rebellion. The Stormcloaks are not, explicitly, the villains in Skyrim, they are a faction that the player can choose to become involved with and aid in their "reclamation" of Skyrim. And given that the Stormcloaks are so heavily racist and centered around the nationalist belief that Skyrim should belong solely to the people who are "native born", there is only one conclusion you can draw from this: Skyrim wants you to play as a Nord.
The entire Civil War storyline, the second most important questline in Skyrim outside of the main one, just does not make justifiable sense unless you are playing as a Nord. No other race in Skyrim has any reason to ever side with the Stormcloaks, they are motivated by the idea that your race is inferior to the Nords and should be kicked out of Skyrim. The only reason Ulfric even likes you, no matter what race you end up being, is because you are the Dragonborn, he sees you as kin. I mean actually the reason is that Ulfric meets the player before they even create their character and as such forms a kinship with them as mutual prisoners heading to an execution and it would frankly be weird for him to then be super racist to you after already treating you as a brother but I digress. Skyrim is, yet again, pushing the player into a box despite promising them freedom.
Skyrim pushing you to be a Nord and building a massive chunk of the game off characters being unambiguously racist to people who aren't Nords is not simply a role-playing issue, however. Nords, as a race, are naturally suited to being warriors. They excel at Two-handed skills and have natural boons in Smithing, Block, Light Armor, One-handed, and Speech. They are perfect for either being a warrior or a warrior-rogue dual class, but honestly it's more just "warrior" because the rogue skills they excel in are more generic and arguably more useful for warriors anyways. The game has, either accidentally or intentionally, placed a lot of emphasis on leaning into warrior. Its systems, worldbuilding, and quest structure have all compounded into a system where, if the player is just to intuit what they should do by what the game is communicating to them, they will inevitably become a Nord Warrior, or otherwise have no reason to even engage with some of the core ideas at the center of one of Skyrim's most central questlines.
This emphasis on the warrior class feeds back into the Guild problem. I mentioned in the guild section that two of the guilds are pretty out of the way and, if you are intuitively following the main quest to determine where you go and what you do, you are unlikely to find them. The Thieves' Guild is in a city you go to pretty late in the main quest and, while you are almost immediately involved in the Guild's storyline once you enter the city the Guild is found in, by the time you encounter the Thieves Guild you are very likely to have decided on your build and may not even be a thief even a little. The College of Winterhold, meanwhile, is something you will never encounter even when the quest takes you to Winterhold, because the quest has you speaking with the "Jarl" of Winterhold, essentially the governor, and his house is the first place in Winterhold. You could go the entire game without encountering the Mages' guild.
Now, I think this is just bad open world RPG design on its face? Ideally an open world RPG would, through its main questline, nudge the player in the direction of all the key points it wants to make within its first "Act". By the following the main quest, you should be able to naturally encounter all of the key points and run into any interesting cities, quests, or interesting areas that you can then go "I want to do this, I want to explore this part of the game more". That way a player who is playing the game for the first time can organically find things like the factions of the Civil War storyline, the guilds, or just interesting geography. And then when you inevitably start the game all over again because you realize its first like 20 hours are better than any other part of the game, you can use that knowledge to be more direct on how you explore Skyrim. Ironically, for a game that wants you to intuit a very particular play pattern, Skyrim doesn't want you to organically find the cool stuff in the game.
But I want to talk about the third guild, the warriors guild. The Companions. Unlike the other guilds in Skyrim, the Companions are not even remotely out of the way. They are centrally located, their guild hall is within the first major city you will go into if you are following the main storyline, which is also the "main hub" for basically the entire game. They are an instance of the game nudging you into finding the significant stuff, you will naturally encounter this guild not just by playing the game but very early on in the game's "main story", You will very likely encounter the Companions within the first five hours of playing, as all you need to be pointed in the direction of Whiterun is to complete the tutorial, be pointed to your first dungeon, and then get the note that you should ask about the weird things happening to you at Whiterun. More than that, though, the game actively introduces you to the Companions if you are following the "intended path", having the guild slaying a giant in the farmland on the outskirts of Whiterun. The fact that they make the Companions so central, to the point where the player could easily find them and want to join them within the first hours of the game, continues to put emphasis on the warrior class. And while the Companions as a guild are ultimately apolitical, they will side with Ulfric Stormcloak in the Civil War if left to their own devices, once again putting emphasis on the Nord Warrior build.
Dungeons and Dragons
I want you to really quickly take the selection of "Thief" skills into account. The rough umbrella of thief skills includes six very specific skills: sneak, pickpocketing, speech, lockpicking, light armor, and alchemy. Six very distinctive abilities that imply a certain play style. The thief wants to find clever, non-violent ways of solving problems. Either persuading their targets to their side, intimidating their targets, stealing from them, planting things on them, poisoning them, that sort of thing. It is a play style that is very in-line with how a thief would play, you are expected to find more sneaky and creative ways of solving a problem than just "hitting it until it dies". The thieves don't even naturally have any combat skills, with their only skill tree that gives them actual combat abilities being the Stealth tree and them having to share their one actual weapon skill, archery, with Warriors (it's even officially considered under the Warrior umbrella, officially). So it would be a shame if, hypothetically, the majority of gameplay in Skyrim is entirely combat focused with very few opportunities to utilize your thief skillsets.
The vast majority of Skyrim's actual gameplay is, indeed, spent in combat. In particular, it is spent in dungeons. Lots and lots of dungeons. Old crypts, caves, mines, that sort of thing. No matter what the questline is or what objective you are ultimately hoping to accomplish, you are very likely to end up in a very similar looking scenario. Making your way through narrow underground corridors fighting off anywhere between 5 and 15 enemies. In particular, two types of enemies: the undead draugr and the living bandits. Other common enemy types you'll fight include the native fauna of Skyrim, magical beasts like trolls, and unambiguously evil people conducting rituals in dingy caves for their own goals. In other words, the vast majority of Skyrim's gameplay is spent engaging in encounters with enemies for whom you have no choice but to fight.
Now, I am not going to sit here and pretend like this isn't an inevitability. It's an RPG, you gotta fight from time to time. And it is unreasonable to state that it's some sort of inherent flaw that one of the three classes of Skyrim lacks combat abilities if you build them "pure". Nobody would ever build them pure, you gaining skills in more combat-able skills like one-handed is an inevitability. Even if you max out your Sneak so stealth kills come easy to you, you will inevitably upgrade either your one-handed or your archery just by virtue of attacking with those weapons to perform the stealth kills. It would be ludicrous to assume the game is telling you that the way to play rogue in this game is to never fight. However, I do think it's noteworthy that the game put this set of skills under the same umbrella because it is implying more interesting and creative solutions than it will ultimately deliver on.
Take for instance one of the most central skills in the Thief umbrella: Speech. The fact that your ability to communicate is, in itself, a skill inherent to the game design implies a very specific outcome: you will be able to talk your way into or out of situations. It implies that more interesting solutions are available to the player if they choose to engage with certain parts of the game. That you may be able to avoid doing long, tedious dungeons by simply being persuasive enough to talk a character into handing over what you need them to. But said checks are very few and far between, with most characters not having a single opportunity to persuade them at all in their travels. And, as the vast majority of the content in the game is sequestered into dungeons with hostile mobs who can't or won't be reasoned with, your Speech skill does nothing for you for the bulk of gameplay.
Bandits and Necromancers aren't exactly interested in diplomacy and even if you were to calm them down somehow, you would not be able to have a meaningful discussion with them to hash it out. They will simply become hostile again once the calming power ends. Your inability to really use Speech to accomplish anything only ends up making the skill an active detriment, as its primary purpose ends up being to give the player better deals for buying and selling in Skyrim but due to how Skyrim's economy works, the more you can sell things for, the less you'll be able to sell. I've seen maxed out Speech players having to travel around the entire land of Skyrim to unload treasure they've gotten from their ventures, only to ultimately sell a fraction of it.
This heavy focus on combat also manifests in the near constant threat of dragon attacks. Dragons are, frankly, a complete and total nuisance in Skyrim. What at first seems to be a powerful foe that will appear at key story moments quickly becomes essentially an overgrown rat that will show up at any point to bug you. Dragons are so common in Skyrim that the player is likely to become completely desensitized to fighting them and honestly ignore their presence entirely as the gains you get from them become less and less fruitful as the game goes on. Their ability to show up at the most inopportune times causes dragons to turn even a brisk stroll in a field into a boss encounter. And the thing about bosses is that you have to fight them if you want them to leave you alone. Dragons, more than any other enemy type, want you dead specifically. It is their singular goal in life. The Dovakiin is literally the only one that can stop the reign of fire from returning. So you gotta fight them.
Dragons are also some of the worst enemies to fight in the game if you are doing anything other than traditional weaponry. For starters, Dragons tend to stay high up in the air until enough damage has been done to them to ground them. This is, already, a non-starter for the majority of builds in the game. Magic has a very limited range which often makes it so that you can only hope to damage these beasts as they swoop down, and really the only weapon to have the range to assist you are bows. Hopefully, if you're fighting dragons, you'll be near enough to a population center to enlist the aid of other people to do that part for you. But if you're, I don't know, exploring. In this open world RPG. You are probably on your own and having to simply hope that you have an hour to deal with it if you didn't pick Archery as part of your build. But even if you do ground them, dragons are very resilient to most of the combat types in the game. They are incredibly unreliable in fighting them and, frankly, the types that are good against this very common threat are the Warrior types. Swords, axes, warhammers and bows. These work far better than any other combat skill you can have in the game.
Too Much Player Freedom
Skyrim's problem is not that it railroads too much. I have framed Skyrim under these arguments because I want you to understand how much Skyrim seems to imply consequence. That it wants you to believe that there are serious ramifications to the decisions you make. That it does matter what you choose to do, matters extremely. Almost matters to the point that Skyrim is tell you that it has a specific way of play in mind and that your freedom is clashing against it. And I wanted you to see this because I want you to be aware of how it does not, in fact, matter in the slightest. Skyrim does not have any consequences for anything you do. Because that would be asking the player to live with their choices. And Skyrim doesn't believe in that.
Take, for instance, the guilds. The fact that there are guilds at all implies that the game wants to reward you for choosing specific paths. You are, in a sense, giving each "class" exclusive content that is only available to them. And yes, that means that not every build would be able to access said content, but that's the consequence for your choices. The whole point of having a class and guild system is to highlight the uniqueness of each class. Is is actually good RPG design to make a player unable to access the content within the guilds they are not prepared to join, it is a choice they made that leads to a consequence that helps inform their character. It is a role. You are expected to play. In a role-playing game.
But Skyrim hates the idea of any content in the game, any content at all, being unavailable. It wants the player to be able to do everything, to have access to all the content available to them on a singular playthrough. And the guilds being such significant questlines are the biggest examples of this. The guilds are not exclusionary, the Dragonborn can join any of them at any time and begin their specific questlines. Skyrim does this because Skyrim believes very strongly in the idea that they put cool content into the game and as such they don't want players missing out on said content. So, despite the guilds being very class/build specific in theory, the actual checks to join them are minor.
To be accepted into the Companion's, your only real requirement is to win a singular swordfight against a moderately difficult opponent. To join the College of Winterhold, you only have to cast a tier 2 spell once, something that is less about your spellcasting abilities and more about your ability to level up your Mana as there are no restrictions put on learning spells based on how much you level up those skills. And to join the Thieves' Guild, you simply need to lockpick a couple locks, which you are probably more than capable of as Lockpicking is one of the most universally important skills in the game, and then pass a Pickpocketing check which isn't very difficult to pass but even if you miss it, you can just like. Reload and do it again. These are all things you can do without needing to invest practically anything into their relevant skills, with the most difficult of these checks only needing you to brute force a couple levels into MP in order to pass it. And after that point, you never have to do any of this again. You never have to swing a sword, cast a spell, or steal from someone again. You can move through the entire rest of the game never having to contend with the consequences of the play style and build you've crafted.
This decision to allow the player to have very little standing in their way to joining all three guilds regardless of whether or not they fit into them has the side issue of making a mockery of the guilds. Skyrim is a power fantasy narrative. The player character is a special chosen one who is uniquely suited to saving the world and everyone is ultimately reliant on and respectful of them. But, this status does not simply apply to the main quest. In basically every quest line, the ultimate conclusion is that the Dragonborn ends up taking on a very significant role within the party involved in said questline. I don't like this decision in the first place. I actually find it pretty exhausting when a main character is the most important character in the story across the board just because they are important in one specific instance. It makes the world feel weaker to me, that any history it has and any character relationships that were formed are secondary to making the player feel like they're the coolest guy to ever exist.
The Companions are a group of Warriors that have been fighting together for a long time, some of the permanent companions (i.e., not adventurers or mercenaries who use the guild for a meal and a place to rest their head on their travels) have been fighting together their whole lives. This is a family who has history and interpersonal relationships. And within a matter of days they've decided you have the right to be in charge of the whole operation. The College of Winterhold is a school. A place of learning. It has teachers to be concerned with, tuition to collect. It needs a headmaster that is equipped to understand its function as a place of education. And the Dragonborn can show up off the street, attend two classes and then through a series of events become the new headmaster of the College. The only one of these questlines that makes any amount of sense is the Thieves Guild. They're a mob. They're loyal to whomever proves themselves to be the strongest in the room. They think that person will lead them better than the previous guy, especially when the previous guy tried to become a god. But even then the Thieves Guild has people who are better suited for succession. Long time thieves that know the business and can bring the Guild into a better tomorrow. And instead, they choose you, a homeless drifter who wandered into the city on accident because they saw an attractive lady and found out this was where they could do something about that.
Skyrim cares so little about its world and its characters that it is willing to balk everything about them to make the player feel like they're the center of the universe. It makes the quests feel superficial, the characters hollow, the world lesser. But, because Skyrim wants to insure that every option is available to the player, these quests are actively made a mockery of. The person who swung a sword a few times in a single fight 20 minutes after joining the Warrior's guild and then spent the entire rest of the game casting magic is now the head of the Companions. The person who casted one spell and went to one class where they didn't need to participate, only to then brute force the rest of the way through the questline with a bow is now the headmaster of the Mage's college. The person who struggled to plant a stolen item onto another person because their Sneak skill was barely leveled up and then clanked around with their warhammer and heavy armor is now the head of the Thieves Guild. It is farce. In Skyrim you play the role of a jester, and the world of this groundbreaking RPG with literal books upon books of lore is the joke.
You remember how I said Ulfric Stormcloak's primary motivation in this game was racism? But that ultimately he refuses to be racist to the Dragonborn? That was actually foreshadowing. So, Bethesda clearly did not want to have to contend with the idea that Ulfric Stormcloak, a man so racist and so nationalist that his campaign to reclaim a world he believes is rightfully his is literally led by a rallying cry about who Skyrim rightfully belongs to, would have those same racist views towards the Dragonborn if they chose to play a race other than the Nords. You meet Ulfric before the character creator and, at that time, he already considers you a friend. Two prisoners marching towards the gallows. When your dragon blood is revealed, Ulfrig begins to see you as kin, as he himself is one of the last descendants of the dragons. So, of course, why would he be racist towards you? He sees you differently from all the other people he wants to kick out of Skyrim if he's put in charge.
However, I think this creates a much bigger issue with the Stormcloak rebellion: it is, ultimately, toothless. That despite grandiose claims of wanting to usher in a new age of Skyrim where the Nords once again reign supreme, there is little to it besides posturing. The Stormcloaks are only a racist, nationalist movement insofar as it is convenient to the game for them to be. It's all posturing with little substance. Now don't get me wrong, I'm glad their racist ideology ultimately amounts to nothing. I think the simple fact that they built a very significant questline around the idea of "do you or do you not" support racism is concerning. Like, I guess it can be interesting from a role-playing perspective, but I will squint at you if you looked at the Stormcloaks and went "yeah, those are my guys". At the same time, though, you would expect a group whose belief in Nord supremacy is so strong that it's literally their battle cry to begin enacting their political ideologies if you helped put them in charge of Skyrim.
But they don't. The lack of racism that is felt from their interactions with the player character is the same lack of racism felt when they take over Skyrim. They are frustratingly apolitical, in a way that makes it feel like you have done literally nothing to change Skyrim. Granted, there's kind of a political commentary to that fact that especially when Skyrim came out, would've probably been resonant with the people. Politicians promising big things on their campaign trails only to do nothing in office is a very common problem in the world and, especially, for America where Skyrim was produced. However, this makes the ending to the Civil War questline, again one of the most central questlines in Skyrim second only to the main quest itself, very unsatisfactory. You are making massive choices, choices that would reshape the country on a fundamental level, and what comes out of it? Nothing. Nothing at all.
To enact the ideologies that Ulfric Stormcloak represents would, after all, mean a fundamental shift in how Skyrim operates. It would mean sewing distrust between the Dragonborn and the non-Nordic people of the country. It would mean changing NPC behavior, dialog, storylines in a very lode-bearing way. And, most importantly, it would mean making quests exclusionary. The other races of Skyrim would not exactly enjoy living under a regime that wants to tear them from homes, nor aiding the person who abetted their conquest. It would mean making quests either more difficult to gain, or removing them from your available pool entirely. If the orc city in Skyrim was under a regime that hated orcs, they wouldn't exactly be happy about the person who let that regime sit on the throne. If the Khajit are run out of Skyrim because everyone thinks they're inherently untrustworthy thieves then they certainly won't be around to help the player when they're on the road and need to unload junk.
Choosing to side with Ulfric Stormcloak would require massive consequences that would fundamentally reshape the world of Skyrim. But Skyrim doesn't want you to ever face the consequences of your decisions. And so the only tangible changes that happen as a result of choosing a side in the Civil War is that certain NPCs will be different, as their sympathies were to one side of the war or the other, and the majority of the guards in the game will either wear Imperial brown or Stormcloak blue. The political situation of an entire country reduced down to a palette change. That's Skyrim for you, I guess.
The heavy focus on combat also does not matter for the very reason that this game is so potentially interesting from a character building standpoint: the Skills. I like the Skill system, I really do. In theory it allows for a lot of experimentation with your character, allows them to be a super unique build all your own. The problem is, as you would probably imagine given everything else, that Skyrim does not believe in creating a system with boundaries. Investing heavily into a skill never actually dictates permanently what your play style is, if you invest heavily into magic and then decide after 50 hours of playing you want to be a traditional warrior, the game just allows you to do that. It's even beneficial to do that, as skills level up much faster when they start, so if anything the game encourages you to invest in a skill for as long as it takes to get whatever you want out of it and then hard pivot when the returns start slowing down. After all, leveling up skills is important for just leveling up in general. You get experience the normal way you would in an RPG in Skyrim, defeating enemies and completing sidequests, but the fastest way to propel yourself to a level up is to level up your skills. So when you're 60 hours in and you're starting to slow down on your level ups, you can just start leveling up the lesser skills and getting big EXP pockets.
So when you inevitably realize after playing for 30 hours that the skills you've been investing in this entire time because you wanted to role-play as a crafty rogue that uses illusions and potions to get what they want are completely useless for the vast majority of this game, it is exceptionally easy to just pivot into what the game wants you to do. This is even a joke within the Skyrim community, the idea of "I want to do a unique build for this next run" only to always end up either as a dual-wielding warrior or a stealth archer. It is, of course, not good criticism to criticize a game for players finding an optimal path to do things. Players will always optimize the fun out of a video game and to behave as if the game is bad because they do so is bad criticism. But I think the problem with Skyrim is that the optimal build is the build the game is naturally designed to lead you into. Its storytelling, gameplay, and core game design all benefit a warrior build, one that favors combat skills like archery and swords. And because it doesn't want the player to ever be inconvenienced by the choices they make, it offers you the ability to change into the optimal build at any moment that is convenient for the player.
Or, at least, that's mostly true. Skyrim does have one key restriction on the skill system that, hypothetically, keeps the player honest. Skill points. You get a skill point upon each level up and these skill points are used to unlock the perks in each given skill tree. As stated earlier on, these perks are often very lode-bearing, certain skills are simply wholly ineffectual without their perks to work with. And Skyrim has a level cap. You will, eventually, be unable to gain more skill points and as such have to be particular about how you try to rework your build. Now, this is not a perfect solution for Skyrim's various problems, you will have more skill points than you know what to do with in any given run and will have enough to max out many of the game's skill trees. But it is a limitation set by the game that keeps the player from just fully reworking their build like 9 times across the journey. You will, eventually, be out of skill points and as such can only really afford to make significant pivots in play style sparingly.
At least until the DLC extended the level cap so you could get enough skill points to max out every skill tree so there's no reason to live with your choices ever. This is a very common way that DLC rewards players, mind you, it's not a Skyrim specific problem. A lot of games are designed around a skill tree where you are forced to make choices, as you will not have enough skill points to fully fill out the skill tree in the base game. I think about Horizon: Zero Dawn, for instance, whose level cap makes it so you will naturally miss out on skills and have to curate your build to your play style, only to then introduce a DLC where you increase the level cap enough to max out the skill tree. And this is fine. I think that having this as a reward for the players who love your game enough to put the most time they can into it, including purchasing an entire separate campaign, is good. The problem is that this isn't a reward as soon as the DLC has had time to be out for a while, it becomes part of the game.
Unless you have tracked down an original copy of Skyrim for the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, you have never played a version of Skyrim with a restrictive level cap. From the game's very first rerelease to the modern day, every version of Skyrim released has had the DLC for the game baked into the base game. This creates a number of issues, namely the inelegant way that Skyrim handles its DLC where it demands you address it or it'll just start killing any non-essential NPCs. But it also means that there is never a restriction put in place by the game to stop you from being everything. It'll be an uphill climb, don't get me wrong, maxing out every skill without cheating is certainly not an easy thing to do. But this also means that you can do whatever you want without consequence. Inevitably, you will gain the ability to pivot in whatever way you want. There is no reason not to do as much as you possibly can. Learn every skill.
It's almost poetic in a way, isn't it. The one singular restriction that Skyrim had put on your ability to do everything, the one thing to keep you honest with how you built your character, and it is seen as little more than a problem to be fixed in a later update. Don't worry about having to utilize the skills you've invested all your time into to make your way into the end of the game. Even if you are 100 hours in to this playthrough, you can just simply pick up a bow and start shooting and eventually the idea that you were ever anything but a stealth archer will be something that neither you nor the game cares about or remembers. The game removing the only built-in consequence to your actions. You have every choice. You have no consequences for any of them. The world is your sandbox.
And, indeed, that is how people enjoy Skyrim. As a sandbox. A game that puts no restrictions on where you can go and what you can do. A game where you can just be. If you want to do every quest? Go for it. You want to live out the ultimate power fantasy in a world that exists to please you and you alone? You got it dude! You want to go on a mass-murdering spree, killing every single NPC you possibly can and then managing to get away with it because you managed to convince the guards not to kill you and instead arrest you, at which point you broke out of prison no harm no foul? You know you can do that. Skyrim is fun. It is a complete and total power fantasy, a game where you can just mess around and never have to deal with the consequences. I have been caught up in it myself, I have had loads of fun with Skyrim. It scratches a very specific itch, the kind that games like Grand Theft Auto scratch. But in a setting that is arguably more interesting, this serious dark fantasy with a long running history.
Skyrim is a freeing experience, a game with no borders, no railroading, no consequences. But RPGs are consequences. RPGs are about a player deciding what they want to be and then having to deal with the fallout of those decisions. The player is allowed to do everything without ramification on doing anything. It is a sandbox. And the thing about sandboxes are that they are full of sand. There is nothing to them on their own, it is entirely what the person playing in them brings to the sandbox. Skyrim is not allowed to feel like a living world with real characters who have relationships and bonds because Skyrim only exists for what the player wants to do it. It becomes hollow, superficial. A setting for play rather than a world to be experienced. It is little more than a Castle Greyskull playset masquerading as high fantasy fiction. Many people love Skyrim. And I understand why. It's fun to play in a sandbox. But Skyrim isn't meant to be a sandbox. Skyrim is an RPG. It's supposed to be a place where your actions have consequences and your choices matter. But if every action only benefits and every choice can be undone, then what remains? What is Skyrim beyond a toy? For me personally, it's a question that only has one answer. Skyrim is a bad RPG.
