4.5/5 ★ – PhatBaby's review of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

It's 2024, and I've smashed through this behemoth of an RPG for the 25th time. Honestly, that really should be the full review. This janky-ass 100-hour RPG somehow always brings me back in. I always think I'm done. I've played it enough. I've spoken to my fill of dead-behind-the-eyes NPCs who knock an entire shelf of potions off the wall before turning to you and saying, "Need something?" But there's something about Skyrim; some special sauce that makes it so uniquely absorbing that everyone you meet has spent an inordinate amount of their teenage years grinding through it. Because we can all admit that this game has flaws. If anything, it was the beginning of Bethesda growing into the studio it is today, which caters to a more mainstream audience and puts checklist world design and action above role-playing. There's no problem with that, but it's largely the reason I don't get along with their newer releases. I grew up with Oblivion and Fallout 3; I like when Bethesda's quests are involved and ask the player to make meaningful decisions, and Skyrim isn't that. I always remember the quest in Oblivion where you help the paranoid elf in Cheydinhal figure out if he's being spied on, so you scope through houses and spy on their residents and make your own mind up whether the elf is on one, his conspiracy theories have credence or, the best option, you're gonna mess with him to see what he does. And it rewards you for making that decision by spinning off into multiple routes. Skyrim doesn't have THAT quest. Pretty much every mission devolves into finding a person pinpointed on your radar, speaking to them, the person awkwardly telling you to go find a magical McGuffin in a random cave, grabbing and bringing it back to them, and then getting a reward. The whole thing feels like 100 hours of fetch quests; there's no moment of substance that makes you question what you're doing, why you're doing it and, most importantly, what your character would do in this situation. But underneath it all, there's this strange moreishness to Skyrim. It's not particularly the best version of anything, but the combination of all the things it offers somehow coalesces into easy, reliable, and fun immersion. The quests and the role-playing of it all doesn't matter. I'm playing the same ridiculously OP stealth archer that all of you played, and that's fine. Cause through exploring and existing in this very lax, forgiving icy plain, you just sort of end up falling in love with it. I do feel like I'm playing a character, and while the story and the quest design haven't enabled that, the decisions I'm making moment-to-moment are. Whether it's coming across a dingey cave off the beaten path that's full of scheming vampires or deciding to secretly assassinate the bartender at the Winking Skeever because he put a hit out on me for stealing a piece of cheese, the systems working in tandem are forming my character. And from there, all of the stuff that's technically wrong just becomes part of its charm. Fuck it, I love the janky NPCs. I love it when I walk into someone's house, and Faendal turns to me and menacingly mutters, "You need to leave," like he suddenly owns this property and will beat me into submission for trespassing. I'm there for Gorbash the orc standing on a table and repeatedly shouting a one-line summary of his backstory and current personal problems at me. My favourite thing in the world is entering a pub and three NPCs are grooving out in sync to Ragnar the Red like the crab dance meme. Every flaw is a moment I cherish between my adventures. What can I say? It's just the special sauce. It's the reason we all love a Bethesda RPG. When Todd and the boys are cooking, they are unparalleled at one thing: creating a world that feels like it exists when I'm not there, even if that's a world where people talk exclusively about their easily summarised life story and dragons, walk into objects they can't detect, and will kill a man stone cold dead for accidentally touching something they own. I can't deny there's a majesty in it, and to this day, there are very few games that have captured my heart like Skyrim has. In short, some may call it junk, but me, I call it a treasure <3