The Throat of Gaming: Skyrim

I’ll say this: Skyrim is a counterfeiter’s masterpiece.

…Two minutes in I’m hunting a creature through the wintered foliage—an elk or something, I don’t know. Whatever it is it’s too stupid to know I’m out to kill it; that the sudden sharp turn of the wind is a prediction of future events; or that the blizzard building around us is a metaphor of its soon-to-be.

Infinitely more cautious is that creature we call reality, giving chase to our subtlest attempts to corner her. The reason for this is perhaps evident: reality, unlike the maybe-elk of my first excursion through Skyrim, is dependent upon us for her existence…upon the human brain’s ability to select between a real world and a false one. And from millisecond to millisecond, we’re doing just that—guesstimating the gap between the two.

As I play I’m consistently shocked at just how much Bethesda got right this time: from the apprehensive footfalls of a stray dog cresting a hill to find me standing there, to the ever-autumnal splendor of a town nestled in the elbow of a mountain, Skyrim feels…well, “real” isn’t the right word for it…faithful.

In film it’s called the Uncanny Valley…that uneasy feeling we get when we see a computer-generated character attempting to emote beyond its believability. Bethesda’s last Elder Scrolls outing, Oblivion, while great fun, was plagued with this, and not only in the unsettling, cyborg-glare of its characters—Oblivion’s world felt ultimately mechanical and just…false.

And I’m not saying that Skyrim doesn’t have its fair share of disquieting fakery…For instance, getting away with murder by first blinding witnesses with buckets, or that one goddamn chicken outside of Whiterun whose death will rouse the bloodlust of an entire town…But these goofs are ultimately forgivable given the sheer number of “real” that the game gets right. Thus far, only a dozen hours in, I can find no more profound example than the “seven thousand steps,” a quest that sees players navigating a precarious mountain path towards the Throat of the World—Skyrim’s highest peak. The journey is slow-going and dangerous; ice wolves lurk just beyond the path, obscured by snowfall. Ascending cautiously, players must train their ears on the cold murmur of the wind, listening.

And when they reach the Throat of the World, maybe they’ll do what I did: immediately scramble to the highest possible point and jump—not out, but up…attempting to literally embody the honor of Highest Possible Point, to center the distinction on ourselves. In that brief fraction of a second we become the Beyond The Game, the Greater Than The Game. It’s a kind of ecstasy, sure. And it’s the kind of ecstasy that Skyrim is: I can imagine a higher pinnacle of gaming…I can take the “foothold” Bethesda has provided me with and scramble wildly towards a greater game. But just as my vertical insurgence quickly succumbs to gravity, so too does my imagination give. Skyrim is, for now at least, the pinnacle we’ll be thinking forth from.