The open roads of Skyrim

As a gamer I am what we call a chronic restarter. I’ve gotten better about it since I’ve started writing about games (as I have to beat things in a timely fashion), but as a kid I would restart Super Mario Brothers whenever I died the first time. I would start completely linear games like Final Fantasy and restart after four hours because I felt like I was doing it wrong. Morrowind and Oblivion nearly paralyzed me into inaction, with so many choices and so many places to go. Even Fallout 3, a much more streamlined game, made me restart a couple times due to feeling my choices were inadequate.

I’ve only played one character in Skyrim, though. What’s interesting isn’t all the horizons I’ve seen with my Argonian but the number of men I’ve been. The game is the perfect storm, in my mind, of leveling: you can make mistakes, but you can very easily live with those mistakes as part of your character concept. I’ve played the game as fighter, as mage, as thief, as archer and never did I feel like I was completely screwed over for oscillating between different play styles. I was just reacting to different situations how I felt my character would react.

In effect, I’ve been freed by the leveling system to pursue whichever thing felt fun in that particular moment. I could specialize, too, if I wanted. I could focus entirely on using one handed maces effectively and casting fire spells. I could do a lot of damage that way if I initially planned to go for all those things. But I’m also free to develop a character who can do a lot of things pretty decently, and that freedom has let me loose on the world.

Contrast this to Oblivion, where you could completely break your character if you didn’t think carefully about leveling. It was a game where you can beat the game at level two more easily than you can at level thirty. A perpetual amateur who practiced, practiced, practiced obscure skills was better than an expert at a couple things there, too, but the difference was the expert would feel gimped. Here, everyone feels powerful.

The variety of choices you can make in improving your character opens up a good deal of role playing possibilities for the conscientious player. Sure, it’s not in-game role playing, focused like a laser beam, but rather a sort of wishy-washy, out-of-game thing thing where the player can justify their own actions with internal logic. Upon learning about his massive destiny (what other kind is there, really?) my character decided to approach a life of crime, in part to become enormously rich but more because he didn’t want to face the reality of his situation. It’s made for a very conflicted character, and while the game obviously doesn’t recognize this conflict it’s driven me to appreciate the ability of Skyrim to place me in a world with a logic.

When I go exploring in Skryim, there’s two types of action. There’s the physical, much talked about world with vistas that demand exploration, but I’m exploring myself, really, and it’s fantastic that Skyrim has created a system where I feel like I can make mistakes and not be so completely hemmed in by them. I feel like my character is effected by his mistakes but not defined by them, and this creates a player character much more interesting to role play and more real to play as. If the game isn’t interested in telling me excellent stories, then I want to be able to tell them myself, and Skyrim certainly obliges me by letting me explore all the aspects of my character’s skills. Its leveling system opens up the world to me, and I can go explore it.

I can understand people’s objections to this system: they appreciate the rigidity of a traditional system. And I’m with them on this: rigidity leads to a much more convincing story. But Skyrim isn’t about the story, not really. It’s about the road, and I’ve been down many roads in Skyrim. If there’s a sight to see, I’ve seen it with my own Argonian eyes. But the most exciting road I’ve walked has been my own development as character, walking down the constellations.