Alas, the economic import of these activities is only so deep. Log cutters even hook logs and roll them onto platforms that send them rolling over whirring saw-blades to fall in piles of timber. Blacksmiths craft weaponry and armor composed from realistic components, as can you. It’s a world that sports a tentative albeit cosmetic economy. Of course the closer you look, the more you’re liable to find small discontinuities, a natural consequence of giving gamers more than they’ve ever had before and implying the world’s deeper still. “When wind blows up and stormy weather makes clouds scud and the skies weep…” I’ve squatted in dozens of one-of-a-kind barrows deciphering puzzles, paddled through streams and over waterfalls, altered ledgers in shops to sabotage record-keeping, burned bee hives for profit, forged then refined hide helms using component parts, gone splelunking for strange gems, broken out of prison, broken into prison to do dark deeds, gone hunting for the truth about legends stumbled upon in books shelved in out-of-the-way dungeons, bought and outfitted a home, cooked food using scavenged and bought ingredients over that home’s fire pit, planted filched goods to incriminate others, betrayed confidants, visited vast mystical trees the size of redwoods deep beneath the ground, taken a literal tour of a museum of curiosities, and stared in wonder-honest-to-goodness wonder-at the shimmering auroras that on rare occasion fill Skyrim’s cold, arctic skies. I’ve clocked over 50 hours so far and I’m nowhere close. The game world’s so thoroughly realized and lovingly rendered, well, good luck not abandoning whatever quest you’re tracking just to see where the river over there goes, or what that strange light halfway up a mountain is.Ī confession: I haven’t finished Skyrim yet, so I don’t know how it ends, except that I do, because it doesn’t end, and there’s no such thing as “finished” here, unless you count achievements, which you shouldn’t-they account for a fraction of Skyrim’s sights and sounds. Or maybe you’ll just wander, an itinerant swashbuckler, taking work as you find it. Maybe you’ll do your best to confound the game’s logic, flaunting the law, even killing capriciously.
…maybe you’ll follow the so-called “main story,” easily the series’ most mature, but whose purpose, fittingly, seems to be as introduction to Skyrim’s footpaths, locales, and wilds, after which the real story-the one you’ll craft as you discover just how much unprecedented detail Bethesda’s baked into every square inch of Skyrim’s vast geography-can begin.
“We have heard of those princes’ heroic campaigns…”
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