Starting today we are going to be featuring a new weekly article in which our buddy, Aaron over at Museum of bad ideas, chips in and rants about what he has been playing lately. Aaron is a hell of a guy and a fantastic writer so enjoy.
The first time I played The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was an amazing experience. A dragon was attacking an outpost near the city of Whiterun and I had been issued a platoon of soldiers to go defeat it. As soon as we saw the horrible beast raining destruction upon the devastated, stone tower, I knew precisely what to do. I rushed up the steps, bow in hand, and leaping into the sunlight loosed an arrow in the wyrm’s belly.
It reeled in pain and continued its attack with an even greater fury. Thus went the timeless tale of Moby-Dick, that eternal struggle between man and beast. Tiny me precariously lodged on an island of a battlement while that massive devil circled all round. Yes! I thought with child-like joy. This is how fighting a dragon should feel!
And then that child-like joy died as the dragon landed, not on the tower so it could face its adversary in a mortal melee, but on the ground…far below me. I waited patiently a moment, wondering when my dragon would be rejoining our epic battle. A few “Here dragon-dragon-dragon” calls later and I realized it wasn’t going to come back up. So I rushed down the steps at falling speed, arriving at the tower’s doorway just in time to watch my foe die at the hands of a nameless footman.
Next, everyone was congratulating me. “Our hero!” they said. “You defeated the dragon! You are the dragonborn!” I looked about nervously. Why were they all staring at me? I didn’t save the day. It was that guy over there, Footman B. My anxiety kicked in and I began to wonder if this weren’t a part of the game. I would be credited as the greatest dragon-slayer and led to the mouth of Lonely Mountain where everyone would be standing behind me, flicking their wrists and saying, “Go on, hero! Save the world!” Armed with nothing but a slightly-dull short sword, I would shuffle awkwardly into the cave, remembering the good old days before I became the messiah.
Before they shipped me to Mt. Doom, I had to go to a quaint monastery near the top of the biggest mountain in the world and meet some monks who would train me to become the next Avatar. Not long after starting the journey, I noticed some giants. They were on the main road and didn’t seem all too friendly, so I thought I’d defeat them. Moments later, my limp corpse was soaring through the sky like a majestic eagle.
Clifford Galiher, a Ph.D. student at USC addressed this early encounter with giants in his paper, The Topography of Risk: Time and Punishment in ‘The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim’. There he stated,
“One example of a non-calibrated challenge that appears early in the game has been immortalized by Ozrek’s oft-repeated comment: ‘Everyone’s first mistake in Skyrim / ‘I wonder if I can kill that giant…’’ The placement of an extremely difficult challenge early in the game—namely the two powerful giants just to the west of Whiterun, the first major stopping point in the game—essentially demonstrates the basic level of strategy inherent to playing a nonlinear game. The foreknowledge of risk alters the player’s approach, introducing an element of strategy that can in itself be a reward for the player: the circumvention of failure as enjoyment.”
I’m not sure how much I was enjoying the circumvention of failure. I was already proving to be a less than satisfactory Chosen One. I didn’t slay the dragon. A giant easily crushed me. Now, I was trying to quietly sneak past anything remotely dangerous. Skyrim felt less like an epic adventure and more like a very scary survival-horror game.
Eventually, I reached the Throat of the World, the mountain where the monks lived and began to scale it. When I was closing in on the monastery, I was rushed by a troll. As it ripped my poor body to streamers, I had flashbacks of being gobbled up by the Yeti in SkiFree. This didn’t seem fair. I was on the main road heading for a story mission and I was being constantly, painfully slapped around.
It seemed the only way I was going to be ready to pursue my destiny was by spending time leveling up abilities outside of the main quests. But in the world that is not Skyrim, I have a job and responsibilities. I have dinner parties to attend where I dance in candlelit halls with beautiful women. This makes it hard to devote long intervals of life to hunting bears, picking flowers, and gathering trinkets for every Tom, Dick, and Harry in this game.
I’m not sure the point of all the grinding and dull item crafting aside from padding out a pointlessly long game. Here, I was greeted by this big, open world where I could do almost anything, and all I wanted to do was a simple story mission, but I couldn’t. I hadn’t put the effort into aimlessly wandering and wasting time that was required to essentially unlock that level.
These kinds of games are designed to give everyone a chance to tell their own unique story. Sadly, mine didn’t end gloriously or humorously. I was just bored, and tired, and defeated. I didn’t want to be the messiah anymore. I hadn’t done anything to earn the title anyway, so I quit. I curled up into a lump on the Throat of the World and vanished from Skyrim, perhaps leaving it to be saved by worthier heroes.
(Here’s the link to Clifford Galiher’s paper: http://www.tft.ucla.edu/mediascape/blog/?p=564#more-564)
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