Among the many RPGs that have come out over the years, Skyrim is

certainly one of my favourites. The level of detail is quite

astonishing. The subtle light breaking through the autumn leaves at

dawn. The mists flowing over High Hrothgar. Or the depth of the lore.

Bethesda has certainly created something special with Skyrim. However,

that is not to say the game is perfect.

When trying to create a world as enriched with detail as this,

some things are bound to slip through the cracks. And some of these

things can be downright pointless. Many of these issues are a product

of the “participation badge syndrome” that is plaguing modern gaming.

That is to say, many elements of a game—whether its gameplay,

mechanics, or story—are dumbed down or simplified in hopes of creating

a more accessible product. This accessibility means one thing, profit.

So when it comes to Skyrim, this leads to many issues. Lack of depth

in leveling, uneven monster fights, or just goofy things like

neglected—and often hilarious—bugs and glitches. This list heavily

features faction questlines as these often fall victim to the dilution

of gaming content. Fetch quests anyone?

With all that said, these issues certainly don’t break the game. But

they do reveal a problem in gaming.

25 Is There A Dragon 3D Printer Out There?

Dragons were the main selling point of Skyrim. I’ll never forget the awesome TV spots that featured the Dragonborn stepping out of a dark alley to wreck a Dragon that is decimating a village. FUS-ROH-DAH! I was so stoked to play!!!

And to be fair, the dragons initial appearances certainly lived up to the hype. Alduin opens the game with an epic attack against Imperials. And first couple dragons actually create significant amounts of anxiety as you early game character is mega-squishy.

And therein lies the problem. As the game progresses, you become increasingly godlike. So much so that dragons become little more than a two-shot inconvenience. You will eventually start avoiding encounters as it takes more time to watch the soul absorb animation than it takes to actually end one. Which becomes really difficult as encounters become more common than mosquito bites.

Get out your enchanted dragon swatter...

24 Lycanthropy Is So Last Week

The Companions are a group of warriors who were founded by a legendary Nordic hero, Ysgramor. In addition, the leadership is all werewolves! Clearly, you gotta join these guys so you can become a werewolf and own the night.

When you meet some of the leaders, they seem to be pumped on the who lycanthropy thing. “Yeah man, howling at night is the bee's knees. It’s great, you don’t need to worry about pants. Join the hunt!”

But once you go through the effort in becoming one, the truth comes out. You will so find out that most people hate being werewolves, and want you to find them a cure. Hey man, I just ruined my life to join your little club, and now you want me to change back?

Funny thing is though, they don’t want you to change back, only themselves. I guess someone needs to hold down the kennel for Ysgramor’s return...

23 Skyrim Is A Playground For The Depraved

Skyrim touts itself as an open world game, filled with people and adventure. A world in which actions have consequences. Unfortunately, those consequences are often nowhere to be found. And when they are, they are so meaningless that they become a farce.

You want to be an extra good guy, fetching everyone's dirty laundry, gathering all the little trinkets you are asked to find, and obeying every guard you see. It doesn’t matter. Any slight against a guard or his jurisdiction, they are on you like you like an amber alert. I killed a chicken in a fight against three dragons, and a guard interrupted the melee to charge me 100 Septim fine! Bruh?!

Perhaps you want to be a horrible person. You kill some homeless people, take everything that’s not nailed down, or become the right-hand man to all the Daedric Princes. No one cares. People still address you the same. “Top of the mornin' to ya lad, been busy sacrificing this morning? Ah well, don’t stay up too late now.”

NOTICE ME SENPAI!!!!

22 Bear’ With Me, Time’s Been ‘Dragon’ On… :P

The combat in Skyrim is a bit uneven, especially at lower levels. The developers seem to have taken a sadistic pleasure in watching you beg for your life.

I recall my first playthrough well. I had just beaten a dragon a couple hours ago near Whiterun. I felt pretty good about myself.

So here I am wandering around, and out of nowhere, I am jumped by a troll! And trolls in this game are no joke. At level 7 or 8, you are squishy. That troll one shotted me back into reality. It took me half dozen tries to figure out how to beat him—which involved a significant amount of kiting I’m sad to say.

Same goes for bears. I mean come on Bethesda! You can’t have the player smoke a dragon, but get torn a new one by the common bear… I still get chills hearing a bear roar, even though my toon is level 90.

21 Wow, A Daily Sandwich… You’re The Love Of My Life!

Marriage can be a beautiful thing. Memories, love, and a unique connection with that special someone. Not in Skyrim though. The marriage system is one of the more pointless elements in the game.

First off, the courtship process is non-existent. Do a couple fetch quests for a random person, say something nice, and then give them a necklace. Boom! You’re married. Now you too can have a cool 100 Septims in your hand and a home cooked meal every 24 hours. And that’s it.

The Hearthfire DLC tried to revitalize the marriage system, but in reality, it did nothing. Now you can have a kid, and get your meals in a player built home in the middle of nowhere. Great a useless meal, and unnecessary commute… Perhaps things are getting too real...

20 Are You Sure I’m Even Qualified?

The College of Winterhold is the prime example of what gaming has become. It seems that modern game design leans on giving everyone a participation badge. Either the college is suffering from a case of severe leadership desperation, or they literally give the job of Arch-Mage to anyone with a pulse. It can’t be that bad, can it… Oh, it certainly can.

For instance, you don’t even need to be a mage to be the Arch-Mage! Seriously! During my first playthrough, I was an Assassin. Bows, Daggers, robbery, the whole thing. My toon was barely literate, let alone a scholar of the arcane arts. But after killing the old Arch-Mage, they just give the job to you. I guess the job requirements are a willingness to end things and a pulse.

Pretty brutal interview process if you ask me.

19 It Just Doesn’t Matter

The idea that you could change how Skyrim looked in the present as well as the future is very intriguing. Alas, none of it matters.

The civil war is part of the main plotline but is treated as a side quest. From the outset, none of the decisions you make matter. At the opening of the game, you can choose to join the Stormcloaks or the Imperials. The only discernible difference here is the shirt colour of the person leading to a burning Helgen.

Further, in the game, the pointless nature of the civil war is even clearer. Both leaders a jerks, and whatever actions you’re allowed to make only lead to different colour guards, and different leadership. But it’s all cosmetic, nothing mechanical changes. You can walk into an opposing faction’s city and still do business, collect quests, and go unharassed.

Nothing changes and nothing matters in the civil war. Such a waste.

18 Just Call Me Arch-Mage, Harbinger, Nightingale, Dragonborn… If You Could

Speaking of participation badges, the faction system in Skyrim is fundamentally broken. To understand how let’s take a look back at a game in the series that did it right. In Morrowind, factions mattered. If you joined one of the Grand Houses—say Telvanni—that would be it. You wouldn’t be welcome in one of the others. In fact, rivals houses would become hostile.

That’s not the case in Skyrim. You can walk through the doors of any of the factions and become a member, or even leader of all of them. During my first playthrough, I was the Arch-Mage of the College at Winterhold, Harbinger of the Companions, Nightingale of the Thieves Guild, and Leader of the Dark Brotherhood. None of them conflicted.

It really adds levity to your decisions when you know that joining a particular group could make access to whole other parts of the game difficult or even impossible.

17 You Think Our Economy Is Bad…?

This one really grinds my gears because it is such a pointless mechanic. As many of you are veteran Elder Scrolls players, you probably have a knack for going hard on the loot. So chances are you have run into the problem of vendors only carrying 1000 gold at any given time.

I cannot tell you how annoying it is, to have a bag full of phat lootz, and you can barely hawk a single ring before the vendor starts giving you IOUs! The amount of wasted hours I have spent, fast traveling between vendors is likely in the dozens.

Why is this cap even there? Why is an even 1000 gold a good number. Just make the vendors have unlimited gold and give a guy a break! I mean I’m already carrying hundreds of pounds of swords on my back already. I can make the leap to accept the idea of rich vendors

16 Oh Great… Another Woodpile

Questing the is bread and butter of any RPG, and Skyrim is no different. One of the exciting things about the early parts of Skyrim is the variety of things to do in the game. The radiant quests around townsfolk, bandits, dragons, and giants were intriguing. You could do odd jobs for money, or join guilds and quest for them and advance their cause. However, once you’re in it for awhile, it becomes increasingly tedious and almost busy work.

The endless content that Skyrim was supposed to have ended up being insane amounts of fetch quests where you kill baddie A, for person B, to get item C, to bring to person D. Rinse, repeat. Also, during the early stages of the game, where money is tight. The game has you chopping literal wood… Immersed! I know the struggle is real, but holy moly. Perhaps give us something besides wood chopping. Skyrim is cold, perhaps shoveling some snow for a spare bit of gold?

15 Nordic Encryption Is Actual Trash

It is important to remember that Skyrim is not a puzzle game. It is an action-adventure game. But we can still take a look at the puzzles that are included in the game. I mean, some are so bad, that you may as well have just left the key in the door!

The main issue is a lack of creativity. Anyone who has played the game is very familiar with the claw puzzle. Variants of this can be seen throughout the entire game. It is so, so, SO pointless. The solution is either on the claw itself or in some obvious position in the room.

Then there is the whale, snake, hawk pedestal. Based on the same premise. Find the obvious solution IN THE SAME ROOM AS THE PUZZLE, and move some rocks.

Seriously, do you keep your house keys in the mailbox? Because that is some top-tier Nordic security.

14 Is It Still Talking Back, If You Are Talking To Yourself?

Skyrim is a game that one spends a lot of time in. My personal experience is well over 300 hours. With some much time existing in a game world, you are bound to notice things. And some of those things become grating as heck.

One of the worst issues is the fact that everyone in the province sounds like a handful of the same poorly voiced Scandinavian stereotypes. This is nothing to say about the core characters, who are often wonderfully acted. I’m talking about the guards, random townspeople, or raiders.

The most amusing situations come when you roll up on a group of people in conversation, and you can witness one person have a conversation with themselves as they all have the same voice actor.

13 *Arnold Voice* GET DOWN!

This one is less about the game being pointless, and more about the player doing useless things.Who says listicles can’t be introspective?

During my first playthrough of Skyrim, I was TERRIFIED. The amount times that I would be walking down a path or through the forest, only to get wrecked by a troll or bear was enough to give a guy PTSD.

I had enough. I dumped tonnes of skill points into the Sneak tree. And so began my irrational behaviour of sneaking. Not just through particularly dangerous places, I am talking everywhere. Down paths, up mountains, through forests, near creeks… EVERYWHERE. I think I crouched across the whole of Skyrim.

I blame it on Bethesda for punishing the newbie player so hard at the beginning. To think of all the damaged noobs out there. For shame guys… for shame.

12 Let The Exploit Gods Take The Wheel

The number of glitches in Skyrim is quite astounding. Flying horses, the giant club rocket launch, frozen dragon animations, and the list goes on. And the fact that Bethesda doesn’t really both to address them, seems to suggest that they think these are just points hiccups. However, these glitches often are an exploiters dream.

For instance, how many times have you run into a giant and his herd of mammoths, only to kite them around to some odd geographical anomaly that their oversized frames will get stuck in? Only to rain pain upon their spasmodic animations as they struggle to reach you.

Or you bite off more than you can chew by attacking too many cultists in a ruin. All you gotta do is cross a threshold of a door, and more often than not, a glitch will make the enemies lose interest in you.

Pointless indeed… ;)

11 It Doesn’t Pay To Be A Chef

Skyrim is a game that goes out of its way to create content for the player. Often this leads to great moments of immersion, like when you look at how flowing water boils under fire spells. However, sometimes such content comes off as quite pointless.

Food in Skyrim suffers from this. While the during the opening portions of the game, cooking can be pretty useful. But as your character develops, even the minimal amount of skills invested into alchemy far outshines what cooking can offer.

Couple that with the crazy amounts of potions that drop, you will be hard pressed to carry about all the health, stamina, and magicka potions, let alone the ingredients for a horker stew.

10 Modded Skyrim Is Better Than Regular Skyrim, Pass It On

I really like Skyrim. It is one of my favourite games to come out in the last 20 years. But it does have its issues. Some would say that parts of the game are lacking, or even broken. And that is where the modding community comes in.

Modding in Skyrim is quite an interesting thing. It addresses failings in the games UI, gameplay, and even content. It creates vibrant quests, rich environments, and interesting characters. It really allows the fans to manifest their greatest fantasies.

I’m not saying that Bethesda uses modders to fix their game… but then again… I’m kinda saying that. I mean, when you release a special edition of your game that modders still have to correct the common bugs and issues from the original, it is hard to dispute.

And in all honesty, I think modded Skyrim is better than vanilla Skyrim… But shhh, keep that on the D/L.

9 Don’t Worry, They Won’t Make It That Far

The level scaling in Skyrim is a mess. Usually, a game scales the level of enemies up as the player character increases in power. Skyrim has a similar feature, though its execution is a broken

Rather than have all monsters grown in strength alongside the protagonist, the game features subtypes. For instance, Draugrs have many different subtypes, from the basic to the Deathlord. That’s fine, but the problem comes in the capacity that each subtype jumps quite a bit from the lower one, often leading to you getting dominated.

Another problem is the fact that increase in difficulty isn’t based on better thinking AI or different tactics, they just hit harder and are tougher to kill. So the bigger the baddie, the more potions you spam.

And don’t get me started on how Bethesda thinks you won't get past level 30, as that’s when the subtypes stop getting stronger. So the end game is essentially you one shotting everyone.

8 Back To The Salt Mine

The perks in Skyrim are quite unbalanced. Most are either grossly overpowered, or laughably useless. From a combat POV, the logical perks to choose are Smithing, One-handed, and Enchanting. Once you level these up, you are essentially godlike, and smash even the most awesome dragons in one or two hits.

Then, on the other hand, you have perks like Lockpicking, Speech, and Pickpocketing. While Speech can certainly be fun for the dialog options, mechanically it is quite useless. And high-level Pickpocketing and Lockpicking is just there for novelty. When has stealing someone's clothes while they are wearing them been of any use?

But the main issue with perks is that, outside of the main combat ones, they all require heavy grinding. For instance, Smithing and Enchanting require INSANE amounts of repetition.

When it comes to perks, the quantity over quality rule certainly doesn’t work.

7 Yo Man… You Alright?

This one is just a pet peeve of mine, though it is quite the aesthetic irritant. The animations in this game, are often very… terrible. Absurd even.

Bethesda uses the Gamebryo engine for Skyrim. This can be quite versatile but is quite aesthetically lacking. For instance, the ragdoll physics that are exhibited upon the death of characters is quite ridiculous. People don’t collapse like they are terrible at jumping jacks when they die.

And the expressions of NPCs… While certainly not as bad as the soulless monstrosities of Mass Effect: Andromeda, the hollow expressionless faces rips you right out of the world. Happy, sad, angry… Same face.

So it’s certainly not game breaking, but I am sure Bethesda would prefer it if you just looked at the pretty landscape and ignored the awkward animation one sees when you run straight up a mountain, all while rubbing your face into a cliff face.

6 I Don`t See Race… Neither Does Bethesda

The races in The Elder Scrolls have always fascinated me. I have always appreciated the variety, the uniqueness, and the lore behind each species. However, the specter of “participation award” game design has ruined Skyrim’s version of these races.

My personal favourite race is the Khajit. I always liked their look, their lore, and the eclectic personalities of the Khajit NPCs. And their racial abilities always made things interesting. I love that their claws factored into unarmed damage.

However, the way they perk, leveling, and the enchanting system works in Skyrim, the uniqueness of each race is all but erased. You could have an orc mage who would essentially be no different than a high elf mage. All you need to do is gear him upright and away you go.

A real shame, too many options essentially make races pointless and purely aesthetic. Which is lost while wearing armour anyways!