It’s 2011 and I’m starting secondary school. The angst of an alien environment sinks in as I clamber to make new friends to join me on this perilous trek through adolescence. It’s now 2021 and I’m a journalist fresh out of university struggling to fall asleep at night. A lot has changed, but the two of us - the two of me - have something in common: Skyrim. Ten years on and the same game is launching yet again. This time around, it’s a remaster of a remaster, and that begs the question: “Why?”
The answer is simple: people will buy it. Skyrim may have been ported to everything short of a minifridge over the last ten years, but the fact the anniversary edition comes with a bunch of pre-installed mods gives it a leg up over the existing special edition. Sure, it’s a janky game with bugs galore, but it was like that at launch and it rarely gets in the way. The bugs are mostly fun and harmless, like a horse being propelled into the air to meet with Buzz Aldrin on Secunda. At any rate, the gameplay loop that reels us in still stands tall a decade later with some of the most intuitive RPG elements in the genre, hence its immense pull throughout the years. Not even Patrick Stewart got people on board with The Elder Scrolls quite like Skyrim did.
There’s a certain undeniable magic to Bethesda’s fifth Elder Scrolls outing - which is not to say it’s necessarily better than Morrowind, Oblivion, Online, or whatever else. It just clicked on an unprecedented scale, catapulting Bethesda into the limelight like never before. Skyrim was a smash hit by all accounts, and deservedly so. An anniversary edition really isn’t that surprising - it was only a matter of time before Bethesda capitalized on current-gen. Sure, there’s that initial feeling of, “Why? The special edition is right there”, and there’s also that instinct to ask where the hell the sixth game is. Ultimately, though, so many of us will be playing Skyrim come November and there’s nothing wrong with that.
This new version of Skyrim comes with 500 Creation Club additions and an all-new mechanic - fishing. Modders are lending a hand in a more official capacity, which makes sense given that they have provided Elder Scrolls games with a sense of enduring longevity since Daggerfall. It was only a matter of time before Bethesda brought them in-house, which is especially beneficial to us because it means we’ll be getting a pre-modded build of the game, and that extends to consoles. Playing Skyrim instead of fiddling with mod managers? Inconceivable.
Whatever the case, the Elder Scrolls 6 is only in the design phase. Skyrim’s anniversary edition has likely had little to no impact on the next outing’s development. Fretting over it feels like a waste of energy when this is just a neat excuse to dive back into a nostalgic goldmine all these years later. I already boot it up regularly for a quick dose of serotonin because its familiarity is therapeutic - I’m sure many of you feel a similar connection to this game for whatever reason. It’s almost hypnotic in how much of an appeal it has, and it’s not like we can pull a James McAvoy and smash our discs - well, not all of us. Digital era and all that.
Still, there’s a strange, overbearing feeling of shame in being excited for the same game again. But there’s no need to feel embarrassed. Familiarity and nostalgia are alluring and after these past couple of years, it’ll be nice to have a ‘new’ Skyrim launch, even if it’s basically an official modded playthrough. It’ll come with a sparkly new icon in the Steam library, a sense of community on launch day, and a newfound boon of accomplishment by climbing from rags to dragonslayer in tow with so many others at once. That’ll be a wonderful feeling, and is something that many of us likely missed out on ten years ago.
The special edition was, in essence, a reshade slapped on the base game, but the 500 Creation Club mods being brought into the fold for the anniversary edition has me giddy. That’s 500 mods pre-installed with the potential for upward of 300 more to be added - that’s a whole new ballpark Skyrim’s never been in. It’s a great way to top off 2021, a year that’s been packed with smash hit games, carried mostly by indies - one of which, The Forgotten City, actually started out as a Skyrim mod. The triple-A development cycle has been hindered by COVID-19 and so a whole swathe of highly anticipated hits have been pushed back. At least in their absence, Skyrim gives us something to look forward to.