Personal Reflections from Playing Skyrim

Skyrim is just a beautiful and amazing open-world game. It's really easy to get completely immersed in the game and hours would just past by so quickly when playing it.

The first time I played Skyrim was on my PS3 about 5 years ago. Now that I own a Steam Deck, I can play Skyrim literally anywhere I go. Trust me, it feels so good to be doing Dark Brotherhood quests while sitting on the bus or train.

As I was playing more and more, I started having several personal reflections on life. Like, real life outside of Skyrim. Here are some of my thoughts.

The real world is actually beautiful too

When playing Skyrim, there are times where you would just stop in the middle of the wild, or in the middle of a city, and just be like, wow. This looks amazing. Like literally just google "Skyrim beautiful scenery" and you'll see what I mean.

In real life, I sometimes find myself doing the exact same thing. Sometimes I would just stop walking, look around and tell myself wow. This looks amazing.

Beautiful games like Skyrim are great for escaping from the real world. But sometimes, the real world is actually beautiful too.

A house or a home?

In Skyrim, you get to buy and own houses. When I first started playing Skyrim, I found out the hard way that there is a limit to how many items you can bring with you. So one of the first things I wanted to do was buy a house, so that I can safely store my stuff in a chest and travel around more lightly. Just to go out and get more stuff that I probably won't use. So that I can store them in the house. Then leave again to get more useless stuff. You get what I mean.

As I played more, I realized that you can apparently adopt children in Skyrim. If you own a home and have a room for them to sleep in that is. I ended up adopting Lucia from Whiterun. The house really does feel so much more different with her there. She would talk with you, ask you to play with her, ask you for pocket money, and all these little things. The house in Skyrim gradually became more like a home. No longer just a place to put down my items.

In real life, I'm not always home. Like in Skyrim, I'm always outside "doing quests". When I do go home, it's usually late at night and I'm normally gone the next day first thing in the morning. Kinda like how my house was in Skyrim at first, my home in real life was really just a house for me to sleep and "put down my items".

But adopting a child in Skyrim made me think a lot more about my family at home. If I would spend time interacting with Lucia in Skyrim, would I spend more time interacting with my family in real life? Is my home in real life just a house? Or can I make my house more like a home?

Be yourself

When you can literally do anything you want in Skyrim, there are so many different ways to play the game. One of the most popular ways to play Skyrim is by roleplaying. Often abbreviated as RP.

Basically, you give your character a backstory and play the game with your character's personality in mind.

When RP-ing, you clearly know who your character is and what is the moral standing of your character. This affects all the choices and what you do in Skyrim. Quests are just suggestions at this point. The point of the game is to just simply, be yourself.

But can I the same for myself in real life? Do I really know who I am? Did I really take the time to get to know myself more, to know more about what I want to do in this open-world game called life? Or am I just mindlessly doing "quests" that are given to me, without giving much thought to what these "quests" mean to me? What does it actually mean to "be myself"?

Main Quest

When I first started playing Skyrim, I often found myself being sidetracked from the main quest and was doing a ton of side quests. Not that there was anything wrong with that, I was having fun anyways.

But then some new game came out, but I didn't like starting a new game without finishing first. So I started focusing on the main quest of Skyrim, hoping to "finish" playing Skyrim so that I can play another game.

When I finished the main quest, it felt quite... underwhelming.

The final battle with Alduin was a lot easier than expected. After you defeated Alduin and fulfilled your "destiny as the Dragonborn", the whole world actually just moves on and keeps going as if nothing happened. Perhaps a few guards might say something about it, but for most of the Skyrim world they don't really know that you just saved the world. It is really as if you have just completed another side quest.

This was an interesting experience to me. In other games it is a really big deal to finish the main quest and "save the world". But in Skyrim, the game just literally moves on.

That's probably why in the gaming community, it is almost unanimously agreed that the whole point of skyrim was never the main quest but rather how the player chooses to play the game. The main quest to me is just a guided tour of the world, guiding you to meet new characters and see new places.

In Skyrim I personally found that I enjoyed the Dark Brotherhood quests, and I enjoyed using a stealth dagger build. I wouldn't have found that out if not for the main quest leading me on to different cities then stumbling upon the Dark Brotherhood in the first place. My initial focus was the main quest, but the satisfaction came from doing the side quests that I enjoy rather than actually completing the main quest.

Is this the same as real life? Do I really need to complete my "main quest" in life, or the point is to really get to know yourself and enjoy all the "side quests"?

Conclusion

One can never really "finish" playing Skyrim. Yes there is the main quest. But looking back, my happiest memories of playing Skyrim weren't really about the main quest. However, if it weren't for the main quest, I wouldn't have stumbled upon other side quests, which led me to explore and enjoy the beautiful world of Skyrim.

Life is an open-world game that we didn't really choose to play, but here we are anyways. We are always on a "main quest". Whether it be finishing school or achieving some career goal or whatever it is that you're doing, there is always this notion of a "main quest" to complete. Along the way, we see some beautiful places, we meet some amazing people, we get to know more about ourselves.

If playing Skyrim can be somewhat analogous to playing this open-world game of life, since one can never "finish" playing the game, there's really no rush in completing the "main quest". Doesn't mean that you should ignore the "main quest", but rather don't let it be the focus of your game. Take your time, get to know more about yourself, enjoy the scenery, enjoy the "side quests" and enjoy being with the people around you.

Looking back, you would probably realize that instead of the "main quest", it is these little things that bring you the most joy.