Huge Tracts of Land

I once knew a game called The Elder Scrolls. You may have heard of her. She really likes attention. I've heard her called a lot of things in the time I've know her: "the best-looking RPG ever," "Game of the Year", and "one of the best role-playing games ever made.

I just called her TES.

TES and I first met back in 2002. She was different then. She had just gotten out of a long relationship with the PC, and decided that in the new millennium, it was hip to be bi-platform. I played her on the Xbox. She was cute, near-sighted, and one of the most expansive games I'd ever played. Her favorite color was brown, she loved to read, and she called herself Morrowind.

Morrowind was an open-world game, the first I'd ever played. Her world was detailed, imaginative, and grandiose. She was going through a more detail-oriented phase. I had heard at the time that back when she was called Daggerfall, her world was over 300,000 squared miles of sparse, randomly-generated land. Now, she was only 10 squared miles, but her attention to detail in landscaping, lore, and atmosphere was more than apparent. Unfortunately, our flirtation lasted only a few short hours. She was directionless, hard, and wanted to take things much too slowly. I was immature, unable to recognize the value of the story she was trying to tell me, and was unwilling to put in the work to unlock the potential of our relationship. Besides, I was kind of stealing her from a friend of mine, so I cut her off. There was no animosity, no bitter feelings. We just weren't right for each other. I wanted something easy and fun, and for all of her wonderful qualities, Morrowind was not that game.

I didn't see TES for a long time after that, and to be honest, I didn't think that much about her either. It wasn't until 2006 that I saw her again, and I was floored. Gone was the pretty, brown-loving, near-sighted game I met years ago. This game was a knockout! She had clearly gone through several makeovers, changed her name again (this time to Oblivion), and she featured the voice of Patrick Stewart.


Patrick Stewart!

This game was the complete package. She was beautiful, smart, and had a lot of ideas. We had some great times together. We rode horses west to the far-off city of Anvil, fought our way through countless dark, terrifying dungeons, and searched for Nirnroot by every lake we found. We laughed at the bugs and we cried at the tragedy of The Gray Prince. We were happy. Sometimes, I was content to just walk through her world for an hour, just because. And if I happened to get a little action along the way, hey, all the better.

Then it all fell apart.

I remember our first fight. Oblivion gates (essentially portals to hell) were opening all over Cyrodil. Demons called Daedra were invading, with the intention of mass-slaughter. The allies of the resistance were gathering in a city called Bruma. TES told me to go out and find as many allies for Bruma as I could. Happily, I went all over Cyrodil, talking to the leaders of every city we had encountered in our travels together, but they all asked me to do the same thing. Somewhere nearby, there was an Oblivion gate. They wanted me to go in, close the gate from the inside, and then they would aid Bruma. This was a fairly boring, lengthy, and tedious process. I did it three times, and as I did, I was able to think about my relationship with TES. Why would she make me do this? This was her idea of a good time? Then I started think about our other experiences.

Riding for hours through a dense forest, trying to find the main gate of Anvil?

Long, drawn-out, repetitive dungeons?

Having to stop at every, single, stupid lake to look for Nirnroot?

Why was I doing this? What was the point? Oblivion had so much to do, but it was all boring.

But she was pretty.

That's when I realized what had happened. TES had taken all of the things that made her interesting when she was Morrowind and streamlined them, simplified them, and dumbed them down to make herself more accessible. All this time I had been mesmerized by her beauty and intrigued by her ideas, but her ideas were all the same. And they were bad.

As soon as I closed the third Oblivion gate, I took one last look at TES's blue sky, lush rolling hills, and snow-capped mountains, and I quit.

I didn't even save.

In my mind, Bruma is still there, waiting for reinforcements that will never arrive, as the Daedra ravish the land, and TES tearfully looks at me and asks, "Why?"

The next few years were tough. Even though I wasn't playing her anymore, Oblivion seemed to be a constant topic of conversation. Mods were released, then expansions, then DLC. When she won Game of the Year at the Spike TV Video Game Awards, I'm pretty sure I grumbled something like, "I hope it doesn't take her five hours to come up to accept." Any time anyone mentioned Oblivion, rather than tell them the truth, I told them that I hated her because the truth was just too complicated. Months went by, then years. Finally, TES fell off the radar when her sister Fallout 3 was released. Fallout 3 was a great game, but it took few risks. It became so popular that I began to think that TES was gone for good.

Then, a few months ago, at this year's Spike TV Video Game Awards,  Todd Howard from Bethesda Softworks came onstage to announce Bethesda's new game.

It was TES.

Her trailer didn't show much, but it was narrated by Max von Sydow and revealed her new name: Skyrim. I didn't know what to think about seeing TES again, but from the time I spent with her, I knew what the title referred to. In TES's world, Skyrim is a frozen wasteland where the barbaric Nords hail from. Screenshots confirmed this soon after, showcasing ruined temples, desolate snow-covered valleys, and tough, muscular monsters. It looked like TES had grown bitter in our years apart, sacrificing her roots in optimistic fantasy for gritty realism.  And I couldn't help but think it was my fault. In each of those shattered buildings, I saw the pieces of the relationship we once had.

But then she released this trailer.

And I noticed something. Behind the brutal, desolate landscapes, the dark chanting of her main theme, and grotesque monsters, TES had hidden something away. Take another look at that trailer, around the 1:44 mark. Behind the guy getting stabbed, there is a lake.

Beside that lake is a Nirnroot plant.

That one, little plant says so much. It says that despite the changes she's made, TES is still the same game I met all those years ago, full of optimism and new ideas. She lets you live in a world, not just interact with it. She gives you the opportunity to be whoever you want to be, even if it's not very interesting. She offers her players the chance to do anything they want, even if it's just look for plants. Whether it works or not, and whether it's fun or not doesn't matter. It's still a noble goal.

Congratulations on your new game, TES. I hope it goes well for you, and I look forward to hearing about it's release. May you find a better player than I.