A Skyrim Situation
Remakes and remasters are extremely
popular these days, and for good reason. Fans of older games love to see them
brought onboard to new generations of consoles, especially if they’re from the
days before HD gaming and they get a graphical upgrade. But sometimes you
stumble upon one of those games brought into the current generation that really
should’ve stayed back in its original form, instead using a sequel to bring the
franchise to a new console.
Today we’ll be talking about the
Nintendo Switch version of Skyrim and
how it’s time for Bethesda to let the poor game die in peace.
There’s no denying that Skyrim is one of, if not the most
influential game released in the 2010’s. The granddaddy of the modern
open-world adventure games, modern favourites like The Witcher 3, Horizon Zero
Dawn and Zelda: Breath of the Wild have
Skyrim to thank for paving the way
for the genre back in 2011. Bethesda received several well-deserved awards for
the game, as well as world recognition as the company behind one of the
greatest games ever made at the time.
Yes, it’s no secret Bethesda loves
their baby, and I can’t blame them for that. As such it came as a surprise to
no one that the game was ported to PS4 and Xbox One in 2016 as Skyrim: Special Edition. The remaster
promised a graphical upgrade to the game, several new shaders to play around
with, all DLC packs included, and mod support on certain consoles. With no new Elder Scrolls game in sight anytime
soon, fans were hoping that the Special
Edition would be the definitive version of Skyrim with many of the game’s infamous bugs scrubbed out.
Unfortunately, this isn’t what turned
out. While at its core the Special
Edition is the same game fans fell in love with in 2011, that’s also the
remaster’s biggest problem: it’s the same game, just with a bit of a graphical
upgrade for the new generation so it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb
alongside other modern day games. Many of the plentiful bugs that ran amuck
when the game first released were still there years later, since apparently no
one at Bethesda bothered to fix them.
Like I mentioned earlier, Skyrim is responsible for the
inspiration behind several amazing modern open world adventure games. But the
big problem here is that it’s impossible not to compare the game with the ones
that took what it did and went beyond that. Skyrim
feels antiquated these days when compared to Horizon, like a last-generation phone that a company is
inexplicably trying to push as competition to the new stuff. Instead of being
fondly remembered as a champion that lit the torch for the hugely popular
genre, the game now looks instead like one behind the times, so caught up in
how great it was in its glory days that it hasn’t noticed
gaming has moved onto bigger and better things in the genre.
The big question for me is…where the
heck is Elder Scrolls VI? If Bethesda
could make Skyrim one of the most
beloved open world games ever back when there was really nothing else like it,
imagine what they could do when asked to make a new game from the same
franchise using the same technology backing the big name games from the past
few years! I have no doubt that franchise fans would be all over that, and it’d
be great to have a new game set the bar for what the genre can do.
And then Bethesda will surely port it
to every system ever over the next few years like they did with Skyrim, but I digress.
To paraphrase Luke Skywalker, it’s
time for Skyrim to end. The remaster
felt pretty lazy, especially when most of the bugs people complained about way
back in 2011 inexplicably stuck around. The game itself feels archaic and dated
when compared to the currently-releasing genre darlings, and considering that
the remaster of a 2011 game costs the
same as a brand new copy of 2017’s Breath
of the Wild on Nintendo Switch, comparing it to modern stuff is inevitable.
It’s unsurprising to me that Bethesda still loves the game that propelled them
into worldwide recognition, but they need to move on. Just like how Skyrim was the sequel to the equally
beloved Oblivion, The Elder Scrolls franchise needs to
move on to a sixth installment to stay in people’s minds as a series that’s up
to date and not resting on the laurels of the past.
Song of the Week
Main Theme – The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
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