The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Publication Information
Developer	Bethesda Game Studios
Publisher	Bethesda Softworks
Director	Todd Howard
Lead Designer	Bruce Nesmith
Composer	Jeremy Soule
Game Engine	Creation Engine
Release Date	11 November 2011 8 December 2011 (JP) 4 June 2013 (Legendary Edition) 28 October 2016 (Special Edition) 17 November 2017 (Switch, PlayStation VR) 3 April 2018 (PC VR) 11 November 2021 (Anniversary Edition)
Genre	Action RPG, Open-World
Modes	Single-Player
Rating	ACB: MA15+ BBFC: 15 CERO: Z ESRB: M USK: 16 PEGI: 18
Platform	PC, Xbox 360, PS3 Xbox One, PS4 (Special Edition) PSVR, Nintendo Switch Xbox Series X/S, PS5 (Anniversary Edition)
Game Information
Setting	Skyrim, Solstheim
Protagonist	The Last Dragonborn
Time Period	4E 201
Holds	9
Skills	18
Dragon Shouts	20, 27 with add-ons
Add-ons	Dawnguard, Hearthfire, Dragonborn

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is an open-world action role-playing game from Bethesda Game Studios, published by Bethesda Softworks and released on 11 November 2011. Todd Howard directed it, Bruce Nesmith led the design, and Jeremy Soule wrote the score that most people can hum before they can name a single quest.

It is the fifth game in the series and picks up 200 years after the Oblivion Crisis, in the northern province of Tamriel that the Nords have always held. You start in the back of a cart bound for Helgen, on the way to an execution you had nothing to do with, and the game hands you a province split by the civil war between Ulfric Stormcloak and the Empire, and a dragon problem nobody has seen in an age.

Story

High King Torygg is dead, killed by Ulfric Stormcloak, and the province has split between the Stormcloaks who want out of the Empire and the loyalists who think the Empire is the only thing holding the province together. The Empire has been in decline since the Oblivion Crisis and the Thalmor are quietly making sure it stays that way.

Into that walks Alduin, the World-Eater, a dragon the Elder Scrolls said would return to end the world. You turn out to be the Last Dragonborn: a mortal born with the soul of a dragon, able to absorb the souls of the dragons you kill and speak their language as a weapon.

The Greybeards on the Throat of the World teach you the Voice. The Blades, what is left of them, want the dragons dead and are not fussy about which ones. The Thalmor want you watched. None of the three is telling you everything, and the game never resolves that for you.

Gameplay

There are no classes. What you do is what you become: swing a sword and One-Handed rises, pick a lock and Lockpicking rises, and your level is the sum of that rather than something you choose at the start. A character who set out as a mage and spent forty hours sneaking is a stealth character now.

Dragon shouts are the other half. After the Dragon Rising quest you can absorb the soul of any dragon you kill, and each soul unlocks one word of power from a word wall. Twenty shouts exist in the base game and twenty-seven with the official add-ons, three from Dawnguard and four from Dragonborn.

The crafting chain is deep enough to be its own game. Mine ore, smelt it into ingots, forge gear, then temper it at a grindstone or workbench and enchant it at an arcane enchanter. Smithing, Enchanting and Alchemy feed each other, and a character who pushes all three ends up stronger than the level curve expects.

Progression

Eighteen skills, each with its own perk tree, and 251 perk ranks across 180 unique perks. A perk point arrives with every level, so the trees are a budget rather than a menu: you will not fill more than a few in one playthrough.

The standing stones scattered across the province each give a permanent bonus and only one can be active, which is the closest the game comes to a class choice. Legendary skills, added in a later patch, reset a skill at 100 and hand the perk points back, so a character can keep levelling past the natural cap.

The Nine Holds

Skyrim is divided into nine holds, each run by a jarl from a capital city. With no High King alive the holds have effectively split from one another, and the game models that: a bounty follows you within the hold you earned it in and nowhere else, so a murder in Riften means nothing to a guard in Markarth.

The climates are genuinely different rather than reskinned. The Rift is aspen forest in permanent autumn, Falkreath Hold is dense pine, Eastmarch is volcanic tundra with hot springs, and most of the rest is snow and rock.

The Dragonborn add-on adds a tenth region off the map entirely: Solstheim, the ash-covered island north-east of the mainland, which tracks its own crime and has its own smiths, materials and gear.

Add-ons

Three major add-ons, all bundled into every modern edition, and each one changes what a crafting character can build.

On top of those sits the Creation Club, 74 much smaller official Creations released from 2017 and retired in December 2023. All of them come with Anniversary Edition, and between them they add whole material families: Amber, Madness, Golden, Dark and Remnant gear, plus artefacts like Goldbrand and the Bow of Shadows.

Editions

Which edition you own decides which recipes appear at your forge, and that catches people out constantly: a guide that lists a set you cannot make is usually describing content you do not have installed rather than a bug.

Weapons

Crafting