Accidentally Awesome: Why Skyrim’s Greatness is in Its Flaws

As I returned for the first time since her death I noticed how quiet it was in Whiterun without the rhythmic banging of Adrianne’s hammer. Ah, how many iron daggers did we make together? I entered Warmaiden’s but Ulfberth wasn’t there so I waited for a few hours. When he appeared at the counter he looked at me for a moment, asked me if I was going to buy something and then began to freakout once again and cry. At first I felt really bad for him, “Wow, he’s breaking down again. It’s really cool that this game has him in a state of mourning.” Then once again something didn’t feel right.I  looked around the counter and sure enough it was the body of Adrienne Avenicci, sprawled out on the floor beneath Ulfberth, spawned back where she would have been standing when Ulfberth wasn’t working in the shop. My warm and somber memory of the little-blacksmith-that-could turned into a macabre and warped hell for poor Ulfberth, cursed to spend eternity serving customers while standing on the corpse of his wife.

See, at its surface, Skyrim is an excitingly large and robust open world fantasy experience, with a seemingly endless world of content to explore. The first week I had the game was a real test of my willpower, “Grandmas’ 90^th? Ma, are you kidding me? Do you know how hard it is to level Alchemy? This Tundra Cotton won’t pick itself.” Scattered all around my desk were little notes and scraps of paper with things to remember or look up, names, places, builds, etc. I was surrounded by real life quests, quests I had given myself to sustain my digital addiction. I was freebasing the Kool-Aid. At the store, on the back of the grocery list I’m holding, in giant black marker it says, “Giants Toe + Wheat = $$$.”

That first week was great, but the honeymoon phase was long gone. Every time I attempted to become immersed I was pulled out by some stupid bandit, undead blacksmith-wife or something similar. It’s really not fair you know? I didn’t cheese-level or anything. I played by the rules. I played with stealth and caution, even when it was unnecessary, just for the sake of immersion and this is how I’m rewarded? I figured I was done with Skyrim, I’d seen behind the curtain and the only thing it got me was a sore ass and a weird taste in my mouth. Skyrim could have been my dream girl, too bad she hated me.

And then something really awesome happened that changed my mind.

I nibbled away at the game for a few more days and there was once again another attack on Whiterun. It was one of those annoying dragons that refused to land and just abused his hover, spraying ice all over everyone in the village. Now I’m about as deadly as a kitten with my bow so it took a while, even with the villagers, to take him down. When we finally did I went through the usual hoopla, absorbed yet another dragon soul to sit in my inventory, addressed my adoring fans, looted the dragon, etc. I began the walk to Belethor’s to sell my dragon bones when I spotted a body on the road ahead. A few people walked past, but none of them wailed like they normally do when they see a body. It was Amren, the man whom I once quested for, retrieving his family’s stolen sword, now dead on the street. Beside his bloody opened hand lay that very sword. He obsessed over that sword, even fought about it with his wife. He swore he wasn’t crazy, but the sword, his father’s, was important to him. If I retrieved it he swore to defend the village with his life. It would seem he was a man of his word, wielding his family’s sword to defend Whiterun like his father once had. Dying, like his father once had.

It all came together, one completely random and accidentally awesome moment that was unique to my character and I. The game’s rich back story combined with some bugs and general weirdness created an environment, a digitized primordial soup that helped to evolve an original experience. For me it materialized as the death of a character I knew and quested for, the luckily random symbolism of the family sword just out of reach of his dead hand. It was just a really cool moment to see an NPC in an open world game experience character growth due to my interactions with them. I liked that some of that growth happened on purpose and some accidentally, it feels more real that way.

The various bugs and gameplay interactions in Skyrim create an accidental strangeness, the type of randomness that made the Fallout series great. Each playthrough becomes unique, albeit odd and sometimes morbid, but unique. Maybe you expected Lord of the Ring and got Monty Python. Maybe you expected Robin Hood and got Men in Tights. Maybe you expected Rocky and got Over the Top. There is an immense experience within Skyrim for those willing to keep an open mind and overlook the inevitable weirdness that will occur.

I’ll take my Skyrim with its blind and loveable bandits and underpaid Draugr, where the undead appear in the shops of Whiterun. Sure it may be strange and I might have lost a bunch of shop keepers to dragon attacks, but its mine. With Skyrim you must define your own immersive experience and be willing to not let what you think things should be, get in the way of what could be great… and weird.