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It's been going on 14 years now since the release of the greatest, most perfect, most balanced, most bug free game of all time. I'm speaking of course of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, a game which "just works" as according to the gospel handed down to us by the Great Todd Howard, may his mighty name be blessed, Ramen.
Of course, over 60 million copies sold later, no one disputes that Skyrim is one of the Greatest Games of All Time, Actually. TBH I haven't really thought about it for maybe a decade now but randomly a video came across my Youtube feed and I like WTF God Damn Is This What Modders Have Done and I thought about it again.
In reality, I have only ever actually seen the ending of the main quest in Skyrim once in my life ever, because one of the issues with Skyrim is that you get 5 hours into it and realize it's buggy as shit, the combat is a hilarious parody of actual game combat, and there's a million annoyances you wish you could fix like "Why the fuck can't I disenchant things without destroying them?" and "Why do all food and ingredients have a weight so if you pick them all up in the world you'll hit your obnoxious 300 carry limit from a bunch of herbs?" and then you get in an endless cycle of adding mods, the mods crash the game, you fix your load order, you add more mods, repeat forever and then you never actually play Skyrim.
So I decided to finally solve this problem once and for all, by installing and playing the Nintendo Switch version of Skyrim, which you absolutely and positively cannot mod, except if you hack your Switch and add them manually one by one after converting them because of course they figured out a way to do it, the fucking madmen. But I digress. It's been almost 14 years, I'm going to grit my teeth and play an unmodded Skyrim on Switch, on a console which means I can't even access the in-game console to enter commands to fix bugs if I need to. I am not fucking around here. I am going to experience Todd's uncompromised vanilla vision for the game, sort of, because it's the 2021 Anniversary Edition on Switch which adds the 3 DLC's so it's not really the 2011 release version of the game.
Anyways, Skyrim for Switch. It's 2025 and I'm playing a 2011 game running on 2016 hardware which was pretty weak back in 2016. And...it looks and runs better than I could have expected. When docked it's locked to 1080p and 30 fps on Switch with DRS down to 720p, and undocked it runs at 720p and 30 fps with DRS down to 540p when things get busy. These are modest resolution and framerate targets, but visually it holds up quite well because back in 2011 we didn't have a million shader and post-process effects smeared all over the screen like Vaseline. Lighting and shading are limited, shadowing is limited, textures are limited, but damn when I look up past the trees at the giant moon in the starry sky at night, there's just something about the world and art design of Skyrim which is fundamentally beautiful. The game is going on 14 years old and it's running on 8 years old hardware which sucked 8 years ago but honestly I feel like it looks as good as and sometimes better than a lot of modern AAA games today. There's a lot to be said for a game which just runs at 1080p and is proud of it instead of modern AAA games using shitty fucking ass FSR 1 upscaling to turn a 720p image into 4K on PS5 and it looks like fucking dogshit.
But I'm digressing again. So how does vanilla-esque Skyrim actually play in 2025? Well.... It's Skyrim. In about 20 hours of play, I've had the game randomly crash to the Switch home screen 5 times. Which is honestly good for Skyrim, all things considered. That's a lot less crashy than it was near launch. All the classic NPC bugs are present. They will say "Follow me" and just stand there and I have to remember where to go or just Google it and I go there myself and they just instantly teleport there to continue the quest. I've had Lydia disappear randomly on me twice now, nowhere to be found, just like in the good old days. So eventually I was like fuck it, Lydia you just go to Dragonsreach and stay there forever, since the Anniversary Edition includes Serana anyways and she's much more interesting as a follower. Enemy balance is that classic mix of one skeleton that I can oneshot and then the next skeleton erases my HP in 2 hits and I hit it for 1% damage. Speaking of which, oh how I love Skyrim combat. Flailing around wildly with my weapon while circle strafing around enemies never gets old. This is truly Todd's greatest vision of combat ever in a video game. Thank you, Todd. Thank you.
Anyways, I'm surprised by how well Skyrim in a general sense has aged in 2025. It's no secret that modern video games have regressed in a lot of ways compared to the ambition and scope of games in the past. Skyrim was made in the 2000's by a team of only 100 people, and despite the general bugginess and jankiness it's also one of the most ambitious and massive games ever made, and that vision for the game is absolutely still present today. When you're running around in the open world and randomly stumbling across NPC interactions that lead into side quests, or find a Word of Power shrine guarded by a dragon, or stumble into a random orc encampment, it's hard not be amazed by just how much detail and density is placed in the game world. There just isn't anything else like Skyrim, 14 years later. (This includes Starfield, RIP Todd's grand vision of space.)
Now if you excuse me, I've got a dragon to whack 50 times with a sword while it stands there and doesn't do anything because it got stuck on the rock and can't move or fly away. Here's to another 14 years of Skyrim being the best game Todd and Bethesda Game Studios has ever made or ever will make, or at least until The Elder Scrolls VI whenever the fuck that comes out and hopefully I'll live long enough to see it be released.
Of course, over 60 million copies sold later, no one disputes that Skyrim is one of the Greatest Games of All Time, Actually. TBH I haven't really thought about it for maybe a decade now but randomly a video came across my Youtube feed and I like WTF God Damn Is This What Modders Have Done and I thought about it again.
In reality, I have only ever actually seen the ending of the main quest in Skyrim once in my life ever, because one of the issues with Skyrim is that you get 5 hours into it and realize it's buggy as shit, the combat is a hilarious parody of actual game combat, and there's a million annoyances you wish you could fix like "Why the fuck can't I disenchant things without destroying them?" and "Why do all food and ingredients have a weight so if you pick them all up in the world you'll hit your obnoxious 300 carry limit from a bunch of herbs?" and then you get in an endless cycle of adding mods, the mods crash the game, you fix your load order, you add more mods, repeat forever and then you never actually play Skyrim.
So I decided to finally solve this problem once and for all, by installing and playing the Nintendo Switch version of Skyrim, which you absolutely and positively cannot mod, except if you hack your Switch and add them manually one by one after converting them because of course they figured out a way to do it, the fucking madmen. But I digress. It's been almost 14 years, I'm going to grit my teeth and play an unmodded Skyrim on Switch, on a console which means I can't even access the in-game console to enter commands to fix bugs if I need to. I am not fucking around here. I am going to experience Todd's uncompromised vanilla vision for the game, sort of, because it's the 2021 Anniversary Edition on Switch which adds the 3 DLC's so it's not really the 2011 release version of the game.
Anyways, Skyrim for Switch. It's 2025 and I'm playing a 2011 game running on 2016 hardware which was pretty weak back in 2016. And...it looks and runs better than I could have expected. When docked it's locked to 1080p and 30 fps on Switch with DRS down to 720p, and undocked it runs at 720p and 30 fps with DRS down to 540p when things get busy. These are modest resolution and framerate targets, but visually it holds up quite well because back in 2011 we didn't have a million shader and post-process effects smeared all over the screen like Vaseline. Lighting and shading are limited, shadowing is limited, textures are limited, but damn when I look up past the trees at the giant moon in the starry sky at night, there's just something about the world and art design of Skyrim which is fundamentally beautiful. The game is going on 14 years old and it's running on 8 years old hardware which sucked 8 years ago but honestly I feel like it looks as good as and sometimes better than a lot of modern AAA games today. There's a lot to be said for a game which just runs at 1080p and is proud of it instead of modern AAA games using shitty fucking ass FSR 1 upscaling to turn a 720p image into 4K on PS5 and it looks like fucking dogshit.
But I'm digressing again. So how does vanilla-esque Skyrim actually play in 2025? Well.... It's Skyrim. In about 20 hours of play, I've had the game randomly crash to the Switch home screen 5 times. Which is honestly good for Skyrim, all things considered. That's a lot less crashy than it was near launch. All the classic NPC bugs are present. They will say "Follow me" and just stand there and I have to remember where to go or just Google it and I go there myself and they just instantly teleport there to continue the quest. I've had Lydia disappear randomly on me twice now, nowhere to be found, just like in the good old days. So eventually I was like fuck it, Lydia you just go to Dragonsreach and stay there forever, since the Anniversary Edition includes Serana anyways and she's much more interesting as a follower. Enemy balance is that classic mix of one skeleton that I can oneshot and then the next skeleton erases my HP in 2 hits and I hit it for 1% damage. Speaking of which, oh how I love Skyrim combat. Flailing around wildly with my weapon while circle strafing around enemies never gets old. This is truly Todd's greatest vision of combat ever in a video game. Thank you, Todd. Thank you.
Anyways, I'm surprised by how well Skyrim in a general sense has aged in 2025. It's no secret that modern video games have regressed in a lot of ways compared to the ambition and scope of games in the past. Skyrim was made in the 2000's by a team of only 100 people, and despite the general bugginess and jankiness it's also one of the most ambitious and massive games ever made, and that vision for the game is absolutely still present today. When you're running around in the open world and randomly stumbling across NPC interactions that lead into side quests, or find a Word of Power shrine guarded by a dragon, or stumble into a random orc encampment, it's hard not be amazed by just how much detail and density is placed in the game world. There just isn't anything else like Skyrim, 14 years later. (This includes Starfield, RIP Todd's grand vision of space.)
Now if you excuse me, I've got a dragon to whack 50 times with a sword while it stands there and doesn't do anything because it got stuck on the rock and can't move or fly away. Here's to another 14 years of Skyrim being the best game Todd and Bethesda Game Studios has ever made or ever will make, or at least until The Elder Scrolls VI whenever the fuck that comes out and hopefully I'll live long enough to see it be released.
