The newest Elder Scrolls release was a bore until my character transformed into a bloodsucker and revealed just how fun and unpredictable the game can be.
Have you ever forced yourself to play each entry in a popular video game series, hoping that the newest release would be the one to swing your opinion from negative to positive? My colleague, Jordan Minor, experienced that with Monster Hunter before Monster Hunter Rise delivered the winning formula. For me, it was Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls titles.
The go-anywhere, do-anything RPG series is one I appreciated on a technical level. There were obstacles to my enjoyment, however. I’m a father of two in my late 30s; I don’t have a ton of free time, so I gravitate toward games that immediately hook me. But that’s not really what the Elder Scrolls games do. They’re less about the moment-to-moment gameplay and more about stringing those moments together into a grand, open-ended adventure. That sounds fun on paper, but in execution? Directionless and too much like homework.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered—a middle ground between The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind’s tilt toward role-playing die-hards and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim’s more mainstream appeal—initially felt like more of the same. But then my character accidentally became a vampire. Now, I can’t put the game down.My History With the Elder Scrolls Games
I sunk more than 100 hours into Skyrim on the Nintendo Switch, yet it still didn’t make me an Elder Scrolls fan. It’s hard to separate playtime from my mental state during those days, when I was unemployed, unmedicated, and very depressed. Energy that should have gone toward writing translated to a plodding journey through the fantasy land of Tamriel. Knocking off quests became just as important as paying the bills. I got stuff done, but I wasn’t having fun.
Once I beat the main quest and found a job (hello, PCMag!), I dropped the many side and DLC questlines I hadn’t finished. Skyrim gave me the structure I needed to get through a hard time. But a game dedicated to keeping a list of tasks, marking down accomplishments, and managing workflows? That wasn’t the type of thing I wanted to play anymore.
