The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was first released in November of 2011 and continues to be one of the most highly played games in the current year. Skyrim recently released as a Special Edition on consoles and PC. Fans were delightfully surprised when the game was announced for a Nintendo Switch port in late 2017. Though Skyrim memes like “arrow in the knee” and “fus roh dah” have mostly died down, fans still take great interest in the game.
Though many admit that they enjoy playing Skyrim, there is harsh criticism that the game took steps backward compared to its previous installment, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Their complaints ranged from a weak storyline and repetitive NPCs. Gamers on PC may simply claim that these issues can be fixed with mods, but Bethesda has to listen to fan feedback.
The developer and publisher have mostly been receptive to what fans have to say. After years passed, Bethesda finally took steps to resolve issues in the original Skyrim with the Special Edition. While the update was free on PC, console gamers were furious when they had to purchase the game again.
Some loyal fans don’t spot the flaws with Skyrim. They enjoy the game as it is and either ignore the flaws or don’t care. We’ve listed some of the most significant issues with Skyrim that even the most diehard fan noticed.
20 More Powerful Than A Dragon
For gamers who roleplay in Skyrim, they choose not to fast travel, which can kill immersion. The cities and villages are spread far apart from one another. The only other option to reach them, besides from walking, is to buy a horse. A horse is a better investment than a carriage ride. Horses don’t even have to be purchased, as more devious players can steal them. If you steal a horse from a passerby, it’s likely that the horse will turn hostile and try to kill you. Horses aren’t like other wild animals in Skyrim. They are almost invincible and are difficult to calm down. Doing the right thing and paying for a horse instead is a better choice, but it can still become hostile if it gets hit by a poorly timed Shout.
19 Looks Good, Works Bad
Skyrim’s user interface is a beautiful sight to behold. The colors and styling of the menus match the fantasy style of The Elder Scrolls series. Using the interface is a different, frustrating matter altogether. The skill level menu is too fancy. With bold animations and lighting, Bethesda tried to make leveling up feel like a powerful event. Leveling up skills is difficult, and the animations can take too long to load, depending on your computer.
The worst of the interfaces is your character’s inventory. The sublists are poorly organized, making it difficult to find that item you need. Try to trade items with a companion, and it just makes things more disorganized. Chests and containers don’t resolve the issue. They only list the items and don’t sort them for you.
18 I Feel Like I’ve Been Here Before
If you ask a friend about a bandit cave, they’d probably ask you to be more specific. You’d have a hard time telling them the specifics, other than there’s a group of bandits and you only have to defeat the Bandit Chief to complete the quest. If an NPC asks you to retrieve an item, you already have the cave mapped out in your head. You already know what to expect from a quest to retrieve a family heirloom from a cave. The longer caves filled with Draugrs are the same. There are several tombs that these creatures crawl out of to attack. If you’re lucky, you may find a Word of Power to add a new Shout to your abilities.
These dungeons may seem entertaining at first, but for gamers who have invested several hours into the game, they’re all the same and offer little reward.
17 What’s The Meaning Of All This?
Skyrim contains hundreds of side quests within the base game and expansion packs, so gamers can easily spend several hours immersed in the game. Unfortunately, many of these quests are too similar. Most of the quests range from taking out a group of bandits and their leader, fetching a family sword, or worse, bring back the quest giver several of the same items. Looking at the quest log, you’ll notice that a large majority of them are fetching things for people. The rewards are often small and not worth the time and effort. These quests are only added into Skyrim to extend your gameplay rather than add quality content to the game. Fortunately, we can skip these endless fetch quests and get back to taking down dragons.
16 Loot For Everyone!
Skyrim is similar to Fallout 3 where almost anything can be looted. Walk by a plant, and you can pick up the entire thing for ingredients. Defeat a cave of bandits, and you can take all of the belongings, except for their dead bodies and heavy furniture. If you’re new to the game, you might be delighted and wonder how these items can be used. You’ll quickly learn that Skyrim has too much lootable junk lying around. If you don’t take that bandit’s plate, you can be sure you’ll find a plate one cave down. The excess items wouldn’t be a problem if you didn’t have a set weight limit that your character can carry. You’ll learn not to take everything, but you’ll run into issues down the line. That gem you passed up may be a quest item, and now you’ll have to track it down.
15 We Get It, There Are Evil Skeleton Guys
With a game as huge as Skyrim, you would expect a wider variety of enemies. Unfortunately, the enemies are mostly all the same. Enter an old cave, and it’s likely to be filled with the same set of Draugrs that you just defeated in a neighboring cave.
If an NPC asks you to rid a camp filled with bandits, they all mostly look the same, except that the Bandit Chief may have a different gender. Humanoid enemies often wear the same set of clothing, which makes them too easy to spot and decreases any challenge.
The primary enemy, Dragons, also suffer the same fate. There are only a small set of dragons that all share the same set of moves. They only differ on their attack type and the color of their scales.
14 You Shouldn’t Climb That Mountain
When Bethesda’s Director and Executive Producer Todd Howard exclaimed “See That Mountain? You Can Climb It” at Skyrim’s E3 presentation, gamers believed him. Skyrim’s map contained a wide variety of regions to explore, from mountains to valleys, to a vast sea.
When Skyrim was finally released, gamers were disappointed to learn that they could not climb most mountains. To make matters worse, climbing a mountain was risky because there’s a high chance your Dragonborn will slide down and get stuck, forcing you to reload your game. With the large mountain range splitting the map in half, most of the region couldn’t be explored.
Gamers who opted to explore the frozen seas instead learned that there was little to discover. The frozen northwest of Skyrim only contains a few lonely shipwrecks and nothing more.
13 Every Village Is The Same…
When you’re not out exploring the land of Skyrim, you’ll be in a village speaking with townspeople. They’ll usually offer you merchant services or give you quests. Head to the next town, and you’ll notice that the NPCs are the same as the last. They may be wearing the same clothing but usually have the same voice actor. The children all have similar physical characteristics and only differ depending on their voice. Regarding similar NPCs, the guards are the worst offenders. They’re the same in every area you visit in Skyrim, down to their voice actor. They may have a different name over their heads depending on rank, but everything else is the same. Similar NPCs may not bother you if you’re used to playing RPGs, but it makes the world of Skyrim less creative.
12 It’s All So Formulaic
Skyrim focuses on combat, and there are few opportunities to use a Speech Check to resolve a conflict. The battles are not impressive and offer little challenge. Most enemies can be defeated by doing the same movies repeatedly: move forward, attack, block, and repeat. Enemies all have a set pattern that is simple to learn. The only way to fall in battle is to get overwhelmed by multiple enemies on screen. Combat becomes even easier if there’s a companion beside you. If they attack first, the enemies will often focus on the attacking companion while you throw a spell or two in the enemy’s’ direction. Unless you decide to be more creative with your move set, defeating enemies becomes a repetitive chore with little challenge.
11 I Pledge My Soul… To Everyone
In the continent of Tamriel, people worship nine different Gods who often want to help people. Some Gods prove to be useful to you, such as Mara, whose blessing can be gained if you’re going to be married.
The sixteen Daedric Princes don’t often help people unless you offer them your soul. If you promise your soul to them and fulfill their requests, they will grant you powerful weapons and armor. The tasks the Daedra request are often more devious than a simple NPC quest. You’ll often have to angry some villagers or bring a specific person back to be sacrificed. Once you promise your soul to one of these Daedra, you’re bound to them forever. There is no consequence to worshipping more than one god, and they often won’t know that you spoke to another Prince.
10 Where’s The Threat?
In the majority of RPGs, you defeat creatures to become more powerful. Skyrim is no different. As you journey to different cities, you’ll face many threats along the way. Your Dragonborn will quickly level-up and become a powerful force. In an attempt to make the game more challenging, the enemies’ levels are based on your character’s current level. Most of the enemies don’t become a greater threat. The only difference is that their health increases and they’re slightly more powerful. You still can craft stronger weapons, higher defense armor, and brew potions which can easily deflect most attacks. Instead of posing a bigger threat, the enemies become minor annoyances.
9 A Little Bit Too Strong
With enemies that attempt to challenge you, they’re no threat to the Dragonborn. The game does a great job at giving you several options to role-play, but all of them lead to the same glaring issue: it’s too easy to become overpowered. Leveling up skills like Crafting, Alchemy, and Blacksmith skills are too easy to accomplish. Your Dragonborn only has to invest time into leveling these abilities to craft some of the most powerful gear in the game. This gear makes you almost unstoppable. Of course, it’s great to feel like the toughest brute in the land, but it gets boring quickly. It can kill your motivation to continue playing the game if you’re blasting through caves and slashing dragons in half.
8 Waiting Is For Losers
Skyrim has a date and time system. It might be sunny out when you first enter that cave, but by the time you leave, it’s already night time. Unless you’re playing in a survival mode, your Dragonborn doesn’t need sleep. That doesn’t mean it’s the same for other NPCs. After completing a quest, you’ll often find them sleeping in bed. If you’re waiting for an NPC to wake up, you don’t have to waste time. With a simple click, you can “Wait” to make time pass by quickly. By Sleeping and Waiting, you’re toying with time and making the game too easy and reducing any challenge. A quest giver says to meet them in the same spot at night? Just “Wait” and you didn’t have to move a muscle.
7 Insulting Your Intelligence
Skyrim boats several side quests to test your limits. Most of them take place inside of dark caves. After you’ve defeated the same repetitive groups of Draugrs, you’ll have to complete a puzzle to open a door. Before that sense of panic hits your stomach, the puzzles in Skyrim are easy to complete. Some puzzles are so simple that the game tells you what item you need to open that gate.
Some puzzles are slightly more difficult than the last, but they don’t take long to figure out. After you’ve figured out the Golden Claw puzzle once, you’ve figured out all of them. All the claw puzzle quests are the same with the difference being where you find the item.
6 Time Never Runs Out
Dragons are swarming the land, the Blades need your help, and the Greybeards have asked you to follow the way of the voice. Meanwhile, you’re following a talking dog as he tries to win back his Daedric Prince’s trust. After that quest, you may take on another NPC’s request to pick 20 plants or spend some time getting married. Even these side quests have no time limit, and you can choose to wait years to complete them.
The main plot tells you that trouble is brewing in Skyrim with the dragon invasion and Civil War, but it gives you no sense of urgency. There are no consequences for waiting five in-game years to complete each section of the main quest. As long as the Dragonborn is alive, the main plotline will wait for you.
5 Becoming Rich Is Almost As Easy As Becoming The Dragonborn
Your title as Dragonborn comes quickly in Skyrim. You do little to earn the title because you were born with it, which immediately makes you powerful. Not only is it easy to become physically overpowered, but it’s also easy for your pockets to overfill with gold. Since almost everything can be looted, you can sell your useless items to merchants for easy coin. Along with your journey, you’ll find chests full of weapons that you can refine to sell for even more gold. Your Dragonborn can quickly become the richest person in the land just by selling items you find in dungeons or have crafted at a Blacksmith’s anvil. These piles of gold are likely to remain in your inventory since you can craft almost anything you’ll need on your journey.
4 This… Seems Wrong
When Skyrim was first released in 2011, the cinematic trailer was enough to make gamers pre-order. They thought the game would have the epic dragon fights and movie-like graphics the video showcased. The actual in-game graphics were not as impressive. Enemies have stiff fighting animations that seem unnatural. Diehard fans may argue that these enemies aren’t human, which makes it acceptable for them to move unnaturally. Human NPCs act the same while going about their normal lives. Their facial animations often run into issues or appear as creepy X-Rays. They walk around the village paths, only to walk like parodies of humanoid creatures. Animals also suffer from poor animations. Instead of lunging at you to attack, their legs remain stiff and their mouths permanently open.
3 All Glitched Out
PC gamers may believe they’re alone with crash-to-desktop errors (not caused by mods) from playing Skyrim, but every version of the game has bugs.
Walking up the side of a mountain seems possible until you slide down and get stuck between boulders. Enemies will get stuck behind doors or other obstacles in caves. Doors not only cause an issue in caves but also in villages. They might swing in all directions, and multiple NPCs will try to shove each other through one passage.
Dragons also have their fair share of bugs. You might hear the roar of a Dragon’s shout, only to find it perched on a rock, stuck in place. Though the Special Edition tried to resolve these issues, for those, who didn’t purchase it can only restart their game and hope they don’t have to backtrack too far.
2 We Get It, The Dragonborn Is Great
Skyrim starts off with your character almost getting beheaded. When the dragon stops the execution, there are two groups of people already stepping up to help you.From the start, your character is already respected. It’s your choice if you want to leave with the Stormcloaks or Imperials, but both are on your good side before the prologue ends.
Things only escalate when words spread that you are the Dragonborn. Guards will be impressed by your appearance and Jarls will immediately begin asking favors. If you’re playing a good character, there are only a few groups that are out to kill you. Otherwise, all groups welcome you with open arms, from the Thieves Guild to the dark Brotherhood. It’s hard to make the characters of Skyrim hate you.
1 They’re Really Not That Strong
Dragons are the primary threat in Skyrim. Villagers scream in horror as soon as you hear the flapping of their giant wings. The dragons with official names may seem slightly frightening at once, but they pose as much threat as the generic “Blood Dragon” or “Frost Dragon.“Battling these creatures turns out to be a letdown. They all have the same moveset: fly around in a circle, spray fire down below, and bite and swipe at you if you get too close. The NPCs fear the existence of dragons, but you’ll quickly learn how easy they are to defeat.
Though you play as the Dragonborn, your only advantage is absorbing the souls for new Shouts, not necessarily being a top-notch dragon slayer. Even the guards are effective at shooting down these beasts with low-level bows and arrows.
