Skyrim's lead designer reckons open world games are 'almost a cliché statement' these days, and that Skyrim owes its continued popularity to a focus on player agency: 'We didn't put anything off limits'

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Skyrim's 14th anniversary might be sneaking up on it, but players still can't get enough of Tamriel's tundras.

Few games enjoy such a long stay in the conversation as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, one of the biggest and most celebrated fantasy RPGs ever released. And release it did, again and again—but it's hard to blame Bethesda for all those re-releases. The game's community is so enthusiastic that modders are practically making entire games in the snowiest slice of Tamriel, and there's no sign they'll slow down any time soon.

It's something that leaves Skyrim's lead designer Bruce Nesmith "eternally shocked," as he told FRVR: "By all rights, a year later, some other game should have eclipsed it. And then two years later, three years later, five, ten. It’s like ‘what the hell is going on here?"

You'll never find a consensus on which Elder Scrolls game is the best—I go back and forth on it all the time, myself—but it's no secret which is the most popular and broadly accessible. SteamDB notes the Special Edition has over 24,000 concurrent players on Steam alone as I write this article; that's a ludicrous number for any RPG of Skyrim's tenure, and over ten times what Oblivion Remastered is pulling in at the moment.

Nesmith told FRVR Skyrim owes its appeal to the fact that the team behind it "didn’t put anything off limits. We didn’t try to manage the experience … it was a player-driven experience. And very, very few games have mastered that because open world is now almost a cliché statement. ‘Oh yeah, we have open world.’"

It's an interesting thesis. In some ways, Skyrim is more restrictive than predecessors like Daggerfall and Morrowind—at least in terms of buildcraft and killing story-essential NPCs, for example. But there's no denying Skyrim's world is so chock full of surprises, every step feels like a discovery won by your own wanderlust. Sure, I can ride a horse across Daggerfall's much larger world map for hours on end, but the chances I find something on par with Skyrim's side quests are slim to none.

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The Dark Urge, from Baldur's Gate 3, looks towards his accursed claws with self-disdain.

(Image credit: Larian Studios)

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Justin Wagner
Justin Wagner

Justin first became enamored with PC gaming when World of Warcraft and Neverwinter Nights 2 rewired his brain as a wide-eyed kid. As time has passed, he's amassed a hefty backlog of retro shooters, CRPGs, and janky '90s esoterica. Whether he's extolling the virtues of Shenmue or troubleshooting some fiddly old MMO, it's hard to get his mind off games with more ambition than scruples. When he's not at his keyboard, he's probably birdwatching or daydreaming about a glorious comeback for real-time with pause combat. Any day now...

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