The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim seems like a world away at this point, despite it still being one of the most popular Bethesda Game Studios titles on the market. It dropped in 2011 to critical acclaim, and it has remained in our hearts and minds ever since, but despite re-releases here and there, it’s easy to clock just how long ago 2011 was.
I recently had the opportunity to catch up with Bruce Nesmith, former Bethesda Game Studios developer and the lead designer on 2011’s Skyrim, widely considered one of the best games ever made. He parted ways with some juicy tidbits about the game and the impact it had on players when it landed fifteen years ago.
We Just Want To Explore
The heart of The Elder Scrolls is centered firmly around the concept of freedom. In Skyrim, that concept was pushed further than ever, presenting players with an open, expansive world within minutes of starting the game.
When you escaped Helgen and narrowly broke away from Alduin’s ancient clutches, you were presented with this enormous map that loomed off into the distance. As you inevitably panned your camera around, you were teased with all kinds of points of interest, from rivers and mountains to hamlets and ruined fortresses.
It was beautiful. I mean, it still is beautiful, but experiencing it firsthand in 2011 is something I’ll never forget.
But talking to Bruce Nesmith via the charming folks at AI humanizer GoHumanize, I had a chance to dig into the secrets of Skyrim, focusing specifically on how players treated the game.
Bruce revealed that a design-driven mission in Skyrim was to present players with a ‘true sense of freedom’, which is something I believe they achieved front, back, and sideways. He explained that at the earliest opportunity, stacks of players went off into the wild without a second thought:
We even did some study into how many people came out of that initial dungeon in Skyrim and instead of going on to Riverwood, they just turned off into the wilderness to do their own thing.
It was quite staggering, really. Like 30% of players. We had to be able to have the game still function for those players and not many games can pull that off, and give that true sense of freedom.
By that, Nesmith means that developers have to accommodate the carefree gamer who wants to wander off and see the world, refusing to follow the steps set out before them on their path through the core campaign.
That’s something he expanded on as we spoke:
Freedom was key and we had to work for that because there were a lot of cases where you realize if this happens it has to go this way, whereas if this happens it has to go another way, and if this happens you’ll have to take it this way, and so on.
That is a lot of effort to be able to say that in all conditions, your quest and your environment work differently to accommodate that.
Nesmith said that his team worked ‘as much as was humanly possible’ to weave this sense of total openness into Skyrim.
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Ultimately, the formula worked, and Bethesda Game Studios delivered a generational title that remains immensely popular to this day. We’ll likely never forget Skyrim, and one reason is how the world accommodated every inch of what the player wanted to do.
Did you play Skyrim in the last 15 years? Let us know what you thought about it on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
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Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
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