Nathan, Nords, and Emergent Narratives: A Recollection of Skyrim

Hi everyone! This post will be my first Throwback Thursday review. While you can expect the same type of info that you’d find in a traditional game review, the format is a tad unconventional. Since these are retrospective reviews (with some games over a decade old), there’s no reason to provide a typical pros/cons list with a rating. Instead, I’ll be traversing each review with a narrative perspective—small, focused stories that explain how my life and that game intertwined.

Nathan, Nords, and Emergent Narratives: A Recollection of Skyrim

I sit outside my professor’s office, my right leg nervously bouncing up and down. I’m nervous because I’m excited; I’m nervous because I’m scared. I found a possible topic for my critical theory class, a higher level course in UVU’s English program. Usually, I scrap together a thesis a couple nights before it’s due and begin the whirlwind of research and writing necessary to pass. But this time I have an idea several weeks in advance. This is new. This is why I’m excited, and this is why I’m scared. What if he turns it down?

Professor Gorelick invites me in. I look around his office. It’s cleaner than most English professor’s offices, and there are several Rorschach ink blot tests pinned on the walls. Professor Gorelick has studied Freud, Lacan, and other psychologists extensively.

“Professor Gorelick…” I begin.

“Please, just call me Nathan. I post memes on the projector during our classes, after all,” he says wryly.

“Okay. Nathan, I’d like to run my research paper concept by you since it’s a bit… avant-garde,” I say. He nods, and I continue, “I’d like to use a video game for my literary reference: Skyrim.” I wait as he briefly mulls over my suggestion.

“Sure,” he says with little hesitation. Phew.

And that’s how, about three years ago, I began to write a literary analysis of Skyrim. In the following weeks, I made sure to brag on social media about my homework, which involved a second play-through of the popular role-playing game. Most Skyrim fans will be unsurprised that I decided to make my character a stealth archer. The homework was mostly just to familiarize myself with the game and characters, because I already knew the topic of my paper: emergent narratives.

Bethesda’s Skyrim was my first real foray into emergent narratives—the stories born from interaction between players and game mechanics. And these were the stories I shared in my paper.

One of your first companions in the game will generally be the shield-maiden Lydia. Due to her ubiquity, most people have some type of story about her. These stories have nothing to do with her non-existent backstory or her repetitive lines (such as the sarcastically delivered “I am sworn to carry your burdens” whenever you trade items). No, these stories come from the emotional attachment players develop with the AI-controlled companion.

In my first Skyrim play-through, I quickly grew confident in Lydia’s ability to soak up damage. I’d often let her engage with the enemy as I sat back and used spells or flanked the enemy with a melee weapon. Lydia was invincible—if brought to low health she would kneel down and stop fighting, and then enemies would ignore her.

Soon Lydia and I ran into a necromancer and his dragon pet, an encounter caused by my incessant wandering off the beaten path, an irresistible pull in Skyrim’s open and expansive game world. I relied on the same strategy, letting Lydia take a beating while I tried using some spells on the wizard. Realizing that the wizard and dragon were next to each other, I saw the perfect opportunity to throw a fireball and hit both enemies. After the fireball hit, both enemies were low. I rushed in with a sword to finish them off.

I imagine I said something haughty and dramatic and embarrassing to the screen in that moment, proud of my newest victory. As I looted the corpses, my personal loudness belied an uncanny silence from my speakers. Something sounded… off. But I couldn’t place it. The dragon bones and scales I collected were rather heavy so I turned around to Lydia so she could “carry my burdens.” Lydia wasn’t behind me. That’s why the game sounded so quiet—I had grown used to the sound of her footsteps behind me, her occasional comments about our surroundings. I frantically searched, and eventually came across her body. Just like the dead wizard and dragon, I was able to “loot” her corpse. I was devastated—my hubris at exploiting the near-death game mechanic had led me to a wonderfully horrific narrative moment.

Later I found out on an internet wiki that your followers can die if hit by an AoE (area of effect) spell after they’ve kneeled down to yield in combat. So I had killed her with my fireball. I felt guilty, even though I soon found a different companion as I wandered Skyrim.

This is the power of Skyrim, and the power of emergent narratives. The game designers probably had no idea that the game rules they designed for the player character’s companions would end up inspiring a compelling narrative around arrogance and guilt.  But I will never forget the genuine anguish I felt upon looting her corpse and the rebound of remorse when I realized her death was my fault.

Skyrim is an immersive, amazing game. That doesn’t mean it’s without fault. While I love the delightful feeling of discovery as you came across a new cave or bandit hidout, I am less enthused by the dull and uninspired main storyline. Whereas some NPCs have brilliant, fun moments of characterization (look up Ulfr the Blind), the main character’s growth is unrealistic and full of narrative dissonance. And for every time a random dragon encounter helps you defeat a difficult quest, another dragon encounter might kill a villager that provides an important quest.

While the academic paper I wrote was bold and new to the English department at my university, the concept of emergent narratives has been discussed frequently in the gaming world. As is too often the case in critical discussion of video games, people often pick a side—emergent narratives or traditional “on rails” narratives—and begin a shouting match. Should games go one way or the other?

I don’t think so. Even though I cherish my Lydia story and the other tales my own mind created through Skyrim’s interactive mechanics, I also cherish games that follow a traditional narrative structure, such as Knights of the Old Republic (which I will indubitably cover in a future Throwback Thursday blog post). The interactivity required for games mean that some measure of personal input will be required by the player, and that personal input will add extra emotional impact to the game’s plot and dialogue as well as any narrative created solely in the player’s mind.

Anyway, if you somehow still haven’t tried out Skyrim, I’d highly recommend it. Bethesda recently released a special edition of the game with some graphical improvements, so now is a great time to start. While many games provide similar opportunities for stories based off the game’s mechanics, Skyrim’s focus on inciting wonder and encouraging discovery set it apart.