Almost Fourteen years after its launch, , The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim It is still a difficult phenomenon to explain. Despite the passage of time and Bethesda’s multiple releases since then, the RPG continues to attract tens of thousands of players every day. its main designer, Bruce Nesmith, assures that he is still “eternally surprised” by the fact that the game simply has not stopped living.
A popularity that does not age
during a conversation for Frvr Podcast, Nesmith reflected on the longevity of the title and admitted that he never imagined that he would continue to be so played more than a decade later. According to the latest data on Steam, Skyrim: Special Edition has more than twelve times the number of active players what The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered. Even when the latter is a more recent version.
“I am eternally surprised by that,” Nesmith confessed. “For all rights, another game must have passed one, two or five years later. But we still see huge figures. Todd[Howard]He showed us statistics on how many people were still playing, and it was impossible to believe. Ten years later, there were still thousands of players a day.”
For the designer, the explanation is not in the graphics or in the expansions. Is found in The type of experience that Skyrim offers, one that few games have been able to replicate.
Skyrim’s open world secret
In an industry where almost everything is promoted as “Open World”, Nesmith believes that Skyrim He did it in a way that No one had tried before, and that few have dared to reply since then.
“I think Skyrim He made the open world in a way no one had done before, and very few have tried afterwards,” he explained. If you try to eliminate everything unpredictable, you lose the magic.”
The team allowed the game to have Failures, rare behaviors and spontaneous moments, because that contributed to the world feeling truly alive. Instead of directing the player experience, Skyrim Let each person had his own adventure. This is something Nesmith considers the key to his success.
“We didn’t put anything out of bounds. We didn’t want to manage the player’s experience. It was a player-guided experience, and very few games have achieved that,” he added.
More than a game, an experience
For millions of fans, Skyrim It’s not just an RPG: it’s a imagination toolbox. Each game is different. Every decision is a new path. The title is not limited to offering a list of missions. It offers you a dynamic environment where exploration, curiosity and freedom have more weight than any predefined narrative. Nesmith sums it up like this: “There is no other open world like Skyrim, not even between our own games.”
About to turn 14, the Bethesda classic Keep reigning among the open worlds, and will probably continue to do so until it arrives The Elder Scrolls VI… Whenever that happens.
