Skyrim Special Edition (PS5 Upgrade) Review
10 years and countless cheese wheels later…
Oh, Todd Howard, you’ve done it again. You’ve successfully released The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim once more on the 10th anniversary of the game’s original release date.
Skyrim Anniversary Edition, priced at $49.99 (or $19.99 for those who own the last-generation version) dropped about two weeks ago, along with a free PlayStation 5 upgrade for those who already have the Special Edition. While I didn’t purchase the Anniversary Edition, the free PS5 upgrade enticed me enough to start yet another playthrough of a title lauded as one of the greatest video games of all time.
Bethesda Softworks has sold over 30 million copies in the past 10 years, and I’ve bought at least five of those sales (6 if you count the free PS5 upgrade.) I heard nothing but good things about it from my friends and had a black “Fus Ro Dah” t-shirt for a half year before I had the chance to experience the game for myself.
Initial experiences
My first purchase was back when I was 16, in late spring/early summer of 2012 for my poorly-optimized PlayStation 3. Loading screen times were abysmal, sometimes taking up to a minute in between entering and exiting buildings. Bugs were everywhere, but they were charming (I’ll never forget being an unwilling participant in a Giant’s space program initiative.)
This was one of the first video games that contributed to my love of long play sessions because there was so much to explore and experience. I distinctly remember one day during summer break, I woke up, went into the basement, turned the lights down low to resemble the torches in the game, and played for a solid 9 hours straight before eating something. Blood vessels burst in my eyes and they were sore for the next couple of days, but I didn’t care.
I shared the love of the game with my friends and we’d discuss events that happened in our playthroughs. One of my good friends at the time even bought what he referred to as “The Skyrim Bible,” a thick book filled with every tidbit of information on every quest, character, item, and location in Skyrim.
In the coming years, Bethesda released three standalone DLCs, and I ended up purchasing the game for a second time because at the time it was cheaper to buy the PS3 Legendary Edition than buying the DLC individually. Steam had a summer sale and I got to dive into another stealth archer build with mods on PC. Later on, I bought the game for PS4 and Switch because I wanted both the updated graphics and load times of the PS4 and the portability the Switch offered.
My love of Skyrim even extended into my academic life, and I used a new playthrough as an excuse to write an undergraduate essay about Native Americans, grave robbing, and burial rights and how the Nord’s lives reflected those historically lived by the Natives of the real world.
There is only one other game that exceeds the number of hours I’ve put into Skyrim over the years, and that is Grand Theft Auto Online. GTAO is a wonderfully chaotic parody of crime and the United States and it has a special place in my heart, but no other game has quite replicated the magic (pun intended) Skyrim has.
So, how does the latest version of Skyrim perform?
Gameplay
As many of you are well aware, you are the Dragonborn, a hero of mythical strength and abilities rivaled only by dragons that were once extinct long ago. Dragons have returned to Skyrim, and it is up to you to slay Alduin, the World-Eater, to prevent the end of the world as you know it.
Or, you can entirely ignore the main quest if you so choose (I know a lot of people who did.)
Skyrim features everything you’d expect from an RPG: questlines, NPC grunts, a leveling system, companions, lore, and seemingly endless dungeons to explore. But the beauty of the game lies in its ability to sidetrack you in unexpected and delightful ways.
In my most recent playthrough, I wanted to level up my Conjuration skills to do something different. As I was leaving Breezehome, my small but comfortable house in Whiterun, a conjurer approached me on the city street and challenged me to a duel, arguing that I wasn’t a real conjurer. I said to myself, “Alright, prepare to die,” rolled up my sleeves, summoned a Frost Atronach, conjured up a Bound Battleaxe, and destroyed him.
During another random encounter, I was riding my horse at night and three Vigilants of Stendarr (wandering priests) called out to me to come closer. I dismounted, walked over, and they immediately attacked me. As it turned out, these were vampires who not only had killed a trio of Vigilants, but they had also looted their bodies, hid their corpses in the tall grass nearby, and were posing in their mage attire to prey on other unsuspecting travelers.
It’s so remarkable to know that I’ve been playing this game off and on for the past 10 years, and there are still things I haven’t discovered yet.
Performance
Do you know those aforementioned long loading screen times I discussed earlier? They’re completely gone in the PS5 edition. I’ve never had Skyrim load as quickly as it does right now. From booting up the game to loading my save file, it only takes 6 seconds. Entering and exiting buildings takes 2 seconds max.
The game now performs at a steady 4K resolution and 60 frames per second. As someone who’s never had the budget or technical know-how to build a PC gaming rig, it feels like I’m playing on a high-end PC, but with a controller in my hands on my 55-inch 4K TV.
This version of Skyrim feels like this was how it was meant to be all this time. Load times next to nothing, smooth framerates, high-resolution textures; it’s all there. And with the PS5’s Rest feature, I can pause the game, go do whatever else I need to get done and hop on without even having to wait for the game to boot up.
It’s given me even more incentive to keep playing. I wanted to get a couple of hours in before writing this review, and I ended up finding myself sinking long play sessions in again just like I used to in high school. I ended up leveling my character to 39 in roughly a week, and I can’t remember being that invested in a game since Red Dead Redemption 2.
Final thoughts
In a world with lackluster and failed contemporary video game releases (Cyberpunk 2077, Call of Duty: Vanguard, Battlefield 2042, Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy — The Definitive Edition) Skyrim somehow manages to retain its replayability.
It’s still a glitchy mess in some places. The inventory system isn’t the greatest. Followers will unintentionally trap you in doorways. Alchemy will be as confusing as ever, the first Frost Troll you face will always be terrifying, and everyone still wants to send Nazeem to the Cloud District as soon as possible.
But there’s so much good this game has to offer in ways I can only see in a select few other titles in the past decade, including Assassin’s Creed Black Flag, Far Cry 4, God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man, and Red Dead Redemption 2.
All of these games offer player agency and let you play the game how you want to play it. The stories are some of the best in gaming and shouldn’t be missed. The characters are written expertly, and the worlds have been crafted meticulously, begging to be explored.
It’s incredible to me how in the past decade only seven or eight games have made that much of an impact on my memory, and how my latest Skyrim playthrough gave me the same serendipitous loss of time and reality the likes of which have only been rivaled by two different Rockstar games.
I love Skyrim, and I can’t wait to see how groundbreaking The Elder Scrolls VI will be.
