Ep. 007: The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim
Still Scrimmin’
The central tension of this episode isn't really about whether The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim holds up — it does, and they both know it. The more interesting argument is about what kind of game Skyrim actually is: a blank canvas that quietly routes everyone toward the same playstyle regardless of their intentions. Luke came in planning a mage build and ended up smithing daggers by the thousand. Alex arrived planning to tank and somehow became a two-handed sneaky thief. Skyrim, it turns out, has its own gravity.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks, released in November 2011 for Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 — and has since been ported to essentially every platform that has ever existed and a few that probably shouldn't have it. The fifth entry in the Elder Scrolls series, Skyrim is an open-world action RPG in which the player is the Dragonborn, a hero capable of absorbing dragon souls and unleashing powerful shouts, tasked with stopping the dragon Alduin from ending the world. It holds a 96 on Metacritic for PC. That number is not an accident. HowLongToBeat clocks the main story around 35 hours, but both guys illustrate why that figure should be treated as a loose suggestion at best: Alex is 40–45 hours in at level 27 and hasn't finished the main quest, and Luke is past 70 hours at level 40 on his return playthrough. The game was originally released in 2011 and the 10th Anniversary Edition dropped in 2021, bringing a wave of returning players — and apparently, at least one set of brothers with a podcast. Both played The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition via Steam on Windows.
This was Luke's first return to Skyrim in a decade. His original run was a college freshman winter break deep dive — solo dorm room, Christmas gift, easily over a hundred hours — and he describes the experience of replaying it as almost identical to the first time, which is either a testament to the game or a warning about pattern recognition. Alex is the last person on earth to play Skyrim for the first time, a fact Luke has been bothering him about for years and finally resolved by starting a podcast and forcing the issue. Their character choices set the tone early. Luke rolled a High Elf he named Elpho — a Disenchantment reference he did not explain to anyone before recording — with designs on destruction magic and enchanting. Alex went Redguard because the character looked cool and he didn't do any research. Neither plan survived contact with the game.
The mechanics conversation is where the episode earns its runtime. Luke's intended mage build dissolved almost immediately: destruction magic tops out and becomes less effective at higher levels, and he found himself falling back on sword-and-shield, obsessive smithing, and fast-traveling between every merchant in Skyrim to buy up iron ore and make hundreds of daggers — not because he needed them, but because it raised his smithing stat. His home base has always been near Whiterun, which sits next to a convenient blacksmith, and this playthrough he discovered you can actually build a house on land you acquire, a feature he apparently missed entirely the first time around. Alex's playthrough took a sharper turn: he got absorbed into the Thieves Guild questline out of Riften, accidentally became a two-handed warrior doing sneak-archer missions, acquired the Skeleton Key — an unbreakable lockpick — and has zero intention of returning it as the storyline requires. The Nightingale armor it unlocked makes his Redguard look, in his words, like Shredder from Ninja Turtles. Luke was jealous.
Both hosts also got pulled into the Dragonborn DLC without fully realizing it was DLC. Alex followed a warrior woman, ended up on the island of Solstheim, and found himself in the middle of the Miraak storyline, which has since become a thorn in his side because Miraak keeps stealing his dragon souls. Luke ran into the same trap ten years later and had the same problem — not enough dragon souls to unlock the shouts you need to fight him, and the only way to get dragon souls is to kill dragons that Miraak then steals from. There's a saving conversation that runs several minutes and contains real texture: the discipline of quick saving, the orc on the mountain path to the Greybeards that killed Alex four times and sent him back on a 15-minute horse ride each time, the companion NPCs who scold you for stealing while helping you rob people blind. The horses are a highlight — both hosts' horses have independently charged into combat against enemies who were completely ignoring their riders, with mixed results.
The Witcher 3 comparison comes up naturally near the end. Alex has it in his top five and admits it's influenced how he sees Skyrim: better story, better writing, more directed. What Skyrim has that Witcher 3 doesn't is total freedom — Luke played the same general path twice over ten years almost by accident, always drifting east, always ending up with the Stormcloaks, always doing the same things — and he's already thinking about a third playthrough where he forces himself west. The verdict from both: deep respect, unfinished business, and an implicit acknowledgment that nobody actually finishes Skyrim. You just stop playing it for a while.
Side Quests get a solid showing. Luke is rotating between Dead Cells, Slay the Spire — 50-plus hours logged, ideal for background Olympic viewing — and Mario Golf: Super Rush, where he is methodically unlocking every club set and is not interested in your opinion about this. He's also making his way through Twilight Princess on Wii despite its oppressively dark palette and pining for a Switch release. Alex has Metroid Fusion nearly wrapped on Game Boy Advance, took a curious detour through ToeJam and Earl on a Switch sale (charming once you understand what it's actually doing), has Empire of Sin on Steam after dropping Game Pass, and Tetris 99 crept into the rotation against his will. Dead Cells is on the docket for both, and it's clear the episode after this one is already circling.
This episode is unofficially brought to you in part by a private Mario Golf academy for people who need it. Ben, you know what you did. Enrollment is open. Luke is the only faculty. The curriculum is rigorous and the admissions bar is extremely low, which is the point.
Skyrim is available on everything. You probably already own it somewhere. If you don't, wait approximately eleven days and it will go on sale. Full episode wherever you listen — come tell us which faction you picked in the Low Five Discord. Or just come argue that Redguard was a perfectly reasonable character choice. The door is open.
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