In creative writing class, they teach you: show, don’t tell. Todd Howard and his clan at Bethesda Game Studios obviously took notes on that, because Skyrim is all about stumbling into enigmatic scenes and being drawn to figure out what took place here. It shows you a dead body somewhere unusual, an incongruous set of objects around it, and it knows you’re pulled into the narrative in a way that hearing an NPC telling you about it wouldn’t achieve.
Skyrim’s so good at this style of environmental storytelling that a portion of its player base has been cataloging and uncovering its mysterious scenes, unexplained phenomena, and tiny details that hint at wider conspiracies since its release. What’s especially impressive, on the part of virtual detective and developer alike, is that many of them do have solutions and conclusions, like the ‘treasure foxes’ whose AI pathfinding routines take you towards high-volume treasure areas through a programming quirk. Players aren’t just reaching for meaning – often, the designers and writers really thought about these details, and lay out mysteries for us to eventually solve and uncover.
But many haven’t. So consider the enduring legend of these six mysteries an argument as to why The Elder Scrolls 6 should seek not to provide answers to these questions, but to ask new ones. The last thing we want is an RPG version of Prometheus barrelling through our beloved lore, replacing the enticing with the mindlessly prosaic. Let’s treasure these unsolved mysteries, and let them inflame our imaginations until a new game arrives with a fresh set of head-scratchers.
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