Skip to main content

You can play The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim until the universe ends

Usually, when people bandy about the word “forever,” it is attached to a healthy dose of rhetoric. Weddings are full of love that will go on forever. People will be listening to The Beatles forever. It is rhetoric steeped in absolutes that can’t possibly be reached. Even the universe will end one day. But if Todd Howard, the director of Skyrim for Bethesda Game Studios is correct, as the last light from the final star in existence is extinguished, there may still be people hunting down bandits and finding items in the game.

Ok, so maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration, but rhetoric aside, the intention is genuine. In an interview with Wired, Howard claimed that the game will never run out of quests for you to do.

Thanks to what the developers are calling the “Radiant Story System,” the game will continue to generate random quests for you to embark on, long after you have completed the primary story and all of the pre-arranged side quests. So while theoretically the game can go on forever, it is probably more accurate to say that Skyrim will feature self-generating mission content with no fixed end. That isn’t quite as sexy as saying you can play it forever, but the idea is the same.

Many of the quests will involve simply completing generic objectives. You may run into a town and have a citizen complain about the bandits attacking travelers, which will then send you out after them. The game will also utilize its own world inventory, so other quests may have you searching for a natural element like a particular flower.

Skyrim will also generate new missions through the game’s various factions and guilds. If you are an assassin, you will be given missions to kill various random characters—usually minor NPCs—scattered throughout the world. If you are a thief, you may be tasked with stealing particular items. The game will determine your progress and choices, then create missions to suit you.

Howard also claimed that many of the side quests and additional missions will be integral to learning the entire history of the world of Skyrim, and in the interview he cited the developer’s previous game Fallout 3.

“With Fallout, it’s not as beautiful a world to everybody,” Howard told Wired. “We had to find ways to make exploration of [a destroyed wasteland] interesting.”

In the post-apocalyptic world of Washington D.C. depicted in Fallout 3, the story basics were all laid out as part of the plot, but to really understand the world that you inhabited you needed to go out of the way to explore. There were several locations in the main game (not counting the DLCs) that featured massive areas with enemies and story elements that you may not have even known about if you didn’t spend time randomly exploring. Partaking on some of the additional quests in Skyrim may send you to areas that you didn’t know even existed.

“The world is probably the one thing that sets [Skyrim] apart from other games,” he said. “It feels really real for what it is … It’s just fun to explore.”

The Elder Srolls V: Skyrim hits stores for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on Friday, November 11.

Editors' Recommendations

Ryan Fleming
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Ryan Fleming is the Gaming and Cinema Editor for Digital Trends. He joined the DT staff in 2009 after spending time covering…
Fallout 5 is happening, but not until after The Elder Scrolls 6
People standing outside Nuka World.

Bethesda's Todd Howard confirmed that Fallout 5 will be the studio's next project after The Elder Scrolls 6.

In an interview with IGN, Howard said, "Yes, Elder Scrolls 6 is in preproduction and, you know, we’re going to be doing Fallout 5 after that, so our slate’s pretty full going forward for a while. We have some other projects that we look at from time to time as well."

Read more
How to get married in Skyrim
Aella the Huntress from The Elder Scrolls Skyrim

As Bethesda's most popular console title, with 30 million copies sold, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim still attracts new players in 2021 while retaining old fans from 2011. Skyrim's lure is limitlessness; players can do anything, even get married and adopt kids. Are you tired of sucking up dragon souls and slaying giants? Maybe it's time to settle down in a cozy cottage in Eastmarch with the love of your life and some children to raise. This guide will focus on how to get married in Skyrim and all the blissful bells and whistles that it brings.

Read more
The best games like Skyrim
A dragon breathing fire while flying.

The impact of Bethesda titles on gaming as a whole is hard to even grasp. Some of the most influential and beloved RPGs of all time have come from this studio -- or were revived by them -- and give players ways to interact and live in worlds that few other games even attempt. The Elder Scrolls series has always been one of their crowned jewels, but it was the fifth game in the series, Skyrim, that took the fantasy open-world series to levels of popularity that rival the biggest IPs in gaming. Now, over 10 years since that game came out, there are hundreds of people still playing that game to this day for all the freedom it gives.

As great as it is, 10 years is old for any game. Skyrim may be constantly released on every new system that comes out, but there's no denying that there's only so much that can be done to make this game look and feel modern. Plus, for many out there, even the huge map is running dry of secrets to find and stories to be told. With the next entry in The Elder Scrolls still years off, a ton of people are looking for their next fantasy RPG fix. Whether you love the open world, deep story and lore, RPG-style combat and character building, or simply a giant experience that lets you play the way you want, we've rounded up all the best games like Skyrim you can play right now.

Read more