The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim was the first major game I invested many hours in. It's funny, but it took years for me to discover what my personal taste in games actually was, and I think that's difficult for anyone who always wanted to keep an open mind, trying the most varied kinds of experiences.

On one hand, you realize you like things you never imagined you could like, precisely by making the effort to explore what's new. On the other, the variety is enormous: award-winning games, best-sellers, the most popular titles, with many criteria for discovering a game and wanting to access it. In the end, I didn't know exactly what I wanted. I think I matured a lot in this regard when I had a PlayStation 5, a Nintendo Switch, a Game Pass subscription, and a Meta Quest. At one point in my life, I had every platform.

With the Nintendo Switch, I went after Nintendo's great exclusives, the classics from the NES and SNES era. I started comparing those games with the PlayStation 4 and 5 ones, and with the PC games I'd been playing for longer. It was through that process that I began to understand what Skyrim meant to me.

I'm not sure whether Skyrim shaped my personal taste or whether my taste already existed and Skyrim was exactly what I needed to find. Creature and creator. The game has characteristics that seem intentional and others that perhaps aren't, and the unintentional ones work very well too.

A casual, accessible RPG

Skyrim is an open-world exploration RPG, but casual and accessible. It simplifies systems that in other games of the genre are complex to the point of being intimidating.

When I played Baldur's Gate 3, one of the most award-winning RPGs in recent years, I felt like I would need to stop and study the systems before I could really play. There was a sense that I'd need to understand the rules of Dungeons & Dragons — not just the mechanics, but the entire lore and world — because right from the start the game presents you with an enormous amount of creatures, possibilities, and rules. The result is overload.

Skyrim is the opposite. The systems are simple, and even without fully understanding them, the difference is almost imperceptible. It's essentially a first-person action game where mistakes have a low cost. I started playing it knowing almost nothing about RPGs and did perfectly fine.

The interfaces are straightforward. The skill tree is accessed by looking at the star-filled sky inside the menu — intuitive and visually appealing. I can focus on being stealthy, a mage, a barbarian, or an archer, unlocking abilities as I gain experience. The inventory is a simple and transparent list that doesn't hide the game behind it. When I kill an enemy, I can take everything they're carrying: the sword, the clothes, anything.

No defined class, no anxiety

In Skyrim, there's no class selection at the start. There's none of that obligation to research builds, watch videos, read guides to decide what kind of character to create and carry that decision throughout the game.

You choose a race and start playing. The class emerges naturally from what you do. I always created strange combinations: a mage with healing abilities who fought like a barbarian wielding an axe, resorting to fire magic when the axe didn't solve it, and to bow and arrow when I wanted a critical headshot on an enemy.

I simply did what I wanted, without barriers, obeying only my desire to have fun in that open and free world.

That freedom enormously reduces the mental load. Large RPGs like Mass Effect, Fallout, and Baldur's Gate itself prioritize choice and its impact: you can make a decision and an important character dies, and that changes the story. That is the essence of roleplaying — the radical freedom to decide. But that freedom carries weight.

In Skyrim, decisions rarely change much. That can be seen as a limitation of the genre, or simply something that was left out. But for me it's an enormous benefit: every time I open the game, I'm not anxious about the consequences of my choices. I can play tired, at night, with a head full after work, without fear of making an irreversible mistake and having to go back to a save.

Baldur's Gate requires me to be mentally prepared to play. Skyrim requires nothing beyond willingness.

A contemplative comfort game

Skyrim became a completely contemplative experience. A comfort game, a walking simulator. Everything it did — intentionally or not — made it more immersive. You walk through that world, see the sky, the stars at night, the forests, the caves, and keep going without much concern about systems.

Instead of spreadsheets of numbers, build combinations, and menus upon menus, you simply live in that world. Contemplate the views, fight skeletons in caves, move forward.

That's where I found my real taste in video games: games that relax me, that bring peace, comfort, and contemplation. That take me out of the chaos of the real world, the stress of work, the frustrations of life, and put me in a comfortable place.

Skyrim defines my personal taste in games.