Skyrim Designer Says It's Still So Popular Because of Unique Open World

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was released on November 11, 2011, and soon it'll meet its 14th anniversary. That's a solid age for a game, and it's impressive how this RPG's popularity has stayed strong for more than a decade.

In the next week's episode of the FRVR Podcast, Skyrim Lead Designer Bruce Nesmith shared that he's astonished by the popularity of the RPG even after all these years: "I'm eternally shocked by that," Nesmith said (via FRVR). "By all rights, a year later, some other game should have eclipsed it. And then two years later, three years later, five, ten. It's like 'what the hell is going on here?'

As for the reasons behind the immense success, Nesmith supposed that the secret is the unique construction of the game's open world. "I think Skyrim did the open world in a way that nobody had ever done before and very few people have really tried to do since."

The designer pointed out that it's important to fill this open world with peculiar, interesting details that hold players' attention and add life to the game: "And one of those things that we accepted, which a lot of developers struggle to accept, is that this means you're going to have quirkiness. You're going to have weird stuff happen. And if you say that's okay, you can get this diamond." Otherwise, the "smoothed," too polished version, without any "quirky things", even despite that they might be called "bugs," will not have "magic." The developer shared that the creators didn't intend to add such things to Skyrim – "it just happened," he said. 

Skyrim's world offers indeed vast and diverse landscapes, and one of the most creative projects inspired by the game's universe is the one crafted by YouTuber ShakeMistake. The blogger measured the paths in Skyrim by tracking his real-life steps and traveling in the game world, and investigated how many steps it would take to walk a path from Riften to Solitude and to climb High Hrothgar:

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