A wave of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim players are getting a little sentimental and booting up their old Xbox 360s and PlayStation 3s to "retire" their original characters.
Skyrim is now more than a decade old — 12 years, two weeks, and six days, to be exact — but remains in player consciousness as much as it did at launch. Bethesda's beloved role-playing game lets players explore a vast open world, fight great evils, and become a living legend, not to mention build a house, get married, and have kids.
Several players are currently taking that role-playing one step further, however, by revisiting their now veteran adventurers and retiring them. Though this isn't a particularly new concept for RPG fans, the current trend was triggered by Scutarior on Reddit.
"This is gonna sound cheesy, sentimental, and a bit much, but hear me out," they wrote. "I recently found my old Xbox 360 where I first played Skyrim. My total first play through, no strategy, no game plan, no knowledge of lore, I just went for it.
"It occurred to me, this account that I spent hundreds of hours on was just sitting there waiting for me to pick it back up at any moment. This little Skyrim dude saw me through high school, and part of college, and I just left him sitting this whole time. So I decided to get back on the 360 to retire my old guy.
"I took him to his custom built house, put him in some emperor clothes, put all the weapons away, and sat him at the table. Saved the game and shut it off. Gave the virtual dude some closure and said goodbye to my first playthrough. It weirdly felt kinda nice. Before you laugh at the idea, give it a try."
The post became very popular on Skyrim's subreddit, with other players chiming in with similar stories and several pledging to do the same themselves. "Good idea. Gonna boot up my PS3," said luigiknightx. "I'm gonna get super emotional, not gonna lie. That first save still feels like a second home to me. Even though i haven't played on it in a long time, just the memories of my first playthrough make me feel emotional."
Hbell-LarkbirdTO put their own spin on it. "This brought a tear to my eye," they said. "I might do that, or I might put her to bed with her husband like that couple in Titanic who cuddles in bed while the ship sinks." Plenty of other users agreed too. "This is beautiful and I will absolutely be doing this," CantBake4S**t said. "Even my husband who isn't a gamer said it's brilliant."
Many Skyrim players revealed they had done the same too, retiring their characters in their family homes or other significant places. "My first character is living happily as an alchemist on her farm, surrounded by friends, her children and her beloved husband who opened a shop," said TiioK. "After saving the world a few times, they decided to stop with the fighting and said goodbye to the Companions."
Though it's a little less wholesome, AntiJackCoalition did something similar with their villainous character. "The account I did the most s**t on — like Dark Brotherhood, Thieves Guild, Companions, civil war, Dragonborn DLC — vanilla playthrough ending I retired sitting in some big Bruce Wayne-ass mansion in the mountains with a lot of gold," they said. "It does feel really nice to leave them to themselves after everything is over."
With The Elder Scrolls 6 still five years away at least, fans have had to find their own ways, like this, to keep the ageing Skyrim entertaining. Another player recently accrued a 267,000 gold bounty murdering 5,000 NPCs in a quest to kill "everything that was killable", while another fan recreated the game in Age of Empires 2.
In our 9/10 review of the beloved RPG, IGN said: "Skyrim is a rare kind of intensely personal, deeply rewarding experience, and one of the best role-playing games yet produced."
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.
