The Way For Me, But Not For Thee
How Skyrim presents something great, then sabotages it immediately
We all know Skyrim. We all know that, in the vanilla story of the game, your custom fantasy hero/antihero/war criminal is fated to be Dovahkiin, or Dragonborn: the inheritor of a dragon’s soul and therefore the only person alive capable of stopping the questionably-imminent threat of the divine dragon Alduin, the World Eater. As Dragonborn, you are able to give dragons a final death, absorbing their soul and using the knowledge and power in those souls to learn powerful dragon Shouts, or Thu’um — words of power in the dragons’ own language.
You’re not the only one who can use the Thu’um, however. You learn early on that others can learn to project their voice into a Shout as well, through long study, force of will, and meditation. You meet the Greybeards, monks dedicated to the Way of the Voice, a pacifistic creed that bends the power of Thu’um toward worship of the gods first and foremost. Arngeir, one of the Greybeards, says this about their philosophy:
“The Voice was a gift of the goddess Kynareth, at the dawn of time. She gave the mortals the ability to speak as dragons do. Although this gift has often been misused, the only true use of the Voice is for the worship and glory of the gods. True mastery of the Voice can only be achieved when your inner spirit is in harmony with your outward actions. In the contemplation of the sky, Kynareth’s domain, and the practice of the Voice, we strive to achieve this balance.”
When you later meet Paarthunax, the benign dragon that heads the Greybeards’ faction, the whole concept becomes even more compelling. The game presents you with a powerful magical ability, some history, differing philosophies regarding that ability, and a faction leader (more or less) that serves as evidence that dragons need not be evil.
All of these things are interesting! All of these things are compelling, with room for nuance and exploration and roleplay!
If only the game allowed for any of that.
As a Role-Playing Game (RPG), Skyrim promises the ability for the player to conceive of a character, from personality to playstyle, and play the game with that idea of a character in mind. Skyrim lets this down in a number of ways (many of which understandable due to the technology limitations of the time and realities of development), but none more core to the game’s story than the way Skyrim forces the player to engage with the Thu’um both mechanically and narratively.
It’s important to note that at the point in the story where you meet the Greybeards, you’ve already met two dragons and killed one of them — absorbing that soul and engaging with the mechanical side of the Shout system is mandatory. You’ve already grown powerful through violence, exercising the game’s (and franchise’s) parasitic economy of power (discussed in compelling detail in Trevor B. Williams’ Skyrim’s Competitive Cosmology: A Fluctuating Economy of Power and Parasitic Deification). So here, in High Hrothgar, you’re given both more information, and an alternative perspective. Surely you can study and mediate on other Words you’ve learned on your travels, and learn shouts through study and meditation? Let’s ask good old Arngeir and see if we can follow the Way of the Voice at all.
“The Dragonborn is an exception to all the rules — the Dragon Blood itself is a gift of the gods. If we accept one gift, how can we deny the other? As Dragonborn, you have received the ability to Shout directly from Akatosh. We therefore seek to guide you on the proper use of your gift, which transcends the restrictions which bind other mortals.”
“That is commendable. But remember, the Dragon Blood is itself a gift of Akatosh. Do not try to deny that gift. Your destiny requires you to use your Voice — why else would Akatosh have bestowed this power upon you? If you remember to use your Voice in service to the purpose of Akatosh, you will remain true to the Way."
Sounds like a “no” to me. Instead of giving the player a set of choices or mechanics for engaging with the Thu’um in a way that mirrors the Greybeards and Paarthurnax — a path of study and meditation — Skyrim waves its hand and presents a loophole that implicitly says “you should not want to engage with the world in this way”. The textual reason the Dragonborn cannot mechanically learn new shouts outside of dragon slaying is the leader of a pacifistic monk faction telling you not to bother. Violence is the sole language of Skyrim, domination its syntax. . . despite the ancient dragon at the Throat of the World that says this:
“Dov wahlaan fah rel. We were made to dominate. The will to power is in our blood. You feel it in yourself, do you not? I can be trusted. I know this. But they do not. Onikaan ni ov dovah. It is always wise to mistrust a dovah. I have overcome my nature only through meditation and long study of the Way of the Voice. No day goes by where I am not tempted to return to my inborn nature. Zin krif horvut se suleyk. What is better — to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?”
A polarizing, but inspiring epic figure, a dragon that mastered himself for the sake of knowledge and peace, an individual who metaphysically bears the same blood and soul the player does, explicitly states that dragons are domineering creatures, but that nature is not deterministic. That’s powerful!
The player is never narratively nor mechanically given the opportunity to explore that same question outside of emergent player behavior. There’s no reward of any kind for doing so — in fact, the game implicitly punishes you by trying to engage with that philosophy because doing so means not engaging with the language of violence the game is built upon. That means no skill levels, no experience, no progression, no loot, no unique quests or stories. The player is punished for trying to engage with these themes in the story.
The counterargument here is, of course, that challenging the game’s language of violence should be hard. It should be punishing. You’re dragon-blooded, after all, it’s metaphysically not in your nature. My problem is not that doing so is difficult. My problem is that doing so is pointless. If the option to try, but still be textually put in a situation where it’s impossible to do, existed, the game would at least be making a statement. Such a quest or choice would be an opportunity for Skyrim to make a statement on destiny and fate, the realities of necessary violence, or the nature of power, all while still funneling the player back to the game’s core paradigm of violence. Instead, we’re told to not even bother thinking about it and just go do what we do best: reduce health bars to zero and consume souls. Skyrim is an action RPG after all, it’s only to be expected that the violence and action be the main mode of interaction with the game.
The worst part is that shades of a more interesting world still exist in the game. You can meditate on words of power and consider what it means to be a dragon by picking one of only three words to briefly talk about with Paarthurnax . . . for a small buff to the selected shout. The crumbs of something nuanced and interesting are only there to better serve the violent, dominating syntax of Skyrim’s game design, despite suggesting that deeper, more fleshed out mechanics may have been considered during development.
The modding community for Skyrim is legendary for both talent and tenacity, and certain combinations of mods can give Skyrim’s Thu’um the mechanical depth I crave, but the way the game approaches the intersection of the Player as Dragonborn, the nature of Thu’um, and the narrative expectations of an RPG will likely forever remain a disappointment.
I doubt that the ability to Shout will make a return in The Elder Scrolls VI when it releases someday, but I write this on the off chance that this unique and interesting form of magic reappears. I hope that Bethesda doesn’t make this mistake twice, either with Shouts or with another kind of magic system. With the runaway success of Baldur’s Gate 3, it should be clear that gamers want, or at least appreciate, RPGs that provide depth and choice beyond purely forms of violence (which is still a criticism of the D&D 5e ruleset BG3 is built on, by the way). The tools and foundation exist for great things here, and I’d hate to see their potential be squandered or cut in the next big fantasy RPG blockbuster.
