The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim has a long history, and the latest good news is the much-needed 60 FPS patch it received on the Nintendo Switch 2. This was a huge improvement for those wanting to enjoy the Bethesda classic while on the go. There were a bunch of minor performance and graphical fixes, too, which made the experience overall a thousand times more enjoyable, so if you're looking to jump into Skyrim in the year 2026 on Switch 2, now might be a great time.
However, while Skyrim is undoubtedly one of the most iconic games to have been released in the last two decades or more, it really is starting to show its age in a couple of key ways that can make it pretty tough to fully enjoy in 2026. We've been spoiled with a ton of QOL changes and features in newer titles, so returning to a game made by the standards of 2011 can be a bit of a culture shock. From outdated narrative design to a UI that's almost always modded by fans, let's look at a few of the reasons why Skyrim is a little rough around the edges.
Still Needs More Choices That Matter
RPGs Have Taken Big Steps In Recent Years Regarding Choice
Narratively speaking, Skyrim drags a little bit behind some newer titles due to the lack of true choice. The only major choice you make is whether you side with the Imperial Legion or the Stormcloaks, but the main quest doesn't have multiple endings or branching paths. It's a stark contrast even to another Bethesda open-world RPG, Fallout 4, which still gives you several factions to pick from and a couple of ways to deal with the story at the end. Cyberpunk 2077 features multiple endings depending on your choices leading up to it in the final act and who you take along with you, plus whether you trust Hanako or not.
Outside of open-world RPGs, we have titles like Baldur's Gate 3 where every single minor decision will ripple into a butterfly effect. All this is to say, Skyrim has been narratively surpassed, and arguably, even at its time, it was narratively on the weaker side compared to a title like Fallout: New Vegas, for example, which came out about a year before Skyrim. This can feel jarring, considering how well Skyrim's world is crafted and how good some of its dungeon design is, with very little repetition. Plus, there are genuinely good side quests, so it's a shame the main story remains so lackluster.
Companion Management Feels Outdated
More Options, More Ways To Track, And So On
Skyrim has a huge abundance of characters you can recruit as your companions, which is nice, but their narrative depth isn't always equal. That's a problem to discuss for another day, though, as the main issue is managing these followers. They often get stuck on the environment; they trigger traps, and it can be difficult to make effective use of them, having to talk to them to make them do something. It would be easier to have hotkeys at your disposal to point them towards specific items or interactable objects in the environment.
Moreover, tracking where these companions are is an absolute necessity in an open-world environment. With all the housecarls you find, it's a bit annoying looking around for them in each hold's city if you haven't purchased a home to send them off to. Perhaps this is nitpicky, but with the amount of mods we have addressing this in Skyrim, it's safe to say it's something players find generally quite annoying. In Fallout 4, for instance, you send your companions you've recruited to specific settlements, which makes them much easier to manage.
Grappling And Climbing Are Missing
A Simple Thing That Could Make A Huge Difference
There's been some amazing open-world games (not necessarily RPGs) that have come out with incredible mobility and travel options. Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are two great examples where you can move around the world in different ways and explore the topography freely. Considering Skyrim's hills and mountains were its selling point, it's a shame we don't have simple features like climbing or grappling a la Cyberpunk 2077, for example.
That game has a lot more verticality, to be fair, but it could be one game to look at for inspiration if Bethesda is intending to deliver a better experience in the future. Starfield fixed this issue by introducing a boost pack, which makes sense for its setting, of course, but this all goes to show that the next Elder Scrolls game desperately needs some kind of new way to traverse the world to keep things interesting. At least in Skyrim, your horse is one heck of a climbing machine, even if it's a bit immersion-breaking.
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This article originally appeared on GameRant and is republished here with permission.
