Anyone who has ever jumped into the latest western RPG without setting aside some serious slide-bar time will be disappointed as to how long it’s going to take before they get to swing their first sword. Oftentimes many an hour can be lost wrestling with delicate features such as jaw line protrusion, eyebrow width or ear lobe density in a bid to create the worthiest individual with which to start your quest. Physicality though, tends to be just the tip of the iceberg.









Finally, you’ll have to give your creation a name. This is the really hard part. After all the fiddling with sliders and stats, allocating precious few points to ability trees as if they were your own starving children, how do you come up with a single name that accurately reflects all your hard work? Is Aragorn taken? You’ll probably mull over a name for the same amount of time you spent on all the rest combined. Or you’ll just cheat - pick name that you’ve used before, or steal it from a favourite book. But surely, after all that effort, you should come up with a name that perfectly captures where your hero comes from, and what they represent? Or, maybe just name them after your cat.





Now that you’ve agonised over all that, you can start getting into the exciting stuff. Walking around and getting to know the townsfolk while fighting off crop-threatening were-rabbits for the local farmer is what gives life to your hero outside their vital statistics. But this is exactly when the doubt starts to set in...





Maybe those extra points I put into Intelligence would have been better spent on Charisma? Why does my nose look weird from this angle? Given that I’m apprenticed to the local innkeeper, why am I a 70 year old wizard? The two hours of tinkering you’ve spent so far are nothing compared to the eighty-or-so you’re about to commit to, so before you pass the point of no return, you’re going to want to be certain that everything is just right. Back to the drawing board it is then.





Some games are more forgiving than others when it comes to character creation. With Skyrim, Bethesda ditched all but the physical side of the crafting process in favour of a more organic development, dependant entirely on play style. This is great, unless the very world itself is also at the mercy of players’ endless compulsion to tweak.





know your game won’t be nearly as immersive without that mod which makes city guards carry lanterns at night. Why would you want to kill a dragon on the ground, when you could shoot it out of the sky? How could you possibly start, knowing that all these great features abound, just waiting to be implemented into your perfectly crafted personal narrative. And you’ve still got to come up with a good name. The breadth of talent and dedication that makes up the Elder Scrolls modding community is astonishing. Thanks to everything from improved wine bottle textures to complete graphical overhauls, Skyrim has become an infinitely richer experience since launch. However, all of this can get a bit overwhelming. Even with the various ‘essential Skyrim mods’ lists floating around the web , it’s very easy to get bogged down trying to create your very own ‘perfect game’. The obvious ones are as simple as choosing your character’s race; better UI, realistic lighting effects, slicker combat mechanics etc. But then you get sucked in to the more obscure stuff. You justyour game won’t be nearly as immersive without that mod which makes city guards carry lanterns at night. Why would you want to kill a dragon on the ground, when you could shoot it out of the sky? How could youstart, knowing that all these great features abound, just waiting to be implemented into your perfectly crafted personal narrative. And you’ve still got to come up with a good name.





In short, playing RPGs is hard work. I’ve seen people visibly age before being satisfied with their mod load-out order. But we like it like that. We’d complain if we were limited to simplistic choices and stock character-models. That’s what consoles are for.