Good afternoon/evening/morning fellows. I don’t know what day or what time it is, I just know that my head has been crammed into the maw of Skyrim for several eternities and now that I can take a breather, I’d like to share my naive and frustrating Skyrim experience.

In the first couple of minutes of the game, after all the character customization and graphics fiddling was done, I can confidently state that Bethesda never planned for a player of my particular creativity. I followed the NPC into a nearby building where the dragon wrecked the stairwell, but instead of jumping after him, I decided to look around my menu map and “Fast Travel” to the town that I was already trying to flee. I mean, if you’re trying to escape someplace and they give you a warp option, what was the harm in trying it?

This sent me outside the gates, where I spent the next 20 minutes trying to find a way back in to Helgen to progress the story. It was rather ridiculous hearing the dragon rampage on loop behind the doors, but I was unable to do anything because

a) my hands were still bound,

b) there were no weapons/armor/items in my inventory

and c) the town was perfectly sealed to the outside world.

I climbed a mountain and tried to slide down into the town, and for a moment, I thought I was successful, but then I realized that I was trapped in an invisible trench with really high invisible walls. I had to “Fast Travel” back to Helgen gates several times to find a proper location for actually entering the town. Once I was in town, I noticed the quest marker was pointing me at the keep, so without much further ado, I raced through the double doors.

Alas, this was a big mistake, because the doors I entered were not re-openable. I was trapped in a barred tower (the wrong section of the keep) and because I was indoors, I could no longer “Fast Travel” anywhere. Fortunately, my last autosave was on top of the mountain, though inside the town would have been much better.

I was at a loss for what to do. People were shouting, fires were raging, and I had to find my original spawn location to progress the story. I tried a different door to the keep and finally stumbled into Hadvar, my NPC guide and timeloop liberator. If anything, this game shows me I am tenacious, if somewhat stupid. No more experimentation, then. I’ll stick to the guides.