The greatest joy in Skyrim is running up an impossibly steep mountain face

Climbing mountains in Skyrim
(Image credit: Bethesda)
Escape your world

PC Gamer magazine

(Image credit: Future)


This feature first ran in PC Gamer magazine, as part of the Escape Your World series. For more quality articles about all things PC gaming, you can subscribe now in the UK and the US.

I hereby offer my apology to every environment artist working in games, past, present and future. How many hours do they spend creating lavish, gorgeous, massive open worlds? Hundreds? Thousands? Huge teams spend years bringing to life spaces we could only dream of exploring—resplendent fantasy vistas and detailed historical reimaginings both. And how do I respond to this work? By running face first into a mountain.

My strongest memories of Skyrim are of being pressed against a cliff texture. Yes, it's a game filled with big moments—the dragon attacks, the dramatic battles, the fun sidequests discovered in unlikely locations—but those are punctuations on a game that's often about simply travelling through an enormous world.

Less than an hour into a fresh playthrough, I'm rubbing up against the mountain west of Riverwood, trying to carve my own path to Bleak Falls Barrow in an effort to retrieve a golden claw stolen from a nearby shop. Presumably there is a path that leads here—a painstakingly crafted and playtested route that will contain just enough adventure and excitement to make for a satisfying journey. And yet I've never found it.

Climbing mountains in Skyrim

(Image credit: Bethesda)

Skyrim, like most RPGs, has a compass that points to your next destination. And me, like most idiots, treats that not as a helpful guide, but an absolute beacon of truth. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Or, more often, a straight line that leads through a mountain that eventually becomes too steep to climb.

The trick to climbing in Skyrim is persistence. If a mountain cliff becomes impassable, keep going anyway. Keep moving forward, but tilt your mouse to the left or right to start sliding along the horizontal axis. As long as you keep holding the W key, you'll almost never lose vertical position. Eventually you'll start to see opportunities for gaining height—gentler slopes that, with the help of some risky jumps, yield greater elevation.

The trick to climbing in Skyrim is persistence.

Am I ruining my own sense of immersion? Yes, but I'd argue that I'm doing so in a way that makes me appreciate the game even more.

It's tempting to think about escapism purely in terms of the fantasy a game is trying to depict. You're the chosen one, fighting back alone against the forces of darkness. You're the cowboy, railing against the greed and corruption of the civilised world. You're the truck driver, shipping essentials across the highways of Europe. But your lasting impression of a game is more than just the fantasy it's trying to sell. It's about the way you chose to play.

Climbing mountains in Skyrim

I was getting bored of screenshots of mountains, so here's a nice fox. (Image credit: Bethesda)

Games once held a sense of mystery and wonder. As a child, it felt like anything was possible in these rudimentary worlds. Eventually, though, my knowledge of what games could do—what they could be—started to grow. Even as the worlds became bigger and more complex, the infinite possibility space closed in. While plenty of games surprise with their ideas and execution, the sense of magic was lost. I used to think that was a sad thing, but I've grown to appreciate the relationship that forms in a work that's familiar and known. 

There is no mystery left in Skyrim. I've played it for hundreds of hours. I've modded it. I've looked inside its editor to find out what makes it tick. And it turns out there's escapism in predictability and order. Our world is chaotic to the point of feeling random. The relationship between cause and effect is so cosmically vast as to be beyond human understanding. In games, though, it can be reassuring to see the edges of a world; to find the limitations of the simulation. If you know what a game can be—if you understand its rules and design—you can also create tricks to turn it to your advantage.

In games, you can run at a cliff until you reach the top. What could be more empowering than that?

Phil Savage
Editor-in-Chief

Phil has been writing for PC Gamer for nearly a decade, starting out as a freelance writer covering everything from free games to MMOs. He eventually joined full-time as a news writer, before moving to the magazine to review immersive sims, RPGs and Hitman games. Now he leads PC Gamer's UK team, but still sometimes finds the time to write about his ongoing obsessions with Destiny 2, GTA Online and Apex Legends. When he's not levelling up battle passes, he's checking out the latest tactics game or dipping back into Guild Wars 2. He's largely responsible for the whole Tub Geralt thing, but still isn't sorry.

Latest in RPG
Rise of the Ronin review
Rise of the Ronin review
A lolporrit squeals in excitement while being driven in a moon buggie in Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail, patch 7.2.
Final Fantasy 14 patch 7.2's trailer has me finally hyped to get stuck back in—and to go to the moon and pilot some mechs, because why not
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 barbers change hairstyle - Henry sitting on a horse wearing armour.
How to find a barber and change hairstyle in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
Key art of the videogame Lunacid, showing a pale, long haired knight in purple armor contemplating a purple, flaming sword surrounded by the different phases of the moon.
One of my favorite indie RPGs is getting a follow-up made with FromSoftware's 25-year-old Super Mario Maker for first person dungeon crawlers
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 image - Henry riding a pink and blue striped horse while holding a fish
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 now has Steam Workshop support, and of course one of the first mods lets you adjust the 'jiggle physics'
Erenshor - A player and two simulated MMO party members stand on a plateau in front of a yellow landscape
This RuneScape-looking 'simulated MMORPG' has all the nostalgia without the drama because all the other 'players' are NPCs
Latest in Features
Monster Hunter Wilds' stockpile master studying a manifest
Monster Hunter Wilds' new gyro controls are a fantastic option for disabled and able-bodied players alike
Manhunt 2
I played the notoriously ratings-board-ravaged Manhunt 2 and was quite glad for the censorship actually
A busy marketplace in The Bazaar.
The Bazaar could be the future of autobattlers, if it stops strangling itself to death with its own microtransactions
Marvel Rivals characters - Hulk with his hands out as if he's grabbing the camera.
Marvel Rivals' growing roster of heroes scares me, but the game's director seems sure that all is under control: 'Everything is progressing smoothly'
Rainbow Six Siege year 9 season 2 key art - two Rainbow Six Siege operators facing each other
'Siege 2 was never on the table': Rainbow Six Siege X director explains why the 10-year-old FPS doesn't need a sequel
Gallica and the protagonist from Metaphor: ReFantazio.
The best deals in the 2025 Steam Spring Sale