I love the teetering and towering mountains tucked away southeast of The Rift. I love the unwavering majesty of the Palace of the Kings. I love the open, breezy, ethereal quietude of Falkreath. Whenever I replay it - which I do fairly often - I always end up spending tens of hours just wandering around Markarth, where rivers flow with blood and silver. There is no other video game location like it.Īgain, Skyrim has dozens of other gorgeous locations. Blackreach is captivating and striking because it is absolutely singular. Magnificent waterfalls tumble over impossible mushrooms, sculpted centurions loom large over gated fortresses, and the paths forward are obfuscated not by obstacles but by the inherent beauty of everything surrounding them. Falmer roam lurching bridges and winding stairs, their chitinous pets being confined to pens of blood and bone. The unique Crimson Nirnroot grows here and only here, while hermit alchemists live - or lived - out their days pursuing solitary scientific endeavours. Most of all, though, Blackreach is mysterious in the truest sense of the term. It is, in every sense of the term, a magnificent mosaic of all the individual elements that make Skyrim so enduringly excellent. Colour and noise blend with darkness and silence to create a sort of ethereal balance hovering between nature and machinery. All of a sudden, the world explodes in front of you: as you spill into the Blackreach basin, you are surrounded by iridescent fungi and impossible natural architecture. Put it this way: you’ve just spent close to an hour trudging through the industrial steampunk framework of a long-deserted dwarven city, where steel sings to the ever-spinning whir of cogs and pistons. Related: If You're Tired Of Waiting For The Elder Scrolls 6, The Elder Scrolls Online Fills The Gap Nicely As our features editor Andy Kelly recently discussed in his piece on why Skyrim is so enduring, this is a world that focuses on eliciting feelings of adventure and exploration - Blackreach is, by far, one of the most powerful epitomes of that. Perhaps more so than anywhere else, though, my favourite place to revisit in Skyrim is still the spellbinding ancient haven of Blackreach, buried deep below the derelict and dangerous dwarven Tower of Mzark. From the soft solemnity of Ancestor Glade to the imposing majesty of Dragonsreach, Skyrim isn’t just stunning in the immediate sense of the word - it is also aesthetically diverse, stylistically versatile, and thematically coherent. Skyrim is teeming with some of the most tremendous vistas in video game history.
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