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the dragonborn wearing a helmet and hide armour raises a shield to protect from a dragon's flames
Image via Bethesda.

12 years on, a huge number of Skyrim players still haven’t finished the game

Only a world-eating dragon to slay, what's the rush?

We’ve all got games we start and never actually get around to finishing, but it turns out that over two-thirds of Skyrim players haven’t actually completed the main quest yet.

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Inspired by a Reddit post about games people keep restarting but never finishing, I decided to dig into the stats for Skyrim, as a lot of people suggested they had barely even touched the title’s main questline. According to Skyrim‘s Steam achievements, just 31.5 percent of you have actually slain Alduin and officially finished the game. I’ll admit, after spending hundreds of hours in the Norse frost myself, I had to force myself to basically speedrun a main quest playthrough to do it, but it’s still wild how many people haven’t.

Redditor spectral_chips highlighted the problem perfectly: “Install. Spend hours modding. Finally rejoice you can play the game. Promptly move on to something else.” With so many mods and the ability to turn Skyrim into a near-limitless playground, why bother with the main quest? It’s fairly dull in comparison to the Thieve’s Guild and Dark Brotherhood questlines, and not as fun as becoming a werewolf or Vampire. PC players actually seem to beat the game more than PlayStation though, as only 7.2 percent of people have the Dragonslayer trophy on Sony consoles. Xbox players appear to be the most likely to actually finish, with 52 percent of 199,652 tracked players being recorded as having the trophy.

I found playing the game in Survival mode made it feel like a whole new experience, so if you’re struggling to finish it due to boredom or getting overwhelmed with mods, give it a go. It adds hunger and the need for rest and warmth, and you can only level up when you sleep, so no more cheesing bosses and leveling up mid-fight to restore all your health. Oh, and health doesn’t automatically regenerate.

Another fantasy RPG players say they haven’t been able to complete is The Witcher 3. I’ve tried to get into it multiple times myself and just can’t, so I feel their frustration.


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Issy van der Velde
Issy loves his video games and his guinea pigs. He's been writing about games for a few years now, but esports is new to him, so please be nice and treat him like the fragile little baby he is.