I finished my second play-through of Skyrim tonight, and I confess that there was just a little bit of Elder Scrolls fatigue by the end of it.  It’s my own fault for looking at the Steam achievements list and deciding that, dangit, I was going to Collect Them All ™, because that had me doing some pretty tedious quest lines and some stuff that was, frankly, busywork, just for the sake of seeing a little icon pop up in the corner of the screen.

But, with 219 hours logged on the game, I can’t really blame Bethesda for me getting a little bit tired of the running back and forth across Skyrim working on the Daedric artifact quests and similar nonsense, and the tedious bits got redeemed somewhat by getting to giggle like a maniac just absolutely blitzing through the main and civil war questlines after knocking out all of the side stuff.

For the record, if you are ridiculously over-leveled and over-geared, with all of your quick travel destinations unlocked and the Elder Scroll already collected from Blackreach, it takes about five hours from the point where you walk into Dragonsreach to tell the Jarl that, hey, there was a dragon attack on Helgen and someone should probably do something about that.

I did allow myself one indulgence during the process.  When I had to make the trip to High Hrothgar, I actually ran all the way rather than just fast traveling to Ivarstead, and I’m glad that I did.  That path was so very carefully constructed to take the player through some of Skyrim’s prettiest vistas AND lined on both sides with shiny things to distract you, and making the run reminded me of just why I’d gotten so hooked on the game in the first place.  There are just so many tempting little paths to lead you up to ancient crypts or into giant camps or bandit towers and pull you away from the main quest… it took real effort NOT to let myself go exploring again.

So, now I get to join the masses patiently queued up waiting for TES VI, which will probably come shortly after Bethesda is tired of releasing Fallout DLC.  Sooooo… 2018?