DISCLAIMER: this are ramblings from an old playthrough I did of skyrim on my Xbox so I don't have any images to ease the wall of text. Sorry TT-TT

I have the same problem most people have with bethesda rpgs, they are too bland. They are good games for sure, but they are also like junk food. Easy to ingest but you get sick of it fast.

So I put a challenge for myself, to play the hardcore mode of the game as a full mage.

Full mage its like the most common self-imposed challenge in the game and with good reason. Starting with magic only sucks but after a few levels you can go back to the usual power fantasy the game's known for.

Things started pretty normal, I was gonna get killed, then a dragon appeared, smoked the town and then peaced out. I was free once again to start on this new path of magic and maybe a lil necromancy.

So I strayed away from the normal path (the tutorial dungeon with the Fus shout) and went just exploring trying not to die to everything that touched me, committing some light arson on the way to get some money until I found someone that could take me to Winterhold so I could start my magic training into becoming the best mage/necromancer around.

Once there I noticed my first problem with the game.

HARDCORE MODE SUCKS FOR ANYTHING BUT MULTICLASS

Let me elaborate. With the survival or hardcore or whatever it's called mode you get new meter just like in Fallout, but this time they added the "warm meter". Every piece of clothing has a new stat that tells you how much it will warm you up, if your cold your stamina bar gets cut off but if you are REALLY cold you could die freezing.

The Problem with this is that all the mage apparel have low warm stats and the mages city is on top of a snowy mountain. So every exploration you try to do. Or if you try to go anywhere else without fast travel you will have to fight the cold or multiclass because the next guy you can pay to take you to another town it's on Solitude.

So I said "Ok, I can deal with this until I complete the Winterhold story and then peace out to another place" and went forward, enrolled in the school and went to the first dungeon. For some reason the dungeons work as indoors, so the cold it's not a problem in them, you can actually warm up in them (which was convenient for exploring).

After I raised some zombies to fight for me I finally got to the boss, blasted him with flames and got my first shout. Ice something. I was happy to get this first I've felt that, after all my hardships with the warm system in the game and the cold being my worse enemy so far I was feeling the sense of accomplishment of finally starting to dominate the cold and use it to my advantage.

I mean it would have been that way if it wasnt for my second problem with the game.

You can't skip the tutorial dungeon

You need to go to whiterun, go to the dungeon, beat it, get Fus, kill the dragon, use Fus, to be able to use any other shout in the game (I think, maybe I'm just dumb). So I went to Whiterun, killed the dragon, was awarded "best person in whiterun by process of elimination" and got the messages from some weird old guys on top of a mountain saying "i showed you my shout pls respond" and went back to Winterhold with my new cold shout.

Back in Winterhold a power struggle was going on, someone was trying to wake some ancient power or something idk idc that much really, I just iced him to be able to move the plot forward when some time stoppers dudes awarded me the "god of all mages by proccess of elimination" title making me the grandmaster of Winterhold.

With this new title in my hands I was now ready to take on the world as one of the most important wizards in Skyrim... but no, finishing this quest does nothing for the rest of the game and here it's when i got mad and stopped playing.

I really like the idea of roleplaying and the ESO world its so vast and perfect for this but in the end you can't escape the power fantasy, nothing really changes, no matter how much you try. You are the chosen one that will defeat the big bad boy, nothing else. You will only be the Dragonborn, a fantasy, an empty husk, known only for your ability to shout really loud.

And that makes me really sad.