“ are often considered criminals and damned from birth, and the game starts with you as a prisoner on the way to the execution site,” he adds. An example of a connection between Blackness and Skyrim “is when you are sentenced to death immediately after creating your character,” he says. The parallelsĪlthough I have a personal connection to the game, I wanted to explore if there was a deeper, more profound connection between my identity as a Black person and Skyrim.Īccording to DEI communication specialist and host of The Unapologetically Black Gaming Podcast Cortez Washington, the parallels between the struggles of Black people and the game itself can be derived from very early on in the storyline and isn’t above critique. The autonomous gameplay that the sandbox RPG has long been applauded for has given me so much peace.
I created my character as a Redguard assassin/mage type, while retaining opportunities to explore other skill sets and fighting styles. A game with an open world, pretty solid character-customization options, and an expansive list of main and side quests, the fifth installment of the Elder Scrolls franchise gave me a chance to exist in the ways that my waking life did not allow.
