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| Exhibit A: nightmare fuel. |
I've played a lot of Skyrim and emerged feeling unsatisfied. Being a thoughtful sort, I started to ponder why that's the case. Even if the interface, incongruities, scripting glitches, bugs, etc., were all tip-top, the game would remain unsatisfying for me. What is it way deep down in Skyrim that's wrong? And I've concluded Skyrim's basic problem is that it's uncanny. As in “uncanny valley.” When a human replica looks or moves almost—but not quite—like an actual human it provokes strong negative emotions in human observers. Think of corpses and zombies. The idea is that the high fidelity of the imitation makes its unnaturalness grotesquely obvious.
I’m only using the concept loosely here because Skyrim’s simulation of a world inhabited by agents and artifacts ruled by psychology and physics doesn’t even loosely resemble the real and what it inspires in me is not revulsion but an eerie feeling of emptiness. Skyrim’s design underlines the game's limitations in a way that forever sabotages its illusions and reduces my investment in its world.
