It is no secret that even though The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim released seven years ago, it continues to be one of the grandest and magnificently vast games of this generation. And while Bethesda has received some backlash due to its seemingly constant porting of Skyrim, millions of fans cannot help but to dive back into the game’s world and all of its lore. As it so happens, one player has studied the game’s lore deeply by reading every single book that Skyrim has to offer, ranking his top five.

As seen in the video below, Brian David Gilbert outlines his process of reading all 337 books in The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, excluding journals and diaries, while also categorizing them and ranking his top five. He states that he printed every single book out in 5.5 font, which became 571 pages of over 316,000 words. After reading a book, Gilbert would categorize it into one of 7 categories: historical, instructional, academic, mythical, dramatic, eh (medieval accounts), and good fiction.

The good fiction category consists of 58 books that Gilbert found to be exactly that, good. To be assigned to that category, the books had to answer “yes” to 3 questions composed by Gilbert:

  • Does it build the world around us? Does it give us a new perspective in the world? Is it good?

Finally, Gilbert chose his top five from the good fiction category, while recommending that Elder Scrolls fans also find and read them. Some of his top picks are book series, but were included since they follow the same story. Gilberts top five in order are:

  • Begger, Thief, Warrior, King Feyfolken 1-3 Argonian Account Palla Vol 1 & 2 Advances in Lockpicking

Despite The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim’s combat mechanics being somewhat substandard to where the bar’s set with today’s games, Bethesda’s numerous ports of the massively successful action-RPG show the immense fan base of Elder Scrolls games. Growing continually bigger and better, the Elder Scrolls franchise has established itself as one of the most-popular and most-played RPGs of this generation.

Taking all of this into consideration, Bethesda will look to capitalize on Skyrim’s success when it eventually releases The Elder Scrolls 6, which Bethesda recently stated will likely launch in the next-gen. Although The Elder Scrolls 6 is many years away, fans can at least ease their need for new Elder Scrolls lore by reading some of Skyrim’s literature.

The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is available now for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.

Source: Polygon – YouTube