A fan of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has rendered the game’s opening cutscene as an oil painting. Skyrim‘s opening scene is one of gaming’s most enduring memes, being the center of countless jokes in the decade since release. It’s hard to overstate the endless meme potential of Skyrim‘s opening scene, which has become one of the more common targets of reposting in recent years.
The strength of its popularity comes from the endless videos that splice Skyrim’s opening dialog into a wide variety of situations, from real-life blackouts of some kind to being knocked unconscious in other games. If the screen can go black, then somebody on the internet has most likely inserted Skyrim’s opening into that moment. In some cases, the screen is simply obscured in some other way, such as a bright orange haze descending due to one of the many sandstorms in Forza Horizon 4, which makes for perhaps one of the strangest crossovers to have ever come from the meme.
Now, Skyrim’s opening dialog has been immortalized by one artistically-inclined fan. Reddit user macvodka has revealed an oil painting of the scene, showing the moment the Dragonborn first awakens to Ralof’s “Hey, you. You’re finally awake.” The Imperial driver of the prisoners’ transport wagon is seen to one side, with other mounted soldiers leading the way to Helgen in the background. Much like in the original cutscene, the colors are dull and muted, a reflection of the Dragonborn’s tiredness and the dour atmosphere as the wagon brings them to their intended execution. The punishment is notably steep, especially as the Dragonborn may not even have done anything to warrant it, though perhaps the Imperials are simply trying to cope with Skyrim’s uncontrollable prison population.
It’s me again. I know I had to paint that one scene from Skyrim. Hope you like it as well! from gaming
Click here to view the original post on Reddit.
This is not the first time that macvodka has painted a scene from The Elder Scrolls; the similarly memetic guard from Oblivion is the much-praised focus of a previous work, along with a variety of other memes from across the internet. It appears that they have struck an entertaining niche in the combination of the classic art form with the visual jokes inherent to modern memes. The opening scene of Skyrim itself has become famous thanks to the versatility of its opening moments in mashups, unlike the rest of the game’s propensity for glitches and bugs. In fact, it was revealed last year that much work had to be put into the scene in order to prevent it from being derailed by bees.
Hey! I’ve painted the guard in Oblivion! from gaming
Even a decade on, Skyrim is still inspiring impressive fan works. In all the variations of the Skyrim opening scene out there, this is perhaps one of the most inherently creative. While there are many examples of inventive mixing and matching pairing the scene with new and funny contexts, it must be noted that creating an oil painting requires a significant amount of time to dedicate to the task, as well as an eye for detail. So as funny as the scene is, macvodka’s work must also be praised from a technical standpoint. They have managed to take this classic Skyrim meme and turn it into a true work of art.
Sources: macvodka/Reddit, macvodka/Reddit
