I recently went back to playing Skyrim; I wanted to finish the main quest line of the playthrough that I started a while ago and get a few achievements on my Xbox.

As my Argonian warrior smacked his way through a Dwemmer ruin, batting spider bots out of the way I came across a Gollum-like creature that died like everything else I set my blade to, this was a Falmer. After all, how could a blind bow-legged scrawny creature like that stand against my Ebony armoured hero?

Nearly ten years ago the story was different. Nearly ten years ago when Skyrim first came out I was pumping all my stat points into stamina so I could run away if I ever saw one of these creatures. I didn’t find their appearance scary or anything, for some reason I thought they were incredibly tough and I hated the idea of a roadblock that would cause me to reload back to my last save.

There are obviously much more powerful creatures in the game but for some reason the Falmer had me running away, turning the difficulty down and just avoiding sections of the game. I did complete it back then but with a very low kill count.

I can look back at how silly this was and laugh at it like I used to laugh at my friend who was scared of The Flood from Halo. I grew up. I realised that the Falmer were just another type of bandit in the game; I probably became a better player of the game or maybe an update made these creatures weaker. On Adept and Expert difficulties I now find little threat in these weirdos.

It’s nice to know that I’ve changed in this way over the years and I’m proud that I no longer fear the not so massive danger of the not so impressive collection of pixels. Generally I don’t like change but whatever has happened over the last decade allows me to enjoy one of my favourite games in a different way, it’s now an adventure in those caves and not a horror.

I wonder what else has changed about me.