Skyrim Clip Captures the Frustration of House Decorating

The expansive open world of Skyrim continues to stand as a testament to sandbox design as players keep returning to the game for everything from fighting dragons to decorating houses. However, a recent clip has shown that the house decoration, like organizing Skyrim's bookshelves and placing gems, can often be the more difficult and frustrating task.

This latest video, originally posted by Reddit user YeetoMojito, has already started to spread on the Skyrim subreddit, with players commenting on how painful it can be to see simple tasks go wrong. In this case, Skyrim becomes a perfect example of how older physics engines and poor controls can make a peaceful afternoon of tending to decorations as frustrating as any boss fight.

In the video, the player can be seen trying to place one of Skyrim's soul gems in one of the many holders that usually decorate mage quarters and enchanting tables throughout the world. However, the object itself seems to have trouble falling into place properly, first bouncing off the rim and falling out, all the way to colliding with the holder and glitching out entirely. At the very end, the gem even appears to drop into the holder before the collision causes it to lift itself out and drop onto the ground.

This isn't an uncommon occurrence for players trying to perfectly place items in their houses without mods, thanks in part to how grabbing and carrying items works in Skyrim. Without the ability to reliably spin or twist items in front of the player, it can be especially difficult to align anything to get ready to place anything from soul gems to weapons freehand. It's a symptom of Skyrim being over ten years old now, though now many players attest some of the 2011 janky controls to a part of the charm that the game can still bring nowadays.

Regardless of older controls or primitive collision, Skyrim still proves to be impressively long-lasting, with players still booting the game up for something as simple as decorating their houses. The frustration that comes from trying to get certain minor details to work can be irritating, but many fans have learned to live with it and embrace the strangeness. Hopefully, the upcoming Elder Scrolls 6 could improve some features and controls as players start decorating the new homes and mansions, removing some of what fans like the ones in the video have had to deal with.