I'm about 100+ hours into my first --and only-- Skyrim character, and I just realized after going back to it a few days ago that, hey, I'm only in the mid 50s level-wise, and have a stack of achievements left to unlock if the mood hits me. That's a lot of time, and a metric ton of extra content to see. I'm kind of proud of the fact that all of those hours were of actual play time, and not an inflated clock because I fell asleep in front of it (which I am wont to do). Still, "how do you keep at it for that long?" asks my imaginary friend that doesn't play video games. Well, here's an answer that's really not much of an answer: The jukebox in my head.

Like just about everybody, whether they admit it or not, I have some song stuck in my noggin throughout the day. Sometimes its overt enough that I'm humming it aloud, other times it's not really even there until I take a second to clear away what's right in front of me. When I play games, though, something always triggers tunes in my subconscious that bubble to the surface. It usually doesn't take much; a name of a location, the decorations on a virtual wall, the chirping of an obnoxious character, etc. Here's my unofficial inner-workings iPod for the Elder Scrolls V:

Fleet Foxes - Blue Ridge Mountains: This immediately popped to mind after a few hours of scaling the cold, mountainous expanse of Temriel. It makes sense; Fleet Foxes sell themselves on the backwoods aesthetic and multiple chiming vocal arrangements that call to mind frontier exploration and possible talk of revolution. A song found on their first full-length, Blue isn't one of the band's singles, but a quiet mood piece found near the end of the album that builds to a sweep near the middle before descending back down for a low tempo ending. Very fitting for long, lonely meandering through the dragon-filled countryside.

The XX - Try: Another slow burn from a band that has perfected the art, Try opens with an eerie warble of sound that conned me into thinking that it was going to be a different kind of track. Instead, its quiet, contemplative lyrical longing (like much of the band's other work) doesn't necessitate the need to connect deeply with the words as much as it encourages the soundscape to wash over the listener, making it another perfect track for long nights full of snowy exploring or singular moments of pause overlooking the aurora borealis. As an album track, it doesn't quite match up to the acapella majesty of Coexist's opener, Angels, but nothing can. In fairness, though, great as it is, Angels doesn't fit here, at least from what my subconscious tells me. Try, though, is perfect.

Mogwai - I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead: Speaking of perfect album openers, the first song on the prolific post-rock band's 8th album The Hawk is Howling is well placed to begin just about any RPG with it's deliberate, momentum-building piano that crashes into a crescendo that carries the song for several more satisfying minutes. Free of vocals that would have just gotten in the way to begin with, I can distinctly recall the final moments of my first dragon kill set to the thundering orchestra of the game's own score, but with I'm Jim still hitting my inner ears as this first monster's soul was absorbed. It was quite a moment.

I'm sure there was plenty of other music that came and went, but these were the three that always seemed to come back. Besides, Skyrim's score is perfect for the game to begin with, so the necessity for other aural distractions just didn't exist.

Image from Dead End Thrills, a site that you should go to