Skyrim Grandma shoots down rumors of Starfield NPC appearance: 'I'm not in the game'

Shirley Curry, better known to gamers as Skyrim Grandma, said in a new video that despite the apparent Easter egg in the recent Starfield Direct showcase, she's not going to appear in Starfield as an NPC. She's also not going to play Starfield, because she's "too angry" that she (and the rest of us) are still waiting for Elder Scrolls 6.

Curry rose to fame in 2015 when a Skyrim "let's play" video she posted to YouTube attracted thousands of responses—and brought her thousands of new followers. She's continued to post videos to her YouTube channel since then, growing in popularity to the point that in 2021 Bethesda announced that she will be included as an NPC in The Elder Scrolls 6. She has also, understandably, expressed some impatience with Bethesda on that front: She was 79 when she first came to fame, which puts her at or around 87 now.

She also said in mid-2022 that she wasn't sure if she would play Starfield, the game preceding TES6, explaining that she would "have to wait until it comes out and see what it's like." But it seems that she's made up her mind a little earlier than that, because in response to comments on a new video, she emphatically stated that she will not be playing it.

Curry shared her frustration with the long wait for a new Elder Scrolls game in her latest video, which is driven in part by the fact that after years of dedicated play, she's finally run out of Steam with Skyrim.

"One of my problems, kids, is that I got so upset with Bethesda for not making Elder Scrolls 6 and getting it out here for us to play, that I was angry, and I was getting—I played so many different stories that I've made up in Skyrim over the years that I was finally starting to get a little bit bored with it," she said. "Didn't have a new one to play, so I just felt like, well, 'Crap.' And I put the thing away and quit playing it. And now I'm bored! I was bored playing it, and now I'm bored not playing it."

Boredom notwithstanding, Curry confirmed in the comments that she really has no interest in Starfield, and also shot down rumors that she's going to appear in the game in some fashion. A gameplay clip seen during the recent Starfield Direct shows a ship with the callsign Grandma, which some viewers took as an Easter egg reference to the Skyrim Grandma. And it may be—but if so, it was done without her input or knowledge.

“No I'm NOT,” she wrote in response to one commenter who asked if she was excited for Starfield. “Too angry that they have put off ES6 too long!!!”

"That may have just been a little 'nod to me," she said in response to another who asked about the appearance of Grandma in the Starfield video. "I am NOT in the game."

Curry also rejected a suggestion that she's too closed-minded about the games she plays—"I'm not 'closed-minded,' I just don't like most of them lol"—and said that she's tried Bethesda's Fallout games but found them "depressing." And while she didn’t flat-out preclude the possibility of trying Starfield when it’s out, she said it’s really just not her thing: “I don’t play space games.”

"I have waited for so long for ES6, as has everyone else!" Curry said in an email to PC Gamer. "I have played [Skyrim] for so many years and made up my own stories within the game, that it's getting harder to find new stories in my head on the same 'land of Skyrim'.

"The [Starfield] presentation was nice...  but still, it's a 'space' game! I am just an Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim addict I guess. Lol!" 

It feels a bit odd to imagine Skyrim Grandma as "angry" about anything, but I'm pretty sure that her upset is really just the extremely relatable sort of gamer outrage we all feel from time to time when our favorite hobby annoys us in one way or another: A game is delayed, a weapon is nerfed, a remake just doesn't 'get it', or whatever. Curry's impatience is very understandable—The Elder Scrolls 6 is still years away, and Bethesda's focus is going to be firmly fixed on Starfield for the foreseeable future—but quite frankly I think a lot of us could take a lesson from her on how to handle it: Tell people who ask that you're a little pissed off about the whole thing, and then go find something else to play.