IKEA turned a shelf into a Skyrim companion, and now I sort of want to play Skyrim

I have never played Skyrim. Eleven years old, absurdly popular, remastered more times than I can keep track of, and it has simply never called to me. Then IKEA released an official mod that turns a Kallax shelving unit into a sentient companion voiced by Matt Berry, and for the first time in over a decade of Skyrim existing, I want to play it. An advert for flat-pack storage succeeded where an entire industry of marketing failed. I'm delighted and a little concerned about myself in equal measure.

What Kallax Storageborn actually is

This isn't a fan mod, it's an official collaboration between IKEA and Bethesda, built by veteran Skyrim modder Kinggath Creations and released for free through the in-game Creations menu on 10 September (PC and Xbox now, PlayStation "to follow"). Get overencumbered in-game and you're directed to a workshop near Falkreath, where a proper three-quest story sends you through two new dungeons collecting the pieces to build your own Kallax. Assemble it, and it wakes up, with Matt Berry, of What We Do in the Shadows and Toast of London fame, doing the voice.

Once built, Kallax can be summoned as a companion with its own shout, has what the mod politely describes as unfathomable storage capacity, and comes with genuinely funny touches: a weapon called the Allenblade, a piece of headgear called the Meatball Helmet, and a boss fight against something called the Clutter Golem. The tagline is "your inventory woes end here," which is a very IKEA thing to promise a Dragonborn.

There's an official trailer, and it's worth the two minutes:

The actual reason this is a Continue? story

I own several Kallax units. They hold my board games, because Kallax is the unofficial furniture of anyone with a hobby that generates boxes, records, comics or all three. So watching Bethesda and IKEA turn that exact shelf into a Skyrim companion is a strangely direct hit on a very specific part of my brain, and it's a decent example of something that happens constantly in nerd culture: one interest reaches sideways and drags you into a completely unrelated one.

The classic version of this is Magic: The Gathering leading to Dungeons and Dragons cards, which leads to the actual D&D tabletop game, which leads to the D&D movie, which leads to whatever comes next. It's rarely a straight line and it's never really finished. A couple of others worth naming: falling for a game's soundtrack and ending up buying vinyl you have no record player for, or getting into Baldur's Gate 3 for the story and somehow owning three D&D rulebooks within a month despite never having played a physical tabletop session in your life.

The nature of nerds and geeks is that we go down rabbit holes. That's the whole point of it.

Kallax Storageborn is just an unusually literal version of the pattern: furniture, of all things, as the entry point. I still haven't played Skyrim. I'm increasingly aware that this might be the week that changes.