Originally Posted by Joystiq

Bethesda has created one of the only games I can recall where the world is so steeped in "stuff to do" it creates the illusion of a world completely without limit. Its scope defies the very notion of "completion" as we've come to think of it relating to games.
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This is the deepest, lovliest world ever created for a single player to explore, and one that no one should deny themselves. This is a game about following Emerson's advice, leaving the trail and finding that the most powerful force on Earth or Tamriel isn't fire or sword, but the ever-insistent desire to know what lies beyond.

Originally Posted by IGN

The Elder Scrolls V pares down the amount of skills and cuts out attributes like Endurance and Intelligence altogether. There's no time wasted on the character creation screen agonizing over which skills to assign as major. You don't assign major and minor skills at all, but instead pick one of ten races, each with a specific bonus. High Elves can once a day regenerate magicka quickly, Orcs can enter a berserk rage for more effective close-range combat. These abilities are best paired with certain character builds – the High Elf regeneration is useful for a magic user – but don't represent a rigid class choice. Major decisions don't need to be made until you're already out in the world and can try out magic, sneaking and weapon combat, emphasizing first-hand experience over instruction manual study, letting you specialize only when you're ready.
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Bethesda Game Studios' achievement isn't simply that there's well over one hundred hours of content in Skyrim, but that the content so frequently defies expectations. To have such an immense game where so little feels like a grind is incredibly rare, and a significant part of what makes this one of the best role-playing games ever created.
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Featuring the same kind of thrilling freedom of choice The Elder Scrolls series is known for along with beautiful visuals and a stirring soundtrack, playing Skyrim is a rare kind of intensely personal, deeply rewarding experience, and one of the best role-playing games yet produced.

Originally Posted by Destructoid

Skyrim is perhaps the most encouraging, rewarding and downright indulging Western role-playing game I have ever played. That sounds hyperbolic, and perhaps it is, but it's something I truly feel in my bones. With Skyrim, Bethesda has taken everything successful from previous Elder Scrolls games and mixed it with the best elements of recent Fallout installments, all while leaving behind the chaff. The result is a game as deep and flexible as Oblivion but as accessible and intuitive as Fallout 3. More importantly, it's better than both.
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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is every single reason to love a Western role-playing game, condensed into a single comprehensive experience with nothing lost in the conversion process. It is a game that will drown those who step into its absorbing, overwhelmingly detailed world, a game that will bury you and refuse to let go. Yet your submergence will be agreeable, your burial ecstatic, and the hands placed around your throat welcomed like those of a lover's. To play Skyrim is to enter into a relationship, one that provides feelings of empowerment, yet demands total submission.

Originally Posted by Giantbomb

Skyrim offers a fantasy world so rich and expansive that to describe other games in those terms after playing this one would just feel hollow. The sheer amount of content packed into the game is a true marvel of video game production; it's even more marvelous that all of it is so well executed that you want to see and do everything, and better still that you're free to play it all in whatever way you want.

Originally Posted by Wired.com

And oh, what a globe it is. Unlike its 2006 predecessor The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which at times felt like a carbon copy of Generic Fantasy Map #40192, the world of Skyrim is a Viking-inspired treasure trove of flavor and charm. Every city has its own personality. Many have their own cultures, each fraught with racial conflicts and frightening adversaries. Gone are Oblivion’s bland medieval cities and repetitive demonic gates.
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To list all of the things you can do in Skyrim would take longer than a Neal Stephenson novel. You can attune observatories in ancient dwarven ruins. You can play hide-and-seek with ghosts. You can get married in an anti-climactic ceremony that may or may not be a cynical commentary on the realities of actual marriage.

You can climb frost-covered mountains and fight off frost-breathing dragons. You can discover the terrible secret behind an eccentric museum. You can enter a drinking contest, black out and attempt to retrace your drunken steps in what must be a tribute to The Hangover. You can join the Dark Brotherhood, a group of assassins who made me yell “holy shit” more times than I’d like to admit (thanks to a beefy quest line packed with death contracts, cold-blooded betrayal and all sorts of gory surprises).

Or you can just steal a horse and gallop across the map, killing everyone and everything in your way.

This sheer amount of content may seem overwhelming to many gamers, particularly in light of the fact that the game has an infinite number of procedurally generated quests. If you’re worried about losing sleep, you should be. I have spent 62 hours with Skyrim over the past two weeks and I still can’t stop thinking about all the things I have left to do.

The game’s greatest accomplishment is that it is a paradise of escapism, a lavish love letter to immersion. Diving into Skyrim’s world feels both thrilling and comforting, like riding a rollercoaster or swimming in the ocean. There is very little padding. There are very few scripted quests that aren’t worth experiencing.
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Perhaps this is why Skyrim’s world is such a triumphant accomplishment. It gives you a large blank canvas and tells you to do what you’d like with it. You guide your own narrative, control your own fate, choose your own adventure. You are your hero.

Longtime gamers may remember the era in which every game’s credits ended with a note saying “SPECIAL THANKS: YOU.” Skyrim doesn’t need to say it; it’s thanking you every step of the way.

Originally Posted by Noonan

I'm still on the fence on what to get it on; PC or PS3. My PC can play MW3 with no issue but it looks like Skyrim has a bit higher requirements. Decisions...

Originally Posted by slop101

Seems like the common theme is that the game locks up, a lot...

Originally Posted by Noonan

That's exactly what's drawing me to the PC version. I should be able to get respectable performance, so that's probably how I'm going to go.

Originally Posted by flashburn

That's an easy decision then, PC. Modding in Oblivion was huge, and Skyrim will be no different in that regard.

Originally Posted by Groucho

Only 9.5 from IGN? I only buy 9.6 and higher games. Try harder next time, Bethesda.

Originally Posted by edstein

You jest but I expect this game to be included in the inevitable Bethesda mega pack coming up during the Steam Christmas sale. I bought Oblivion for the PC cheap last year during that sale.

Originally Posted by nickdawgy

Would it have killed them (IGN) to give it a 10 like the one they gave GTA IV?

Originally Posted by superfro

Who cares?

Originally Posted by superfro

Who cares?

Originally Posted by nickdawgy

I'm just saying .5 more and a 10 would get noticed more than a 9.5.