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I remember the year 2006 when I first heard of Elder Scrolls via the launch of Oblivion and it looked like no other game I had played before - it was THE best looking RPG back then and still a classic today. The fact that the game brought the medieval fantasy trope so vibrantly to life, paired with the fact that the game was so long, made me enjoy it for several years after that, and also because it was so moddable.
5 years later, this giant of a game got its sequel: S K Y R I M.
Hoo boy, the internet was abuzz for months after release, from arrow in the knee jokes to how life-ruiningly fun the game was, but when I first saw Skyrim's trailer I was a bit underwhelmed - the graphics, while definitely a big improvement over Oblivion, still didn’t look THAT much better. 2011 was already an age when games like Crysis 2, Killzone 2, Metro 2033, Battlefield 3 and the like were out. Thus, the long awaited Skyrim in its hues of grey somewhat disappointed me and I didn’t get it on day 1. Instead, I chose to wait for the Legendary Edition that included all 3 DLCs: Hearthfire, Dragonborn & Dawnguard.
When I finally started playing Skyrim I noticed that Bethesda had made a huge number of improvements (also with the experience from Fallout 3 & NV). Many of these inspired by popular mods for previously released Bethesda games. For example, the fact that NPCs now carry torches in the dark was something that wasn’t so in Oblivion, but the content of a very popular mod. Or Dungeons no longer having a silly door that you need to open to get in or out. You can place your books on bookshelves, towns are illuminated at night, you can hear your heart pounding when low on health and on top of all this, there is horse combat now!
Things like cooking, forging, smelting, tanning and sharpening have also been introduced - all you need is ore that can be smelted into ingots, which in turn are needed to create armor. Buying ingots and crafting your armor yourself is cheaper than buying it directly from the blacksmith. Of course, different armors need different types of ingots, like moonstone for Elvish & orichalcum for Orcish. Weapons & armor no longer degrade after fighting, and repair hammers are thus non-existent in Skyrim.
Magic underwent a HUGE improvement. You can now cast spells with your left hand or your right, or even simultaneously. Destruction battlemage? Grab your sword in your right hand and cast spells with your left as you charge in for the kill. Restoration battlemage? Strike blows with your right while you have your left hand ready to heal yourself. Defensive warlock? Grab your shield with your left hand to ward off enemies who get too close, while hurling spells with your right. Full-on spell caster? Hurl a torrent of spells at your enemy using both hands! Obviously your mana should be appropriately large for this kind of warfare. The fact that staffs are now one-handed instead of two is even more of a bonus for wizards as this allows them to cast spells using their mana while simultaneously casting spells from their staff that does not tap into their mana but uses up magical charge instead. And the utterly useless "touch" school of magic has been removed and the "on target" school of magic has been changed in that instead of hurling one spell after another at the foe, you now launch a steady stream of magic at them. There are also some pretty new improvements like the illumination spell now in the form of a glowing ball of light that floats above your head or sticks to any surface you hurl it at. Impressive!
But what I strongly dislike about Skyrim are its random enemy encounters. Bears & sabre cats jump at you from behind a pile of rocks, and it doesn’t take much playing to realize this wasn’t a nice effect of the immersive game world taking you by surprise, no, this was literally an enemy materializing out of thin air when your character gets into its scripted trigger zone. This is fun once or twice, but being unable to ride your horse for 5 minutes in one direction without being ambushed by such a creature spawn is just ANNOYING! At least in previous Bethesda games you could see enemies already existing in the game world (and thus avoid them) instead of them being created on the spot.
Now Skyrim is a cold place, but Bethesda has made sure that the game world isn’t as monotonous as a Cyrodiil player new to Skyrim might think - you'll still find plenty of green forests and almost Cyrodilic pastures in Skyrim (e.g. around Falkreath or Riften), while the hold stays true to its icy hallmark the further north you go - from the cold craglands of the Reach over the frozen coast of northern Skyrim to the volcanic lands of Eastmarch reminiscent of Yellowstone, there is variety. It gets even better when it comes to dungeons - the mainstay of every RPG. In Oblivion each dungeon had a different layout, but the majority of them were generic (mine, cave, ayleid ruin & fort). In Skyrim on the other hand, while dungeons can indeed be divided into these same 4 types (though it's nord crypt instead of ayleid ruin), each dungeon feels like it was hand crafted to have its own unique and distinctive charm - each has its own story to tell and it feels like its own mini-adventure when you embark on clearing out a dungeon in Skyrim. While there are several that are duds (just a large room inhabited by two bears you're done clearing within a minute), the Dwemer Ruins are nothing short of fantastic that sometimes need more than an hour to clear as you keep working your way ever downward and marvel at the great cities of the dwarves now inhabited by foul goblinlike Falmer - I've had more than one breathtaking Moria moment while doing these ruins!
While Cyrodiil had 9 distinct cities (one of which was destroyed), Skyrim only has 5 cities of such size. The other 4 are merely glorified villages, and even the largest city cant match the amount of hours you spent in the Imperial City. Perhaps to make up for this, Skyrim has gone overboard with quests. While Oblivion had 174 quests, Skyrim has 273. While a great deal of them are fetch-quests, i.e. an NPC asks you to retrieve an item for them from a ruin and bring it back for a reward - which can get tedious after a while (and these also get dumped in a new "Miscellaneous" section in your quest log) there still are enough themed and characterful quests to easily give Oblivion a run for its money.
And unlike the Fallout games (or even Oblivion) Skyrim's quests not only take you to almost every possible corner of the map, but also encourage a style of play where you can spend the first 100 hours without even bothering with the main quest. There's that much stuff to do - you never get bored. I can't speak of this kind of satisfying main-quest-avoidal in any previous Bethesda game, not even Oblivion.
Something I really love is the world map - it's no longer a piece of parchment, but an actual, interactive bird's eye view over 3D terrain, including weather effects like clouds and volumetric fog. The latter also tend to wrap around mountain peaks as well, making things look that much more realistic. While Skyrim may be a bit smaller than Cyrodiil, everything feels more natural - Cyrodiil felt like a game world, where dungeons were evenly spaced out and felt like they were deliberately placed there, instead of being hewn into the landmass and thus part of its physical geography. In Skyrim you dont need fancy mods like Oblivion's Unique Landscapes to find yourself navigating between beautiful rivers, rocks, forests and ravines. Everything feels like it has been shaped by the raw forces of nature rather than dragged and dropped in a game editor.
No previous TES title had its gameworld as beautifully designed. Once you play Skyrim, you are transported into this province and your real life self takes a significant toll as you spend so much time in this realm instead! Skyrim proves that it's not just MMOs that drain your real life away!