Just before playing Skyrim for the first time, I watched my brother play Oblivion for an hour. We had a copy that was given to us years ago that we just decided to crack open. Man, that game didn’t age well. Besides the obvious degradation in graphical fidelity, its take on the middle ages appeared very rote and the mechanics looked like Dungeons and Dragons to a fault.
Skyrim blew the doors off of its predecessor and pretty much every other game out there. There wasn’t a game with a world as big, graphics as pretty, or an experience as immersive. For dozens of hours of my life, I thought the game was damn near magical.
From the opening credits, I immediately was pulled into the role of my character. This gorgeous and lively world was my oyster to tackle in virtually any order I wanted. While the game had narrative beats, the openness of it all really gave it the sense that I was creating my own adventure. Oftentimes, I would simply wander around the world until something interesting popped up and go from there. What usually lied ahead was more interesting than many linear stories I’ve played in games.
Admittedly, I never did finish every quest in this adventure, let alone the main story line. However, the many hours I put into it were well worth it. Rarely has a game absorbed me like Skyrim, and it may take until the next one before that happens again.
In Third Person 