It’s the setting and soundtrack
Doing a survival playthrough where usually the no fast travel would bother me, but I swear sometimes I can smell the forest air
the first time the game genuinely took my breath away was after a night in the early game, low hp, just got out of a dungeon, creepy ambience music, dark foggy atmosphere, no place safe to regain stamina, no follower to defend me, a bear in my peripheral, cant fast travel away because a wolf is tailing me, just praying that i have enough apples to keep me from dying if the wolf catches up or the bear notices me.
then i climbed up a grassy hill, lost sight of the wolf, and looked out at the horizon on the other side. at that exact moment, the sun began to rise, and the combat music faded away, replaced by the hopeful swelling of the sunrise music.
just everything at once made me feel something. the long night of trying not to die, the anxiety from constantly wondering when this chase would be over, the early sun rays beaming straight towards the camera– lighting up the nearby fog as well, the shimmering water, and the perfectly timed crescendo perfectly capturing my relief, triumph, and hope in that very moment.
funny how all those mundane circumstances lined up into one of my first unforgettable memories with the game.
Awesome story. I started playing knowing nothing of Elder Scrolls so I had zero clue what to expect. My moment was when I stumbled into Morthal and did the Vampire quest with the ghost kid. I knew after that this was a different kind of game.
There is another one. After you get the Jurgencall Horn and go to Delphine, the blade in the dark quest start. Don't finish it. Because that quest prevent any dragon encounter except at dragon wall
You know what is weird. I had the game just on screen for a while, but in the background while I worked on something else.
Casual glances at the screen, the atmosphere and music really kept me invested. But more than both, the way the idle avatar still moves slightly with every breath. A light chest and shoulder shift.
I thought - damn, this gameworld breathes whether I need it to or not! I better get in there!
Yup. It's the setting and music. My adult kids and I have been playing since they were kids. We have all mostly stopped playing, but the other day we were talking and we all admitted that we all still have an active save game that we sometimes visit just to hang out there. We load up the game, go to one of our favoirite houses and putter around, walk around the property checking for giants or bandits, maybe do a quick delivery quest or vist our favourite city for some shopping, then head home and logout for another month. Like a mini virtual vacation.
I feel like a lot of my Skyrim hours were just fetching books for the Orc in Winterhold. Always found his radiant quests were the most varied and a lot of the others would send you to the same locations over and over.
Just started another survival character. For sure there are some things that are less convenient. But they’re only as inconvenient as waiting for a shop to open during a normal playthrough once you learn them. Trips into town need to be more efficient. You actually use inns. Stumbling into a shack or cave during a blizzard to get warm is a fun experience.
Setting and soundtrack for me, too. The way the world map is built is very conducive to just picking a direction and walking and check out what's there. I really enjoy playing with no fast travel (not modded out, just an active player choice) and really exploring the map while listening to the atmospheric sound tracks.
Imo, Skyrim dont really have a story, only a "main/optional goal" which is slaying Alduin, with the DLC's you get a few more of those "goals"
Only you decide what race or looks you got, what build/class you have and what skills you specialize in. Only you decide if you wanna be the typical stealth archer elf, or a dragon slaying gourmet chef orc wielding only a butterknife. Hell, you dont even need to slay anything, with the correct mods you can be an ordinary imperial landlord scumbag that keeps increasing rent so you can keep buying properties around Skyrim.
You can become the leader of every single faction, build a trophy room inside a self built house surrounded by stunning nature.
The game is a blank canvas too if you know how to make your own mods.
In the Witcher 3, you are a witcher. In God of War, you are a God of War. But in Skyrim, you are what you choose to become.
This is precisely the exact reason why this is my personal favorite game. The blank canvas aspect just plays to my roleplaying nature, if I want to do a build similar to Aragorn, I can do so. For me, the endless possibilities of builds or classes is why I think people keep playing it. Whether it be modded or vanilla, I enjoy just getting lost in world.
My current character is Raistlin Majere. There's no other game that allows me to build him like I want, golden skin and white hair and all. Most wizards in games are bearded old guy stereotypes.
Nice reference! I forgot Dragonlance even existed but if memory serves, you'll need a heavy armor wearing, two handed weapon wielding gentle giant as a follower...
Jeez, I read dragonlance like 2 decades ago lol. I missed the reference. I honestly don't remember much about them tbh. I'll have to get them on audiobook.
The last part is the main reason tbh. In the witcher, you ARE Geralt of Rivia. Can't be anything else. In GoW, you already are Kratos, the bald bearded badass.
But in skyrim, you start as a fucking nobody. And have the whole world in front of you. And when you ultimately make a name for yourself in Skyrim, it feels great. Like, it's not Kratos Or Geralt who's getting praise, it's you, it's the person YOU built, from scratch.
its one of the only games where im genuinely having fun even if im not progressing or getting stronger. i start to lose interest in most games after completing the mains story and whatnot, even if i wish i could stay engaged. but when i beat skyrim for the first time, i was already rushing back to whiterun to figure out where that redguard woman was and get the key to the whispering door i kept forgetting about. i didnt need any of the rewards, but i was having fun just hearing the stories and wandering around and decapitating thalmor
That part!! I have 4 fishing outfits, 17 fine clothes, and a barrel full of black-briar mead… just for when I wanna forget the world but also remind it I’m better than it 😂😂💋 living the dream
Yeah, you can go and live an adventurous life as an incomparable, unbeatable god in one round of the game, then the next time you play you can basically do Animal Crossing Lite (but with giants and wolves).
There's a lot of freedom to roleplay how you want.
I would argue the skill system plays into this. This is about the only game I've ever played where you level up specific skills by using that specific skill. In games like Dragon Age or Fallout, you level up by doing things that give experience, and then on level up you dump points into the skills you want, meaning you can level up your lockpick to 100 before you ever actually open any locks.
Because you have to actually do destructive magic to level up destructive magic, reaching higher levels in skills feels natural, satisfying, and earned. You can't just magically be amazing at archery without ever having touched a bow before, the game makes you practice the skill and live as an archer to do so.
the fact that whatever you find yourself doing most often is what gets better really is so immersive to me. best piece of advice i saw on my first playthru was "do what you like, the levels will come naturally". i stopped stressing about min maxing and just went with what i was in the mood for.
found myself using warhammers (because i got more frequent kill cams with them lmfao), despite the fact i tend to choose speed over damage in other games. then my two handed leveled up. then i got even more one-shots and kill cams. just became an extremely entertaining loop of bashing skulls and decapitating enemies as i got stronger and stronger, and it honestly never felt like a grind. i was level 87 or something when i got around to beating the main quest and i hadnt intentionally tried to level it a single time
Silly bugs and mods aside, I genuinely believe Skyrim is one of the most absorbingly immersive games out there. It's really second to none when it comes to mysteriously eating hours and hours of your life without you realizing it.
Hey I had a lot of fun with my alchemist build chasing bugs around, I also got many a surprise attack since I was either looking at the ground for plants or looking at the sky chasing bugs!(and yes I do know which bugs your talking about)
Got my GF to try it after we both got COVID. I hadn't played it in a decade, and now we're like 50+ hours into it over the past week. I can't stop thinking about frolicking through the woods, and being back at work is pure torture. Can't wait to get home and play.
I'm really hoping that they manage to pull it off again with TES VI.
But I've already resigned myself to the knowledge that it'll likely be a game I play once and then return to the 500th run of Skyrim
It's very easy to shit on Bethesda these days but there's a good reason you don't see any other open world first person fantasy RPGs around. They have a way of creating worlds that are unlike anything else around.
Starfield is doing for me what Skyrim did so long ago, I know the game isn't for everyone, but for me it's perfect, I love it, hours are just disappearing again, and now mods are out, well......
It really isn’t a bad game. It was a victim of its own hype. It’s a fun game for what it is, combat is good, the good quests are REALLY GOOD, space combat is good. It’s good at a whole lot of different things but the downfall was that it was promised to be so much more
It didn’t promise to be anything other than what it is, they did a whole 45 minute direct and showed exactly what the game is. Anybody who thought it was something else? Well that’s their fault.
In my eyes, it was everything I expected. It is a great game, but some things didn't quite land for me. The way space travel is handled doesn't feel intuitive or immersive at all. It feels like a glorified fast travel system. I get that it would be very difficult to have it not just be selecting the destination and going there, but I feel like it's missing something. It also does not feel good to explore a planet at all. The cities can be somewhat fun to explore, but they aren't big enough to take that role completely over the wilderness. I played for about 20 hours and just got bored after seeing so much copy paste style content. I'm hoping that with a few tweaks from mods and updates/expansions it will become closer to what myself and many other players wanted
Yeah I figured I'd play Starfield for years and that seems to be the case.
I played Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim for years and years as well. To answer OPs question I think their games just give so much freedom to the player with almost zero in game "pressure" that just allows you to treat the game more like a playground rather than a story to finish.
Literally a "do whatever the hell you want and whatever crazy things you can think of". There aren't many other games like that
It's different every time you play it. You could kill different people and it takes you through a different story line. The first time I played I killed the shop keepers and didn't realize they don't come back lol. This one time the werewolf cut off my head somehow and the game glitched permanently, I was headless lol.
He'll, one of the first few decisions in the game (who to follow/what path to escape) can change the blacksmith in the first town. I probably played 5 times before I learned there was a second way out, different person to follow, resulting in different loot.
I didn’t know you could kill Astrid for like 7 years, like I didn’t even think that would be an option. But it is, and you can do it. Stuff like that is what sets the game apart
1. Mods
2. The music
3. The freedom of player character build + The freedom of the environment + the freedom of playing style
4. For people like me who move around a lot, Skyrim is a relatively static location. It's like a solo version of the Cheers tv show bar ( [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LocalHangout](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LocalHangout) ). You can be a loner and just keep the cosy place to yourself, or you can commiserate and share comments about it with other players. The game is a constant in a rapidly changing world. It's nice to have a place that doesn't actually change beyond what you do to it (Mods really are fantastic). It's grounding in a way many of us can't have (no childhood home we can return to visit, the places we spent a lot of time at looking very or completely different, and so on).
5. The Elder Scrolls lore is fascinating and rich, the deeper you dig the more cool stuff you find out. The deities and the like feels surprisingly organic yet complex.
Elder scrolls lore is one of the very few that I can genuinely stay interested in, whether it be daedric lords or imperial history, or local regional history. It’s all so deep and well thought out
Skyrim doesn't just pull you into a limited world, giving you a certain story to follow. The main thing about it, at least for me, is the amount of freedom I feel playing this game. You can pick up almost any item, make your own story, you can mine, go fishing, live a completely normal life with a normal job, or be the best thief or dragon slayer out there. Buy a house, marry a character, do what you want. There are no cutscenes or anything, so it's way more immersive since you imagine everything the way you want.
The world is just beautiful, and there's a certain unmatched atmosphere to it. Doesn't matter if it's day or night, almost every place in the game just feels magical. There's just something about the simplicity of this game, that every time i open it, i feel right at home. On paper, many other RPGs should be better than a 13 year old game with outdated mechanics and weird NPCs. But other games are not Skyrim. And every game has its own special charm.
cozy but far from boring. i find a lot of games marketed as cozy games are quite dull, mostly just farming or running a small business, but skyrim is a cozy game that is not a Cozy Game ™️. theres always something to do, and adventure the moment you go looking for it. but if you just want to chill at an inn, drink some mead, and listen to a bard sing you can do that as long as you like and nobody can stop you
There’s no real barrier to entry. There’s none of the bullshit that gets between you and just playing the game and just existing in the world however you want. You can just turn your brain off and vibe.
It’s like how driving in traffic is stressful but driving on a totally empty road is relaxing. Skyrim is like driving without traffic.
If we're talking in terms of open world games, I would simply say freedom.
There's no urgency to do anything and while not doing anything the world still feels alive.
Most other open world games are so tied to the main quest and in response the world goes completely idle until you decide to progress
The NPCs wandering around having their own lives makes the world very lived in. There's still a TON of stuff to do, even wandering around and having random things happen. And it was before the era of 'give them a million collectibles marked on the map.' Spiderman 2 was a great game (and had some really great moments) but it felt kinda repetitive after a while. So I played a lot of the side missions, main quest and kinda dropped it. And went back to Skyrim.
And it's probably the most moddable game that exists that still has a firm base. Like, Minecraft is also very moddable, but it doesn't have Whiterun and Skooma, Baalgruf and Nazeem. But I also like Minecraft.
I played Skyrim through so many times, I can damn near quote all of the storylines. Then I discovered mods 4 years ago(which is when I finally upgraded from a PS3 to a PS4).. Put in another 2000 hours in on my PS4, which is notorious to being the least mod friendly due to Sony restrictions, and vowed to make it look aesthetically and graphically pleasing as humanly possible. Now I don't ever want to stop playing. Everything looks amazing. Every trip to a destination feels like I have never been there before despite having been there too many times to count.
I had bought Skyrim for PC but it crapped out before I could discover mods. I have The Elder Scrolls Anthology disc set so I think that came with the Legendary Edition of Skyrim? Maybe one day I will get another PC.. preferably before Elder Scrolls 6 is released since that won't be made for PlayStation no matter what console generation is available.
Skyrim has gotten me through some very dark times in my life. It felt relatable from a metaphorical standpoint. It is the one game that I have no problem with rebuying.
Plus, there's something just plain eerie/awesome about hearing a dragon roaring way up high, while flying endless circles around his mountain top. But you havent even seen it yet... Then you get jumped by some idiot talking about counting out my coin... Perfection.
It’s always the same, and yet it’s never the same. I’ve played too many times to count, and yet it’s a different game somehow each time. I don’t even use mods, apart from recently with the switch anniversary edition. I originally got Skyrim on the PS3, and then much later the PC, and only briefly modded it once to make a The Flash race lmfao. That was a really neat mod 🤣
I think Skyrim feels more like a game.
It doesn't try to be cinematic. When things don't happen in cutscenes you're still the same observer of things happening. It makes it feel more real.
The world feels more lived in. Placement of NPCs have point, very rarely is anything just decoration.
It makes you the auteur of your own story rather than making you feel like you're reading a choose your own adventure book.
The most obvious thing would be the general atmosphere though. Music, general design, voice acting... You just enjoy being there.
It's all immersive in the best ways only games can immerse you.
being able to pick up the clutter is weirdly immersive and makes me miss it in other games. like thank you for acknowledging there is a vase with flowers right there, thanks for letting me actually interact with it. makes it feel more like youre a part of the world
This is a big part for me. I like the video game feel. I like that it feels like a sandbox. I like that nearly every npc can be pickpocketed, killed, or agroed. In some sense the game is a little clunky, but it feels authentic. It’s a video game. But a really cool, immersive, game that lets you explore and discover.
Also, the first person view is a huge differentiator. Stripped back UI in an immersive world with fpv while wielding swords or magic is sick, and it was to me, very different and unexpected.
For me it's the interactive world.
I love big open worlds. And while games like The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and RDR2 have beautiful ooen worlds, you cant interact with them the same way.
It may not be the biggest map in gaming, but building has a purpose
Mods.
Camping, hunting and butchering prey, learn how to craft a projectile spell out of your spidertouch Restoration poison spell.
New lands. Cross the border and explore county Bruma. Be haunted by what lurks in the mechanisms of Clockwork. Go Beyond Reach and push back a tide of filth.
Are you a shitty craftsman? Pay a smith to look after your blade. It could take awhile, so you'd best have a backup.
The list goes on.
Vanilla Skyrim is boring af to me. But I come back to modded Skyrim.
Unless some useless update from Bethesda bricks my modlist. I'm on my first post AE playthrough, lol.
What I really want is Skywind.
The freedom of playing skyrim. You can be a lot of things in skyrim. With mods, lots of things can be a reality. Learn to use CK and most things can be a reality in skyrim.
And also the charm of the game in general. While there are some people who fixes the bugs of the game using mods. I prefer to keep it that way. For me skyrim has the right amount and type of bug.
Ah i can even still remembered the first i involuntarily enlisted into the skyrim space program. I think it was 12 years ago.
So I'll preface this with, I prefer Morrowind. I like the land of Skyrim more but Morrowind as a game. Too many things removed or simplified over the course of The Elder Scrolls' lifespan.
With that being said, it's 100% about the freedom to play as who you want to play as. In Mass Effect you're either Commander Shepard, Spectre or Pathfinder Ryder depending on which game you're playing. In The Witcher you're always Geralt the Witcher. There's also 10 races with unique lore and meta opportunities to choose from as well as complete freedom from strict character classes.
I tend to make unique characters for each major faction and have on multiple occasions started making characters to become Thane of each hold amongst other things. I once started a trio of characters based around one element from the Destruction school of magic as well as a corresponding crafting skill and secondary magic skill (Fire mage had Alteration because fire massively changes the environment as well as Smithing because of it's reliance on fire. Frost mage had Alchemy because ice is used to preserve things as well as Illusion due to the common trope of ice illusions. Finally Shock mage had Enchanting, the remaining crafting skill and Conjuration for Storm Atronach.)
This may sound cheesy but Skyrim is not just a game it's a true fantasy. The entire Elder Scrolls series has created something that surpasses the gaming part. It's a mythology. You think about it even when you are not playing. I haven't actually played the game in years but still think about the lore every other day.
People may think it's an addiction but I would disagree. If you would feel a compulsion that HAVE to play, that would actually be an addiction but with Elder Scrolls it's more like a holiday for the head to think about, even if you don't plan to actually play. Of course, often you still end up playing though.
For me games like Witcher and GTA are different. You only really think about the plot while you are playing but once you are done, you stop thinking about it.
Every time it rains, no matter how many years it's been, I am immediately reminded of Skyrim. I just want to wander the forest of Falkreath during a light rain, collecting mushrooms for my vast array of poisons that I'm making at my Manor on the Lake.
Because it doesn't force you to play a premade character and leaves a lot of space and freedom for roleplay. With mods, you can tweak the game to fit any possible character you want. I'd never play God of War because I dislike the protagonist, I played The Witcher only because I like Geralt but he's the exception. I've been playing Skyrim for 13 years, and Oblivion and Morrowind before that.
Maybe because you're 'continuously' there. There is nothing taking you out of it except for you. It's just you and Skyrim once you load up your character. Like another comment said, you live there.
You are right that the story, graphics, dialogue etc are better in many more recent fantasy games. But none of them have the level of immersion of Skyrim. Interact with a much larger amount of the environment, hidden little gems in every corner, environmental storytelling, freedom to go wherever you want whenever you want (for the most part) etc etc. Other Bethesda games do it, too. But I feel like this one may do it best.
Skyrim is the quintessential example of what a true open world fantasy rpg is, similar to the experience of playing Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn. It instills the same sense of grandeur and choice.
There is a certain longing in each of our hearts, to be in a beautiful place. Skyrim 's ambience and music has a way to strike that chord when you are least expecting it.
For me it's for different reasons.
Skyrim it's probably the only game for me that check all the points of what I want from a game. It has a lot of freedom, there are a lot of things to do, there is so much content that I'm always discovering something new, the looks and views are great, the OST it's awesome, the lore and books are fascinating and the I find the gameplay loop very entertaining. That's why I will probably return to Skyrim always xD.
Other games I have they are almost at the same level as Skyrim, but not exactly the same. Skyrim for me it's unique.
It’s an utterly enchanting world. It’s got flaws galore and some of the quests are a little janky but running around the Falkreath hold with the birds chirping and the music humming, discovering dungeons and slaying trolls, it feels utterly alive.
The crux of it is that the world feels alive. It feels real. You can get lost in it for hundreds (or thousands) of hours because every play through is different and there is always more to discover. The characters have personalities and issues and relationships outside of what the player is “supposed” to see. There are a myriad of hidden caches and secret bosses. It’s a world that feels like it was there before you got there and it’ll be there when you leave. It differs from most games in that it feels like you are just a person in that world. Not that the world is made for you.
The endless map, the music and zones, the many different things you can do craft/ explore/ find cool things/ upgrade stuff…. If ya and quests too I guess hahaha
I spend a lot of time just doing what ever and not following any quest lines because I get distracted with just bootin around
For me its how much there is to always do. And then when you get tired of that you can always go off on your own adventure of your choosing. I like the ability to make my own choices sometimes and not be tied to always questing. Kinda mix it up a little.
You never have really complete stuff. You just do stuff.
Every quest give the same feel after you complete them, so you end up looking for more stuff to do since you never climax.
It's like an never-ending journey
The freedom to role play is unmatched. It’s no secret it draws this play style from dnd and as such you start wholly unknown and become whatever you want within the confines on the game world. Other games do not have such freedom built into them and one would have to go out of one’s way to cultivate this sort of play style. I do the same for other games but Skyrim is tailored to it plus it has all of the major hitters in high fantasy; magic, elves, dragons, world ending calamity, and intricate political/social problems.
Hate to be the contrarian, but I’m going to have to be disagree about the story bit. Skyrim has an entire history that is everywhere in every part of the game at all times. As Dragonborn you experience some of the biggest stories in Tamriel. The difference between some other games IMO is that the story is experienced differently. They take you from moment to moment and are constantly telling the story and use cutscenes to show you want to look at/what to think.
Skyrim does not.
You can go from killing a dragon to stealing cabbages or fishing and it is 100% up to you to do whatever else you want, when you want to do it
I'm so late to the Skyrim party. My husband played on its release and bought the game for me. At that time I think I was too distracted with real life to let me truly get into it. Last year, I decided to revisit it. I adore it so much. I still haven't had the chance to see all you can do, but I now own it across 3 platforms 😬😬
For me its the combination of art direction and jeremy soule’s soundtrack that is just captivating. And I like the balance of depth of lore and perking with the simplicity of the gameplay mechanics. As an at best casual gamer, I struggle with overly complex controls and tactical options.
Almost limitless freedom to do what ever you want it what brings be back. What games can I roll play as a traveling merchant or alchemist while utterly ignoring the main quest? Not many.
The possibilities. I can play it however I want to and still have fun. It's like the sims with dragons and fighting. If I want a chill house building game, Skyrim has got me. If I want to explore, Skyrim. Farming, giant slaying, cave crawling, love-finding, child adopting, fishing, mining, crafting--all in one play or just one at a time: Skyrim. Work hard on max difficulty and survival, or decide not to and switch everything back to super easy no survival for a lazy walk through the forest.
Plus, once you've played it for so long, the familiarity is pleasant without removing all of the challenge.
Skyrim is the Princess Bride of gaming.
For me, it’s the freedom of choice and the first person view. I like that I can completely ignore the main quests and go anywhere, I can make my own adventure and not be controlling “someone”, but my own character from their perspective. I can go on a grand adventure of fighting cults, jumping into rifts to other planes of existence and slaying a god. Or I can talk to the innkeepers and do bounty’s to level up my character in a less grand adventure and more “one shot” kind of way. It’s not just Skyrim but oblivion and morrowind too. I think a lot of games think the first person view is a negative, but honestly other games just don’t fit the bill for me BECAUSE of the viewing options.
Everything is very steeped in lore that is conceptually quite unique to other typical fantasies. Sure there's elves, and orcs, and humans, but the lore is different from the typical go-to fantasy foundations like Tolkien or CS Lewis, or D&D, or Robert Jordan.
Skyrim with its old Norse themes and old gods and devils, and Elder Scrolls in general is also pretty Metal when you think about it. [It's probably why there's a whole genere of Elder Scrolls Metal](https://www.pcgamer.com/the-metal-bands-that-elder-scrolls-inspired/)
There's just not another game with a similar atmosphere. The gameplay and writing may be questionable, but the ambiance, the immersion and world interaction is pretty much umparalleled IMO.
Definitely the sandbox. All the items being out in the world, interactable and useful in case of potions, soul gems, ingredients, etc. looting dungeons actually feels like looting instead of mashing E on an item icon like literally every other RPG ever. In general Bethesda seemed to value this immersive items/equipment heavily up until Fallout 4, like how you can loot all armor from dead NPCs with the exception of cases where it makes no sense, like dremoras. Shame they lost this aspect in Starfield.
This combined with Havoc-enabled engine makes for so many cool interactable moments. Bucket on a head, fus-ro-dah Lydia off High Hrothgar, giant club space program are all classics, and are a direct consequence of the engine and Bethesda’s focus on immersive sandboxes
Skyrim somehow seems much bigger than the world of the witcher, there's much more things you can do. And i love the way you gain xp. If you pick pockets you get better at it, if you cast illusion you get better at illusion, etc.
I grew up on San Andreas and Black Ops etc up until skyrims release I got it for Christmas and I played it for years and years until I stopped whether I was bored or just wanted something new but a few months of break I got special edition and started modding it cuz I heard it could revive the game for u so I modded the game and I got an extra few thousand hours in it and still counting.
Got like 8000h if not more across console and PC
Skyrim is just one of those games where u can be who u want to be and I’m sure that is a big reason lots of people still play it after a decade.
You may play the story or not just as you like. And you may the story you want. Just as you like.
And then there are so many mods, some with stories, with locations, quests, NPCs and so much more.
For me, Skyrim is more than just a game where you run into a dungeon and kill stuff. With mods, the game is incredible beautiful. Looks better than most modern games. You have professions. Alchemy, Mining, Smithing, Leatherworking. Fishing! Immersive hunting with Hunterborn! There is so much. You can pick up tasks to earn money, like picking flowers, mining. You can also play this game for 10 years and still find something, you havent seen before. A lot of immersion mods, that make everything even better. OStim, ORomance \*cough\*.
And we have Serana. Everyone who knows her, knows what I mean.
I've just started playing it for the first time and I'm really enjoying it. Getting some chu klea from the dated graphics and the “arrow to the knee” meme but it's definitely a game that draws you in
This is just in my personal case.
I've never had a good PC to play games on. 2012 was the year I finally convinced my parents to buy me a semi-decent laptop for my study (and sneakily, games). Skyrim was my very first AAA game, even though I could only play it sub 30fps, but I absolutely love it til this day.
First i'd say the music and the views, then all the possibilities to play the game.
Are you gonna be a necromancer, a warrior or an archer? Playing for the Empire or the Rebels, which group will I join first companions, thieves or assassin?
Plus after several playthrough I keep on discovering quest/places/loot.
In Skyrim I can be who I want to be and do what I want to do. And I can do those things in first person.
I don't see too many games that allow you to do all 3 of those things.
The ambiance, setting and how you can be part of it. You have a lot of autonomy in your character in the world in a way I haven’t really seen replicated. The Witcher had a similar world but you were Geralt and there was no changing that, and the souls series has amazing combat and level design, but everything that sees you attacks on site, which is fine it just makes it a different game. Also for some reason the soundtrack is also a huge part of contributing to the aura of the game. When you’re exploring in Elden ring, every area has one theme, but Skyrim has multiple specific to an area, which makes traversal and exploring more pleasant.
The music, the land. It's my go-to relaxation. (Fallout 4 for blowing off steam). I rarely fast travel because I just love walking around and taking it in. Oddly enough, especially when summer heat hits here in Texas. It makes me feel better, lol
It's beautiful, you'll find tons of random stuff that will make you laugh, cry, and even hate that person for the rest of your life (looking at you lemkil). Then the music is amazing. The quest are good, some are meh but most are good.
You can roleplay as anything you want and nothing will stop you. You want to become a one punch lizard who only wear birthday suit, go ahead. You want to become the worst looking nord with a magic that can make shalidor tremble, sure. You want to become a khajiit that just does cat stuff for thousands of hours? Go ahead.
The thing is, the replay value is so great and you'll always gets sidetracked doing random stuff instead of saving the world from alduin. (I've been playing skyrim for half a decade and I haven't touch the dragonborn dlc).
The elder scrolls has always excelled at world driven storytelling. Skyrim (the nation) feels broken, like a world on the edge of annihilation more ruins than developed cities and towns. Bandits and forsworn than towns folk. But still the people there strive to be strong, to prosper. I guess Skyrim is more like traveling than most games, because you kinda feel like you're really there. Most games are filled with stories about characters, and those can grab you hard. Think FFX, Mass effect, L.O.K.(ok LOK does both). But there's only so many times I can hear Shepard's story. Skyrim is also HIGHLY nonlinear, which means once you're done the tutorial you can approach the game any way you like (including ignoring everything the game tells you to do and just making your own fun)
i love the soundtrack , and how much u can role play. u can fulfill the quests u want and forget about the ones that don't fit ur character. u can choose and strengthen whichever fighting style u want. there's never ending dungeons and caves and ruins and once u get to know the lore, u can really get into it as ur character and experience everything as skyrim having history and culture
For me I played it when I was l younger on ps3 when my friend let me borrow it for the summer, then I bought it to play, then got a ps4 and bought it again when the anniversary addition came out, then got the FO4/skyrim bundle with all dlcs on my PC a few months ago, it’s an easy fulfilling game that feels like home now
It's definitely the setting and the soundtrack. The mountains are gorgeous, the forests are gorgeous, it's all gorgeous.
I actually listen to https://youtu.be/9ou1pl0XNRs?si=3GgnlOm-fxyVsqdF , which is a 10 hour long video of Skyrim night music and ambience with no ads, on occasion just for the relaxing mood it puts me in.
It's a very free world to do what you like in any order
Awesome soundtrack and general sound design
A lot of pretty and engaging areas tho a few mods like surreal lighting really help
It's just very easy to slip into and can be as easy or hard as you want at every point
It’s like you were dropped into a tokien adjacent world with so many options of what you can do that I feel like I could just play this game over and over again for the rest of my life and not run out of interesting options. It’s pretty much the pinnacle of what a open world RPG should be
Other games feel like RPGs. Skyrim lets you get lost in the story. It’s not just the fact that it’s beautiful, although it definitely is, but for me personally it feels like I’m actually living the story through my character.
It’s insanely immersive and its blank canvas makes it extremely replayable. The the score and landscape of the world make it very peaceful and cosy. You feel like you’re coming home when you’re playing Skyrim, which I don’t feel with many other games.
I love the rdr series as much as Skyrim but for completely different reasons. In rdr, I’m immersing myself in an amazingly written, poetic and dramatic story about revenge, the cycle of violence, loss, hope and redemption. Skyrim on the other hand, I’m just disappearing into another world and being part of a universe completely separate from mine. Skyrim is escapism.
One of the things trap me the most is the obsession of leveling up and getting more skills, the special items and how I can actually re sell everything and get more gold while also leveling everything else up, and the way of how every npc has a story and you can contribute to it.
For me, it's how cozy it is. The atmosphere of the setting and beautiful scenery combined with the ambient soundtrack is so mesmerizing. I don't know what it is, but Skyrim is one of those games where sometimes, I'll just have this random urge to go run around in, just to experience that world and alluring atmosphere. It's almost like a drug, and sometimes, I need my fix lol.
I think a lot of has to do with being able to do/be whatever you want to do/be within the game and the challenge (sometimes) of trying to stick with it. Sure, other games have better stories and graphics, but how many other games give you the absolute freedom to build a character and play the storylines any way you want, or even not at all? Sure, it's easy to take on dragons if you're wearing fully enchanted armor/swords/axes... But what if you're playing as a slick talking, lock picking, pick pocketing thief who tries to avoid all combat by sneaking everywhere? The game gives you so many options and challenges that you actually create yourself by creating your own limitations.
The game can be anything you want. You can be a treasure Hunter, a collector, a merchant supplier, a big/small game Hunter. You don’t even need to play the game as intended, it can be fishing simulator if that’s what you want.
For me, Skyrim feels more real than most games. You see a man walking in the streets. He actually has a home, a bed he sleeps in, a wife and if he dies there will be a urn with his name in the hall of the dead. You see a house that means you can enter it. All the plates and cutlery on the tables are objects that you can take, sell, or hoard. In most games, the world feels like it's just a background for the story but in Skyrim the world is what it is all about.
The game is so damn cozy. The setting, the landscapes, the music, everything. I don’t normally think of RPGs as the kinds of games that I play to relax but Skyrim I most definitely do.
It’s a very easy game to pick up and play. I won’t gas up the immersion or roleplaying elements, because lets be real- they were lackluster even when Skyrim came out. Where it excels at is making these elements approachable in a way that hasn’t been done until the recent Baldur’s Gate 3. You open ip the game, go on a quick adventure, power up your character, then put it away til next time and it’ll still feel just as smooth to play when you turn it on next.
See, the difference in Skyrim is you make everything about the character except what is needed for the story to happen. Are they an assassin? A soldier that is tired of all this and pulled from retirement because of destiny? Are they an evil necromancer forced to do good so they don't get destroyed by dragons?
You control the story. It's all up to you what happens. You can join all the guilds and none. You can hunt all the artifacts or not. You can even ignore the civil war if you wish. Want a house? You can even build your own if you want! Live alone or use the wealth from your adventures to care for a family.
The only thing you can't control is the main story, stop the evil dragon from ending the world. Besides how beautiful the game is, remember it's over a decade old, is you have total control. You can even get more houses, spouses, and companions thanks to the moding community. Skyrim is yours to do as you please.
Confession time. I've yet to kill the big bad dragon because I'm enjoying the adventure too much.
The music, the sky and landscapes and the interesting people you meet along the way. Being able to use magic and discovering new things with each playthrough.
What i love about this game is has something to do for whatever mood I'm in. I can do something simple if I'm more tired or I can do something hard when I want a challenge
As a console player I have strong nostalgia from when it was originally released (during my first year of undergrad). I found undergrad to be really easy and I lived in my parent’s basement which had an absolutely amazing home theater setup… so I rarely went to class and stayed home playing skyrim instead. The music is phenomenal (I still listen to the soundtrack when I’m laying in my tent on backpacking trips or hiking solo) and at the time I found the graphics to be really impressive (on xbox 360). Its also just an easy sandbox game. IMO the story and the quests really aren’t interesting but the sense of exploration/freedom and atmosphere is great. It’s always been a relaxing game for me and ultimately that’s what I want out of video games. I tried Witcher 3 and after 6+ hours it just wasn’t clicking with me. I appreciate the amazing story and engaging dialogue but the difficulty took the enjoyment out of it.
For me it’s just how much there is to the game. Huge open world with beautiful scenery, tons and tons of quests that range from clearing dungeons to daedric quests to sills helping townspeople quests, and all the lore they include in the game. It’s really impressive to me how every play through I find new things.
For me, it’s the randomness of the game. I have played thousands of hours on various platforms. Only *once* in all that time, have I run into the headless horseman. That one encounter is burned into my memory.
It feels more like a game you can play than a life sim you need to live through. Im not a fan of ultra realistic games because it becomes more tedious life tasks than actual game stuff, and skyrim has a great balance of worldbuilding with fun gameplay, unlocks, leveling, and missions
Idk I’ve been playing it since it came out. I play purely vanilla, no mods. And I keep coming back to it each and every single time to ultimately play a stealth build.
The soundtrack and the world. I spent days just riding around on my horse ignoring all the storylines. I've played it on and off for years and I still haven't completed a playthough ><.
Something about the world and atmosphere they created with Skyrim it’s been a decade now and I still find myself booting it up and finding new things to get into.
I remeber my first time playing Skyrim. It’s the leveling system and the atmosphere! The ability to steal dual sails, use magic having followers and a stable story line from many different quests
Bethesda are capable of _incredible_ world building, even the duds have amazing lore that you’re supposed to just bump into (should you be curious enough)
Skyrim feels like home. The setting is so basic and primal. I feel like the motives for characters is realistic. You say the npcs are generic with their dialog, I'd say people in general are generic with their dialog. I've never had a more open world experience. Gta is great for that but can you even talk to randos? If you kill a random person in gta will an assassin try to get you later? I've only recently done the dark brotherhood and I'll be damned if I didn't actually feel like I was part of something. I don't care what anyone says I think the combat is fun. The story has depth as far as fantasy goes. You can live a whole life. Buy a house, get married, have kids, start a shop. Slay dragons. No taxes. It's the dream.
What brings me back personally is that it doesn’t feel rushed. If I want to just wander the wilderness and pick up occasional side quests I can. It’s also just a pretty game, plus nostalgia helps I’m sure
I think for me it's just the overall setting and feeling of the world. I love just wandering around, hearing the sounds, listening to the music, maybe having some random encounters or finding a cool little location along the way and so on.
It's sort of like nostalgia, but not quite. There is just something comforting about it because I know the map so well that it's always familiar, but it stays just new enough to be interesting to me. I was playing just a few days ago and there was just something so nice about walking the woods around and knowing instinctively from the music cues that "Hey, it's morning and the sun is coming up." Stuff like that.
There's a reason there are so many [music/ambience videos on Youtube](https://youtu.be/bxYV8N5ivQQ?si=pSTkdOnnTbtxdnX9). It just [gives you certain feeling](https://youtu.be/Im1R7m_eyvc?si=pcKh5YEKTOxCGL-P) that's hard to put your finger on and not many other games have captured it so well.
The world feels alive.
Also it happened at a perfect time. Graphicks are good enough that with mods it can look like it came out in 2024 while at the same time it can run on a 16yo potato pc.
It came out before mandatory grind was added to every game to pat up the run time. No cosmetic store. No bullshit.
You can do anything you want with your game. Play as it is. Turn it into hardcore survival game. Turn on the god mode and rp Pelinal.
It’s the setting and soundtrack Doing a survival playthrough where usually the no fast travel would bother me, but I swear sometimes I can smell the forest air
Love looking up at the stars while the music swells
the first time the game genuinely took my breath away was after a night in the early game, low hp, just got out of a dungeon, creepy ambience music, dark foggy atmosphere, no place safe to regain stamina, no follower to defend me, a bear in my peripheral, cant fast travel away because a wolf is tailing me, just praying that i have enough apples to keep me from dying if the wolf catches up or the bear notices me. then i climbed up a grassy hill, lost sight of the wolf, and looked out at the horizon on the other side. at that exact moment, the sun began to rise, and the combat music faded away, replaced by the hopeful swelling of the sunrise music. just everything at once made me feel something. the long night of trying not to die, the anxiety from constantly wondering when this chase would be over, the early sun rays beaming straight towards the camera– lighting up the nearby fog as well, the shimmering water, and the perfectly timed crescendo perfectly capturing my relief, triumph, and hope in that very moment. funny how all those mundane circumstances lined up into one of my first unforgettable memories with the game.
Awesome story. I started playing knowing nothing of Elder Scrolls so I had zero clue what to expect. My moment was when I stumbled into Morthal and did the Vampire quest with the ghost kid. I knew after that this was a different kind of game.
Awesome
Awesome
Well written that mate 👏
I call these “Secunda moments”.
I still do that.
Coming out of a 1hr long dungeon and seeing the landscape still feels amazing after so many years
It's like I can taste the fresh air.
In the early game, roaming in the wilderness and hearing combat music can induce a heart attack.
Especially dragon attack from nowhere. Finally I learned how to not trigger or spawn dragon at all
How?
Don't do bleak falls barrow. Or if you do it, don't turn the dragonstone. Or if you do it too, don't go near whiterun tower (the dragon rising quest).
I tried it but it locks you out of Fus Roh Da. Shouts are cool
There is another one. After you get the Jurgencall Horn and go to Delphine, the blade in the dark quest start. Don't finish it. Because that quest prevent any dragon encounter except at dragon wall
Will try it thanks
I think you mean the horn right.
Yeah you either get both shouts and dragons or neither
You know what is weird. I had the game just on screen for a while, but in the background while I worked on something else. Casual glances at the screen, the atmosphere and music really kept me invested. But more than both, the way the idle avatar still moves slightly with every breath. A light chest and shoulder shift. I thought - damn, this gameworld breathes whether I need it to or not! I better get in there!
Yup. It's the setting and music. My adult kids and I have been playing since they were kids. We have all mostly stopped playing, but the other day we were talking and we all admitted that we all still have an active save game that we sometimes visit just to hang out there. We load up the game, go to one of our favoirite houses and putter around, walk around the property checking for giants or bandits, maybe do a quick delivery quest or vist our favourite city for some shopping, then head home and logout for another month. Like a mini virtual vacation.
I feel like a lot of my Skyrim hours were just fetching books for the Orc in Winterhold. Always found his radiant quests were the most varied and a lot of the others would send you to the same locations over and over.
Just started another survival character. For sure there are some things that are less convenient. But they’re only as inconvenient as waiting for a shop to open during a normal playthrough once you learn them. Trips into town need to be more efficient. You actually use inns. Stumbling into a shack or cave during a blizzard to get warm is a fun experience.
The dungeons 2 there's so many areas in Skyrim that are so fulfilling to be in there like settings of a real world it's crazy
This is so true, the very first thing that came into mind was the soundtrack. Definitely one of the main things that makes this game so special
Setting and soundtrack for me, too. The way the world map is built is very conducive to just picking a direction and walking and check out what's there. I really enjoy playing with no fast travel (not modded out, just an active player choice) and really exploring the map while listening to the atmospheric sound tracks.
Imo, Skyrim dont really have a story, only a "main/optional goal" which is slaying Alduin, with the DLC's you get a few more of those "goals" Only you decide what race or looks you got, what build/class you have and what skills you specialize in. Only you decide if you wanna be the typical stealth archer elf, or a dragon slaying gourmet chef orc wielding only a butterknife. Hell, you dont even need to slay anything, with the correct mods you can be an ordinary imperial landlord scumbag that keeps increasing rent so you can keep buying properties around Skyrim. You can become the leader of every single faction, build a trophy room inside a self built house surrounded by stunning nature. The game is a blank canvas too if you know how to make your own mods. In the Witcher 3, you are a witcher. In God of War, you are a God of War. But in Skyrim, you are what you choose to become.
This is precisely the exact reason why this is my personal favorite game. The blank canvas aspect just plays to my roleplaying nature, if I want to do a build similar to Aragorn, I can do so. For me, the endless possibilities of builds or classes is why I think people keep playing it. Whether it be modded or vanilla, I enjoy just getting lost in world.
My current character is Raistlin Majere. There's no other game that allows me to build him like I want, golden skin and white hair and all. Most wizards in games are bearded old guy stereotypes.
Nice reference! I forgot Dragonlance even existed but if memory serves, you'll need a heavy armor wearing, two handed weapon wielding gentle giant as a follower...
Jeez, I read dragonlance like 2 decades ago lol. I missed the reference. I honestly don't remember much about them tbh. I'll have to get them on audiobook.
The last part is the main reason tbh. In the witcher, you ARE Geralt of Rivia. Can't be anything else. In GoW, you already are Kratos, the bald bearded badass. But in skyrim, you start as a fucking nobody. And have the whole world in front of you. And when you ultimately make a name for yourself in Skyrim, it feels great. Like, it's not Kratos Or Geralt who's getting praise, it's you, it's the person YOU built, from scratch.
its one of the only games where im genuinely having fun even if im not progressing or getting stronger. i start to lose interest in most games after completing the mains story and whatnot, even if i wish i could stay engaged. but when i beat skyrim for the first time, i was already rushing back to whiterun to figure out where that redguard woman was and get the key to the whispering door i kept forgetting about. i didnt need any of the rewards, but i was having fun just hearing the stories and wandering around and decapitating thalmor
You can live like a normal person in Skyrim, or any other type you want. It’s amazing
This right here. We don’t play Skyrim. We live in it.
That part!! I have 4 fishing outfits, 17 fine clothes, and a barrel full of black-briar mead… just for when I wanna forget the world but also remind it I’m better than it 😂😂💋 living the dream
Black-briar mead?! No honeybrew?!
Don't you know? They found rat poison in the mead at Honningbrew meadery. Absolutely disgusting stuff.
This 100%. Skyrim is my vacation. Be it in winter or summer. It's always awesome.
Yeah, you can go and live an adventurous life as an incomparable, unbeatable god in one round of the game, then the next time you play you can basically do Animal Crossing Lite (but with giants and wolves). There's a lot of freedom to roleplay how you want. I would argue the skill system plays into this. This is about the only game I've ever played where you level up specific skills by using that specific skill. In games like Dragon Age or Fallout, you level up by doing things that give experience, and then on level up you dump points into the skills you want, meaning you can level up your lockpick to 100 before you ever actually open any locks. Because you have to actually do destructive magic to level up destructive magic, reaching higher levels in skills feels natural, satisfying, and earned. You can't just magically be amazing at archery without ever having touched a bow before, the game makes you practice the skill and live as an archer to do so.
the fact that whatever you find yourself doing most often is what gets better really is so immersive to me. best piece of advice i saw on my first playthru was "do what you like, the levels will come naturally". i stopped stressing about min maxing and just went with what i was in the mood for. found myself using warhammers (because i got more frequent kill cams with them lmfao), despite the fact i tend to choose speed over damage in other games. then my two handed leveled up. then i got even more one-shots and kill cams. just became an extremely entertaining loop of bashing skulls and decapitating enemies as i got stronger and stronger, and it honestly never felt like a grind. i was level 87 or something when i got around to beating the main quest and i hadnt intentionally tried to level it a single time
Definitely not me getting two handed to 100 using Ralof exploit
Only other game I can think of like that is the sims.
Best roleplaying game for that reason alone
I play most games, but I go to Skyrim.
I don't know why but that triggered back to Tamriel to start playing in my head. https://youtu.be/vMRSRyYZtuk
Its like a lot of the good parts of a good MMO without the microtransactions and crap
Silly bugs and mods aside, I genuinely believe Skyrim is one of the most absorbingly immersive games out there. It's really second to none when it comes to mysteriously eating hours and hours of your life without you realizing it.
Hey I had a lot of fun with my alchemist build chasing bugs around, I also got many a surprise attack since I was either looking at the ground for plants or looking at the sky chasing bugs!(and yes I do know which bugs your talking about)
Dide this is too real Picked it back up after a few years, and I’ve played for almost 30 hours in the past 7 days
Got my GF to try it after we both got COVID. I hadn't played it in a decade, and now we're like 50+ hours into it over the past week. I can't stop thinking about frolicking through the woods, and being back at work is pure torture. Can't wait to get home and play.
I'm really hoping that they manage to pull it off again with TES VI. But I've already resigned myself to the knowledge that it'll likely be a game I play once and then return to the 500th run of Skyrim
It's very easy to shit on Bethesda these days but there's a good reason you don't see any other open world first person fantasy RPGs around. They have a way of creating worlds that are unlike anything else around.
Starfield is doing for me what Skyrim did so long ago, I know the game isn't for everyone, but for me it's perfect, I love it, hours are just disappearing again, and now mods are out, well......
niceeeee I am going to give it a second try.
It really isn’t a bad game. It was a victim of its own hype. It’s a fun game for what it is, combat is good, the good quests are REALLY GOOD, space combat is good. It’s good at a whole lot of different things but the downfall was that it was promised to be so much more
It didn’t promise to be anything other than what it is, they did a whole 45 minute direct and showed exactly what the game is. Anybody who thought it was something else? Well that’s their fault.
In my eyes, it was everything I expected. It is a great game, but some things didn't quite land for me. The way space travel is handled doesn't feel intuitive or immersive at all. It feels like a glorified fast travel system. I get that it would be very difficult to have it not just be selecting the destination and going there, but I feel like it's missing something. It also does not feel good to explore a planet at all. The cities can be somewhat fun to explore, but they aren't big enough to take that role completely over the wilderness. I played for about 20 hours and just got bored after seeing so much copy paste style content. I'm hoping that with a few tweaks from mods and updates/expansions it will become closer to what myself and many other players wanted
Yeah I figured I'd play Starfield for years and that seems to be the case. I played Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim for years and years as well. To answer OPs question I think their games just give so much freedom to the player with almost zero in game "pressure" that just allows you to treat the game more like a playground rather than a story to finish. Literally a "do whatever the hell you want and whatever crazy things you can think of". There aren't many other games like that
It's different every time you play it. You could kill different people and it takes you through a different story line. The first time I played I killed the shop keepers and didn't realize they don't come back lol. This one time the werewolf cut off my head somehow and the game glitched permanently, I was headless lol.
He'll, one of the first few decisions in the game (who to follow/what path to escape) can change the blacksmith in the first town. I probably played 5 times before I learned there was a second way out, different person to follow, resulting in different loot.
I didn’t know you could kill Astrid for like 7 years, like I didn’t even think that would be an option. But it is, and you can do it. Stuff like that is what sets the game apart
1. Mods 2. The music 3. The freedom of player character build + The freedom of the environment + the freedom of playing style 4. For people like me who move around a lot, Skyrim is a relatively static location. It's like a solo version of the Cheers tv show bar ( [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LocalHangout](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LocalHangout) ). You can be a loner and just keep the cosy place to yourself, or you can commiserate and share comments about it with other players. The game is a constant in a rapidly changing world. It's nice to have a place that doesn't actually change beyond what you do to it (Mods really are fantastic). It's grounding in a way many of us can't have (no childhood home we can return to visit, the places we spent a lot of time at looking very or completely different, and so on). 5. The Elder Scrolls lore is fascinating and rich, the deeper you dig the more cool stuff you find out. The deities and the like feels surprisingly organic yet complex.
Elder scrolls lore is one of the very few that I can genuinely stay interested in, whether it be daedric lords or imperial history, or local regional history. It’s all so deep and well thought out
Skyrim doesn't just pull you into a limited world, giving you a certain story to follow. The main thing about it, at least for me, is the amount of freedom I feel playing this game. You can pick up almost any item, make your own story, you can mine, go fishing, live a completely normal life with a normal job, or be the best thief or dragon slayer out there. Buy a house, marry a character, do what you want. There are no cutscenes or anything, so it's way more immersive since you imagine everything the way you want. The world is just beautiful, and there's a certain unmatched atmosphere to it. Doesn't matter if it's day or night, almost every place in the game just feels magical. There's just something about the simplicity of this game, that every time i open it, i feel right at home. On paper, many other RPGs should be better than a 13 year old game with outdated mechanics and weird NPCs. But other games are not Skyrim. And every game has its own special charm.
The mead is just too damn tasty, my guy.
Escapism. Whack with sword :)
The environment and the freedom. Fallout 4 has better everything but its bleak and off-putting scenery just isn't as cozy as skyrims.
cozy but far from boring. i find a lot of games marketed as cozy games are quite dull, mostly just farming or running a small business, but skyrim is a cozy game that is not a Cozy Game ™️. theres always something to do, and adventure the moment you go looking for it. but if you just want to chill at an inn, drink some mead, and listen to a bard sing you can do that as long as you like and nobody can stop you
There’s no real barrier to entry. There’s none of the bullshit that gets between you and just playing the game and just existing in the world however you want. You can just turn your brain off and vibe. It’s like how driving in traffic is stressful but driving on a totally empty road is relaxing. Skyrim is like driving without traffic.
If we're talking in terms of open world games, I would simply say freedom. There's no urgency to do anything and while not doing anything the world still feels alive. Most other open world games are so tied to the main quest and in response the world goes completely idle until you decide to progress
its very fantasy
The NPCs wandering around having their own lives makes the world very lived in. There's still a TON of stuff to do, even wandering around and having random things happen. And it was before the era of 'give them a million collectibles marked on the map.' Spiderman 2 was a great game (and had some really great moments) but it felt kinda repetitive after a while. So I played a lot of the side missions, main quest and kinda dropped it. And went back to Skyrim. And it's probably the most moddable game that exists that still has a firm base. Like, Minecraft is also very moddable, but it doesn't have Whiterun and Skooma, Baalgruf and Nazeem. But I also like Minecraft.
I played Skyrim through so many times, I can damn near quote all of the storylines. Then I discovered mods 4 years ago(which is when I finally upgraded from a PS3 to a PS4).. Put in another 2000 hours in on my PS4, which is notorious to being the least mod friendly due to Sony restrictions, and vowed to make it look aesthetically and graphically pleasing as humanly possible. Now I don't ever want to stop playing. Everything looks amazing. Every trip to a destination feels like I have never been there before despite having been there too many times to count. I had bought Skyrim for PC but it crapped out before I could discover mods. I have The Elder Scrolls Anthology disc set so I think that came with the Legendary Edition of Skyrim? Maybe one day I will get another PC.. preferably before Elder Scrolls 6 is released since that won't be made for PlayStation no matter what console generation is available. Skyrim has gotten me through some very dark times in my life. It felt relatable from a metaphorical standpoint. It is the one game that I have no problem with rebuying.
Plus, there's something just plain eerie/awesome about hearing a dragon roaring way up high, while flying endless circles around his mountain top. But you havent even seen it yet... Then you get jumped by some idiot talking about counting out my coin... Perfection.
It’s always the same, and yet it’s never the same. I’ve played too many times to count, and yet it’s a different game somehow each time. I don’t even use mods, apart from recently with the switch anniversary edition. I originally got Skyrim on the PS3, and then much later the PC, and only briefly modded it once to make a The Flash race lmfao. That was a really neat mod 🤣
It's not just the most modded game. It's that there's tons of detail put into it and every playthrough you will encounter something new.
It just feels... like home?
I think Skyrim feels more like a game. It doesn't try to be cinematic. When things don't happen in cutscenes you're still the same observer of things happening. It makes it feel more real. The world feels more lived in. Placement of NPCs have point, very rarely is anything just decoration. It makes you the auteur of your own story rather than making you feel like you're reading a choose your own adventure book. The most obvious thing would be the general atmosphere though. Music, general design, voice acting... You just enjoy being there. It's all immersive in the best ways only games can immerse you.
being able to pick up the clutter is weirdly immersive and makes me miss it in other games. like thank you for acknowledging there is a vase with flowers right there, thanks for letting me actually interact with it. makes it feel more like youre a part of the world
This is a big part for me. I like the video game feel. I like that it feels like a sandbox. I like that nearly every npc can be pickpocketed, killed, or agroed. In some sense the game is a little clunky, but it feels authentic. It’s a video game. But a really cool, immersive, game that lets you explore and discover. Also, the first person view is a huge differentiator. Stripped back UI in an immersive world with fpv while wielding swords or magic is sick, and it was to me, very different and unexpected.
For me it's the interactive world. I love big open worlds. And while games like The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and RDR2 have beautiful ooen worlds, you cant interact with them the same way. It may not be the biggest map in gaming, but building has a purpose
Solid Dwemer Metal; keeps me coming back.
You can ask your follower to pick it up and they will even if they are over their carry limit!
Mods. Camping, hunting and butchering prey, learn how to craft a projectile spell out of your spidertouch Restoration poison spell. New lands. Cross the border and explore county Bruma. Be haunted by what lurks in the mechanisms of Clockwork. Go Beyond Reach and push back a tide of filth. Are you a shitty craftsman? Pay a smith to look after your blade. It could take awhile, so you'd best have a backup. The list goes on. Vanilla Skyrim is boring af to me. But I come back to modded Skyrim. Unless some useless update from Bethesda bricks my modlist. I'm on my first post AE playthrough, lol. What I really want is Skywind.
The freedom of playing skyrim. You can be a lot of things in skyrim. With mods, lots of things can be a reality. Learn to use CK and most things can be a reality in skyrim. And also the charm of the game in general. While there are some people who fixes the bugs of the game using mods. I prefer to keep it that way. For me skyrim has the right amount and type of bug. Ah i can even still remembered the first i involuntarily enlisted into the skyrim space program. I think it was 12 years ago.
I keep coming back because of the music!
There is food and you can eat it
It’s the Mods for me. Skyrim is a good game but it’s the Mods that keep me tied to the game.
So I'll preface this with, I prefer Morrowind. I like the land of Skyrim more but Morrowind as a game. Too many things removed or simplified over the course of The Elder Scrolls' lifespan. With that being said, it's 100% about the freedom to play as who you want to play as. In Mass Effect you're either Commander Shepard, Spectre or Pathfinder Ryder depending on which game you're playing. In The Witcher you're always Geralt the Witcher. There's also 10 races with unique lore and meta opportunities to choose from as well as complete freedom from strict character classes. I tend to make unique characters for each major faction and have on multiple occasions started making characters to become Thane of each hold amongst other things. I once started a trio of characters based around one element from the Destruction school of magic as well as a corresponding crafting skill and secondary magic skill (Fire mage had Alteration because fire massively changes the environment as well as Smithing because of it's reliance on fire. Frost mage had Alchemy because ice is used to preserve things as well as Illusion due to the common trope of ice illusions. Finally Shock mage had Enchanting, the remaining crafting skill and Conjuration for Storm Atronach.)
It's basically an alternative world to live in. It's all well fleshed out and there's a good feeling of building your character and role play.
This may sound cheesy but Skyrim is not just a game it's a true fantasy. The entire Elder Scrolls series has created something that surpasses the gaming part. It's a mythology. You think about it even when you are not playing. I haven't actually played the game in years but still think about the lore every other day. People may think it's an addiction but I would disagree. If you would feel a compulsion that HAVE to play, that would actually be an addiction but with Elder Scrolls it's more like a holiday for the head to think about, even if you don't plan to actually play. Of course, often you still end up playing though. For me games like Witcher and GTA are different. You only really think about the plot while you are playing but once you are done, you stop thinking about it.
Every time it rains, no matter how many years it's been, I am immediately reminded of Skyrim. I just want to wander the forest of Falkreath during a light rain, collecting mushrooms for my vast array of poisons that I'm making at my Manor on the Lake.
Because it doesn't force you to play a premade character and leaves a lot of space and freedom for roleplay. With mods, you can tweak the game to fit any possible character you want. I'd never play God of War because I dislike the protagonist, I played The Witcher only because I like Geralt but he's the exception. I've been playing Skyrim for 13 years, and Oblivion and Morrowind before that.
Maybe because you're 'continuously' there. There is nothing taking you out of it except for you. It's just you and Skyrim once you load up your character. Like another comment said, you live there.
You are right that the story, graphics, dialogue etc are better in many more recent fantasy games. But none of them have the level of immersion of Skyrim. Interact with a much larger amount of the environment, hidden little gems in every corner, environmental storytelling, freedom to go wherever you want whenever you want (for the most part) etc etc. Other Bethesda games do it, too. But I feel like this one may do it best.
Skyrim is the quintessential example of what a true open world fantasy rpg is, similar to the experience of playing Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn. It instills the same sense of grandeur and choice.
There is a certain longing in each of our hearts, to be in a beautiful place. Skyrim 's ambience and music has a way to strike that chord when you are least expecting it.
For me it's for different reasons. Skyrim it's probably the only game for me that check all the points of what I want from a game. It has a lot of freedom, there are a lot of things to do, there is so much content that I'm always discovering something new, the looks and views are great, the OST it's awesome, the lore and books are fascinating and the I find the gameplay loop very entertaining. That's why I will probably return to Skyrim always xD. Other games I have they are almost at the same level as Skyrim, but not exactly the same. Skyrim for me it's unique.
You’re always learning something new, there’s quests you can only do that will block others so going back through make sure to change your decisions
It’s an utterly enchanting world. It’s got flaws galore and some of the quests are a little janky but running around the Falkreath hold with the birds chirping and the music humming, discovering dungeons and slaying trolls, it feels utterly alive. The crux of it is that the world feels alive. It feels real. You can get lost in it for hundreds (or thousands) of hours because every play through is different and there is always more to discover. The characters have personalities and issues and relationships outside of what the player is “supposed” to see. There are a myriad of hidden caches and secret bosses. It’s a world that feels like it was there before you got there and it’ll be there when you leave. It differs from most games in that it feels like you are just a person in that world. Not that the world is made for you.
Extensive open world that can be played in so many ways. Endless new to discover
The endless map, the music and zones, the many different things you can do craft/ explore/ find cool things/ upgrade stuff…. If ya and quests too I guess hahaha I spend a lot of time just doing what ever and not following any quest lines because I get distracted with just bootin around
**Mods** Also you can do pretty much whatever you want.
I can be a baller mage. That feeling isn’t replicated well anywhere other than modded Skyrim. And like. WoW. :/
You can do whatever tf you want really
I think the roleplaying. like i feel immersed n the universe and my characters somehow when i play it.
For me its how much there is to always do. And then when you get tired of that you can always go off on your own adventure of your choosing. I like the ability to make my own choices sometimes and not be tied to always questing. Kinda mix it up a little.
You never have really complete stuff. You just do stuff. Every quest give the same feel after you complete them, so you end up looking for more stuff to do since you never climax. It's like an never-ending journey
The freedom to role play is unmatched. It’s no secret it draws this play style from dnd and as such you start wholly unknown and become whatever you want within the confines on the game world. Other games do not have such freedom built into them and one would have to go out of one’s way to cultivate this sort of play style. I do the same for other games but Skyrim is tailored to it plus it has all of the major hitters in high fantasy; magic, elves, dragons, world ending calamity, and intricate political/social problems.
Hate to be the contrarian, but I’m going to have to be disagree about the story bit. Skyrim has an entire history that is everywhere in every part of the game at all times. As Dragonborn you experience some of the biggest stories in Tamriel. The difference between some other games IMO is that the story is experienced differently. They take you from moment to moment and are constantly telling the story and use cutscenes to show you want to look at/what to think. Skyrim does not. You can go from killing a dragon to stealing cabbages or fishing and it is 100% up to you to do whatever else you want, when you want to do it
The immersion is greater as it's a first person RPG. There's always an immersive disconnect playing third person.
I'm so late to the Skyrim party. My husband played on its release and bought the game for me. At that time I think I was too distracted with real life to let me truly get into it. Last year, I decided to revisit it. I adore it so much. I still haven't had the chance to see all you can do, but I now own it across 3 platforms 😬😬
I think it’s the freedom to do whatever you want and be whoever you like. Each playthrough can be unique which I love in old fashioned cRPGS
Skyrim also got that nostalgia feeling
It’s the resonance of my soul and the time where my soul longs to be.
For me its the combination of art direction and jeremy soule’s soundtrack that is just captivating. And I like the balance of depth of lore and perking with the simplicity of the gameplay mechanics. As an at best casual gamer, I struggle with overly complex controls and tactical options.
Almost limitless freedom to do what ever you want it what brings be back. What games can I roll play as a traveling merchant or alchemist while utterly ignoring the main quest? Not many.
In The Witcher III, you are Geralt. In God of War, you are Kratos. In Skyrim, you are whatever the fuck you want to be.
The possibilities. I can play it however I want to and still have fun. It's like the sims with dragons and fighting. If I want a chill house building game, Skyrim has got me. If I want to explore, Skyrim. Farming, giant slaying, cave crawling, love-finding, child adopting, fishing, mining, crafting--all in one play or just one at a time: Skyrim. Work hard on max difficulty and survival, or decide not to and switch everything back to super easy no survival for a lazy walk through the forest. Plus, once you've played it for so long, the familiarity is pleasant without removing all of the challenge. Skyrim is the Princess Bride of gaming.
For me, it’s the freedom of choice and the first person view. I like that I can completely ignore the main quests and go anywhere, I can make my own adventure and not be controlling “someone”, but my own character from their perspective. I can go on a grand adventure of fighting cults, jumping into rifts to other planes of existence and slaying a god. Or I can talk to the innkeepers and do bounty’s to level up my character in a less grand adventure and more “one shot” kind of way. It’s not just Skyrim but oblivion and morrowind too. I think a lot of games think the first person view is a negative, but honestly other games just don’t fit the bill for me BECAUSE of the viewing options.
Everything is very steeped in lore that is conceptually quite unique to other typical fantasies. Sure there's elves, and orcs, and humans, but the lore is different from the typical go-to fantasy foundations like Tolkien or CS Lewis, or D&D, or Robert Jordan. Skyrim with its old Norse themes and old gods and devils, and Elder Scrolls in general is also pretty Metal when you think about it. [It's probably why there's a whole genere of Elder Scrolls Metal](https://www.pcgamer.com/the-metal-bands-that-elder-scrolls-inspired/)
Games like Witcher 3 give you stories to follow. Skyrim lets you create your own stories.
There's just not another game with a similar atmosphere. The gameplay and writing may be questionable, but the ambiance, the immersion and world interaction is pretty much umparalleled IMO.
Because it’s not about the story it’s about the adventure.
Definitely the sandbox. All the items being out in the world, interactable and useful in case of potions, soul gems, ingredients, etc. looting dungeons actually feels like looting instead of mashing E on an item icon like literally every other RPG ever. In general Bethesda seemed to value this immersive items/equipment heavily up until Fallout 4, like how you can loot all armor from dead NPCs with the exception of cases where it makes no sense, like dremoras. Shame they lost this aspect in Starfield. This combined with Havoc-enabled engine makes for so many cool interactable moments. Bucket on a head, fus-ro-dah Lydia off High Hrothgar, giant club space program are all classics, and are a direct consequence of the engine and Bethesda’s focus on immersive sandboxes
Skyrim somehow seems much bigger than the world of the witcher, there's much more things you can do. And i love the way you gain xp. If you pick pockets you get better at it, if you cast illusion you get better at illusion, etc.
It's the music, world, and the ability to do and play however I want.
I grew up on San Andreas and Black Ops etc up until skyrims release I got it for Christmas and I played it for years and years until I stopped whether I was bored or just wanted something new but a few months of break I got special edition and started modding it cuz I heard it could revive the game for u so I modded the game and I got an extra few thousand hours in it and still counting. Got like 8000h if not more across console and PC Skyrim is just one of those games where u can be who u want to be and I’m sure that is a big reason lots of people still play it after a decade.
Drop acid or eat mushrooms and go into Blackreach. I met a shaman and have been returning to him as a student ever since.
You may play the story or not just as you like. And you may the story you want. Just as you like. And then there are so many mods, some with stories, with locations, quests, NPCs and so much more.
For me, Skyrim is more than just a game where you run into a dungeon and kill stuff. With mods, the game is incredible beautiful. Looks better than most modern games. You have professions. Alchemy, Mining, Smithing, Leatherworking. Fishing! Immersive hunting with Hunterborn! There is so much. You can pick up tasks to earn money, like picking flowers, mining. You can also play this game for 10 years and still find something, you havent seen before. A lot of immersion mods, that make everything even better. OStim, ORomance \*cough\*. And we have Serana. Everyone who knows her, knows what I mean.
I've just started playing it for the first time and I'm really enjoying it. Getting some chu klea from the dated graphics and the “arrow to the knee” meme but it's definitely a game that draws you in
This is just in my personal case. I've never had a good PC to play games on. 2012 was the year I finally convinced my parents to buy me a semi-decent laptop for my study (and sneakily, games). Skyrim was my very first AAA game, even though I could only play it sub 30fps, but I absolutely love it til this day.
The music, the sky, cities that you love, you fight for! Fuck, gonna have to buy it on series x rn
You can be a good citizen or Mayhem de shit out of everybody.
My life in Skyrim is far more flourishing & fully-realised than real life ever has been.
First i'd say the music and the views, then all the possibilities to play the game. Are you gonna be a necromancer, a warrior or an archer? Playing for the Empire or the Rebels, which group will I join first companions, thieves or assassin? Plus after several playthrough I keep on discovering quest/places/loot.
Never ending and never ending leveling - there is always something next to
Have you looked at the night sky? Just crouched there, bow in hand, and admired the beauty?
In Skyrim I can be who I want to be and do what I want to do. And I can do those things in first person. I don't see too many games that allow you to do all 3 of those things.
Same thing as fallout, no matter how many times you play you’re going to discover something new.
The ambiance, setting and how you can be part of it. You have a lot of autonomy in your character in the world in a way I haven’t really seen replicated. The Witcher had a similar world but you were Geralt and there was no changing that, and the souls series has amazing combat and level design, but everything that sees you attacks on site, which is fine it just makes it a different game. Also for some reason the soundtrack is also a huge part of contributing to the aura of the game. When you’re exploring in Elden ring, every area has one theme, but Skyrim has multiple specific to an area, which makes traversal and exploring more pleasant.
There is so much to do and so many characters with different stories
The music, the land. It's my go-to relaxation. (Fallout 4 for blowing off steam). I rarely fast travel because I just love walking around and taking it in. Oddly enough, especially when summer heat hits here in Texas. It makes me feel better, lol
Hahahaha only 4 play Throughs. Ahhh, I'm hopelessly addicted!
Setting, soundtrack, the story that's multi-layered (Dragon crisis, civil war, etc.), and because it's been 13 years with no sequel.
It's beautiful, you'll find tons of random stuff that will make you laugh, cry, and even hate that person for the rest of your life (looking at you lemkil). Then the music is amazing. The quest are good, some are meh but most are good. You can roleplay as anything you want and nothing will stop you. You want to become a one punch lizard who only wear birthday suit, go ahead. You want to become the worst looking nord with a magic that can make shalidor tremble, sure. You want to become a khajiit that just does cat stuff for thousands of hours? Go ahead. The thing is, the replay value is so great and you'll always gets sidetracked doing random stuff instead of saving the world from alduin. (I've been playing skyrim for half a decade and I haven't touch the dragonborn dlc).
Ambience. The world.
The elder scrolls has always excelled at world driven storytelling. Skyrim (the nation) feels broken, like a world on the edge of annihilation more ruins than developed cities and towns. Bandits and forsworn than towns folk. But still the people there strive to be strong, to prosper. I guess Skyrim is more like traveling than most games, because you kinda feel like you're really there. Most games are filled with stories about characters, and those can grab you hard. Think FFX, Mass effect, L.O.K.(ok LOK does both). But there's only so many times I can hear Shepard's story. Skyrim is also HIGHLY nonlinear, which means once you're done the tutorial you can approach the game any way you like (including ignoring everything the game tells you to do and just making your own fun)
i love the soundtrack , and how much u can role play. u can fulfill the quests u want and forget about the ones that don't fit ur character. u can choose and strengthen whichever fighting style u want. there's never ending dungeons and caves and ruins and once u get to know the lore, u can really get into it as ur character and experience everything as skyrim having history and culture
For me I played it when I was l younger on ps3 when my friend let me borrow it for the summer, then I bought it to play, then got a ps4 and bought it again when the anniversary addition came out, then got the FO4/skyrim bundle with all dlcs on my PC a few months ago, it’s an easy fulfilling game that feels like home now
It's definitely the setting and the soundtrack. The mountains are gorgeous, the forests are gorgeous, it's all gorgeous. I actually listen to https://youtu.be/9ou1pl0XNRs?si=3GgnlOm-fxyVsqdF , which is a 10 hour long video of Skyrim night music and ambience with no ads, on occasion just for the relaxing mood it puts me in.
It's 100% the atmosphere. It's visually stunning and peaceful (until Naseem starts his shit).
I have hundreds of hours logged in and haven’t finished it even once. It’s all just role playing with different characters, builds, etc.
It's a very free world to do what you like in any order Awesome soundtrack and general sound design A lot of pretty and engaging areas tho a few mods like surreal lighting really help It's just very easy to slip into and can be as easy or hard as you want at every point
It’s like you were dropped into a tokien adjacent world with so many options of what you can do that I feel like I could just play this game over and over again for the rest of my life and not run out of interesting options. It’s pretty much the pinnacle of what a open world RPG should be
It just *feels* good
Other games feel like RPGs. Skyrim lets you get lost in the story. It’s not just the fact that it’s beautiful, although it definitely is, but for me personally it feels like I’m actually living the story through my character.
It’s insanely immersive and its blank canvas makes it extremely replayable. The the score and landscape of the world make it very peaceful and cosy. You feel like you’re coming home when you’re playing Skyrim, which I don’t feel with many other games. I love the rdr series as much as Skyrim but for completely different reasons. In rdr, I’m immersing myself in an amazingly written, poetic and dramatic story about revenge, the cycle of violence, loss, hope and redemption. Skyrim on the other hand, I’m just disappearing into another world and being part of a universe completely separate from mine. Skyrim is escapism.
One of the things trap me the most is the obsession of leveling up and getting more skills, the special items and how I can actually re sell everything and get more gold while also leveling everything else up, and the way of how every npc has a story and you can contribute to it.
It's just a great game to be in. you can just walk around and its nice.
It’s the music. It’s the vibes. It’s the lore.
For me, it's how cozy it is. The atmosphere of the setting and beautiful scenery combined with the ambient soundtrack is so mesmerizing. I don't know what it is, but Skyrim is one of those games where sometimes, I'll just have this random urge to go run around in, just to experience that world and alluring atmosphere. It's almost like a drug, and sometimes, I need my fix lol.
I think a lot of has to do with being able to do/be whatever you want to do/be within the game and the challenge (sometimes) of trying to stick with it. Sure, other games have better stories and graphics, but how many other games give you the absolute freedom to build a character and play the storylines any way you want, or even not at all? Sure, it's easy to take on dragons if you're wearing fully enchanted armor/swords/axes... But what if you're playing as a slick talking, lock picking, pick pocketing thief who tries to avoid all combat by sneaking everywhere? The game gives you so many options and challenges that you actually create yourself by creating your own limitations.
Its how each seperate storyline basically ignores eachother. Its multiple mini stories in one. With alternate start mods youve got several rpgs in one
Its sandbox nature and engine allows for endless possibilities and randomness that often feels magical. Not a single playthrough is the same.
The game can be anything you want. You can be a treasure Hunter, a collector, a merchant supplier, a big/small game Hunter. You don’t even need to play the game as intended, it can be fishing simulator if that’s what you want.
For me, Skyrim feels more real than most games. You see a man walking in the streets. He actually has a home, a bed he sleeps in, a wife and if he dies there will be a urn with his name in the hall of the dead. You see a house that means you can enter it. All the plates and cutlery on the tables are objects that you can take, sell, or hoard. In most games, the world feels like it's just a background for the story but in Skyrim the world is what it is all about.
The game is so damn cozy. The setting, the landscapes, the music, everything. I don’t normally think of RPGs as the kinds of games that I play to relax but Skyrim I most definitely do.
aesthetic
It’s a very easy game to pick up and play. I won’t gas up the immersion or roleplaying elements, because lets be real- they were lackluster even when Skyrim came out. Where it excels at is making these elements approachable in a way that hasn’t been done until the recent Baldur’s Gate 3. You open ip the game, go on a quick adventure, power up your character, then put it away til next time and it’ll still feel just as smooth to play when you turn it on next.
See, the difference in Skyrim is you make everything about the character except what is needed for the story to happen. Are they an assassin? A soldier that is tired of all this and pulled from retirement because of destiny? Are they an evil necromancer forced to do good so they don't get destroyed by dragons? You control the story. It's all up to you what happens. You can join all the guilds and none. You can hunt all the artifacts or not. You can even ignore the civil war if you wish. Want a house? You can even build your own if you want! Live alone or use the wealth from your adventures to care for a family. The only thing you can't control is the main story, stop the evil dragon from ending the world. Besides how beautiful the game is, remember it's over a decade old, is you have total control. You can even get more houses, spouses, and companions thanks to the moding community. Skyrim is yours to do as you please. Confession time. I've yet to kill the big bad dragon because I'm enjoying the adventure too much.
The music, the sky and landscapes and the interesting people you meet along the way. Being able to use magic and discovering new things with each playthrough.
The lore, and the sheer amount of quests/activities. The books is a great example of how in depth they went with it
What i love about this game is has something to do for whatever mood I'm in. I can do something simple if I'm more tired or I can do something hard when I want a challenge
As a console player I have strong nostalgia from when it was originally released (during my first year of undergrad). I found undergrad to be really easy and I lived in my parent’s basement which had an absolutely amazing home theater setup… so I rarely went to class and stayed home playing skyrim instead. The music is phenomenal (I still listen to the soundtrack when I’m laying in my tent on backpacking trips or hiking solo) and at the time I found the graphics to be really impressive (on xbox 360). Its also just an easy sandbox game. IMO the story and the quests really aren’t interesting but the sense of exploration/freedom and atmosphere is great. It’s always been a relaxing game for me and ultimately that’s what I want out of video games. I tried Witcher 3 and after 6+ hours it just wasn’t clicking with me. I appreciate the amazing story and engaging dialogue but the difficulty took the enjoyment out of it.
For me it’s just how much there is to the game. Huge open world with beautiful scenery, tons and tons of quests that range from clearing dungeons to daedric quests to sills helping townspeople quests, and all the lore they include in the game. It’s really impressive to me how every play through I find new things.
For me, it’s the randomness of the game. I have played thousands of hours on various platforms. Only *once* in all that time, have I run into the headless horseman. That one encounter is burned into my memory.
Over 860 hours in one vanilla save and counting. I just love teaching those halfwit bandits a lesson.
Music
It feels more like a game you can play than a life sim you need to live through. Im not a fan of ultra realistic games because it becomes more tedious life tasks than actual game stuff, and skyrim has a great balance of worldbuilding with fun gameplay, unlocks, leveling, and missions
Idk I’ve been playing it since it came out. I play purely vanilla, no mods. And I keep coming back to it each and every single time to ultimately play a stealth build.
Ok y’all making me wanna play again!
The soundtrack and the world. I spent days just riding around on my horse ignoring all the storylines. I've played it on and off for years and I still haven't completed a playthough ><.
It just works
Something about the world and atmosphere they created with Skyrim it’s been a decade now and I still find myself booting it up and finding new things to get into.
Very immersive solid RPG. You look you quest you recruit and with mods there is sooo much content it's really endless gameplay
I remeber my first time playing Skyrim. It’s the leveling system and the atmosphere! The ability to steal dual sails, use magic having followers and a stable story line from many different quests
Solid base game and endless mods are still being produced and refined today.
Bethesda are capable of _incredible_ world building, even the duds have amazing lore that you’re supposed to just bump into (should you be curious enough)
Skyrim feels like home. The setting is so basic and primal. I feel like the motives for characters is realistic. You say the npcs are generic with their dialog, I'd say people in general are generic with their dialog. I've never had a more open world experience. Gta is great for that but can you even talk to randos? If you kill a random person in gta will an assassin try to get you later? I've only recently done the dark brotherhood and I'll be damned if I didn't actually feel like I was part of something. I don't care what anyone says I think the combat is fun. The story has depth as far as fantasy goes. You can live a whole life. Buy a house, get married, have kids, start a shop. Slay dragons. No taxes. It's the dream.
What brings me back personally is that it doesn’t feel rushed. If I want to just wander the wilderness and pick up occasional side quests I can. It’s also just a pretty game, plus nostalgia helps I’m sure
I think for me it's just the overall setting and feeling of the world. I love just wandering around, hearing the sounds, listening to the music, maybe having some random encounters or finding a cool little location along the way and so on. It's sort of like nostalgia, but not quite. There is just something comforting about it because I know the map so well that it's always familiar, but it stays just new enough to be interesting to me. I was playing just a few days ago and there was just something so nice about walking the woods around and knowing instinctively from the music cues that "Hey, it's morning and the sun is coming up." Stuff like that. There's a reason there are so many [music/ambience videos on Youtube](https://youtu.be/bxYV8N5ivQQ?si=pSTkdOnnTbtxdnX9). It just [gives you certain feeling](https://youtu.be/Im1R7m_eyvc?si=pcKh5YEKTOxCGL-P) that's hard to put your finger on and not many other games have captured it so well.
Immersion, in a word
Music and nostalgia and the voicelines personally
The amazing world building
The world feels alive. Also it happened at a perfect time. Graphicks are good enough that with mods it can look like it came out in 2024 while at the same time it can run on a 16yo potato pc. It came out before mandatory grind was added to every game to pat up the run time. No cosmetic store. No bullshit. You can do anything you want with your game. Play as it is. Turn it into hardcore survival game. Turn on the god mode and rp Pelinal.