Skyrim Review: Get ready not to sleep for days
Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series has always been known for presenting experiences that absolutely demand your full and undivided attention.
Anyone who has played any of the previous installments can attest to how absolutely detrimental they can be to a person's social life.
Skyrim delivers this immersive and addicting gameplay in spades with a wonderful new land to explore packed with curious tales, plenty of loot and literally infinite quests.
For many, the sheer size and scope of the Elder Scrolls series can seem a bit intimidating. They're well known for giving players only the briefest of tutorials then dropping them in the middle of an expansive landscape with nearly endless possibilities - and that's the point.
The Elder Scrolls is first and foremost about forging your own adventure. After creating your very customizable character from one of the series' signature races, you are free to play the game as you choose.
Skyrim manages to grant you even more freedom and flexibility than previous titles right from the get-go. Character creation no longer involves choosing a class or assigning major and minor skills. Instead, races differ primarily by their unique aesthetics and daily power. This allows you to organically create your own character class as you play, mixing and matching abilities from the warrior, thief and mage classes as you desire.
This fits right in with Bethesda's effort to make Skyrim more accessible to a wider audience of gamers than its predecessors. Nearly every aspect of the game - be it your quest log, alchemy and enchanting, inventory and magic or leveling up - has been streamlined. Don't worry, they haven't pulled a Mass Effect 2 here and just ripped out your inventory system. The changes they have made only make the interface less cumbersome and easier to understand without sacrificing any RPG integrity.
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