Where does one even begin with Skyrim?  It's plot?  It's game mechanics?  It's visuals and audio?  It's sheer, daunting scale?  This I can say for certain; Skyrim is the new crown jewel of Bethesda Game Studios' already stellar game catalogue.  It is the absolute sum of the lessons the developer has learned since the release of Oblivion; a grander, more epic, more beautiful game whos scale and dauntingly full-of-life world draws the player in like few other games have, if any.  Bethesda game veterans will find the game instantly accessable control wise, but they may be surprised with just how much better Skyrim is than it's predecessors.  In a season full of major hit titles week in and week out, Skyrim can stand tall and say that it very may well be the king amongst them.

Like the other games of the Elder Scrolls series, Skyrim places you into the boots of a new rising hero, a seemingly faceless member of the masses before fate bestows upon them a grand quest.  This time, you are a Dovahkiin, or "Dragon Born", one born with the soul of a dragon and blessed by the gods to do great things. Thus, you find yourself in the middle of the grand realm of Skyrim to do...well, whatever the heck you want to do.  Soon enough, one will discover that there is PLENTY to do in this world gone mad - people to help, bandit forts to eradicate, new powers to seek out, new skills to learn, and much much more  It's all quite frightening, really, to be presented with not only so many things to do, but so many different ways to play through this game.

Since the game takes place in the Nord's home realm of Skyrim, I took to playing a Nord in this runthrough. He is a thick skulled, stubborn, Nords-first warrior in heavy armor who lives and dies by the sword - or in his case, battle axe or hammer, by the name of Caoimín.  He is what I instantly imagined throughout the entire buildup to this game's release as a typical main character for this universe, so I just decided to go with it.  Half of what makes this game so astounding to me is the sheer multitude of ways one can decide to handle any given situation, or entire playthrough for that matter.  For instance, I use no magic.  At all.  Okay, only to heal myself, but thats virtually IT.  This means that despite however long I take to finish this game with this character, however many bandits are taken out, however many dragons are slain, that I will do it all over again just to play as a different type of character. Apart from these main choices - race, weapons, skills, armor - there is still a ton more to work towards in Skyrim.  Armor and weapon making, cooking, alchemy, enchantment, pick pocketing, and many more skills must be trained just as hard as swinging your sword in this world.  Without training a few core backup skills, you'll find yourself lagging behind the rest of the world. Trying to tackle it all at once is a fool's chore, so as I pointed out before, multiple playthroughs are pretty much demanded to get everything out of the game.

The game plays as you would expect an Elder Scrolls game to nowadays.  Melee combat is essentially unchanged, which is fine, add some new fun slow-mo kills taken straight from the pages of Fallout 3.  Magic, especially Destruction magic, really impresses though.  It is far evolved from the magic of Oblivion, feeling not only much more powerful, but much simpler to use.  The new Shouts, the ability granted only to the Dovahkiin, are the major separation in combat compared to Oblivion.  Shouts are the central focus of the game - seeking out new words is always your main goal, as these words grant your character powerful new abilities.  My current abilities grant me everything from breathing fire to throwing my voice across a room to confuse opponents.  What other shouts remain ahead of me to discover remains one of the driving forces that makes me keep wanting to play.  But to unlock new shouts, you must not just find the word.  You also must slay a dragon.

Oh yeah, have I not mentioned the Dragons yet?  The other major separation from previous Elder Scrolls titles, Dragons are your enemy.  I, personally, like to use the term "prey".  They will appear at random throughout the world, roaming the skys, seemingly in search of you, the only known Dragon Born (if there is another reason, I have not uncovered it yet).  Their roar will echo from the distance, they will soar across the sky, and suddenly the fight for life and death is on.  Being a ground-based player, a bow is my only choice to attempt to reach them while still in flight, but the fights are adrenaline pumping no matter how they are approached. There has been more than one occasion where a Dragon has ambushed me right after taking out a good number of bandits, so being in the wilderness of Skyrim is always tinted with excitement and danger.  Each time a Dragon is slain, you absorb its Soul.  Souls are used as a currency to activate Shout powers you have found.  Each power levels up three times once you find all three words that make up that Shout.  Thus far, even after all of my playing, I only have five powers and a total of ten words.  Obviously, I want more.

I have been playing the game on XBox 360, and this I knew from the start that I would be punished graphically for doing so from the start.  Seeing screenshots from the game being played on someone's top notch PC rig compared to my 360 does make me want to weep, but when you take into consideration the sheer scale of the game, especially when one is able to take a view of the grand wilderness, or see the Skyrim equivalent of the Northern Lights, you quickly begin to forget the graphical differences.  The world is so beautiful and inviting anyways that you barely notice.  The only time it really rears is head are the lower-res textures on many of the more complex objects, but nonetheless, everything is usually moving too fast for you to notice.  Still, I would have wished to see an install to the HDD increase the graphics.  I can hope for a patch in the future, maybe.

As I was playing for the first few hours, my expectations had already been blown away in nearly all categories but one.  Music.  I started to think "I really liked the music in Oblivion, theres no way I can like the music in this game more".  Then I got into my first Dragon fight.  War drums pounded, deep voiced chanted, and I suddenly felt like I was being a part of the most epic moment in history this portion of Tamriel had ever endured.  I then left to trade in some new items for coin to Skyrim's central city, Whiterun.  I listened as a calm, repetitious yet powerful song began to build as I traveled the streets.  Suddenly, the life pulsing through Whiterun's streets seemed all the more powerful, all the more real.  And let me say, the world is truly alive. People dont just stand around anymore.  They have jobs, and they do their jobs.  They train, they small talk, they argue.  If there is one place that Bethesda has truly expanded on in their games over the past few years, it is making the worlds seem as true to life as possible.  The fact that people have a schedule and do their jobs and live their lives in this world is a testament to the design prowess that permiates every little part of this game.

Skyrim, of course, does have the glitches that seem to come with every open world game.  Every now and then speaking to someone will become a difficult chore as the menu wont act correctly.  Sometimes a character will walk through a door or seem to get stuck in a wall.  One moment in particular that made me laugh was when I was ordered to take the head of a witch - the game replaced her character model with a new headless one, but something went awry and the body was launched across the room and into a fireplace for some reason.  I laughed, but these little bugs are a part of what makes these open world games so memorable.  Sure, sometimes they are frustrating and there is even the occasional crash (ive had only one), but some of the most entertaining moments of the game are sometimes caused by these bugs, and they create memories that allow us to just remember the game all the more fondly.

Skyrim is one hell of an achievement.  From the world's design to the intense combat to the incredible audio direction, this game has a ton of heart and soul in it.  Despite the fact that I am nowhere near complete with the game, it has already been the single most enjoyable gaming experience of the year thus far for me, and with few contenders remaining, has a strong chance of being my favorite game of this year.  

I wrote an article earlier this month asking of 2011 was the best year in gaming history.  The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, in my opinion, has absolutely cemented it as so.