Skyrim is already the fifth role playing game in epic TES series from Bethesda. For those who are not familiar withit, may I remind you that we are on a planet called Nirn with main continent Tamriel with lots of animals, races, languages; at a time, pretty much similar to the end of Roman empire and the beginning of early medieval ages. But first, a bit of cosmogony..

A little history

First, there was order (Anu) and chaos (Sithis), which gave birth to eight high spirits (aedra) and lots of low spirits (daedra). First of them (Akatosh) created time, while Lorkhan created this planet and binded himself to it through his heart as an active Red mountain vulcano in the Morrowind. That is how age of dawn ended and new time, consisting of three epochs began (that lasted 3 thousand, 900 and 430 years respectively). 

One of most important changes in this world history becomes the emergence of human empire with the capital in Cyrodiil at the end of second epoch by first imperor Tiber Septim, which later becomes worshipped equally as other aedra, with new name Talos - spirit of war and rule.

First two games (Arena and Daggerfall) were done in pseudo 3D with randomly generated content and are not worth much attention. First breakthrough was Morrowind, that stunning graphics, thought through world and innovative location loading in the background. In Morrowind main story ended up with main battle of hero with nemesis partially immortal Dagoth Ur, that kept living by gaining energy from vulcano's heart.

The plot of Oblivion takes place several years after Morrowind, at the end of third era, when cultists of Mythic Dawn kill the emperor and most of his heirs, opening gates to lower worlds. Protagonist fights with this cult and daedra-princes. As a result Mehrunes Dagon is banished by new incarnation of Akatosh and the gates of oblivion are closed.

And now we come to Skyrim at the fourth era, almost 200 years after last emperor's death. The Empire is growing weaker under the fire if elves (Aldmeri dominion = Thalmor), which conquer the capital. At this time in northern provice if Skyrim, a local king is killed and an uprising by some mayors is formed. Stormcloaks wish to worship the only human to become aedra - Talos. And since empire is too weak, to protect itself, they want independence. Among this national chaos, a dragon appears.

Plot

We play another protagonist role (Dovakiin) who is supposed to save the world, now - from awakened dragon (Alduin), that keeps awakening more dragons. Being saved from the execution, we are free do explore the world as we please - we can go to Whiterun city and follow with main quest objectives learning the way of controlling the Voice, or we can choose political quest of deciding who is going to win, or we can join the thief's guild, dark brotherhood of assasins, College of magi or warrior's brotherhood of companions. For those that like to explore, lots of unique cities and dungeons with snow elves, ancient dwemer robots, nordic skeletons. Roaming in those dungeons and killing dragons will actually make you stronger with the Voice.

Honestly, I didn't like the beginning (although I like cinema effect). Dragons and vikings? What a cliche.. first Dragon age and Cataclysm in World of Warcraft, whats next - TES6 Elsweyr with cat continent (Kajiit)? Everyone on youtube seem to like Puss in boots. Speed record takes two hours to complete, but with all of the exploring it can be around 160 hours

World and engine

Skyrim is a worthy heir of Morrowind and Oblivion. Entire world is hand-made with approximately 300 unique locations, of whitch 120 are dungeons. All NPC have voices of over 70 actors (comparing with 12 actors involved in Oblivion). 

The engine (creation engine) was taken from Fallout and still looks well, especially mesmerizing are open landscapes and weather system with lightning. Faces (elven especially) still look weird, same thing with close-up objects and textures - apparently caused by need to deal with consoles too. Animation of characters is not bad, dragons in particular - probably because of motion capture. Battle looks real too - if you hit someone with a sword, they tend to block it with their shield in the right angle and location. Closeup animation of critical strikes looks cool too. There is problem with running while being skinny (legs look very weird) and with dragons changing their direction while their wings are not doing anything for that. 

Bethesda tends to focus a lot on mythology and literature of their world - thats why they are so obsessed with hundreds of in-game books, that explain entire history (there are even erotic ones). I thought that was too much work, even if they just copy-pasted most of them from previous TES series, because I've read only one of them, though I did copy all 1500 page and 1MB long file of those books on iPad to read through (see file below).  

"Realism"

Realism is poor and that isn't something game designers really focused on. You can kill an animal, cook it in the cauldron, but thats not practical because potions and spells are much more useful, so its just a useless but "cool" feature, like cooking in WoW. You can also mine different ore types and make an ingot to create new weapon and then enchant it with soulstones, but it might just become too old because of fast leveling. One thing that should be clear is that its not as combinatory as Minecraft - objects are not destructible and key NPCs are immortal..

All buildings and dungeons are still separate locations, probably because embedding them into open world would overcomplicate physics or scripting, making someone stuck or killed when it shouldn't. Also, weather doesn't affect you in any way. Wind doesn't slow you down, road doesn't become muddy after the rain, even swamps don't slow you down. Wearing a 40 kilo iron armor? Yes, you loose stamina and run slower, still you can swim just fine in that. You don't get cold being naked in the mountains too.

As I said before, fight looks realistic and hitting head or neck with an arrow can be deadly, still hitting a deer on a hunt with an arrow doesn't cause him to bleed to the death, though fire and poison do deal damage over time. Scripted dialogs are also a problem - you come up to a Yarl and hear his monologue and unless you take that quest, you will keep hearing it every time. Those issues should be adopted from Assasin's creed, along with pushing other people animation.

But, everyone seem to notice magical atmosphere. Quests are not that much automated - they seem to have emotional dialog before and if I don't count minor generated quests, most are not courier tasks. Some involve investigation of a murder, others give a group of guides to go through dungeon, and some require a non obvious non dichotomic choice. You wanted independence with high idealistic reasons? Here you go - a speech of some soldier betting he killed more imperials today than you did.

Many key progress levels in the game are well commented by strangers, like "I hear you are a new student in the College" or "I see you are a two-handed kinda guy, one can respect that". Going into tavern and talking to some stranger you can get to know that he is a local cook or a miner. And most likely there is some quest connected with him. 

Building a character 

All 10 races and partially their bonuses were inherited from previous games. Main change - direct class selection was dropped, making characted creation more fluid. Main development trees are still three - warrior, mage and thief/assasin. Gaining experience is sped up by megaliths that are placed all over the map. With each level up you select +10 health, mana or stamina and +1 perk from the Constellation. 

I played only a tiny portion of the game (30h), choosing barbarian orc and investing into heavy armor and two-hand weapons, but because I lacked money, I ran through thief's guild quest line gaining skeleton key and leveling archery. Then I noticed that although I am able to kill 10 soldiers or a dragon, Its still not as easy as I would want it. Plus I am very reliant on health potions and thus - alchemy or stealing, while all of my mana as a resource is wasted and switching to heal is not effective. Build failed, mostly because its too agile.

While building thief role, I noticed that being an archer and sneaking is very important if you need to kill entire army from afar. But, its a pain in the ass to switch gear from archery to melee mode if you get noticed. So you either have to shoot in heavy armor, or constantly go through stupid scrolling inventory UI. An yes, there are favorites and numpad key bindings, but not for entire inventory.

As a possibility for safe ranged game, one can recruit a companion (or a thane) and learn conjuration. But problem is that you have to specialize in something, because increase in any perk automatically increases your general level. And general level directly influences available weaponry level in the shops and enemy levels too. So by spreading your perks thing on all skills, you actually loose in dps.