What Makes Skyrim... Enjoyable?

I know this is a very trivial question, but what keeps you coming back to Skyrim, what makes you want to turn on your computer, xbox or PS3 to play this game?

For me, one of the answers would have to be that, unlike the other games, you can stray from the main storyline. You can go do the Dark Brotherhood, or join the Imperials/Stormcloaks, or even help someone look for their dog, but you don't have to stick with the main storyline if you don't want to at that time, you can stray from it as much as you like and go back to it when you want to.

Another one would have to be the graphics, it's rare to see this much detail put into one game, the only other one I can think of is Far Cry 3. I love looking at screenshots of mountains and sunsets and stuff because the graphics in this game are amazing, and glitchy at times .

One of the other main things if that in this game, you can be who you want. You can be a heavy armor user who uses only maces and fireball or you can be someone who uses Light Armor, a bow and a two handed weapon you can be anything, a mixture of anything you want to be.

So, what keeps you coming back, what are your favorite aspects of Skyrim and why?

The amount of openness and freedom of interaction, in addition to quantity of interaction.

I loved Fallout 3 (and New Vegas) for similar reasons, but it feels like a lot more character interaction in Skyrim.

The graphics, the mods, the npc's, the huge amount of quests and factions you can join/destroy, the different characters you yourself can create and role play and like you have said already the freedom to do as you please make Skyrim a top game.

jRi0T68 said:

The amount of openness and freedom of interaction, in addition to quantity of interaction.

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I agree with you here, I love how you can talk to so many people, you can start up meaningless conversations that mean nothing, but it just shows how much effort they put into making this game.

What keeps bringing me back to Skyrim is how immersive the world of Tamriel is. You can be anything and do anything. You can create an alter ego and play to his/her personality and tastes.

I personally love the dungeons. I love delving into a burial tomb, cave, Dwemer ruin, or dungeon and being there for hours, exploring and killing everything and discovering treasure. I LOVE the adventure aspect. When you wander the wilds, you find neat things, and people wandering, and creatures to fight. I love stumbling upon an awesome ruin that I've never been in before.

i enjoy this game so much its a bit worrying. the freedom within the world is immense. i point blank refuse to use carts or fast travel just in case i miss something i wouldnt have seen otherwise.

mods add a lot of course, being able to pitch a tent/camp fire wherever adds to this, fishing the rivers, lakes and oceans for food.

in short i guess its being able to wander about the place not doing anything much if thats what i choose

Hadean said:

mods add a lot of course, being able to pitch a tent/camp fire wherever adds to this, fishing the rivers, lakes and oceans for food.

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I really wish I had Skyrim on the PC. I would love to indulge in some mods.

Followers add a lot to the enjoyment of this game for me. I know people either love 'em or hate 'em, but I love 'em, and use them as often as possible. You can befriend a promising young adventurer and take him or her out to hone their fighting skills, or you can travel with your housecarl and unleash them on anyone who threatens you, or you can even take your spouse out on your journeys and stop for a quick shag every time you come across a sleeping bag or old unused bed and wake up to your "lover's comfort" bonus. And we even get to dress them up like dolls, how about that! Of course, there are certain points of the game where I'll go solo, but if it weren't for followers and I had to do EVERTHING by myself, I probably wouldn't enjoy Skyrim half as much as I do.

I love the various moods the combination of the atmosphere, the visuals and the music creates in every single area. I love just walking alone at night, looking at the stars, or scrounging for my life in the wild middle of nowhere. I love the overwhelming peacefulness I felt in Ancestor Glade and the despair of the Soul Cairn. It all makes Skyrim such an experience, rather than merely a game.

Well, it sates everything I ask for in a game: it's something I can lose myself in, that I can remove myself for my otherwise crappy life for a while. It's mostly void of the kinds of things I've hated about gaming in recent decades, which makes all the bugs and glitches tolerable for me. I can play it even if I'm not in the mood for particular activities because I'm not locked into a linear quest line. And I often have moments where I'm simply engaged by its landscape and atmosphere. Like this:




Also the horker stew is to die for.

I like it because you can be a different person in a new world, or the same person in a new world. Regardless, I can be as idiotic as I want in Skyrim, and no one looks down on me. There is no judgement in Skyrim.

I honestly haven't played in a couple of weeks.

I've been firing up the game to interrogate npcs so I have a better idea of the political situation. And I've been working on learning the basics of Skyrim machinima. But play? Hmm. Not for a while.

I have seen some good builds in these forums that might tempt me back in, though. Some really good builds.

But really, you don't even have to PLAY THE GAME to enjoy Skyrim.

There's also the lore, I enjoy a good story and TES has a great one I especially favour Skyrim because it includes so much of the origins of Human kind in Tamriel. The way of life of the ancient and modern Nords both fascinate me

The immersion and ability to be a great hero, evil villain, or simple NPC who keeps telling other NPCs to solve their own dang problems is a big part for me. The most fun I've had in Skyrim is being a travelling alchemist or playing Skysim with Hearthfire.

Another big part for me is how the random encounters and things NPCs say or do that can shape the game, especially when you are roleplaying. I had one character who was living under an assumed name from the Thalmor. One day she came across a Thalmor patrol two minutes after killing a dark brotherhood assassin. Two days later she left Whiterun and saw three different Thalmor patrols in the space of ten minutes. She decided they'd found her but couldn't get to her in Whiterun, so she will never buy or build a house that isn't Breezehome and only leaves Whiterun after dark. That changed the game a lot.

My current character didn't go the way I planned at all purely because Stenvar slept in a bed. To elaborate: My Dunmer had spent her whole life until this point being used and abused, and doesn't have any experience with love or being loved. Stenvar proposed after a very short acquaintance. She said yes as she was poor and bad at fighting (very low level) and thought having a person who would fight with her and help her earn enough gold to eat in return for sex was a good deal. At Stenvar's urging, they soon adopted two pretty little girls they'd seen in the streets. Now, my plan had been to have this character slowly start to fall in love with this family of hers, and realise what a wonderful thing romantic and motherly love was. But Stenvar throw a spanner in the works. Twice in a week this character came home late and discovered Stenvar fast asleep in one of the daughter's beds.

What would you think if you came home and found a man you knew had a high sexual appetite asleep in the bed of an orphan girl he'd been extremely eager to adopt? That's what this character thought. Let's just say that the next day, two people went on an adventure and only one returned. Sofie was so happy to hear Papa wasn't coming home ever again she gave Mama a flower. I don't think this character will ever remarry now she's rich and powerful. With her backstory and Skyrim story, I can't see conceivable reason for her to decide to re-marry.

I could never have predicted this result. Skyrim just swept aside my plans and forced me to come up with new ones. That's why this game is so damn enjoyable.

The music, the roleplay, the characters, the shouts, the freedom, class.. i mean everything

I enjoy my development as a player; from the first time I plugged in Oblivion to the anticipation of 11.11.11, to stepping out of my comfort zone to try something new and unnatural in character development; I have progressed.

The other day I was fighting a Bandit Chief and two Marauders in Treva's Watch on Master and they were beasts, but I timed my back/side steps perfectly, countered effortlessly, and finished with what felt like a choreographed conclusion (the whole battle, not just the cut-scene) with the body of the Chief impaled on my great sword while I watched his life seep away and my breath returned. I used all the tools available to me, at the right place and time, to succeed in what felt like a Flawless Victory. In my earlier run-throughs I might have used Noobish tactics to run and recover, or inhaled dozens of potions just to survive. To me that was a mighty accomplishment, and one that felt very satisfying at 2-3 a.m.

For the first time I believe I could drop my dependency on maxing out armour, or reload ad infinitum from the start of a dungeon/fort/cave, or any other one-dimensional goal oriented straight line. I can apply a tactical approach to each situation rather than a cookie cutter same-as-before. Each time I play I can feel I develop a more rounded play style, one that I could see myself using if were trapped in a dungeon with my life on the line. And now there is an added element of Role Playing with self imposed restrictions to limit a guaranteed victory every time, adding risk (love it), and fleshing out my character's raison d'etre. What a breath of fresh air, what a challenge. What limits? Does this play style fit within TES lore? How hard do I want to make it? Very worthy questions. Some will take quite a bit of consideration before I dive in, but I'm open to thinking about it.

........................

I shied away from the Role-Playing in HS, didn't see eye-to-eye with many of the DnDers. I'm a visual strategist and the graph paper dungeons, the die16/32/6s, having to be at a certain place at a certain time with other people of questionable reliability, the fact I couldn't see the dripping/ seeping/ groundwater/ skeletons/ trolls/ Paladins/ etc made the exercise too slow and draining, so I passed.

But I grew up reading my uncles' Conan comics (hence the quote on my sig) and loved the Spartan view of life and religion, the weaponry, the rewards and the pathos. It spoke to me, that despite your start, you could do whatever you alone chose to do. If you wanted to sit on your ass and do nothing, do it, but don't blame anyone for the results; if you wanted to spend hours training on a certain technique to develop better odds in battle, do it, but don't get complacent, there's always someone better in your next battle.

.......................

This game has all that, and an extremely knowledgeable, opinionated, passionate, stubborn, peculiar group of people from the four corners who, if you look for a minute or two for the right conversation, can help at the drop of a hat with a question of strategy or character development. This, to me, is more than any other game (chess and Civ come pretty close though) that I have ever played. I have all manner of other games in my Xbox bag of tricks, they have only gathered dust since Dec 3, 2011 (still play Civ on my PC though, gotta have some variety. Hail Juracán!! Storm God and Leader of the Free World in a loin cloth and bad attitude, baby).

Simple. What other game gives you the ability to catch 2 butterflies, pick a flower, skin a dead rabbit, and gain a 1,000 dollar bounty, all while fighting a dragon?

I love the detail even though ive basically seen it all. For me it just never gets old.

Freedom and openness.

On console, the game is very open and free, but with PC, it is completely open and free. I can fly for crying out loud.