How often have you gone back to a game you thought you'd exhausted, only to find it full of prospects and potential? In a fallow period for vast open-world RPGs, a lazy visit to see my Skyrim house opened more than furniture filled with hard-earned goodies. Nostalgia took hold and prompted a look at my open quests list, and from there I was picking up the threads of a game that had laid dormant for a good 18 months.
I had to finish off the Imperials vs Stormcloaks storyline. I felt bad about leaving it (likely due to making sure I'd got all any loot that might be closed off by the war's conclusion), so I felt a curious duty to see it through. Sure enough, ganking up some Stormcloaks outside Whiterun lead to sojourns across Skyrim that put plenty of black location markers on my compass. That was all it took to strike out into the wilds again, if only to tick off all the locations as visited. Such is the power of Skyrim's grip that I was off sneaking my way around new caves and towers, backstabbing all the baddies with joyous abandon. As stealth games, The Elder Scrolls and Fallout titles are a total joy. They're more leisurely than some strict and masochistic Silent Assassin kill or Splinter Cell ghost run, and the system is happy for you to feel comfortable in your state of non-detection while still maintaining enough peril if you step into sight to prevent too much of a farce.
The critical thing was this re-visit showed how much game there really is in vanilla Skyrim. It's a real testament to Bethesda's vision and sheer generosity of content. Aside badgering from infinite dragons, there's little in Skyrim to piss you off, but lots and lots to go and find. And it's still great, over two years after release. It still has the capacity to make you marvel at environmental vignettes that arise from simple exploration, lending a sense of the sublime to idle wandering. It's a place, more so than any of its predecessors, that validates its scale with potential for enjoyment. Perhaps it was a case of absence making the heart grow fonder, but there is a genuine sense that Bethesda built a world intended to be enjoyed as much as possible.
from Eurogamer.net http://ift.tt/1hSS92t
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