It seems to me that a game which presents us with so much diversity allows us to experience it in different ways.

It's rather like a book reading assignment in school. Some students will take pride in how quickly they were able to finish it; others will take their time and immerse themselves in the story and characters; some will enjoy identifying flaws, such as holes in the plot; others will engage with, and ponder, the ideas behind the story.

Which path do you take?

A combination of a test and an immersive experience. It's the first game I've resolved to get the Platinum PS3 trophy for, but I'm not rushing to get there. 80 hours in, and loving the whole experience - and I'm not even half-way through the game yet.

First and foremost its a world, however it needs a few storylines to give it an overall structure.

Its a huge, detailed world, and allows you to approach it from multiple angles and have a different experience (mostly).

What is Skyrim to you? A buggy mess.

...a... video game? :shrug:

A province in Tamriel, where lies the Oghma Infinium and the locations to Ice Fortress and Labyrinthian (2nd piece of the Staff of Chaos).

I was torn between "Story" and "World" but opted for "World" in the end because overall this is a world that shall allow me to experience multiple stories.

Azrael
The Nord with the Sword

In all seriousness, what is skyrim to me?

A game that needed better Alpha/Beta/QA Testers. I'm on the PC but I'm seeing some severe bugs with the console versions being reported. Beth/Zen are going to go down in flames with the console users if they don't start getting it right very soon.

/edit
And the PC has it's share of gamebreakers as well. just wanted to add that in. the thing is, with that, beth will rely on the community to fix most of those bugs, as it has in the past.

It's a world, a lifestyle, a quest, really a masterpiece. It's very immersive to me, I get the feeling of being in a renaissance fair quite often in the towns, an intense bloodlust during large battles on mountainsides, and the feeling of paranoia, greed, and little remorse while stealing from someone. I feel power and superiority when I burn things to a crisp with a swirling inferno from my palm. Skyrim pleases, but like any ES game has bugs that irritate me sometimes. Tops to Skyrim, tops to Bethesda.

It's a place where the stories end abruptly because of script errors. And the gods, instead of fixing the easy script errors first, decide the tackle the more esthetic features of the game and create more errors.

The poll needs an 'All of the above' option. :thumbsup:

Something people without better things to do can complain all day about (hey you should be thankful for that, it gives you something to do).

I'm still defining Skyrim, but Daggerfall is this place in my dreams where High Rock has ancient subways under it. Seriously, all my Daggerfall dreams include subways.

Most of the time I think of any TES game as a sandbox world. What I want from it on any given day can be entirely different.

I'm surprised nobody has opted for challenge considering the difficulty complaints, that or they are lying to themselves about what they look for in a game.