Okay, so, I waited until I hit level 60 to write this...probably because I was too busy playing.

As a gamer in my mid-30's - I'm considered an old dude...especially by all of my 20 something friends who I online game with and get constant "old man" bashing. Its all in good fun....I'm sure...

I wanted to write this post to the older generation of gamers who reminisce about how gaming started and what WE had as kids versus today's generation. In particular reminiscing about the 1980's and even more particularly Dungeon's and Dragons, Atari, Coleco Vision, Dragon's Lair and the like from the era where video games began.

As I have been playing Skyrim recently, I realized that Skyrim is pretty close to the realization of a dream. A kid's dream, my dream, from back in the 1980's when Dungeon's and Dragons was at its peak in popularity. I never liked the games or played them, but the artwork and the books from D&D really grabbed me. I can remember walking into a bookstore and seeing this like, 2000 piece puzzle that was a picture of a huge orange-ish yellow dragon breathing fire down upon some armor covered warrior enthralled in battle. With the advent of Atari and its popularity in the forefront of my mind, I thought, wouldn't it be cool to actually play a game sometime in the future that could emulate that?

Back in those days, the suspension of disbelief that someone had when being entertained in a movie or reading a book or playing a video game, had to be way more imaginative than the suspension of disbelief today. When you played Pitfall...you imagined so much more on that screen than the colored squares that built up the characters and landscape. With the technology today, the suspension of disbelief in the individual being entertained by movies and games is so diminished because we can see things and interact with games like never before.

So, old people on these forums will know what I am talking about, but younger generation Skyrim fans can't possibly know what its like looking back 30 years and seeing D&D or Zelda actually come to life. I mean, the Zelda franchise just released a new game this year, but for me, looking at the old Nintendo version of Zelda from the 80's and seeing Skyrim today...my vision of how zelda would be in the future was more like Skyrim than it is like the Zelda games today! When you are a kid you imagine alot of crazy stuff....wouldn't it be cool if character "X" could call a dragon to aid in battle? Wouldn't it be cool if someday somebody made a game where you could dual-wield magic on both hands? Wouldn't it be cool if you didn't have to stay between the lines and could just go anywhere anytime in a game...oh an fast travel from one location to the next? Wouldn't it be cool if you and a follower could go into a dungeon and raid it and find and fight undead creatures and warriors to get to a treasure chest? F yeah!

And all these things are happening in Skyrim today 2011....amazing. Now I won't say Skyrim is my GOTY or that it is the best game ever made...its damn good. The thing I like best about Skyrim is that it is the closest thing in gaming EVER to come close to my childhood visions of what D&D or Zelda would be like in gaming in the future.

I want to finish out by saying that I know some of you here on the forums are having issues with bugs or glitches...honestly I only have had one issue where a dragon glitched and was disappearing and re-appearing...but it was fixed the next time I went back....What I want to say is, despite any issues we are having from a technical side...please recognize what Skyrim really is...not only a great game, but also a realized vision built from 30 years of dreaming of what could be possible. Thank God for computers and art and mixing them together.

Good night.

Nicely written, made me a little teary actually.