The gushing thread. Basically, something for you to share what you enjoyed about this game and what you liked to what blew you away? Think of it as the counterpart thread to the disappointment one.

On my end, no hyperbole,I think Skyrim is the greatest video game ever made. It's not just the best of the Elder Scrolls, I think it's the best game period ranging from Pong to whatever they've cooked up now. I've been a lifelong gamer and after 34 years, I'm happy to say I've never played anything like it and have returned to it repeatedly despite this for both the gameplay and worldbuilding and general sense of immersion I've enjoyed about it. It's a masterpiece and while other games may have more coherent stories, I think of this as the one I'd point to other games as an example of art.

Skyrim works as a movie first of all and I love the beautiful (breathtaking even) design of the place from Helgen to the Dwemer ruins to the Falmer to the individual structure of each hold. Each town has a personality and while I may think some of them are overboard (Winterhold didn't feel like a dying town so much as a gas station in front of the college) others I think were immense works of vision that told me SO MUCH about the people in each place without ever having to say a word.

Whiterun is a little slice of paradise and a kind of Heaven in Skyrim, embodying everything which is good about both Nords as well as the Empire. The people are happy, their traditions are respected, and everyone has a general sense of joy in their lives with ancient monuments like the Companions Hall and Dragonreach existing alongside happily married couples like the one which runs Warmaidens. It's a place which makes me want to LIVE THERE, which is something I almost never get from fantasy video games and only rarely get from fantasy period. I think there's Harry Potter and a few others that have places I think would be awesome to dwell in.

Compare this to the stark, frozen, and hellish Noir city of Windhelm where there's a bunch of people imprisoned by their traditions. The Argonians are hated by the Nords, living in frozen waters. The Dunmer live in a ghetto. There's a child practicing black magic, a serial killer, and yet still a sense this place has people who love it. So much is TOLD without having to say a single line of dialogue drawing attention to this stuff. It's visual Storytelling which reminds me of Star Wars where massive amounts was told about the Rebel Alliance because their bases live in harmony with nature while the Empire is cold and mechanical.

Solitude is also the perfect contrast to Windhelm because it gives us a sense of what the price for what serving the Empire is as well as the benefits. Solitude is every bit the same sort of paradise as Whiterun is but the people aren't really NORDS anymore, are they? They're rich, children play in the streets, and the ancient history of their people is more or less nothing more than a puppet show they put on every year. Solitude is a beautiful-beautiful city and I always move my family there but it's a place which is also silly and misses the darker undercurrent of Skyrim. They have blinded themselves to the fact this country is terrifying and built on ancient slumbering evils.

It's a bit like America to the rest of the world in that it's a 1st World Nation which turns its back on the rest of the world. Things like Potema, Alduin, and the ancient undead King Hakon One-Eye don't go away just because Solitude pretends they don't exist. Plus, the city maintains its prestige and power with a massive military in their doorstep. Is giving up your freedom and cultural heritage worth it if it means living like Solitude's otherwise happy citizens? The answer is maybe.

Really, what makes Skyrim so awesome is it's an organic fantasy world. Everything in the world is lore-justified. Why is there a goblin clan in the sewers in Oblivion? Because we need enemies for the Prisoner to kill during his escape. Skyrim is an IMMENSLY old civilization and we get to explore SO MUCH of its history. The Dwemer ruins, the Falmer, the Dragon Cult crypts, and even Blackreach all give us a sense that not only are the Nords not the first inhabitants of Skyrim but they will be far from the last.

This is an ANCIENT [censored] land and I've never had so much fun exploring the history of a world as much as I have just looking at the beautiful civilizations which have risen, fallen, and disappeared throughout the story. By the end of the game, I felt for the Falmer and Dwemer (well, not so much the Dwemer), and so many other groups. I even felt for the Dark Brotherhood who are complete scum but who believed in a dream once and let it fall to the wayside because they loved each other more. There are hundreds of characters in Skyrim and so many of them have personalities it's amazing. I can tell you the differences between most of the Smiths in Skyrim and what they hope from life. It's the little details that make it great, like how Eorland Greymane thanks the gods everytime you want to buy or sell something because his family is impoverished despite being famous country-wide for his Smith work.

Now throw in the cinematic moments like ascending the Throat of the World to discover the leader of the Greybeards, Esbern telling you of the terrifying prophecy which has haunted him as a boy, staring at the mural from 10,000 years in the past which predicts YOU personally coming to save the world, arriving in Sovangarde to find it covered with an omnious dark fog filled with terrified souls, riding to Alduin's temple on Dragonback (even if you don't see it), the Emperor standing defiant to the end of the Dark Brotherhood and its power with only a man's courage in the face of an angry demigod, and even the Indiana Jones-esque finale to the Thieves' Guild quest where you face a being as strong as you before escaping as it floods.

This is a magical [censored] game.

Really, I could go on.

I like Skyrim but it is far from my personal favorite game, I try not too but some days the laundry list of problems with the game make my brain hurt. But at the end of the day there aren't a lot of games out there that let you make a custom character and explore and open world so beggers can't be choosers I say. Personally the things I do like come in the form of the dynamic weather (love it when it rains especially) and I am glad to explore dwarven ruins again, best ruins of all to me.

I agree with everything you've said. I absolutely love this game. I was hyped for Destiny's release, but I've postponed that game, so that I can play more Skyrim.

The bugs and stuff get me down at times, but I can't avoid loving this game more than any other.

Possibly my favourite part of Skyrim is the falmer; they make me sick, yet excited, and I always feel the most immersed when doing a quest/exploration related to them.

I agree skyrim is the greatest game of all time, it's been voted so a bunch of times as well in massive polls so we're not alone.

I loved the freedom to create a character you actually like, and develop them how you want them to be (with skills and gear and etc) and then do what you want to do with them all in a rugged realistic world. I'm not even a fantasy buff or anything, I don't mind the medieval setting but I'm not crazy for it either, would have been just as happy in lots of other settings, but skyrim has achieved what I mentioned above better than any other game to date, and I don't consider anything else more important. Like maybe "the last of us" is a better movie with better story and etc, but do you know what's even better? Movies. Skyrim is the better game because it utilises the creative potential of games much more significantly. It's story is and missions and etc don't blow me away, but they're not the point and if you think they are you don't get the game.

Mind you, I can imagine a better game that does it all even better, but it doesn't exist yet. Looking forward to fallout 4, TES 6 and who knows maybe even a future red dead with create a player, or something similar.

Exploration. It never gets old.

That the game is highly moddable to fix all of the issues it has. It also increases the game's longevity since we only got 2 dlcs, the first being very meh and the second being an improvement but not by much (I don't count hearthfire)

What "did"? I am still playing Skyrim. I do get burned out and switch to a different Game, but I always end up back in Skyrim. I will probably return to Skyrim after Fallout IV, possibly even TES VI.

Hearthfire was by far the best dlc, and the only value the others had was in new gear.

I didn't find it interesting, the houses were bland. I use player made homes in my games which are more stunning, from sprawling lakeside mansions to a covered wagon gypsy style caravan that you can actually DRIVE from place to place and set up camp as needed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwhL1yJ5HJM

As I said, this is what I love about Skyrim, nothing the game came with by default, but that it allowed the player base to pick up the slack where the base game was lacking.

The Sheer amount of Content. With every playthrough, I discover something new. And I've easily put over a few thousand hours into Skyrim. It's hard to get bored.

Hearthfire had it's benefits but it was the first time my game crashed and now I'm afraid of visiting my house. Also, bluntly, while I know why they did it, my mansion in Morthal isn't so much my Dovahkiim's mansion but it seems like his weird wizard's workshop. I can't imagine raising kids around all the weird weapons and stuff I've collected.

Less love-nest for me and Ysolda too and more place for me to store my Daedric artifacts away from the kids in Solitude.

The freedom to do whatever you want in a massive open world.

I was about to say this, after re-reading the title.

The OP obviously can't change the title of the thread now but I think we all know what he's getting at anyway.

I knew what he was getting at in the first place, as you'll see by my earlier response.

Character designs: I think the people and the characters you can make look fantastic. The beast races especially.

The look of magic: Despite the issues with magic, it looks pretty damn cool unlike Oblivion. Oblivion had an awesome magic system, but it didn't look very impressive.

The world: It's gorgeous. OP said enough. I kind of feel like the world is always the star of the ES games anyways though.

Customization: All the different races, different skills you can choose, factions, etc.

Mods: Always something new to do, or if I'm feeling motivated, I can jump in and do stuff with it.