If you’re like me, you spent an ungodly amount of time playing Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion. The quests, the guilds, the action, the Oblivion gate closing (or lack thereof because you were so busy doing other things), it kept you hooked for at least 50+ hours. We’ve known for a while that Bethesda would be doing another installment in the Elder Scrolls franchise, though they didn’t officially announce it until last December at the VGA’s. What we haven’t known is exactly what you will be doing in this next installment, entitled Skyrim.
Thanks to the upcoming Game Informer issue, we now know some details. While the story remains mostly under wraps, we’ve learned a lot of gameplay information that is sure to make you eager to get your hands on Skyrim. One of the biggest things is the scaling “2.0” system where the enemies won’t be the only thing that scales to your level. You will now have the entire world scaling around to your experiences. An example that the NeoGaf user DennisK4 used (see entire post linked at the bottom) was “Entering a city, a young woman might approach you and beg you to save her daughter from kidnappers. The game will look at the nearby dungeons you've explored; automatically set the mission in a place you've never visited, and designate opponents that are appropriately matched to your strengths and weaknesses."
Bethesda continues to deliver intuitive gameplay mechanics that are sure to be implemented in other games in the future. Also, sprinting.
Source: NeoGaf Forums