It doesn’t take long to reach one of the pivotal moments you’re sure to experience while playing Skyrim: that instant when you begin to get an inkling of just how much content is crammed into the wintry Nord province. Within minutes of surviving the harrowing opening sequence, you’ll be confronted with a vast landscape filled to the brim with intrigue, conflict, and a seemingly endless cast of characters that all need your assistance. Whether you’re questing for the Jarl of one of Skyrim’s nine Holds, picking the lock of an affluent home to steal an item for the Thieves Guild, or crouching behind an outcropping of rock to evade the breath of a dragon somewhere in the wilderness, you’ll never find yourself wanting for things to do. Even excluding the game’s main quest and the various faction quests, the amount of tasks you’ll find yourself faced with is staggering.
Of course, this has always been true of the Elder Scrolls series. Yet Skyrim offers perhaps more than any other game in the series, rarely wasting an opportunity to provide the player with incentive to scale every mountain and walk every canyon floor. Exploration for its own sake also has its own rewards, leading the player to locations and quests that might’ve otherwise gone unnoticed. Inevitably, you’ll find yourself ignoring the growing number of quests in your journal in order to avoid being overwhelmed. The choices you make will shape not only your character’s destiny, but will also define your character’s developing abilities. Bethesda has done away with the practice of creating or choosing a class, instead allowing you to advance your skills simply by using them. If you decide early on in the game to join the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild, by the time you’ve completed the quests for those factions you’ll likely have become a standard rogue. Skills are not divided into categories or ranks; any one of them can be developed and will contribute to the leveling process.
