As I have written before, when I played the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion,
it was an awesome experience. Completely free roaming on a very
realistic-looking terrain with no obvious repetition, and this outworld
was just humongous. It was the dream of an 80's and 90's gamer: No longer
are you restricted to a narrow path, but instead you can just take a
random direction and start walking to see what's there. (Of course Oblivion
was not the first one to do this, but older games invariably were
significantly more boring, eg. with significantly less detail and more
repetition, and worse graphics.)

  But Oblivion kind of immunized me to the whole concept of free-roaming
wide open sandbox gameplay. After a few weeks the novelty wears off, and
after that it's a bit boring.

  When I recently started playing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, I regained
much of that original wonder of just exploring around. It helps that the
terrain in Skyrim is even more detailed and varied than in Oblivion, and
more humongous. Long distances (eg. between towns) really feel long.

  The climate of Skyrim is much more nordic, which means that the ecosystem
is mostly of the taiga and tundra type, which makes it much more barren than
the lush forests of Oblivion. Nevertheless, it still succeeds in being more
detailed, varied and interesting than in Oblivion.

  Fun fact: I bought a new PC so that I could play Skyrim at ultra-high
detail, full resolution, full antialiasing. A rather big investment for
one game. (OTOH I suppose I'll be able to get the benefit with future
games as well...)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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