I’m more of a sci-fi man myself. I like bursts of fire to come from flame throw­ers and jolts of elec­tri­city to come out of shock rifles, not from the hand of a bearded mage. Nevertheless, I’m a sucker for a good story and a world I can sink into. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim provides both.

The many quest lines made avail­able give the world both breadth and depth not found in other games. The story of Skyrim isn’t built solely on the civil war tak­ing place between the Imperials and Stormcloaks, or even the main quest line, which has you slay­ing dragons. Its rich­ness is built through the nine holds that com­prise Skyrim, each with all sorts of soci­etal and polit­ical issues that you’d expect when people live together.

Your jour­ney starts in an Imperial car­riage ride on its way to Helgen, where you are to be beheaded for a crime that is unbe­knownst to you along with the exe­cu­tion­ers. Regardless, you were in the car­riage with the other crim­in­als so your head has to go. Among those about to die includes the leader of the rebel­lion, Ulfric Stormcloak, who just killed the High King of Skyrim. Because you weren’t on the list you are asked for your name, which then takes you to the char­ac­ter cre­ation screen.

Picking a race is the only character-creation choice that has cer­tain stat­ist­ical advant­ages dir­ectly built in. Choosing to be the Khajiit will give you an addi­tional bonus in sneak­ing and unarmed com­bat while the Imperial will find more gold when loot­ing. Classes have been com­pletely done away with. You simply are how you play.

For instance, using one-handed weapons will increase your One-Handed Skill. When your char­ac­ter levels up, the player is faced with the option to upgrade among Magicka, Health, or Stamina. Afterward, play­ers can spend a point on one of the many perks found in each Skill tree. For example, Armsman, a perk in One-Handed, increases dam­age done by one-handed weapons by 20 per­cent.

The skill and perk sys­tem gives Skyrim a pick-up-and-play feel that isn’t found in most RPGs, while still har­bor­ing the com­plex­ity needed to sat­isfy the statistical-strategy nuts of the genre.

To get some of the loftier Perks, your cor­res­pond­ing Skill level must match the Perk’s require­ment. This often forces the player into either spend­ing the point on a Perk they don’t really need or wait­ing until their skill level breaks that threshold, unlock­ing the perk for pur­chase. A potion, allow­ing play­ers to redis­trib­ute a cer­tain per­cent­age of perks, would have been a much wel­come addi­tion.

As your head is finally leaned over the chop­ping block a dragon plunks down on a tower and scat­ters every­one with a thun­der­ous shout. You fade out then back in to see Helgen in dis­ar­ray. While skirt­ing around the ruins you’ll enter Helgen’s Keep and travel through its many cham­bers, dis­patch­ing enemies along the way before even­tu­ally escap­ing out to Skyrim.

At last, the world of Skyrim is com­pletely made open to you. If you’re like me, you’ll roam around on foot for a bit, fend­ing off attacks from the bears and wolves that will inev­it­ably cross your path. Skyrim is a rather geo­graph­ic­ally diverse region, full of moun­tains and val­leys. If you go straight from Helgen Keep to Riverwood you’ll fol­low a cobble­stone road through a lush, green envir­on­ment that’s brim­ming with trees and rock out­crop­pings. Go a little fur­ther up in elev­a­tion and you’ll notice the snow that even­tu­ally accu­mu­lates into a white, powdery sheet. Even fur­ther up the fall­ing snow is so dense that you can only see a few feet in front of you.

Exploring will not only famil­i­ar­ize one with the world but also uncover small vil­lages and ruins that don’t show up on your map. Once you’ve been to these loc­a­tions you can fast travel there for the rest of the game. Fast trav­el­ing is cer­tainly a use­ful tool if crunched for time, but it also deprives you of stum­bling upon the occa­sional ban­dit camp or other crooks and cran­nies that can be found in Skyrim.

Once you’re ready to settle down, delving into the main quest soon opens up a new power found only in the fifth install­ment of the Elder Scrolls games: the Shout. Shouting; is a power that can be equipped, grant­ing you spe­cial abil­it­ies such as knock­ing your oppon­ents on their back or call­ing down a thun­der­storm.

Shouts don’t use any of your magicka sup­ply and thus have their own cool down rate. This is per­fect for those want­ing to play a more straight-forward war­rior arche­type as it gives them some power­ful spe­cial abil­it­ies without hav­ing to invest time into the arcane arts. Be fore­warned that some of your enemies will also have access to these abil­it­ies. The first time an enemy knocked my sword out of my hand sent fear into my soul.

Shouts are usu­ally learned from the Word Walls you’ll encounter through­out your quests, but they can also be learned from other NPCs in Skyrim. Each shout is a sequence of three words with each word being learned indi­vidu­ally. Using one word of a shout doesn’t unleash its full power, but instead leaves you with a shorter cool-down period in return. Knowing the words to a Shout is simply not enough. You’ll need a dragon soul to unlock them.

Shortly after slay­ing your first dragon you’ll notice some­thing odd. You absorbed the dragon’s soul lead­ing those around to call you Dragonborn. As Dragonborn, or Dovahkiin in dragon tongue, you have dragon blood cours­ing through your veins, allow­ing you to absorb dragon souls and learn shouts instantly. You’ll tra­verse the land of Skyrim, invest­ig­at­ing why dragons are being resur­rec­ted and more import­antly, how to stop them.

Most cit­izens of Tamriel acknow­ledge you as Dragonborn but seem rather unim­pressed by your new-found status. This is a prob­lem com­monly found through­out the game. Most civil­ians are almost always aware of what’s going on, but some­times lack the appro­pri­ate emo­tional response needed to make it seem authen­tic. Other times, they’re rather for­get­ful. One shop­keeper sold me his wares with a smile even though the day before, I smashed his prized vase to pieces in order to extort inform­a­tion out of him.

There are other issues that take you out of this enchanted-sinkhole of a world. As many expect, there are glitches galore in Skyrim, although the game crash­ing to my desktop has been the only thing to really taint my exper­i­ence.

I once thought I was fight­ing some sort of arcane wolf because its pelt was shin­ing bright blue. After loot­ing it, only to find a reg­u­lar wolf pelt, I noticed other objects such as the trees now had this blue hue. Mammoths will leap 50 feet into the air and enemies get caught on objects rather often giv­ing you the easy kill.

Combat still feels rather empty. There isn’t any heft behind your attacks. You swing your weapon in what feels like the vacuum of space and hope to see your oppon­ents health bar drain. At first, puzzles serve to break up some of the mono­tony of clear­ing out dun­geons to find an arti­fact. Later on, you real­ize all puzzles are cut from the same cloth, mak­ing them noth­ing more than a speed bump.

Despite its short­com­ings, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim puts on a dazzling spec­tacle, and you are left to your own devices to exper­i­ence its won­der. There is always some­thing left to do. You can kill dragons, get caught up in a civil war, or if you’re like me, travel to remote loc­a­tions on foot while tak­ing in all that is Skyrim.