What keeps you playing Skyrim?

[Flameseeker]

I've not been playing the game constantly since I bought it at release (Shogun 2 and GW2 also keep me occupied in my free time), but I always end up coming back to Skyrim nonetheless. The game doesn't have the best storyline or writing but for me it's easily the most immersive game I've played to date. You can quickly lose track of time without even touching the main quest or a faction quest and before you know it you've spent hours just wandering the tundra. Modding it makes the game even more beautiful! Seriously, I booted it back up last night and spent a good five minutes just staring at all the different colours of the night sky just blazing brilliantly over Dragonsreach and on top of that, no other game lets you propel people off of cliffs in quite as glorious a manner as Skyrim does. Lastly, mods. Without mods the game wouldn't be half as repeatable as it currently is. So at the risk of appearing to be brown-nosing, thanks to all those lunatic modder's out there who slave over their projects for hours to entertain myself and others.

 

Now if only I could decide on a permanent character... I've lost track of the amount of times I've finished Helgen now and even repeating Ralof's lines verbatim in various stupid voices has gotten boring!

Really, I think that might be my main criticism of the game and it's more a criticism of myself. It spoils me for choice so much that I just can't decide on a character. Ha.

[MidevalGuy]

I've not been playing the game constantly since I bought it at release (Shogun 2 and GW2 also keep me occupied in my free time), but I always end up coming back to Skyrim nonetheless. The game doesn't have the best storyline or writing but for me it's easily the most immersive game I've played to date.

 

What Skyrim does RIGHT:

 

I feel the main thing Bethesda did right with Skyrim aside from the free roam aspect is the Thu'um, a.k.a. Shouts.

 

It's a seamless balance of story telling and game play and that is very rare in most games these days. The Shouts serve as mini-quests (along with Dragon slaying) which drives game play along side official quest lines. The use of Shouts in-game also gives your character that extra "X" factor other characters lack. The Shouts are the equivalent to Jedi powers in the Star Wars universe.

 

I bring this up because the vanilla game suffers from a lot of technical shortcomings and artistic elements, so it's a lot easier to criticize Bethesda than acknowledge what they did right.

 

It's just like when everybody bashed "Avatar" for being a "Dances with Wolves" clone in space. True, the basic premise is the same, but people failed to acknowledge what James Cameron did right with the story and that was the Na'avi's ability to literally plug into the world around them. Most stories... Including "Dances with Wolves", "Pocahontas", etc. all claim the native people can connect with the land whereas in Avatar the Na'avi can literally do that with their braid tendril. It's little things like this that people take for granted, or wrongly criticize because they don't understand how effective those things are on a subconscious level... Just like the Thu'um in Skryim is equivalent to rage (shouting!), but having your words actually having a real effect in the world.

[LordSarcasm]

I keep playing to experience as much as possible of Skyrims massive modding community because there is some amazing work out there. I'm also surprised that after 1000+ hours of Skyrim I'm still discovering new things, like a cave I'd never explored before or a little side quest (a very little sidequest) I'd never played before.

[FishBiter]

What keeps me playing Skyrim? Um.. I think it's the fact that I haven't actually gotten very far in it. I've had this game for like over a year and I've still never completed the main quest... or really anything.

 

Mods keep me playing this game because I end up doing something wrong with them which makes me have to start over constantly!

 

Will I keep playing Skyrim once I have finally done an actual play through where I actually finish all the quests and stuff? Does the basic gameplay without the promise of "something I haven't seen yet" hold enough entertainment value that I would continue playing the game just for that? Yeah actually, I get a lot of enjoyment out of Skyrim battles just for their own sake.

 

Sort of like Fallout New Vegas... I still play that game, and I completely ignore the presence of quests and just walk around shooting things because for whatever reason it's just a lot of fun!