The Skyrim Blog

In the usual year-end culmination of gaming that befalls holiday season, we've seen a lot of spectacular videogames and the shifts in gaming power that comes with them. Modern Warfare 3 made some lines at GameStop's midnight release so long that they could put World of Warcraft's releases (a notoriously big winner) to shame. Battlefield 3 failed to meet the hype its own distributors generated, and EA dredged up the wrath of many of us angry videogame nerds. Minecraft has spawned a fanbase so devout that they can hardly bring themselves to leave the game.

One particular game this year, though, has caught not only my full attention, but that of a great portion of the gamer base. It has essentially launched a bid for Game of the Year against the Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Uncharted bigshots of previous fame. This game is the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. In the nearly three hundred years following the Oblivion plot, dragons, as well as their mortal kin the Dragonborn, have returned to the province of Skyrim amid mass unrest between the Empire and a Nord-centric rebellion group.