The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is one of the most influential games of the entire generation and synonymous with a vast open world full of freedom. The player embodies the Dragonborn, destined to stop the dragon Alduin and his apocalyptic return, while traveling through the snowy province of Skyrim, full of Viking-styled towns, caves, and ancient tombs. Bethesda Game Studios upgraded the Creation engine, added dynamic combat with dual-wielded weapons and spells in both hands, and a system of dragon shouts that granted the hero powerful abilities straight out of Norse mythology. Dragons also flew in over the landscape at random, turning them from scripted boss fights into elemental events that could catch the player in the middle of a completely different quest.

The freedom to choose a role without traditional classes, hundreds of side quests, and endlessly generated content gave the game its legendary replayability. Skills grew through simple use, so the player became a thief, a blacksmith, or a mage depending on what they actually did, and the perk tree took the shape of a constellation. Alongside the main story ran the civil war between the Stormcloaks and the Empire, and extensive guild questlines, each of which was worth a small standalone game in its own right. The modding community, despite the console's technical limitations, created a phenomenon around the game that persisted for years after release, and later expansions added a vampire chapter, a dragon-themed chapter, and the ability to build your own house.

Skyrim became a cultural phenomenon reaching beyond the gaming community thanks to memes and the ubiquitous phrase about taking an arrow to the knee. Critics showered the game with near-perfect scores and Game of the Year awards from dozens of publications. On the Xbox 360, the game showed the console's limits when handling such a vast world, including long load times and well-known issues with bloating save files, yet it still sold tens of millions of copies across platforms. Skyrim remains a symbol of epic fantasy RPGs and is still regularly re-released on new platforms, making it one of the few games known even to audiences who otherwise don't follow consoles.