Now, I'll preface this by saying that I give Skyrim an 8, however, I can totally agree for it getting more. I'd find it hard to justify lower ratings, though...maybe anything lower than 7.
Anyway - it's just a game that is very well put together and is part of a franchise that does open world good. Despite it's fallings, the ES games are still one of the best in the open world circles. And yes, they have failings but they also have strongpoints, also I really liked how Bethesda have shown to be learning, adapting and trying to improve themselves. I still prefer Morrowind but Bethesda did address some of the criticism Oblivion had, also some of the things the series as a whole had. And it did so...let's say adequately. They found solutions - how good the solutions were is up to debate and up to personal opinion but I'm looking beyond that and saying they are solutions. Say, the levelling systems - some like it, some don't, however it is better than the old system that was a remnant from another time. It is more organic, takes you less away from the game, it works better, even embodies the goal concept more. And it's worth to say - it handles is the way people already handled it - the most well known character progression overhauls for Oblivion and Morrowind tackle levelling from the same perspective as Skyrim does. It has its downfalls but undeniably it fixes many problems present before.
And there are more things like that, bottom line, Bethesda show they are trying to make something good. I'd actually want to expand here a bit - you can see they are trying - the world they have is big and there are many things you won't (normally) find or encounter. And that right there is worth noting - Bethesda put a lot of time and effort and know that some people...most probably many, won't even see all of it. But I think we can appreciate it.
But let's examine the scores it got. I'll talk about how I formed mine - it's a collection of factors, here it goes
Sound: it gets a solid 9 here - the music is beautiful, it's majestic, it's Jeremy Shoule. The guy just does good music, and hasn't disappointed yet. The other sounds are fine.
Visuals (vanilla): 9 - looks good, and it's quite pretty. Mods can bring this up to a 10 but vanilla is still nice.
Gameplay: interaction with the world (except where noted below) - it's OK. The levelling is definitely a fix but it has some drawbacks, fast travel is an option as well as horses and paid transport, which is fine, travelling by foot is also not bad. Overall, though, it's not impressive - not bad but not impressive. I'd go for 6.5 but I'd rather have whole numbers, so I feel justified in rounding it up to 7, since it's not quite a 6.
Combat: It's...well, not too different from before. Although we now have more options - dual wielding, having a sword and a spell, etc. I'd go for a 7 again, though. It's not awesome but it's good.
Story: 6...OK, let's go with stories as an overall - I'm not going to only judge the MQ with all of this around. And yet...it's not too different. The MQ is all right, I suppose but the rest of them are just a bit underwhelming. The guild quests in particular are too short and every one boils down to "You're the chosen one" which gets old REALLY fast. And most of the other quests are "go in this dungeon". Stories overall are meh but at least on the upper side of meh.
Total: 7.6 which I feel totally justified in rounding up to 8 - there is a huge world, there is lots of stuff to do, there is lots of effort involved which I don't want to ignore, and there is the effort I mentioned about trying to improve. I would have rounded up even if it came to 7.2 due to these factors. Although...there is the menus which I found were quite bad on a PC. Still, it was an annoyance at best, since I could navigate them with a keyboard sort of OK.
I should also mention that it took a while for Skyrim to actually hook me in, there are bugs present (of course) and overall, I'm way more likely to boot up Morrowind than Skyrim if I feel the need to run around in an open world. In fact, I'm not quite sure if I would be replaying Skyrim, at least not soon. It's OK but I don't care about it that much. I'll go as far as say it was somewhat boring. Not too boring, as I have 150 hours clocked into it so far but...yeah - I won't be increasing that count that much. Still, I won't deny its merits.
