Perhaps no game has seen more hype or been more looked forward to this year than the most recent entry in the Elder Scrolls series, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The Elder Scrolls games and their developer, Bethesda Game Studios, have come a long way since the series was first introduced back in 1994, but some things have remained the same. Bethesda has again released one of the largest fantasy role-playing game experiences on the market.

Like each game in the Elder Scrolls series, Skyrim begins by having gamers create their own characters. Players can choose from one of 10 different races, with the ability to customize almost every element of the characters' appearances. After this, Bethesda yields almost complete control of the Skyrim experience to the player. Many gamers will choose to follow and complete the main quest, and for good reason.

After generations have passed without the appearance of dragons in Skyrim, they have become little more than a myth. However, the game starts out with a bang: right before the player's unexplained execution, a dragon appears out of the sky, destroying the town and inadvertently saving your life. You are then tasked with discovering the sources of the dragons' reappearance and ultimately saving the land of Skyrim.

While this campaign is truly exciting and will intrigue players, it's what happens outside of this quest that makes Skyrim so unique from other games. Unlike most games, players need not follow this path right away, if ever. Players can instead choose to complete any number of side quests offered by non-player characters in the numerous cities, or join a guild focused around combat, magic, theft or assassination and ascend through its ranks. Players even have the option to ignore quests altogether and simply create their own experience: If you want to become a master thief and simply loot the largest palaces and manors you can find, you can do that. If you want to go hunting across the map and discover the dynamically generated flora and fauna, you can. Skyrim is truly a blank canvas, and players can take any or all of these routes.

It's hard to overstate just how massive Skyrim is. Players can spend hours just walking from one end of the province to the other. In Bethesda's new Radiant Story system—which dynamically creates new quests and missions—the gameplay is truly endless. One would think that with such a large game, some detail would be lost, but this is certainly not the case. Each non-player character lives his or her life by a certain schedule and engages in activity as though the gamer were not there. Every object in the game can be picked up and used. Every location is amazing in its detail and beauty. While it may be cliché to say so, the game is actually epic.

Skyrim is, of course, not without its faults. In large part because of its size and its dynamically generated missions and creatures, this game has more than a few glitches. Some of these are minor, while others are outright ridiculous, such as a town soldier literally soaring through the air after being hit by an enemy's club in one bizarre error in the game's physics. Skyrim's menu system is also a bit cumbersome. While it may seem like nitpicking, a game so reliant on its menus for equipping characters and leveling up should have a more intuitive interface.

Ultimately, however, these faults are few and very minor. Skyrim is a masterpiece that will keep gamers busy for a long time to come. There is no game on the market that gives players this much freedom and instills such a strong sense of discovery. Bethesda has topped itself again with Skyrim. I can't recommend this game enough, and I give it a perfect score of 10/10.