The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim - final thoughts

Our Skyrim review goes live at 1pm today. Bit of internal insight for you: the Elder Scrolls 5 is currently the most searched-for game on OXM, pulling in more interest than Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 combined.

In a vain, fruitless, despairing bid to sate your ravening hunger for the game, we're posting issue 78's Skyrim cover feature in full. Have a shufty. The game's out tomorrow, 11th November.

Three hours is a long time to spend in a supermarket. It's a long time to spend in traffic. In Skyrim, three hours is as insubstantial as a cat's belch. It's like being given a delicious four-dimensional biscuit, then told you can only lick the air around it. When the time is up, we're told to put our controllers down. Everyone automatically nods, but no one stops playing. It's like we're testing our parents. Will they dare to unplug the consoles? And would we be justified in throwing a massive howling tantrum if they did?

Our Skyrim Experience begins around half an hour into the game. We don't see the opening sequence, or the story in which our character is spared from his mysterious death sentence. There's a moment in Oblivion, at the end of the tutorial dungeon with Jean-Luc Picard, when you're given one last chance to change your character before entering the world. That's where we join the game. In a cave, with the frosty white light of Skyrim glaring through the tunnel.

Our options at this stage are fewer than Elder Scrolls connoisseurs will expect. You don't choose a star sign. You don't choose a class. Speaking as a role-player who has a pathological fear of commitment at the beginning of a game, this is a massive relief. I don't have to worry about choosing a perk, profession or class that'll turn out to be boring or underpowered. I spent much of Oblivion lamenting my decision to be a Redguard Bard, just because it rhymed.

There are a lot of body-type sliders here, but the only non-cosmetic decision to make is race. In the absence of an alien invasion or rogue evolution, it's all the same races on offer. I choose Khajiit, not so much for the Night Eye ability that comes with it, but because they're a race of massive combat cats, and that's not to be sniffed at.

And so, Jeff the Dragonborn Khajiit walks into the light, and down the zig-zagging mountain path towards Riverwood. It's the first time you'll see Skyrim, so it's a deliberately beautiful postcard scene. Shrubs and trees frame the borders, with the ornate, damaged archways of the Barrow Hills Temple temple making a nearby mountainside seem worth a visit. And at the bottom of the valley, there's Riverwood, the classic, picturesque first-village-in-a-role-playing-game.

The first decision you make in terms of your character's development comes on this path. Three stones sit by the roadside, one each for the Warrior, Mage and Thief. That's not to suggest there are three classes - it's far more refined than that. A wider range of more specialised stones exist in the world. But at level one, you don't need to worry about that. Activating a stone doesn't give you powers, it simply speeds your progression. Jeff specialises in magic, meaning my development in the five branches of magic is boosted by 20 per cent.

Everyone who's played Oblivion has a story about the time when they sacked off the main quest and just walked around. The world of Tamriel is pregnant with non-essentials, far more than any non-obsessive could ever hope to complete. It's a large part of the charm - the fact that everyone has a different but equally noteworthy experience, both with their character development, the world, and the infrequent but inevitable glitches.