Skyrimming

A lot of games were unveiled at last week's Video Game Awards, including Uncharted 3, Mass Effect 3 and, most importantly for me, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

That's not to say that I'm not excited by the prospect of more Mass Effect or Uncharted, but in my heart of hearts I'm an RPG gamer. I was absolutely captivated by Oblivion's huge and dynamic world and must have played it for hundreds of hours. The excellent Shivering isles expansion pack added a good deal more content, but I eventually tired of it and have been searching for a suitable replacement ever since.

If you look at the current gaming landscape, there's nothing quite like the Elder Scrolls titles. Fallout 3 and New Vegas are obviously very similar, but they are a lot less ambitious and take themselves far less seriously. Bioware's Mass Effect isn't really a true RPG experience and I personally found Dragon Age to be rather dull. I'm also not big on grind-heavy MMORPGS like World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings: Online.

Bethesda didn't have much to say on Elder Scrolls V, other than the above teaser, which seems to speak of an approaching dragonpocalypse in the northern region of Skyrim. One other bit of news revolves around the game engine, which will not be ID's Tech5 engine as many had speculated, but their own new in-house solution. As long as they drop the ageing, creaky Gamebryo engine that did such a poor job of running New Vegas then I'm happy.

To Tamriel!