Ok so I've already got over 100 hours on my first character who finished the main quest and quite a bit of the game. Started a new character the other night and I'm about level 20 or so. Tonight I saw several things that just never happened on my first play through and they were both epic..

So I'm on a quest where there are these vampires in cages. I thought oh nice I'll try to level up my archery or something but my arrows bounced off the cage so I switched to flames and was able to find an angle to reach them. Lydia had nothing but her 2H sword and bow but once I engaged them and she realized she couldn't help me, she ran off somewhere. 30 seconds later she returns dual wielding a sword and a flame staff! She's helping me burn these vamps with a staff she must have looted in the other room! Plus it looked bad ass seeing her dual wield!

Then after we clear that thing out, we're on our way home and come up over a hill and damn near bumped into two giants escorting two mammoths somewhere. Woah lets back up... so I enter sneak mode and we get away from them in time but then these two elves with no shirts on run right past us and I'm just sitting there watching the whole scene go down. The giants are waving their clubs at these two shirtless hillbillies and sure enough the hillbilly elves (bandits I guess) attack the mammoth. I'm so LMAO at this point but it gets better. One giant smashes the first one with his club, sure I've seen that go down 1000 times... but then the OTHER giant lifts up his foot and STOMPS on this elf! The crazy thing is... he SHOT 2000 feet into the air! He disappeared for a couple seconds... then finally returns as a single pixel in the top of the sky somewhere and 5 seconds later splatters on the ground! LOL. It was so funny to watch. I did get a screenshot, but it's just blue sky with a tiny dot, lol.

This game continues to amaze me.

Earlier (I had read about things like these) I ran into the overturned cart and dead merchant (seen these many times) but looked around a bit and found an adventurer camp with a journal laying there about how they too found these attacked merchants and found a cave up the hill where they thought the attackers were at. So I follow in their footsteps and find their bodies in the cave as well as some epic ingredients. As an alchemist this place was like OMG with more rare ingredients in one cave than I could practically carry, and it was filled with epic fights with falmer. It's just cool to find new stuff continuously after nearly a month of playing every night. Most games run out of content at 8-10 hours, this is insanely awesome to just keep seeing new things. Oblivion was cool but felt pretty repetitive after the first play through and I still keep finding new quests and unique dungeons I've never seen yet. Amazing.

Yes, somehow I keep finding new cool things to do and experience in this game.

That giant thing happens all the time but the companion looting thing sounds pretty cool.

Yeah, its probably the most epic game ever made.

I saw a lone unescorted mammoth on a mountain road last night, I have seen those things go nuts and so stayed well away from it. As I skirted around it I was flanked and attacked by a Sabre Toothed Tiger, I am level 20 and those things still give me a good hammering so I leapt up high onto a rock to try to escape. The mammoth meanwhile had spotted the cat and came to the rescue. It flattened the Saber Tooth and then went on its way paying me no heed whatsoever.

Is that kind of thing that gives Skyrim so much depth, you are part of the world rather than just passing through it.

130 hours in and I *just* had my first headless horseman sighting. And discovered two locations. And ran into a mercenary, and a wagon attacked on the road. And I haven't found half the things other people have described despite the fact I run cross-country all the time.

Great experiences there (anything involving giants is great I have found), thanks for sharing them. And agreed there always seems to be something epic, some little drama playing out. I never get tired of these moments.

I am particularly fond of skeletons as well (have been in TES games ever since Morrowind). Not epic in the same way, but there is something about stumbling on some tableau with one that just paints a picture, tells a story, makes you think "what is your story, how did you come to this" that sends a little shiver up your spine.


Wonderful and agreed. I love the well built feel of the world, then feel that things are going on and would go on whether I was there or not.

I've never seen one yet and I have 136 hours! It just goes to show how huge this game is. I love how they tried to put meaning into everything they have done in the environment. Instead of "just because it's cool" they go a step further and you'll find a journal with a story behind what may have happened and it might lead to further events. None of it matters, but that's why its cool if you look around each scene in the game there is some little back story you can find if you dig enough. Stuff like that you just gloss over the first time through but then later you can soak up all this little stuff which makes Skyrim so huge, at least in content density. Personally I think the world is insanely big. Moving 3" on the map is a good half hour journey. I never fast travel any more unless me and Lydia are full and can't carry anything else, otherwise its so worth walking everywhere because you find little shacks and cool stuff everywhere you go.

Like meeko's shack, and the alchemist's shack each have little stories to them. Cool stuff.