14 DAY TRIAL // Skyrim has no mini-map; instead, it offers players a band at the top of their game screen. This "map-band" allows them to see the cardinal directions and a number of undiscovered locations around them, in addition to the quest marker for their current adventure and, possibly, a custom location.
This simple mechanism creates the sort of addiction that can only be described as Skyrim virtual location crack.
Unlike real world addiction the mechanics here are very simple: as I travel around the game world the band shows me locations that are close to my position.
They do not appear on the big map and at times they can be quite hard to get to but that never stops me from dropping my current quests (thankfully none of the have been time restricted so far) and trying to reach the landmarks, mines, camps, houses, caves, forts, temples, stones, ships and bandit camps that make up the world of Skyrim.
The developers at Bethesda have created an impressive game world here, one that feels organic in its organization and allows the player to wander around and always find something interesting to see or do.
The game world feels bigger than that of Fallout: New Vegas and that of Oblivion and, more important, it feels lived in, a space where different creatures have found their niches, filled with hideouts, memorials to long lost heroes and hard to get to mountain top locations.
Sure, all this content makes it hard for some to concentrate on the main quest and make progress but to me the narrative that the developers from Bethesda created feels almost secondary (although well written and engaging) to the stories that I can create myself by exploring the world, seeing its vistas and meeting its inhabitants, even though most of them are rather unfriendly.