Now, that doesn’t mean you can abuse the system in certain ways. The wikis already have multiple ways of abusing certain situations to increase skills. Putting a bucket on the head of an NPC and then sneak-walking in front of them for half an hour will make your sneak skill awesome. But because skills increase in fairly logical ways from use, only powergamers who really like doing stupid things will bother abusing the game to level up skills. For most players, your skills will naturally increase at a reasonable rate from proper usage. I didn’t have to abuse the game to make a character who could sneak like a ninja. And I didn’t have to abuse the game to make that stealthy character a deadly marksman who could snipe and one-shot 90% of targets in a dungeon without any of them even knowing what hit them.

What I like is the notion that the game is both linear and free-form. One of my issues with these games is that they’re always so damn big (and that I’m a completist for this stuff) that I just find them intimidating. Plus, a lot of the skill raising stuff in Elder Scrolls games has always seemed…pretty tedious, really, especially when you have to game the leveling system. Glad to hear that’s changed for the better and that the game has both real focus and the opportunity to just fart around.