The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition

Skyrim came out in 2011 and Xbox players are still buying it in 2026, which tells you everything about how well this world holds up. I've started a new character in this game more times than I'd like to admit, and every single time I tell myself I'll rush the main quest and every single time I end up three hours deep in some cave chasing a quest marker I forgot I had. The combat hasn't aged gracefully, animations are stiff and swinging a sword still feels a bit like swatting at flies, but the sense of a world stuffed with hidden things more than makes up for it. It's the fantasy sandbox other games still get measured against. Bring snacks.

Skyrim is the game that made open-world RPGs feel like something anyone could walk into. No prior lore knowledge required. No class to commit to before you understand what you are doing. You just start walking and the world fills in around you. I know its weaknesses: the dialogue is thin, the late-game scaling has issues, and compared to the games above it the role-play depth is lighter. None of that stopped me from sinking hours into a pure mage build one winter just to see how far I could push it. In 2026 it is still the clearest entry point for someone new to the genre, and the faction questlines, the Companions, the College of Winterhold, still hold up as some of the best self-contained quest arcs in the format.

Skyrim is the game I have started more times than I have finished, which is either a criticism or a compliment depending on how you look at it. I keep coming back because the first twenty hours of a new character are endlessly replayable: sneaky archer one time, destruction mage the next, heavy-armor tankbuild after that. The faction questlines, particularly the Thieves Guild and the Companions, are still some of the best quest writing in an open-world RPG. Yes, it is fourteen years old. Yes, you have probably already played it. But on PS Plus it is free, it runs well, and if you somehow have not done a full playthrough, there is no reason left to delay.

I have started Skyrim on three different platforms over the years and I always end up doing the same thing: ignoring the main quest entirely and just walking toward a mountain. That wandering instinct is exactly what the Steam Deck was built for. The game runs beautifully on handheld, controller support is native and comfortable, and the stop-start session structure means you can play for twenty minutes or three hours and it gives you the same thing either way. Text is readable, load times are short, and there is genuinely no friction between picking up the Deck and being deep inside Whiterun politics within ninety seconds. Still the right answer at number one.

Skyrim is fifteen years old and I still occasionally wander into a dungeon I have never seen before. That breadth is almost unreasonable. Fantasy is the genre I always come back to, and Skyrim at its best is the purest version of the fantasy open-world promise: go anywhere, do anything, stumble onto a quest you had no idea existed. The Special Edition on PS5 is stable and looks decent, though it will not impress anyone who has played Ghost of Tsushima in the same week. Where it loses ground is onboarding. If you hand this to someone who has never played an RPG, expect a confused first evening.

Skyrim carries a Playable label on Deck and the experience is not quite as frictionless as the Verified picks at the top of this list. Some text runs small, performance can dip in dense areas, and the sheer scale of the game works against the pickup-and-put-down rhythm that Deck play favors. None of that stops it from being one of the most compelling open-world RPGs you can carry anywhere, and fantasy is my genre, so I have no interest in pretending otherwise. If you have never played it, or want to play it again somewhere other than your main screen, the Deck handles it well enough to justify the install.

Skyrim is one of the first open-world games that made me feel like a world actually existed independent of me. You walk into a dungeon and the story inside it has nothing to do with your main quest. That world density is why it belongs on this list. The low-end caveat is real, though. Special Edition pushes integrated graphics harder than the original 2011 release. If you are on Intel UHD 620-class hardware, track down the original Legendary Edition instead. It runs noticeably smoother on tight specs. For anyone on Iris Xe or better, the Special Edition is fine with shadows and draw distance pulled back.