Beautiful! A master piece! Thanks

It depends on what a person is going for. It has about as much choice in the main quest as Oblivion (i.e. none, but specific quests can have multiple paths to take, like wearing a disguise through an otherwise hostile area), the Civil War feels slapped together, but is technically the largest choice you can make. The DLCs are excellent, with Dawnguard having two separate paths for the main quest, akin to Bloodmoon, but starting earlier instead of halfway through.

Having companions that actually work well is a nice change from the escort-quest companions in unmodded Morrowind. The UI is a lot nicer to use than Morrowind (no need for two clicks just to move an item into your inventory), and is actually scaled properly to the screeen, unlike Oblivion. Also unlike Oblivion it's a lot more possible to make money from other professions than adventuring (hunting, thieving), random junk often has *some* value again, and harvesting plants finally shows the picked part disappearing (which has been in mods since Morrowind, but for some reason took until Skyrim to happen in vanilla.).

On top of that performance is actually quite good, at least for the original release version, with overall better performance than Oblivion due to multi-threading being a thing. Though the SE version is a lot more performance hungry in comparison, with the plus side being that it is 64-bit, allowing for significantly more modding potential instead of running out of RAM constantly if you had too many large mods.

Also unlike Oblivion, all of Skyrim's dungeons are actually unique. Not just the same rooms put together in nearly identical ways with at most one unique room per dungeon. In that way it's more like Morrowind, though some people might be put off by how the dungeons are frequently more linear and have far more storytelling going on in them.

Oh, also the music is actually somewhat reactive, with combat music not being an instant swap and even not triggering if the enemy is too weak. Plus separate tracks for regions.

My favourite is still Morrowind, but Skyrim is a close second. I'm sure it varies based on what a person enjoys most from the series, with Morrowind offering the best exploration and lore, Oblivion having the best cities and character movement, and Skyrim having the best combat and interactive elements. (At least best combat for me. But I play primarily as a clothing-only mage with a sword, so my playstyle fits extremely well into Skyrim's gameplay, with dual-wielding and more basic enchanted types of clothing to support a magic user.)

One thing I will say, like with the previous games, the "difficulty" settings just make NPCs take less damage and the player take more, or vice versa for easier difficulties. If you like to turn up difficulty to maximum in games, be warned that the whole game becomes an ultra-boring slogfest where all combat takes several times longer (enemies take 1/4th damage on Legendary) with no interesting aspects added. Make the combat interesting by giving yourself roleplay restrictions, not with that pathetic excuse for a difficulty slider. Especially since Skyrim doesn't have the unlocked potential of Morrowind to become effectively a living god that no enemy can hope to stand against (except an army of werewolves in a maze), but at least it also doesn't have Oblivion's enemy levelling where all combat becomes something to avoid instead of actually harder because every enemy takes multiple minutes to kill at higher levels.

Thank you so much for this. I never thought we'd get DRM-free Skyrim, but now my Elder Scrolls collection is complete. Hopefully Fallout 4 will follow, and who knows, maybe Starfield in the far future?

Now if you could just convince Rockstar to give you GTA 5 and RDR2...

Something about Skyrim Script Extender, probably.

eyyy, it's the game! :D

will there be a fallout 4 though? That is the question

Kudos to GOG and Bethesda to actually give us a proper option here...;

https://www.gog.com/game/the_elder_scrolls_v_skyrim_anniversary_upgrade

Whether or not I like CC content or not right now, I am glad we can upgrade further down the path.

Wow... just, wow.

It is odd. This release is at the same time expected, and unexpected.

And now I am puzzled:

1. Can you buy both the Special and Anniversary Edition, or do you have to choose which to get? To me it appears you can choose only one. The Anniversary Edition does not include the Special Edition, right?

2. If you want the DRM-free version of the game, is the Special edition the only choice? Ie., does the Anniversary Edition require Galaxy, or a third-party online account, even if you are not going to use the Creation Club content?

Or, is Anniversary Edition fully playable even without Galaxy and being online, you just can't access Creation Club content?

The best thing is they actually made a good release this time.
You can upgrade
https://www.gog.com/game/the_elder_scrolls_v_skyrim_anniversary_upgrade

Special edition is included in the Anniversary edition.

You don't need anything for the Creation Club mods, just download it as DLC, even better no external menu or account login.
that's the real good old gog for you.

Hopefully, it's the mod toolset, as it's not included with this version…

EDIT: Scratch that, it's a separate download through steam...
EDIT2: Welp, looks like I'm gonna have to re-install the steam version… my orig point stands!

1. Anniversary Edition is Special Edition + OPTIONAL CC content. You can buy Anniversary and download/play only Special. You can buy Special and upgrade to Anniversary any time.

2. CC content is available as regular DLC's.

What mods are required to play? Oblivion didn't even approach a playable game without half a dozen mods to get going (UI fixes, like making the map useful, making the inventory not console-sized so you can see more than a couple things at a time, etc.)

[They made it playable. It was unplayable from the box. It still wasn't a good game with them, but it was at least playable.]

Thanks, that's all I needed to know, so I can safely buy the Anniversary edition, and don't have to be online or use Galaxy to play it...

I am not that familiar with all the Skyrim editions, so at first I thought "Special Edition" was the original Skyrim + DLCs, but that was actually Legendary Edition... (googled for it).

I never thought Bethesda would allow GOG to release Skyrim. Just never thought it would happen.

GOG, thanks for proving me wrong!

Now just to figure out which version?

Well, that's a nice surprise! Of course we all knew it was coming eventually, but still. Pity I got the Steam version in a trade a while back :P Though I think that was the original edition and this is the Special Edition, so I may still end up picking it up here.

I asked about the same, and just bought the Anniversary Edition. It includes everything that is available for the GOG version, it seems.

I've been numerous times that close to buying the game from Steam, but now the unthinkable happened and I bought it from GOG only. :) I kinda wished I had the original Legendary Edition (in Steam if required), but I guess I can live without it. Mainly just for interest, how the original differs from the remake etc.