No spoilers here, just a random scene from my game that I wanted to type out.

As I made my way through the trackless wilderness toward a quest destination, night fell and the woods grew dark and misty. As I passed through an area known as Witchmist Grove, the mist hung thick around the trees and the silhouette of a small house, surrounded by wooden spikes and bloody objects, loomed off to one side. Vaguely creeped out, I paused to consider my situation and decide whether or not I wanted to check up on what was surely a witch house (witches are bad so far), or continue undistracted to my destination, further on in the deep forest.

That's when I heard the dragon.

If you've never stood in the dark, misty forest, surrounded by tall frosty peaks, already vaguely creeped out, and then heard the spine-tingling, neuron-firing screech of a dragon echoing off the mountains, well, let me tell you. It's something else.

Abandoning the witches, I plunged into the forest in the direction I thought the cries were coming from, and soon broke out into an open, rocky area. I scanned the skies, where cold stars glittered. The dragon's call came again, a primal thing, but I couldn't see it in the sky. I began to worry it might be behind me, and as I turned around and saw nothing, worried that it might be behind me now. I crouched and waited for another cry, and soon it came. There. Definitely that way.

I broke into a sprint across the rocks, not wanting to let a precious dragon escape me but at the same time feeling a twinge of fear or caution in my stomach. The last time I had faced a dragon, I had only defeated it because a giant came to my rescue. My little flames had been too slow to deplete the massive beast's health, my arrows too puny to pick it out of the sky. But I had grown since then. I carried with me a strong orcish bow, and had upgraded my flames to a proper powerful fireball that could strike from a distance. Would it be enough?

As I rounded the side of a small mountain, I saw it. The dragon swooped through the air, its cry piercing the night again. I drew my bow and prepared to give it a sneak attack, but too late. It had spotted me, and banked eagerly in my direction.

I switched to my fireball and backed away from the oncoming dragon. My companion, Lydia, caught up with me and fired an arrow at the swooping beast. The dragon hovered in the air and screeched at us. I let a double-fisted fireball fly, doing depressingly little damage while eating an equally depressing chunk of my magicka.

The dragon engaged my companion as I let the fireballs fly, quickly draining all my magic and switching on my daily high elf power to recharge it quickly for the next 60 seconds. Long before those 60 seconds were up, my constant barrage of fireballs dropped the dragon. I took its soul and its valuable but heavy bones and scales. Satisfied, I continued through the dark toward my destination.

With a rush of air and an earth-shaking impact, a second dragon landed behind me and, apparently pissed off that I had killed its friend, shot fire at me. I desperately switched magic and brought up my ward, lowering the damage I took as I fled this new foe to gain distance. My companion bravely engaged the second dragon as I clambered atop a nearby rock and raised my fiery fists once more.

At that moment howls broke the darkness and a pack of three wolves charged out of the forest and attacked the dragon from behind. The dragon continued to pummel my companion. Full of the righteous knowledge that nature itself was on my side, I blessed those brave wolves and let the fire fly ... until suddenly I had no magicka left again, the dragon was only half dead, and my daily power had already been expended.

I dipped into my pack and found a store of 22 potions of minor magicka restoration that I had been saving for a rainy day, gathered from dungeons and saved instead of sold just in case I ever needed a quick infusion of power. With my companion on the verge of death I swallowed half a dozen potions and prepared to let the dragon have it.

The dragon, perhaps sensing my intent, broke off the attack and took to the air, causing my next fireball to fly wide. The wolves, finding themselves suddenly with no dragon to target, took one look at my bloodied companion and turned on her, all three of them charging in. I swapped to my lower-damage, lower-magicka flame blast spell and jumped off the rock to close the distance, roasting the wolves while trying not to hit my companion as the dragon cried and swooped above us, circling for another attack.

The wolves down, I looked up to find the dragon hovering above us again. I let fly with all my remaining magic, and with the last fireball the dragon screeched and crashed to the earth. Depleted and exhausted, my companion and I stood victorious in the darkness.

Forced to abandon a couple heavy and valuable magical weapons in order to carry the even more valuable extra dragon bones, I weighed in at my maximum and could barely waddle across the landscape. Still some distance from my destination, I sighed and quick-travelled back to town, where all the merchants in town combined didn't have enough money to buy all my junk. I stopped by my personal house to drop off the extra in cupboards and drawers, and to put my latest book aquisitions onto my bookshelves. Then I slept the sleep of the just, and prepared to start the next day with a fresh assault on my unreached original destination.

This is the sort of thing that can happen when you're simply travelling from one place to another. The actual quest locations and dungeons are often much more involved.

I love it. It's the best open world RPG I've played to date.