The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a 2011 action role-playing game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. It is the fifth main installment in The Elder Scrolls series, following The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006), and was released worldwide for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 on November 11, 2011.

The game is set 200 years after the events of Oblivion and takes place in Skyrim, the northernmost province of Tamriel, a continent on the planet Nirn. Its main story focuses on the player character, the Dragonborn, on their quest to defeat Alduin the World-Eater, a dragon prophesied to destroy the world. Throughout the game, the player completes quests and develops the character by improving skills. The game continues the open world tradition of its predecessors by allowing the player to travel to discovered locations in the game world at any time, and to ignore or postpone the main storyline indefinitely.

Skyrim was developed using the Creation Engine, which was rebuilt specifically for the game. The team opted for a unique and more diverse open world than Oblivion’s Imperial Province of Cyrodiil, which game director and executive producer Todd Howard considered less interesting by comparison.