What Makes The Elder Scrolls So Special?

I think I speak for practically every avid TES player when I say there is something magical about the games, something that keeps you coming back to it years after you've sucked all the content dry.  You've killed those damn mountain lions for the fighters guild a hundred times over, and Rufio's been slain more times than you even care to remember, but yet, you still keep doing it.   Hell, I've played the Oblivion tutorial so many times I can repeat back Uriel Septim's dialogue almost verbatim.   Why? I've always wondered.

Just a few minutes ago, I went outside for nice long walk.  It was dark out, no clouds, the moon beaming brightly in the sky, the stars twinkling vividly.  As I gazed at the moon, in all its luminescent beauty, this song began playing on my MP3 player.

At that moment, I got this overwhelming sensation of complete and total limitlessness.  In that one fleeting moment, it felt as if the entire world lay before me, that all the boundaries of the universe could be transcended.  I wasn't an insecure, nerdy high school senior who worked a crappy job as a cashier.  I could be anything I wanted to be in that moment.  There was limitless potential.  I was on the edge of a great precipice overlooking the world, and I could go anywhere and be anything I wanted.  Let me tell you, that feeling was utterly indescribable.

This brings me to The Elder Scrolls.  Remember first stepping out of the Imperial City sewers?  I remember it well.  In front of me lay this absolutely gorgeous landscape that was open and free.  I didn't know where to go or what to do; it was overwhelming.  I recall thinking to myself "I can just go anywhere?" It was like a living, breathing world.  That was something I had never before experienced in a game.  And when, just a little while ago, I stood looking at the moon through the crisp night air and that song came on, the feeling I experienced reminded me of Oblivion.  It was the same feeling, that feeling of complete and total freedom--the freedom to be whoever you want and do whatever you want.  I believe it's this freedom that makes these games truly special.  Because they give that sense of limitless possibility.  Just look at this screenshot below and tell me how it doesn't embody the very essence of freedom.