Best RPGs Inspired By Skyrim

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Few games have influenced their genre as much as Skyrim. It revolutionized RPGs with its incredibly immersive open world, packed with quests, characters, and diverse monsters. The game truly transported players to a fantasy world like never before.

From the beginning, Skyrim had a huge impact, and many developers started making their own games inspired by it. Some tried to recreate the same feel and ideas that made Skyrim so successful, while others took a different approach but still showed respect for this incredibly popular game.

7. Dragon Age: Inquisition

BioWare’s Epic Fantasy World

Details:

  • Large-scale RPG by Mass Effect developer, with party-driven combat and a focus on characters
  • Followed Skyrim’s expansive open-world structure, having several open areas and a more expansive world to explore
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Dragon Age: Inquisition is BioWare’s biggest effort yet to combine its rich storytelling and team-based RPG gameplay with the open-world feel of games like Skyrim. The game offers vast areas to explore, packed with both important story missions and optional side quests, and gives players much more control over where they go and what they do.

BioWare has acknowledged drawing inspiration from Skyrim, especially its large open world and smooth transitions between locations. However, their game prioritized storytelling, crafting a strong, character-focused narrative that felt more unified. This emphasis on story ultimately led to it winning the first-ever Game of the Year award at The Game Awards.

6. Avowed

From New Vegas To Swords And Magic

Details:

  • Set in the Pillars of Eternity universe, focused on magic and melee combat
  • Pitched internally as Obsidian’s answer to Skyrim, but later shifted to a different identity
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When Avowed was first revealed, people naturally compared it to Skyrim. Initially, the developers aimed to create a similar experience to Bethesda’s game, but set in a new world. However, Avowed also does things differently – it features choices that truly impact the story and makes character upgrades feel more impactful.

Okay, so everyone’s been comparing it to Skyrim, and yeah, you can see the inspiration, but honestly, Avowed feels really different! Instead of one huge, open world, it’s broken up into big, detailed zones. And that’s actually a good thing! It lets the developers really focus on making each area feel special and unique. It’s definitely forging its own identity, and that’s what I’m excited about – it’s not just trying to be another Skyrim.

5. Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon

Reimagining The Arthurian Legend

Details:

  • Darker aesthetic, heavy on atmosphere
  • Familiar feel to Skyrim, both in gameplay and visual style
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Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is a dark and immersive RPG where you explore a vast world and shape your own adventure. The game features interconnected quests that make the world feel alive, but gives you the freedom to go where you want and play at your own pace.

From the beginning, it’s easy to see the similarities to Skyrim. Both games create a deeply immersive experience, keeping you hooked whether you’re in intense action or peaceful exploration. Although the atmosphere is much darker, the game fundamentally offers the same freedom as the Elder Scrolls series – giving you everything you need to create and live out your own adventure, but within a more disturbing and unsettling world.

4. Outward

Surviving The World Together

Details:

  • Traditional survival mechanics with a high-fantasy setting
  • Developed with Skyrim in mind, but wanted a unique feel with features like split-screen co-op
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Unlike most fantasy RPGs, Outward focuses on the challenges of simply surviving in a dangerous world. Instead of playing a powerful hero, you’ll need to worry about things like hunger, the weather, and getting hurt while you explore. The game blends classic fantasy elements with survival mechanics, making exploration both exciting and risky.

Though smaller in scope, Outward, like Skyrim, really focuses on giving players freedom and letting them make their own choices. The game world is open and every adventure feels unique. The developers also wanted to create a game that could be enjoyed cooperatively, something Skyrim and similar titles hadn’t prioritized recently, which led to the inclusion of a split-screen feature.

3. Elden Ring

The Ultimate Hero’s Adventure

Details:

  • Soulslike combat pushed into a giant open-world
  • Inspired by ambitious, interconnected games like Breath of the Wild and Skyrim,
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Elden Ring is an impressive open-world role-playing game that draws inspiration from many different games, resulting in a truly unique experience. It features a vast and limitless world where players are free to explore and overcome challenges in their own way, without being forced down a single path.

The developers drew inspiration from popular games like Skyrim when designing the game. While the challenging, ‘soulslike’ combat system was already well-established, creating an open-world experience required extensive research into other games. This research helped them build what many consider to be a truly exceptional video game.

2. Dragon’s Dogma

Action And Scale On Par With The Elder Scrolls

Details:

  • Following an epic quest to defeat the dragon Gigori
  • Aimed to create a distinctive experience as genre-defining as Skyrim
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Dragon’s Dogma puts you in a vast, open world filled with huge monsters to fight and exciting places to discover. You have complete freedom to play the game your way, and the unique pawn system adjusts to how you like to battle. Every location is packed with chances to explore, whether through fighting enemies or talking to characters.

Like Skyrim, this game aims to create a huge, immersive fantasy world for players to explore. However, it focuses more on exciting action, delivering a fast-paced and captivating experience instead of trying to realistically simulate medieval life.

1. Starfield

Sending Skyrim Into Outer Space

Details:

  • Interplanetary exploration across an entire galaxy
  • Pitched from the start as “Skyrim in space”
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Starfield is a completely new game from Bethesda, their first new franchise in over 25 years. From the beginning, the team aimed to create an experience similar to Skyrim, but set in space. You’ll find familiar elements from Bethesda’s other games – like how you interact with characters and explore the world – but everything is larger in scale and takes place in a futuristic setting.

There was a lot of excitement surrounding the game, and many players thought it would be even more successful than Skyrim and revitalize the RPG genre. While the release didn’t quite live up to that huge anticipation, it’s still a remarkably well-designed RPG. It offers fans of the developers something fresh to experience, while still capturing the feeling of the games that made them famous.

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2025-11-23 18:07