The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a fantasy action role-playing game, playable from either a first or third person perspective. The player may freely roam over the land of Skyrim, an open world environment consisting of wilderness expanses, dungeons, caves, cities, towns, fortresses, and villages. Players may navigate the game world more quickly by riding horses, paying for a ride from a city's stable, or utilizing a fast-travel system that allows them to move their character immediately to a previously discovered location.

At the beginning of the game, players select their character's gender and race, with 10 choices for the latter including races of humans and fantasy races such as elves and orcs. The player chooses the character's appearance; this is not necessarily permanent, however, as an in-game mechanic allows for changing the appearance later.

Characters have three primary attributes: health is how much damage the character can take before dying, magicka is depleted to cast spells, and stamina allows the character to perform heavy "power attacks" or sprint. A status bar for each attribute appears onscreen when the attribute falls below its maximum value. Attributes regenerate over time and can be refilled faster by drinking potions, casting regenerative spells, or through various enchantments. Characters gain experience indirectly, via leveling up skills. The 18 skills are divided evenly among the three schools of combat, magic, and stealth. Each skill has its own experience bar, which increases when the character performs an action in-game related to the skill. For example, crafting a dagger increases the Smithing skill, and dealing damage with a bow increases the Archery skill. When a skill's experience bar fills, the skill levels up and the bar is reset. After enough skills level up, the character levels up, enabling the player to increase the maximum value of one of the three attributes and providing a perk point. Perk points can be spent immediately on a skill-specific perk or stored for later use.

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's character, the Dragonborn, on their quest to defeat Alduin the World-Eater, a dragon who is prophesied to destroy the world. Over the course of 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 anywhere in the game world at any time, and to ignore or postpone the main storyline indefinitely.