With the video game industry seemingly headed toward smaller, cheaper, more casual and less complex game experiences, it's somewhat of an anomaly to see Bethesda Game Studios continuing to hit the ball out of the park with games that are the exact opposite: long, expensive and incredibly dense. Starting with the 2002 release of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Bethesda has focused almost exclusively on lavish RPG experiences. Ten years later, Skyrim looks to continue that trend to a round decade and beyond.

I recently spoke with Bethesda VP of Marketing Pete Hines about what makes the developer's RPGs "bulletproof" against gaming's current "less is more" trend.

"We do what we do best," said Hines. "We make big, crazy RPGs, and fortunately for us the previous ones have done really well so there's no reason for us not to keep making them. If that's what we loved doing and nobody wanted to play them, we'd have a problem on our hands."