But that's exactly how they feel. They're fetch quests. "Go to this cave, kill Bandit chief, come back." That's it. That's exactly what you can expect from an MMORPG.

What people want is choice and dynamic quests. For example, following in line with OP's example of New Vegas, if I save the town of Primm in New Vegas, I have the choice of giving it three seperate sheriffs. One may properly defend the town but raise taxes quite high, another may lower crime to the point where the town has a healthier economy and can give you cheaper prices, but the sheriff himself is corrupt and often shoots first and asks questions later, whereas the third is a compromise who doesn't really affect the economy or have any corruption/lack thereof. In another quest, if someone asks me to deliver a drug package, I can either deliver it for pay or I can turn it into the authorities and report them.

In Skyrim? If I do a certain quest where someone suggests turning me into a werewolf to make me stronger and I say "thanks but no thanks," what's their response. "Ok that's fine. COME BACK WHEN YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND." I'm then forced to accept his offer to continue on with his quest. If I do the main quest and get to the "optional" parts where I can ask the Greybeards or the Blades for advice, I can choose the Greybeards, reload the game and ask the Blades and then realize it doesn't make ANY difference at all who I choose. They react exactly the same and send me on the same task. EVENTUALLY they give me a true choice where they disagree, but again, the path I choose has no real effect on the game.

Or if I'm stuck in a room and told to figure out which of these three people need to die, it doesn't matter which one I end up killing. I'm rewarded all the same.


The game has no choice, no rewards and consequences and thus no replay value.

there is a ton of quests in Skyrim that has multiple choices as to how to get a quest done

I have played Skyrim for nearly 70 hours now, and while it's the best Elder Scrolls to date, Bethesda's incredibly formulaic approach to the design of Skyrim keeps it from being the best open-world RPG ever.

For example, 70% of the quests are fetch/kill quests. For the remaining 30% of the quests, linearity is the order of the day. There are few choices to make, nor is there much of a way for the player to take alternate paths to solving a problem or reaching the objective. The result is often a reward, and the player has a very small impact on how the gameworld changes depending on his or her actions. The repetition of quest structure also saps Skyrim of the replay value that games like Fallout New Vegas had.

While the game gives you a ton of leeway in how you play the game (by brute force, magic, stealth, etc.), it lacks the freedom of choice that Fallout New Vegas and many other RPGs have. To Bethesda, there are only two choices: Do the quest, or refuse the quest. While this might have been fine back during the 1990s, I would have liked to see a more freeform quest structure that takes into account a number of choices that a player can make.

PLEASE USE SPOILER TAGS FOR THIS SORT OF THING DOUBLE-PLEASE.

Thank you.