I hear a lot of comments about Bethesda games lacking depth of story, but I honestly think they do a better job than most of maintaining the precarious balance between fantasy RPG and player interaction.

For example, with Dawnguard they do a good job of sending you places where the CONTEXT tells the story. Not to give away anything too specific, but there is a point where you have the option to be cured of vampirism...


Dawnguard adds a lot of interesting and well thought-out content interaction, but even in the original game, it's the more subtle interactions and casual comments as they relate to the larger context that really tell the story.

Especially in this genre it is very easy to say too much, and break immersion, shattering the illusion of fantasy. On the other hand, not saying enough can leave people feeling confused or unfulfilled. Personally, I find that Skyrim strikes the perfect balance.

Its a matter of taste I supose. And, the people who like it, will not start a thread. BUT people who dont like will. So you get there the point of the "why".
In my case, I like it.
Not at the Morrowind′s level, but very close.

I remember reading a blog written by one of the BGS level designers. One of the nice points he made was that there's a difficult balance between adding enough details to give stories some depth and complexity, while still leaving it open-ended enough to cater for a variety of different characters. I think the example he gave was with random assassin encounters. If the game told you who wanted you killed, then there'd immediately be a question about why they wanted you killed. And that could cascade into a bunch of other questions that the designers would need to have some sort of answer for. What the designers are trying to do is just provide enough scaffolding so that you can fill in the blanks according to your character.

Sometimes the dialogue can be wooden, and the NPC motivation really implausible, but I think I agree that a lot of the time the writers do a reasonably solid job of providing enough context to get you going, while leaving it up to you to do the bulk of the imaginary work.

Edit: just following on from Fhynrood's post. I think a lot of the criticism against Skyrim's writing is motivated by the thought that it's not as good as Morrowind's. Morrowind also did a really great job of trading off depth and complexity against flexibility and open-endedness, but it seemed to do it with more elegance and panache. Skyrim often seems a little too... obviously functional. Like it's just there to get you into the dungeons.

Sounds a lot like a better version of Morthal.