Seems we have a fair few conservative consumer reactions on these boards to Skyrim's 'direction'. There are always those that react badly when a genre develops and moves on.

The fact is, legacy CRPG mechanics were a contrived way of simulating the complexity that they did not have the capabilities to put into the actual gameworld. Now people think that they define the genre. They don't. They define the limits of those folk's tastes.

Complexity should not reside on stats/inventory screens, but in the gameworld. It should be in the choices you make when it comes to how you choose to explore the world and interact with it - how you deal with characters, with factions, with plot choices. Who you kill and who you don't. How you choose to solve particular problems or circumvent them etc etc etc. Your character should progress more according to the choices and actions you make, and not what boxes you tick on a stats screen.

For me, Skyrim is a bold and brilliant step in the direction of a true RPG game - a varied and complex gameworld that svcks you into deep immersion right from the start, and doesn't let go. This isn't a game that has damaged the series through simplification, as Dragon Age 2 did. It moves on from the generic, repetitive world of Oblivion and offers a far more engaging experience than any RPG I've played before - and I've been playing these things since the original Bard's Tale 20 years ago.