I have found that i love half of Skyrim. The half where i just wander around aimlessly at lower-mid levels and explore and loot and kill or run away from things is amazing. However, when i get to high levels and the exploring becomes pointless because i can kill everything and i already have the best gear and tons of money, or I start interacting with npcs or start doing quests at any level, that's when I ask myself "What has happened to them?"

Leaving aside FNV which i consider the golden standard of recent sandbox RPGs or whatever you want to call them, just comparing Skyrim to FO3 leaves me wondering how many people they fired after FO3 was done. FO3 had a gameworld that was just as amazing and fun to explore as skyrim albeit not as pretty. However, in regards to multiple ways of doing quests, npcs dialogue, FOLLOWERS, the world reacting to things you done and your ability to shape the world in and of itself, FO3 just beats the snot out of Skyrim. I seemed to have more impact in Tenpenny Tower, which is just one sidequest in FO3, than I did the entire game of Skyrim.

In a nutshell, Todd happened. See my sig, it extends to the Fallout series as well. Don't get me wrong, I love Skyrim as a game, but as TES and an actual RPG? It leaves a bit to be desired.

EDIT: Grammer.

FO3 spoiler incoming....

My feeling about Tenpenny Tower was that after I helped the ghouls and they suddenly decided to slaughter everyone regardless, I just wanted to go back and kill all... three... of them. But I didn't bother. However I hung onto the mask which somehow kept its effect in my inventory after it was not worn any more due to damage.

I can't really see the difference from your average Skyrim quest. The cool aspect of Fallout to me is when you are looking over the blighted landscape and you feel kind of like you are there. Like you do when you are in the uplands of the Reach at dawn.... IDK.

If you want seriously branching writing, you have to put up with less content. Unless you cut all the voice acting to save money. I am tottally on board with an RPG that ditches all voice acting and channels the money into writers. Could be a classic game. But FO3, not so much.

You made a CHOICE to play that way they gave you a sandbox game - Be what YOU want, play how YOU want - you could choose to not use uber gear, play dead is dead (one death you wipe character) or many other things that make it more realist / fun - note if they make the game act like that i.e still hard later some people (10 million diffrent players, 10 million ideas) some people would not like it - on a game as open as this you have to play to a style.
No offence ment I respect yr opinion - Sorry spelling Dyslexia

The responses of the population are pretty bland. After saving the world I got the arrow to the knee thing. I did love FO3. But I do feel like there are many more things to do in Skyrim than in FO3.
I get your point, but I do really find myself being immersed in this game after awhile.

Fallout New Vegas wouldn't be a good example if we are basing it off of it's open world which is horrible and incredibly linear based in comparasion to Fallout 3/Skyrim. The System for New Vegas though with the exception of no Level Scaling (Terrible decision), is pretty good.

Todd was behind FO3 though. Even though FO3 wasn't as good as FNV, at least for me, it was far better than Skyrim in every category except flashy visuals. I couldn't get past the awful turnbased combat of Fallout 2 so i can't say whether or not they gutted the series since then but i thouroughly enjoyed FO3 and i've been playing RPGs and all sorts of games since the 90s.

@Mujokan.......there was a way to complete the quest where everyone coexisted.....although there was a bug bethesda never fixed with faction aggression or something where after awhile the game had a 50/50 chance of killing the residents off anyways. I had to use a mod that fixed it.

If you mean your average "go fetch this and I'll give you 100 gold coins" quest, then yes i agree but FO3 had some very good larger quests that had multiple pathways and more importantly if you svcked as speechcraft you couldn't take the easy way out. You could even blow up the BoS base if you wanted to.........which i did with glee.

Agree on some points, not on others.

I think F3 had more actual 'theme ambience', and was (for its time and setting) prettier than Skyrim. It felt desolate for the most part, and it felt desperate...I actually enjoyed wandering through deserted wind blown streets watching the dust eddies or wandering up to places just to look at the view. With Skyrim, I don't go anywhere for the view, because once you've seen one windswept snowy peak, you have seen them all.

As far as becoming 'king of the world', once you picked up certain perks in F3, you were far more powerful than you are in Skyrim. Grim Reaper's Sprint + Lincoln Repeater meant you could wander around in your undies and T-shirt and still take on anything that moved....simply because there were two types of killing: melee or guns. Skyrim is a little different in that magick comes into play aside from melee or missile weapons, so you have that to deal with as well.

I disagree about FNV, I found it too cliche'd for my tastes, although some of the mechanics were a big advancement on F3. That said, the Zion dlc was superb work...particularly the sub-story regarding the Survivalist.

Wholly agree in relation to the impact of the character in Skyrim though....but I think to a certain extent it does come back to one basic anomaly right at the start: If Dovakhim is the only person who can kill dragons, as we are told, why is it that other people can do them damage? Why are the Blades what they are? Why have I seen town guards and my followers actually kill dragons? Why do the chickens of Skyrim launch themselves into melee combat with the great wyrms? (Yes, they do, I have seen 3 or 4 battle chooks charge into the fray beside the mighty dragon slayer of legend).

I can fully appreciate that each Hold is a form of faction in itself, but if my character is a legendary figure of old, where is the recognition? I AM the Dovakhim, the dragonslayer of myth and legend, yet when I set foot at the gates of numerous towns and cities I get taunted about someone stealing my sweetroll, or get told not to go fiddling with any locks or there will be trouble...

Don't forget Broken Steel, that expansion completely breaks the character whether you like it or not.

FO:NV was a great game. I prefer it over F3 in honesty. I like FO:NV more then Skyrim. Skyrim was fun the first playthrough and I just cant get back into it.

Wholly agree in relation to the impact of the character in Skyrim though....but I think to a certain extent it does come back to one basic anomaly right at the start: If Dovakhim is the only person who can kill dragons, as we are told, why is it that other people can do them damage? Why are the Blades what they are? Why have I seen town guards and my followers actually kill dragons? Why do the chickens of Skyrim launch themselves into melee combat with the great wyrms? (Yes, they do, I have seen 3 or 4 battle chooks charge into the fray beside the mighty dragon slayer of legend).

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I believe thats because Dovokin is the only one who can `absorb` the dragon`s soul thus killing it rather than just destroying its material form, at least accoding to Bethsda`s dragonlore in TES

Exactly, fallout NV was incredibly linear, invisible barriers covered half the map. In the most ridiculous spots. fallout 3 was good, NV, not so much, in fact, in my opinion, and lots of other peoples opinions, NV was an absolute disaster.

adragon isnt technically dead in this game until its soul is devoured, which only the dragonborn can accomplish.

I loved NV, I admit it. Partly because I love the desert, partly because it was a great story writing. When goty version arrives, I'll get it. I stopped buying DLC for NV when a bug made it impossible for me to finish one.

I didn't like the invisible barriors..but they're in Skyrim too. Do you know there are places you can climb that are not on the edge of the game map and you're stopped with a message; you can't go there, please turn back?

@Terror, agreed to a point, again.

I actually liked the BS extension, and the storyline, but the thing that really got to me was that it introduced bugs and glitches into the game that are still present in Skyrim...I still have a character who can ice skate on solid rock or paved roads, I get the same old lockups and occasional ctd's. Some things never change.

OP has a very valid point, in that some major parts of skyrim are really good and immersive, but other parts aren't and lead to a somewhat jaded experience after too long.

I must admit that I have one F3 character who I kept going for over 1200 hours, until the game became insanely ridiculous (all exterior encounters were with numbers of albino radscorpions and such), and I still kept finding new things, or doing new things. At the moment I'm in 350+ hours on one character in Skyrim, and it's starting to become mundane, despite the supposed enhancement of the Radiant Quest system....seriously how many times can you keep doing the same old Mage College quest?

Granted, I'm one of those people who like to pace my following of the main questline, and flesh it out with a bit of exploring and gawking, but the problem in Skyrim is that if you go exploring, then you are likely to come across something that is necessary for a later quest. I have an inventory full of crap such as Someone or Other's Magic Sword, and my main quest is to find them to get rid of it... I don't know how many times I've wandered into some grotto and found a word of power, only to get a quest to go down there later on to re-find it. That kind of jades the exploring experience and turns people right off it.

How is this any different then past TES games and any RPG for that matter?

Edit: I don't understand peoples complaints about how the game is easy at high levels. Shouldn't it be? If the game is just as difficult at level 50 then it is at level 1, why did I just spend 150hours leveling my skills and planning my perks?

The edge of the map is different from a 5 foot sand dune that you cant cross for miles on end in the middle of the map, if those barriers on the edge of the map were not there, you would end up falling forever. Big difference. BIG difference.

New Vegas did do some things good such as Iron Sight Mode, Return of Traits, better balance with the amount of skill points per level up, perks every other level, better story, etc but it's open world and scaling leaves a lot of question marks. Fallout 3 was much better in this department. You still had high encounters with enemies at low levels but they weren't anywhere near the starting point of the map unlike New Vegas where you wonder too far off the path and whoop there's a Deathclaw or a Cazador. Scaling was present in Fallout 3 but hardly noticeable, there's virtually no scaling at all in New Vegas except with what weapons are available at shops.

For me, Skyrim runs rings around Fallout. I was burned out on Fallout by 150 hours of play. This burnout extended to FO:NV, which I consider to essentially be a rather ambitious expansion pack to FO3. Only got 50 hours into NV before I got bored with it (although I liked hardcoe mode).

Skyrim--200 hours logged so far, and I can't wait to get home tonight and play some more. For me, that says it all.

They sold out, although they did that after Morrowind.

I had the same problem with Fallout 3 and New Vegas to a degree, once I get to a certain point (70 hours in FO3, 50 hours in FNV) I don't see any reason to continue playing. At least with Skyrim I can keep playing and it won't get old especially if I RP.

i agree, new vegas isn't a good open world game, its static, nothing respawns, the gameworld is way too desolate/empty and there's not really any good combat in the game at all(killing geckos and deathclaws isn't combat) and no good locations for fighting and stalking enemies.. you need buildings, bases, other interesting locations and for that, not shacks and tents like in new vegas, FO3 had the entire dc area to battle it out in, not to mention all the buildlings and dungeons, la enfant plaza, the capitol building, national archives, lady of lords hospital, statesman hotel and secret bases etc. to battle supermutants or raiders in, that was fun. thats what an open world game needs to have, much like FO3, or skyrim, or a game like stalker is much the same way...but new vegas is way too static of a gameworld to really qualify as a good open world game.

-this- I loved fallout 3, but when NV came out, I was sorely disappointed, I bought all the DLC for FO3, played fallout 2, and brotherhood of steel to death, but NV, was so....bad.....aside from the follower wheel, and teh few funny speech options, and yes man, the game was god awful. Like plathismo said, a ambitious expansion, no more.

Its called adapting to the market. Its what happens in a free market economy. RPGs have changed, people need to realize this and move on.

-this- No self respecting company would release a 16 bit game on the 360, ps3, or PC for 60 dollars, or more for special editions, they know HARDLY anyone would buy it. Games now a days have to keep up with the demand, and most people demand a quality product that can hold its own against other quality products. Morrowind wouldnt sell worth anything if it was released today.