It being a one player game is irrelevant. Balance still matters.

By your logic, why can't I simply just make myself level 81 at the start? I mean, it's my game, let me play it how I want, right?

Right.

Maybe Beth will include that functionality in the next game, not that I'd be interested in using it ... would detract from the fun.

lol that’s funny
You were joking right?
There is no way they could butcher TES lore more than Bethesda.

@ themainevent.
"Lord Ka1n, what do you mean about Brass Water cave and Irkingthand?"

i get the name right? before that TG quest its a 1 room cave with a container & two bears. pretty much nothing in there. probably more than half of NV's locations were empty & pointless like that.

@ darkside eric

"By your logic, why can't I simply just make myself level 81 at the start? I mean, it's my game, let me play it how I want, right?"

Actually....you kinda can. grind easy skills like alchemy & smithing to get to lv15 & infinium glitch to 81

What does that cave have to do with Irkingthand?

Please God NO!
IMO the principals at Obsidian should be banned from touching ANYTHING to do with gaming ever again. FNV was the straw that broke the camel's back.
Maybe they should concentrate on writing jokes for the Xmas cracker companies... or body copy for the local real estate agencies.
like an old fighter that doesn't have enough sense to get out of the game when they are beaten to within an inch of their lives at every bout, Obsidian chose to keep on sluggin' long after their use-by date.
I keep FNV on my gaming rig to remind me of their descent into irrelevance.

Short answer: it would be a Buggy generic fantasy RPG with nil exploration, force you down a path. It'll have all the same problems as it does now but won't have any of the good stuff. The story will be bloated and dull and use Tell not show style (a writing 101 nono) due to talented writers not giving a [censored] (they haven't since becoming obsidian.)

Obsidian doesn't care about their work, they never work harder or even try to learn from their mistakes, they just blame others like Publishers and used gaming.

@ themainevent
did you do the TG?

we wouldn't have arrow to the knee. the xbox version of the game would have the same bugs as the PS3 version.

flying cows.

Had Obsidian developed Skyrim then quests would have had choices.
NPC's wouldn't be set to "essential".
Reputation system would be better than just "Hey, you are wanted, give us gold or go to jail or die!
The writing would be better.
Companions would be better and have detailed personalities that you actually want to find out more about.
It would have more interesting factions "Mage's" guild, "Thieves" guild, Companions and Dark Brotherhood, which basically means: Mage characters, Rouge characters, Warrior characters and Assassin characters. They'd mix things up.
They wouldn't have tossed out the Attributes system, they'd improve upon it.
Speech would be used more, hell, I think Mercentile would still be in.
Main quest would have more choices and different endings.

And let me remind everyone that Bethesda handled Quality Assurance for New Vegas, they knew how buggy New Vegas was but they chose to release it. Not Obsidians fault that Bethesda forced out an unfinished game.
Same with Kotor 2, except that LucasART forced them to cut severe amounts of content.
And Alpha Protocol is 'not' as buggy as it's hyped up to be.

If Obsidian had had the same amount of time as Bethesda, meaning an appropriate amount of time to develop a game, then it would probably not be as buggy as LucasART and Bethesda made Kotor 2 and New Vegas respectively.

spears lol

Simply and plainly if Obsidian made the TES series then I cannot trust them to stay true to the Lore or trust them to make new Lore. They are not the devs that made the game series. Even if Bethesda tends to skew its own lore and leave out very important things in their games like Falmer Ruins or artifacts. How am I supposed to believe a widespread, fairly advanced, magical culture left no physical trace of its glory days other than itself as a mutated monster? Really?

Lord Ka1n i'm confused? What's only accessible after

brass water cave was just the most boring location i could think of (besides things that are supposed to be, like giant camps or landmarks) but i just said that because it becomes pretty cool after that

You still have to read those things in order NOT to butcher lore, regardless of how badly the originators fare. And some of those things are no easy read.

Provided they had the inspiration, vision and motivation to do so, which you have no grounds for assuming. What if they tried but ran out of ideas or inspiration? What if they felt the theme and lore of TES to constrain them too much and weren't able to realize their visions without changing many more core elements? Like others have said it is entirely different to work with a series that you are developing yourself or have been part of developing before, and to step in and take over someone else's vision.

If Obsidian [blah blah blah] they had one customer less.

What if Square Enix developed Skyrim???

I think the civil war would have been done better. Things relating to RPG like Skill tree and perks wouldn't be in the relatively broken state they are in. And a better long main quest and side missions.

GIven how buggy both games have been I'm going to assume it is Bethesda's tech rather than programing skills of the programmers.

The story would be deeper and there would be branching quest lines. There would be a bigger emotional connection to NPC's and there would be at least some impact upon the world by the actions you do. Companions and the marriage system as an example would be better because of more deep writting and back stories

It would a much better game albeit riddled with bugs.

I wouldn't call any them memorable (except for Aela, but she's memorable because of her side-boob, not personality). The only memorable and well written character in my opinion is Cicero. I think a random town in New Vegas has more memorable, well written characters than whole Skyrim. Unfortunatly writing has never been Bethesda's strongest side.

What if Bungie did?

Well for one, it'd have a plot.