One of the things that left an everlasting impression on me in the Elder Scroll series, was the first time I started playing was Morrowind, because it has such mystery and unknown about it. It felt like everything that you do had such an impact on the game, that it could change the very face of how things were played. In Oblivion and Skyrim, it doesn’t feel like anything I do changes the people’s attitude towards me. These two games don’t give you the feel that you change the vibe of the land or the future of the citizens. You don’t even hear gossip about your exploits when you slay a dragon that is overlooking the village, snatching up villagers or killing off live stock.

My Opinion and Improvements on Dragons
One of the most basic characteristics of dragons is that, they don’t stick around and completely wipe out stuff if they are a small fry. They are like hawks or eagles who snatch their pray out of the sky an only fight back if they are provoked. This could lead to two things that would bring a feel of dread… never knowing if the dragon will strike, burning down a village or snatch up a NPC and take them up to their nest to feed on them. A great way to make this is to redesign the dragons by making them have unique personalities and you can hear of dragon attacks from gossip of NPC.

Image you are walking through a village and you hear of a dragon attack in a far off village. The villages are talking about the disappearances of players or village constantly being harassed by dragons that burn down houses or attack fortresses. Vital NPC could flee or hide within well defended structures with the Jarl’s ordering villagers into their castles while non-vital aka mission players like mercenaries and soldiers would try to defend the village.

After a dragon’s attack, villages would then shift into rebuilding their houses mode. This could result in keeping house orientated quests from being failed. Each day, the house would show progress in being built. At the most, they would take three days to finish a whole house. After that, everything would return to normal in the village allowing for continuing flow of quests. Sometimes the player would stumble upon a half destroyed village with NPC rebuilding it, talking about the recent dragon attack and where it is perched at.

Dragon’s shouldn’t be killed by NPCs, after all, you are the Dragonborn who is destined to free and defend Skyrim form them. In the worst case, the dragons should flee if they are too badly wounded to lick their wounds and recoup. If a dragon does die by a NPC, then it would be revived and flee back to the mountain tops to recoup.

When the player confronts these dragons, they should be able to speak to him… curse his name or make a bargain with him. After all, not all dragons are evil and can be swayed to turn against their leader. This would make a great impression of dragons in the game as a race of beings that are not mindless beasts but cunning and calculating danger you must face. Some of these dragons would have a certain fighting style, meaning you have to change your tactic in facing them.

The game also gives the impression that dragons have an order they must follow, but I really don’t see this order in which they follow. Sometimes I wish could face two dragons at once, even hear a dragon ushering orders to another dragon in their tongue while circling the skies above me. This would make it even scarier to face dragons unless prepared for the task. Some dragons should have different weakness than others… personality flaws that would allow you to take advantage of it.

oblivion did talk about you i think, noone in skyrim will never know you exist even if you leap from dragon reach onto a dragons back and force it to the ground with your bare hands then break it's neck all while naked and screaming profanitys at the jarl. noone will remember you for better or worse (and i think you would remember the maniac who killed a dragon naked while scream at the jarl). jsut felt like throwing that out there because of the first sentace.

anyway, dragons, in my humble opinion, are great beasts and hard to kill (i dont see why people say other-wise tbh, they must play on very easy with the best gear in the game), but they are far to agressive for TES lore. they were considered a noble race, and othe rraces even gave them safe-harbor (in akavir) but in skyrim they are just mindless animals who follow some bigbad without a thought about what they want

There's a grand total of about 15 minutes of recorded dragon dialogue in the game, with 70% of it being short one-liners of Alduin trash talking. There is only one we have any sort of meaningful dialogue with.

Overall, I am disappointed they were played out to be simple beasts in gameplay when they are meant to be highly intelligent. They don't even use more than one shout of their own language against you. They just don't fight intelligently. They animate beautifully though, but as opponents they are not what they were hyped up to be.

Also, each of the special named dragons were just the same as any other, nothing significant about them. It would have built more respect in my opinion, if the burial mound dragons were initially unkillable and very high level, appearing as large scale random encounters, with other dragons and draugr...going around laying siege to cities and settlements, with the possibility of the named boss dragons escaping each time to lead more attacks.

It would have been interesting if even lead attacks as well instead of just suddenly appearing at the end.

^{ya the dragon is nice , i really like how they move and fly}

Because Alduin will spank them if they don't do as he says

These 2, they made dragons seem like beasts when they're not. There should be more dialogue with them rather than just mindless attacking.

yep pretty much I thought there would be a chance where we would be able to go into a dragons lair and before fighting you would have conversations with you