In many situations Skyrim is much more or entirely role-playing and not "game" at all. The success of The Elder Scrolls series is mainly due to the variety of things you can do or approach a situation or make your game world unique to you and not because of planning, timing, or player "skill". The Elder Scrolls series as a whole never really had a great control or gameplay system, they are just put thing you don't like on screen and click or press attack button. You can break down any video game to this, but in many games they require the gamer to figure out patters, know when or where to attack, timing blocks or parrys or dodges, or think about who to take out first or how. In Elder Scrolls its just mindlessly mash or click your way to make the unliked beings to go away.
Many games also have proper balancing systems as opposed to the Elder Scrolls games which are more unbalanced than an elephant on a child's teeter totter?(not sure about spelling or if its even a word). In Skyrim for instance without much time consumption about 10 hours spread across one character playthrough made all spells cost zero, can make any melee weapon do several hundred damage, get an armor rating well over 1000. And yes balance exists in a single-player game, but is it has any relavancy to a game is up to opinion. Without even trying to break my game though i did with ease or intent on doing so, I just wanted to make the character as varied as possible.
Trying to argue that Skyrim has no RP elements is difficult to back up, but saying it doesn't have any great gameplay mechanics are much easier. But then again a game is something something someone can engage in to find fun or amusemant, so anything can be considered a "game" or great "gameplay" mechanics if someone believes it to be, but may be terrible through the eyes of everyone else.
Also many things i said above are breaken down to opinion and I'm not attempting to say are "correct"
RANDOM BUNNY YEAH!!!
