Nope. I think it's just fine the way it is. People just have different tastes in what they want in a game.

A person should not have to use their "imagination"to to get something out of the game that says volumes about the story or lack of it.And why can you not roleplay in Dragon Age??you have lost me?i roleplayed a rogue rather well took all the corresponding actions that seemed to fit the characters nature.Sure it may not be on a Skyrim roleplay level but it is there.

While I can agree with most the points the OP has made I'm still playing Skyrim with close to 400 hours now. Those points don't make the game unplayble, and I enjoy it. Sure you have to be creative to enjoy the game at that point but there is no other game capturing my interest for that long. I still have Saints row the third sitting there untouched waiting to be played but Skyrim at 400 hours is more appealing.

PS3 player here so my overall opinion is a bit tainted by the underlying game mechanics ie FRAME LAG game breaker. But I'll keep the focus on game conduct. After 420 hours I can say that there are many improvements Bethesda was able to include. Biggest plus for me was the Dungeon design, layout and appearance, it is much more diverse than previous games.

Heres just one example. Just had a journey which began in a cave cut out by a river where some bandits live. Was able with great difficulty to make my way to the top of the waterfall at its apparent end, and discover a tunnel which led to a huge Falmer grotto. What was interesting is that the Falmer spawned behind you after you walked past them. At one point I was swarmed so bad that I was forced to flee on ahead only to have them rolling boulders down the chute after me. Dove into water at the end to escape becoming mashed potatos, and while exploring its depths found a warp type portal that materialized me inside a small dwemer ruin. Was totally unexpected, and certainly there was nothing in Oblivion like this!

My point is that the game world design is improved from a geographic perspective. Its illustrative quality is improved over its predecessor, even if the overall size of most the towns are smaller. Certainly the character designs themselves are improved, though character design / creation is more limited, and re-use of designs is still quite obvious.

The weakness most apparent to me is in the story writing itself. There are good spots, mind you, but some of the questlines seem really flat. The end of the civil war quest was positively ludicrous. No epic battles between court jarls. No shouts or ANY resistance by Ulfric, though we are reminded countless times how strong his powers were when he killed the high king. The usual preliminary missions one would imagine are there, find a potential magical weapon, free some imprisoned troops and regain a strategic fort, and so on. But they are totally wooden in execution, there is no drama, and no real sense of accomplishment. Ulfric and Tullius are given a small modicum of character development, but thats all. Everything else felt like it was mailed in. Yes the quest lines in Oblivion seemed long, and sometimes padded out, but the finales where usually pretty good. DB, Thieves guild, Main Quest and Fighters guild all had decent climactic adventures leading to their end. The main quest in Skyrim is pretty decent, and makes you visit just about everything the developers put into the game, but, as others have noted, theres no real sense of accomplishment afterwards. Many of the side quests lead to a less than golden character ethic, at least if you want the daedric bauble afterwards.... Kinda forces the tarnished hero back onto you... Bethesda strove for a darker, grittier ambience I think, but forcing the character into the mud wasn't necessary. DB works just fine on its own....

But my biggest disappointment is really the character dialogue implementation in general. The population seems more active, and seems choreographed to show a bustling community even if the population # is still un realistic especially in a capital city like Solitude. Whats really sad, and irritating is the amount of repetition. What good really is 70 + voice acters if so much of their dialogue is looped over and over again with 10 minutes? Sure given the time and locale, people would actually want to talk to you on the streets, but if they see you again ten minutes later wouldn't they just make a facial acknowledgment, positive or negative and continue on their way? I would hazard a guess that maybe after their initial soliqy they should maybe only talk if it was a radiant plot type issue, or if your player initiated the conversation. Otherwise only speak 1 of their 2-3 scripted lines, when passing you maybe once in 10 times or so. Silence or a simple gesture would work so much better here. Obviously the market barkers would be exempt while peddling their wares, or the Talos preacher fellow in Whiterun. As it is in this game though, it totally kills the immersion for the most part, and becomes ,more than annoying, it becomes torturous. A merchant may re-use a byline once in a while, but life story events being replayed over and over amidst the sales patter makes everyone sound like a broken record, or that some other mental impairment is involved. (I'll forgive the town drunks I guess... )

AS for the PC companions. Right now, they are androids , not realistic beings..... I end up using them more for pack mules than for anything else..... Sure Mjoll has a back story. But its 7 lines long,and dispersed in a unasked for line or two every 10-15 minutes..... and then repeated. How about some questlines which really involves them rather than just gives them some work to do? Yes , a few are met while doing a quest, but even then their development is pretty wooden in nature, with very little depth. Yep, I'm a big burly nord, but I've been waiting here for someone to come by and help me find my aunt inside this here tomb.... uh OK.....sure..... I mean really, wouldn't it have been better to cross paths inside, maybe even start fighting each other before realizing you are on the same side or have the same goal?

Enough of the rant. Guess I'll summarize this way. Visually and musically, the game is VERY GOOD. Best game world I've experienced in many years. Just wished they'd moved forward with character development. Shivering Isles showed such promise, as far as imaginative, and memorable characters. Pretty flat beer , er... mead in Skyrim though....

I'm disppointed with the animation after how much they hyped it to be different. It's really hard to see what using Havok has added? Diagonal running? In some ways it's worse, changing direction while not running not longer has any blending- instead of turning the character "snaps" from walking forward to diagonal or sideways walking. In fact I wouldn't even call it that, the character can no longer walk east while looking north, all WASD does is change which way he faces.

If you're referring to them cramming EA's [censored] into every available orifice, then yes they certainly do.

Bioware's stories are usually crap, much like their lore. I mean the Reaper's motive is "just cuz". Not even "for the lulz" mind you. It's their cinemactics and how they tell the story plus their characters.

Yes - I can see how being detected would have ruined my day completely. And I did kill a few more guards than was strictly necessary. (i.e. every single one in the estate. I was actually going to spare the owner, but I didn't realise he was around and he attacked me...) It's really the direction I would have preferred the dark brotherhood to take. A quest where, for example, you have to eliminate the entire garrison (or even elements of the garrison, such as the 2nd in command, the smith and 3 other specific targets out of a total of say, 20) of a fort that is being inspected without being detected by the inspecting officer or his entourage is a much more impressive and fearworthy assassin than one who eliminates the inspecting officer without being detected by his garrison.

What I left from the paragraph is exactly what I mean. Each guild should really focus on its class skills, so that at the very least progression is restricted to those who are actually playing that character. Not so burly nord with heavy armor and two handed weapons leveled to 100, and everything else left at base values, can essentially complete each and every quest in the game, even those reserved for so called stealth or so called magical characters. Ideally what TES would give me is a game within the TES world, which had a stealth game, a combat game and a magical game all rolled into one.

Ah sorry - you misconstrued the Jack of All Trades argument - I was saying that the game did many things vaguely, but didn't do any of them particularly well. So it's a great game because it offers so much, but it is a terrible game because it offers so much.

It all comes down to expectations. And not looking under the hood.

I've played Arena and Daggerfall, and I can safely say Bethesda never has "gripping" MQ story archs. Or a world who reacts much to what you were doing. Don't know where people get that idea, in fact I believe lorewise all previous "heroes" are dead or disappeared or whatever. At any rate they're unknown.

It was ALWAYS about exploration, adventure and action. Arena played like a conventional first person RPG (didn't even have skills then) and Daggerfall was certainly stat heavy. However the aforementioned games played just like Skyrim plays today. Raiding dungeons, talking to NPCs with limited dialogues, walking around the countryside, forgetable main quest of which you won't be spending the vast majority of your time on anyway.

People here are confusing their disappointment in a few axed or altered features with being disappointed that there's no "consequence" in this latest Beth installment. Those two should be viewed and debated apart. In terms of "reactionairy world", gripping quests and "consequence", there never was much of those in TES. Why is it demanded now?

Probably because people have played "movie" RPGs like Mass Effect, KotOR and Witcher by now. Every little thing APPEARS to have consequence in those games, from fixing someone's coffee machine (+ 1 light side) to stealing some baby's candy (+1 Renegade). However, in the end, the aforementioned games get played out in that same way with two basic outcomes and a bunch of variables. These games give you the illusions that you're really making an impact. Partly because exploration is limited, so everyone in that limited space KNOWS how great/terrible you are. Partly because side quests get rewarded with a few points in a morality system which is supposed to define your character. Then, of course, you have a fixed protagonist. There is no Scipio, there is only Sheppard, Revan and the grey wolf. Yes you get superficial choices but in the end stuff gets played out in similar ways.

I find it curious that while people are quick to point to Mass Effect (along of DA the last of the true Bioware games), they don't seem to mention Mass Effect 2. And proceed to bash Skyrim (mainly for the axed features). Well Mass Effect 2 (hello EA) got an even worst deal then the TES series had. There are no stats, a few classes and most of those classes share the same skills. There isn't even any "behind the scenes" die rolling. The story was railroaded. There was little to no explorations, an obvious ploy to sell more DLC. And then the famous dialogues. There wasn't much "skill" involved with speaking to people, nor where there many people to talk to. It all served as background info to get you started on some quest and a few opportunities to receive a few points in a morality system, which in the end made no difference overall. There wasn't even an inventory.
There were things that Mass Effect 2 did better then Skyrim, of course, such as better dialogues (when you got them) and much better companion interactions (although, you couldn't kit them out like you wanted).
DA2 is evidence that the old Bioware sold out and the fact that they made a another WoW MMO and will work on a RTS says more then enough. We'll have to wait and see how good/poor ME3 will turn out. But pointing to Bioware as the champions of RPG-dom is a bit of a mistake. They've sold out more and faster then Beth is doing with TES.

In conclusion, people shouldn't expect an epic storytelling masterpiece from a Beth game. They've never produced one. They've always focused on exploration, adventure and action. And while I hope Bethesda will one day learn how to make an epic MQ, I'm not going to TES6 with the expectation that they suddenly will.

ps I view Bioware's BG series to be the best RPG gaming series I've played (along with Interplay's Fallout series), and quite frankly those games put KotOR, DA, Mass Effect (let alone Bioware's newer "RPGs") and the TES series to shame in terms of party interaction and gripping storylines.

Here we go again (yawn, snore).

Very insightful.

I don't mention Mass Effect 2 because I haven't finished ME yet, and therefore haven't started ME2.

Skyrim is like playing dungeons and dragons with no attributes. It just doesn't work if you want to call it an rpg.

Beth generally leaves it up to the player to RP sensibly, but it would be nice if they validated your decisions by giving you occasion to use your skills. If I'm joining the mages' guild, I'd want someone there saying: "Okay, see that target over there? I want you to give it all you've got." If all the player has is a Flames spell and 100 Magicka, they should be laughed out of the college. (This would have been easier to do with attribute checks.) Of course, they could always have a trainer available for civilians. That would be a good money sink. 10,000 gold for 1 skill level. No refunds or exchanges. College got bills, after all.

The Thieves' guild should have similar restrictions. (Only they wouldn't train outsiders.) Plus, missions should have requirements. I think its reasonable for the guild to request that the player not be detected. Maybe give them one strike. If they botch it twice, boot them out of the guild. That would force the player to avoid combat. If you take out all the combat skills and spells, there isn't anything left for the player to do but use their stealth, lockpicking, and pickpocketing. I've been playing the TG missions as a thief, and so far, I've been able to do most of them without fighting (with some notable exceptions that kind of water it down). I went through a whole cave filled with bandits and only had to kill one of them to complete the quest. Mage quests should be the same way, with enemies and magic wards that can only be destroyed through magical means.

+1

I agree on pretty much everything. KotOR has a very well crafted story, very interesting secondary characters and really good main character development arc based on the main quest and your companions. Both the twist in the main story and your decisions about who you help in your team will determine who your character is. It's certainly one the best examples of videogame writing and Skyrim can't be compared to it in those terms. However, like you say, Bethesda's strength is in the exploration. Which doesn't mean that their writing is bad either.

When it comes to games, we have to be very careful about what words we use and what we mean by them. I have a very particular idea about what it means to tell a good story in a videogame, as I'm sure most people here have, and it's important not to get concepts mixed. For me, Left 4 Dead has better storytelling than most games released last year, or the year before that. How, you may think? L4D's story is these four characters running from A to B and that's it. Well, that's just all that's predetermined by the game. But the story, stories in fact, that will develop from that scenario will be determined by the players' actions. And quite often, those stories will have all the ingredients you need for a very good drama, even if they happen just by accident. But do they happen by accident? L4D is genius in the sense that it's marvelously set up to be the perfect primordial soup for a good story. Unlike other multiplayers, it creates an urgent need for cooperation that strengthens character bonds as each player gets in trouble and has to be saved so everyone can survive. And then, after countless calamities, it throws the group of survivors into their final dilemma, where they have to decide whether they save themselves, help that one person that was nice to them during the campaign, betray the one who didn't care half the time or keep on cooperating. And this is just a very general look at what that game has to offer in terms of interesting drama.

Now, how does all that relate to Skyrim? It relates in the sense that I think Skyrim has much more to do with that approach to videogame storytelling than others. It is my favorite way of experiencing stories in a game and I think it's also the truer one to the medium. It's definitely not an easier approach than the traiditional story, because the world where the player will be can't just be random, it will need something interesting in every corner and enough situations that challenge you in unexpected ways. In other words, it can't just feel like it's there for your amusemant. It has to mess around with you as you mess around with it. If you achieve that, and I think Bethesda achieved it, then you have a game with, if not one, several potential great stories.

And considering that when videogame writers take the traditional approach, you only get one KotOR for every hundred subpar Hollywood pastiches, I'd much rather take something like Skyrim with all its mistakes.

I understand your point, but I think in Baldurs Gate 2 they actually had both balanced quite well. Interesting world to explore with lot's of side quests and a main quest that you didn't wan't to miss out and companions and people to actually interact with. I really felt that my actions had consequences. Of course it wasn't flawless, but I liked the conversations and that I could improve my relationship with my companions. The lack of communication and reaction with others in Skyrim really is a bummer. I don't get a real connection to the world and the habitants.

I totally agree with the BG comment. BG 2 is the best rpg ever. But why should we not demand reactionary world and consequences from TES series? Maybe they should try to add something new to the series. Without restricting the exploration and open game world of course.

I myself am now getting off my duff and focusing in on one character, and I am finding the story lacking, and that is making me disappointed. I thought there would be much more to the civil war quests other then "go kill these guys" and "go clear out that fort" aka "go kill more guys". I was hoping a dramatic arch with the Thalmor or with dragons depending on which side you went to, as well as more quests in general, maybe some that flushed out the tensions and troubles the civil war has been causing like is hinted at so often in NPC pvssyr.
But well, yeah, the story seems to have taken a hit on this one. As well, the factions quests are all somewhat limited in scope and depth. I couldn't believe how fast I went through all the Companion ones, I was literally like "what, that's it".
I am hoping they open up more with some DLC, but they seem to be taking their time with it. I am going to be wearing when it comes out, cause I am spending my dollars on gaming less and less when it seems that so much is barely skin deep.

This!

A big reason why I loved New Vegas was the PC. The courier had very little known facts about him/her, but it was enough to create a very interesting story, while still leaving a lot of room for Customization.

Honestly, it really does feel like New Vegas ruined Skyrim for me. New Vegas is story heavy. Skyrim is not, at least not in the sense that you have choices that influence the story (Which, for me, is what makes a great RPG)

Skyrim is a great game, but in disappoints terrible in terms of story, and that's what I was looking for; a good story. I got a feeble attempt to make me care about a land that clearly, through lack of depth, and lack of choice and consequence, doesn't care about itself.

I think if you put Oblivion in Skyrim's place today, Oblivion would be superior, i.e updated the graphics and engine. The quests in Skyrim are so weak compared to Oblivion and there is a real lack of diverse enemies in Skyrim and a serious lack of originality.