Please quote my entire post if you are going to argue against my post, I never said strip the freedom and force the player down a linear questline (even though the Elder Scrolls are little more that a bunch of singular linear questlines bundled together in one game rather than one big branching questline) however if your idea of what an RPG should be is little more than a giant sandbox then how are the Elder Scrolls games any different from games like GTA or Saints Row?
Sorry for that I take only one comment of your post. It was separated paragraph so I though it was divided comment.
My idea about RPG is not only blanket sandbox with unlimited freedom. It's huge sandbox which actually is living world which reacts and is affected by your and NPC's deeds. You have character which you have created by yourself, you have right to go all over the world (not forced to stay on roads and paths etc.) You decide what you do, what you wear and how's your character's moral, religion, history and living style. It's important that you have world which is worth and enjoying to explore without quests. World has to be large because travelling between cities should take time and give you a chance to see many things between them. Some quest you do you write in your head and some are written in the game. NPC's should do their doings without player and they should have some kind of personality (even a small one). I don't know the Saints Row so I can't say anything for that, but GTA is far different than RPG. GTA is action-crime-game. In it you have no customized character, no first person look, no skills, no attributes (only health), blanked world which is not affected more than cars burning and police running after you. Quests has no storyline or anything like that they are just like kill "x"-number of people with "x"-gun. I can't even understand how you can compare GTA to TES, there's so big difference.
True sandbox is not really good representation of freedom in roleplaying.
Good free-roleplying should let you do a lot of different things, but clearly let you know how your actions have affected the world and what the consequences are. You are free do to anything within the laws of game's universe.
True sandbox is... your actions are meaningless because nothing you do ever matters because you have no boundaries. You are beyond any rules because you set them. True sandbox can never really be a game. It's more of game engine.
To put it in context of old school pen & paper role playing, sandbox is basically pen and paper. You can choose to write whatever rules you want, or draw a happy face, or do nothing. For it to be a game, there must be a set of rules (restrictions and boundaries) that you are willing to follow.
Then we have different perception of sandbox. Of course it has laws, order and rules. It can be that we understand the term "sandbox" in different way I think. You seem to think about it a little blanket when I have my idea by only real sandbox games I have ever played - TES. I'm more like old school gamer and actually TES is only game series I have watched since they abandoned to continue Age of Empires.