I will state up front that I have not played Skyrim, and so this inquery is purely that of an investigatory nature. I am seeking not a flame war, but rather relatively 'scholarly' views of whether Skyrim advances the RPG genre, fails to move the ball forward, or even if it somehow has set the genre back. I do believe that a single Bethesda game can alter the path that RPGs will take in future games because for so many people Bethesda = RPG. There are many thousands of Elder Scrolls fans who will not even try other games because they are not Fallout or Elder Scrolls. That is why I feel what happens in a Bethesda game is so important*.

My interest in this topic stems from what I believe are some misconceptions that earlier games in cRPG history lacked modern gameplay features. For certain RPG series this is patently false, and indeed in many ways todays games have gone backwards. Again, I have not played Skyrim, so I am not leveling that accusation against it. For other games I've played recently, however, that is definitely the case. Sometimes older games had a lot more depth and strategy involved than today's.

Let's take Wizardry, for instance. In Wizardry 7, a game that came out in 1992, your characters could catch diseases that at first were rather benign, but if you didn't cure them within a few days, would inflict increasingly more serious symptoms. Your characters would get itchy, nautious, blind, and finally paralyzed from disease. If you ran into an enemy party and your character(s) were in this state, they would be killed in short order. After learning this the hard way, once your characters became diseased your game would take on a freeform quest to get them cured. This is just one example from the Wizardry series that is a bit more complex than many more modern games.

I won't go on and highlight other exmaples from other early game series, but I think you get the idea. I'm interested in hearing a wide range of responses.

*As important as a video game can be, let's keep this all in perspective.

From a niche genre into the mainstream and no longer bound by "acts" or stages or tiers that hem the player in a location until a story is completed is an evolution, even if this is what the series has been doing since Daggerfall.

these are its evolutions. the devolutions are the choices and consequence of actions beyond the death or denial of an NPC or anything related to said statement. they are ultimately inconsequential and at best only lightly effect the player. with is negligible and comes as an after thought

I believe Skyrim marks progress in terms of making RPG's more appealing/available/playable to the general public, which is their goal ($$$). It has that first-person appeal as well as the high fantasy element that many players enjoy. Some people may say that Skyrim has advlterated/come up short in regards to the Elder Scroll series as a whole, but I don't subscribe to that way of thinking. It's an accessible, fun, playable game that a ton of people can enjoy. There will always be more hardcoe RPG's out there for those who seek them out, and Skyrim/Elder Scrolls introduces many people to the genre...possibly helping the RPG world as a whole. Of course Skyrim isn't perfect, but it's pretty damn good.