Branching Dialogue: Have you even played the game? Also, contrary to popular belief, MOST RPGs don't have that. It's exclusive to a few WRPG franchises from what I've seen. This is one of the few franchises that actually have it.

Action and Consequence: ...Yer joking, right? So yeah, you can just waltz into whiterun, kill someone, and nobody will care?

Support skill choices: You're an orc and you don't know how to smith? You shame Malacath. You shame us all. Also, don't forget block. You also might wanna consider a berserk style "two waraxes" option. A failure in your imaginiation is not the fault of the game, it's the fault of yourself.

Quest Choices: Okay, you're right there - compared to previous TES games, quest options and branches are actually pretty limited.

Good vs Evil: This is a huge issue I have with gaming as a whole. It's not Skyrim exclusive, and is actually a big problem in the gaming industry. Morality choices are not black and white, and few games actually acknowledge this.

Screwing up quests: You can easily do this. If you kill her, neither gets her. You can't marry her because (shocker!) she's not interested in you. Don't be a sad bachelor, just move on.

So instead of speaking up about what an RPG should be about those people should just be silent and let their genre degrade?
Speaking of the definition of what an RPG is/should be about helps the developers to see what the RPG fans actually want and they might consider their suggestions for the next game.
But if the only form of feedback is gratitude then they have no way of knowing if they couldn't have done things better and will just continue the trend.


1. Baldurs Gate, Planescape, Fallout, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Alpha Protocol.

2. Yeah, you can, but I don't mean that kind of A&C, I mean that you are never punished for your choices in character builds. If I in Fallout choose not to focus on Traps then I get a really nasty surprise. If I choose not to focus on Doctor then when I get crippled it [censored] svcks.

3. I don't give a crap about Malacath to be frank. And yes, I can use Block, thanks for reminding me of it, forget it's a skill most of the time. But no it's not a failure in imagination, it's the game being so biased towards combat, Alteration, Conjuration, Illusion, Block, Armor Types, One Hand, Two Hand, Archery, Destruction, Restoration, most of the skills in the game are biased towards combat, and when my combat character has the skills (s)he needs then there are few support skills to back up the gameplay in civilized areas with friendly NPC's or for usage in quests. Both Oblivion and Skyrim are very linear in their game design for dungeon crawling and their skills back that up. I wouldn't mind having Medicine or Surgery as a skill for Warrior characters, so what if Restoration and Alchemy is better, maybe I don't want to use potions or spells, is the game allowing me to do that? Nope. Then again, maybe I'm wrong in how I perceive Elder Scrolls, maybe it is a combat game, but since it's suppose to be an "RPG" I wished otherwise.

4. That it is, there have been a few grey areas in Skyrim which I enjoyed, but most of the time it makes my character feel schizophrenic or that I'm locking myself out of content for not doing a quest that doesn't fit my characters morals.

5. Actually, you can marry her, check the wikia.

The term RPG has lost it's meaning at this point. I don't care if a game is an RPG really, I just care if it's an enjoyable game to me.

I'm the newb? My game came first and was the model of perfect linearity. Yours brought in the evils of choice such as using the 2 Relics...one for dual wielding and the other for Quad attacks. It's the 8 attack/one turn strategies that clearly were the predecessor to breaking Skyrim's Smithing.

@Gab: Who says an RPG has to be exactly how you say it does? Games evolve, and do so in many directions. RPGs themselves took quite a split. Let's list the varieties!

Japanese RPG
Western RPG
Action RPG
Tactical RPG
Pen and Paper RPG
Massive Multiplayer RPG

And even then, these genres have sub-genres within themselves.

Skyrim is what we call an "Action RPG". It's a genre that's been around a hell of a long time. Your claim, if Skyrim is not an RPG, also means that games like Morrowind and Kingdom Hearts, by extension, are not RPGs, despite the heavy prevalence of RPG elements.

If you don't like ARPGs, go play a different type of game.

Ummm can you point out at least few non-TES wrpg with non-branching dialogue ? the only one i can think off is Bards Tale (2004)

1000 bounty , pay off , thats all there is to it.

Holy.... you're totally right!

Maybe I suggest you all get on the phone to the various makers of dictionaries and definers of words etc whose definition doesn't agree with these requirements?

If these wrong thinkers continue to tell people role playing games don't need to tick all those boxes to your satisfaction it will make our crusade keep role playing pure by purging the pretenders that so much harder!

And maybe also get them to change the adventure game definition as well, since it doesn't seem to fit either. Reality must bow to our subjective will!

So their is all this hype that Skyrim is not an RPG, So please tell me in the video game world list a true rpg that you think deserves the title RPG

You can marry her. Have you even played the game?! (as you would say). But anyway, what he means is that you cant tell her for example, that both had dumb little letters. Or say both of them asked you to give her letters and that they were both actually from the person (so she thinks both of them said mean things.. though itd be hard to get her to believe).

Seriously, you should stop taking things out of context. Either you know exactly what he means and are intentionally being a [censored], or have a rather low IQ.

NO!!!!!! Silence, silence. We will not have any commence sense interfering with our war on reality.

Skyrim is an casual action simulator puzzle shooter with some minor RPG elements.

BG2.

The focus is definitely roleplaying. Maybe it's not a good RPG to you because it lacks a lot of possible features, but it's still an RPG. Usually I would have said it's more of an action-adventure, but the action isn't really that great either.

More potential buyers = More profit

So if you really want your "true RPGs" back, which the TES series by your definition hasn't been at least starting with Morrowind, down with capitalism! ^^

You should focus your anger on Bioware, who are reducing character customization from game to game and only focus on you affecting the story. Effectively their new games are interactive shooters... [edit] Great interactive shooters, which I enjoy playing[/edit]

On another note: I like your signature.

Dungeons and Dragons apparently. And only those before 4e.

Except in those many games that are just loot gathering kill quests, then it is also action adventure. I think this thread has proven there are actually no RPGs at all and we are all victims of one of the most elaborate pranks of all time.

you got to be trolling, i was forced to play that game for almost a year because it was the only RPG my friend had for play station 2 Everything in that game went in a straight narrow line. how dose that game at all compare to skyrim.

You might as well walk up a Harley Davidson rider, and tell him that his brand new 2011 machine isn't a real Harley...
He needs to have a Knucklehead, Flathead, or Panhead in order to have a real Harley...
See where that gets you...
Try that.

not console game not the dark alliance.....Baldurs gate 2 PC game.

Dammit, ninja'd.
Uhm yeha...

BG2 SOA not the... other... one.

I realize my opinion on it isn't "the" opinion for 'all' RPG's, I'm sorry if it came out like a factual statement, should probably have worded things differently.
I like ARPG's, but I like actual RPG's a lot more, as for Kingdom Hearts and Morrowind I cannot comment on as I have not played the former and I got suicidal from the realtime dice rolls in Morrowind.

Thank you for agreeing with me.

Only reason I'm on this forum is because it's next door to Fallout, if I had any reason for being there I'm sure I'd throw an even bigger fit.

Wizardry 6, Wizardry 7, Wizardry 8
Knights of the Chalice
Disciples of Steel
Prelude to Darkness
Realms of Arkania, Realms of Arkania 2, Realms of Arkania 3
Arena, Daggerfall
Dark Heart of Uukrul
Darksun, Darksun 2
Might and Magic 1-8
Ancient Domains of Mystery
Troubles of Middle Earth
sCthAngband
The Summoning
Aethra Chronicles
Geneforge 1-5
Exile 1-3
Arcanum
Planescape: Torment
Eye of the Beholder 1-3
Lands of Lore
Anvil of Dawn
Baldurs Gate, Baldurs Gate 2
Fallout, Fallout 2
Bloodnet
Wasteland
Legacy: Realm of Shadow
Magic Candle II: The Four and Fourty
Betrayal at Krondor
Nahlakh
Darklands
Aleshar
Ultima 4, Ultima 6, Ultima 7
Ultima Underworld, Ultima Underworld 2

TES games are NOT RPG's because these no longer exist. It is too 'complicated' to come up with creative stories and situations allowing for different solutions.

It is much easier to just offer a bunch of 'different' skills that allow you to kill stuff differently and call it RPG, provided you can hypnotise ppl with stunning graphs and other truly secondary things, RPG-wise...

Mind blown!

Srsly, how the [censored] are you supposed to implement everything the OP wants into a single video game? You can either have a massive amount of choices or a non-linear game experience with a huge amount of content. Combining these two would make the games development time look like Duke Nukem Forever was rushed, if you want only a handful of bugs.

Horrible game with idiotic characters lol

To be fair, decent for its time though.

Sorry my apologies, i was under the influence that what i got stuck playing was BG2. Sorry for the mix up and because i have never played BG2 i cannot comment on it.