nah-

ez call.

you don't know expertise and fairness.

u actually have to cheat to get me to complete somehthing.

I don't know about that. In Oblivion if you did not spam skills to get good attribute bonuses the games leveling system basically killed you. I could never count how many times I hopped in MW and OB when my character (in game) was not actually wanting to hop over something. Or the times I switched to using a mace, even though my character liked swords. Or the times I'd sit on the street corner sneaking ... just because.

I have literally never had to do any of this in Skyrim (though I have hopped a few times out of habbit) and I love it. My biggest gripe is the fact that all skills level you up while I would prefer lockpicking and speechcraft not leveling my warrior.

I agree.

Finding a good single-player game has become difficult.

This is where self-imposed restraints or suspending belief came into those games as well, you had to avoid running and gimp yourself if you didn't want to have high speed (which was extremely useful and overpowered compared to other attributes). Basically telling yourself in your head that you didn't just approach the archmage by bunny-hoping.

Stopped reading there.

Nailed it.

Hey man, in case you did not know by now, Daggerfall is so ridiculously huge is because it's automatically generated by an unthinking machine that has the creativity of a brick and which has been programmed to do so. Now THAT sir, is shallow in every sense of the word.

Exactly you can't reshape the story in Skyrim. That is what people are arguing out. There are no consequences and extremely shallow progression paths. You are extremely limited in what you can do and how it influences the future of the game or how NPCs react to you. Factions, for example are pretty much non-existant ENTIRELY...The game is not all about the aspects of your character, but character progression is just as important as storyline progression. You cannot have one or the other, or do one well and the other poorly and be truly successful. Both need to be done well. It seems however, that the game was designed in a completely opposite direction than the environment and how they wanted it to be. The game scales as far as content fairly well and is huge, but, itemization, difficulty and character progression could use a lot of work.

If you meant me I will answer. Actually I'll answer that nonetheless. I'm not saying Skyrim is the best game I've ever played, of any genre. That would be the total war series. Actually, I'm pretty sure there are many games even in this genre to top it but like I said I'm relatively new. However, I will defend to the death that it is the best in the series. I don't want to play mario-with-swords even if the fist-sized pixels in front of me utter philosophical statements to shame Aristotle. Then I'll just read Plato and leave the mario-with-swords part out.

That is a bit harsh...just because it's basically Angry Birds with a sword and shield doesn't make it shallow...it's only shallow if it doesn't have attributes...

LOL, you let yourself out, or rather into the Skyrim forums ya troll.

"Angry Birds" lol? You've lost any credibility you had left.

"automatically generated by an unthinking machine" = most of skyrims "quests"

I agree, I find Angry Birds much more captivating.

Umm... no. You son't need to be a "mature" "seasoned RPG player" to play Skyrim and get all the fun you want out of it. Or to do anything. And what makes someone a "mature, seasoned RPG player?"

Yet not the ones which matter (but I agree the writing isn't the best). Still, quests and locations aren't the same thing. At least you can be an adventurer in Skyrim, but you can't do that if you know what's going to happen next. Also I was kidding, you're not a troll, just a little joke there. No hard feelings...eh?

I would like to point out something that you alluded to in this post in how this game "comes through as a game meant for those of us who play CoD"

I can attest to the fact that in some respects this game can play as a CoD death match, and i love it! Setting aside all RPG aspects of the game and praticing some self-imposed regulations, you can have a Skyrim/CoD hybrid in this singal player game. I have to acknowlegde that for this game to achieve such a feat is amazing.

Let me clarify what i'm talking about. My Orc character who is a pure heavy armor, two-handed weapon and blacksmith guy roleplayed himself right into CoD unwittingly. First, my Orc started life as a tribal Orc, and did a quest from one of the tribes that got him a bad ass hammer he stuck with throughout most of the game. He also worked hard in the mines at one tribal location that provided enough materials to equip himself and every tribal Orc follower with upgraded Orchish Armor. He than educated himself via books found at the Orc Encampments which lead to giving himself a centeral purpose in life and that was joining the Imeriperal Legion. Now here when CoD death matches come in. When he was sent out to help take control of stormcloak strongholds the idea occured to me to impose some rules. I would save my game right before me and the raiding party of the Imerpiral Legaion attack began. I was of course playing on Master. I didn't allow myself any potions or food for health. Thus, it was very challenging. Every battle unfolded differently even though it was the same stronghold. I would have to practice tatics that would allow me to take the stronghold. The great thing about it was it felt like i was the hero leading the assault, yet that did not make me indestrucable. I would have to advance and retreat a lot. I would have to soften up the enemies defense for sometimes 5 mins with launching a serises of arrows at the enemeis paraminter. Then I would have to stick with the other soldiers inorder to surive. If i went sole i'd quickly get overrun and die. When i needed to push through a heavy enemy assualt i'd use my berserker rage and go on a temporary killing rampage. I would have to sit back and read the how the battles were unfolding and time my flanking attacks just right to ensure that i can deal more damage than i take. All in all i would play the same stronghold for several days just because it was so dang fun. It was like a CoD map online in that the map is the same but you never know what to expect and all the battles are different, which is why CoD is addicting. I would also, obvioulsly not save inbetween battles. There would be times that it took several hours just to beat one stronghold. However, when i did, i had a great sense of accomplishment.

Now, this goes back to my intial argument, how many CoD fans that enjoy Skyrim do you think has thought of doing this on their own? It takes a certain amount of creativity to get this type of gaming experience from Skyrim. Thus far, my Orc has been my favorit roleplayer/actionRPG/CoD hybrid to date. I'm working on my Khajit but i have yet to find an underlining purpose that defines this charactoer the way my Orc had. It's also important to note tha after the civil war things for my Orc got VERY VERY anticlimatic. Life in the companions was dull and boaring compared to life in military service. However, after the war he stuck with that Orc follower who was also was a legion vet. Thus, the bond they had was remarkable. And after life in the compaions was through he's just waiting around for some DLC that may make his life interesting again.

So, as you can see, it requires a lot of fishing in this game to find the gold nuggets. And as it says in that one move with Tom Hanks, "if something was easy to find, it wouldn't be worth finding." People that can't find a gaming experince right off the bat which entralls them automatically claim its the desinger fault. I dissagree. Completely. Its becasue of a lack of creativity, imagionation and self-dicispline.

omfg its the wall of text which my OCD compels me to read

I see what you mean. I was simply trying to make a point, I for one love a good ol' game of CoD with my buddies, but when I want to play CoD, I'll stick with CoD.

To some extent yes. A guy I work with played skyrim for 50 hours. He did all the quest lines (major ones) with one character and said he was done. Then there is me who has played a few RPGs and spend 180 hours on my first character and only did 2 quest lines that made sense for that character. Have just started a new character and will do what makes sense for that character to do based on the RP backstory I made up in my mind

Most people who play skyrim I will bet are very similar to the guy I work with.

Not necessarily. I don't consider myself a 'seasoned RPG player'. Maybe just a person of above average intellect who has self-control/discipline. I've played Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout:3 and Morrowind when I was like 12 years old. I as well restrict myself in similar ways that you do and roleplay when playing these games, especially in Skyrim. I guess that's why I enjoy the game more than my other friends who are bored of it because they rushed all the quests or it is too easy because they have legendary Daedric Armor at level 20.

I enjoy the game more than a lot of my other friends because I appreciate the detail of the game, I roleplay, I don't rush anything and I never make myself over powered (playing on Adept at the moment.) Oh, and I'm 16.

Good one. I agree.

Most people don't know WTF they are talking about...all this bs about 'rpg elements' etc is rubbish.

Roleplaying was developed as a psycho-theraputic tool back in the 1920's/30's, was eventually introduced into teaching methodology, and found its way into gaming back in the 60's and 70's...and it has been used in theatre for thousands of years before all this. To suggest that the video game genre is marked by certain characteristics is ridiculous...what it does do is attempt to limit the ability of games developers to innovate and come up with new products...sad for some on this thread, Morrowind is long gone, join the new century folks.

Edit:

I'll say it so I don't have to repeat it ad infinitum to respond to people:

There's an awful lot of people on these forums that would be better off keeping their hands on their keyboards instead of wasting energy and thinking how great or knowledgable they are.

Falsehood.

An RPG is supposed to be about the character(s), not just about the player participating in an interactive storyline. A "vibrant" or branching storyline is neither a vital or defining feature of an RPG. It may enhance the experience and flesh out the development of your character, but it really is not essential. As long as characters are uniquely defined in a way that has a meaningful impact on their interactions with the gameworld and allows for a sense of progression, that's really what makes a game an RPG. Such interactions can be almost entirely combat based... in fact many oldschool RPGs were essentially nothing more than stat-driven dungeon crawlers.