Oh man that was a good one.

Rep to you.

But seriously, Almalexia is an nice game, but is too close to dyslexia... so not a good name unless you consider home schooling.

Yeah, but his mother was a Cambodian freedom fighter, if I recall correctly.

And both his parents are RPG geeks.

AND IT'S FICTION :P

Could be worse, at least we all know that nobody would name their child "Facebook" ...

Have a son :D
True, and it's awesome that someone else reads that excellent webcomic. And whatsammata with fiction, anyway? ;P
Poor Roman, you haven't been happy since Morrowind, heh.

I'm going to have kids with six different women just to be on the safe side. That unknown reward is surely mine.

Elder Scrolls V, Parts 1-6: Inheritance

The unknown reward is probably a visit from CPS.

I don't know what that means, but I like the sound of it.

Cool. Well at least that will take care of all the child maintenance payments.

Especially considering the list of features in Skyrim that Bethesda have released list a number of things that suggest drastic improvements over the admittedly quite dumbed down Oblivion.

That's basically what I was going to say except I was going to tack on "What doesn't make your blood boil?" :P

While Oblivion was nowhere near as good as Morrowind (it becomes much better with mods of course), Skyrim seems like it's a huge step in the right direction.

The more dumbed down a game is == the more sales it gets. Todd Hoeward knows this well.

This is not necessarily true. For starters, dumbed down =/= streamlined. Although I feel it was a mistake, Bethesda doing such things as merging short blades and long blades into one skill was an attempt at removing unnecessary complication.

Secondly, I am an old hand at RPG's and ARPG's. I have played very few shooters, and I was very bad at them. To me, a "dumbed-down" shooter such as Star Wars Battlefront II is an excellent venture into the genre, whereas I passed up the Arma games simply because I'm not ready for that much realism and accuracy.

I'm not condoning or encouraging oversimplification of beloved franchises, I'm just trying to point out that they aren't trying for raw increased sales, they're trying to make the franchise less intimidating to draw in people that wouldn't normally be playing the game. Sort of like Fallout 3 becoming a FPS/RPG hybrid to draw in the shooter fans, but retaining the VATS system to keep those who (like me) can't hit the broad side of a barn.

You cant get any more oversimplified than Oblivion., unles there was a button to finish all quests instantly. The VATS in Fallout 3 wasn't really the original Fallout VATS. Experience points were removed completely. It was a only a stupid pause button.

I've seen dumbed down games crash and burn following the success of their less intelligence-insulting prequels. Oblivion certainly wasn't one of them, true. But I doubt Bethesda have any intention of producing an open world whach a mole here.
Skill points were directly affecting your chance to hit in my experience. Apart from when the enemies moved into cover and the VATS system continued regardless. But generally speaking they were very relevant.