I really don't understand why people are so diametrically opposed to the Skyrim leveling system. That was one of my favorite parts of the game, coming from someone who is very vehement about roleplaying. This isn't pen and paper, so you don't know everything about how the game will play before going in. With such a diverse range of active time playstyles too, finding the options as you play has always been how these games have worked.

The biggest change as TES has gone forward is the change in the 'weight' of how everything is. In Morrowind, your general movement was floaty and stiff. Getting around was tough going, and while people may have liked that, coupled with the awful combat it really was more of a restriction on exploration than anything. Oblivion had a bit more weight to it, but there was still this attachment to the earth (this is all disregarding insane acrobatics, btw) that really rooted a player into a slow route. Oh, and the combat was like waving a stick at a raccoon. Skyrim got the synergy right, though I admit, it might be because a put a lot of stock into animations that I find this change for the better. Is the combat really challenging? No, but it's a lot better than slowly side-strafing a Morrowind enemy. The base for what they want is there, they just need to get the Dark Messiah guys on that ;)

I don't think Oblivion is "anti-immersive" (I hate that word, btw) anymore than Morrowind or any RPG is.There is only so much one can do in a game. There will be bugs. You cannot name an expansive RPG in which "game-breaking" experiences do not exist. That's the nature of games, getting more prone to failure the more that has to be handled at once. But we look past them because we absorb the intent. Regardless of the fact that I had to restart Ultima 7 several times because of pathing which made NPCs inaccessible, I still love it. Some people don't like that there is a game where you can go out and kill dragons in a minute because they find that to be an experience which should be a rite of passage. I can go both ways, and I think all the TES games are casual, because I can pop in and play for a few hours without getting anywhere and feel fulfilled by my gaming experience. Whatever. Does everything need to be the paragon of gaming?

Oh, so your issues with all TES games are problems only Skyrim has? Well that's ... Ok, judging entire series by the last game is just about the poorest argument I have ever seen
I don't agree with everything, but I do agree with the fact that Skyrim was designed to make you feel like this epic badass hero who can't be endangered by anything. And it shoved it in your face at every occastion. So yeah, we can agree on that.

I don't think it even is a word :-P

If it's a Bethesda game - yes. That's my main source of annoyance on every criticism for me. :)

No their games aren't perfect and there is room for improvement, no doubt about it. But Bethesda's curse is Morrowind. It was a masterpiece and every future game has to measure against it - however, you can't replicate a stroke of genius.
Would a Morrowind 2 nowadays even work out? Going pretty much with the same system / skills / ruleset, just updated graphics / engine? Games like Fallout 1 / 2, System Shock 2, Planescape and the lack of follow-ups might suggest not, as they weren't a commercial success, as much as we might regret that.
Wasteland 2, Project Eternity, Torment: Tides of Numenera might prove otherwise. Dragon Age: Origin might suggest that it could. But then again, it also had it's flaws like, where's that promised open world or the lvl scaling (which interesting enough, gathered in no way as much criticism as the ones in Oblivion, F3 or Skyrim received).

The problem with all the valid criticism is, that it mostly manages to leave out anything good. It seems (at least to me, but that may be because I'm an admitted fanboy) that no matter what they put in and how, they get bashed for it. And it doesn't matter at all, if there's no other game around that put up as nearly as much. Yes Skyrim could have been more, but which other current game can really go against Skyrim, be it content-, world-, scale- or other-wise? About none. But Skyrim get's bashed for it.

If you compare Gothic 1 against Morrowind or Gothic 3 (community patched, without the inital flaws) against Oblivion, which came out around the same time, you have a hard time claiming Gothic the winner - only Gothic 2 could probably stand up against Morrowind, though it looses on scale of the world and complexity.
And there really is no competitor. Yes, Obsidian may have put up a better, more complex quest / story with factions, but pretty much blew up the world building.

Currently there's one game which might change that: Witcher 3. And I hope CDRed manages to succeed and give Bethesda and Skyrim a run for it's money. Because competition is good for business and that's what Bethesda currently simply doesn't have.

One little example:Heartfires adoption system (videos part 1 / part 2. Again, it wasn't what I was looking forward to, it's the smaller of two features of a $5 DLC and I certainly wouldn't call it "fleshed out".
However, it gives my a reason to head home beyond the point of dropping loot. Hell, I caught myself following those two brats for two ingame hours, just to see what they are doing. It gives me roleplaying and immersion value. It may not for others and I accept that, but it works for me. What other games go that extra mile time and time again or can claim to even come close? About none.

I can tell you for a fact that they won't, as Bethseda's and CDP's design philosphies differ radically. There will be more or less no freedom in who you are in the Witcher 3, and ... Well, that's that really.

But yeah, pretty much that. TES games are unique, there are no alternatives. The people who find fault with them usually do so because they're more accustomed / just prefer the 'usual' style of RPGs.

I'll end by saying that I was very excited for Skyrim, because while I found many faults with Oblivion, I still played the hell out of it until I just couldn't deal with all of the glitches and nonsense. I was hoping with Skyrim, they would fix all of the stats to be meaningful and function properly, but they stripped out so much of the game that it just felt bland. I picked a mage character, as I usually do, and was extremely disappointed in the short, lackluster mage's guild and the spells in Skyrim were just incredibly lame and dull, no creativity went into them at all.

On the other hand, the spells in Oblivion were pretty cool and you had the freedom to create some that were potentially game breaking, and that's exactly what they did unfortunately. I remember creating a ring or something that would make my character run extremely fast, so fast in fact that the game would constantly crash.

It's been so long that I can't remember how many hours I put into Morrowind, but it was a lot. I put in about 100 hours into Oblivion. About 50 into Skyrim and I no longer have any urge to play it.

Believe it or not, I considered myself a huge fan of the Elder Scrolls series, but I always felt that Bethesda never really made the game they could have made. Of course, there's always room for improvement, but there are such glaring blemishes on every installment of the series that it's ultimately unacceptable, a total lack of polish. At this point, they've gotten fat and lazy, comfortable with letting modders finish their games.

Some of you really like The Elder Scrolls series, and that's fine! I just always expected more with each release, instead I felt like I was short changed.

Even with the success of Fallout 3, are we really holding Bethesda on a pinnacle of deeply enriching experiences? Have they really made a strong mark which transcends simple culture into actually creating gaming which fully utilizes the medium? I've had more thought provoking dialects while playing World of Warcraft than any Elder Scrolls game, and that includes both Daggerfall and Morrowind. Let's face it: From the outset, Bethesda wanted to create an accessible RPG. The first person mode was 100% about accessibility. The fantasy tropes inserted were all about accessibility. The simplicity of the story and its message are about accessibility. These games were never meant to satisfy people who wanted D&D, but rather people who wanted the experience out of the favorite part of their fantasy novels. A truly more complex game would be less inviting, and in all less fun, but I can pop in any TES game and roll over some enemies WAYYYY faster than I could most RPGs. That's its appeal.

I am of the express opinion that people asking for "Morrowind 2" have no idea what they actually want. Do they just want a return in mechanics? A more ambiguous world? Movement which makes you feel like you're wading through swamp muck with ice at the bottom? Or is it just that you want a story marginally more interesting than the Forgotten Realms tie in comics? If we're really reaching for the concession that being the Nerevarine was somehow a deeply enthralling story simply because it was unexpected, then let's bandy up going into the umpteenth Oblivion Gate because I sure as hell didn't expect that! There needs to be a divide between the actually deep and somewhat interesting. Morrowind did not portray a story that was enhanced by its mechanics, and the end game of that story was as tedious as a DM could make it if they tried really hard to suck your campaign dry.

I wonder if folks are ever going to realize that true depth has nothing to do with numbers on the screen. Daggerfall had thousands of options, and I'm sure that made for interesting possibilities, but the depth was completely lacking. Forget the awful word "immersion" a moment and just think about the ridiculousness of having half a dozen language skills. Sure, it's true to D&D, but a DM will play to a character's strengths (or weaknesses) should that be relevant. However there's nothing in Daggerfall which expressly will make sure that Spriggan skill gives you one iota of interesting gameplay. And exploration? The hell was there to explore in Daggerfall? Whole lot of undetailed environments is what.

But that's a rant about depth for that game, and I think it's clear to anyone with a sense of unblinded reason that Morrowind is a deeper game than any of the other TES titles. Why? Because it uses its elements to create interesting gameplay beyond interacting and fighting. The use of spellcasting, for example, is some of the most intuitive use of player reasoning out there. The foreshadowing of the game's events are subtle and then supported by gameplay when you get snagged with an ever-present debuff. Still this use of gameplay is nowhere near as fleshed out or provoking than most Final Fantasy's I've played and it will continue to suffer if it looks backwards. The technology implemented in Skyrim is enough to realize a world which is accessible to everybody. It's just a matter of using the lore (which as it develops gets greater, even if the plots don't) in an efficient manner rather than coming up with "cool" ideas to fill a haphazard story checklist.

Personally I'm glad we've moved beyond these arbitrary measures for quality. If I could have played short but still intelligent games for all the hours I've spent on Skyrim.... I'd probably still play Skyrim. Nevertheless!, I would like to think that I would give at least an iota of reasoning towards experiences that were less caught up in not knowing what truly engaging interaction is. Again, like I said, a game where you can pop in and kill dragons freely in a few minutes should exist. There is no denying that. Do we need 2 though? 3? When's the point where we have to step away from the simplicity and ask for a bit more than the biggest concession between pure game and psuedo-realism on the market? I think the Elder Scrolls games should excel at providing the experience they actually want to create, and their current route is not what I think Bethesda actually desire.

Wholeheartedly agree. I do not like the fact at all that Bethesda is somehow the face of the Western RPG market, wherein they were neither the first nor the best to arrive on the scene, and even the best to stay on the scene! Europe I divulge as a whole other category, but TW3 is not an RPG in the classic sense at all. You do not choose who you are, nor a great myriad of options despite what TW1 fans might espouse over TW2. There are merely tools handed out incrementally, which in itself seems more Ultima Underworld than Ultima. What it provides though is sorely needed, and a focus to freedom with interaction that they claim will surpass TES, I have equally high hopes. Let's see to it that they don't just barrel over with it.

Yes, yes they have. With the exception of tabletop RPGs which, as you are probably aware, you can't actually play alone, there is absolutely nothing that comes even close to the experience TES games provide. I have never seen a form of entertainment that would actually surpress everything just to put the consumer as the only one who decides how he wants to consume it. More on this thought below.

That might be its appeal to you, or to keevek, and it is actually part of makes it so unique and so popular: Most people who play a TES game, especially a TES game since Morrowind forward, won't play it in the same way. Everybody will find a very particular combination of elements that they enjoy about the game.

TES games combine pretty much every fantasy RPG out there, all of their possibilities, and put them into a single game. Those possibilities, when looked at individually and compared to the games which are focused on them, are shallow of course - for instance, most of your post focuses on story and storytelling elements, so let's take any Final Fatansy game for that matter. You will, inevitably, get a better and more thought-provoking storyline in them (as long as you're into Japanese storytelling). However, you will never be able to just say "fuck this shit, I'm becoming a herbalist" in the middle of the storyline, the game just won't allow you to do that.

TES games, on the other hand, do. They organically combine multitude of genres, all of which are rather weak and uniteresting when looked at by themselves, and fail when compared to a game which focuses on that particular aspect. However, combined, you suddenly get an experience which only has ever so few boundaries (and those which are there are easily fixed by modding the damn thing, but I digress.)

You are saying that TES games should provide an experience they desire, but that's not what TES built its popularity upon - as opposed to pretty much all the other games out there, they provide experience the player desires. That's why TES games can't be replaced, even by Witcher 3 (and the Witcher series are by far my favourite games of a long, long time, as I value storytelling, I definitely like them more than TES). Any game, which even in the slightest manner dictate how they should be played, won't be able to replace TES.

But people tend to not see that. People start playing a TES game and think only of elements which they prefer, and that's perfectly reasonable thing to do, don't get me wrong. However, with this mindset, of course a lot of people are going to dislike TES - when they compare elemets of TES they prefer with the particular elements of games they like the most, TES is going to lose this every single time. But, when taken as a whole, TES series have absolutely no competition. Case in point - you were talking about stories. I am now playing Oblivion with the main storyline completely cut out of the game, and I'm enjoying it quite a bit.

I for one have to credit the Elder Scrolls games, with all their flaws, for being among the few AAA games that physically models and depicts most of its environment and objects. How many games besides Ultima 7 lets you pick up, carry around, and drop just about anything? In most other games items are abstract things that only show up either in your inventory screen or in a loot prompt that pops up when you press "E" while pointing at a sparkle effect.

Also, am I the only one who's starting to get tired of CRPGs, however you define them, always being compared to tabletop RPGs? Nobody compares platformers to anything. Nobody compares adventure games to anything. Nobody would compare Giants: Citizen Kabuto or <i>Candy Box</i> to anything. Why is it RPGs that have to get paired with some analog activity?

If a game were to really recreate the tabletop RPG experience it would look like a text adventure with a bunch of spreadsheets. And it would be multiplayer only.

Well I guess historically a lot of the CRPGs out there were based on P&P RPGs - so the direct comparison exists in a way that it just doesn't for platformers / adventures / Giants etc.

And for me, a lot of them have done a fine job of re-creating the P&P feel - the Gold Box D&D games, Baldur's Gate / Icewind Dale / Neverwinter Nights, Vampire: Redemption / Bloodlines, etc.

But we won't talk about that diabolical Shadowrun FPS... ;)

Oh man, I was originally so happy to hear Shadowrun was getting another game, I'd dabbled with the original in college, then enjoyed the games on both SNES and Genesis. So, I booted up the 360 version for about 30 min...then...turned off the 360, went and popped in the SNES version and replayed that for a while (couldn't find my Genesis cable or I probably would have played that one :P)

Yeah, but you still have to admit that they look far less like an actual tabletop RPG than, say, a strategy game like Civilization looks like a real wargame.