I was watching "...why Skyrim?" by Razbuten on sloptube this aft and it's so weird that it finally took Starfield for people to realise. Like Fallout 76 wasn't enough, only now are negative things people were first saying about Skyrim in 2012 finally bleeding into mainstream consciousness. It's so wild, like wow they ruined the magic system? The game has worse writing than a PS1 era Mega Man X game??? Skyrim is just shitty Game of Thrones?? Welcome to thirteen years ago!!
Bethesda hasn't made a really good game since 2002, but it'll probably be years before that realisation sinks in.
I think that Skyrim was good for it's time and I say this as someone that could never get into Skyrim, I mean even you said in another comment that you've played 400 hours of Skyrim. You don't do that unless there is something enjoyable about the gameplay loop.
But the thing is you can't keep making, re-skinning and releasing the same game you made a decade ago, as much as gamers say they just want companies to remake their favourite games from their adolescence and update the graphics with some quality of life improvements, this isn't what gamers actually want. Such a game would appear very dated on release and get harshly criticised by gamers. Old games always had their flaws that would be very apparent nowadays. And I think that's exactly what's happened with modern open world Bethesda games, ever since Fallout 4 actually. They keep making a similar type of game, and it feels old on arrival, with the same flaws as games from a decade ago.
I have hundreds of hours in the first borderlands but I think the game itself is pretty shit. It completely fails as an fps because your movement speed isn't fast enough to make organic use of cover or treat it as a run n gun, and it's not great as a cover shooter either. It just ends up being a game where you need big enough numbers on your gun and shield to get past the next zone.
The setting, story, and art isn't bad, but without good gameplay none of that can save a game. The only reason I played it so much was because I sometimes wanted a mindless experience where I can watch the numbers go up without thinking too much about anything.
Me having played 200 hours of Borderlands 2 once and hating every second of it for this reason
Nah, I mostly did it desperately trying to enjoy the game. See enemy, click to ready destruction magic, hold down both mouse buttons until dead... Skyrim was easy to play because it's mindless, borderline 0 mental effort to engage. A podcast game almost.
You're basically right about the, remaking-the-same-slop, I just find it weird it took so long for people to notice.
I have 80 hours in Skyrim, 60 of that was testing mods. I put the game down because even with all the mods the game ia still very flawed and the mods can't fix it for me.