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.
There is one fun way to play vanilla Skyrim, be a stealth archer and explore the world at your own pace and not follow the questlines at all except when the next quest marker happens to be the next place in your exploration pattern. Those two things happen to work very well for me, so I enjoy vanilla Skyrim.
But that doesnt make the fact that theres no other viable playstyle than stealth archer remotely acceptable. Or the fact that the questlines lack depth acceptable (I dont think the writing is as bad as you do, but I'm also fairly tolerant of bad writing and love CONTENT so I'm kind of just a shallow uncritical baby). And even in a game they sort of designed to be explored, most people arent going to do that and they have quest markers on your screen so obviously a lot of people are going to follow them. And while I've never done this, my understanding is that following quest markers to do the main quest kinda sucks ass because it takes away from a lot of enjoyment. (though based on the games overall popularity I guess it worked as slop for a lot of people).
Also even when the game came out I never accepted the "the game is big of course there's a ton of glitches!" bullshit lol. Fuck that. Bigger games since have not been anywhere near as broken and people working for free managed to largely fix the broken ass game for them.
As a first order of business I usually run the main quest in these things with minor pitstops, so whoops I guess... But I was surprised back when people complained about say, Assassins Creed Unity, because Skyrim was about that functional on launch. Silly defenses from fans.
Also another thing that my friend pointed out to me is that it actually sucks ass that they made a game with the intent for it to be explored, but then made a main quest line that from a roleplaying perspective is actually super fucking urgent?
This never impacted me because I dont really think of that kind of thing? I dont set out to play a game like this from a roleplaying perspective (yes I know its a roleplaying game lol). I just want to do the STUFF (TM) thats in it.
Yeah I mean it was awkward in Oblivion when there were gates open everywhere and daedra pouring out and you just fucked off to mess around, but the solution was not to give it a knockoff Zelda plot...
These kinds of games are usually more fun for me when I roleplay them but having contradictory gameplay and story is unfortunately very common
I don't think you're a shallow uncritical baby, sometimes we just wanna
beat big monster and have cool magic fight story and I think that's reasonable