Given the trajectory of the series (and Bethesda games in general) I have this creeping fear that it's going to be even more watered down than Skyrim is. It seems like with every game Bethesda releases they strip away RPG elements and dialogue and "streamline" everything, effectively making their beloved RPG franchises into action-adventure games like they did with Fallout 4. What are the odds they turn it around and actually make the excellent first person open world RPG the series deserves?
My dream is for TES to get it's own New Vegas, a return-to-form RPG from an outside company that actually knows how to write an interesting video game
I don't even mind the walking simulator thing, but I don't know why with Skyrim specifically is so easy to notice the "stitches in the fabric" as it were, the world feels soooo makeshift. The thing I remember the most in Skyrim is the College of Winterhold, I always do the magic guild questline in morrowind, so I had to do this one. It's hyped in books as "the center of magic" in Skyrim, and there's many books that keep referencing Winterhold and magical breakthroughts around Winterhold keep popping up in descriptions. You walk very far until you reach Winterhold and from afar you see this ominous castle, really cool looking harry potter-ish castle, you enter and see that the entirety of the school is five guys shooting spells at the wall. One of the guy gets in the way of someone shooting an ice beam, shouts in pain and shortly after resumes walking to nowhere in particular.
It's perhaps some sort of uncanny valley effect too I guess. I mean it's obvious that NPCs in Morrowind REALLY have nothing to do except walk back and forth, and most share the same dialogue pool, but I dunno, something in Skyrim didn't stick the landing and I don't know what it was. I think the subplots happening beneath the surface in Morrowind help you flesh out the world in your imagination, we should go back to lengthy text exposition, maybe.
Almost everything just felt super small in Skyrim to me, or at least the town stuff and actual civilization.
Maybe this is gaming as a child syndrome but I remember the Imperial City or whatever feeling really massive, which put the smaller settlements in the world in perspective. I think with Skyrim also it feels like the technology should be able to do more somehow, in older games everything feels somewhat cohesively limited, while in Skyrim suddenly shit just feels smaller and more limited than their potential.
The small cities are one of the biggest disappointments in Skyrim IMO. They did a decent job of making them feel bigger, but I remember walking around Whiterun the first time and being like "uhhh this is it?"
I also wish there was some more interesting spell selection (the shouts were cool at least) and that the weapons felt more different. I was able to fix those with mods, but I really shouldn't have to.
That's fair, I'm not denying that there are flaws with the game, and the factions are a major one. I'm just pointing out that the game is still fun despite its flaws and ultimately the enjoyment is all that truly matters to me
I think TES should stick with radiant AI, the world would feel a lot more dead without it. I feel that oblivion did it better, there were more NPCs with more complex schedules.