Quote Originally Posted by Laddy View Post
Skyrim is a shallow experience. It pisses on its RPG roots and create a laughably easy and predictable experience that is completely incapable of surprising anyone with any real experience in the WRPG genre.

Oblivion is too, but at least it was the first time it was an utter disappointment for the series and not the second.
This is completely untrue. I was wary of absolutely everything they were doing with Skyrim and it turned out to be excellent. The inclusion of perks is a far, far more meaningful way of customizing your character than anything in Oblivion. You can't gimp yourself over with a low constitution or anything and whilst you can still get screwed by pursuing the wrong skills, you can make up for it far more easily than anything Morrowind or Oblivion let you do. I don't like the removal of skills any more than you do but it's not like they were used well in Oblivion or anything. This game seems shallower at first glance but if you spend any amount of time with this and Oblivion and compare them, Skyrim's a tremendous improvement.

As an RPG yes, it's a shallow experience. So was Oblivion. To only a slightly lesser extent so was Morrowind. So were Arena and Daggerfall. Very few RPGs are actually all that deep and meaningful, giving you characters and interactions and choices and consequences. But at least the linearity in this game had someone literate, if not astonishingly talented, writing it and they used some lesser-known voice actors well rather than blowing their entire budget on the Emperor and Martin.

The most important thing though is that Skyrim actually has an interesting, big world to explore, one that can feel hostile and one you can feel lost in. Oblivion was the most generic of generics, a medieval forest basically, and everything that was magical about Morrowind was stripped away - the giant mushrooms, the weird animals, people living inside crab shells, the huge hostile marshes, the broken coastlines, the ash storms, all that. Skyrim doesn't climb all the way back up to those heady heights but I've never said it does. It is, however, an interesting world with a worthwhile aesthetic that regardless of its flaws is hugely enjoyable to explore. Which is exactly what Morrowind always was.