From Destiny to Watch Dogs and even the Shadow of Mordor, no game has even come close to Skyrim and the TES series. After playing all of these supposedly "amazing" next gen games, it just highlights how extraordinary this game actually is. I can't believe that I ever complained about story missions in this game, or any other part of it. All of these new games are half-baked pieces of trash in my opinion with a failed story, broken gameplay mechanics and hardly any content or long term pull. They're just skeletons with make-up on made to look all shiny by money hungry vampires. I think the only game that will beat Skyrim is the next TES.

I know the feeling. I've been trying to play Dragon Age: Origins recently. But it's beginning to feel like work. I find myself constantly wanting to play Skyrim or Oblivion instead. That's the way it is with nearly all games these days: I try them for awhile but I soon find myself longing to play an Elder Scrolls game again.

Skyrim, World of Warcraft, Age of Empires(2 and 3), and Neverwinter Nights are the only games I really play all that regularly. I usually like to criticize Skyrim within the context of the lore and in comparison to other games in the series for this reason, because the only thing that really compares to Skyrim are other Elder Scrolls Games and -maybe- Witcher series, though I find the lore in Witcher to be juvenile at times.

Hmm.. Dark Souls occupies me quite a bit. So does The Witcher 2. Not next-gen, but new & good enough to divide my time between them.

I know what you mean, though. Destiny was a huge flop. Didn't even bother getting Watch Dogs because it feels like GTA with actual Brands. And I've yet to play Shadow of Mordor, but I've heard it's just a Buffed Assassin's Creed.

It'll be quite a while before the next TES, though.

That's exactly it. Those games aren't new, but they were made to their fullest. They were worked on properly and the devs took time and care over them. Of that breed of older and brilliantly crafted games the TES games are at the top of the pile. I personally wouldn't even bother going to next gen if I could reverse my decision in buying an Xbox One. I've yet to play a next gen game that is new or innovative, or even fun after a day. They're just terrible.

I'm prepared to wait for Fallout, and definitely TES. The Elder Scrolls games are such masterpieces, they're just in a league of their own. No other game can even come close. Especially not those hollow next gen games.

Never played Destiny,Watchdogs or the Shadows of Mordor. I am not much a fan of new games and usually wait a few years before getting the game. The TES and Fallout games is one of the exceptions if I have the money since I know the games will be fun and long lasting. Fallout 3 and New Vegas I have not even stepped foot in any of the DLC's except for a short stint in Broken Steel and that is after I do not know how many hours of gameplay. The other exception is Diablo, and Torchlight games.

The Ultima games, Hitman series, Baldurs Gate, Skyrim and Kingdome Come: when it's finally released!

Mmm, been spending time immersed in New Vegas mods recently, trying to make long time characters, but I'm sure ill be back to Skyrim when I grow tired of that character, and retire him for a short while so I can play another game.

...It just happens that all of those games are Beth games

Does anyone feel slightly ripped off when they purchase a non-beth game and they aren't able to extract many hundreds of hours from it? Most games on launch day cost a basic 60 dollars, and when you buy a simple shooter with your 60 dollars and get only 5-20 hours of linear shootmans out of it it just makes it feel so hollow. Shadow of Mordor does actually interest me, since I love Middle Earth stuff, if only MERP got off the ground and didnt get hit by the squad of lawyers.

I too have been recently playing Dark Souls (Dark Souls II to be specific), but other than that not much other games can appease me.
Elder Scrolls I have to like for most of what it is, Dark Souls for my longing of a good challenge and a fair difficulty to make things feel rewarding, Legend of Zelda because they've been good to me all my years, and Smash Bro's for a good competitive spirit.

This weekend I tried to play the witcher 2 since a lot member in this forum talk about it.

After playing for 5 hours, I just realize how good Skyrim is. It so easy to get used to. You can truly roam the environment.

I agree, if you mean modded Skyrim. I don't think I would've played the hours I have without some mods.

Supposedly? Who exactly said they were suppose to be amazing? I know the marketing for both Watch Dogs and Destiny was huge but if you're going to have overhyped expectations of a game then I would say it's on the consumer. The only game I played out of those mentioned was Destiny. I never hyped the game and I have been enjoying it quite a bit since release. No doubt a heavily flawed game but I wouldn't go so far to call it a "flop" (that term goes hand in hand with games like Aliens: Colonial Marines). What I expected out of Destiny was what I played in the beta.

As for the next-gen games on the consoles, I won't deny its current line up is pretty stale at the moment, but at the same time, I don't know what you expected from it either. The line up for games when the Xbox 360 and PS3 was rather unimpressive as well when they first released and it is seemingly no different here. That's why I've never bought a console at launch, never any good games to play until a year or two. Though, there have been exceptions.

As for Skyrim, I wouldn't say its quality in story, game mechanics, and content were all that better either. In terms of consisting any sort of depth at least.

Dark Souls is awesome, but games like Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim tend to get me more. Mass Effect also made me spend several hours on Shepard's Skin.

Welcome to the club

Shout-out to Crusaders Kings 2, though I do find myself wishing someone would make a TES mod for it...

I've felt the same with the Witcher 2, the game by itself is a good game but it makes me long for the freedom of Skyrim, both in environment and in custom characters. There's obviously many unpolished parts of the game or design choice we disagree with yet overall Skyrim is a masterpiece imo and every TES outshines everything when they're released. I'll be a fan forever unless they make a huge mistake and add guns to Nirn or something along those lines...I like my fantasy to have magic and might with no gunpowder whatsoever.

Everyone I know who plays games thought that these games would be completely out of this world and amazing. The devs also amd them out to be absolute masterpieces. If you don't listen to devs, friends and gameplay trailer then what do you listen to?

Destiny and Watch dogs weren't flops? We have nothing more to speak about here.

I expected games that were a vast improvement on the PS3 and 360 games. So far all I've seen are games with improved graphics. Same bugs, the same scale and the same features.

If you think that the current crop have a better story than a Skyrim then again, we have nothing more to speak about. Skyrim had hundreds of hours worth of guilds, side and main missions.

I agree man. If they added guns, I would just die.

Would you have a bit of a freakout if I told you that there was a mod named Elder Kings that has a unfinished but still pretty complete release out that includes all of nirn as its map?

I could actually go for a flintlock pistol, but that might work better as a mod. I do like my guns in Fallout, but I miss the magic from TES, likewise I miss the guns in TES and appreciate the magic. Maybe there could be a third game series that has a setting that incorporates both, but if Bethesda is adding a third IP to their lineup then we'll be getting a game in each series every decade, which might be too long of a wait.

Im not sure if they are as bad as you or some other people say, but then again I dont really keep track of most other things going on in videogaming. I am sure we are kindred spirits in that Bethesdas games offer us so much that we rarely see fit to look outside of them, and thus find most other games boring, but I always abide by the philosphy that videogames are by their very nature highly subject to taste. I will never play Destiny or Watch Dogs, but even if they were a major dissapointment to a lot of people, there is atleast some group of people out there who really like them. If some large group of people atleast enjoys the game, I am hestitant to call it a flop.

Also Skyrim doesnt have hundreds of hours of content...It has thousands. And with the huge success its had its attracted a lot more modders than usual, resulting in even more content. You could buy Skyrim right now and still be finding new things in it when Fallout 4 and TES VI are out, which is the exact reason why I play all of the modern Beth games at once instead of sticking to just one

Glad I'm not the only one for who DA:O feels like work. It's an impressive game but over the years I've spend over 80 hours on it and never actually finished it. The invisible wall system, non-respawning locations, insane difficulty spikes, the limited amount of XP/gold to be found is bad. But I can live with that, it's the lack of freedom that puts me off the most.

For the OP, I can recommend FO:NV. It's a bit hard to get into but compared to Skyrim you get a game in which choices and things like faction armor actually matter. It has the freedom of TES and even more. For example, even when the game starts you can immediately kill one or all the factions (if your char is strong enough). All the things that annoy me in Skyrim, like being able to walk in Legion armor to Ulfric and not being able to take out one civil war faction when I want, are fixed in New Vegas.

I have played FONV and love it! In all honesty, I love all Bethesda games. They're the only game studio that I have faith in.

I've known about Skyrim for a long time, but not so much to get past the preview video, I didn't look in depth but on first glance I thought it was just another sword and board time. Stealth, thievery, murder, and an open world is what makes it for me... along with the crafting mechanics. Asheron's Call was my addiction for many years, nothing has occupied my gaming time like that since... at least until I learned of Skyrim's game mechanics. I always did the archer thing on Asheron's Call, but Skyrim does it one better.

State of Decay has the same open world field, but in a completely different genre.

The biggest problem I have is that it's not an online experience. I know there is ESO, but I don't feel like shelling out that much cash up front for a game I don't know if I'll like. Will it be the same as Skyrim only better? Or worse? When other companies are going to free to play models and making money like that, ESO puts a huge price tag on the front end. I don't mind a subscription fee of 15 a month or whatever, but to pay that plus, what is it, more than 60 bucks for the game itself first.

They should at least offer a demo server, 2 week free trial before that account is either closed, or you subscribe and get shuffled into a regular server. Just to let us get our feet wet and see if it's something we'd enjoy playing with the group dynamics.

I mean, in Skyrim, why have a house to show off your gear on manikins when there's nobody to show off to, unless you take and post screenshots. In Asheron's Call, which was 100% online, we had housing and could permit people to check out the gear we wanted to show off on the walls etc. Made trophy items kinda valuable.

Anyway, this is a great game overall. Minimal complains, little glitchy sometimes, but overall well done.

PS, I neglected to mention, I've had this game since Sept 3, 2014, it's now Oct 6th, 2014 and I have over 200 hours game time. Averaging about what? 5-6 hours a day.

Well for me at least and many others the games were shallow and just horrible. However, I completely agree with what you posted there. Well said.

Yes, I too would like an online feature in TES, but it would have to be implemented carefully. Maybe if you could go in to a world with 30-35 other players or something and also have a co-OP mode. Maybe an area where you can take your characters and be match made with others to undertake specially made team missions or something. I'm not sure how they'd get around showing off your house and stuff like that but I'm sure there could be a way.

There are a lot of people all across these forums who confuse "I dont like this game" with "This game is bad", and that just makes me shake my head.

I do agree that I find most other non-Bethesda games rather shallow though, but there are some that have broken the mold. Its a far different experience, but I find that for my strategy fix paradox games can provide a lot of fun, and I invite you to take a look at some of the stuff that the now revitalized space sim genre is doing. X3: Terran Conflict and the in-development Limit Theory offer some interesting things for people who enjoy Bethesda games, X3 is mostly about setting up a massive space trading empire that goes on to dominate the universe, and how you go about that in the huge open world is completely up to you. Limit Theory is also using some pretty crazy procedural generation tech to create a actual infinite universe that I think is actually going to blow X3 out of the water. My plan for that game is actually to do some RPing around a single capital ship that goes on a great exploration of the universe.

The whole open-world space sim stuff actually offers a lot of things in common to what we enjoy in Bethesda games. After all of these years since I first set eyes on Morrowind ive been hoping for the open world revolution where a lot of people take after Bethesda, but it seems that in terms of open world games people seem to like the GTA blueprint better.

Ehh. I always write too much, but not all games out there are as hollow compared to Bethesda games, just that Bethesda is always going to be better in our eyes.