Todd's not stupid. His answer means literally he doesn't know what the guy means by his question. There are dozens of valid interpretations of "pulling a DA2" that Todd's smart enough to forsee. He's not going to answer blindly on one side of the fence or the other. He's been doing this way too long, and observed so many other PR blunders to make that mistake.

Simply put: Todd knows better than to put flamebait on video.

When a friend of mine who is a baseball and foot-ball player tells me he thought oblivion was cool and wants to get skyrim - thats when you know they've reached the casual audience.

Theres often a lack among a fandom that the company is a business and needs to make money, but theres a moral objection when you turn your back on the people who built you up in the first place to make more money.

They added more than they took out. The opposite of DAO--->DAII.

The last Bioware game that I completely enjoyed was Baldur's Gate 2. I thought Dragon Age 2 was a 7/10 game (if played in nightmare mode only) because the characters had some personality, the story was alright, the action was good, and some terrific boss battles (DA:O combat and boss battles were bland). There is some good in the game, even if nerdrage caused for users to bomb the metarating.

Mass Effect 1/2 were decent 7/10 for me. They were fun, but lacked depth.
I thought Oblivion was a 5/10 game because the world felt artificial and unresponsive.
I think Fallout 3 was a good 7/10 for having a lot of things to explore and shoot, but the elimination of the core RPG features from the originals soured my experience.
I think New Vegas was an 8/10 because it brought some of the RPG elements back, improved combat, and better writing for dialogue and story even though the landscape was unfinished and lacked fulfilling exploration.

I will probably give Skyrim a 7.5/10 because the magic and combat appear improved (plus not having a [censored] console control scheme and interface)... unless they astonish me and make interaction with NPCs feel genuine and responsive to my character's personality,

The simple fact that we will not be able to influence our strength, intelligence, agility, endurance or any attribute for that matter is mind boggling. Health, mana and fatigue cannot replace attributes, nor skills or perks. People are complaining about a system that is almost identical to the current skill system. Numbers ranging from 1 to 100 to define your skills with a blade, only to be raised when you hit things a set amount of time. These are the people claiming that I hold on to the pen & paper rpg's, while all I want is to be able to increase the very fabrics of my body.

Exactly this

You could list all the things they took out next to all the things they added, and i'm sure the additions do outnumber the removals. But that's a dumb way of looking at the situation.

For me, many of the things they've removed carry far more weight and importance than the things they've added.

Dual wielding
Finisher moves
Perks
Dragon shouts
Children
Marriages

...all worthless to me.

Attributes
Athletics
Acrobatics
Separate armour / clothing pieces

...all VERY important to me in TES games.

The problem with Oblivion's attributes goes along with what I felt was the prevailing fault of the game: lack of depth to the system. BGS probably decided to improve skills and customization without the extra effort of making attributes meaningful and balanced. They could have done both, but the decision was most likely made to make character creation less complex (improve accessibility) while retaining depth in the skill system.

Again, glass half-empty.

They removed something and there's NO POSSIBLE WAY to have ANY kind of alternative.
If there is it's instantly inferior.

So if they changed something, they basically removed it from the old one. And there has to be reason behind, and who else can pull the blame then the evil casual crowd, those evil people ruin everything. Skyrim is not our private game anymore those dirty kids will just break it.


And I still don't know what's so despicably "not-RPG" in Dragon Age 2...

I think that when Todd talks about Skyrim being hardcoe he's referencing the depth of its systems, not its difficulty level, and that this is confusing to some players.