I did a long (+40 minutes~!) video regarding Skyrim Legendary Edition and the Elder Scrolls in general. Any feedback is welcome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3WTXZLj2mk

tl;dw

Good video.

I agree the game takes place mostly in dungeons. Even Oblivion has cities engaging you with different personas and quests.

I think a single player RPG should have the DM and player vision combined, otherwise it is a static story, just an adventure game.

The difference between the quests in Skyrim and Oblivion is, Oblivion's are more creative. That's it though. The disjointedness and schizophrenic player character are still there. This criticism about quests should have been spoken about Oblivion. For me, I want moral choices in quests. A fetch quest is much more when there is a backstory and choices involved. I give this example all the time, LOTR is just a fetch quest.

And I don't (want to) believe the franchise will forever feel disjointed like in Oblivion and Skyrim. I would like to believe given time and money, they can attempt at a crazy cohesive game world again, including open ended quests with many moral interpretations. Radiant AI was originally making NPCs act upon their needs and emotions autonomously, that failed and we got lobotomized version with glorified scripted events as schedules. Radiant story should have supposed to govern all quests. That failed too and who knows how much dev time this caused for the quest writers. I want to believe, they were struggling with realizing their ambitions. Morrowind had problems, like that insanely close view distance.

Quests is the biggest problem and I think most critics realized this too now. Now I think, NPC/faction interaction mechanics like in Morrowind is an important part too, as I think, these make the choices and interactions more grounded. That there are rules to this world, instead of a linear story progression with multiple paths a writer think as OK. No, we must also be the DM.

They should quit adding dispenser type NPCs like beggars or captives, morals are the core of roleplaying. They should quit making NPCs essential, no storyline is more important than the player's agency. I would like to think people who can play games for only few hours a week still like a proper RPG which lets them be who they want to be by confronting them with moral choices. Doing it right is a win win for everyone!

I thought it was a good video. I have played the Morrowind murdered tax collector quest many times but your insights about it made me think about the racial and political tensions in a new light.

Pretty much my reaction

However I am going to give it a try

Given my limited patience we will see how far that takes us but I will report back