A fraction of the time, a fraction of the world? Skyrim is huge, not just in physicality but in scope. They wrote a language for it, for god's sake. The micromanagement level of this game is insane. I can't believe you're not acknowledging that when comparing it to other games.
A lot of rather meaningless words come from you. How is Skyrim huge? In what scope? Prove your statement. Yes, Bethesda did invent a few words for a fictional language. It isn't particularly notable, fantasy and science fiction writers do that all the time. How about George Martin? Or John Tolkien? Or Andrzej Sapkowski? In which ways is Skyrim's scope bigger than that of New Vegas?
Maybe because, as was already pointed out twice...she's already used in a quest?
Yeah.
Let's illustrate further your scripting theory- who said the fort was taken by anyone? My character could have cleared out that fort and I don't belong to either of those factions. Oops, there's another string you have to create. What if there's a thieves' guild quest that involves that fort? Better create yet another scripted reaction. Also, we must ensure these reactions don't interfere with one another because the player has the opportunity to join every faction in the game.
Yes, they should've done exactly that. Bethesda had the resources, staffing and all the time in the world (five years is a lot of time in the industry) to create a complex game with a lot of interplay between factions, characters and the player. What, exactly, is wrong with expecting a reasonable amount of interaction from a roleplaying game? Again, Obsidian coded in a lot of such interaction, with much less development time.
Your anology doesn't fit- a truer comparison would be if your GM couldn't make it that day and wrote a campaign with some notes on which direction to take it if you made certain choices. Even being your friend and knowing your playstyle, he could not have predicted each and every choice you could make, so you're going to have to ROLEPLAY to excuse some missing data.
Sorry, pen and paper roleplaying games don't work like that.
In the end, this is a computer program. It's not unlimited, it's not omnipotent.
Reasonable interaction and reactivity in a game is not omnipotence.
And you are blowing everything out of proportion- all I said was if you have a problem with an NPC not reacting to a particular set of circumstances, roleplay a reason for it. That's not rewriting the game, it's explaining behavior.
God, I would hate to play a tabletop game with you. You're the player who kicks his chair and swears at other players when they come up with some unorthodox method of getting around an obstacle. "IT'S NOT IN THE GAME GUIDE RWARRRR"
Chill out.
You're equating roleplay with play pretend. As I pointed out, this is not true.
And thanks for jumping to conclusions with that ad hominem. If I ever needed any more proof that you cannot defend your view or back it up with any sort of reasonable argument, that's that.