It's been a long time since I lurked the TES forums here, I only remember the TESV speculation threads. I remember there was a lot of hate on Oblivion and many people predicted that Oblivion will be the new Morrowind when Skyrim comes out, with people remembering Oblivion as the glory days of Bethesda while hating on Skyrim. Did that happen? I'm sorry, I'm too lazy to just read that further back in the forums.
I myself am okay with Skyrim, many of the extremely bad stuff in Oblivion were corrected in Skyrim and the world, the atmosphere and the characters (the main quest ones anyway) were a lot better. It is a shame though with what happened with many of the side quests and the faction questlines. Just the Forsworn Conspiracy makes me sad, there could have been an entire faction questline or a DLC based around that. A shame. Actually, did Dawnguard add better side quests? I can't get Dawnguard until later because I live in Hungary so tell me if it's actually worth it or not.

Skyrim is great and although oblivion is still awesome, it's not the new oblivion

Yes, pretty much

As well as Daggerfall/Morrowind when the latter first came out. It's a neverending story.


About Skyrim itself, I believe most criticism is on a very high level. I could pick almost everything and say "Well, you guys could have made a better and longer quest out of it". The world is filled with tons of content. If it wasn't people wouldn't be here after almost a year a videogame came out. In the end, everything boils down to personal preference. Every Elder Scrolls game has some remarkable strength and weaknesses. Skyrim drastically improved on a lot of things that were criticized in Oblivion like NPCs faces, animations, no followers and so on.

I have fun playing and some of the complaints are sound like how there aren't that many unique quests or how it the factions could've been longer and better written but some of the other complaints like the minimal armor customization or how its just more actiony then rpg-like is kinda just finding reasons to give the game a bad name and another annoying thing is that people claim its ruining the Elder Scrolls series which is completely stupid.

Short answer I love it, people find ways to complain, it happens all the time.

Well, in polls I consistently see Oblivion as rated below both Morrowind and Skyrim, so I guess that there's a consensus that Oblivion was Bethesda's 'low point'. Morrowind is still being played quite a bit though, and I'm positive that Oblivion is too.

I think there is also a slim majority consensus among Elder Scrolls fans who have played 3+ games that Morrowind is superior to both Skyrim and Oblivion (if not necessarily superior to Daggerfall, depending on who you ask...) And that Skyrim really has a lot of areas that it sorely underperforms, and could've been much better/deeper when the entire game is really somewhat shallow compared to previous titles. Guilds are probably the most obvious example of where Skyrim has stumbled - there are only four 'full-length' joinable factions, and even these are ridiculously short and for the most part act as just one lengthy quest chain, instead of an actual 'guild'. And the pacing for guilds is horrible, you can go from being a piece of crap grunt to the leader of a faction in about five days in-game time, depending on travel times.

The above is what I have reason to believe the 'general opinion' (as asked by the OP) is at this moment. I might be mistaken, but I've tried to be very careful with my wording to reflect what I've seen in polls and during conversations. Now below, I have my own opinion which may or may not be held by others:

To me, Skyrim marks the transition of The Elder Scrolls from 'RPG Games with real-time combat/action' to 'Action/Adventure Hack-and-Slash games with some RPG elements added'.

The General consensus on Skyrim I'm sure is.

Skyrims a great game, but lacks a lot of aspects available in past games. its not....there's very little you can point out and say this game is [censored] basically.

for me? well its in my Sig, A mile wide, a foot Deep.