Thank god for this. It amazes me just how far Skyrim gets praised for stuff that isn;t even in the game.
Let's get this out of the way: Skyrim is by no definition a bad game. It's good. Ok. Decent. Passes the time.
But from that to all the retarded wanking fanboys shouting BEST RPG EVAH ... seriously? THIS? This unfocused, underwritten, booring, uninteresting generic medieval fantasy with dragons is TEH BEST RPG EVAH? Let me explain RPG: Role Playing Game. In otherwords and rpg is a game where story, roles, characters, situations take precedence over everything else. You must imerse me in your world and make me want to play the role assigned to me by the story. What are you in skyrim? A nobody. A random nobody of no known race gender or features that just happens to get the power to nom on dragon souls. A bit bland, but hey, if tyhe journey is good and the people I met are fun ... oh ... yeah ... ummmm ... generic save the world from bug bad dragon, generic exposition spewing pieces of cardboard with names atached ... ouch. Skyrim has NOTHING beyond a crude skeleton of an RPG, opting instead to just dump a truckload of disjointed and random toys and pretend it's an actually interesting experience. When really it's just a collection of random boring toys pilled up in one spot. That and graphics that would almost be passable (seriously, all the people praising skyrim graphics at launch must have been blind ... the draw distance was shit and all textures were utter crap I would expect to see in Mount&Blade for christs sake. Oh sure the vistas were nice if you played in low res and squinted real hard at the screen). Skyrim is not an RPG, plain and simple. You want a good RPG? Planescape: Torment. That game after so many fucking years still holds permanent residence in my memory and I can recite it's story by heart, it's dialogue word for words and all I need is one visual or audio que and instantly I am back in the skin of the Nameless. That is a true RPG, one that grabs hold of you, erases your mind and makes you become your in game character through a well written, well paced story and mistery and interesting sights and places and characters and personality. If one was to use graphics from one or two years ago to recreate Planescape, all the skyrim fanboys would probably shit themselves at actually fucking unique and amazing sights, not generic nordic country farm land from skyrim. Bottom line: verry few games pretending to be RPG are actually even real RPG's, let alone good ones.
Planescape: Torment is my number 1 best RPG ever, but for more modern examples: Witcher, Mass Effect (you had a name and place in the world before the game began, you had a rudimentary identity that the game allowed you to build upon. As oposed to identity-less random amoeba from skyrim) even despite the shit ending, that new Deus Ex game, the original Deus Ex, The Gothic series (it takes cues from skyrim in it's inception: namely you are a convict, difference here beeing you have a face, a voice, a personality. And the story starts as just you trying to find your place in the new life, but through proper pacing, mistery and one of the most immersive integration of RPG skills into the game world I have ever seen in a game, it sucks you into a world that isn't as simple or as boring as it might seem. It trains you in a mundane atmosphere, so when the weird world shapping events pop up and you are swept in them, you actually feel excited. As oposed to: "you are the mighty dragonborn, powerfull beyond scope, our only hope against dragons. Now go do a bajilion fetch quests and run around boring farmland for 100+ hours. Oh and don't bother with dragons that much, aparently if they attack a town, pesants with farming tools and fists can kill them just fine. So really, I don't even know why you are even needed here. EPIC ADVENTURE!").
Oh and another thing: FUCK MODS. FUCK THEM. DO NOT TELL ME "MODS FIX IT". NO! IF THE GAME IS SHIT AND FAILS AT THE MOST BASIC THINGS IT SHOULD DO, THEN THE GAME HAS FAILED AND NO AMOUNT OF MODS WILL FIX THAT. Will I enjoy a mod more than the origina? Of course. Will I go praise skyrimn because mods make it better. FUCK NO! SHIT ON SKYRIM ALL DAY FOR BEEING BLAND OVERHYPED BULLSHIT! PRAISE THE ACTUAL MODDERS WHO WENT OUT OF THEIR WAY AND FIXED WHAT THE DEVS WERE TOO LAZY TO FIX OR DO RIGHT FOR NO ACTUAL MONEY. Skyrim is a decent game, but it's overhyped and overpraised beyond belief by idiots who just can't comprehend that no amount of mods will fix skyrim beeing just an average game and who are praising bethesda for the work of other people. IF bethesda was to deserve all the praise skyrim got, then at least 70% of the profits skyrim made should go to the modding comunity of that game. And that would also make the game fair game for any best of lists (which are about the merits of the game, NOT what the modders fix about it. IF it's fixed by a mod, good job game devs: you are so incompetent and/or lazy you put out an incomplete broken game for other people to fix).
Actually does anyone think bethesda are turning into lazy fucks? I mean ... right now TES 6 and Fallout 4 can be the shities buggiest games in the world, dipshits will still praise them because bethesda basically gave the comunity an incomplete broken game and said "fix this for us, here are the tools". In my days, when a dev put out a shitty game that the comunity had to fix we would humiliate that dev all day and not buy any further game untill proof we no longed had to do their work for them.