Quote Originally Posted by warty goblin View Post
I played a lot of Oblivion, and loved it. Running around a big fantasy world and swording things and doing quests everywhere and just exploring stuff was a blast. Sure there were problems, but the scale of the thing was hella cool, so it didn't really bother me.

I dumped a lot of hours into Fallout 3 as well. Not as many as Oblivion, because the monochrome ruined cityscape was vastly less appealing to me than Cyrodil, Fallout as a setting has always kinda bored me, and FO3's shooting is even rougher than Oblivion's melee. But a lot of fun was still had, even if the basic mechanics felt a lot like Oblivion's.

Then I tried Skyrim. The basic pleasure of wandering around the super atmospheric world was still there, but I was just utterly worn out of those same janky systems that hadn't progressed since Oblivion. So I could wander the map, but the only result would be finding another cave where I'd just have to fight another group of irrelevant enemies with the same bad systems I'd been tolerating for years. The stealth was still crude, the combat an uncontrolled mess of flailing, and the inventory clearly the punishment of a vengeful god.

It didn't help that Skyrim released at about the same time as Saint's Row 3, which scratched more or less the same open world pitch, but had enjoyable characters, a goofy sense of humor about itself as a game, and systems that basically worked ok. Then Kingdoms of Amalur dropped, which took more or less the same idea as TES, but gave it combat that was actually fun s and smooth to control. Sure it was total over the top high fantasy nonsense, but running into another group of enemies wasn't actually unpleasant.

So yeah, Bethesda games do some stuff that other games don't. That was really spectacular back in 2006. They've barely advanced since then, and it simply isn't good enough for me anymore.
Eh, as you put it as well, it sometimes has a lot to do with where your "itch" bar was when you played it. Myself, I loved Morrowind, then not really enjoyed Oblivion and F3, which emptied that bar a lot and allowed me to enjoy Skyrim. Though also, as much as I liked Saints 3 and KoA, they don't really scratch that same place for me. Somehow Kingdom Come or even Far Cry 3-5 come closer, though.

Besides all that, I'd also claim that even if Skyrim didn't really improve its mechanics, it did improve its polish a lot since Obli and F3, and I mean a lot.