Why do you (still) play video games?

>Chill, it's a 2011 videogame, that comes with limitations.
As always, Bethesda drones NEVER fricking fail to deliver absolutely moronic delusional shit.

There are games 10 years older that do an incomparably better job at this. Including one MADE BY THE SAME FRICKING COMPANY.

Claiming that this is a technical limitation is the most disingenious shit ever. This is laziness. Research does not cost much money. Attention to detail does not have to come at massive cost increasement. Coming up with interesting ideas and stories does not cost money or hardware resourcers. And Skyrim is LEGENDARY for how insanely cheap Todd was about the assets too, completely needlesly cutting assets that would not get much reuse in what was a fricking 80 million production of the most anticipated RPG of all time, to save few hundreds dollars.

This has NOTHING to do with technical restriction. This is just a trademark shit design that Bethesda deliberately employs, it's a problem with their more modern games as well. Pro-tip: KC:D managed to avoid this problem with literally less than 1/3rd of the same budget. Fricking Morrowind had a more convincing, and interesting and imaginative and well-researched world in 2002, Gothic ONE YEAR BEFORE THAT.
You can do a lot with very little if you fricking try. Beth just does not try, at all. It's a design that permiates all their games, narrative and gameplay side alike.

Yeah. And honestly, for all it's major technical issues, The Witcher 1 was really damn good at this too. Hell, even games as absurdly messy and LITERALLY amateurish as Pathologic 1 do a far better job.
I think it boils down to those games actually having some respect for their audience. I can't fricking shake off the feeling that Bethesda is most held back by assuming their audiences ARE idiots, that would be genuinely intimidated by anything even remotely more ambitious. Because for all the shit I will throw at beth - they did make Shivering Islands. They did put SOME interesting lore tibits into Skyrim, at time almost made some locations feel like a genuinely interesting place place, but... those are so damn rare, drowned out in extreme, deliberate mediocrity.

Morrowind made the place feel real because it was driven by creativity, it was a game primarily made by people who were brimming with imagination, visions of strange yet oddly coherent visions, fascination with various themes. The game was BUILD to allow them express their imagination, and everything else was essentially secondary to that.

Other games, like Gothic or The Witcher did take a different route, they did more-or-less appeal to the far more familiar and conventional tropes - but again, each of them had a theme, and a risky mechanical element.

In case of Gothic, it was their fascination with social engine and social dimensions of the RPG, the idea that the place is more than anything, MADE BY PEOPLE WHO INHABIT it.
In case of Witcher, it was made by history buffs, people who grew up fascinated by medieval history and old classic folklore, people who soaked it all in. People who went FAR out of their way to study what an actual medieval village was like, who paid attention to thinks like - what a wedding was, why it was so important, and blended that with those really old fairytale stories that have so much beauty behind them.

Beth... assumes that you wouldn't care. that is the issue

KOTOR and Never Winter Nights never worked for me, I think I have some odd personal problem with this early days transition from the Infinity Engine type games into this early 3D. It may also be an issue that it is a licenced universe, and one I don't particularly care for (I love the starwars movies, I just don't think it's world-building that makes them good).
I think it was TW1 that kinda managed to get out of this odd NWN/KOTOR era uncanny valley graphics.

But I don't think the issue is that Bethesda does the sandbox "make your own story". It's a different, and in many ways limited approach, but I loved it back in Morrowind, and I think it's potentially unbelivably interesting for sheer exploration and world-building (as opposed to story-focused) type of narrative.

I think the issue is that their priorities are purely pragmatic and frankly, cynical. Todd REALLY likes his team (well the senior staff at least), he really wants to do what is best for the company, which means he does not actually fire incompetent senior staff members, does not force technical innovation or competition of ideas all that much.
And he just entirely and completely focuses on absurd levels of maximization of profit and wide reach. He does what the marketing says is going to sell, or what a very grimm view of general public tells him.

Which is that people are stupid, lazy, and don't like change, challenge, or weirdness. A "fantasy" in his eyes is a safe, familiar tool of most BASIC imaginable escapism and most shallow powerfantasies. Which is fricking depressing when you think about it.

I think Beth's biggest fear when designing - at any point - is to challenge the player. In any way. He once gave that "never say no to player" speech and it made my SKIN CRAWL, it's such an fricked up, patronizing view of people.
The game must never make the player feel uncomfortable, challenged, confused - experience any negative emotion what so ever. That is the Beth way and it's terrible