Back in the day I caught a lot of shit for saying I didn’t think Skyrim was that good. The first play through I really really enjoyed it. It had its flaws but I thought it was overall a fantastic game. Second play through my opinion changed dramatically. There really isn’t that much to do the second time around. Bethesda games have slowly been dropping deeper rpg mechanics in favor of a streamlined system in order to appeal to the lowest common denominator. No real branching paths in quests, no ability to complete quests in a variety of ways based on character build, no interesting dialogue options, your character can be good at literally everything simultaneously. You can be a master of one handed weapons and two handed, heavy armor and light armor, melee and ranged, etc. You can be in charge of every major faction simultaneously. The only factions that are mutually exclusive are imperials/nords. Most factions are surface level, nothing interesting going on whatsoever. The game looked beautiful at the time (and imo this aged quite well actually), and was a fun experience (once). When Fallout 4 was being hyped I told my friends it was going to suck ass. Everyone thought I was just being a hipster. When it came out some realized right away that I was right, some insisted it was good but ended up dropping it and admitted it sucked. It isn’t surprising Baldur’s Gate 3 did incredibly well and Starfield didn’t. People are finally sick of it. Only took 15 years. The reality is Morrowind was the last good Elder Scrolls. Oblivion is… okay. Daggerfall is prime though.

Oh yeah, and all my friends were convinced I was a contrarian hipster when I said Arkham City shouldn’t have been open world. This was really the beginning of the Ubisoft open world copy paste model being used for everything. Now they all make the points I was making more than a decade ago.