Skyim is the worst in the series with or without mods.

In Skyrim you are the chosen one, no doubt about it. Could anyone else have defeated Alduin? I think not and here is why. The greybeards says that it can take years to master the voice. You have to remember that the dragonborn masters a lot of shouts in a short period of time. Could anyone learn that shout that clears wind before Alduin destroy Nirn? You can argue that the greybeards already know of the shout but could they defeat Alduin? No they can't nor can't Ulfric since he thinks that the Imperials are a bigger threat. (Plus he die pretty easily) So I would argue that you are the chosen one and that nobody can replace you. The Dark brotherhood in Skyrim did not have enough bonuses to beat Oblivion's excellent Dark brotherhood and the bonuses Skyrim had was not even worth saving in my memory. Let us be honest here. Oblivion had a quest were you could switch someones medicine to poison or that time when you were at that party and could if you so choices murder everyone silently. I have fun memories with the finger bonus too. I do remember two bonuses in Skyrim but that is all. I once made a comment on youtube that said something like this. "Dark brotherhood in Skyrim does not even have bonuses". I got liked a lot so I'm not the only one that can't remember the bonuses. That is a failure of game design. Yes it is true that the Dlc improved upon the werewolf and the vampire but the werewolf is not good anyway. When you talk to some people who have the werewolf "curse" they complained about it yet when I was a werewolf I did not get what they were talking about. There was one downside with being a werewolf but it's not even a big deal and nothing that was worth curing the werewolf "disease". Also you should not pay for a dlc just because the werewolf feature was broken. (I went that far) About the map, I almost wanted to fast travel while playing Skyrim. Same roads and sometimes shortcuts. But those shortcuts became dull after a while and made me stop playing Skyrim for almost five months. If you ask me, that is a failure of game design. The npc had discussion in Oblivion and yes very stupid ones at that. But the discussion was in the game for one reason. So that when you walked around the cities the npcs would seem like real people and hell I don't even listen to them so I sometimes hear a dialogue that is new to me. Also Bethesda did not focus on freedom in Skyrim. It had less freedom then the titles before it. Try it out for your self! Try to kill everyone in a city. You will notice that half the city is not killable because of some quest they had. I once went into a mining village near Morthal and this one guy that owned the mine could not be killed. When I searched his name in the Elder scrolls wiki I found out that he had one quest and it was to deliver a note to someone in Solitude and then come back to him. Is that the freedom you were talking about? Because I simply can't see it. Elder Scrolls Online is not really a part of the series. Same with the mobile games and the redguard game. I could mention Daggerfall,Arena and Battlespire but you can't simply compare the those with Morrowind,Oblivion and Skyrim and you know it.