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

It's not an accident that the blades seem so tense about everything. They're an aggressive faction and are often demanding of the player, especially delphine in early quests. They're reluctant to work with the greybeards and demand that you kill Parthunax. But you are not tied to their worries. Maybe a Dragonborn won't be born in time. Maybe Ysmir will rally some heroes to stop Alduin, or the Elder Scroll can propel him once more. It matters little to the player outside of that quest, and one of the main goals of TES V is to not tie down the player with the decisions of other characters too much. You used HR as an example saying that if a game doesn't offer incentive to use a certain path, no one will take it. The reason DB missions start with gold early is because in early game gold is still hard to come by. Rewards often scale with level, so flat gold is a good enough incentive until the player needs more permanent bonuses such as Shadowmere, given to the player as the stakes raise. Saying you find dual wielding silly is not a flaw in the game. If you laugh at something it doesn't make it a flaw, and while I could try and call certain aspects of the game cool, I won't. What little I know of dual wielding is from a sword making friends who I've sparred with once or twice. Yeah, a parry mechanic would have been in order if it was going to be realistic, but that's a different combat engine. Freedom is power in a lot of games, especially open world games. Skyrim designs to make the player a force of nature, and if a side quest barred you from certain styles of play, it would interfere too much with that power fantasy. I was worried that I didn't know enough about Morrowind for this, and I decided to install it since it had been sitting in my library for ages. I must say, the sense of exploration is really hampered when you move at a snail's pace through a repeating texture with more fog than Silent Hill. And Cliff Racers. CLIFF RACERS. Along with the downright ridiculous limitation that you have a to-hit chance when swinging a sword at point blank against even stationary targets, even with a fatigue/longblade build I couldn't land a hit since it would float just above hit detection. Among other things, your hit chance is tied to your stamina, and you drain stamina if you move any faster than walking pace: the only way to regain it is to stand still.The reason Skyrim has less focus on towns is because it's no longer compulsory. The old games are so stiff until you level agility and acrobatics. But outside of graphical quality, Skyrim still looks and feels better. Movement is smooth, you don't have buy an engagement ring for your starting class, and my characters don't walk like they've Stevie Wonder's Superstition stuck in their heads. As an MMO, ESO is sub-par. It tries to play itself off as another Elder Scrolls, but fails since these games are a single player experience. It was also paywall heavy: not getting the Imperial Edition meant a decent horse would cost you upwards of 10,000, gold from drops being scarce since players would often crowd around mobs waiting for them to respawn, and items could only drop for one player. And as an MMO, you couldn't free roam since the areas are levelled, so there is always a set path. This was a nice debate: it's not common that somewhere brings a video game to the discussion, so hit me up next time you have a topic like this. Duncan ,