Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

If they are going to use the same engine you can bet your ass it's got everything to do with Consoles. PCs are already 2 or 3 Graphics and performance generations ahead.

Whatever about the engine. It looked really stunning in its day and even more recently with texture mods. but what really set me off was as someone else pointed out, the awkward and limited voice acting, and the leveling system - one which left you know sense of accomplishment or power because when you were level 5, the mobs were level 5. And when you became 20 the mobs were all 20, and so on. Whereas any normal rpg with a brain has areas you simply shouldn't venture out to when you're level 2.

Last but not least they overpopulated the world with the oblivion gates, evidenced by the fact that there were maybe 3 or 5 "unique" (but really the same ****ing theme with slightly different layouts) oblivion realms that get copy-pasted across the entire world, and youre expected to close a bunch of these while fighting off boredom.

I suppose it always works out this way though: anytime someone first hears about a sequel they worry it will have all the flaws of the originals, and then it comes out and we're all left a little surprised at some of the improvements.

Neat. But what about the leveling?

No, they did a really horrible job in the storytelling department. Frankly, each Elder Scrolls game has had some variety of problem in that regard. At least the 2 I played. Morrowind's unreadable journal system meant you had to play this game pretty much at a constant just to remember what was going on. And in Oblivion it was just a mash of voice actors and random characters. You would think that being fans of storytelling, storytelling would be what they're best at, but what you get is this often uncontrollable mesh of sidequests and everything else that do what they can to marginalize the main plot because the main plot really isn't given a whole lot of gravity. Especially not when everything is the same: the voice acting is all the same, for one, but the leveling was all the same. You basically are overwhelmed at any one point because you can go - well, anywhere, without much sense of consequence, knowing you could probably run down just about any mob you come across with enough tact. Theres no "Damn I have to come back to this area later" or feeling of "yes I'm finally strong enough to save the world" etc.

Not to mention the whole "Lone hero saves the world" thing is getting pretty dated.