Like I said, I just need to emphasize how good it feels to have at least someone on the same page. And it's not part of a mission to hate on Witcher 3, no. It's just to feel that there's somebody out there who "understands", and who shares the same basis or worldview in how to analyze of games (for lack of better words).

Interesting score to Witcher 3 you have! That spread. To me personally, Witcher 3 is a weaker version of Red Dead Redemption (which I loved to death), but hard to give an overall representative score. I would spread it out like that too, depending on element.

As for Fallout 4 I just want to clarify that I don't really consider it an RPG either, I hope I was clear on that. But I disagree with you in the overall analysis. A huge disappointment, yes, but I think Fallout 4 has some great qualities and is overall "a great" game, because the gunplay is very smooth, the funfactor is high and the world is interesting and feels alive and the game offers so much, it really feels like a world ( the game has a high world simulation factor). The negatives are the same as has been stated a million times by others - the dumbed down RPG-elements and especially the story, characters, dialogue and morality system are weak compared with the predecessors and the competition. I am happy Fallout 4 got so much criticism though because it will almost guaranteed mean that Bethesda will improve on those areas next time for sure. And this is one reason for my big frustration with Witcher 3's enormous universal praise, that obviously people don't agree with me, so the kind of elements I am worried about, nothing says those will change in the future. No, the more people praise it as "the new standard for RPG", the bigger the risk that those elements (or lack of elements) will be implemented in other games.

I feel really sad about this, and I can't even articulate and communicate properly Witcher 3's weaknesses in simple terms and in what way I think Skyrim/Oblivion are so superior to Witcher 3 despite their weaknesses. People will only see it as... that I'm a stupid and biased Bethesda fanboy really. It's frustrating as hell, and here I am with a wall of text again.

As a note, I had never played a Fallout game before Fallout 3, that's probably why I loved that game so much (on the other hand I had played a lot of Morrowind for years before Oblivion and that game immediately became my best games of all time).

Yeah, "proper open world action RPGs" and the future. The full blown RPG, that's what we will miss. I love Dark Souls but to me it's not 100% RPG, and it's definitely not proper open world.

What about Red Dead Redemption 2? Not an RPG obviously, but do you think it will be a fantastic open world game? And Mount & Blade: Bannerlord looks fabulous (is genre-wise more a strategy/simulation than "open world RPG" though).

Looking back, Skyrim was released in 2011, nearly 5 years ago to the day actually. I thought it was fine enough then and has aged better than Oblivion did. However, I do agree in general that moving forward, I would like a greater number of choices and more radiant options, dialogue, etc.

Yeah, FO4 had good gunplay - too good actually - when I'm getting headshots due to my player skills on enemies on which I have 0% of hitting in VATS then it's pretty much obvious how broken the whole system underneath is. And while the game was somewhat fun in many aspects, the amount of dumbing that Bethesda did with it just ruined it for me - even though I was dissaopinted with FO3, I played through it twice (imagine then how many times I've played FO1/2) - but I barely made myself finish FO4.

Now, it's no secret that I'm not a big fan of Bethesda - back in the days I thought Daggerfall was ok game, but I didn't care much for it (Might & Magic was my thing), but for some reason I liked Morrowind quite a bit (setting helped a lot I guess). Oblivion already felt weaker for me, Skyrim took it a notch lower. So honestly, I don't expect for them to surprise me in the good way, at least not anymore.

As for Witcher 3, I was really looking forward to it - as much as I am Piranha Bytes (Gothic) fan, their days of glory are long past, so I was hoping for someone else to carry on the torch. I liked TW2 for what it was and I hoped they will manage to make good open world RPG - but honestly, I would much prefer if they've sticked to TW2 formula, I don't think open world did much favours for Witcher. And while I find it fairly good in some aspects (like quest design, which gets 9.5), I find it mediocre in other (like world/landscape building) and pretty bad in RPG mechanism (which gets that 6.5). Ultimately, while I don't consider it action-adventure, I think it would be better as one. But I guess most of the press got hooked on quest and character design, so I suspect that's where all the high praise is coming from.

As for future - honestly, I've pretty pesimistic about it when it comes to action RPGs (open world or otherwise). It's probably the hardest genre to pull off properly, given that there is not one single game that managed to make it even close to perfection (for me at least). I think RPG mechanisms are being fewer and fewer as time goes on, eventually we'll end up with either FPS or action-adventures with some light RPG elements taking over. But one can always hope I guess.

Great post and thanks for reply.

I tried to look at your individual page here on VGC but it left me with no result. I was gonna ask you about your other favorite games, the Gothic games and if what your other favorites are, but it becomes too off-topic for this thread. If you can will you please add me to your friends list?

Fallout 4 was great. Wish other companies could release a "mess" like that.

You mean Oblivion? Cool! Yes it would be fantastic if they remastered Oblivion some day. Let's hope they do it with the next version of their game engine, in the years around the time Elder Scrolls 6 releases perhaps?

I mean why not? But I'm afraid they're thinking that they want to do it properly or not at all. And they have other priorities of course. Our only hope is that the Skyrim Remaster becomes a huge success and sells more than they could ever imagine in their wildest dreams. Whatever number that could be?

So tell a little about your experience with Oblivion! What are examples of the "so much" you never did?

maybe a little less stiff in the interactions?  I would like them to just do little things to increase immersion like instead of always having the same greeting when you enter a shop (which they need to get rid of loading screens and just let the door open to the shop) they can have you say stuff like "good morning" or "good afternoon" depending on the time of day or something