User blog comment:Madman97/Madman Tonight with Three Masters of Horror (And One Unexpected Guest)/@comment-25356303-20160117190811

Wow, excellent read! Pretty good length actually, and overall very interesting.

I think a lot of the issues you brought up have to do with simple gameplay constraints. The lack of consequences is there because if Bethesda were to make every one of your actions seriously influence the story and world, you'd be unable to do a lot of things that you would otherwise be able to do. For example in a more realistic game if you killed the Emperor during the Dark Brotherhood questline you would be unable to join the Imperial Legion, even if you agreed with them over the Stormcloaks. Or if the Dragonborn DLC stuck closer to its own lore you would be stuck in Apocrypha forever after defeating Miraak and thus you wouldn't be able to do anything else. The Stormcloak example also fits in here; if they excluded non-Nords from the faction, it would probably turn players off. The reason Bethesda chooses not to include this type of thing in Skyrim is because it would make players angry. Making games ultra-realistic can be damaging to its status because of this, but if it's pulled off right then it turns out awesome. I think The Witcher 3 for example handled that whole thing pretty well, but Bethesda is going to have to change up their formula a bit if they want to do it too. Maybe it's something to look forward to in TES: VI?

I think the relatively poor combat has to do with physical restraints though. There are only so many buttons (especially on controllers) and it's already pretty full, so introducing a stronger combat system would probably mean removing or at least reorganizing the current system of controls, which again would make it harder for players. Probably the only way to change a series this popular without losing traction would be to slowly change things over the span of multiple games.

Overall very fun blog, it's always great to see different opinions floating around. Keep it up Madman!