The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is one of the worst successful games of the past generation.
Aside from combat mechanics and graphical fidelity, every aspect of the game defecates on past games in the series. Narratives may not be what every player approaches the game desiring, but what is present in Skyrim is only one notch above Destiny, which has been raked over the coals for that fault for the past two months. Yet you rarely hear anyone complain about Skyrim, aside from the odd forum post and CDProjekt RED jibe. You hear about how immersive it is, and dynamic, and how people have been playing it for 500 hours (with mods for the most part, admittedly), but the game itself is as barren as the mountains you ride your horse up at 10° angles, and as vapid as the eyes of the 2,486th draugr the game pits you against. It makes a mockery of adept worldbuilding to such an extent that it drains any fun to be had from the minute-to-minute combat and progression. The quests are so samey and derivative that I can't remember one from another, and the factions are so grievously short and dull that I can't remember a single character from them. They are incidental and worthless and forsaken to the tenets and expectations of anyone who enjoyed the quests and factions of the previous games.
Some games work fine without context: look at Minecraft. Yet aside from some nameless wandering bands of enemies and the odd dragon attack, Skyrim relies on the context of its lore and its quest narratives to complete the package. And it fails on a fundamental level.
Normally, I'd let it go. It's a three-year-old game, move on. Play The Elder Scrolls Online, which from my standards, winds up being a better game than Skyrim ever tried to be. Yet I feel that Bethesda hasn't learned its lessons. It met with so much success when it launched that I'm afraid they're going to rest on their storytelling laurels for the next game in the series. People were happy with a barren countryside to "make their own stories" and so they'll just give us another sandbox and call it a day. I'd feel so much better to hear them say that they made mistakes, and that they'd work to fix them in later entries, but they haven't. At this rate, I don't think I'd get The Elder Scrolls VI at launch because I don't trust them to learn from their mistakes...because I don't even know if they acknowledge them. Considering that it was one of my favourite series before this, I find that so depressing.