Is this supposed to mean that I secretly liked it or else I wouldn't have played it as long as I did? Would you rather I stopped after 10 minutes so you can say I didn't give it a fair chance?

What's good about it then? I don't mean that as an insult to you or your taste, I am genuinely asking because I'm the sort of person that likes to think about games. I've spent hours listening to GDC talks on game design, hours looking at map viewers for some of my favorite games. When I play a new game I take screenshots and make notes about my thoughts while playing it.

From what I saw playing Skyrim there's basically nothing there in terms of NPC dialogue, very little in terms of environmental storytelling, world design, and worldbuilding, and usually not very much atmosphere or sound design. And that's on top of the completely vacuous gameplay. If the game did even a single one of these things well I would have considered it to be good, but for me there's just nothing there.

I am aware that the Elder Scrolls series in general has interesting lore and metaphysics based on Hindu mythology. But it's my understanding that the person who came up with most of that no longer works at Bethesda. And while I was playing Skyrim even googling some of the things I encountered (such as "why do the draugr attack you") failed to elicit feelings of intrigue.

I did like the amount of verticality you experience ascending the main mountain though. That was cool map design IMO.

EDIT:

Skyrim isn’t good because it’s not your idea of a specific kind of rpg game

Most of the games that I listed are pretty vastly different from each other, but they all do at least one thing that's interesting. Skyrim not being "a specific kind" of RPG has nothing to do with it.

Skyrim released in 2011.

New Vegas released in 2010.

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines released in 2004

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura released in 2000

Plainscape: Torment released in 1999

Fallout 1 and 2 released in 97 and 98 respectively.

The concept of a good RPG wasn't invented in the last few years.

The concept of good gameplay and encounter design wasn't invented in the last few years either.

I played Skyrim a few months ago and felt like my soul was getting sucked out. I just kept asking myself "what am I doing? Why am I playing this?", and stopped after a few hours.

I think the straw that broke the camel's back was when I encountered a group of bandits that tried to attack me. I went into the cave they seemed to be operating out of and was greeted by a named NPC called "ulfric the blind" or something. He said something like "[name] is that you?", and I thought "oh I wonder if I'll be able to fool this guy into thinking I'm someone he knows. I wonder what could have driven this old man to banditry, or if he and his family have been in the game so long he's now elderly. Or maybe instead of information about his life he'll inadvertently reveal some secret that can help me. Regardless I'll probably have to carefully choose what I say if I want to get the most out of this".

Then the only dialogue choices were "yeah I'm him [end conversation]" and "he's dead, you're next [end conversation]".

That was a different technique, using simulated evolution in an FPGA.

An algorithm would create a series of random circuit designs, program the FPGA with them, then evaluate how well each one accomplished a task. It would then take the best design, create a series of random variations on it, and select the best one. Rinse and repeat until the circuit is really good at performing the task.

A dark pattern would be some sort of underhanded but legal tactic to trick or coerce a user into agreeing to something they wouldn't otherwise.

But most websites aren't using dark patterns for this, instead they just blatantly and plainly violate the law.

Doesn’t really count if you have to google it first to know what it is

Maybe you have to Google it

The first STALKER game. Near the beginning when I had hardly any ammo.

I saw a pack of feral dogs in the distance and while they didn't sound friendly I didn't know whether they would be hostile or how close I could get before they would aggro. Since I had so little ammo I resolved to not take any shots unless they got close.

Well, one of them did start running towards me, but before it got that close it cut off and ran away at a 90° angle. Then another, and another did the same thing. "Maybe they're not hostile?" I thought to myself, "Do they just run around randomly?".

Then I realized I was being circled. Which was an extremely unnerving realization. I went from thinking about aggro ranges and AI states to being thrust into a situation that I sometimes have to worry about not falling into in real life.

This is a symptom of the absolutely insane way digital payments work.

You give a company your card details and they're able to charge whatever they want, whenever they want, by default. That's like paying at a restaurant by handing the waiter your entire wallet and telling them to take out the cost of the meal.

Well, Fromsoft had a good run.

Maybe we'll get one more game out of them.

I learned better in 2012 when they tried to put an Amazon search bar in their start menu, the same thing people are complaining about with windows today.

If I wanted to use corposhit I would have stayed with windows.

Man I am so tired of the endless parade of articles with the premise "How could conservatives possibly think this?? Surely if we just take the time to carefully understand their reasoning we can blah blah blah...."

Here I'll answer the the "why" right now:
A) Most US conservatives live in suburbs and rural areas and generally hate and fear inner cities and the people who live there. They also generally hate and fear environmentalism. They also greatly resent the idea that the USA isn't the best country on earth at literally everything. They're also violently homophobic and have such deeply toxic ideas of masculinity that they consider it to be weak and "gay" to drive a smaller vehicle.

So when an urbanism advocate says they want people to give up their lifted truck to live in a city and ride a bicycle so the US can be more like Europe and East Asia to help the environment how in the world do you expect them to react in any other way?

B) This is a population that's addicted to hate, fear and opposition like a drug, and conservative politicians and news orgs are the dealers. They need to periodically find something new to tantrum about. If there is no reason to hate something then a reason will be created. This was the case with LED lightbulbs, with COVID, with Romneycare, and so on and on and on. The 15 minute city conspiracy theories are not some sort of new unprecedented pattern of behavior.