, and don't even get me started on the 'procedurally generated' caves and dungeons.
Err, they weren't proc-genned. They were built in the editor. It's been ten years, of course, but I can't remember if proc-genned dungeons were part of the buzz. However, I think (emphasis on think) that they did use an automatic generation program of sorts to plop down trees and rocks in the forests during development. Which I'm ready to believe, because some parts of the woods felt a lot more hand crafted and pleasant, while others didn't really look... Foresty enough.
That's one thing they did for Skyrim in response to the abundant boring little caves, though, putting more people on dungeon building duty. I thought most of the dungeons in Ob was alright, at least the ones fleshed out and decorated a bit. The random caves quickly knocked together by a stressed intern is not something I miss, though.
Say what you will about Oblivion and Morrowind, though. At least there were attributes.
I don't know exactly what it is, but Bethesda games nowadays have either all skills or all attributes. Never both. Maybe it's part of their "making RPGs for both RPG players and non-RPG players, because that won't have any drawbacks at all" scheme, or maybe the astronomical budgets they work with means that they are so tight on the margins that they are forced to remove anything that might offend any potential dumb-dumbs and lose sales. It's "streamlined", perhaps, but streamlining isn't just a good thing (although you'd think it is by how idolised that term seems to have become), not all the time. Would someone who'd think of it as a deal-breaker even buy a nerdy game for losers with dragons and Thor and hobbits an' shit?
That's my pet peeve for the day, overall. Simplification for its own sake. Cutting stuff out, not necessarily replacing it with something, taking a system and boiling it back down to its simplest form. Just because that's what you do. Either to "reach a bigger market" or for its own sake, so you can say you've done it. Because it's a good thing by itself, apparently.
I'm still horribly disappointed of what Hearts of Iron 4 became. HoI3 got away from the usual tired WW2-themed Europa Universalis thing, and the emphasis on production efficiency and managing your armies' chain of command is something you just don't see very often, a pleasant little oddity that gave it a bit of bite and identity. It was stimulating, and captured the right spirit along with the excellent visual design. But no, grind it all off, boil it down, back to form. Just put the same old men to walk around on a map again. It might be a case of the Morrowind Effect for me, though. They do something different, and I build the expectation that that's what it's supposed to be like from now.
That's not to say that all streamlining is bad. I'm part of the crowd who thinks the talent-trees in World of Warcraft got better after they were boiled down. Yes, there was less choice, but the old system was just an exorcise in finding a few specking guides and picked the one that made people moan at you the least. It's when someone goes "complex BAAAD remove now!" or sandpapers off half of the game because the group testing department found that a newborn lamb couldn't figure the it out at a glance that I begin to grumble.