Morrowind's guilds felt better to me, but that was because the quests were smaller in scale. It wasn't "OMG ANCIENT EVIIIILL HAS RISSEN AND WE MUST CRUSH IT!", the Fighters Guild was simply taking contracts whilst dealing with some internal corruption, as was the Mages Guild, the Great Houses were simply engaging in some petty politics with the other Great Houses, the Thieves Guild was just trying to survive against the Commona Tong and keep its foothold on Vvardenfell, and the Morag Tong were just taking contracts and it was business as usual.
I mean, one of the Mages Guild quests was to try and find out why the Dwemer disappeared. The guy who asked you to do it was an idiot, nobody expected you to do it, you were free to investigate and you could even find a somewhat satisfactory answer and present it (they basically turned themselves either into divinity or nothingness, to an outside observer what's the difference?). But you were free to ignore it and just dismiss the guy who asked you to as an idiot not worth your time until you replace him.
Sure, they were all a lot less grand but they still felt...more intimate I guess. And you actually felt like you'd earned in when you became Grandmaster of them guilds, that your character really was a master thief, master fighter, master mage. Compare this to Skyrim and Oblivion where Conan the Barbarian can become Arch-Mage...
Dragons = Gods, Alduin = Akatosh. Anything the devs and the game say to try to retcon it otherwise doesn't matter, the whole metaphysics structure of TES lore breaks down and falls to pieces if Alduin does not equal Akatosh.
Doesn't the Elder Scrolls lore have this thing going on where "All the myths are true, even the contradictions. Especially the contradictions." or something?