Guild exclusivity is actually what I had in mind. Sure, there’s nothing that significantly changes the main quest in TES games (and I think I misremembered how much blocking is there in previous titles) but that still counts for me personally. Self-imposed role play is fine in general (I do it all the time in games in fact) but I still think that lack of reasonable requirements for some (optional?) content makes the world feel more generic and player-focused than I’d like.

Thanks for the reminder though.

Change from Oblivion to Skyrim would definitely affect my question. I do think the former had more “my kind” of role playing so the initial thought would be more understandable for me.

Thanks for the answer. I get what you mean about playing as more defined main characters, it definitely has it’s benefits over more open-ended approach.

This is a genuine question and not me trying to be snarky or anything: how’s that possible? Was there any meaningful role playing in Skyrim at all?

To me the system simplification of Skyrim went so far that the only real role you could play was the dragonborn - not your specific one but a generic dragonborn who could be anyone and everything at the same time. Maybe my definition of role playing is outdated as I feel it should include choices and consequences (like blocking or limiting access to some content) so I’d be grateful if you could expand on that.

Again, I’m not trying to suggest you’re wrong or anything, I’m just curious about your perspective (or something more about what you’ve read).