David O'Dell

Exploration is fragmented due to the size of the space and this is made worse by bugs in the UI and fast travel system. With all the load screens killing immersion the game needed a really interesting world lore & story telling to keep you immersed. The story starts as a promising mystery but does not deliver. The starborn dialogue is so awful it's painful to listen to. The world lore is generic with nothing going on at the moment. The art design is mostly generic sci fi that you have seen 1000 times and doesn't match the world lore. The destroyed Earth is the worst art design depectiction in any video game or movie ever. The story/world lore can be jarriingly inconsistent. Like the writing had no quality control at all. The game is not terrible it's just not immersive or interesting enough to justify your time. There is far better writing, story telling, exploration in their older RPG games. And much better combat in other FPS and sci fi games. I only really enjoyed the UC Vanguard questline as poor writing and poor stealth impacted the others.

My favorite video game of all time. No other game matches it on the sense of freedom and adventure. With the ability to walk in any direction, meet interesting people and create your own story. Best played on the PC where you can you use mods to tweak the game to look as detailed and as stunning as you want and you can download many extra stories and adventures to enjoy (all for free). One story mod has even been reworked into it's own game it's so good. The world is a pleasure to explore as you meet characters living in the world who often need help or offer work. It makes the world feel real. Exploring the open world in other games like Fallout 4 is almost exclusively you being shot at on sight by everyone. which is only great if you just want to kill enemies. You start the game in the middle of a war as dragons start to come back into the world, which is both a shock and a mystery. You can get involved in this mystery or you can ignore it. You can join one side of the war if you wish or ignore it and stay neutral. You develop your skills by using them and by joining a guild if you wish. So you decide if you are going to be a wizard, a warrior, an archer, a thief or an alchemist or a mixture. The world is so detailed and interesting that even after finishing the game several times I keep wanting to go back to Skyrim and explore some more.