You seem to be completely oblivious as to what an RPG actually is and think it's all about combat. A game where you can side with a bunch of different groups depending upon your choices, completely circumvent scenarios depending upon your skills, being able to play in completely different ways dependent upon those skills are core things that an RPG should allow you to do like morrowind does. Having a Bad guy/Good guy meter doesn't make something an RPG nor does numbers increasing. How exactly does a character in Battlefield being mainly focused on healing make it any different than a J"RPG" character being a healer? It doesn't at all because the healer in the J"RPG" doesn't do anything special outside of combat to distinguish them as a healer. So how the fuck are they filling a role outside of combat? An RPG is a game where you can play the game you want in a way that is fitting to your role.
A thief in an RPG should be able to embody a thief, they should be able to pickpocket, disable alarms, sneak, eavesdrop, and lockpick all of which you can't do as a thief in J"RPGs". A warrior should be able to do well in combat but also intimidate people, be better at understanding weapons and using them, not just get better numbers in combat that's not roleplaying that's just a tactics game with classes. A mage should know alchemy, should be able to enchant shit, should be able to use magic to trick people, not just cast 7 minute long animations in combat. Even more if J"RPG"s are Role Playing Games they're pretty fucking shit at it since they intentionally make their character bland as fuck but somehow just have them stand there mute with no player input 99% of the time while others are having their character have a bespoke backstory but give the player a ton of control as to how the character behaves storywise.
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Yeah, no. There are action games and games of all stripes can give you choices on good or evil, that doesn't make them role-playing games. Starcraft 2 lets you choose which upgrades to use and even which side to choose in some areas, that doesn't make it an RPG. Similarly, there are role-playing games where you are corralled into one ending for the whole game, where all your choices lead to the same end, or where you barely have any choices at all and they still count as role-playing games, like Paper Mario. Heck, you classify Morrowind as an RPG, and no matter your choices, the end will always be the same-Azura praises you for destroying the Numidium. So much for choices mattering, eh? You can be a saint or an irredeemable shit, and the ending of the game ends up the same.
The core of what makes a role-playing game is the fact that you have multiple ROLES to play. One guy plays as the thief, good for sneaking around and opening doors and chests. Another guy plays the role of a paladin, good for soaking up damage and whaling on the enemy up-close. Another chooses to be a marksman, nailing targets from afar, and another chooses to be a sorcerer, using healing magic on the team or blanketing the enemy with fireballs or lighting storms. Each person has his strengths and weaknesses, and the whole team compensates for each other's strengths or weaknesses to make for a balanced team that gets the job done.
Like say, KOTOR. The Mandalorian party member is a good melee specialist who can wear heavy armor. You have a retired Jedi in your party who excels as a spellcaster, and another party member who's an assassin droid excels at long-range combat. You have a thief who gets by opening locks and sneaking past people, and a droid that excels at using computers and repairing things. Your character can choose in the beginning to be a soldier, a scoundrel, or a scout, and later, can choose between a Jedi Guardian, (meathead melee combat type) a Jedi Consular, (spellcaster type) or a Jedi Sentinel (somewhere in between Guardian or Consular, with some extra skills). You pick your roles for your character, then you choose the right party members who have the right roles for the job. You each play your roles and play to your strengths while compensating for your weaknesses with teamwork. THAT is a role-playing game.
I'm more than ready to admit that Bethesda's recent output does not fit that mold. Quite frankly, every Elder Scrolls or Fallout game they came out with from 2006 onwards was just one variation or another of a real-time action game with some RPG stats and attributes on the side, but in the end, they're more akin to real-time action games than actual RPGs like KOTOR or Mass Effect, especially when you just have one type of character who masters everything in the end, anyways. And there's nothing wrong with that. Oblivion and Skyrim might not have as much RPG DNA as KOTOR or Final Fantasy would, but they're still great action games, and the RPG mechanics enhance them as games, they're tons of fun to play, and the fact that other game studios have been copying the Skyrim formula shows that as an action game, it's got plenty of value. They might not pass as RPGs, but as action games, they're very fun.
Morrowind fails at being an action game and being a role-playing game. On the RPG department, you have no roles to play outside of what you imagine, which makes it no different from Skyrim or Oblivion or even Fallout 4. You just level up whatever skill you want and do whatever you want. That's not role-playing, that's Fantasy GTA. As an action game, Morrowind's bad mix of real-time and dice-roll combat make the gameplay a mess, especially in the early hours where combat is a joke, and guess what, just like with anything, FIRST IMPRESSIONS MATTER. This is why Skyrim stuck in a dragon attack at the first hour of the game, and why Fallout 4 stuck in a Deathclaw and power armor, you need to hook players in. And most players at the time back in 2002 just took one look at Morrowind's shit gameplay and graphics, and tossed it away to go back and play Halo or Smash Bros. Melee.
As an action game, it fails, because the combat and action are crap, and as a D&D-style RPG, it fails, because there's no roles to play and no party mechanics to mix up the roles. Couple that with a mediocre story and crap graphics even for early 2000s standards, and yes, that makes Morrowind an objectively mediocre game.
If you play as a thief in an RPG, you should stay a thief. Not turn into a meathead warrior who later bonks a god in the face for 5 seconds with a hammer, killing them. A warrior should stay a warrior, not turn into a mage who blankets the battlefield in lighting storms. If you just have a Swiss Army Knife character who masters everything, then congratulations, that's not an RPG. That's an action game with upgradeable skills which uses RPG stats to track your progress. Especially if it's got real-time combat.
. You have the online openworld games like No Mans Sky/Arc but its hard to compare those to a single player game imo.
and each plotline all have something to do with Daedric Princes taking over. They also show the Psijic Order for the first time. There is also that plot with a 'dragon faction' having their own motive and make an attempt to become a planet. The most interesting to me is definitely the idea of 'planets' harboring power/beings beyond the Daedric Princes.
