In fact, one of my biggest complaints about Vampire attacks in Dawnguard was they often killed non-essential NPCs before I could save them.
But where's the fun in that? Where the consistency?
You said Alduin gave this sense of danger and, thus, it's only natural if there's a sense of urgency, that you HAVE to deal with him ASAP. If the game was actually GOOD, then they should have designed the system/imposed rules that reinforce those sense of danger and urgency by making him and the Dragons he resurrected to ACTUALLY start killing NPCs and destroy settlements/holds left and right.
I'm starting to see what Crni saw for a while now. You're completely inconsistent in your own arguments:
1. You said you felt a sense of danger to Alduin, but
2. You complained every time non-essential NPCs getting killed
That's just fucking stupid.
The sense of urgency of the main quest is dictated solely by the player who can treat the main quest with or without it.
This is just even fucking stupider.
Urgency of main quest SHOULD be dictated solely BY the fucking game. This is why FO1 was objectively THE best Fallout game, not just because it's the original but also because it's the only game (I know of) to tackle sense of urgency most right and properly with the Water Chip quest.
The game has pretty landscapes and a nice experience/leveling system to pull people in for hundred of hours. But as far as the story goes, the game is optimized for your first and blind playthrough. Such that, for example, you don't know the fact that random dragon attacks frequency won't change regardless of your heroic feats. Then you can assume that the dragon arrival is a threat to be curbed on, and one way to do that is battling that one chief dragon with the ability to resurrect them (so that presumably dragons killed off-screen by some guards won't be possibly revived).
So basically the game were meant to have EVERYTHING done in one playthrough. Which means it isn't exactly an RPG.
And like have been said before, even in your first playthrough halfway through you SHOULD've seen that the Dragons ain't really a threat. Some NPCs might die, but WAY too many of them were essential and never, NEVER ever I saw them actually destroy settlements/holds. The sense of urgency were false all along, because the game was designed so that anyone can completely anything in ONE playthrough, basically lollygagging despite the Alduin's threat initially gave an impression of a sense of urgency.
See, this is a fallacy that I just don't fall victim to. Simply, in a game where cities are represented by a handful of buildings with two dozen people, and you cannot just walk in and assassinate civil war generals - in such a game you can't treat the state of bits in your computer to be exact representation of the world you are supposed to role-play in. A better perspective on dragon attacks is shown the Skyrim live action trailer.
"Fallacy"? Seriously?
You're just making the game look bad. Of course it's silly to make a game in first/third person perspective, open-world (but still have loading screen lol), only to make cities represented by mere two streets and a handful of NPCs lol. You want to know a solution to this? Go design/get better engine, not hold on to that ancient piece of fucking shit engine.
Also, live action trailer =/= the game.
So to sum up - it's an interesting game for a blind first playthrough. To visit an Ultima7- style world in 3d, see how far can your player character put up with major sidequest lines, and solve the main crisis.
The game would ACTUALLY be interesting if only that's the case.
Bethesda has never literally represented towns and it's not been the same for any major RPG.
Or do you think Shady Sands literally looks like this?
That was back when Shady Sands still pretty young, though?
And on topic of accurate representation of cities and population, there was once a talk on how with top-down isometric perspective you can kind of be cheap and put a handful of NPCs on the map and designed the city so you'll only go to the important places. It all comes down to how creative you can be to create an inaccurately represented cities with a handful of NPCs but they still felt like a real one to the player. There are games that accurately represent cities and population despite of top-down isometric perspective, though, like Underrail.
But with an engine where it's first/third person perspective, there's no excuse. You HAVE to make accurately represented cities with accurate population.
Also, 'major RPG'? What?
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It's like you can't think a game is great despite its flaws rather than ruined by them. I think Portal is the only flawless game I've ever played and it's not the BEST because it doesn't have much staying power.
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