Can you expand on this a bit? I'm not intending to disagree, I am interested to hear what you have to say. I enjoy Skyrim, maybe because I never played many "real" RPGs, but I can totally see the validity of many criticisms of it.
Skyrim is mostly a huge map with tons of dots, with the vast majority of dots being in essence a completely linear situation (linear caves, linear quest or even string of quests, etc.). There is a large amount of choice in what you will play style and obviously the freedom of open world, but very little of what you actually do has any amount of influence on the game and the "single corridor" design of most caves/forts means that even the gameplay is pretty forced (it can be summed up in 90 % of cases by : "enter the dungeon, go straight ahead killing everything, end up at the entrance of the dungeon, done").
The actual "choices" tend to be rare, binary and sometimes feels that they exists just for the sake of claiming there is a choice (the "blades vs dragonbro" is really forced, the "who will bang the girl" in the first village is ridiculously shallow and rather pointless, not to add that the "reward" is just contradictory with the them).
The most egregious cases are the guilds, which are very short, with usually no choice at all, and which just constraint you into completely idiotic situations. For example (obviously spoilers ahead) :
- The Companions. You're forced to become a werewolf, even when it's obviously a completely effed up idea, and THEN you end up trying to fix this situation because, 'lo and behold, it WAS a terrible idea, who would have guessed. No possibility to refuse, no choice.
- Worse (worst ?), the Thieve Guild. You're a effing THIEF, burglaring and stealing and doing all sort of nasty deeds for your own benefit. Skyrim logical conclusion from greed and selifishness ? You need to sacrifice your soul and enslave yourself to an eternity of servitude after death for the sake of the guild, of course ! (wait, wat ?)
It's especially infuriating because you are given no choice to refuse, BUT the NPC rubs the lack of choice by ASKING YOU IF YOU'RE SURE ABOUT IT. And you have a single answer : "yes I'll do it". FFS.
- The Dark Brotherhood at least allows you to chose if you're going for or against them. But it's so half-arsed if you chose the later (somehow, the Empire knows where to find them if you do that, and they send you alone instead of throwing their elite forces, because... because !) that it kills quite a bit the actual meaning of choice.
So basically, every instance is a linear corridor FPS without choice (the worst of the "linear design"), and the scaling means the overworld lacks substance : whatever you do, wherever you go, it's always leveled so it makes little difference (the worst of the "sandbox" design).
Skyrim is fun to play because it's better handling and reactivity than previous entries in the serie, because despite the linearity it has a HUGE amount of content, because it's moddable so you can fix some horrible design decisions with it and because the graphics are very, very immersive. But it's probably the single most overrated and overhyped game in history. It's not "bad" (I DID play it for dozens of hours after all), but the chasm between the amount of sales it had and it's actual quality, ESPECIALLY considering the massive dumbing down each TES has gone through since Morrowind, makes me quite a bit salty.
I knew you could nuke the town (I didn't do it, and I only played the game once) but I didn't know that you could apologize afterwards. That's a riot. 
