Skyrim makes an effort to simulate the physics of a fantasy world, but fails to make the world around you feel alive, which in turns makes it difficult to feel real sympathy for the other people (they are hundreds, come and pass very quickly), who, like the hero, display lifeless and/or static face expressions. Skyrim is an often long cold lonely journey where the motivation can disappear. After that it becomes a cycle of getting loot to become more powerful, which can be very hard to endure if you are not having fun with combat/visuals/mods. It is shallow in that sense compared to Oblivion, and even more to Dragon Age.
