Because the vast majority of people can't be assed to freely frolick about playing outside, so Skyrim gives them a premade open world with its own campaigns where in "virtual reality" (the old definition of VR, lol), they can do just that.

When fans of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt have to go back and bash Skyrim, you know they're both discontent and trying too hard. Saw something all the way back there in 2011 that you wanted in 2015, like, oh, damn near complete freedom on the PC side of things? Lol.

Did a factory reset deleting everything, including the viruses I got from browsing porn malware, so I've been installing stuffs since last night, and recording that progress since every fired employee out here wants to hack your system to hell's deep freezer, lol...