Polygon is making a provocative case for one of Bethesda's most criticized releases: ignore the main story, and the game underneath is a 10/10.

The retrospective argues that players who abandoned the title because the central plot never hooked them walked away from the wrong thing. The narrative may have been the weak link, but the surrounding game — the part most people quit before fully exploring — is where the real experience lives, in Polygon's telling.

It's a familiar arc for Bethesda games, which have long been loved more for their open worlds and emergent moments than for their critical paths. What's notable here is how far the pendulum swings: from "most reviled" to a perfect score, contingent entirely on what the player chooses to engage with.

For anyone who bounced off the game at launch and never returned, the piece amounts to an invitation to try again — this time treating the main questline as optional scenery rather than the point.