Achievements are one way to provide an incentive of the completion of a user’s backlogs. Though many games barely have incentives in them.

The cities really irritated me in Skyrim. The 9 major cities are supposed to be these large, important capital cities, but they're all so miniscule. Look at Whiterun, there are maybe 20 buildings there; that's a hamlet. How many people could live in such a place, a few hundred at a generous guess? Meh, a couple…