Karasuman

I wholeheartedly agree with this. While I can't say I've endorsed every single mod I've liked in my TES games, I have endorsed the majority of them. There are some mods which have enhanced my experience with the games so much that not endorsing them would have been a disservice to the modder;

For what you'd pay for Oblivion, which is 15 or 20 bucks, sometimes $5 on Steam, it's definitely worth it. Oblivion has a huge, advanced base of mods, many of which can turn it into one of the best games you will ever play.

If anyone is shocked or in any way surprised by this, you must have had your head in the sand for the last several years. I'm surprised it took Zenimax/Beth this long. The MMO market is becoming saturated. If they're going to do this, they need to put some serious thought and creativity into it. I'm heavily looking forward to the release of GW2 because it's completely different from WoW/Rift/ToR, which are all basically the same. I'm really hoping that the TES MMO does something different as well instead of being another WoW clone.

We're not talking about what you do with the software. There are all sorts of laws and copyrights and so forth in place so that people such as hackers can't misuse software, and if they do misuse it, they can be penalized for it. That's prevalent in software no matter the platform. There's a difference between software and hardware. I'm talking about hardware. You can be sued and possibly arrested for changing the hardware in your own PS3 or XBox, a tangible device you paid for. Do you think HP is going to sue you if you put a better processor in one of their PCs that you bought?

A better and more accurate analogy is you buying a car, let's say a Ford, and then Ford gets pissed off and sends the police to your house to arrest you when you put a bigger engine and other performance parts in that car. This is exactly what Sony and Microsoft are doing to their users, and it's complete and utter BS that they're allowed to do it. Spot on.

Good post. This is why even if someone does or does not like Skyrim, Bethesda is still smart for continuing to allow its games to be modded on the PC. Morrowind was released 10 years ago primarily as a PC game and it's *still* showing it has untapped potential. With the right mods, it looks absolutely stunning even by today's standards, but only on a PC. A console will never make it look anywhere near as good. On a console, once a game is out, that's it. You're not going to see any major improvements to the way it looks or plays. What you get is what you get, and you'll never see what that game could actually do if it was on a more sophisticated and upgradeable platform. That's the main reason I like the PC for games so much, because I really enjoy watching a good game grow into something even more spectacular once modders have had some time to work with it.

Lol I completely agree.

I agree that Skyrim does do some things right for sure. I just felt that it was a bit lacking in the creativity department as compared to some of Bethesda's other games, i.e. Fallout and Morrowind. Also, I wasn't aware that Dark Souls is being released for the PC, but now that you've mentioned it, I'm pretty stoked about it. I keep hearing how awesome (and tough) that game is, and it does look intriguing.

American conservative hypocrisy at work. Expressive sexuality is deviant. Violence, war and death? Those are ok. This kind of nonsense is just one reason why conservatives are taking ever-increasing heat and scrutiny here in the states.

Yes, but then those new consoles will still be behind the PC's we'll have then. Therein is my problem with consoles. It is very true what you say, that they aren't going anywhere, but my main issue with them is that they will always be anywhere from slightly to quite a bit behind a concurrent PC, and so most games from here on will not realize their full potential because they're going to be written for an inferior piece of technology. Consoles are great if all you want to do is make money (which of course that's all anyone really wants), but they're also restrictive from a creativity standpoint. I realize no one in business cares about creativity vs the bottom line these days (Bethesda made that clear with Skyrm), and that's unfortunate, because regardless of how many dollars are being made, it contributes to a never-ending downward spiral in the quality of the games themselves.

A GTX460 can be found for $129 on Newegg as well as other sites, and the 460 can run Skyrim perfectly. The 560's are only $20 more.

Richter Belmont

From someone who has sunk hundreds of hours and countless characters into Morrowind and Oblivion, my opinion is that Skyrim is not as good as the reviews would have you believe. It is not in the same league of variety, creativity or complexity as Morrowind, and lacks the vividness and lush environments of Oblivion, I see some people saying Skyrim is a simplified Oblivion with better graphics. I definitely agree with the simplified part, but I think that saying Skyrim has "better" graphics than Oblivion is a very questionable statement. Both games were made for the same console(s). Oblivion's shadows are better and less jagged, for instance, and the game itself has more varied environments than Skyrim. In other words, Oblivion, for its time, was way ahead of the curve graphically relative to what you have with Skyrim now. Frankly, I'd rather look at Oblivion anyday over Skyrim. If you like attributes, character speed variance, lots of different skills, Daedra, enchantment choices, spell variety, in-game graphical settings, and a useable UI, then Skyrim says "piss on you," because you won't get any of those. Ok, I take that back. There's a few Daedra here and there. Mostly the ones you summon. Being such a fan of the previous games, Skyrim was a let-down and a waste of $60 for me, and it sits on the shelf doing nothing. However, taste may vary. It's a reasonably good game if you haven't played the others, but in my opinion, Skyrim left too much potential on the table because it was made primarily for a couple of 5-year old consoles instead of utilizing current technology.

And that's perfectly ok, encouraged even. It's differing tastes and points of view that make the world go 'round. I'm glad you (and others) enjoy Skyrim. I really did want to like it, but it was just missing too many things I enjoyed from the previous games for it to hold my interest for long.

Looking at this thread now, it's kind of humorous. Two or three days after Skyrim was released, I had called it Oblivion with a bunch of snow and dragons. And it really is. That's all I've ever seen Skyrim as: A brain-damaged Oblivion with its winter mittens on. Bethesda pulled a fast one with Skyrim. All there is to it. That's not even to say Skyrim is horrible as games go. It can be fun near the beginning, but it's not to be taken seriously as a separate TES game.