moose109 Posted January 7, 2015 Author Share Posted January 7, 2015 Why is it that many would rather have better graphics than gameplay? Is it once again a case of the "Ooh, something shiny!" mentality. EDIT: The above comment was no intended to provoke anger or incite rage in fellow forum members. Just thought I'd put this in as a disclaimer for all the HATE and RAGE posts I'll get. Yesterday I reinstalled Skyrim, and began a vanilla playthrough, no mods except the unofficial patches. I got bored and uninterested after an hour and began installing mods again. I never had this problem with Morrowind or Oblivion - or now fallout 3 and New Vegas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lachdonin Posted January 7, 2015 Share Posted January 7, 2015 Yesterday I reinstalled Skyrim, and began a vanilla playthrough, no mods except the unofficial patches. I got bored and uninterested after an hour and began installing mods again. I never had this problem with Morrowind or Oblivion - or now fallout 3 and New Vegas. That's going to be personal taste. I found Oblivion to be boring, uninspired and totally lacking in any character what-so-ever. I don't think i even got 100 hours into it, at least not until the Shivering Isles. I had similar problems with New Vegas. It's just not interesting to me. I play a minimally modded (sometimes totally unmodded) version of Skyrim, and have put more than double the time into it than i have Oblivion and New Vegas COMBINED. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mebantiza Posted January 7, 2015 Share Posted January 7, 2015 Yesterday I reinstalled Skyrim, and began a vanilla playthrough, no mods except the unofficial patches. I got bored and uninterested after an hour and began installing mods again. I never had this problem with Morrowind or Oblivion - or now fallout 3 and New Vegas. That's going to be personal taste. I found Oblivion to be boring, uninspired and totally lacking in any character what-so-ever. I don't think i even got 100 hours into it, at least not until the Shivering Isles. I had similar problems with New Vegas. It's just not interesting to me. I play a minimally modded (sometimes totally unmodded) version of Skyrim, and have put more than double the time into it than i have Oblivion and New Vegas COMBINED. Really? I rather like Oblivions look and feel, but in one respect I agree fully with the boring part. Oblivions dungeons\ruins were repetitive and had a kind of cookie cutter sameness about them. I remember years ago when I first got TESIV how alike and frustrating I found that aspect of it. Skyrim at least, managed to fix the sameness that plagues oblivions ruins\dungeons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dkboy24 Posted January 7, 2015 Share Posted January 7, 2015 Why is it that many would rather have better graphics than gameplay? Is it once again a case of the "Ooh, something shiny!" mentality. For me, I find the ultra high graphics, fully modded out to make it look as real as possible really helps add to the immersion of my game-play experience. Due to graphical mods, when I'm in a musky inn and can see the flecks of dust in the air and the rays of sunlit pouring in through the windows, it really draws me into the game. Don't get me wrong, I do highly value gameplay, but I found that if my graphics are amazing, my imagination can sub in anything lacking in the story or plot. Whereas the other way around, bad graphics can take away from game play (for me at least). And just to clarify, I'm not talking about bad as in "aged" graphics but bad as in simply poor design or low resolution, nasty blocky graphics mixed with really well done graphics. Almost like the designers put extra attention to certain areas for the game-play trailer but then rushed through the rest. As an example, I can still play FF7 to this day and fully enjoy it due to the amazing story, despite the aged graphics. To comment on the original point of this topic, I'm not exactly qualified to give an insightful opinion as I never played any previous TES games. I started with the original Fallout series, skipped FO:3 and then got into Skyrim. After which I played through FO:NV. I have to say, if I'm comparing FO:NV to Skyrim, Skyrim is a step back if we are talking about the level of difficulty. I LOVED FO:NV's hardcore mod. I LOVED getting into a fire fight and crippling away bleeding and wounded because a piece of shrapnel hit my leg. There is a fist sized glob of dried blood on Doc Mitchell's front door from me banging on it to get patched up again. With Skyrim, I would have loved to see that attention to fight realism because I hate their version of increased difficulty. I find it immersion breaking when all it does is add extra health and damage to a mob. If I shoot a shirtless bandit in the face with an arrow, he should go down, no matter what difficulty. On that side token, I should go down (just like FO:NV) if I take a headshot and am not wearing a helmet. Viking combat was violent, bloody, and brutal. I can't imagine the Nords would be any less. I do see it was very apparent the violence was toned down to increase their market share to the "Konsole Kiddies" But I also think Skyrim took steps forward in other areas. It's sheer size (especially when you opt not to fast travel) was jaw dropping. I would get lost just exploring the depths of the terrain they built for us. I love the diversity from the dark rainy pines of Falkreath, to the snowy drifts of Dawnstar. I also liked how your speech checks were kept hidden whether or not you would pass them. In FO:NV it was either you have the skill or you don't. I like that level of mystery where you think "Maybe I can sweet talk my way out of this?" I know it might seem trivial to some, but I love the camera in Skyrim compared to FO:NV. I hated the camera in NV so much... I found it clumsy and difficult to fight in third person. Another thing I think Skyrim did better was simple movement animations. I found the movement animations in FONV to be clunky at best. It felt like I was "ice skating" through the wasteland because my foot steps would not match the speed at which I was running / walking. And lastly, another step forward with Skyrim was it's character creation. The FO:NV creation was over-simple and just plain ugly. I'm not the type of gamer who wants the barbie glam girl as his character, I actually prefer a gritty, dirty, scared, character. But beyond that, FO:NV character creation (without mods) was pretty bad... All and all we can't really stop these companies from dumbing down their games for the kids. Money will win every time, despite our want for the difficult old style RPG's we all grew up with. All I ask is they give us crazy hardcore RPG'ers extra options to add that level of immersion and/or difficulty/ gore to our games like FO:NV did. It probably won't happen... because you know... deadline and fiscal reports etc. But I can still hope! XD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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