Skyrim: A Step Backwards?

[Ondrea]

I think may be a case of different strokes for different folks, but I could not get into Fallout. I've played a bit of it, and it's nice and all, but I just can'y help but think "Skyrim is more fun then this", when i'm playing the game lol. I don't know I just feel like Skyrim's world is more interesting and epic.

 

The wasteland look gets old pretty quickly, it still has the oblivion era "zoom in to talk to NPCs and the whole world stops around you", and I really don't like the animations or character models that much.

 

I don't know, maybe i'll go back and download a few mods and play on hardcore mode, maybe then i'll have more fun or something.

 

This is pretty much how I feel as well on all points. I have FNV along with a slew of other games that I played for two hours and then just went back to Skyrim.. The setting is hugely important to me and the wasteland, as well as the character models, made it hard for me to get into.

 

I have never gotten into any single player game as I have Skyrim and I keep waiting for something else to be more like it.

[Vooodu]

 

Us PC master race true believers like to think we mean something to the game makers - but lets face it we are somewhere around 10% of the market. They will be making the games for the Konsole Kiddies for the foreseeable future because that is where the money is - and we are lucky to get a half done port that is crippled because it cannot take advantage of half of what a PC can do. Luckily we do have mods to make it all better. :blush:

This is the ultimate answer to most questions regarding the "stepping backward" of Bethesda's games, the Elder Scrolls in particular. Something I find a little ironic is how so many gaming companies clearly tailor some of their games to younger age groups, whilst at the same time claiming that their game and its content is tailored towards a 15+ or 18+ rating. They're happy to tailor their games to suit younger audiences who need it all laid out for them, whilst happily saying that they respect that the games content might not be suitable for everyone, sticking a big red 15+ sticker on it. I mean come on, the age group that your game is supposedly for could probably deal with having to eat, sleep, find their way around with a compass and without just teleporting wherever they want at a whim.

 

 

I don't think its catered to younger players.. Its catered to casual players. Casuals being people who simply don't play alot due to what ever reasons.

 

But the best part about Skyrim is how easily we can change how we play the game. Even in vanilla players can choose to turn off the compass, play on the hardest setting and refuse to fast travel if they chose too.

[vram1974]

Using Frost Fall and Realistic Needs helps quite a bit in terms of fixing the unrealistic aspect to Skyrim. Although frankly i think Realistic Needs goes over the top. You eat two venison steaks and a few hours later you're starving to death. So stupid.

 

Anyway, Skyrim physics could have been a little more realistic too. The mountain fighting and anything in the polar ice regions are completely broken/bugged to death. NPCs will fall into water and disappear and path/wayfinding is nearly impossible.

 

Overall, Skyrim is a much better game than Oblivion and not a step back in my opinion. It's just extremely buggy because it's so big. And the more you play the more bugs you come across.

[Bloodinfested]

As someone said they are 2 different developers every developer has a different outlook on creating a game. I never really thought much about Obsidian until I bought fallout New Vegas was never a big post apocalypse fan never got fallout although New Vegas appealed to me more. I think overall Obsidian is a great developer.

 

A step backward because they decided to rip out old traditional elder scroll elements classes, repairing your gear, spell making, the 8 main attributes and so on. You can always fix a lot of things with mods but hard to get past what the base game really was. Bethesda chooses to redesign the game they always seem to create a few good ideas but never underestimate how many poor decisions they can also make in the process. Hopefully the next game goes a bit smoother.

[Lachdonin]

I am one of the few people in the world, it seems, who actually hates New Vegas. It could be the totally uninteresting world, my primal hatred of Vegas, the general lack of individuality or character, or Obsidian's glaring tendency to focus on a single aspect to the exclusion of others. Admittedly, the conversation sydtme in it was great.

 

In general, though, I don't think Skyrim was a step backwards. It's a vast improvement over Oblivion, which was it's self a marginal step forward (in some areas...) From Morrowind. Yes, Skyrim makes some basic, seemingly obvious mistakes (rushed questlines, no item-repair, no Attributes, blank-slate start) but it's still moving forward.

 

 

*for the record, I support the removal of Spellmakijg and Classes. As they existed, they were highly mechanical, made little sense, and we're too exploitable.

Edited January 7, 2015 by Lachdonin

[VolkiharFiend]

I think my only real complaint about TES games is the feeling that what you do doesn't seem to have any real consequence in the game world. That and the occasional AI stupidity that you may encounter from time to time. Like in Skyrim it felt like even though you were the Archmage, Harbinger, Listener, Thieves Guild's Guildmaster, AND the Last Dragonborn of legend etc. etc., nobody really cared. Of course, you could choose to roleplay and only be in one faction to make it more realistic, even then it still feels that way. You could also transform into a VL and kill an entire town, then either go to jail for 7 days (lol) or pay off the fine, if you have enough gold. After that you go about your business like nothing happened and rinse and repeat if you choose to. It just...I don't even.....god it just bugs me.

 

Also way more character depth would be a HUGE improvement...at least to me. Being a walking killing machine all the time is just boring and immersion breaking for me.

[Mebantiza]

Step backwards might be overstating it a little, but there is some truth to that. I could make a huge list of things about Skyrim that bug the hell out of me, but, Ill just say I spend way more time in Skyrim than I do FNV, at least lately. The improvements to the game engine give Skyrim a level of immersion and beauty that FNV, or any title for that matter, simply can't match. (Fallout 3 however, world is much more expansive), FNV lies in the middle-it feels a little on the small side compared to both Skyrim and F3, even with all DLCs. I never get tired of wandering around Skyrim and its related DLC content. That said, I really wish they would overhaul their navmesh system and water. Both of which annoy the hell of me at times(ok a lot of times). Fallout, FNV, Skyrim, all suffer from it. Oblivion too I guess, but pathfinding technology really hasn't advanced@bethesda at all over the years. If anything Skyrims pathing seems worse than all of them, but that could be because I spend more time in it.

 

The thing is, yes Skyrim is the best title of the lot imo, BUT, there is a qualifier. It takes 150-200 mods to make it the best. Fallout and FNV had good modders and mods too, but Skyrim outdoes all previous titles both in terms of quality and quantity of mods. Of course that doesn't mean everything about it is good, the open-endless classless system doesn't really sit well with me, but I overlook it. Thats whats saves Skyrim. If FNV and Fallout 3 had modders that were as good as Skyrims, Id likely play those a lot more than I do. For example, I have no more than couple dozen mods on both F3 and FNV each, compared to the nearly 200 I run on Skyrim. My tracking page on F3 and FNV is all of two pages. For Skyrim, its 13-and growing. If Skyrim were just vanilla, and we had no mods, or ways to fix the really sloppy job that vanilla admittedly is, Skyrim, the game would have been a moderate success that people would replay once in a while, but thats about it. And yet, here we are 4 years on, and mods are as good as ever, and bug fixes and improvements keep coming and show no sign of letting up.

[Moksha8088]

I came to Skyrim from the world of Fallout. I was skeptical at first, but soon realized that Skyrim was a big step up in many ways. With the high res packages by Bethesda and Skyrim 2K, the screen view is visually stunning. Add in ELFX, Ultra Realistic World Lighting and the Imaginator and it looks great. Much larger field of action and locations are reusable for other quests. Characters like Inigo and Vilja are light years ahead of anything attempted by Bethesda.

 

Just play it and if you like the open world quality of Fallout, you will love Skyrim. Make sure you add in Interesting NPCS (the magnum opus of the Skyrim mod world), along with SKSE, SKyUI, Shereson's memory patch, uGrids to Go, Safety Load and the Unofficial Skyrim Patches and you will be good to go.

[Lachdonin]

the open-endless classless system doesn't really sit well with me, but I overlook it.

 

I'd like to ask this... Why?

 

Skyrims open ended, class free system is more realistic, more adaptive, allows for far more depth and variety (even if not expressly realised in Bethesda's perks...) and creates more of a life-simulator environment than the antiquated RPG mechanics of classes. All classes served to do was limit and define who you were before you did anything, whereas Skyrim's model allows you to define who you are based on your actions, as you play.

 

Its only real limitation is its generic, cookie-cutter start. Add a way to shift skill levels at the beginning to at least create the illusion you didn't just pop out of a hole in the ground, and it is universally superior to Classes in every way.

[TheVampireDante]

Maybe something along the lines of a "profession" list to pick from that has some impact on your starting stats, with perhaps the ability to add/create in your own additions to said list (for those that dislike the preset options).

 

Would obviously need a decent balancing system if using something like that, but I could see it at least providing a jump off point at game start. The other plus with that would be that you wouldn't have to stick to the "type" since you (as in, the character) has now embarked on a new life and has a lot of potential to learn new skills and traits along the way which could change their entire way of being.