Roleplay or Not?

[Rethrain]

 

This is a symptom of the Konsole Kiddie Dumbing Down Arc. Skyrim is designed for people who want to just lounge on their sofa after work and mindlessly jiggle a controller while running through things on their ultra-wide home cinema system without having to think.

That aside, frankly, most of what was cut from Morrowind to Oblivion was superfluous fluff that added nothing but frilly lace, and everything cut from Oblivion to Skyrim (except for Spell Making) was to dramatically expand the options and roleplaying of the series. Its been a slow slog uphill, but it's been uphill none the less.

 

Going back to Morrowind is great fun, and i highly recommend it to anyone interested in The Elder Scrolls, but it's not the irrelevant choices, the superfluous skills or the catastrophically dated mechanics that are part of that greatness.

 

That frilly lace is part of the role-playing...otherwise it becomes more and more action orientated... Hell, even other RPGs have it. It adds flavor and replayability as well. After all, it's pretty hard to play a role if there is very little differences between the classes, or no meaningful ones. That's really the only objection I have, though.

[Lachdonin]

 

After all, it's pretty hard to play a role if there is very little differences between the classes, or no meaningful ones.

 

Thats the thing. There wasn't for most classes. Sorcerers, Clerics, Spellswords and Battle Mages all played basically the same. There difference was only in how one IMAGINED themselves, not in the actual execution, which... frankly, wasn't lost.

 

Look at Morrowin's weapon skills... Many people would argue that the divided weapon skills in Morrowind were the best in the last 3 games, because using an Axe, a Sword and a Mace were different. But were they really? The variation on best-attack depended more on the particular weapon rather than the Class it was in, and even then the differences weren't that pronounced. You basically had 4 skills that did the exact same thing, and only offered aesthetic variation between them. It was like having the option between Purple Paint and Wet Purple Pigment. Same thing, different label.

 

That's not to say everything has been handled well... but removing that lace and replacing it with something that's functional (special attacks for weapon-skills that make them behave differently) isn't something that should be decried.

[Boombro]

While I agree that nothing is perfect, morrowind has a great spell selection, staves and throw-able items. The guilds are also handy.

[BigBizkit]

On quest markers and directions:

 

It would indeed be a lot of work to have both, not just a line of dialogue. That might be the case for set quests. Skyrim has loads of "dynamic" quests where e.g. the item to find, the location and the guardians would vary. You'd have to have a lot of additional VA work.

 

So, the change towards markers has more reasons than just dumbing down. However, saying that it has nothing to do with dumbing down, or rather making TES more accessible, is not entirely true either.

 

Why Morrowind was (or is perceived as) the better RP experience has more than a few reasons and varies based on personal bias. I would say a big part of it is that Morrowind is very alien to our world and thus loads of things in it have made up history/explanations etc.. For instance, in Skyrim no NPC/book/whatever ever talks about how people build their houses or anything. And why would they? They are very similar to what we know from our world. In Morrowind however, most of the things are very different from our world and thus come with a flavoured explanation, which, I guess, increases the RP aspect.

 

While Lachdonin is right about Axe/Spear/Sword etc. not being that different in Morrowind, a big part of it was that you HAD to decide on your main skills from the beginning. If you started out a Barbarian, you were stuck with it. In Skyrim you can become a jack of all trades easily. In Morrowind, a Barbarian PC would have a very hard time progressing through the ranks of, let's say the Telvanni. In Skyrim you would only have to have cast a spell once in your lifetime (to gain access to the College) in order to become the Archmage. Any kind of character can become the leader of guild X in Skyrim within one playthrough. In Morrowind, you could not do that (only one Great House was joinable without mods) reliably (or without meta-playing).

That was a conscious design choice made to make Skyrim more accessible.

 

Also, in Morrowind there were more guild options. While they both catered towards mages, the Great House Telvanni and the Mage's Guild were very different and opposed each other. Also, (though this might have just been coincidence) the Fighter's Guild in Morrowind was imo more open in the sense that more varieties of fighter-type PCs would fit in there. The Companions really only fit a more specific, armored warrior type well. Then there is also the part where you get forced to accept something significant, if you want to continue their quest line. Imo that limits the RPing you can do with them.

[Boombro]

I agree.

 

The problem with TES quest markers is not the radiant system though, it the way the markers was set up, it hard to turn it off in-game fully. Of course, don't show in compass is do-able and we can see.

 

 

 

While Lachdonin is right about Axe/Spear/Sword etc. not being that different in Morrowind, a big part of it was that you HAD to decide on your main skills from the beginning.

That the class system, not the weapon system.

[metaphorset]

Let me put it that way. I think that everybody has a different opinion what role playing means.

 

In general, Bethesda Games aren't very good as pure RPGs. There are so many things that don't make sense, story-wise. My Argonian Nerevarine felt a little out of place and it was pure accident that I swore to play as a Nord in the next TES game back in 2008 - way before I knew that TES V's story would revolve around such a heavy Nord-related story. You need to have some pretty good imagination to play through that with an Altmer. That's the one thing I really liked about TES Oblivion.

 

I would really like to do more role playing if the game would let me do so. The point with Skyrim is that it needs a lot of mods to make it feel like I am actually play a role other than that of the one Bethesda has chosen for me. And then it's still way from being perfect.

 

Quest markers (and even forced ones) are one bad thing, but there are far more worse things Bethesda has done to role playing in Skyrim . There is not much of a choice when it comes to joining the Thieves Guild or the College of Winterhold. It's just like they were thinking "Oh look, so we have done some pretty good stuff here, let's make sure every player is going to see it. Like, on their first playthrough."

[Boombro]

 

In general, Bethesda Games aren't very good as pure RPGs.

That right, but they are the best and very few ones around for that.

I want to buy something like it this winter sale, didn't find anything let you RP.

[Signette]

Let's stop fooling ourselves, Beth role play is based purely on player imagination, nothing else. There were no actual debates in Morrowind, only detective-esque questioning (as in all TES games on my memory). Different classes gave you NOTHING, since you could self-assemble brutal death machine with right skills destribution and name it like Terminator 5000. You couldn't agree or disagree in different manners while pissing off or befriending certain NPCs. Side quests, as most appraise here with no quest markers were like that:

"I lost one tiny ring somewhere in the North-East, please find it and bring it back to me!"

And what do you think? You had to actually drag yourself (no sprinting, haha!) across the wilds in the North-Eastern direction, looking under every rock, and somewhere, in green mud, below crunced plants was little chest with this ring in it. Is that fun? Sure, the pure masochistic type. I have quest markers turned off in Skyrim btw and I don't complain about it.

 

When I first finished vanilla Morrowind, I was 13 years old, I had absolutely no difficulty doing it. Never used single cheat or console command (didn't even know about it) and safe to say I had replayed it maybe 6 or 8 times after that, and modern Skyrim or Oblivion doesn't feel an inch harder or easier than Morrowind was. The only way you could have fantasic experience in ALL those games is by modding them entirely, changing most aspects of gameplay making it hardcore survival experience where you need all your tools to come on top. Dumb AI or masochistic quests could never contribute to that. Games truly always felt like barebones program script, which by help of modding tools you could actually build up a decent game.

 

The only real advantages of Morrowind were unique style of Vvardenfell continent with all its fauna and huge amounts of text, which I love to read in any games, especially ones rich with lore. I don't like the idea of TES4 and 5 on converting to voice acting, because it's really cuts the text amounts by a pile, but AAA studious have to please wider audience to sell more copies and product being more popular, you can't argue with that. Still, all these games are decent in each form, and it hard to objectively say that one is better than another. While some *dumbing down* might be the case, you can't deny that progress was also made in other aspects.

 

 

 

 

In general, Bethesda Games aren't very good as pure RPGs.

That right, but they are the best and very few ones around for that.

I want to buy something like it this winter sale, didn't find anything let you RP.

 

 

Erm, try Pillar of Eternity maybe? Divinity Original Sin? Wasteland 2? Shadowrun Dragonfall/HK? Hell, even Age of Decadence has great RP potential, so you're in luck! xD

[Lachdonin]

Let's stop fooling ourselves, Beth role play is based purely on player imagination, nothing else. There were no actual debates in Morrowind, only detective-esque questioning (as in all TES games on my memory). Different classes gave you NOTHING, since you could self-assemble brutal death machine with right skills destribution and name it like Terminator 5000. You couldn't agree or disagree in different manners while pissing off or befriending certain NPCs.

 

That's a shallow interpretation of what RPGs, and role-playing in general, is/are. It's not about choice or range of difficulty, its about assuming an identity. In JRPGs, you have next to no control over abilities, personality and even dialogue, but they are still RPGs because they put you in the shoes of someone. In fact, the only way to encompass everything defined as an RPG is to define it in such a way that literally every game in which you have control of a character who is not yourself qualifies.

 

TES games handle role-playing in a different way than, say, The Witcher or Dragon Age. It's not about playing through a story that shifts based on the choices you make along the way. Rather, it's more like assembling a story from a collection of chapters. Things are predominantly already written, but which chapters you choose, and where you put them, defines your story, and your identity.

 

And that's what RPGs are, at their core. Characters and Stories. Any variation from one to the next is an element of role-playing, and Bethesda excells at this by giving you so much control over so many variables. Your characters can change with experience and circumstance, instead of being bound by their classes, they can pick and choose stories rather than being set on a single branching path.

[Rethrain]

Choices were and still are a big part of being an RPG. Take that away and it's less of one. Just because people label something an RPG, doesn't mean it actually is (Action RPGs? Anyone? :tongue:). Some of them are quite hack and slash but they let you play dress up with your character, that's shallow at best. It's just one thing. Characters can most certainly change with experience, and still be bound by their classes, they don't have to be restrictive.

 

Maybe our descriptions of RPGs is very narrow, but yours are very broad, since every game out there puts you in the shoes of someone, you are always playing a role and sometimes making choices that affect important things story-wise. Sometimes you are Corvo Attano, at others you are some dude shooting up an island (Far Cry 3). They are not RPGs though, but they certainly have those elements.

 

As for JRPG...I gotta be honest with you...I never played those games with an RPG mindset, and I played a lot of them. I always treated them as a different genre.

 

Well, you could always be Terminator 5000, it's just refraining from doing so. But I do remember a debate...like, 10 years ago about the very same thing, on the very same game. Yeah, you had to force the RPG, I suppose.

 

But for the record, I don't hate Bethesda games, I just wish they stop taking away actual RPG elements for the sake of making the game more balanced, and not actually achieving this in a few cases. Otherwise, I have a LOT of playtime on them. I just thought this needed to be said.