The hopelessness of skyrim journalist's coverage

[Lingwei]

I originally was going to post this the day it was uploaded on the Bethblog I had to wait a bit to clear the post with Dark0ne since it could have...ruffled feathers. He asked for the snark to be toned down since he doesn't want the editorial tone of the site to become like NMA's (aka cynical). I removed most of the snark from the main page news post although I felt that I should make a post here to make the point I was originally going to make in the news post. For the record this is entirely my own opinion and does not reflect the editorial voice of the site.

 

For the record I am cautiously optimistic about Skyrim (as compared to cautiously sceptical pessimistic about Fallout 3).

 

A couple of things jumped out at me as I read through some of the previews.

 

1) Game reporters are the most shallow people in the world. This is funny because from the few pictures I have stumbled across game reporters tend to be...not the gym going type. The over emphasis upon graphics in some of the previews was ridiculous. The Escapist article leads with a paragraph about how the journalist wrote "Holy s***" in his notes because the graphics were good. These are people who see games that all have top-notch graphics all the time. These are the same people who assured us how "stunning" Oblivion's graphics were and how "cutting edge" Morrowind's graphics were. We can see how the game looks from the previews. We know that the last 3 Bethesda games have been visually attractive. So why do these "professional" gaming journalists keep falling over themselves to be wowed by the graphics and allowing that to either colour or dominate their stories' angles. As a rule any preview written after 2003 (which was when 3D maps started to replace isometric maps) and starts off emphasising how great the graphics look on a game I discount immediately.

 

2) The questions. Bethesda only releases what they want to release and doesn't say a single thing else that it doesn't. This modus operandi should be obvious to anyone who has any contact with Bethesda PR since the marketing behemoth that was Oblivion's release. It's also the reason that posting suggestions and comments on Bethesda's forums is pointless. By the time Bethesda has released information about a feature it means it is set in stone and will not change. This is part of their "we only show what we are ready to show" strategy dreamed up by Bethesda's Pete Hines. So why do the reporters who are invited to this event waste their time asking about things that are both 1) not important and 2) not going to be answered.

 

There's no decision yet on mounts or difficulty levels. Inquiries about guilds' date=' factions, alchemy and crime are all batted away. We do at least find out that you can buy property, and Howard hints that some dragons may not be your enemies[/quote']

 

As the demonstration came to a close' date=' Howard opened the floor up to questions and was presented with a laundry list of topics, but he couldn't really comment. Will there be mounts in the game? Maybe. How will the guilds function? No comment. Will alchemy be a skill in the game? Yes. Well, how will it work? No comment.[/quote']

 

Here's an idea - ask about the decisions behind the design rather than individual features which will only be revealed when Bethesda is ready. If there wasn't anything about crime in the demonstration then he isn't going to talk about the crime, get it? In the mean time we still don't have any idea about whether Skyrim will return to Oblivion's atrocious level of role playing in which every single bloody quest was a linear railroad with a quest pop-up every five minutes, or more like Fallout 3's sometimes choices and consequences, sometimes just choices and the same consequences style of quest design. At the moment the only thing we know about quest design is that there is something called radiant story which as far as I can tell means instead of starting the same railroaded linear quest from town A all the time sometimes we'll start the same railroaded quest from town B instead - and the "professionals" think that this means that the game "won't play the same for any two people". Of course there are going to be guilds in the game - blind freddy could tell you that the fighters, mages, thieves and assassins (the 4 typical archetypes) will all have a guild. Will those guilds questline contain choices and consequences - that's something that we might actually want to know before the game starts.

 

So far we've seen the demonstration of a single quest. The only way to pass the quest was for the player to kill the two guards at the beginning of the dungeon and then kill the dude who stole the claw when he tries to run off. This is the exact same type of quest design that Oblivion typified. All violence all the time don't bother selecting the peaceful line in dialogue because it will just lead to the NPCs fighting you anyway. Incredibly poor quest design and gives no room for roleplaying of any kind.

 

You would have though that out of all these "professionals" one of them, just one of them might have had the cognitive ability to ask at the end "Is speechcraft going to be as worthless as it was in Oblivion or is it going to be as important as it was in Fallout New Vegas?". That's a question that actually needs answering. It's a fundamental part of the design of the game - one that they would have definitely worked out at the beginning of the design phase.

 

3) How is carrying capacity determined? Kinda related to the above point but one that consistently kept popping up as I read through the reviews. Almost all of them mentioned the removal of attributes and switch to adding points directly to your statistics (well they haven't specifically said it but it doesn't take a great mental leap to make that connection). But all the time they kept on repeating the same thing (which makes me think they must have been pretty much quoting Todd Howard).

 

The eight attribute categories from the previous Elder Scrolls game' date=' Oblivion, have been cut out. Now you only have to worry about your Magicka to cast spells, Health for your hit points, and Stamina, which serves as a limiting factor when pulling off axe slashes and mace bashes in combat.[/quote']

 

Also' date=' the skills have been simplified to three categories: magicka, health and stamina to make the RPG elements slightly more streamlined.[/quote']

 

That second one, so much wrong in a single sentence. There were a number of statistics that were determined by the attributes - not just health, magicka and stamina. How is our disposition affected? How fast do we run? How fast does magicka regenerate? It's like these people hear a point of information given to them and instead of thinking about what logically would flow from that point of information they make the cognitive jump from removed attributes = attributes not determining a dozen different statistics other than the three mentioned by Todd Howard = but what about the horsies! Really.

 

4) General sucking up. The whole tone of these piece make me wonder if any of these people have a critical bone in their body. Yes the game looks like it could have potential as a good hiking simulator but in regards to the quest design, the most important feature and underlying layer of an RPG, I am only becoming more and more disheartened by given Bethesda's apparent lack of interest in showing it off and the game reporters mindless braying of whatever talking point Pete Hines decided was the one they should emphasise for this round of previews.

 

-----------------

 

Just a bit more on the choices and consequences thing because that's what's really annoying me in these previews. For a comparison look at the emphasis given to choices and consequences in the Fallout 3 previews.

 

Your arrival reveals the bomb to be a source of controversy among certain parties in Megaton. The first person you meet is Sheriff Lucas Simms' date=' who, assuming you're not a total ass to him, will ask you to disarm the bomb. At Moriarty's Saloon however, you'll encounter a certain Mr. Burke who represents interests that would like to see Megaton wiped off the map and are willing to pay you to sabotage the bomb.

 

Whether you decided to help Simms or Burke or simply ignore them both, you'll need to consider how your actions will affect your overall Karma, the game's sliding scale of ethical judgment.

 

RPGs that reward players for being only good or only evil miss out on the whole concept of "role-playing" so it's nice that Fallout 3 will rewards players who aren't so absolute in their morality.[/quote']

 

What's the bet that Skyrim will revert back to Oblivion's style of only good or only evil and IGN won't criticise or mention it at all in their final review. Any takers? Anyone....?

Edited April 23, 2011 by Lingwei

[Thoreai]

I have to say that even though im hyped about this game, i cant shake away that strange feeling that we will get something very similiar to oblivion.

 

I agree with you, the journalists are basically jumping on everything that Todd Howard says without asking important questions... how do those changes going to influence the game/quests?

 

Maybe i just got somewhat alergic but everytime i hear "radiant..." i want to run away, it looks to me, just like you said, that even though you can get the quest in different ways, the core of it will remain allways the same and this topic brings this on spot.

[stars2heaven]

I agree that sometimes the reporters could be a little bit more critical. When it was stated that stats were being removed I would have liked some follow up questions on what sorts of things would govern the various things that stats used to. A very recent interview with Todd Howard had a reporter asking him if dragons were confirmed. While I'm sure there are only so many questions that could really be asked with what little information we have at present, I'm sure there are better ones than that. (btw, in that interview the gameplay trailer was showing in the background. So it should have been obvious to even a personseeing it for the first time that there would be dragons)

 

Also, concerning the quest you mentioned, I read in one of the articles that Todd took the more violent route in order to show things off more quickly but that there were some less violent alternatives to solving the quest. I recall the article saying that if the one of the bandits were allowed to live that he would attempt to solve a puzzle on his own, which would also have warned the player of a trap when the bandit ran into it himself. It is still up in the air as to exactly what sorts of choices we will really have.

[Lingwei]

Hi stars2heaven,

 

I think the part you are talking about is this.

 

Pressing onward' date=' we located and dispatched another member in the party of thieves before coming upon a metal door with an elaborate mechanical lock. Had we allowed the thief to get this far, he would have attempted to solve this puzzle himself, failed, and been rewarded with a swift death for his efforts.[/quote']

 

I saw this part in several previews actually. The point to note though is that they all seem to give the impression that instead of engaging in dialogue with the NPC the player could just sit back and wait for them to travel down (presumeably as part of their scripted radiant AI). If you can give me a link to the article if you remember so I can actually go and doublecheck that they say there are non-violent ways through parts of the quest (dealing with the NPCs at least) then that would be great. Otherwise I think it is just a case of sitting back and waiting.

 

A really well designed quest would have the player be able to convince Arvel the Swift (or whatever he's called) to hand over the dragon claw and some money in exchange for cutting him loose. Or you should be able to trick him into thinking you'll cut him a share of the reward from the shopkeeper if he gives you the dragon claw and then give you the option of either letting him down or not, and then giving him a share of the loot or not. This is all stuff I would be factoring in if I had modded this quest in. It doesn't look like any of that will be available based off these previews and we aren't able to allay our fears because the professionals would rather ask pointless questions about horsies and whether we can fly dragons (which I've seen denied at least 5 seperate times).

[Corakus]

This was with the snark toned down?Really?I would have loved to see the original version.I'm starting to really hate word "streamlined", every time Bethesda uses it, it's really just a euphemism for "dumbed down".They act as if though the only attributes in Oblivion were Endurance and Intelligence, it's as if they completely forgot about Strength, Agility, Speed, Personality, Willpower, and Luck.In fact here's a quote from Todd on RockPaperShotgun:

 

What we found was those [old] attributes actually did something else. For instance, Intelligence just affected Magicka. They all trickled down to some other stat.

 

That doesn't make any sense to me, how does EVERY attribute get condensed into Health, Magicka, and Stamina?Sounds like a load of crap to me.But maybe I'm being too negative and cynical.

[WizardOfAtlantis]

Welcome to the world of the professional Tool.

 

They're not journalists in the sense of the word that people expect, i.e. an independent free- and critical-thinking objective person devoid of bias and working for their own particular and personal agenda (more or less).

 

No, these guys are press agents for Bethesda (whether they realize it or not, and I hope they do because otherwise...sheesh), and that's it. They're propaganda agents. You won't see them asking uncomfortable questions like, "Just what in the Oblivion Planes were you thinking when you DESTROYED THE ROLE-PLAYING OF A PERSONA BY DEMOLISHING THE WHOLE SYSTEM OF ATTRIBUTES, YOU DIMWIT?"

 

Of course, they could leave out the dimwit part, but they wouldn't even get that far. If someone ever did, they'd never see the inside of a Beth door ever again.

Edited April 23, 2011 by WizardOfAtlantis

[Talova]

It really is rediculous that any reporter would not take such an opportunity to ask some really important questions. The trick is that you have to wedge the presenter into a corner, just like any other politician, and adress as many factors as possible at once in a single question. What's the worst anyone can do to you for asking an honest question?

 

For instance, instead of asking: "Mr. Howard, will x equal y?"

or: "Will x be included in the game?"

 

ask: "Mr. Howard, did this factor contribute to your design choices for feature x?"

or: "Will your changes to feature x affect features a, b and c in this specific way?"

or: "Were these your goals involved with the experience portrayed through feature x?"

or: "Did factor y or z make you decide to change feature x?"

 

For god's sake, you don't ask the minister of finances: "Will money be spent on education this quarter?"

You ask him: "Will THIS SPECIFIC MOTHALUVIN AMOUNT BE SPENT!?"

Edited April 23, 2011 by Talova

[Retribution]

Why do you care about what Bethesda says about their game before its release? Everyone knows what happened with Oblivion. Half the stuff they said was a complete lie.

[mountainstorm2010]

Quote

"The eight attribute categories from the previous Elder Scrolls game, Oblivion, have been cut out. Now you only have to worry about your Magicka to cast spells, Health for your hit points, and Stamina, which serves as a limiting factor when pulling off axe slashes and mace bashes in combat."

 

 

Quote

"Also, the skills have been simplified to three categories: magicka, health and stamina to make the RPG elements slightly more streamlined."

 

 

These quotes also scare me about what Skyrim developers will do to the leveling system. It's true that Oblivion's leveling system needed a re-haul but it wasn't all bad. In fact, I thought Oblivion's attributes system was well done for the most part. I agree with you that it's great how all the attributes in Oblivion affected many things about a character and how the character changes during level ups. I hope to God that Bethesda doesn't switch Skyrim's gameplay and/or leveling system to that of Fallout 3/New Vegas. What I loved about Oblivion's attributes system was that it could affect how high your character jumps, how fast he/she runs, how well a character can block with a shield, etc; Fallout 3/New Vegas has none of these.

 

I seriously hope Bethesda uses the modding community's works such as deadly reflex, capes and cloaks, OOO/MMM/Wac, and Supreme and Midas Magic as stepping stones to learning what made people enjoy playing Oblivion for. Skyrim is one game I am eagerly awaiting. The game better not be disappointing because Fallout New Vegas was sure as hell a huge disappointment.

[JimboUK]

They're not really journalists, their "Interviews" are just a series of statements from the developers. A proper journalist would ask follow up questions and dig deeper, these drones just move on to the next pre-arranged question.

 

Why do you care about what Bethesda says about their game before its release? Everyone knows what happened with Oblivion. Half the stuff they said was a complete lie.

 

Exactly, I'd take everything the Toddler says with a shovel full of salt.