Skyrim isn't dumbed down. Purists are.

[Handofbane]

And the NPC's have more depth. There's marriage and companionship and so much. Al hough I do feel a loss of dialogue over morrowind, most of that dialogue was just a stretch of what could've been said in a few sentences like in Skyrim.

Skyrim NPCs have more depth? Not a chance. Most are on par with the depth we got to see from nameless NPCs in Oblivion/Morrowind or FO3/NV, with a strong tendency toward generic stereotypes rather than actual personalities "Get up to the Cloud District often? Oh what am I saying, of course you don't." "What's the matter, can't stand to see a strong Nord woman?" And so on. More writing time did go into the major characters, though even they are pretty limited in their depth beyond some basic motivation - see Jarl Elisif, General Tullius, Maven Black-Briar, or even Ulfric "Superlungs" Stormcloak himself. Now take any of those, and compare them to a character like Divayth Fyr, or Lord Vivec, or the man himself, Crassius Curio. Instead of deep interesting or entertaining characters, we get essentially one-dimensional Fargoths struggling over who gets control of the tree stump at Seyda Neen.

 

Marriage is another joke, it is barely more than a free money generator with a bonus 24-hour merchant tacked in. There is no real attempt at making the player become attached to their spouse beyond "Oh you look nice, want to make me sandwiches for the rest of your life?" Followers are on par with some of the more basic modded ones out there, but nowhere near as compelling or inspiring as those like Viconia, Vilja, or Willow were. How many times must we hear "I am sworn to carry your burdens"?

[CaptainChaos]

@pineapplerum: thanks for your excellent comments. That pretty much summarizes old schoolers. I dk when it happened to me, but i guess I became one, haha. You are so on point.

 

I don't have an issue with the streamlining so much, the skill system works well enough mostly, tho it would be nice not to be able to get 100 in everything and make you choose (Perks help with making that a bit more individualistic). My major gripes are: (1) why can't PCs use more than 2GB of RAM; Seriously?! I mean really!? (1a) but I would have liked to see PC graphics and not rely on the modding communiy to fix that; more mods = more crashes, and it's not fair to make us upgrade the game, tho the mods ALREADY are AWESOME (2) less consolized better UI (3) combat that was even more improved (better than Oblivion, thank you!) but how about on par with Risen?!

 

Next group would be: (4) I would also like Bethesda to get Speechcrafting correct one of these games. It's ridiculous that my shaman barbarian who prefers to hit things first, has people calling him a smoothtalker just b/c he traded in a bunch of stuff from dead bodies over and over again. (5) And, if I hit a guard during a dragon attack, could i get some friendly fire slack here and not get arrested in the middle? and (6) WHY DO YOU EVEN HAVE NIGHT EYE IN THIS GAME? I CAN SEE CLEARLY IN EVERY DUNGEON?! DO I NEED TO MOD THIS AGAIN!?! DO YOU PLAY YOUR OWN GAMES? DUNGEONS SHOULD BE DARK AND NOT HAVE BURNING CANDLES THAT NEVER RUN OUT. Sorry, I get so frustrated when I see them repeat the same stupid errors, repeated game to game. (7) it's also a bit unrealistic to eat food in the middle of combat, but I guess I could keep myself from doing that (risen handled that amazing well as well - Gothic III and Risen just rocked so much; truly underrated games). (8) could someone clean-up the stores? it's great that they notice you knock over their crap but it stays knocked over forever.

 

Finally some minor immersion issues that others pointed out. I'm Thane of White Run but no one even addressed me as such. Things like that. I don't think consolizing has contributed to all of the above gripes, but you gotta wonder how they could create such an amazing place with such attention to detail and still miss so much. but the Quake graphics up close, really gotta go. they are so bad, they actually break immersion for me.

[Dat1Guy]

@Handofbane

 

Yea, I agree. There is little depth to Skyrim's characters... Though, I will say a good amount of Oblivion's NPCs share a lack of depth but a good majority of TESIV's major players had more depth than... well what we have in Skyrim, a bunch of static, shallow carachters.

[Lachdonin]

The overall arcs of Skyrim's writing are pretty good, but the detail is piss poor. The only remotely good character is Paarthunax, and everyone else can't even be qualified as two dimensional. If this is an indication of their writing staff and the future of Bethesda's story telling... *cringe*

[Dat1Guy]

Well, Lachdonin, I'm still hoping that the CK will allow modders to do what was done with Oblivion. Modded quests will definitely introduce some of the character depth, choice, responsiveness and ultimately challenge that we are seeking...

 

Until then (as I've probably said) it's back to TESIV for me.

[TotalRookie]

I am now up to 40 hours of gameplay and I can safely say that I'm enjoying the crap out of vanilla, waiting for the CK to add the chocolate syrup :D

[minngarm]

And purists have no place in future elder scroll games lol.

 

 

 

.... -.- f*** you jarjar binks fanboy.

[DarkGenius]

Live another life, in another world.

 

That’s been the philosophical approach (at least on paper) to the TES games, and I contend that Beth applied that same philosophy to Fallout 3 and New Vegas as well.

 

Unfortunately there appears to be a lot of disagreement about how to best reach that goal of “immersion” in another world. Some contend that it is preferable to diminish the importance of stats/numbers (i.e. classic hard-crunchy RPG stuff) so it doesn’t get in the way of the “experience.” Others contend that the stats/numbers make it more immersive because your characters can be more specialized/unique (aiding the role-playing elements) and that attribute/skill levels create immersive “limits” to your abilities. This is of course a matter of individual preference.

 

And certainly Oblivion + Morrowind drew criticisms on the leveling system from both sides of the fence, as the systems lent themselves to being “gamed” in order to min-max your character. Whether this was necessary to do is yet another matter of preference (I myself played quite easily through both games without powergaming my character).

 

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

 

But what disappoints me most about Bethesda’s trends is the lack of ingenuity shown in the evolution of the design and the game mechanics itself.

 

Modder’s had “fixed” most of the leveling issues (see the plethora of smooth leveling mods) in Oblivion + Morrowind in ways that combined the best of both worlds … high immersion (i.e. I can just play the game and not worry about having to “game” my skills) while still retaining character specialization and depth. But apparently the easier design solution was just to lobotomize the advancement mechanics.

 

Similar lobotomies seem to appear to be made in other arenas, including fewer weapon skills, less unique enhancing options, no spell crafting, smaller set of magical effects, etc. etc… It’s pretty hard to come up with any justification for these changes in lieu of more ingenious solutions beyond appealing to a wider range of potential buyers while minimizing development time. Interestingly, the current success of the TES franchise was built on games that were ultimately more “crunchy” and hardcore than the games are now.

 

What I find surprising is that New Vegas, developed by Obsidian primarily and not Bethesda, DID have more innovations in the base gameplay. It is pretty obvious to anyone heavy into Fallout3 modding that many 3rd party mods were incorporated, in spirit, into New Vegas. They even included a hardcore mode for people who wanted a more “immersive” experience that required them to think more about things like eating, sleeping, weight, etc.

 

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

 

Bethesda has always been masters at building another world. The storylines, the landscapes/scenery, the design of the world, etc. has always been top-notch, and I think that’s what keeps people coming back to their games. But the underlying gameplay mechanics have been transitioning over the course of their games to be more streamlined and frankly present players with less choice. And that is the heart of the my worry about the direction of the franchise.

 

Choice, for many gamers, and particularly fans of sandbox games, is critical to their enjoyment. To qualify choice, the choices presented to player have to be interesting and they have to have a significant impact on the outcome of an action and/or on the gameworld itself.

 

The choice between learning to use an axe or a sword should be interesting and have an impact on how I have to actually play the game and the tactics I employ in combat. The choice between taking one factions side over another should have significant consequences on the gameworld and how the plot unfolds. If I go down one path, it may mean I can’t go down the other path later. There isn’t really a choice between light vs. heavy armor if when I get high heavy armor skill the weight and sneak penalties are eliminated.

 

For me, choice adds greatly to the replay value and immersion of the game. Folks have berated the more class centric system of prior TES games, but the choice of going in one class or another creates a different game experience, opening up some courses of actions and closing others. And even then, you can still choose to train up other skills. If I’m a fighter and I want to learn to use magic, why not allow me to go off into the woods and shoot fireballs at tree stumps for hours on end until I get good at it? That’s my choice and the choice exists.

 

Ideally, choice manifests at a large scale (i.e. what quest lines are open to me, what quest rewards are given out) as well as at the small scale (i.e. how do I deal with this encounter). Morrowind did a good job with this. Your choice of skills/specialization had a huge impact on what guilds you could join, how far you could advance, etc. You actually had to be really good at magic to become the master of the mage guild. Imagine that. Few things are more immersion breaking (for me) than being able to do a few quests and become the master of a guild while at a pitifully low level.

 

Implicit in having choice in a game is the need to actually think about what decision to make. By removing choice the game has removed the need to think. At that point, one is really following along a scripted series of events, with curious diversions along the way, but with no genuine interaction and influence on the game world. From my perspective, this crosses the line from being a sandbox-RPG to being an Action-Adventure game. But who’s splitting hairs over this right?

 

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

 

I haven’t yet played Skyrim, although I’m sure I will. As others have mentioned, it’s unfortunate that so many feel the game has to be modded to get the kind of experience out of the game they desire. I can’t help but feeling that the amount of modding needed with each successive game grows larger and larger.

 

At the same time, the available avenues for modding gameplay mechanics seem to get smaller and smaller. With the Steam requirements and controlled executable, it may be that no Script Extender can exist for Skyrim, which would be a huge blow to the modding community that greatly limits what is possible. Likewise, by removing attributes and further reducing the number of skills that are hardcoded, even fewer pathways exist for tweaking the mechanics via mods.

 

As an old-school gamer, I do feel a bit like a dying breed. The number of games that require thinking and present real challenges these days is dwindling. That isn’t to say games are bad or not fun, they are just different and are intended to appeal to a broader demographic. I just wish Bethesda wouldn’t forget its roots and the kind of gameplay experiences that got them where they are today.

 

Such a rather nice intellect, your input on the theory has somehow showed many how TES is changing. I feel your pain, about quests, about ENTIRELY about magic, we have a few spells effects and no spellfcrafting, the quests are only 5 or more until leadership, which flawed and ruined the experience many of us had in previous TES. Even if you didn't play Skyrim, I think you should, it is rather nice. Though, I still stick around My Morrowind and Oblivion, for a while or so, until them release the CK that will save the day for many Roleplayers.

 

Sincerely,

 

DG.

[modder3434]

anyone else notice this trend;

-when oblivion came out all the morrowind players kept saying how much better x was in morrowind then in oblivion.

 

-when skyrim came out oblivion players kept saying how much better x was in oblivion then skyrim.

 

- when TES 6 comes out skyrim players will say how much better x was in skyrim then in TES 6

[Sabatasso]

While not entirely wrong, it's still a simpleton explanation, modder3434.