Personal Thoughts on Skyrim

[oldspice2625]

The bad points for me are:

- no spellmaker (and magic effects since the days of Daggerfall have gone down with each game)

- no attributes and their game influence (which allowed modification by spell or potion)

- an interface that screams "I am a console game!" at me (major point here)

- lesser number of equipment slots

- graphics which are fine for a console, but not so fine with DX11 around on PCs

- the teensy problem with 2 GB memory...

- weak daedric artefacts - they used to be something special, but many are lackluster in Skyrim (any mastersmith can make a better mace than Molag-Bal); I would have preferred them to have some unique effects instead of being so close to common gear

 

The good points are:

- very immersive world

- lots of not-so-generic locations

- the whole surroundings feel appropriate for the scenario...the architecture, the scenery, the snow, etc.; they did a similar job on Morrowind, which felt alien for me, and not like the standard european fantasy world

- great dragons (those combat animations and movement of them rock), the first in a game which look "real"

- the shouts, which give the nord scenario a certain flair - maybe it was intended to have less magic and more primal supernatural effects? (my favorite for a norse scenario would have been rune magic as in Arx Fatalis)

- the perk system, but then I am a huge Fallout fan (best remake/continuation of an older game I have seen), where perks are part and parcel

- many nice stories to follow, and continuing some of the lore of previous games

- you can actually play through as fighter, thief or mage, which is in most games impossible

- a huge number of quests, varying from short to lengthy

- the alchemy system was kept, although potions are very far from what they were in Morrowind *dreams about the 10.000 stat potions again*

 

I don't mean to be rude, I hope I don't come off as that... and I AGREE with some of the points here...

 

But how is the game immersive? There are so many little bugs that prevent this, and the world is a proactive one... nothing you do influences anything at all, or immerses you in my opinion. The dragon's animations are great, but they are weak. These are supposed to be immortal creatures that strike fear into the heart of even the most stout nord, yet can be dispatched by my lvl 35 warrior in three dual wield power attacks... The perk system is nice, but there are not enough oints. i'm not asking to become god or anything, but I have to sacrifice essential skills like speechcraft, lockpicking, pickpocketing, etc... because I only have enough to max out two skills, and have the rest have chunks... in oblivion, yes, you could max out every skill and get every mastery skill for it... but the point is, you had to put A LOT OF WORK into it... hours upon hours upon hours upon hours of work into getting all that efficiently leveled... so when you got speech to 100, you felt the burn and felt accomplished, the same with Athletics and Mercantile. You could get all those essential "perks" in oblivion. In Skyrim, you have to sacrifice those for better, more useful perks.

 

You can't play as a pure warrior, you need to utilize pickpocket for the carry weight perk (only 5 carry weight per lvl up is kinda bunk... 25 per stamina lvl up would be better) and you need lockpicking and archery to fight dragons effectively, so a hybrid. With mage, there are no open spells, so again, a thief/mage hybrid, or a warrior/mage hybrid to fight dragons/bosses...

 

The guilds in this game are rediculous and a joke. The dark brotherhood's arc nearly made me cry at how pathetic it was... the main goal was good, but everything else was so dumb... the leader herself even says "don't worry, if you get caught, serve your time"... are you kidding me? You should commit suicide or something rather than get caught in the dark brotherhood... that voids the entire purpose of stealthy finesse filled kills... where are the interesting assassinations?

 

The thieves guild is another one, though a bit better. Why can't I solve the crime in riften? Why can't I get the Jarl to do her job? Why is such a basic thing overlooked?

 

The mages guild... FOUR QUESTS... seriously? Wow. Archmage and my destruction is still at apprentice >.> Same thing with the companions, fifteen minutes and you get their special gift, unreal.

 

I save the world, am near god status at least like Tiber Septim, solve a civil war crisis, and thwart the Aldmeri Dominion for now, but i'm treated like common trash by people. What is that? Maybe hearing that i'm the champion of cyrodiil every five minutes is lame, but at LEAST THE WORLD RECOGNIZES YOU AS SUCH.

 

tha'ts my beef with this game, that KILLS immersion. I know i'm playing a videogame all the time here, i'm not sucked in like I was with Daggerfall and morrowind or even oblivion at times.

 

 

meh, to each their own I guess some people like this stuff like it is, some hate it, some like parts and dislike others, this is just how I feel :(

[shadownight]

Couldn't have said it better oldspice 2625 the game lacked much guild wise and story also. in Morrowind and even Oblivion there was much replay value, and a payoff to a degree to completing the game. But in this one although the world is huge in comparison to either of the aforementioned games, it seems Bethseda concentrated more of the size of the world and ingored the deepness and richness the world needed to go with that size.

[uruku7]

I'm with oldspice2625. As for the world being huge, it feels far smaller than Vvardenfell to me. Looking at the map, yeah Skyrim is a bigger land mass, Vvardenfell isn't very big, but it felt like it. I almost want to reinstall Morrowind and walk across, time myself, and do the same in Skyrim. I have a feeling the size here is illusion. What looks like a great distance on the map can be covered in a couple minutes on foot.