Why I take issue with Skyrim

[Halororor]

Now take note, I'm one of the biggest Elder Scrolls fanboys, and the series lies close to my heart. I really tried not to think about the things that bothered me while I was playing the game, but it really started grating on me later on. I've thought about it a bit and this is pretty much the things that bother me the most.

 

Ok, here's basically my issues with the game, and for the most part they're basically the same issues I had with Oblivion;

 

1- It starts out amazingly, and it feels like you've got the world at your fingertips. You think the content is never going to end. And then it does. You've just finished the last quest/cleared the last dungeon. Now what? Sure, there are 'infinite quests', but these are all 'go to location x, kill enemies' quests. Not really my idea of fun, but it might suffice for those with short attention spans.

 

2- It doesn't feel vast. At all. Despite people saying it isn't, the landscape of Morrowind felt enormous compared to Cyrodiil and Skyrim. I played it for years and years, and I still probably haven't seen even half of what there is to see in Morrowind. In fact, I'm starting it up again soon for that very reason. Now how did we get from, at the very least, months' worth of content in Morrowind to a few weeks worth of content in Skyrim if you take things slowly?

 

I didn't use mods for Morrowind. Not even a single, itty-bitty one. The game and it's content was substantial enough that I didn't feel it required it. However, it seems to get any more playtime from Skyrim I'm going to have to start using mods, and I hate using mods for extra content. As much work as modders put into their creations, it just never feels quite 'right'. There's always something off that ruins the experience for me.

 

3- Quests are goddamned atrocious. With the exception of the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood lines, obviously. Okay, I lied a bit. The Thieves Guild still has a few shitty quests. And the Dark Brotherhood has an entirely predictable storyline. Still, they're probably the best questlines in the game. Aside from that, how much variety is there really in the quests? There are probably only a handful of quests that aren't fetch or kill contract type quests. And then on top of that, they're so predictable. If you have to fetch something from a dungeon for someone, of course it's going to be in the last chamber in the dungeon. No, the boss who's carrying it won't choose the nice bed-chamber halfway in, it has to be the last one.

 

Morrowind's second main quest had you hunting a Dwemer Puzzle Box in a Dwemer Ruin. After going right to the end of the dungeon and not finding it, I started at the beginning of the dungeon again. Where did I find it? In a side-room off the very first area you get. You literally only have to fight three or four bandits to get it. It's not even such a big effort from the developer's side, but it made me smile.

 

And what happened to starting off slow? When joining the fighter's guild does it not make sense to test someone's combat abilities by letting him do some menial jobs first? Oh hell no! Let him go rescue some hostages from bandits on his first job. It doesn't really matter that he might just botch it up.

 

4- Combat still gets boring just as fast as it did in Oblivion. Aside from the dual-wielding and finisher system, it's still pretty much the exact same thing. This is due more to the limitations of the engine, however, something which I'll get to later.

 

What also irks me is how I'm constantly forced to fight. In Morrowind you could do large parts of the game without fighting at all. Once again, it gets tedious, but I can probably live with it. When you decided to actually fight, at lower levels you basiaclly had a 20% chance of surviving. That place is dangerous, yo!

 

Another issue is that you get forced into certain playstyles. Everyone I know seems to be playing the same character. A light armor specialist using melee weapons with either a bow or destruction magic. You seldom hear about pure magic or pure melee characters. This is due to the fact that it is nearly impossible to fight dragons without some form of ranged combat.

 

5- This is the big one, and the one that angers me the most. THIS IS STILL THE SAME s*** ENGINE THAT POWERED OBLIVION. They promised us a new engine, but instead they took Gamebryo, rewrote a few sections of it and then labelled it as a brand new engine called Creation. That's not a new engine, Bethesda. I almost cried when I started the game the first time and recognized the stilted animations and awkward movement that is so typical of the Gamebryo engine.

 

Now I'm not irked by the fact that they re-used an engine. I'm irked by the fact that they re-used a s*** engine. Gamebryo seems to be severely limiting in what you can do with it.

 

See that tiny rock over there? Yeah, you can't climb it. You have to jump over it, and if the tips of your feet hit the rock, you're not getting over it. Apparently nobody at Bethesda has heard of climbing up ledges or hoisting yourself over small obstacles. See that mountain? At some point you're going to stop running up it and just stand there running in place. I'm not sure if this is an issue with the engine itself, but considering it's case with all Gamebryo games, it probably is.

 

I think even the tedious combat is something to do with the engine's limitations. Something like the Dark Messiah combat system just doesn't seem possible on Gamebryo.

 

I can't help but wonder how much better the game would have been had they actually built a new engine from the ground up. I'd have been willing to wait one or two years more for the game in that case.

 

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed Skyrim, but after about sixty hours of playing, everything just starts to grate on me. It's a vastly better game than Oblivion, but it's still miles away from Morrowind. I'll probably put in a few more hours before I retire it, and then wait for the DLC to play again. It was a fun romp, and cash-per-hour wise, I got more than my money's worth, but it just doesn't feel like an Elder Scrolls game should. It still feels like I'm playing an MMO. Alone.

[Iv000]

Those are all valid reasons and I agree that it does somehow get a bit boring.

But honestly, I'm 200+ hours in and most of the things you pointed out don't bother me. I'm still enjoying the game.

I still didn't do the Thieves guild questline, I only did about 4 Daedric quests and I have only fully explored Whiterun hold and the forests around Riverwood and Falkreath. The other regions are still more or less unexplored.

I don't know, maybe I'm easily amused. I just feel bad that I'm still enjoying Skyrim, and people like you that want to enjoy it even more just can't.

 

Try taking a break from it for a week or more and create a new character then. I'm on my third character right now, and it's a totally different play style then my first two ones.

[CalibanX]

I don't necessarily disagree with your points, it's just that most of them were there with Oblivion as well and I still managed to mod and play that game to death. Skyrim has lots of improvements over Oblivion and (despite the tediously long list of flaws) I'm still enjoying it. And the Construction Kit isn't even out yet. Whatever Bethesda does or fails to do I think the modding community will (eventually) give us the options to change Skyrim into whatever we want. I recommend patience. :)

[faifh]

Morrowind's second main quest had you hunting a Dwemer Puzzle Box in a Dwemer Ruin. After going right to the end of the dungeon and not finding it, I started at the beginning of the dungeon again. Where did I find it? In a side-room off the very first area you get. You literally only have to fight three or four bandits to get it. It's not even such a big effort from the developer's side, but it made me smile.

 

I remember that one! I loved it too, as I felt so much made fun of. If I recall correctly it actually is positioned that way, you run over it, on the way out, but very easily miss it on the way in :-)

 

What also irks me is how I'm constantly forced to fight. In Morrowind you could do large parts of the game without fighting at all. Once again, it gets tedious, but I can probably live with it. When you decided to actually fight, at lower levels you basiaclly had a 20% chance of surviving. That place is dangerous, yo!

 

Yes, but later on I still was constantly taken on by bandits, where their usual line way, "I'm going to hurt you lethally ... *ONE HIT* ... Uaaargh"

 

I agree with this, aside from better graphics, voice acting and more 2011 technology, Skyrim compared to Morrowind, Morrowind was the better game. But thats still a very, very high standard to compare games with, so all in all, compared to the market average, Skyrim is still a top class game.

[Muschen]

1- It starts out amazingly, and it feels like you've got the world at your fingertips. You think the content is never going to end. And then it does. You've just finished the last quest/cleared the last dungeon. Now what? Sure, there are 'infinite quests', but these are all 'go to location x, kill enemies' quests. Not really my idea of fun, but it might suffice for those with short attention spans.

 

You could make a new character, every dungeon is a new experience with a different character.

 

3- Quests are goddamned atrocious. With the exception of the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood lines, obviously. Okay, I lied a bit. The Thieves Guild still has a few shitty quests. And the Dark Brotherhood has an entirely predictable storyline. Still, they're probably the best questlines in the game. Aside from that, how much variety is there really in the quests? There are probably only a handful of quests that aren't fetch or kill contract type quests. And then on top of that, they're so predictable. If you have to fetch something from a dungeon for someone, of course it's going to be in the last chamber in the dungeon. No, the boss who's carrying it won't choose the nice bed-chamber halfway in, it has to be the last one.

 

And what happened to starting off slow? When joining the fighter's guild does it not make sense to test someone's combat abilities by letting him do some menial jobs first? Oh hell no! Let him go rescue some hostages from bandits on his first job. It doesn't really matter that he might just botch it up.

 

I agree with you there, its too easy to become the leader in any of the guild. I made arch-mage at level 12 just because i wanted the robe on my 3rd character.

 

Another issue is that you get forced into certain playstyles. Everyone I know seems to be playing the same character. A light armor specialist using melee weapons with either a bow or destruction magic. You seldom hear about pure magic or pure melee characters. This is due to the fact that it is nearly impossible to fight dragons without some form of ranged combat.

 

That is up to you, i have played jack of all trades, pure bow, pure mage and pure sword and shield.

You just have to be patient as a pure melee character, or get dragonrend. Why would a dragon land?

 

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed Skyrim, but after about sixty hours of playing, everything just starts to grate on me. It's a vastly better game than Oblivion, but it's still miles away from Morrowind. I'll probably put in a few more hours before I retire it, and then wait for the DLC to play again. It was a fun romp, and cash-per-hour wise, I got more than my money's worth, but it just doesn't feel like an Elder Scrolls game should. It still feels like I'm playing an MMO. Alone.

 

You cleared all the dungeons, did all the quests and discovered the whole map in 60 hours? Wow, i got around 160-200 and i have soooo much left to do.

[abaris]

 

You cleared all the dungeons, did all the quests and discovered the whole map in 60 hours? Wow, i got around 160-200 and i have soooo much left to do.

 

I guess he meant repetition.

 

If you're honest to yourself, the game is repeating itself. I might have put about 100 hours into the game but never actually finished the main quest because I had my fun on the way but got bored when running into yet another dungeon fighting yet another pack of Draugrs to get yet another package for someone.

 

I put it aside when I looked at the map and had discovered most of it and thought about my options. Joining up with guilds, my character wouldn't like to get another set of quests that probably turned out to mean crawling into the same sort of dungeone some more?

 

As has been said. The game is worth it's money, but it lacks that certain something to keep me going. Now I'm waiting if the modding community can unveil some potential I'm not aware of.

[Muschen]

 

You cleared all the dungeons, did all the quests and discovered the whole map in 60 hours? Wow, i got around 160-200 and i have soooo much left to do.

 

I guess he meant repetition.

 

If you're honest to yourself, the game is repeating itself. I might have put about 100 hours into the game but never actually finished the main quest because I had my fun on the way but got bored when running into yet another dungeon fighting yet another pack of Draugrs to get yet another package for someone.

 

I put it aside when I looked at the map and had discovered most of it and thought about my options. Joining up with guilds, my character wouldn't like to get another set of quests that probably turned out to mean crawling into the same sort of dungeone some more?

 

As has been said. The game is worth it's money, but it lacks that certain something to keep me going. Now I'm waiting if the modding community can unveil some potential I'm not aware of.

 

 

Ofcourse a game can always be better, but what some people is asking for is limitless variations of quests.

Even 60 hours of gameplay is from somebody that have so many bad things to say about the game is great.

I feel sorry for bethesda, its like giving somebody a car for birthday present and they are not happy because the car didnt come with a caravan.

[abaris]

 

I feel sorry for bethesda, its like giving somebody a car for birthday present and they are not happy because the car didnt come with a caravan.

 

Well, don't feel sorry.

 

The shareholders are counting their money right now. And that should dry their tears.

 

Sorry, if that sounds cynical, but sometimes a more down to earth attitude is in order. I never said it's a bad game, but to strip it of all romanticism, we have a business contract with a company and not with our personal friends.

Edited January 11, 2012 by abaris

[Lachdonin]

2- It doesn't feel vast. At all. Despite people saying it isn't, the landscape of Morrowind felt enormous compared to Cyrodiil and Skyrim. I played it for years and years, and I still probably haven't seen even half of what there is to see in Morrowind. In fact, I'm starting it up again soon for that very reason. Now how did we get from, at the very least, months' worth of content in Morrowind to a few weeks worth of content in Skyrim if you take things slowly?

 

Two words for you there. Fast Travel.

 

In Morrowind, Fast Travel was limited to a few main cities. I think there were something like 12 total fast travel locations. That meant a lot of walking. Skyrim, and Oblivion for the matter, seem smaller simply because you can pull up your map and 'blink' to a new location in seconds. It creates the functional illusion that theres a lot less space. Try running from one side of Skyrim to the other, and you'll start to notice the differance. Morrowind's map also didn't mark locations the way Skyrim and Oblivion do, which mean't (IMO) repetitive exploration of locations. You may 'find' the same tomb three times, and be surprised every time. Of course, this rarely detracted from the sense of exploration, and i remember spending many hours consulting the physical map that came with my game and trying to track down an illusive cavern somewhere in the wastes of Red Mountain.

[flobalob]

Of course, this rarely detracted from the sense of exploration, and i remember spending many hours consulting the physical map that came with my game and trying to track down an illusive cavern somewhere in the wastes of Red Mountain.

 

No kidding. I had 2 copies of the paper map (additional one from the Tribunal add-on) and both of them were covered in little x's and annotations etc.