What An Excellent Game

[Thesblah]

It's not Planescape: Torment by any stretch of the imagination, but that's fine because I never expected it to be.

 

I have no expectations for new games to have good stories or RPG elements. Skyrim is geared for console players who tend to like things like Call of Duty. That's fine. There is money to be made there.

 

If they geared it towards people who like RPGs and stories, they'd never attract that crowd and they'd get a lot less money.

[MrBuio]

As far as games in general go, it's great. As far as role playing games go, not so much.

Needs moar rpg elements. kthx.

 

Define "RPG elements".

 

Personally I believe Skyrim is filled with them.

Edited January 26, 2012 by MrBuio

[Masternaut]

No matter what guys it is still good, a couple graphical glitches here and there and some odd physics it is still great. It's still better than Battlefield 3 performance wise, this game runs fine all day and never has problems then again Battlefield 3 = joke.... so far.

 

You guys all know that this is one of the best RPG games ever made and once all the little problems are fixed it will be even better.

 

Good Job Bethesda

Edited January 27, 2012 by Masternaut

[Dukkah]

As far as games in general go, it's great. As far as role playing games go, not so much.

Needs moar rpg elements. kthx.

 

Define "RPG elements".

 

Personally I believe Skyrim is filled with them.

 

I'd be happy to! :happy:

 

First a note about RPGs. There are two elements that are necessary for a game to belong to this category: an interactive story, and a leveling system. The interactive story is, of course, the "role" part of RPG, while the leveling system is the "playing (a) game" part, used to determine winners and losers in the situation given by the story.

 

It's important to see here how either of these parts could be present individually in any game one thinks of, but it's when they come together that a game is considered an RPG.

 

Now my claim is that Skyrim, though a good game, is piss poor as an RPG. By the criteria above, this should mean that it lacks in one or both of those elements, which I would claim it does.

 

Interactivity: I'm always impressed by the scale Beth gives their games, but that does not always mean substance. In Skyrim we receive a lot of missions, but the opportunity for alternative development of these missions is greatly lacking, even compared to earlier ES titles. From the guilds, to the side missions to the MQ, we are given the option to complete missions, but not how to complete missions. This leads to many awkward moments from a role playing perspective; whether it be the forced "gift" (avoiding spoilers) in the Companions, which for some reason halts the further development of the story if not accepted, the mandate made on the players by the Blades at the game's end, or the liberal sprinkling of one-path mini-missions throughout.

 

"But wait!" You might say, "there are many linear RPGs that are still good! Just because an RPG has linearity doesn't make it bad!" And you'd be right. Problem is, those games are linear. That is, in many of them you play a character made by the developer, to play a story that rarely, if at all, goes outside of its written plot. As thus, said plots are very fleshed out and lengthy, with plenty of character development. As if one were reading an interactive novel.

 

Skyrim is not such a game. It is a different type of RPG, which lets the player determine the character's development. So the story is not as strong, which allows the player to fill in the holes of character development. But because of the aforementioned linearity, Skyrim fails at this. You are rarely allowed separate options which would let you flesh out your character, so Skyrim ends up lacking both the well developed, interactive line of linear RPGs and the free choice of open world RPGs. Thus, it gets low marks here.

 

Leveling System: What can I say here? We got the same, broken leveling in which players can get weaker as they level up, without the intricacy of stats. Now, regardless of how strong you are, if you don't have the right perks in the right tree your attacks will do nothing. Further, we've lost a lot of battle diversity over the years; that is, we've lost the ability to train in particular weapons schools, which could add a lot to a game like this. The difference between short and long bows, the ability to use poles, reduction of spell types, even the ability to become proficient in hand to hand. Perks are an okay system conceptually, but we received a poor implementation here. Thus, low marks.

 

So, with low marks in both of these aspects, I came to the conclusion that Skyrim, though a good game, is a bad RPG. Hope that clears it up. :smile:

[MrBuio]

@Dukkah; I did read your whole post, and I agree in parts. So I wont respond or try and retort on those.

 

I do come from a slightly different opinion regarding this though;

First a note about RPGs. There are two elements that are necessary for a game to belong to this category: an interactive story, and a leveling system.

I believe immersion and freedom are two huge RPG components. First of all, immersion is the thing that draws us into the world and make us feel part of it. This can be made in many type of games, but large open world games with exploring and good graphics adds a lot to this. Secondly freedom is another part, and it is the ability to do what you want. You can skip the main quest (story line if you want) and just run around and be an idiot, murderer, thief, goody-two-shoes hero or whatever you like. As I come from old-school P&P RPG, I rank immersion and freedom as high as leveling your character or having an overarching storyline. Maybe this isn't the per se definition of CRPG but its my opinion.

 

And personally I also rank games where you play a single character higher than party-based games. I think many party-based RPG games are great, but when I want immersion I wanna play one character.

 

For Skyrim I would rate all categories high to very high. Yes the leveling and interactive story could be better, but in my opinion they are great anyway.

 

When it comes to leveling I feel Skyrim is missing mostly in the gear and loot department. When killing a hard boss and getting a unique sword, it should be an upgrade and cool. I already had a better one and put this unique sword on a plaque in my house instead. I'm not saying that Skyrim should have Diablo-style loot, but it needs to be more diverse and better. And above all give you that fuzzy feel more often when you find that great item upgrade after a hard fight.

Edited January 27, 2012 by MrBuio