Critique of the game and why I don't like it (anymore).

[Alithinos]

Very interesting points you have there,but you are forgeting some more:

 

1) New Journal Entries overwrite the old ones,and you can never read again an older entry after you moved to the next one.

2) Misc Quests have no Journal Entries at all.

3) Facial Animations used for the expression of NPC feelings are absolutely absent,but Oblivion had them.

4) Even with Havok Behaviour,the animations of the npcs are still quite clunky and unrealistic in comparison with other games like Mass Effect,Witcher,LA Noire,Crysis,Zelda,Mario...

5) For some weird reason you cant jump while running.

6) For some reason it seems sometimes you have to press the jump button somewhat before you want to jump,or else you fall down.

7) Physics ? What are they ? Shouldn't my horse fall if it walks in the air or at a 80 degrees cliff ?

8) You are not getting damage points from natural hazards when you should do,and while older games of the series had that interactivity.In Skyrim you can have a bath in lakes with boiling water near the Volcanic Area,or jump and stand right in the middle of those bowls with fire in Whiterun,or stay in the freezed water forever,without any damage at all.Neither fire or frost kills the player if it isn't casted by an npc,which is bad.

9) The pattern variety of the quest types is very limited,I'm guessing between 2 or 4. Most dominant is this pattern: (NPC X asks player to retrieve item/kill person A in dungeon Y and bring it back.)That's why it is repeatitive.

10) Most Dungeons doesn't make sense.You open a gate that had to be openned for 200 years,and then you find the room behind it full with lit candles and food that hasn't yet rot.

11) Characters repeat the same exact lines over and over every 4 seconds if you stand next to them,it gets annoying fast and it breaks immersion.

Edited February 7, 2012 by Alithinos

[mindflux]

I could live with the slight inconsistencies or, for a lack of a better word, issues, but it's a total immersion breaker that after completing all the Companion quests the guards still ridicule the player for being a new kid on a block. And it's not only the Companion quest line, it happens all over the place. It somehow seems amazing that the developers didn't care to spend some time fleshing out the characters by writing couples of lines of dialogue for them, but at the same time they had plenty of time to write what is probably hundreds of pages of books which are in no way as significant for the overall experience.

 

Also, how realistic is it that, quite frankly, in a matter of hours you can become an arch mage of the Winterhold College? I mean, shouldn't it take like hundreds of years of practising spells and such? The thing is I don't necessarily want to be an arch mage, especially as it means nothing more than a fancy room in the college. The whole quest line just seems somehow pointless from a story-telling point of view, something that was added hastily to satisfy the casual players that want instant gratification.

 

Well, this thread is turning into a full-scale Skyrim bashing. I have to admit that even with all its flaws I have gotten hours of enjoyment out of it, more so than from any game since Gothic 2 I think.

Edited February 7, 2012 by artem1s

[Smelgafeld]

My biggest gripe with the game is the quests actually. They dont get me involved really WANTING to help these people out.. maybe its me i dunno. They just seem more like a chore in general (i have enjoyed a few of the main storyline quests, my problem is mostly with the "filler" quests i guess). Also i find the console style interface horrible and hopefully with the CK we can get some major changes done to the interface :D

 

Also +1 to the repeating dialouge rubbish. My wife looked at me like i was crazy after hearing the guards talk about sweet rolls for the hundreth time. Very annoying!

Edited February 7, 2012 by Smelgafeld

[t1000n1]

So, you wrote all that for me to just say "lol the game was developed from 2006". Wich it ...you know....was. Also, they prob couldn't get as much sales if they made the super elite only computers be able to run it.

 

No I did not read your whole post because the very first thing I saw was cry about graphics.

 

Edit: Maybe I would have read your post if you didn't give me the impression that you werent' really saying " I don't care about anyone else but my eye candy, so what if you are unable to run the Skyrim that I want" There are your HD 4k - 8k Super Duper High res mods for that. Me, I just am glad I can play. I guess a lot of people aren't happy and don't know what the hell they have and / or how lucky they are.

 

Double Edit" Oh and FXAA PPI is a lot better than Realistic Lighting (in my opinion). But because it is my opinion, I am not going to make a thread about it to complain. Some people s kids I tell you spoiled as hell these days.

 

Triple Edit" To the people who complain "and how realistic is it that blah blah blah blah complaints" In real life if you help an old woman across the street you think people in your town / city are goingto automatically get a Tweet about it and go "oh my, that guy/girl is such a sweet heart" No, the NPCs not knowing who the hell you are is more realistic, I dont' remember reading a tabloid in Skyrim that lets them know that in one cave you saved some random NPC.....sheesh.

Edited February 7, 2012 by t1000n1

[MrTastix]

Not playing a game based on it's visual appeal (aka: graphics) is a horrible reason and it further proves to me how shallow the average gamer has become.

 

I remember when I could play nothing but old games. These games had some of the worst graphics in comparison to today's games (though they were good at the time) but that didn't make them horrible games. People who only look at the visuals for a game and refuse to see behind them miss out on so many great games.

 

As for gameplay and world design? Eh, can't really argue too much on those points. I think both areas have been vastly improved since Oblivion, which is great, but they could've done better, especially with regards to the types of enemies and the dungeons you encounter.

 

Frankly, after about 10-20 hours of dungeon crawling you've pretty much seen all there is about dungeons. You'll still go into new ones, of course, but mostly because a quest or some rare item you want demands you go into it. Fighting the same dragr and seeing the same similar tombs can get grating, and it was no real different with Oblivion.

 

I think gameplay is slightly better than Oblivion's but overall and other than a few combat changes, the combat really is still the same old hack and slash that Oblivion was.

 

I still love the game: I wouldn't have hundreds of hours clocked on it if I didn't like it, but this is largely because of the modding community and knowing that that community will create absolute wonders with the Creation Kit; Essentially "completing" what I consider to be a pretty half-ass job done by Bethesda (and frankly, I believe they did it knowing modders would pick up the slack).

 

At the end of the day, the game is still fun to play. Even after I've played practically all "class" combinations, seen all the quests and beaten the living hell out of every enemy ever. But it's not fun because of the default storyline, world and dungeon design, it's dialogue or even it's gameplay. It's fun because I can mod it to do whatever I want, pretty much.

Edited February 7, 2012 by MrTastix

[redhorizon09]

I have over 200 hours of gameplay invested into Skyrim. If not for the generosity of modders, I would have lost interest in the game upon the first 30-40 hours or so. I'm not sure where some people are getting at when they claim that the animations for Skyrim are great. Sure it's an improvement over Oblivion's, but with the level of technology available today, Bethesda could have done so much more in this part of the game. I would have loved to see a bear kill a deer, then watch it devour its prey afterwards. Third person animation when characters have their bow drawn and ready to fire looks retarded and unnatural. I expected the bosmer to have a lot more grace and fluidity in how they use bows since they're known for their skills in archery. The dovahkiin should have had his/her own sets of animations to make the character feel more unique. Matter of fact, every race should have their own sets of animations. Why would a redguard fight and move exactly like a nord? I thought khajiits were suppose to be more involved in martial arts so why are all the skyrim khajiits not using kicks and various flurries of hand-to-hand combat? The way characters wield weapons and magic will always remain the same, and this is annoying. You mean to say that an expert in swordplay and a newbie swing their weapons the same way? Boring...

 

For those who said that the removal of athletics and acrobatics and the locking of run speed and jump height were necessary: yes it totally makes sense that my lightly armored rogue can only run as fast and jump as high as a guy decked out in plate armor. It totally makes sense that no matter how much my character runs around, he'll never be able to improve his speed in running and sprinting; his speed and jumping skills will always be the same as some lazy person who does nothing but sit at a bar all day. Makes absolute sense.

 

Spells are mostly uninteresting. Dual casting is a welcomed feature, but like what the OP said, there are less spells this time around. No damage scaling based on level and intelligence for spells was a major disappointment for me. My master wizard's fireballs still only does as much damage as a novice mage's fireballs. Wow, nice... I can't help but to wander that the magic system was seriously nerfed because of the introduction of the dragon shouts. Speaking of dragon shouts, I remember Bethesda saying to Game Informer during an interview that no other mortal will be able to use shouts as powerful and effectively as the dragonborn because that's what makes him special. Lies. The draugrs, Greybeards (especially the Greybeards), 3 fallen nord heroes, and Ulfric use shouts just as effective and powerful as the dragonborn.

 

The OP is right about the guilds as well. I was disappointed with all guild main quests, especially the college of winterhold.

 

Dragons are easy loot, which makes them more of an annoyance than anything epic. In fact, they look more like wyverns than actual dragons. It's understandable that because they've only been recently restored, most dragons would be soaring around Skyrim. However, why aren't there any dragons inhabiting large caves or other areas of the game? Skyrim is known to be inhabited by werewolves, but I have yet to see any roaming the vast landscapes throughout. What happened to the regular zombies and why are there no zombies of other races? How come liches and wraiths were taken out? I mean, there are necromancers wandering the land so there's bound to be other forms of undead too right?

[SubjectProphet]

I'm looking at this and laughing.

 

Let's start with graphics. To say Skyrim's graphics are horrible is to say BF3's graphics look horrible. Both have the same connections in graphics if you didn't know that.

 

Then you go on and on about random things that don't even make SENSE. "Archery has no hit detection" what do you mean? The arrow either hits the person or it doesn't. End of story.

 

And the map system? Like Oblivion's? Yeah right.

 

The story imo is great. It goes good in detail and everything.

[fraquar]

By reading this thread I can say I'm probably the target market for this game, someone who doesn't play games much.

 

That said I can say 1st hand they spent about 2 minutes tops playtesting the Thieves Guild questline. How on earth do you butcher a Thieves Guild so badly that you allow the player to become Guildmaster without really having to have any Thieving skills developed?

 

That shouldn't even be possible, it would be like completing the Assassins questline and never have to kill anyone.

 

Make me at least have to act like a Thief - even if I don't want to - at the very least maintain the integrity of what the Thieves Guild should represent.

[donutmancuzco]

To all complaining about OP complaining about graphics, he is right. No, a game doesn't need great graphics to be good, but the graphics could have been far, far better. And for the people with lower end computers, that's what the lower setting are for, just because the graphics for the ultra setting are increased, doesn't necessarily mean the low setting requirements are also raised. They just could have added a super-ultra-jesusfckingchrist setting.

 

Also the quest menu being in the options menu is really annoying, it should replace the level up menu, and just have a button on the side for that. Esc is for options and exiting game, not for looking at quests. And the lack of a real option menu on the main menu is also bizarre and reeks of console port.

 

And archery does have aim assist, why do you think there would be so many mods and ini tweaks to remove it if it didn't?

 

And to the person who said Battlefield 3 graphics = Skyrim Graphics...

(SubjectProphet)

 

No, just no.

 

To the same person

"Archery has no hit detection" what do you mean? The arrow either hits the person or it doesn't. End of story."

 

That's the problem genius, there is no difference if you shoot them in the head, or in the foot, or in the arm. He said no hit box detection, which it doesn't have.

 

The journal system is also awful, if I stop doing a quest part way through/ get distracted I want to read the previous entries to know where I was and what I was doing, that's why It's called a journal. As the the Misc section there is no entries, so all I see is talk to [npc], and no reason why, or information, nothing.

 

Also:

>2011/2012

>dx9

>wat

 

Tessellation and Global Illumination would have made the graphics so much better.

 

And the NPC's are awful. At least they hired more than one voice actor, but the characters are all flatter than cardboard.

And the cookie cutter dungeon quests.

And the shtty guild quests.

And the general over reliance on radiant quests.

And the crappy CPU reliant horribly done shadows.

And the weird crappy physics, when someone dies, the appear to contract rigour mortis instantly.

Almost everythin OP said, except for the Jumping stuff, I don't mind that gone.

 

 

A 64bit exe would also be nice and allow me to raise ugrids value to 9 without ctds. buuuuuuuut I don't see that happening.

[robdustin]

 

Hi, my username is a bunch of numbers. I complain about every little detail in what is 2011's game of the year, Skyrim (because I'm anal). Why I feel the need to share a novel of critique about a game I don't like (anymore*), I haven't the slightest clue. Though, I should admit that every game I play eventually get's put aside because those too become boring. Though you'll never know if I vented about such because again, my username is always numbers.

 

 

Seriously, biggest waste of time. Agree to disagree.