Skyrim dumbed down?

[killerx267]

I've played Morrowind through Skyrim, and before I start this topic i just want to say all three games are fantastic and great. I've spent 200+ hours on skyrim, 300+ hours on oblivion, and around 80 hours on morrowind. Now to begin, At first morrowind, to me, was a little overwhelming. I had no idea what to do first at all and at times the journal wasn't organized well enough for me, but I ended up loving the freedom of it. Taking over someones house, the spell possibilities, the uber treasure loot. I went back to it about 3 days ago and installed the graphics overhaul and I am completely immersed again. Morrowind was just a amazingly content filled and quality game.

 

Now for Oblivion, in my opinion oblivion got it just right in content. wasn't overwhelming and wasn't underwhelming. I loved the guilds and was glad the fighters guild wasn't pretty much a mercenary and assassin guild. I could keep track of all the quest and loved the game world more than Morrowinds, but I lost my guy who didn't belong feeling with Oblivion. Sure, spears, thrown, etc etc was removed but in my opinion a bow was just fine. There was less freedom, but I feel the magic system was just right and balanced. Sword combat was drastically improved over Morrowinds. Balancing system was great until around level 20.

 

And for skyrim. Skyrim is amazing and I love it, Graphics on PC were extremely lacking imo, but when I did the STEP overhaul it was fine and beautiful. I felt magic was too dumbed down, melee combat was improved in some ways and dumbed down in others. The world in my opinion was alright. I didn't love the world but didn't hate it. Just snow and mountains isn't my cup of tea. The cities sucked, Solitude is tiny compared to the average cyrodiil town. Guilds completely sucked. The stories were good but each guild was only around 3 hours while morrowind and oblivion guilds were 8 hours and up. Now this is just my view on the franchise since morrowind. If people want to go back and play morrowind for the first time but find the graphics unbearable just download the graphics overhaul, its amazing. I hope in the next elder scrolls they can get a combination between oblivion and morrowind. I would like classes and attributes back because that adds to the replay value of the game.

 

I know there have been many topics such as this one but I would like a fresh view on the topic seeing as the initial skyrim effect has worn off now.

[gsmanners]

It is a game, after all. You can't have everything, so it makes sense. To me, it's more about the improvements, which have been somewhat up and down to be sure. A good example is the user interface. I prefer the way the keyboard is set up in Skyrim to Oblivion, but the overall layout and selection of parts of the interface has been seriously degraded. SkyUI is a huge improvement (just the way I could never go back to playing Oblivion without Darn's UI).

 

Combat is not really the strong point for Oblivion or Skyrim (can't really speak for Morrowind as I never played that). The main thing I hate about combat is the unresponsiveness and the lack of attention to detail. Especially if you compare a serious effort at combat like Fallout 3 or FNV to Skyrim, you see a serious regression. Skyrim combat is just like its system of followers. It's a distant afterthought and a very low priority.

 

Magic and balance? Probably, the less said about all that, the better. Suffice it to say that magic has been simplified, and the only real balance is what you make your game give you (I find that using "modav destructionpowermod 200" goes a long way toward fixing that). You can hardly complain when the tools for balancing are given to you, but it would have been nice had these issues been addressed better during the last few patches.

 

The world in Skyrim is great. I find nothing to complain about that.

 

The stories vary in quality. The most interesting and compelling stories are the Dark Brotherhood and the Thieves Guild factions. Then the Daedric quests. Then the Divine quests. Then the Thane quests. Then the miscellaneous quests. At the very bottom is the civil war and the main quest, which show many signs of having contrived plot points. Delphine pretty much ruins the main quest for me. Even though she's supposed to be your guide and mentor, she acts like an arrogant, conceited child, and is insubordinate at every turn of the story (thus proving herself to be more of a villain to my mind than Alduin). The writing for the main quest starts out okay, but goes seriously downhill (culminating in the laughably terrible scene you see with the Elder Scroll). By contrast, you see a lot of predictable tropes in the Dark Brotherhood, but they are all handled with professional caliber skill. The dialogue choices are never lacking in the DB, and the story rarely indicts the author of anything other than a lurid fascination with the dark side (as you might rightly expect in a faction of assassins).

 

I never got as deeply into Oblivion (simply because I was more into FO3 at the time), so I can't really speak to any regression in quality of the writing. Skyrim does a lot of things the right way, but I'm not too impressed with what I'm hearing about Dawnguard. I think I'm going to wait for the next DLC and see what happens.

[fms1]

I played Oblivion and FO3 on xbox for too long before moving on to PC. I had at least 3 600 hour games of Oblivion (on xbox) and 1 around 250- 300 hour game of FO3 (xbox), I had actually skipped work a day here and there for Oblivion. Once I moved on to PC I spent more time modding than playing by far. I pretty much agree with all gsmanners said above, If I have 1 complaint about Skyrim it would be the lack of quest content compared to Oblivion, I have only around 300- 350 hours now with only 1 play through for Skyrim, and have gone through all the quest lines including most side quests in those too, except the Daedric ones, which I lack a little more than 1 left, I have left all the Divine ones though, and haven't done any more than required of the redundant fetch (radiant) quests. I do however look forward to Dawnguard though, because for the first time it looks like some thought was put into vampirism. If possible after the MQ (another play through) I will probably turn Delphine into a thrall (haha), and I look at it as, at least it's better than horse armor.

[breakwind]

I loved Oblivion, but even though it might have had more quest content than Skyrim, they seemed too repetitive. You seen one dungeon or ayleid ruin...you've seen them all. But the atmosphere in Oblivion seemed a bit better than Skyrim. Probably because of it's temperate climate compared to the Ice and snow

[gsmanners]

... Morrowind was just a amazingly content filled and quality game.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Morrowind mostly just text (most of the dialogue was unvoiced)? Given that, it makes sense that Skyrim has a lot less dialogue, as that involves hiring actors, renting time in the studio, doing all the voice work, etc.

[Enatiomorph]

Yes, lots of dumbing down and removing key features of the series.

[Mydget]

I've seen Morrowind, but never played it. I've probably spent half my high school years on Oblivion. In my opinion, Skyrim is somewhat dumbed down, but there are many other things that are done better too. Either way, much of my time is spent playing with mods. People who don't like this or that really should go browse the nexus. (Not pointing fingers here if you think I am. Just stating.) Haha.

 

On a side note, the ... thingy... what was it called? That combat overhaul mod for Oblivion was really impressive. I can't even imagine doing 10% of that. Then again, I haven't got that much experience as a modder yet.

[trob1000]

Skyrim is dumbed down compared to Oblivion. The removal of the guilds and the quest lines that went with them was a mistake. The magic is a lot less varied, and you can't make your own spells to add variety. The writing was also not as good. The Dragons didn't seem to be doing anything as the quest went on unlike the gates to Oblivion opening near cities and along the roads. Also the smaller towns and lacking the Imperial city made trading harder. As far as trading goes, they should use the Fallout system where you put all the items you want to sell up at once and then make the list of the stuff you want from them. I still think Skyrim is a good game, it is immersive enough to overlook some of these faults, the key word is some.

[DieNowIdiots]

I found oblivion to be an amazing game. I probably spent most of my middle school days playing just oblivion for hours. I do admit i miss some features of oblivion not found in skyrim like making spells or large cities, but the game is amazing never the less. and through the power of mods, I suspect eventually the stuff from oblivion will find its way back into skyrim.

[trob1000]

Thank god the developers let people mod the game and support the modding community.