Skyrim is more linear and a step down from Oblivion

[GoodfellowGoodspring]

I know the game is a year old now but it still frustrates me through playing how good the game could have been but was restricted by Bethesda 'dumbing' down the game series to make it friendly to new players and casual gamers in general.

 

The game is more linear due to quest lines being a straight line with often no swinging from the coding and is less detailed in general in regards to gameplay and options. I understand that mods improve the game to fix these annoyances but for me, Skyrim should have gone further with the Elder Scroll Series adding more detail instead of just making everything look pretty and pleasing the masses.

 

The game missed the little things which modders usually have to add afterwards to make the game special, and to be honest, the game was simplified to make the game easier to play and to sell copies to those players who complete the game then sell it and not to those players who still play it years after release!

 

 

Here is my summary of my main concerns

 

- More choices with consequences with quests is needed. Quests seem more linear then on Oblivion and don't allow the player to follow quests how they or their character wants, more detail is needed from a sandbox game made in 2011. For example in the 'The Forsworn Conspiracy' quest you are firstly FORCED into starting it by being handed a letter, what if i had no interest in accepting the letter? its not like a NPC could force an item into my inventory. Then you have the 'choice' of either unraveling the truth about the Forsworn or just leaving the quest alone. Why can't we inform the guards about Eltrys' (the quest giver) actions? Why can't we side with the 'bad guys' and become an ally and informant of the Silver-Bloods? Further more, why can't we join the Thalmor or destroy entire factions like the companions?

 

- Too many scripted conversations and introductions, yeah great, its nice to enter a city or building for the first time and have a summary of whats been going on and what problems the characters are having but it takes away the sandbox feel and forces the player to become involved in something they might not want to become involved in.

 

- A lot more essential and protected NPCs, this was a huge game breaker for me. I don't particularly want to massacre an entire town but i should have the option too, its not even like the main quest line and faction NPCs are the only ones protected, its those from small quest lines as well and these characters aren't even important. We should have been at least given an setings option or made the essential NPCs protected instead, with a message popup so we knew what quest we would be loosing upon their murder.

 

- The interiors of Skyrim seem a lot more open and public, trespassing only exists in small residences. I can walk around in the Jarl of Solitude (and potentially the High-Queen's) bedroom without having to seek permission, a certain rank or reputation or pick lock! Why are these doors not closed like in the castles of Oblivion?

 

- An enemy will always be your enemy, you cant ally with a bandit or Forsworn for example despite how evil or how rich you are to bribe them, they will always attack you on sight. 'Yup, lets chase down the DRAGONBORN for the sake of our reputation and because he isn't our friend, im going to risk loosing my life to kill someone who just wants to use the path to get to the next city and im not really bothered if my spouse is a widow' (why don't these types of npcs ever have families or detailed routines?)

 

- NPC's schedules and routines also seem extremely dumbed down to make characters easier to locate im guessing, i loved following (or stalking) a citizen of Cyrodiil around to see what they got up to in their daily lifes. However in Skyrim its the same boring trip everyday they don't go shopping for food and for supplies something i expected to see in a next-gen game and many of them stay in the same location all their lifes despite many of them talking about visiting family in other cities! A lot of NPCs don't even move from their spot or run a routine at all! I've witnessed house carl's just stand their all day doing nothing, why don't they guard the Jarl (who could even walk around OUTSIDE wow imagine that,) or eat and sleep like any other person would need to do.

 

- Skyrim is a lot more immersion breaking than Oblivion as well, walking down a street in a city and you are usually chatted too by every NPC in the town. Why is the game catered towards the player? I should be PART of the game world not just a player who needs to be told about quests by some passer by who gives me their entire life story and problems, let me investigate by myself!

 

- Why can't we kill a house owner, steal the deeds to their house, hide the body then get a free house? The game isn't clever enough to deal with these sort of ideas, each NPC should have items where you could potentially take ownership of property, blackmail or extort them to get ahead quicker or even use your WEALTH to corrupt people and influence the game world?

 

 

These are the sort of features and details i would have expected to see from arguably the best RPG sandbox game out there and the follow up game to Oblivion, but the game seemed to be more focused on adding more stuff rather than clever AI and releasing DLC to add even more stuff to increase the profit margin! -_-

 

Any thoughts on your expectations with Skyrim and if the game met your expectations?

Edited December 27, 2012 by GoodfellowGoodspring

[Alithinos]

Yeah,Skyrim has been dumbed down in regards to Oblivion my friend,but this is old news. I know you would just want to tell it,but believe me we have discussed about this a lot.

But to offer to your thread,I'll add some of the points I've noticed too,on how some aspects of Skyrim are worse than Oblivion,and even Morrowind.

 

 

1) Combat.

They removed skill from combat and they made it mindless button mashing. All you have to do is just get close to the enemy and spam the attack button until he dies. Perhaps you will bring up the inventory menu a couple of times to drink some potions,and that's it. That's how you beat every single one of the game's enemies,perhaps with the only exception being Dewmer Centurions. While combat mechanics got simpler and stupid-proof,they added new cool ways to fight like dual wielding and OMG KILLCAMZZ. They basically reward the player for doing the most simple and mindless thing. In Oblivion you might only had two options (shield&axe/sword) or (two handed weapon), but you HAD to block if you wanted to survive,and timing was needed. You had to block the right time and attack the right time. It resembled more a real combat,it was far way more realistic. As a concept dual wielding is cool,as are killcams. But the addition of these aren't enough since battles stopped requiring skill and became button mashing fiestas. As things goes I'm grateful they didn't added Quick Time Events. Sounds alien ? The way the series is being "Streamlined" don't be so sure QTEs won't be featured in the next game of the series...

Another thing Oblivion did well regarding to combat was that you died more fast if you were careless,and the enemies also were dying faster. Skyrim just adds more HP to the enemies to make them harder and that's all. And it breaks the immersion when you have to hit so many times a simple unarmored bandit to see him dead. These changes along with the leveling system of Skyrim which is a factor that makes the game loose its challenge after a while,makes combats really boring after a while. Enemy encounters doesn't excite you,you don't feel threatened,you don't get immersed on them. Instead you start feeling like you are making a chore as battles become dull and tedious,and many times I skip battles completely and I only see enemies as a way to level up my skills.

Skyrim improved the combat animations,it also added new combat styles,and cool killcams,but it removed requirement of skill and lost its challenge,thus making combat to be more exciting at the beggining,but it turns to dull and tedious after a while

 

2) Magic.

Here again,what is being added is gimmicks and things for momentarily instant gratification."Cool we now have dual wielding magic,and magic killcams!!" and that's all of it. But now the number of actual spells is way less,destruction magic is underpowered,they removed all goofy and other spells that existed just for the fun of it and didn't affected combat directly (walk on water, nighteye, levitation, etc..),spell making is completely absent,and you can become the Arch-Mage without ever putting points to your Magicka or even using a spell except from 3 scripted moments where you have to.

 

3)Dialogue.

Way less dialogue options. Oblivion had tons of dialogue and the complain was that the player was hearing the same voices again and again. In Skyrim there is barely dialogue other than quest-specific,we once more hear the same voices again and again,and even worse now everybody also says the same things.

 

4)Quest Types.

Way fewer quest types. Skyrim is the extravaganza of fetch quests. It's always "go there and kill him,then come for reward" or "go there and get that,then come for your reward". That makes questing dull and tedious after a while,and along with the facts that there is far less unique items,and that you will never get something that doesn't fit your level,and that the monetary value of most items is way less,you just don't feel motivated after a while to do a quest.Extreme overuse of the "go there and bring me that" cliche. Less gameplay variety on that department.

 

5)NPC A.I. & PERSUASION

NPCs in Skyrim stay in the same spot every day,doing the exact same things. They don't have a dynamic life,they are not programmed to do more than 1-2 things. It starts to feel more like Zelda and less than The Elder Scrolls. Another thing is that because many players didn't like Oblivion's persuasion mini-game Bethesda decided to completely remove the dynamic persuasion system that Oblivion had,so everything that was based in persuasion including charm spells,persuasion quests etc,is absent in Skyrim. You can now "persuade" characters,but it isn't any more dynamic and its just depended on a perk. The instances where you will actually need to persuade a character are actually very few,so you really shouldn't waste a perk point on that perk. For the shake of simplicity a large and important gameplay feature was basically removed,and the available options for roleplaying reduced. One of my character builds in Oblivion was a charismatic bard that everyone liked and talked with good words for him. Now in Skyrim I can't have charisma. People insult me and are bad to me,and they don't recognize what I have done,who am I. Everybody hates me and I can't role-play a similar character again. Such a huge part of the fun was scrapped for the shake of "Streamlining" so all you need to do is press a button once to get a perk on the skills menu.

 

6)ATTRIBUTES

Do I need to say more for that ?

 

7)LEVELED LOOT

OK so I now know what I will find inside a chest each time I open one. Is this supposed to be good ? This killed my interest and motivation to search for chests and go dungeon crawling without having a quest making me do it. It also removed the possible excitements and gratification I would get when I would discover a rare or unique or high leveled item because of pure lack. Well thanks Bethesda for making one more aspect of the game more dull and boring.

 

8)ECONOMY

You know what's bad with Skyrim's economy ? First of all that you get too rich,way too fast.You can buy a house way faster than in past games,and soon there will be absolutely nothing you will want to buy from a shop. The opposite actually happens,and you only ever visit shops to sell your junk,and even worse you can't even sell most of the junk you can carry at a single shop. You have to travel to 2-3 cities to get rid of whatever you are caring and don't want to keep. It makes you feel you can buy the whole and all cities of Tamriel with your money,as you become Bill Gates in just a few months time. There is never any interesting to buy from shops,because the shops are only selling leveled stuff,which is what you find in every single dungeon and fort and bandit all the time. I liked how in Oblivion there where always something way too expensive to buy it in some shops. I remember the shop in Imperial City offering you a unique high leveled enchanted axe for... more than 10000 coins,not only from level 1,but also at a heavier price than Whiterun's house.

 

9)INTERACTION

What's that ? It doesn't exist in Skyrim. You jump and stand inside burning flames without getting flames on yourself or loosing health. You swim freezing waters naked without being a Nord,and you are not affected in any way. Before some patch that added a breath meter,you could even stay as long as you wanted underwater without even being an Argonian. Simple things like that,that could be done in no-time if the developers wanted,but they where never done,broke my immersion very badly to me. It just stopped feeling a believable and a real world.The first time I jumped in a fire and didn't got burned I thought the game was bugged. But other players reported the same thing,and the developers never fixed it. I felt I was in Stupidland.

 

10)NO THOUGHT

In Skyrim you get inside a dungeon and you open a door that had to be opened for centuries. And behind it you find lit candles (who lit them ? Haven't they melt after so many centuries?) and fresh carrots and cabbages. (Haven't they rot after all that time?) Even more immersion breaking stuff...

 

11)LIGHT AND SHADE

Oh... Universal glow,everything is full of light,be it out in the forest during midnight,or in the deepest dungeon. Immersion breaks. Also gameplay dumb down,because now you are not required to use a torch,or a nighteye potion or spell.I wonder why they even added the candlelight spell.They also rendered my Khajit's one and only power useless.

 

12)NO CLASSES

I don't think this needs more explanation.

 

13)Removal of athletics in purpose,so the player can't move as fast as in past games,to make the game's world feel larger,and artificially enlarge the hours of gameplay.

 

14)Removal of acrobatics,mostly for the same reason as the removal of athletics: To make it so the player can't just jump and get to places faster by using shortcuts,so he is forced to go all the way around on foot,so he spends more time walking around,so the hours he played are artificially more. Secondly they removed the acrobatics so the player can't get to high ground and evade battles. No sir,you are not allowed to choose to avoid the battles,we don't care if you are role-playing a pacifist or a coward,or you are just bored of fighting our creatures,you will have to fight them just because we want so!

 

15)Jumping doesn't eat up Stamina any more. Why should they make the game "complicated" and "hard" by having jumping eating up Stamina ? People who want to win without thinking or trying need easier games. The lowest common denominator will get overwhelmed by that. And we want him to feel that he isn't challenged so he will like our game.

 

16)No more jumping while running! I really can't think why they chose to do that.I hate that it limits my freedom of movement. It makes me feel I'm back in the 80's when Super Mario came out and everyone got crazy about it and said it was innovative just because Mario could jump.

 

17)Average dungeon encounters like Falmer and Chaurus harder than Final Boss.

 

18)JOURNAL

The journal.THE f***ing JOURNAL!!! How could they f*** that up ? For starters,for some weird reason you can't read past additions that describe events of the quest you currently have active. Why ? Is there an important reason for that ? This breaks the game some times,as to complete some quests you need to have in mind some info that was available at past addition on the journal that now you can't read. But the additions aren't even good to begin with. They doesn't provide much info and their writing has no imagination. Even worse a TON of quests doesn't even have any explanatory text AT ALL!! (The misc quests). That's a BAD,BAD,BAD,idea! With the frequency you get new misc quests in Skyrim you will soon will have more than 50. Many times you get a new misc quest without even realizing at the time you get it.Misc quests have only a title,and their titles most of the time are so generic they doesn't provide any useful info.So you navigate to the Misc quests list,and you find like 60 different quests,and you read their titles,but you can't remember what each one was about from their titles,so you don't know where you need to go and some times what you have to do in these quests. And that is a motivation killing factor. You know at a point while I was walking through some city,perhaps some NPCs where talking about Aventus Arentino,the kid that wants to summon the Dark Brotherhood,but I never even realized I got a quest for it,in fact I might not even paid attention to that conversation,because at the time some random dudes were talking about it I WAS ALREADY TALKING WITH ANOTHER NPC and I was trying to hear what he was saying to me.So I look at my Misc quests at some point and I see the generic title "Talk to Aventus Arentino". And I'm thinking "Who is this guy ? Where do I need to go to meet him ? Why was I supposed to meet him ?" and I never went to meet him. Because I already had like 20 "important" quests waiting,and over 60 "Misc" quests.And the irony is that all that time I was trying to find the Dark Brotherhood. To find the DB I actually QUIT my game,and searched on GOOGLE for a f***ing walkthrough,only to read the first few lines,so I can know how to start the DB quests. And I never use walkthroughs. I hate walkthroughs. They spoil a game's story and are prove that you are not a good gamer. Skyrim's journal is FUBAR.

 

 

To tell you the truth after finishing the main quest for the first time in Skyrim I got uninterested to keep playing it.Since I killed the world eater,every other problem the people had seemed so irrelevant and pointless. I couldn't any more roleplay many of the characters I wanted to roleplay.I had lost my will to search for rare loot in dungeons.I had become bored of fighting bandits and falmer all the time.I had joined the companions but after the third mission that required me to collect yet another fragment of that axe,I got bored and stopped being interested. After I joined the Bard's College guild and I found out I would never actually play music and instead I would be sent all the time to kill more falmer and more bandits I got bored of that too. The thief guild this time was way much unpleasant to me.I got bored of having to fight my way to the guild all the time,and I didn't liked their attitude and the way they treated me,they had also no rules.And I couldn't find the DB.

So I stopped playing it until many months later. I returned to Skyrim after more than 5 months abstention. But lately I've been given hope. I've been given hope by mods I started seeing coming up that weren't existing back then,and that fix various parts of the game. I thought that Skyrim was FUBAR,that it couldn't be fixed.

But after the usual texture and nude mods flood,the ones who deal with actual gameplay and immersion issues started to come up. I now started playing some more Skyrim,with the addition of many mods,and the DLC. Unfortunately Bethesda seems to walk more and more to the simplification of its game series,and I'm afraid about the future,what the series will become. I hope I'm wrong with this,I really wish it,but I foresee TES becoming more like a mix between the latest Zelda and Final Fantasy games.Not that they are bad series,but they are way simpler games. So what's next ? Long cutscenes and heavily scripted events ? QTE battles ? "Press X button to finish game" ? Thankfully,as long there is the modding community,for which Nexus plays a huge role,there is hope.

Edited December 27, 2012 by Alithinos

[daventry]

The other day i was holding the Oblivion 15 Anniversary PC Box in my hand $10 worth in the the Shop where i came so close in buying it, so i just put it back in thinking it might not be compatible with Windows 7 and among other reasons.

 

I remember years ago how much fun i had with that Game and i still have better memories from that Game then this stale Skyrim game.

[luzburg]

I hate walkthroughs. They spoil a game's story and are prove that you are not a good gamer.

 

While I agree with all but a few of the things you said, you just made yourself look like an elitist with that particular comment.

 

I don't get this idea that the Oblivion and Morrowind combat systens were somehow more tactical than Skyrim. Morrowinds combat was infinitely worse for button mashing with its broken dice system. You couldn't even use your shield if you wanted to.

I think jumping was abused to cheapen the earlier games and removing it makes things a little harder.

 

Play Dark Souls if you want a thrilling combat system. Play Skyrim if you want to run around having fun.

[Alithinos]

I hate walkthroughs. They spoil a game's story and are prove that you are not a good gamer.

 

While I agree with all but a few of the things you said, you just made yourself look like an elitist with that particular comment.

 

I don't get this idea that the Oblivion and Morrowind combat systens were somehow more tactical than Skyrim. Morrowinds combat was infinitely worse for button mashing with its broken dice system. You couldn't even use your shield if you wanted to.

I think jumping was abused to cheapen the earlier games and removing it makes things a little harder.

 

Play Dark Souls if you want a thrilling combat system. Play Skyrim if you want to run around having fun.

Elitist ? Why elitist ? I just think that reading out what to do in a game is like cheating in an exam. I play a game to have some challenge,and I look to get success and feel nice of my accomplishments! :turned:

If I cheat,it won't be my victory,I won't have earned it. And I don't like spoilers. It's better when you find something yourself,than reading or hearing from others that found it,it feels better.

 

@daventry: It plays fine on Win7! :thumbsup:

[stars2heaven]

Blah blah...it's all been said. It all comes down to opinion. Some of the things the OP mentioned as negatives I consider improvements over morrowind and oblivion. I also happen to think Skyrim is better than Oblivion many times over.

[Saggaris]

Elitist or not... Not a real question, you should not have to revert to a walkthrough to find your way to a quest end... or start... albeit because so much junk is posted in your journal without you knowing, that fact is, though Skyrim has a '15' sticker on it we all know it was designed for and aimed at the 10 year old playbox brigade, you gotta see that we 'the great unwashed' ES fans will buy the game anyway and once Bethesda has the money they don't really care if you get pissed and sell it on or fire it in a cupboard and never play it again, so their main interest is to keep the button mashing preteens happy so they can sell the add-ons and their next chapter of the series, the RPG market has changed and the original gamers don't really matter, Skyrim musta sold over half a billion dollars worth... not bad when you consider that only about a hundred guys worked on it!, the poor thing about those stats is if I were to make a game to generate $1/2 billion I would have five times as many guys working on it so it didn't turn up based on a 5 year old platform, and I would have a little more respect for the end user... ie: I would have a hundred or so guys play testing every aspect of the game constantly so I didn't get situations where that woman at the forge would ask if you've met her father every single time you used the forge, and while we're at the forge "stop leaning against the fikkin shop post and make the Imperial fikkiin swords woman" and why can't the player make them when he asks about 'do you need help at the forge"

there are claims of 62000 lines of dialog in Skyrim and I feel that 61950 are used only once and the other 50 are the most annoying lines of dialog in the world and are in use every time the PC walks by anyone.

There are so many annoying things in this game that I despair constantly, I think that the guy signing the cheques liked to have input to the game and the only thing he could think of was... "and it's broken", a designer would say "we could have a high wall here"... and the guy would say... "yeah, and it's broken" "I'll design a carved alter for the main temple"... "yeah, and it's broken"... "the bridge to the city could be here"... "yeah, and it's broken"... FFS can nobody in Skyrim weild a hammer or paint brush, I know it's an old place but work does happen even in old places and things get mended and others get built anew!, why are there no carts loaded with ore and other trade goods travelling the roads, the only reason the use the carriage is for first time 'quick' visits to a town after that you can just quick travel and save a bit of gold for the same time in game... because there's no animation for carts... why the hell not? it's taken modders a lot of work and pain to make the game presentable to 'us' (and the 'us' I refer to is the PC core fan base... the ones who come well down the list of what matters) and I thank them for that, the mods that provide 'alternatives' to the linear game that was offered by Bethesda, it is these things that enable me to play the game and enjoy it... even though bits still rag me

 

So, Thanks you guys!

 

 

 

(as a side note, am I really not allowed to write the word *censored* for a female dog here in the forums?)

[NaaluNaiglemez]

Ranking on unikgamer december 27th, 2012 (http://www.unikgamer.com/):

 

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion # 15

http://www.unikgamer.com/games/the-elder-scrolls-iv-oblivion-24.html

 

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind # 35

http://www.unikgamer.com/games/the-elder-scrolls-iii-morrowind-23.html

 

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim # 52 (not in the top 50)

http://www.unikgamer.com/games/the-elder-scrolls-skyrim-2701.html

[frakle]

I know the game is a year old now but it still frustrates me through playing how good the game could have been but was restricted by Bethesda 'dumbing' down the game series to make it friendly to new players and casual gamers in general.

 

The game is more linear due to quest lines being a straight line with often no swinging from the coding and is less detailed in general in regards to gameplay and options. I understand that mods improve the game to fix these annoyances but for me, Skyrim should have gone further with the Elder Scroll Series adding more detail instead of just making everything look pretty and pleasing the masses.

 

The game missed the little things which modders usually have to add afterwards to make the game special, and to be honest, the game was simplified to make the game easier to play and to sell copies to those players who complete the game then sell it and not to those players who still play it years after release!

 

There wasn't a whole lot of difference in the linearity of quests between Skyrim and Oblivion, yes there were some differences that did simplify the character leveling process (which I can't say I'm incredibly happy about), but the combat and just about everything else is an improvement honestly.

 

 

- More choices with consequences with quests is needed. Quests seem more linear then on Oblivion and don't allow the player to follow quests how they or their character wants, more detail is needed from a sandbox game made in 2011. For example in the 'The Forsworn Conspiracy' quest you are firstly FORCED into starting it by being handed a letter, what if i had no interest in accepting the letter? its not like a NPC could force an item into my inventory. Then you have the 'choice' of either unraveling the truth about the Forsworn or just leaving the quest alone. Why can't we inform the guards about Eltrys' (the quest giver) actions? Why can't we side with the 'bad guys' and become an ally and informant of the Silver-Bloods? Further more, why can't we join the Thalmor or destroy entire factions like the companions?

 

I don't remember any quests being so any more linear than Skyrim's quests, unless you mean the hideous amount of walking/fast traveling you had to do as non-linear.

 

- Too many scripted conversations and introductions, yeah great, its nice to enter a city or building for the first time and have a summary of whats been going on and what problems the characters are having but it takes away the sandbox feel and forces the player to become involved in something they might not want to become involved in.

 

This is true, to some degree. However it's still your choice whether you want to actually do anything about it, and Oblivion thrust quests in your face as well (Go to Anvil, and the dialogue for the woman-thief gang quest will pop up in maybe the 2nd person you talk to. And then instead of talking about mudcrabs they'll talk about woman-thieves.)

 

- A lot more essential and protected NPCs, this was a huge game breaker for me. I don't particularly want to massacre an entire town but i should have the option too, its not even like the main quest line and faction NPCs are the only ones protected, its those from small quest lines as well and these characters aren't even important. We should have been at least given an setings option or made the essential NPCs protected instead, with a message popup so we knew what quest we would be loosing upon their murder.

 

Seriously, this was a major problem in Oblivion as well. The Counts and such (except for 1) were all essential. Sure there were a couple of NPCs you could kill that were involved in quests, but not a whole lot.

 

- The interiors of Skyrim seem a lot more open and public, trespassing only exists in small residences. I can walk around in the Jarl of Solitude (and potentially the High-Queen's) bedroom without having to seek permission, a certain rank or reputation or pick lock! Why are these doors not closed like in the castles of Oblivion?

 

I don't know what you're on about here. I've walked around the Jarl of whiterun's assistant's bedroom, a little kid walked in and called the guards in. I broke out of jail, went to the Jarl's bedroom, and then the Jarl woke up after a little kid (again) called the guards on me. Point is, a lot of places are still private, maybe some aren't, but there are guards who will warn you from going in there.

 

- An enemy will always be your enemy, you cant ally with a bandit or Forsworn for example despite how evil or how rich you are to bribe them, they will always attack you on sight. 'Yup, lets chase down the DRAGONBORN for the sake of our reputation and because he isn't our friend, im going to risk loosing my life to kill someone who just wants to use the path to get to the next city and im not really bothered if my spouse is a widow' (why don't these types of npcs ever have families or detailed routines?)

 

This was the EXACT SAME!! in Oblivion. Bandits would always attack the Champion of Cyrodiil, Hero of Kvatch, Arch mage etc. Also the reason they don't have families is well 1. they're just going to attack you and die, plus who says the little bandit groups aren't families? Plus they can't have bandit children or the media would label it a "Child murder simulator" and force it to become AO rated, which would tbag the sales, hard. (which is a fault of the media, not the creators of the game) 2. You don't want to feel anything when you slice apart that bandit, do you? If said bandit had a family, maybe a little kid, who watched you butcher their daddy, most of us might feel a small tug at the heart strings. You most likely don't want to feel guilt for killing bandits.

 

 

- NPC's schedules and routines also seem extremely dumbed down to make characters easier to locate im guessing, i loved following (or stalking) a citizen of Cyrodiil around to see what they got up to in their daily lifes. However in Skyrim its the same boring trip everyday they don't go shopping for food and for supplies something i expected to see in a next-gen game and many of them stay in the same location all their lifes despite many of them talking about visiting family in other cities! A lot of NPCs don't even move from their spot or run a routine at all! I've witnessed house carl's just stand their all day doing nothing, why don't they guard the Jarl (who could even walk around OUTSIDE wow imagine that,) or eat and sleep like any other person would need to do.

 

Most NPCs have jobs now, chopping wood, running a store, picking flowers etc. In Oblivion.. they walked around the city. How did they get any money to do anything? Is everyone on welfare? Wtf is going on? House carls are guarding the Jarl who is sitting in a chair.. next to them. If you're talking about the housecarl you get as a Thane, they aren't assigned to the Jarl, they're assigned to YOU. Also, when Lydia is not currently in use and you don't have Breezehome, she'll sit at the chairs in Dragonsreach, talk to people and eat.

 

 

- Skyrim is a lot more immersion breaking than Oblivion as well, walking down a street in a city and you are usually chatted too by every NPC in the town. Why is the game catered towards the player? I should be PART of the game world not just a player who needs to be told about quests by some passer by who gives me their entire life story and problems, let me investigate by myself!

 

Oblivion did the same thing, walk down a street, "Hello friend!" "Hey there!" "Oh, it's you." "I have mudcrab!" "Did you hear about Jebus the adventurer who went to Ballsack Cave hunting for the Woman thief gang in Anvil?" and so on. You were bombarded by NPCs trying to talk to you. Skyrim doesn't do this as much. Although it still does it to a degree.

 

- Why can't we kill a house owner, steal the deeds to their house, hide the body then get a free house? The game isn't clever enough to deal with these sort of ideas, each NPC should have items where you could potentially take ownership of property, blackmail or extort them to get ahead quicker or even use your WEALTH to corrupt people and influence the game world?

 

Err.. what? This wasn't even in Oblivion.. at all.

 

These are the sort of features and details i would have expected to see from arguably the best RPG sandbox game out there and the follow up game to Oblivion, but the game seemed to be more focused on adding more stuff rather than clever AI and releasing DLC to add even more stuff to increase the profit margin! -_-

 

Any thoughts on your expectations with Skyrim and if the game met your expectations?

 

It added a lot of stuff, and it made a lot of stuff better. Sure it's not the Best Game Ever with no flaws whatsoever, but it's still a great game, and I (and many, many others) enjoy it a lot.

Edited December 27, 2012 by frakle

[Slyjoker87]

Honestly, a lot of this post is why I quit playing skyrim about a month after release. The game just felt so dead to me. Yet, here I am trying to see if it is worth coming back to, and it sadly looks as if these issues have not been addressed.

 

Honestly, Skyrim has been the biggest letdown in a long time.