How can anybody srsly play as a Vampire Hunter?

[pheo3309]

I forget the order of events, as it's been a while. I forget if Serana settles in before or after the first official "vampire check". But I don't remember the check being handled with any sort of meaningful transition. Just, at some point, everyone in the Dawnguard suddenly becomes aware you're a vampire, and Isran refuses to continue the quest until you cure yourself.

I wonder about that actually. I never noticed it either. It's just like out of know where, bam! "You're a vampire! BLAH BLAHBLAH!" ._. I have Better Vampires... There should be more of a check. D:

[sisterof]

I guess it's actually an on-going theme in Skyrim plots. Don't want to sacrifice your eternal soul to a Daedric Prince for the good of a certain guild? Quest limbo. Not keen on being a werewolf? Quest limbo. Personal sacrifice loses a lot of narrative power in those situations. The plot railroad, which I generally have nothing against, suddenly becomes uncomfortably obvious.

Thank you for the inner lulz. "Quest limbo." :D Shall adopt that term.

 

Skyrim is very undeserving of the term "RPG" when it comes to quests. Of course you can choose to follow a quest or not (you can't choose not to have them cluttering your journal, though). But there are no multiple ways to finish anything (at least that my sleepy mind can recall). It always comes down to kill the boss in one way or another. Letting Serana walk with an Elder Scroll and then tag along pushed the limits of my suspension of disbelief - it went so against the character I was playing. And yeah, you're quite right about the "if you don't want to give me choices, then don't write a situation when a choice is so evidently needed".

 

Actually, I was unaware one could become a vampire without Dawnguard. Shame on me. I thought it was like with the Companions/werewolves, as no character of mine ever got infected.

 

I have a tendency to play out something that offers no choice and, once the quest is done, just change the story in my mind to whatever path I found more convenient. Forge headcanon. Nod sagely at yourself. Keep playing.

[MightyZ0G]

Head Canon beats Quest Limbo

 

the companions' quest could have been so much better if instead of having to become a werewolf, you could talk to Farkas, Vilkas and Kodlak and skip to curing them, maybe having a split in the companions and a fight against Skjor and Aela.

 

this could also lead to a truce with the Silver Hand

[MarchinBunny]

Here is my 2 cents. The game is how it is, and that is that. You either work around it, and if you can't, then why are you playing the game?

 

I do understand where some of you are coming from, however, I think it's ridiculous how much you all complain about it.

 

The Elder Scrolls is a roleplaying game that gives you a setting, a story, character development and tons of lore. You have to follow it. This isn't a table top roleplaying game, where you have no limits. You are still limited to the story that Bethesda gives you, and you really should know this by now.

[ClockworkBard]

Brabbit1987, on 25 Apr 2013 - 20:58, said:

Here is my 2 cents. The game is how it is, and that is that. You either work around it, and if you can't, then why are you playing the game?

 

I do understand where some of you are coming from, however, I think it's ridiculous how much you all complain about it.

 

The Elder Scrolls is a roleplaying game that gives you a setting, a story, character development and tons of lore. You have to follow it. This isn't a table top roleplaying game, where you have no limits. You are still limited to the story that Bethesda gives you, and you really should know this by now.

Yup, the game is how it is. To disprove such a tautology would rip a hole in the very fabric of space and time. We of Internet fandom only think we possess such armchair god-powers, when really we are only endowed with an uncanny ability to analogize anything and everything to Hitler.

 

Sorry, silliness aside...

 

Aye, the thread devolved into a bit of a whine. Sorry, my bad; I started that. I kind of broadened the scope of the discussion. But in my defense, I did so to try and snipe at a more root cause. I get something of a nerdgasm from analyzing game mechanics and how players react to them. Though perhaps I didn't shape it as such, because: Internet. It's easy to get caught up in the mood of the thread.

 

My theory, as of the moment, is as such: It's less about a lack of options and more about storytelling (not necessarily just through writing, but the presentation of the narrative as a whole), at least as far as I see it. More specifically, it's a matter of "invisible walls". A game cannot exist without limitations. Every line of code is, by its nature, a limitation. Even something as free-form as Lego blocks are defined by the rules imposed on any given block. Our imagination is inspired by these limitations, which is why I imagine so few tabletop RPGs come without settings and we tend to be so drawn to established lore.

 

The problem comes when the rules of the game, or the rules we infer from a combination of game rules and the knowledge the player brings to them, don't function as we're lead to believe. A street alleyway that ends in a dead-end is a concept we inherently grasp. Unless we're playing Spiderman or something, we accept without much questioning that this is the end of the road. Even something as easily climbed as a chain-link fence is generally accepted, if fence climbing has never been introduced as a mechanic. But an alleyway that looks like it leads to another street, but suddenly blocks your path with an invisible wall, is a jarring and frustrating experience.

 

Skyrim dances precariously on that line some of the time. A lot of it is through storytelling, which is harder to nail down as right or wrong, because it is as much influenced by the game's inconsistencies as it is what the player brings to the table. Sure, you see your share of posts wanting to do anything and everything. The free-form nature of the game can easily cause the slippery slope of players inferring anything should be possible. However, some specific issues are far more common than others. There are trends.

 

Just as a tiny but frequently mentioned example: children. Is it a problem that children are immortal? Some will say yes, but most are simply frustrated at the way some children are presented. They will taunt and talk down to heavily armed warriors with fire spouting from his fingers. Is charring the virgin flesh from their tiny bones a reasonable reaction to this? Our society tends to institutionalize people who answer "yes" to that question. But beyond the occasional quest and pilfering their poverty-stricken pockets, the game offers no real interaction with them. They're mechanically about as static as a tree; at least a tree sometimes has mushrooms to harvest. And we'd pay about as much attention to them as we do trees, if all they did was wander the background and engage you in the occasional game of tag. Players are fairly reactionary like that in nature. The moment we're provoked, we start analyzing our mechanical options. When we find none, well...

 

In Skyrim, immolation solves about 99% of our problems, and thus child killing mods are born. True story.

Edited April 26, 2013 by ClockworkBard

[MarchinBunny]

 

Brabbit1987, on 25 Apr 2013 - 20:58, said:

Here is my 2 cents. The game is how it is, and that is that. You either work around it, and if you can't, then why are you playing the game?

 

I do understand where some of you are coming from, however, I think it's ridiculous how much you all complain about it.

 

The Elder Scrolls is a roleplaying game that gives you a setting, a story, character development and tons of lore. You have to follow it. This isn't a table top roleplaying game, where you have no limits. You are still limited to the story that Bethesda gives you, and you really should know this by now.

Yup, the game is how it is. To disprove such a tautology would rip a hole in the very fabric of space and time. We of Internet fandom only think we possess such armchair god-powers, when really we are only endowed with an uncanny ability to analogize anything and everything to Hitler.

 

Sorry, silliness aside...

 

Aye, the thread devolved into a bit of a whine. Sorry, my bad; I started that. I kind of broadened the scope of the discussion. But in my defense, I did so to try and snipe at a more root cause. I get something of a nerdgasm from analyzing game mechanics and how players react to them. Though perhaps I didn't shape it as such, because: Internet. It's easy to get caught up in the mood of the thread.

 

My theory, as of the moment, is as such: It's less about a lack of options and more about storytelling (not necessarily just through writing, but the presentation of the narrative as a whole), at least as far as I see it. More specifically, it's a matter of "invisible walls". A game cannot exist without limitations. Every line of code is, by its nature, a limitation. Even something as free-form as Lego blocks are defined by the rules imposed on any given block. Our imagination is inspired by these limitations, which is why I imagine so few tabletop RPGs come without settings and we tend to be so drawn to established lore.

 

The problem comes when the rules of the game, or the rules we infer from a combination of game rules and the knowledge the player brings to them, don't function as we're lead to believe. A street alleyway that ends in a dead-end is a concept we inherently grasp. Unless we're playing Spiderman or something, we accept without much questioning that this is the end of the road. Even something as easily climbed as a chain-link fence is generally accepted, if fence climbing has never been introduced as a mechanic. But an alleyway that looks like it leads to another street, but suddenly blocks your path with an invisible wall, is a jarring and frustrating experience.

 

Skyrim dances precariously on that line some of the time. A lot of it is through storytelling, which is harder to nail down as right or wrong, because it is as much influenced by the game's inconsistencies as it is what the player brings to the table. Sure, you see your share of posts wanting to do anything and everything. The free-form nature of the game can easily cause the slippery slope of players inferring anything should be possible. However, some specific issues are far more common than others. There are trends.

 

Just as a tiny but frequently mentioned example: children. Is it a problem that children are immortal? Some will say yes, but most are simply frustrated at the way some children are presented. They will taunt and talk down to heavily armed warriors with fire spouting from his fingers. Is charring the virgin flesh from their tiny bones a reasonable reaction to this? Our society tends to institutionalize people who answer "yes" to that question. But beyond the occasional quest and pilfering their poverty-stricken pockets, the game offers no real interaction with them. They're mechanically about as static as a tree; at least a tree sometimes has mushrooms to harvest. And we'd pay about as much attention to them as we do trees, if all they did was wander the background and engage you in the occasional game of tag. Players are fairly reactionary like that in nature. The moment we're provoked, we start analyzing our mechanical options. When we find none, well...

 

In Skyrim, immolation solves about 99% of our problems, and thus child killing mods are born. True story.

 

I know what you mean. I completely, entirely, understand. However, creating a world where a player has so many choices becomes really hard to develop. For every choice you add to the game, you end up needing to add more. Then you end up needing to add more after that. Also sometimes, while a choice may seem so obvious to some, it may not be all that obvious to others.

 

It really is impossible to create a world where every choice will be available, unless the content was created on the spot, which is currently not feasible right now with todays technology.

 

Once you are aware of this, you just kind of learn to shrug these type of things off, or you change it yourself to suit your needs. AKA mods. If a mod isn't available, you either make it, or you simply wait for it. Trust me, if you have an issue with something in the game, you are probably not the only one. There is probably someone working on a mod for it as we speak.

 

Skyrim should coin the sentence, "There is a mod for that", cause it's seriously just like cell phone apps XD.

[MightyZ0G]

the annoying thing is that some of the choices seem to have been thought out then abandoned (destroying the thieves guild in riften) while others seem obvious yet weren't included (siding with the Silver Hand against the werewolves).

 

that said, that doesn't mean that I'm unhappy or unsatisfied with Skyrim.

it's just that instead of being a great game, it could have been an even better game if 1 or 2 things had been thought out a little more

[Cipherthe3vil]

It really is impossible to create a world where every choice will be available, unless the content was created on the spot, which is currently not feasible right now with todays technology.

 

Except that Skyrim has so much lacking. Such as all the linear dungeons, and how often you only get one dialogue or one option in general in how to proceed. RPG's should have more great trees of possibilities of you ask me. Or at least a little shrubbery.

A rather major aspect to this is how strongly you're forced into the vampires in Dawnguard. There is just no way around it. You HAVE to escort missyvampire to the castle of vampires, stare at all the vampires, then walk away saying "Well, you be good now with that Elder Scroll, later". It seems obvious that the game is pushing you to be a vampire. Meanwhile what do you get for sticking to the Dawnguard? Mm, well, you get a rather disappointing armored troll you can bring along to your little dinner parties.

 

 

that said, that doesn't mean that I'm unhappy or unsatisfied with Skyrim.

it's just that instead of being a great game, it could have been an even better game if 1 or 2 things had been thought out a little more

 

^

[TheObstinateNoviceSmith]

 

So I did something very usual: I played it as it was, but in my head it happen differently (doesn't that sound a wee bit insane? alas!).

 

 

LOL, I am insane with ya sister! I do this quite a bit playing Skyrim and while I don't expect any company to come with every scenario, I definitely believe that, while I like Dawnguard overall, it would not have been hard or a stretch to figure out a way to have you joint he vampires WITHOUT joining the Dawnguard or figuring out a way to include killing Serana as an option.

[MidbossVyers]

Well, let me put it this way. Even Abraham Lincoln had a vampire ally.