The Best Moments Can't be Scripted

[fraquar]

Meh, I look in the distance in the Whiterun plains and I see a stray dog fighting off a pack of wolves (Skytest Animals and Predators). I run across the prairie, join in the fray and help the poor mutt fight them off. Burned up all my potions and was down to a sliver of life left and the damn stray dog turned on me and killed me.

 

Talk about your classic WTF? moment........

 

So much for man's best friend, now every time that character sees a stray dog he's turning them into kagogi.

[gsmanners]

No offense intended, Sir, but it seems you prefer the "novel" approach. Someone else writes the story, you "beat the game" and then sit back and enjoy the ending. I've done that (fireworks at the end of "Curse of the Azure Bonds", anyone?), but now prefer the "roleplaying" approach. Give me a detailed, complex, graphically beautiful imaginary world and I'll write the story myself. I know I'm a minority, since I couldn't care less about dragons and the Dovahkacallit. The beauty of Skyrim and the reason Bethesda has made so money from it, is that it can accomodate a wide variety of approaches. If ProjektRed actually produces a sandbox version of The Witcher, I'll try that too. Certainly, the first two iterations didn't appeal to me.

 

I mostly agree. It's great fun, but the Best Moment? I don't think so. The Best Moments take a very long time to accomplish, a lot of planning and heroic effort. It's that sort of thing that makes the role-playing have purpose, without which the whole game just feels empty and bleak. Fill the world all you like, but inspired writing gives you the absolute best possible moments. When you've earned those moments with your best playing is like no other feeling in the world of video games.

[jet4571]

Adding a good main quest or side quests is one thing but the reason sandbox games in general feel so lifeless and boring is because developers dont spend enough time setting up more random events. Enemies will always be in the same locations, or randomly in the same spots. wild animals all spawn in the same exact locations, there are not enough completly random encounters like the traveling bard, maig, the farmer couple who lost a home, and maybe 3 others. if they used the tools they have then they could have made every predator a fully random event by using patrol routes that are a loop and criss cross other patrol routes. Right now walking along a road you know just over the next hill will be a bear, so draw your weapon and be ready to kill it. What would happen if that spot was a crossing point for 5-6 patrol routes of both predators, bandits, and some traveling NPC's? you might pass it 100 times and not see something there then you could get there and everything on those patrol routes happen to be there at the same time.

 

The best things happen once only and cannot be repeated, they make the stories you can tell in "NO SPOILERS" sections. the main story? Nah everyone gets to see it so its nothing special even if it brings out emotions.