Editorial Skyrim - Why It Might Not Be Worth Your Time

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: Bethesda Softworks; Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

<p>Have you ever wondered whether <strong>The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim</strong> might be worth your time or not? <a href="http://kombo.com/articles/Why_The_Elder_Scrolls_V:_Skyrim_Might_Not_Be_Worth_Your_Time/" target="_blank">Read this article</a> to learn that Morrowind was better than Oblivion.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sure, there are dissenters. The proud few who played <em>Morrowind</em>, the <em>Elder Scrolls</em> game that preceded <em>Oblivion</em>, and actually liked the older game more. For those few, there is no question of which is the better game. It's glaringly obvious. And since I am one of them, I'm going to explain to you now why <em>Morrowind</em> is better than <em>Oblivion</em>, and why <em>Skyrim</em> probably won't be worth your time.</p>
<p>Even before you start comparing it to its predecessor, you've got to realize that <em>Oblivion</em> comes with some seriously fatal flaws. Most glaring is the leveling system: when you're level one, every enemy in the game is level one as well. When you're level 20, enemies are level 20, and so on. Furthermore, it's impossible to find powerful weapons and armor until you reach a high enough level, no matter how hard you search, and once you do reach that level, half the enemies you encounter will be outfitted in the best equipment available.</p>
<p>In <em>Oblivion</em>, you will never be more or less powerful than the world around you. It doesn't leave you feeling very special.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But you are special. Very special. Why a comparison between The Elder Scrolls III and IV should have any meaning for V is up to anyone's guess.</p>
<p>Spotted at: <a href="http://www.rpgwatch.com/?rwsiteid=1#16355">RPGWatch</a></p>

 

[Andyman Messiah]

V is two more than III and one more than IV therefore it will be better. What are you talking about? I've already got my preorder preordered.

 

[waywardOne]

he's just setting his expectations so low that he will praise V when it only marginally exceeds them.

 

[SimpleComplexity]

It's gonna take another 5 years after Skyrim gets released before "game journalists" start calling it a piece of shit.

 

[Angthoron]

Until then, they'll rim it to the sky

 

[Azrael the cat]

Until then, they'll rim it to the sky

Oh dead god, I hadn't even realised it lent itself to that phrase yet. Damn it, this is going to be as bad as 'popamole'.

 

[Freelance Henchman]

I'd like to claim the invention of the expression "skyrim-job" to mean something or other. You heard it here first!

 

[Angthoron]

I'm sure Racofer could chart a sky rimming, but I'll settle for VoD using the witty chatchphrase for newsposts.

 

[Twinfalls]

Shut up, twerps.

More worthwhile than the article is this fine comment from the RPGwatch thread:

I take issue with the criticism that Oblivion and possibly Skyrim will be inferior to Morrowind because of a "generic quasi-medieval setting". The material culture and geography are second to how Bethesda will use the history, religion and politics of the province to make you experience that province's immaterial culture.

For example, in Oblivion existing lore for Cyrodiil was underused, we read about a rivalry between the people of the Nibenay Valley and the people of the Colovian Highlands but experience nothing like that in the game.

It were the many join-able factions of Morrowind that made you experience life in Vvardenfell from different points of view. These were missing from Oblivion. There was no police-like faction (Imperial Legion in MW), no religious factions (like Imperial Cult and Dunmer Temple, this was somewhat alleviated with Knights of the Nine) and no cultural factions (like Hlaalu, Redoran and Telvanni). These factions contributed to understanding Vvardenfell and I don't think it was impossible for Oblivion. They, for whatever reason, decided not to go that way. I'm saying that even with a medieval setting a lot can be done to make the province come alive in an immaterial cultural sense (and with that I DON'T mean Radiant-AI).

I do agree that they played it safe with Oblivion. They avoided anything that could cause results that could be interpreted as a bug (see the next paragraph). Factions that were in MW had quest-lines that intertwined. For example the empire sanctioned Thieves Guild and the Imperial Legion both were in conflict with the unjoinable Camona Tong (Local crime syndicate) which itself controlled the higher echelons of the Fighters Guild. Depending on which path one took, completing for instance a certain quest-line in the Fighters Guild could later halt progress in the Thieves Guild. Personally, I had no issue with this, on a next play-through I'd simply follow a different path. However, some players experienced this as a bug, while it actually was a consequence to a decision of a player.

During development of Oblivion some of the Devs said they wanted to avoid that players felt they “lost control”. Result was the implementation of surgically clean guild quests (Fighters Guild vs Blackwood Company and Mages Guild vs Necromancers) where it was made sure NPCs weren't shared between quest-lines of the various guilds. Another thing the devs wanted was that on a play-through the player could join all factions. In Morrowind you would need several play-troughs to experience each guild. This “feeling of losing control” has also been seen recently in New Vegas where being unable to continue a quest as result of players choices were thrown on the bug pile by those players. (i.e. not every uncompletable quest is the result of a bug). Lack of hand-holding is nowadays considered to be a bug. In Oblivion another result of removing the feeling of “losing control” was the implementation of Essential NPCs. If in Morrowind you killed an quest-related NPC you couldn't finish a later quest that also used that NPC, you needed to reload or give up finishing the quest-line and do better in the next play-through.

Concluding, it is not so interesting to me if the material culture and geography in the game is based on an LSD/Mushroom trip. It is far more interesting if the developer lets you experience the history, religion and politics of a province through interacting with it's factions and peoples. To get a great experience, the material culture and geography don't have to be strange, weird, alien or peculiar but Bethesda needs to create an experience of the immaterial culture of whatever province they set a game in. After Morrowind, I knew Vvardenfell because I experienced it from different cultural, religious and political points of view. After Oblivion I didn't know Cyrodiil, it felt vanilla not because it had no giant mushrooms but because by the end I didn't get to know how society intertwined in Cyrodiil Depending on the effort Bethesda went through with Skyrim, it could go either way. Point is the material culture is the least of my worries.

Sidebar: As long as the Elder Scrolls are made for consoles some of the things I like about Morrowind will never return (wiki-style dialogue) but I hope they can overcome the limitations of modern technology such as Full Voice-Over and still deliver a province rich with cultural and political factions interacting.

Ever since I had the pleasure of playing Morrowind, I've decided to buy all RPGs BGS makes since then. There will be disappointments but I don't want to become jaded. Despite the swing to the consoles I hope they have used their experience with Oblivion and Fallout 3 as a foundation they feel comfortable with and build upon that to bring some great things of Morrowind to Skyrim (like more factions and a detailed back-story of the province, not referring to giant mushrooms here).

 

[Angthoron]

snip

Sounds like the poster of that quote is high on giant mushrooms. All that talk of the "devs wanting to avoid the feeling of lost control" and yet the end of the game is basically a schoolbook case of "lost control" - a very nice contradiction within the poster's own post already.

Culture-wise, we can see what Bethesda did with lore-rich settings of TES and Fallout already; we can see the sales they made from these, and we can see the DLCs that were made and sold. I don't think it's the devs that need to learn their lesson - it's the players that have to do it. Buying shit funds making of more shit, and hoping shit will get better the more of it you buy is delusional.

 

[commie]

I'd like to claim the invention of the expression "skyrim-job" to mean something or other. You heard it here first!

You're late....

Posted Dec 15

SKYRIM? MOAR LIKE RIMJOB AMIRITE? LOLOLOLOOL

 

[Vibalist]

snip

Nice post, and I agree completely. One of my gripes with Oblivion, perhaps my biggest one, was how different quild quests never overlapped. Being grandmaster of both The Dark Brotherhood and The Fighters Guild with the same character felt so silly.
There should be consequences to doing something like joining a guild of assassins like The Brotherhood, and one of them should of course be that the "good" guilds like The Fighters Guild should be off limits and vice versa.

 

[Freelance Henchman]

I very much doubt Bethesda will go back to "one character can not do everything in the game at once".

 

[Luzur]

I very much doubt Bethesda will go back to "one character can not do everything in the game at once".

exactly, console players must have their achievement quotas filled, ya know, and they will not feel the same rush if they are not able to join every guild on the planet and go GM in them all.

 

[SolipsisticUrge]

I can't recall when or where, but I read some interview with a Bethesda high-up (Hines or Howard, I'm sure) which says that they had "grown past" (paraphrasing there) locking off game content based on player actions within said game.

I don't expect to see its return in Skyrim. Why labor over higher interactivity and reaction to player choice when you can lay out a straight path with no deviation (excluding order of selection, i.e. "SO MUCH CHOICE I GETS TO DO FIGHTER GUILD OR MAGE GUILD FIRST I PICK!!!") and subsequently have the horrendous game praised lavishly, pocket the millions in sales and go on to repeat the abortion a few years down the line?

I do generally concur with the article (both on Morrowind's superiority, and some of the reasons for it, and the fact that a fairly straight medieval setting can still, if executed properly, be interesting in and of itself while leading to an interesting background for the game as a whole).

 

[Mastermind]

Morrowind makes you feel special at every possible opportunity, asking only that you put some work into it.

Work = know where something is and take it.

 

[Vibalist]

exactly, console players must have their achievement quotas filled, ya know,

Why do people even care about getting these abitrary and pointless achievements? They don't do anything for chrissakes. To this day I still don't get this.

I can't recall when or where, but I read some interview with a Bethesda high-up (Hines or Howard, I'm sure) which says that they had "grown past" (paraphrasing there) locking off game content based on player actions within said game.

Wierd, considering FO:NV is pretty heavy on C&C as far as I understand it. And weren't there also instances in FO3 where certain actions would lock out certain content, such as blowing up Megaton?

 

[SolipsisticUrge]

Why do people even care about getting these abitrary and pointless achievements? They don't do anything for chrissakes. To this day I still don't get this.

So their digital friends can see how much they own everything and are the baddest gaming motherfucker on the planet, of course. Same reason overly simple, effortless waves of crap combat trump well-designed tactical and difficult encounters - assuage the ego enough and the common man will line up to buy it. Gaming as wish fulfillment rather than challenge.

Wierd, considering FO:NV is pretty heavy on C&C as far as I understand it. And weren't there also instances in FO3 where certain actions would lock out certain content, such as blowing up Megaton?

New Vegas definitely so, and there was some in FO3. This is a half-remembered quote from ages ago so perhaps I've misdirected it over time, but I do believe it was Hines (their design and his answers to same changing from game to game surprises me little if I am correct). But in the case of FO3, if I recall you can still get all official achievement-granting quests from Megaton after nuking it (the one crazy annoying vendor bitch survives and still wants her shitty wasteland guide written two hundred years too late) so the impact of the decision in the Bethesda-produced game is minimal, and in terms of New Vegas, I think they were willing to grant an outside developer more leeway since all "failures" would be ascribed to Obsidian, and the foaming-at-the-mouth fans would forgive any slight once the "real" sequel, Fallout 4, produced by Bethesda, came back to "fix" all the "problems."

 

[Drakron]

Actually Megaton is typical Bethesda, its one of the few quests that have a optional patch leading to different rewards and its early in the game to be noticed by reviewers.

Its like Fargoth's Ring in Morrowind, its just there to mislead reviewers into thinking there are more quests as that one so they dont mention that the game quests are the same type we seen for the last 20 years ... kill, fetch, deliver.

 

[Topher]

I'd agree that there is little to no chance of seeing the Elder Scrolls move back in the direction of Morrowind or Daggerfall ever again. As far as I'm concerned Bethesda started a new series with Oblivion and it's a series that doesn't interest me.

Also, thanks for nice read Twinfalls.

 

[Crooked Bee]

I'd agree that there is little to no chance of seeing the Elder Scrolls move back in the direction of Morrowind or Daggerfall ever again. As far as I'm concerned Bethesda started a new series with Oblivion and it's a series that doesn't interest me.

Well said. Unfortunately, this. :/

 

[JarlFrank]

I like the post Twinfalls quoted. Immersion into a fantasy world, and how deep the world seems, is largely dependent upon inter-faction relations and political events. If everything is static even though shit seems to be happening (demons invade, the different lords are quarreling, there is no emperor so the council rules currently - but none of these things are actually noticable in-game), it becomes bland real quick.

Characters and factions have different motivations and sometimes the same goals, which inevitably leads to conflict. If everyone just lives in peace and concordance with each other, without there being any quest that even hints at inter-faction conflicts, you end up with something like Oblivion.

 

[a budda]

you even bother to post here after oblivion and f3?
oops

i mean: "monkeys and writers cost" just summed up a charter in "rpg" history and you know who said that...