sea's (Mostly Technical) Skyrim Initial Impressions

[Vb]

Didn't Bethesda state that they had worked hard on making every npc killable ? Wonder where that went, since critical NPCs just seem to regenerate to full health.

Certainly is a massive step backwards after New Vegas gave us the freedom of doing a psychopath run.

 

[Multidirectional]

But you see DA:O went on to become Codex GOTY 2009 and Risen went largely unnoticed. Except a year later exactly the same people started shitting on DA:O using the same arguments as I did. Oh and I also liked Divinity 2 that came out the same year as DA:O btw but also was ignored by the Codex.

Well I can somewhat sympathize with you here, Risen and Divinity 2 DKS were best action RPGs in years and I was a bit baffled that Codex largely preffered to talk about mediocre games like DA and ME 2 anyway. But what the fuck do I know, my first RPG was Bloodlines anyway. Maybe I'm just not expert enough.
Actually, playing a bit of Skyrim (didn't even get to level 2 yet, got bored, but will play more when the mood is right) only made want to replay Div2 and Risen. Give me smaller games with actual good content over dull large ones any day.

 

[ksjav]

Spellcraft

Ok. So Oblivion had spellmaking, which I assume is what you consider to be better about it as apart from that I don't see anything "better" about it.
Take destruction spells, Oblivion had fire/shock/frost attacks, which differed only in their projectile and damage type (read, didn't differ in terms of gameplay at all apart from different resistances). There were touch and ranged attacks. Cool. I guess. In Skyrim in addition to having different resistances different elemental attacks have other effects, such as frost slowing down, fire dealing damage over time, shock dealing stamina damage etc. There are "spray" attacks, projectiles with xploshuns, elemental "mines" as was seen from some video and probably something else as I haven't played the game enough to give a full account, but it already seems to suggest more variety than Oblivions touch/ranges I-can't-belive-it's-so-good spellcraft. Of course if your idea of better is making a fireball that deals 50 points of damage instead of 45 than you have a point there.
In addition so far I've seen some interesting utility spells such as Transmute metals, which allows you to change iron ore into silver and then gold (for crafting jewelry $$$), which is a nice non-combat gameplay element for advancing your skills and level to address your previous baseless assumption.

non-linear dungeons thanks to which they suck a little less than what's in Skyrim

Dungeons in Oblivion were largely an uninspired random mess, which might as well have been generated by Daggerfall's dungeon generator, but smaller and their non-linearity meant there were "sidepassages" that lead to a small room with a chest in it, something Skyrim has in abundance, only often more interesting, such as a corner covered in spiderwebs, where you may find a chest if you cut the spiderwebs with a dagger or something, or broken floor planks that if you inspect closely will reveal a hidder chest beneath them.
Sometimes Oblivious dungeons would have multiple linear corridors leading to the same endpoint, containing the same random enemies taken from levelled lists, oh the majesticness of it all. In Skyrim's dungeon design inviroment is integrated with the enemies you get, as such you have draugrs rising from wall niches (level scaling means you get more powerful undead in niches if your level is higher I assume, as seen from the released gameplay videos). You find rooms full of spider webs meaning evidently spiders have made their lair here. Surely meeting random elementals in an Aylied ruin, that looks exactly like the last one, without any hit of backstory to the place is more exciting (there were few exceptions with more or less passable design).

much bigger and more open gameworld without mountain walls

In oblivion the world is generated with a generator producing the same scenery throughout the whole landscape, it may have looked pretty from a distance but walking through it meant trudging through a "flat" landscape albeit with heigh variations, that it no way obstructed your movement, so much for mountains.
In that regard Skyrim's world design is remeniscent of Morrowind's as it uses natural barriers to make the world feel dramatically larger as all the ravines, rivers and rough mountains make you take scenic routes to your destination and the scenery is actually pretty and atmospheric.

more "skills", birthsigns adding + and - to characters and that's from the top of my head.

Oblivion had attributes that were by large useless, as for example strength had negligible effect on weapon damage comparing to your skill. Not that I'm saying removing it is a solution, but claiming Oblivion is in any better for having it is ridiculous.
Weapon skills may have been merges, but the new perks system encourages specialization to a specific weapon type. And this goes across the board for merged skills.
Some, such as athletics and acrobatics, that each and every character would have maxed out in Oblivion regardless of picking them as major or not. Not saying removing skills is a solution, but again, that's Bethesda for you. (but saying Oblivion is a better game due to having acrobatics is again ridiculous)

 

[Hoodoo]

LOLZ

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Played for a couple of hours last night. UI is absolutely fucking horrible, I know everyone's saying it, but it can't be stressed enough. It's actually worse than anything the 80s produced, and those interfaces were made for machine men with machine hearts. I can't even blame the consoles for this. Oblivion was a console UI. It was fucking bad too. This... this is... something else. Something simply, utterly retarded. It's not functional. At all.

The game is Oblivion 2. Anyone expecting anything else will be disappointed. That said, and despite the "streamlining", it's a better Oblivion. Probably worse as an RPG, but as a game, it's better. It has some atmosphere here and there, the actually different spells are a step up even though spellmaking was one of my favourite ES activities, the dungeons so far all seem pretty different and interesting, and it's possible to get in way over your head and get your ass kicked. For example, I got a random quest to get a powerful mace from a tomb far to the south-west. I knew I was risking it heading there, but I got a blessed axe that turns weak undead from another random event, and that's carried me through a few hairy situations on master difficulty. I made my way through the tomb pretty comfortably, raising a few corpses as zombie grunts, then met the boss. He immediately disposed of my zombie, smacked me down with an axe, and blasted me with a lightning spell so hard my character instantly died, blew across the room and got stuck in the gate. After a few attempts, I ended up having to bring the difficulty down just to survive. And I got decent, non-scaled loot for the pleasure. Definitely an improvement over Oblivion's bland, scaled, calculated and sterile "challenge".

But for all that, it's still far from a great game. I'll have some fun with it, might even finish the main quest, but it won't really stick in my memory for years to come. It's an open-world action game that does most things competently, doesn't have very good combat, and informed me that legends don't destroy villages. It's not really worth all the fuss either way. Try it (or not) and forget it.

 

[MetalCraze]

Take destruction spells, Oblivion had fire/shock/frost attacks, which differed only in their projectile and damage type (read, didn't differ in terms of gameplay at all apart from different resistances). There were touch and ranged attacks. Cool. I guess.

There is much more to spells in Oblivion actually. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Spells
Also some are AoE and some do keep dealing damage over time. And there is a shitton of spells with specific effects no many-in-one dumbing down like in Skyrim.

In Skyrim in addition to having different resistances different elemental attacks have other effects, such as frost slowing down, fire dealing damage over time, shock dealing stamina damage etc. There are "spray" attacks, projectiles with xploshuns, elemental "mines" as was seen from some video and probably something else as I haven't played the game enough to give a full account, but it already seems to suggest more variety than Oblivions touch/ranges I-can't-belive-it's-so-good spellcraft. Of course if your idea of better is making a fireball that deals 50 points of damage instead of 45 than you have a point there.
In addition so far I've seen some interesting utility spells such as Transmute metals, which allows you to change iron ore into silver and then gold (for crafting jewelry $$$), which is a nice non-combat gameplay element for advancing your skills and level to address your previous baseless assumption.

See the link above.

Dungeons in Oblivion were largely an uninspired random mess, which might as well have been generated by Daggerfall's dungeon generator, but smaller and their non-linearity meant there were "sidepassages" that lead to a small room with a chest in it, something Skyrim has in abundance, only often more interesting, such as a corner covered in spiderwebs, where you may find a chest if you cut the spiderwebs with a dagger or something, or broken floor planks that if you inspect closely will reveal a hidder chest beneath them.

And you will stumble on all that regardless because it's a linear corridor where you can't miss anything even if you tried. It sucks. Dungeons suck in Oblivion too but at least you can miss stuff in case of that small 5% chance you are not paying attention.

Sometimes Oblivious dungeons would have multiple linear corridors leading to the same endpoint

Which already makes them superior

containing the same random enemies taken from levelled lists, oh the majesticness of it all. In Skyrim's dungeon design inviroment is integrated with the enemies you get, as such you have draugrs rising from wall niches (level scaling means you get more powerful undead in niches if your level is higher I assume, as seen from the released gameplay videos). You find rooms full of spider webs meaning evidently spiders have made their lair here. Surely meeting random elementals in an Aylied ruin, that looks exactly like the last one, without any hit of backstory to the place is more exciting (there were few exceptions with more or less passable design).

Don't overexaggerate. Dungeons in Oblivion did contain specific enemies that could've been encountered only in dungeons. In Skyrim beth took a linear scripted way instead to throw some more dust in your eyes but encounters are not interesting since you are forced into them regardless.

In oblivion the world is generated with a generator producing the same scenery throughout the whole landscape

What

it may have looked pretty from a distance but walking through it meant trudging through a "flat" landscape albeit with heigh variations, that it no way obstructed your movement, so much for mountains.

What are you talking about?

In that regard Skyrim's world design is remeniscent of Morrowind's as it uses natural barriers to make the world feel dramatically larger as all the ravines, rivers and rough mountains make you take scenic routes to your destination and the scenery is actually pretty and atmospheric.

In Morrowind there were no natural barriers, you could've went whereever you wanted. Some places were just easily to pass using higher jumps or levitation.

In Skyrim mountains are just walls you can't pass so poor XBox won't die. Notice - when a scenery has exactly the same copypasted pine tree (lol oblivion same scenery lol) the mountain wall is 100m away. When it has zero trees but the same copy pasted type of rare grass - walls are 1km away. You can't make a world look any more artificial and "We did it to save resources" than that.

Oblivion had attributes that were by large useless, as for example strength had negligible effect on weapon damage comparing to your skill. Not that I'm saying removing it is a solution, but claiming Oblivion is in any better for having it is ridiculous.

It's better exactly because it had negligible effect. Having some kind of effect is already better than butchering it out.

Weapon skills may have been merges, but the new perks system encourages specialization to a specific weapon type. And this goes across the board for merged skills.

If you didn't specialize in one weapon or another in Oblivion you would suck at using it too. Remember enemies scaled only to your level, not to your weapon and skills. As a result in that shitty Oblivion weak spell skills were dealing barely any damage to higher level enemies as you became more powerful.

Some, such as athletics and acrobatics, that each and every character would have maxed out in Oblivion regardless of picking them as major or not. Not saying removing skills is a solution, but again, that's Bethesda for you. (but saying Oblivion is a better game due to having acrobatics is again ridiculous)

They would've been maxed out after a while - "a while" was however a term not set in stone. In Skyrim they ALL progress at the same speed. Catch my drift?


You see I'm not saying Oblivion was a majestically superior game

What I'm saying is:

For every thing that Skyrim does better it has a thing that it does worse.

 

[Roguey]

When Codex was orgasmic about DA:O and I was bashing it I was getting a lot of flak too. Exactly like in this thread they were ready to tear me a new one.

As they should have, since DA:O is a smartened up KOTOR. To love one enough to play it seven times and loathe another just shows that you've outgrown Bioware.

Except I also praised Risen which despite being consolish was still Gothic. But you see DA:O went on to become Codex GOTY 2009 and Risen went largely unnoticed.

Risen was noticed, particularly its lousy character and combat system and how it becomes a linear dungeon crawl after the first chapter.

Except a year later exactly the same people started shitting on DA:O using the same arguments as I did.

I was lurking at the time, you were far from the only one shitting on DA:O. Stop pretending that it only had unanimous praise.

Oh and I also liked Divinity 2 that came out the same year as DA:O btw but also was ignored by the Codex.

Only in Europe and that was an extra-shitty version. Divinity 2's combat and character system are also complete garbage (even compared to DA:O and even after DKS), and that's a huge flaw since combat is a huge part of core gameplay. The things it really has going for it are exploration and funny dialogue. And your mockery of Skyrim's combat is odd since Div2's is pretty much the same shitty "flail through air until one of you drops" except you can use a few cooldown-based powers and you can't actively block.

 

[ksjav]

Yes Oblivion did one thing worse (even though it did a lot of other things better) - that makes it a total shit.

What I'm saying is:

For every thing that Skyrim does better it has a thing that it does worse.

I sense a flip-flop incoming.

And what I'm saying is that you are taking arbitrary differences and slapping a "better" tag on Oblivion (it's an older game so it must be better, that's what the Codex teaches us!), which, naturally is your opinion and you are entitled to it, you present as the gospel truth and are quick to shove your alleged KKK in everyone's face, with nary a thought of justification behind it. You can only expect antipathy.

There is much more to spells in Oblivion actually. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Spells
Also some are AoE and some do keep dealing damage over time. And there is a shitton of spells with specific effects no many-in-one dumbing down like in Skyrim.

Again you are missing the point as noted by other posters. In Oblivion the "different" spells are essentially the same. While in Skyrim they are given distinctive characteristics.
And concerning the dumbing down, and moar spellz!!1 please present detailed side by side comparison of numbers, thank you. Don't have one? I guess you pulled this out of thin air once again then.

And you will stumble on all that regardless because it's a linear corridor where you can't miss anything even if you tried. It sucks. Dungeons suck in Oblivion too but at least you can miss stuff in case of that small 5% chance you are not paying attention.

I'd just refer you to the quote you responded to as your answer contradicts the point being made in it. You might have just written "no it's not", it would be more constructive.

Sometimes Oblivious dungeons would have multiple linear corridors leading to the same endpoint

Which already makes them superior

The word same implies there is no difference to any of the options, as seen in Biowarian dialogues, but then if one enjoys doing the same thing 7 times, I'll just leave it at that.

Don't overexaggerate. Dungeons in Oblivion did contain specific enemies that could've been encountered only in dungeons. In Skyrim beth took a linear scripted way instead to throw some more dust in your eyes but encounters are not interesting since you are forced into them regardless.

Right back at you.

Don't overexaggerate.

In oblivion the world is generated with a generator producing the same scenery throughout the whole landscape

What

Not the best sentence ever, but the idea was that the world is not created by hand, but procedurally...

it may have looked pretty from a distance but walking through it meant trudging through a "flat" landscape albeit with heigh variations, that it no way obstructed your movement, so much for mountains.

What are you talking about?

...resulting in you generally being able to walk from point A to point B in a straight line. Making the world seem much smaller than Morrowind's even if the size was approximately the same.
I'm admittedly not the best English speaker, but try to make sense of what you are reading at least, it is not so difficult.

In Morrowind there were no natural barriers, you could've went whereever you wanted.

At this point in the conversation I would have slapped you. And the remainder of the line would not be spurned out so you would not contradict yourself.

In Skyrim mountains are just walls you can't pass so poor XBox won't die. Notice - when a scenery has exactly the same copypasted pine tree (lol oblivion same scenery lol) the mountain wall is 100m away. When it has zero trees but the same copy pasted type of rare grass - walls are 1km away. You can't make a world look any more artificial and "We did it to save resources" than that.

This is just plain untrue, as my own experience with the game suggests otherwise. In fact mountains are the most content rich areas of the game world.

It's better exactly because it had negligible effect. Having some kind of effect is already better than butchering it out.

Matter of opinion, if you do no like attributes that matter in your game, I won't judge you.

If you didn't specialize in one weapon or another in Oblivion you would suck at using it too. Remember enemies scaled only to your level, not to your weapon and skills. As a result in that shitty Oblivion weak spell skills were dealing barely any damage to higher level enemies as you became more powerful.

But it did not give the game any credit, as you would be fighting godlike wolves and mudcrabs by then, which does not seem to be the case with Skyrim as far as I've experienced (subject to change).

They would've been maxed out after a while - "a while" was however a term not set in stone. In Skyrim they ALL progress at the same speed. Catch my drift?

Actually they don't, as you use birthstones (not sure if that's what they are called, but they are based on the birthsigns so there you go) to change skill progression rates in Skyrim, the problem is that apparently you can change your birthstone at any time (should you find them), which is a poor design decision in my book.

You see I'm not saying Oblivion was a majestically superior game

What I'm saying is:

For every thing that Skyrim does better it has a thing that it does worse.

And I'm not saying Skyrim is the most majestically awesome game ever, but I dislike baseless bashing and especially right out bullshit with less then impressive justification as given in your latest crusade to somehow prove people, who consider Skyrim an improvement over Oblivion, newfag flip-floppers.

 

[hoopy]

Can attempt at doing so right away, he cannot do everything right away ... heck the game allowed me to pick a Master lock and what happened was I wasted every single picklock I had.

I ran into an expert or master lock early on and picked it with a couple of attempts.

Everything is 5 feet away in Skyrim too. You can have a guard tower and then 30 meters away from it - evil giants.. standing in one place.

Just why are these games so damn small anyway? World of Warcraft is enormous, you could take two or three large areas from it and they'd be as big as Tamriel or Skyrim. Creating large exterior locations shouldn't be much of an issue in this day and age, so why not just make a bigger world so locations don't all have to be so close to each other? Pretty sure the destruction of the tutorial town was easily seen from a guard tower in... whatever that first city was called. But nope, everyone LARPs that it was actually too far away.


I think Skyrim needs some kind of IFF system. You can't tell if a human is friendly until you're close enough for them to initiate combat, and by that time you're at a severe disadvantage if you're a stealthy character. I once attacked a friendly outpost because I assumed it was a hive of scum and villainy like every other location outside a city or town.

 

[crufty]

I like it. I have been going exterminatus on bandits.

Had an interesting bug: i was walking from riverwood to solitude. When to my surprise I heard "let's get out of here!"

Thereby three npc swimming in a lake jumped out and began swimming down the path i was on. Meanwhile a wolf pack descended on them and they were unable to defend themselves. As they were stuck in swim mode.

I found the dragon claw plot to be nifty.

So far the longbow with a 2x sneak attack is pretty good weapon. In another visit, I got my ass whipped in this cave with bears and spriggans. So that was good to see.

Pretty fun time, alli in all.

 

[ksjav]

I think Skyrim needs some kind of IFF system. You can't tell if a human is friendly until you're close enough for them to initiate combat, and by that time you're at a severe disadvantage if you're a stealthy character. I once attacked a friendly outpost because I assumed it was a hive of scum and villainy like every other location outside a city or town.

I don't get it. Am I the only one who noticed the Gothic-like warnings some creatures give you? If you approach a giant for instance he will start doing menacing shit, obviously warning you to stay away from his pastures. If you don't run headlong into certain bandit outposts they will sheathe weapons as you approach and stare at you, then if you get too close they will attack. But I guess if you're sneaking then you won't be able to tell as they don't see you, but here you are asking for red outlines around hostile characters. inb4 next bethesda game

 

[dr. one]

So, I guess that it seems to be a bit early for a verdict. Let's see how the shit develops.

Definitely. It´s a big open world game and it´s by Bethesda, which means initial impressions don´t tell much about how good the game is in the long run and this applies doubly so to the exploration aspect.

Speaking of which,

Whoever says the world design is good must be joking. I've explored two large cities so far, Whiterun and Windhelm, and am now in Winterhold, as well as a couple of villages, and they're all basically the same; I can barely make myself thoroughly explore new locations now. It looks like, if you've been to one of them, you've been to them all. In other words, it's nothing like Morrowind, sadly. The dungeons I've explored (the one in which you get a dragon shout, the one that culminates in a dwarven golem construct, and a couple of others) aren't any better -- they're all linear and boring.

After a bit more playing today, I think there´s quite a good chance this will end up being spot on.
I travelled to all the major cities for a quick check and, at least at a first glance, they certainly all seemed very similar to each other.
While I´ve found the dungeons I´ve been to quite fun to progress through, if all are linear in similar fashion, "dungeon crawling" may get old fast. Also, I already saw the dragon claw "puzzle" repeated in another dungeon.

And I wasn´t joking when I said the world design is good, such were my initial impressions .
I´ve been mostly running around Whiterun, gave a visit to those Greybeard dudes and explored a bit of the hot springs area in the east and I think all of this stuff is well put together, attention to detail and solid use of z-axis included.
Can´t say anything about the northern areas, but the lack of distinctiveness between the cities isn´t very encouraging indeed.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Oh what the fuck, the torrent is barely 5.5gb and I'm totally out of stuff to play. Might as well grab some MAJESTY and see the suck for myself.

 

[hoopy]

I don't get it. Am I the only one who noticed the Gothic-like warnings some creatures give you? If you approach a giant for instance he will start doing menacing shit, obviously warning you to stay away from his pastures. If you don't run headlong into certain bandit outposts they will sheathe weapons as you approach and stare at you, then if you get too close they will attack. But I guess if you're sneaking then you won't be able to tell as they don't see you, but here you are asking for red outlines around hostile characters. inb4 next bethesda game

Infinity Engine games all showed red circles around hostile NPCs. Skyrim could simply paint your crosshair red when it's over an openly hostile NPC, perhaps it could be even be a stealth perk (danger sense or something). Most NPCs outside civilized areas want to kill you, but some don't -- how to tell the difference without save scumming?

 

[Hoodoo]

Thereby three npc swimming in a lake jumped out and began swimming down the path i was on. Meanwhile a wolf pack descended on them and they were unable to defend themselves. As they were stuck in swim mode.

 

[Gord]

In other words, nothing much to talk about. Which is why I don't get why people are masturbating over it.

The same thing happened with The Witcher and Dragon Age, because for all its cynical attitude the Codex is just as susceptible to hype as any other place. Plus, video gamers are addicts who will play what's given to them if there's nothing else out there. Gotta wait a few weeks for things to settle down. Not saying that it's necessarily utter shit, but Oblivion sucked balls, so a simple upgrade of Oblivion is suck balls + 1, which is still firmly in swallow-my-nuts territory.

I don't consider the blind prejudice it's getting from some codexers much better, tbh.
Anyway, at least it seems an substantial improvement over Oblivion. A shame that again removing things instead of fixing them (like attributes) was the way to go.

Well, I saw Skyrim for 40 € at a local retailer today, instead of the usual 50 € for new pc games, so I'm a bit tempted to get it early next week, especially as I still have some kind of gift certificate lying around - chances are it will go up in price again in a week or two.
Also my girlfriend will be out of town for a couple of days, so I'll have plenty of time for playing.

 

[Darth Roxor]

There's one thing I can say for certain about this game. It's giving me motion sickness.

 

[ChristofferC]

There's one thing I can say for certain about this game. It's giving me motion sickness.

Change the FOV!

 

[MetalCraze]

When Codex was orgasmic about DA:O and I was bashing it I was getting a lot of flak too. Exactly like in this thread they were ready to tear me a new one.

As they should have, since DA:O is a smartened up KOTOR.

If by smartened up you mean instahealth regen and quest compass among other things lawl

To love one enough to play it seven times and loathe another just shows that you've outgrown Bioware.

I still consider BG2 to be very good DnD PC port (mainly due to it being a proper DnD adventure and quests were quite good and character-class dependent) and plan to replay it. Addons to NWN were also quite OK.

Risen was noticed, particularly its lousy character and combat system and how it becomes a linear dungeon crawl after the first chapter.

Actually it becomes linear only by the end. And DAO is all linear and dumbed down and has shit combat and character system but you see Risen is shit because it didn't have millions of dollars poured into hype even though it's quite like Gothic which is of course praised on the Codex because it's an old game.

I was lurking at the time, you were far from the only one shitting on DA:O. Stop pretending that it only had unanimous praise.

Codex GOTY 2009 says otherwise. The majority of Codex loved the fuck out of it. And then DAO stopped being cool because to keep getting KKKs you need to bitch at big studios. And Risen became true MAJESTIC.

Only in Europe and that was an extra-shitty version. Divinity 2's combat and character system are also complete garbage (even compared to DA:O and even after DKS), and that's a huge flaw since combat is a huge part of core gameplay. The things it really has going for it are exploration and funny dialogue. And your mockery of Skyrim's combat is odd since Div2's is pretty much the same shitty "flail through air until one of you drops" except you can use a few cooldown-based powers and you can't actively block.

In Skyrim you can easily twitch LMB until shit dies. In Divinity 2 you also have to dodge a lot and can't just kill everyone at once. In Skyrim you have ultrafast mana regen so you can almost permaheal yourself with any kind of character and armour gives no penalties whatsoever.

And yes quests. In Divinity 2 each quest had some character to it, it wasn't the constant retarded shit of Skyrim "here's a sword/shield/ingredient - deliver it to my father/mother/fiance, you'll get shitty 10 coins for doing this and no XP because you get levels only for running into the wall"

Div2 combat may be very flawed but it's still eons above the horrible shit of Skyrim.

 

[Comrade Goby]

Bros quit playing it with a kb + m.

With a 360 controller it's a bit more tolerable.

 

[Heechee]

It's by no means perfect, and yeah, hype is definitely a factor. Having said that, at the bare minimum, you can turn off the shitty quest / settlement / dungeon markers and you have a fun hiking simulator. No, it's not the best game ever. No, it's not better than Morrowind. It's sure as hell better than Oblivion, though, and much more fun of a hiking simulator compared to New Vegas (which I quickly got bored of - never played Fallout 3)

I think a big complaint with the game, ultimately, will be that a large majority of the outdoor scenery, including towns, is snowy, which means white. There are non-snowy areas, but trudging through endless snow blizzards, with the terrible "snow covering" effect will probably get old. I guess it only makes sense given the game's lore, but I'm sure it's going to be a sore point with some.

It's pretty damn atmospheric, if nothing else.

That's just it though. There's nothing more. If you will, for a moment, put away the highly improved atmosphere and the admittedly decent game world design, and look at what you have left. You've a shitty and further dumbed down character/class system, poor combat, mostly uninteresting enemies, mostly run-of-the-mill quests, crappy dialog as always, still the shitty follow the quest compass!! gameplay style, boring items/weapons/armor and enchantments, no spell maker, heck not even an interesting spell, and tons of other stuff. Basically it's still the same old shitty Oblivion underneath, and it's actually even worse than OB in some areas. But this time they managed to hide it under an actual good atmosphere and a better game world design.

My thoughts exactly. An excellent atmosphere is utterly wasted on the empty gameplay. The most important question concerns the degree to which the game can be realistically improved by modding.

 

[Lord Haw Haw]

Bros quit playing it with a kb + m.

With a 360 controller it's a bit more tolerable.

No need to. The most recent patch makes the menu way easier to use now, more like new vegas. Still a bad UI, mind tou but now it works properly for a mouse. I just hope somebody mods a nice parchment texture background for it so it doesn't feel like I'm scrolling through a goddamn iphone.

In closing: Avaunt thee and quit my sight, thou shitty xbox controller!

 

[Mortmal]

The truth is so many people here find it postive that my poll was moved to retardo land before more can pick an option, the forum has become as bad as the TES forum, there you cant say anything negative about any bethesda game, here you get the same level of censorship.

 

[Stabwound]

By the way, the game DOES have some c & c from what I've seen so far. Minor magic guild spoilers ahead.

I came across a dungeon boss character that was slaughtering me badly. Before the battle, she gives you the opportunity to turn over a prisoner you could find and rescue earlier in the dungeon to be used as a test subject. You can either kill her and save the guy, who I assume turns into a possible ally and returns to the magic college, or turn him over and he dies, and you walk out with what you came for. I eventually was able to kill her, but it's pretty cool to have the option to sacrifice an NPC - never knowing what would have happened if you saved him, while completely avoiding a tough boss fight.

It's painfully obvious that some people are ranting about the game without even playing it, or playing the super scripted intro and beginning area. Also, yes, the UI improves greatly (as in, goes from useless to usable with a mouse, but still shitty) if you apply the patch. Makes it obvious who pirated it here.

I do agree with some of the criticisms, though.

As for the supposed decline of magic play - I think playing a mage is MUCH more satisfying in Skyrim. Yes, at first it seems harsh to lose your spell making option, and truthfully, I want it too. But because of the way they tweaked the spells and changed up the combat, it's actually really satisfying to launch a fireball at a group of skeletons and see their bones go every-fucking-where. You can dual wield 2 different spells, or get the perk that lets you combine 2 spells (has to be the same in both hands) into a more powerful attack. It would have been nice if they gave the option to combining ANY two destruction spells, but it's still cool and feels a lot more fun than in previous games.

That's just it though. There's nothing more. If you will, for a moment, put away the highly improved atmosphere and the admittedly decent game world design, and look at what you have left. You've a shitty and further dumbed down character/class system, poor combat, mostly uninteresting enemies, mostly run-of-the-mill quests, crappy dialog as always, still the shitty follow the quest compass!! gameplay style, boring items/weapons/armor and enchantments, no spell maker, heck not even an interesting spell, and tons of other stuff. Basically it's still the same old shitty Oblivion underneath, and it's actually even worse than OB in some areas. But this time they managed to hide it under an actual good atmosphere and a better game world design.

I'm sure this is going to evoke some nerd rage, but doesn't that paragraph describe Gothic 1/2, a duo of games that are almost universally jizzed over here, almost exactly? I loved both of them, but let's face it: they make much better adventure games than RPGs. Yes, they're both great games, but a lot of the RPG elements leave a lot to be desired. And playing a mage in the Gothic games is an exercise in not smashing your monitor out of frustration and boredom.

 

[Technoviking]

The truth is so many people here find it postive that my poll was moved to retardo land before more can pick an option, the forum has become as bad as the TES forum, there you cant say anything negative about any bethesda game, here you get the same level of censorship.

If you read this thread you'll find several people saying Skyrim sucks, you'll find several people saying that it's not terrible, a few people saying it's OK, another few saying that it's decent, a couple saying that it's good and one person saying that it's 'potentially great'.

Then you got one person who has made multiple posts proclaiming Skyrim to be absolute garbage, intentionally misinterpreting other posters all over the place to fuel his rage, while intentionally using lies, misinformation and exaggerations to try to back up several of his claims.


If anything, more people are posting about how much the game sucks than there are posters proclaiming it to be great. The general consensus seems to be that Skyrim is a decent game, worse than Morrowind, better than (vanilla?) Oblivion and by no means great or ground breaking.

I don't visit the TES forums, so I have no idea what they're talking about, but if I go by past experience I doubt it's anything like this thread.