Skyrim is worse than Oblivion in every way

[sea]

I always thought it was an attempt to railroad the backstory into the unsuspecting player's face, because they're obviously too stupid to read about the TES series before buying the game or otherwise discover anything of their own volition.

"Hey, you were caught trying to cross the border into Skyrim! THAT IS A PLACE WITH NORDS AND IT IS WHERE WE ARE NOW"
"ULFRIC STORMCLOAK, THE STORMCLOAKS ARE NAMED AFTER YOU AND YOU HATE THE EMPIRE"
"YOU KILLED THE KING USING THU'UM WHICH IS A THING"
"We're going to be killed by those damn Imperials! THEY WILL BE IN THE NEXT SECTION OF THE INTRO SEQUENCE"
"You're from Rorikstead and stole a horse! YOU CAN STEAL HORSES AND/OR GO TO RORIKSTEAD!"

And then you get to Helgen:

"Hey dad where are those people going?"
"THEY ARE BAD SON, AND WILL PROBABLY BE KILLED BECAUSE THAT WOULD MAKE THIS INTRO WICKED SICK"
"YOU, THE PLAYER, ARE AMONG THE AFOREMENTIONED BAD PEOPLE AND SHOULD BE WARY ABOUT BEING KILLED"

It was basically a cheesy exposition about the game, dictated from the first person. Just about as bad as Oblivion's quest journal entries which were a walkthrough written in first person. "I FOUND THE KEY I NEED TO TAKE IT TO THE LOCKED DOOR AND OPEN IT WITH SAID KEY"

Yeah, I don't get it. Creating exposition that actually makes sense in the context of a game is not hard. If you can set up a situation where the player's character is new to something, then it practically writes itself... the "well, as you know, doctor, a microscope is a..." kinda crap just gets fucking painful after a while and has actually driven me to stop replaying various games. The worst are games with dialogue trees that let your character say "I know what that is" and THEN THE GAME EXPLAINS IT TO YOU ANYWAY. For fuck's sake.

Then again, it's still not as bad as that X-Files episode where they have an arson expert in a lab coat spend 45 seconds explaining to the audience that fire needs fuel and people don't spontaneously combust under normal circumstances.

 

[Commissar Draco]

I uninstalled Skyjob as soon as the opening "movie" ended. If your story is shit, you damn well better let me skip your fucking cinematics.

I always thought it was an attempt to railroad the backstory into the unsuspecting player's face, because they're obviously too stupid to read about the TES series before buying the game or otherwise discover anything of their own volition.

"Hey, you were caught trying to cross the border into Skyrim! THAT IS A PLACE WITH NORDS AND IT IS WHERE WE ARE NOW"
"ULFRIC STORMCLOAK, THE STORMCLOAKS ARE NAMED AFTER YOU AND YOU HATE THE EMPIRE"
"YOU KILLED THE KING USING THU'UM WHICH IS A THING"
"We're going to be killed by those damn Imperials! THEY WILL BE IN THE NEXT SECTION OF THE INTRO SEQUENCE"
"You're from Rorikstead and stole a horse! YOU CAN STEAL HORSES AND/OR GO TO RORIKSTEAD!"

And then you get to Helgen:

"Hey dad where are those people going?"
"THEY ARE BAD SON, AND WILL PROBABLY BE KILLED BECAUSE THAT WOULD MAKE THIS INTRO WICKED SICK"
"YOU, THE PLAYER, ARE AMONG THE AFOREMENTIONED BAD PEOPLE AND SHOULD BE WARY ABOUT BEING KILLED"

It was basically a cheesy exposition about the game, dictated from the first person. Just about as bad as Oblivion's quest journal entries which were a walkthrough written in first person. "I FOUND THE KEY I NEED TO TAKE IT TO THE LOCKED DOOR AND OPEN IT WITH SAID KEY"

All would be Forgotten if this Intro was skipable and/or done in form of Orgins DAO had, but maybe modern adventures consumers are indeed to lazy/dumb to read some fluf themselfs and need things to be showeled into them.

 

[Ulminati]

I uninstalled Skyjob as soon as the opening "movie" ended. If your story is shit, you damn well better let me skip your fucking cinematics.

Not saying you should reinstall skyrimjob or anything, but it's not like oblivious and morrowind didn't have equally long "immersive!" tutorials. And it's not like one of the very first mods for morrowind/oblivious/skyrimjob was a "skip the intro tutorial" mod.

 

[waywardOne]

Not saying you should reinstall skyrimjob or anything, but it's not like oblivious and morrowind didn't have equally long "immersive!" tutorials. And it's not like one of the very first mods for morrowind/oblivious/skyrimjob was a "skip the intro tutorial" mod.

I get what you're saying, but I'm someone who plays through BG2's opening dungeon because I can setup my LARPing and party composition plan for the rest of the game (well, it's also modded to my preferences so it's got more variety and challenge than vanilla). My point is, if the good gameplay is supposed to excuse the bad story, let me get the fuck to it.

 

[Commissar Draco]

I uninstalled Skyjob as soon as the opening "movie" ended. If your story is shit, you damn well better let me skip your fucking cinematics.

Not saying you should reinstall skyrimjob or anything, but it's not like oblivious and morrowind didn't have equally long "immersive!" tutorials. And it's not like one of the very first mods for morrowind/oblivious/skyrimjob was a "skip the intro tutorial" mod.

Ulminati bro, Morrowind has 5 minutes max Tutorial, which was perfectly integrated into play as you were procesed by Imperial Customs Station, gave some lead, few coppers and kicked outside to fend for yourself... No why the hell Emprah gave the most precious relic of Cyrodil or maybe even Tamariel to complete stranger who happens to be criminal scum in Oblibion. Or Skyrim intro movie which was dissected earlier.

 

[Ulminati]

I uninstalled Skyjob as soon as the opening "movie" ended. If your story is shit, you damn well better let me skip your fucking cinematics.

Not saying you should reinstall skyrimjob or anything, but it's not like oblivious and morrowind didn't have equally long "immersive!" tutorials. And it's not like one of the very first mods for morrowind/oblivious/skyrimjob was a "skip the intro tutorial" mod.

Ulminati bro, Morrowind has 5 minutes max Tutorial, which was perfectly integrated into play as you were procesed by Imperial Customs Station, gave some lead, few coppers and kicked outside to fend for yourself... No why the hell Emprah gave the most precious relic of Cyrodil or maybe even Tamariel to complete stranger who happens to be criminal scum in Oblibion. Or Skyrim intro movie which was dissected earlier.

All I'm saying, Commissar Potato, is that if bad acting is getting in the way of my hiking simulator, I skip it.

 

[Commissar Draco]

I do share the sentiment, load this mod and you're free to do that. http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/9557

 

[DraQ]

I actually have little problem with Skyrim intro.

First of all, I kept save right before actual chargen.

Second, it isn't forced, contrived and nonsensical mess like that sequence at the beginning of oblivion - you were about to get executed for being in the wrong place, then shit hits the fan, dragon razes the town and you escape with either one of the rebels or or a legionaire who had objections regarding executing everyone and letting the gods do the sorting in the first place.

You didn't meet derpy stand-in for the emperor in your cell, you weren't allowed to tag along despite being criminal scum, potential assassin and security risk, you weren't left alone with emperor despite of all the above, you didn't avoid slaughter somehow after emperor croaked at the moment his BG turned back on you both and you weren't sent, as escaped criminal scum, potential assassin and/or enemy agent and lvl1 weakling, across Cyrodiil with priceless artifact of strategic importance, exact address of chief honcho of intelligence/elite guard, but no escort.

Sure, it's darker, edgier and far less subtle than MW's beginning, but at least it doesn't make you clutch your head every fifteen seconds and stay like that for several minutes while trying to tune out dying screams of your poor, poor brain cells.

My main complaint would be lack of an opportunity to re-tweak your character near exit from the intro dungeon.

 

[Average Manatee]

My main complaint would be lack of an opportunity to re-tweak your character near exit from the intro dungeon.

showracemenu in console.

 

[Commissar Draco]

My main complaint would be lack of an opportunity to re-tweak your character near exit from the intro dungeon.

showracemenu in console.

which borks your progress if you change the race, it is bug since MW atleast.

 

[Average Manatee]

My main complaint would be lack of an opportunity to re-tweak your character near exit from the intro dungeon.

showracemenu in console.

which borks your progress if you change the race, it is bug since MW atleast.

Is losing 10 mins worth of leveling in the tutorial that big of a deal?

 

[Bahamut]

My main complaint would be lack of an opportunity to re-tweak your character near exit from the intro dungeon.

showracemenu in console.

which borks your progress if you change the race, it is bug since MW atleast.

I think it doesent do that in skyrim, also i heard theres some retweaking added in Derpguard,

Also im like when oblivion fanbois bitch about skyrim, because its same shit more or less, with the diffrerence its bit less generic and actualy feels like a TES game,

For me TES was always lore-hiking sim, the gameplay was crap since morrowind, with oblivion/skyrim they made it more actiony but its still goddamn glichy and boring

Oblivion was a crap in every possible way - writing, quests, npc, main quest, setting, exploration, VO, combat, character progression, design, most locations where all rock bottom shit and i really cannot comprehend how somone says that oblivion is their most favorite game
Skyrim was mostly same as above with the difference it wasnt that much retarded setting wise and actualy tried to feel like MW, so its much more enjoyable hiking sim than oblivion

 

[Commissar Draco]

My main complaint would be lack of an opportunity to re-tweak your character near exit from the intro dungeon.

showracemenu in console.

which borks your progress if you change the race, it is bug since MW atleast.

Is losing 10 mins worth of leveling in the tutorial that big of a deal?

Nope, and I always finish the TES games as Imperial, but fixing your bugs and giving more choices and consequnces would be nice Bethpizda.

 

[Bahamut]

My main complaint would be lack of an opportunity to re-tweak your character near exit from the intro dungeon.

showracemenu in console.

which borks your progress if you change the race, it is bug since MW atleast.

Is losing 10 mins worth of leveling in the tutorial that big of a deal?

Nope, and I always finish the TES games as Imperial, but fixing your bugs and giving more choices and consequnces would be nice Bethpizda.

Yea i thought they learnt a lesson while making failout 3: skill checks, little c&c, they where shitty but they actually where. But besides Breiviks and Emperahs there is none, pure railroading combined with godawfull quest and wasted opportunities (eg companions with their retarded plot progression)

 

[Commissar Draco]

Never Completed F3 and Oblibion, but Done recently my 5th run throu FNV with all DLCs, Skyrim is good for one time hike so far.

 

[Stabwound]

It's funny how much better Skyrim would have been with some simple skill-based quests, dialogue, etc. Instead it's just a distilled and simplistic hiking simulator. It's not like the series has ever been a super complicated set of RPGs, but I don't think beefing it up a little would have hurt sales or reviews much. If a dumb teen girl is going to play this for 200 hours I don't think a little complexity is going to ruin itfor them.

 

[Commissar Draco]

It's funny how much better Skyrim would have been with some simple skill-based quests, dialogue, etc. Instead it's just a distilled and simplistic hiking simulator. It's not like the series has ever been a super complicated set of RPGs, but I don't think beefing it up a little would have hurt sales or reviews much. If a dumb teen girl is going to play this for 200 hours I don't think a little complexity is going to ruin itfor them.

FNV sold better than F3 despite game whores journalists noticing bugs in Beth made engine this time. Stat checks and paths for Aldurin, Thalmor and Reachmen, would made it worthy a replay.

 

[Utgard-Loki]

fnv sold better than fnv? :D

what i have a problem with is that the game is just too fucking small. they tried to fix that up a bit with the "dynamic" fetch/kill quests, but that's just not doing it for me because you will be visiting the exact same, tiny dungeons everytime. and the only dungeon worth a crap in the game (blackreach) doesn't even have a lot of content in it.

 

[Kahlis]

I get what you're saying, but I'm someone who plays through BG2's opening dungeon because I can setup my LARPing and party composition plan for the rest of the game (well, it's also modded to my preferences so it's got more variety and challenge than vanilla). My point is, if the good gameplay is supposed to excuse the bad story, let me get the fuck to it.

Perhaps people would have been less prone to whining about the skills/attributes system if they had actually committed to a playstyle at the beginning of the game, and if the starting dungeon was actually genuinely challenging and thus served as a way for you to test the viability of your class build rather than people randomly getting mad 5 hours in when they realize how stupid their character is.

But I suppose all of that would've been futile anyway since Oblivion had level scaling.

It's funny how much better Skyrim would have been with some simple skill-based quests, dialogue, etc. Instead it's just a distilled and simplistic hiking simulator. It's not like the series has ever been a super complicated set of RPGs, but I don't think beefing it up a little would have hurt sales or reviews much. If a dumb teen girl is going to play this for 200 hours I don't think a little complexity is going to ruin itfor them.

It's amazing how many simple things they could have done to make the player character feel more integrated into the game world and constrained by its conventions. For starters, I don't see why they ever adopted damage/spell potency modifiers as perks, when you should have just had those things scale with the level of your skill. Or had both. This more gradual progression would've greatly widened the variety of difficulty of enemy NPCs.

Skill checks, too. Kind of going back to what sea said about exposition against the player's will in dialogue, I really hate it when an NPC offers you a task and then your possible replies are either "sure" or the mean-hearted "what's in it for me?". Even though they didn't specify an award in the beginning, you'll get one even if you don't ask. Your choice of fluff text is completely meaningless. Instead, they could've checked against your character's speechcraft skill. Perhaps if they were particularly persuasive they could gain a bigger reward, or part of it in advance as collateral. On the other hand if you just seemed to be full of shit, they might only give you the initial reward or not tell you it in advance.

I still don't get the dumbing down. What happened to that strange time in the 90's when the sequels were often better than the originals, because they just expanded upon the original mechanics and added more of everything - (Realms of Arkania 2: Star Trail). You're going to have to draw the line on "accessibility" somewhere, and I and everybody else had hoped that was in 2006 with Oblivion. But apparently TES can never get more complex, because Todd wants every generation's 10 year olds to not feel as if they've been left behind.

 

[sea]

It's funny how much better Skyrim would have been with some simple skill-based quests, dialogue, etc. Instead it's just a distilled and simplistic hiking simulator. It's not like the series has ever been a super complicated set of RPGs, but I don't think beefing it up a little would have hurt sales or reviews much. If a dumb teen girl is going to play this for 200 hours I don't think a little complexity is going to ruin itfor them.

Too complicated for mass audiences. People get upset if they can't do everything themselves, all the time. There are a lot of people who actually outright hate the skill checks in, say, Fallout: New Vegas because they don't seem to understand how character skill is more important than player skill in determining outcomes. "I already said this, why won't the NPC do what I want?!" And of course, a lot of people out there just want to be able to complete the entire game or always get the best outcome to every situation no matter what they do because they want their ego stroked, or think the game owes them something for playing it (yeah, I've seen that attitude a lot).

I think Bethesda would have absolutely no problems including those features if they wanted to, but my guess it directly contradicts the accessibility that they're going for. Skyrim is as big, dumb and simple as an RPG can possibly get: it's intended to be played by the most casual of fans, with the least commitment to its play mechanics and story/lore, and features a core gameplay loop (kill/loot) that the player is capable of imposing on everything in the game in case the game isn't quick enough in offering new situations to the player directly. They have a quest marker that tells you what to do and where to go at all times, and if you watch any random LP you'll see how much most players depend upon it. It has an iPod interface to make everything feel sleek and fresh, not dorky like all those other RPGs! Skyrim is a game designed specifically to appeal to as wide an audience as a fantasy game can, the signs are all there - is it any surprise that it has almost no depth whatsoever? It was never really intended to.

 

[Kahlis]

Of course. It's all about consistency in Bethesda's new games, and they feel as if they're obligated to ensure nobody "misses out" on any of the experience. In every sense of the term, from how all merchants have the same randomized loot lists to how dungeon loot will always be in the same chest at the end of the last room.

Deviating from what the developer intended is suddenly a bad thing these days. I used to post religiously on the Bethsoft forums back in 2008-10, but it's just too idiotic now. People defending the ability to join every guild in Skyrim, because they think you have to be able to 100% the game. I guess true replayability is shirked in favor of the replayability you get from Lydia sex mods.

 

[Ion Prothon II]

You know what's Skyrim biggest flaw? It's bland and mediocre as fuck. In just every aspect of gameplay.
The game pretends to be an RPG, action FPP game, simulation- and in every case it fails to deliver the core elements. Of course it's caused mostly by the incompetency of bethesda staff, or their efforts to make the game retarded, accessible, etc. In the end it's something that can be barely fixed even by the shitload of mods.

... unless you like LARPing .

 

[DraQ]

You know what's Skyrim biggest flaw? It's bland and mediocre as fuck.

No.

The game pretends to be an RPG, action FPP game, simulation- and in every case it fails to deliver the core elements.

Yes.

 

[Ion Prothon II]

I've been lurking through Akyrim Nexus and seen some progress there. I almost regret I didnt wait those 8 months. This game would still suck, but propably in a better style.
I wonder if those things are playable at all.

Appearently some modders got bored with Lydia sex mods, and tried to bring back the old hardcore RPG experience... like what they saw in Oblivion :irony:

Classic Classes and Birthsigns
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/16736

Revised Character System
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/12207

Third Era Attributes for Skyrim
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/13968

Mods implementing realistic stuff, like hunger, thirst, fatigue AND cold. Oh wow, finally.

TOTAL REALISM - Basic Needs
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/10843

Imps More Complex Needs
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/10639#content

Frostfall - Hypothermia Camping Survival
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/11163

Level scalling removers are still fucked up. At least that I'm sure.

Skyrim Scaling Stopper
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/9857

Unlevelled World
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/6206

No leveled and totally revised world - inmersive
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/10307

 

[Kahlis]

That reminds me. Has anybody here been following progress on the Elder Scrolls partial conversion called "Andoran"?

It was originally being designed for Oblivion, but they've since decided to port it over to the Creation Engine. But their website assures that "transferring the game to the TES V engine doesn't imply that we will be using Skyrim's game mechanics however. The role-playing system is closer to that in TES III: Morrowind in point of fact."

I really hope that this team succeeds in finishing the mod, just as a big "fuck you" in protest to Bethesda and other mainstream developers, to demonstrate how you can still have detailed, engrossing hand-crafted worlds on modern technology, and that skills/attributes systems still have a place in such games. The way Todd defended the removal of attributes, he acted like they were completely redundant or impossible to implement. Maybe if Skyrim actually had an extensive variety of weapon types, and skill checks, and magic that was more multifarious than "spell you shoot at the enemy" / "spell you shoot at the ground", it would've made keeping all of those things in worthwhile.