Urthor
Prophet
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2015
- Messages
- 1,873
Todd's main problem is that while he's pretty good at coming up with large, open worlds to explore, to this date, other than his work on Morrowind, he hasn't put in any reason to want to explore his worlds. Oblivion is the most obvious example, but even Skyrim -- other than its varying landscapes and pretty trees to look at -- was just boring to walk around in after the first couple of hours.
When you take the examples of games like New Vegas and Enderal, which were obviously based on "worlds" that Bethesda created, it's painfully obvious how incapable Todd and his team is of putting any kind of creative pizzazz into his own games. They, unlike the derivative games based on them, lack any intellectual stimuli to invoke the desire to climb that mountain that he so proudly claims you can.
I completely disagree in terms of Enderal.
Enderal has many, many, many, virtues, but to me it never felt like a *truly* open world. Enderal felt like a progression of pretty level gated areas. You usually didn't have as much choice on where to go next as you'd think.
It reminded me of Gothic style level design. Gated areas by difficulty progression. Entertaining, not truly exciting.
Now, I dislike many, many aspects of Skyrim, but the way that all of the cities are *truly* destinations and all have their own virtues, was very pleasant.
I think it just goes to show that, the quality of the *world*, is really all writing and quest design. The things Skyrim does fantastically, area design of Markarth, aren't as important as the writing and quests in Markarth they didn't make quite so compelling (I love Markarth... as a concept. I felt the dialogue and NPCs weren't up to scratch).