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Elder Scrolls The appeal of Skyrim

Do you like Skyrim?

  • Yes, one of the best games ever made

  • Yes, it was alright, but i got bored with it.

  • Meh, not my type of RPG

  • It was a bad RPG, didn't like it

  • I am a sperg, i don't consider Skyrim to be an RPG, you fucking popamoler


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TemplarGR

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck Bethestard
Joined
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Messages
5,815
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Cradle of Western Civilization
I was asked recently what i was that i really liked about Skyrim. Apparently many people misunderstand Skyrim here on this forum. I really think it is unfair that many people don't consider it an RPG, or consider it garbage. So i decided to start a new thread stating what i believe is the real appeal of Skyrim and the "Bethesda formula" in general, and begin a discussion about it.

Let's get the "review" thing out of the way. Everyone already has an opinion about Skyrim's graphics, music, voice acting, etc, so i won't bother mentioning those. This is not a "review" of the game. This is just giving the opinion of someone who genuinely enjoys Skyrim immensely and deserves his "bethestard" tag. I am just discussing what is the appeal, what is that i find that makes my mind tickling with it, so to speak.

Let's also get a few other things out of the way:

1) Skyrim is very easy. Increasing the difficulty can make the enemies hitspongy and make it closer to souls games but it is just cheap difficulty. You can also always break the game with crafting cheese. Let's just say that no one plays Skyrim for the satisfaction of a hard combat system.

2) Skyrim's writing is just... functional. It is not complete garbage, but it is not good either. It is just "there". It just exists, just for the purpose of making the locations and NPCs exist. No one plays Skyrim for its story or writting. The lore is rich in content but poor in quality, let's be honest. There are also retconns galore. Still, it is, as i said, functional. It gets the job done.

3) Skyrim is not a pure CRPG. It is an action-RPG hybrid. Obviously it having action controls introduces player skill to the avatar's skill. This dilutes the RPG element somewhat, and can't be denied. No one denies this.

4) Skyrim's skill system is not complicated. It is very streamlined. This does not mean that it is not well designed though. I found that the perk system was extremely flexible and could create (assuming typical levels of around 40, no i am not grinding to 100 :P ) an extreme number of different builds. The trees are designed in such a way that you can save perks by only getting what makes sense for a build. I love it. Still, it is not DnD... It is not Divinity Original Sin... Sure, it is more "casual". More streamlined. Again, no one denies it, if having a more hard core skill system is your thing, then Skyrim won't satisfy, not unless you mod it.

So, getting those criticisms out of the way, what is the thing that makes me enjoy it? What is the secret of Bethesda's formula?

As i said in other threads, i have played several hundred hours of Skyrim already. I have made more than a hundred different characters. Yet i have only completed the main questline once. I typically only complete the main questline until Solstheim gets unlocked, with every character. I really don't care about completing the main questline, it is boring, and i don't play the game to experience the story or get the satisfaction of completing the campaign.

The thing i like, is that i get to play an avatar of my making, in first person mode, and control its actions directly. When i play Baldur's gate using my Paladin, it is fun, but i always keep thinking "what if i directly controlled that character in a first person view? And Skyrim allows me to do just that. I make a new character, and shape him up to approximate a paladin build, getting perks in restoration, one handed, shield, heavy armor. Getting anti-undead items like Dawnbreaker. LARPing my Paladin and having fun!

I have attempted to recreate almost any DnD class/subclass in Skyrim. I have made many other builds like merchant-with-people-skills-who-sucks-at-combat, to a dwarven-armored-crossbowman, to vampire necromancers etc. And unlike most CRPGs, i get to experience them directly, with rich graphics, in an open world. I make them exactly like i want, pick the perks i want, the items i want, the lord stones i want, the other bonuses i want... I build them houses like i want, i marry them to whoever i want.

There is no real "end condition" in Skyrim. There is nothing to win, nothing to achieve. It is literally just a digital puppet theater. You get out of it, what you put into it. You are using your imagination, and you escape in its world. Not because it is perfect. It is not. But because it is fun and allows you to express yourself in it. It allows you to put your personal touch.

Think a game like Baldur's Gate. You get to roleplay, yes, but you are rigidly structured in some ways. You can't really escape the class system of the game. You get to pick a class and pick where you assign some bonuses, but other than that, it is a rigid system, not fluid create-what-you-want like Skyrim. Also you don't get to experience the character you are playing directly.

Now, think about Witcher 3. Witcher 3, allows you to control Geralt directly, but it is just Geralt. It will always be Geralt. Yes, you do make C&C, and yes, you do pick if you want the light armored version, the mid, or the heavy, if you want a melee focused or a magic focused, etc. But in the end, it is just a Witcher. It is just Geralt. That is not bad per se, but it does not cover our need to express ourselves in a free way and just do our thing in a sandbox. Skyrim does.

In Skyrim, the only limit to how you roleplay your avatar, is your imagination. I heard stories of someone who wasted many hours just LARPing a Riverwood woodcutter. He would literally just chop wood and help at the mill for money and he even went to sleep at night and get back in the morning. Why he did that? To someone who is objective-based it will seem pointless, he didn't unlock any reward, didn't achieve anything. But to him, it was FUN. He was roleplaying a woodcutter, because why the fuck not? That was his thing, that was what he wanted to do, and he did it.

Skyrim is a virtual sandbox, a world waiting to be shaped up into what you want it to be. Unlike more traditional CRPGs, it is not a rigid thing waiting to be conquered by a brilliant strategic mind or a nice story waiting to be told like a great novel or movie. And that is what Bethesda is good at. That is what Bethesda fans really love about those games.

You need imagination to really get the most out of Skyrim. You need to input a part of you inside your game. You need to perhaps "pretend" to be the character, like a kid pretending to be Spiderman. Skyrim lets you experience a role playing Avatar in first person, directly, with as much freedom as possible, in an open world. Nothing else in the industry let's you do that, like Bethesda's games. That is what makes Skyrim so special. It does not mean that other CRPGs are bad or inferior. They are just different types of RPGs, and that is fine. There is room for everybody... Different strokes for different folks...

And that is why, denying that Skyrim is an RPG is retarded. I mean, it is a game you can role play anything, and shape your character into what you like with an extreme amount of options, and you say it is not a role playing game? Like, seriously?

TLDR: Remember when we were kids. Sometimes we played with toy soldiers, action figures we controlled. That was Baldur's gate. Some other times, we dressed like cowboys, we got our toy revolvers, and played cowboys vs indians, pretending we were aiming and shooting at imaginary indians, or our friends, dressed as indians. THAT, was Skyrim...
 

Deleted Member 16721

Guest
Skyrim is great. Yeah I said it. I enjoyed it for over 300 hours when it first came out. I plan on revisiting it heavy in VR here as soon as I get my mods in order. The game is great because it's just a huge open world to wander and get lost in. The writing is alright, I don't have a problem with it, combat is fun enough, but the exploration and dungeon diving is a lot of fun, even if the dungeons are mostly linear. It's a very atmospheric game and playing in VR puts you right there in the action. It's not Morrowind, and IMO it's not even a spiritual successor to Morrowind (we haven't really seen a spiritual successor to Morrowind yet) but it's a great game for what it is.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
Skyrim is an RPG by the literal definition of the term. It's not my cup of tea, but I can see why it might appeal to people who want to actually roleplay as a handcrafted character in a fantasy world.
 

Oracsbox

Guest
In Skyrim, the only limit to how you roleplay your avatar, is your imagination. I heard stories of someone who wasted many hours just LARPing a Riverwood woodcutter. He would literally just chop wood and help at the mill for money and he even went to sleep at night and get back in the morning. Why he did that?

Simple he was fucking nuts :D.

However to be fair Skyrim does make a very easy to mod porn simulator.
 

kintake

Savant
Joined
Jul 14, 2017
Messages
239
Location
Norway
I wonder if tentacle rape is symptomatic of how love seems to no longer matter in Japan. Declining birth rate, solo weddings and male gigolos making millions from lovesick girls. Tentacle sex is like a basic primal urge fulfillment with no contending-- I might actually be reading too much into it.
 

TemplarGR

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck Bethestard
Joined
May 30, 2013
Messages
5,815
Location
Cradle of Western Civilization
I wonder if tentacle rape is symptomatic of how love seems to no longer matter in Japan. Declining birth rate, solo weddings and male gigolos making millions from lovesick girls. Tentacle sex is like a basic primal urge fulfillment with no contending-- I might actually be reading too much into it.

Not just Japan, really. If you really want to think about it, replace tentacle rape with just "pr0n" and Japan with "the western world" (that pretty much includes Japan in some aspects, including morals decline). Birthrates are declining everywhere that isn't an Islamic region. Atheism/secularism/humanism, the modern way of life, a declining moral compass. People don't value family, human bonds, anymore. It really is sad and it really is socially engineered by the elitists because they think 8 billion people are just useless eaters and would rather reduce us to fewer than half a million. They don't need more slaves than that, and that is stretching it...
 

Poseidon00

Arcane
Joined
Dec 11, 2018
Messages
2,039
Skyrim is a good fantasy life sim. Properly modded, you can be hundreds of hours into it and play several builds and still be satisfied. Some content mods are actually quality and not just virtual waifu simulators. Scattered notes and journals may get a bit old as plot devices, but at least they put a backstory into most locations. The only thing really unforgivable about Skyrim is how they took out so many spells and removed the spell creation system. Absolutely no excuse for that.
 

SpoilVictor

Educated
Joined
Feb 25, 2018
Messages
84
Location
My room, sometimes other rooms
Skyrim works for mainstream audience just because it is stripped of RPG and C&C (either in story and with char dev). Like OP claims everything is functional:

- combat works, but there is nothing to master,
- story works, but it isn't a gripping tale,
- NPC deliver exposition and quests, but don't have any personality to be remembered,
- world is living enough, but not too much to overshadow or overtake player's presence,
- char dev gives some sense of progression, but never forces player to do things specific way or closes any doors.

That design caters to players that want their "fantasy life", illusory world and don't care if illusion is thin as hymen. Skyrim is more like Sims in that regard, but only FPP and with dragons. Wake up, do daily dose of Draugr/Bandit killing, back to shop, put trinkets in home, go to bed. Rise and shine and repeat. What it excels is giving that opportunity, to fulfill that wanderlust, even if anything around is so artificial.

Who else would find anything good there:

- combatfags: will they master their dodges, feints and parry? Nope. Will the crunch numbers to min-max build? Nope,
- storyfags: will they get another tale worthy of Hugo & Nebula award? Nope. Will they meet characters so moving to fell in love or hatred with them? Nope.

If there is any game that embodies "jack of all trades, master of none" proverb it is Bethesda open-world RPG, Skyrim and FO4 in particular. They tackle everything one would expect to find in open-world RPG, but also on such basic level, that it is unbearable for ppl with strong preferences. And as it happens that here on Codex everyone has strong preference this game is shit.
 

Deleted Member 16721

Guest
But why have strong preferences when you can enjoy a multitude of experiences? I will play Fallout 1 or PS:T one day, and then Skyrim another day. There's enough room in our brains and souls to play multiple types of RPGs and still enjoy them. I like a wider variety sometimes, even if my favorites are the hardcore CRPGs and isometric genre. I still appreciate Skyrim for what it is and what it does. Different strokes I guess.
 

The_Mask

Just like Yves, I chase tales.
Patron
Joined
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Messages
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Location
The land of ice and snow.
Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
Skyrim's writing is just... functional.
Thieves Guild.

Where we learn someone is messing with the guild. Mercer Frey is a Nightingale.

Where we learn who is messing with the guild, what the Nightingales are, and we become a Nightingale ourselves. Mercer Frey is a Nightingale.

Where we track down, and kill Mercer Frey during a heist. Mercer Frey is a Nightingale.
Where we go to the Twilight Sepulcher, where all Nightingales go after death. Mercer Frey, now dead is not there. (even after the connection with the Ebonmere is restored, in case you conjure that dumb argument.)

So is Mercer Frey a Nightingale or not?






That's just 1 argument amongst thousands that this game is pure and utter mediocrity aimed at the 100 IQ mark. You one of them.

Skyrim's writing is just... functional. It is not complete garbage.

Ok.
 
Unwanted

Soulstones

Unwanted
Joined
Dec 1, 2018
Messages
78
I was asked recently what i was that i really liked about goats. Apparently many people misunderstand goats here on this forum. I really think it is unfair that many people don't consider it an viable sexual partner, or consider it garbage.
But there is no real "end condition" in goat fucking. There is nothing to win, nothing to achieve. It is literally just a gratification. You get out of it, what you put into it. You are using your imagination, and you escape in its world.
Not because goatfucking is perfect. It is not. But because it is fun and allows you to express yourself in it. It allows you to put your personal touch.
 

Oracsbox

Guest
I was asked recently what i was that i really liked about goats. Apparently many people misunderstand goats here on this forum. I really think it is unfair that many people don't consider it an viable sexual partner, or consider it garbage.
But there is no real "end condition" in goat fucking. There is nothing to win, nothing to achieve. It is literally just a gratification. You get out of it, what you put into it. You are using your imagination, and you escape in its world.
Not because goatfucking is perfect. It is not. But because it is fun and allows you to express yourself in it. It allows you to put your personal touch.
So is this a new Skyrim goat fucking mod ? :D
 

Agame

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 29, 2015
Messages
1,702
Location
I cum from a land down under
Insert Title Here
many people don't consider it an RPG, or consider it garbage.

Its a garbage RPG. You dont need a wall of text to explain that.

But it is a decent walking simulator with lots of survival mods like Frostfall etc. And as an explorefag I can appreciate that.

Anyway I have to salute your effort in writing a goddamn essay about the game, probably taking more thought power than anyone at Bethesda did on the dialogue/quest design in the game.

Im also not sure why you picked Skyrim to go all Fanboy Bethestard over, Morrowind is clearly superior in every way.
 

Saerain

Augur
Patron
Joined
May 27, 2011
Messages
495
I like it for being an open-world RPG, that's pretty much it. I don't think it did anything particularly well beyond giving a decent illusion of freedom, in a market of prescribed characters and rail-riding narratives. Unfortunately, yes, I grew bored fast, because the content within that freedom was so cardboard. It's more fun to mod than to play, by far.
 

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