Not me, but the last time I had a Saints Flow, I woke up covered in blood....And it wasn't mine.CyricZ said:
Extra Punctuation: Too Many Options in Skyrim
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
I'm not that far into the game, my highest skill is destruction, at 60. But yeah, conjuration could become OP later on, but wouldn't playing on master remedy that a bit?bootz said:
EDIT: BTW, on customization "issue". I've constructed an enormously sexy female high elf and am proud of what I achieved with the customizer, but yeah, too bad I almost never see her face. Still, it's my character's identity and I respect that.
"some kind of fantasy household where mummy doesn't drink and beat the kids"
This had me laughing. I come from a very abusive family, so I can see why that might be a fantasy.
But really, I've heard it *does* exist. Lucky buggers!
This had me laughing. I come from a very abusive family, so I can see why that might be a fantasy.
But really, I've heard it *does* exist. Lucky buggers!
Learning from Dragon Age II, a title I loathe with more hatred than anything Harry Potter, I actually did make my first Dragonborn look very silly, with strange black eyes and a very peculiar protruding chin, expecting to make it easier to spot my own character in any nonsensical cutscene to come, should there be any. Luckily, most of the story had me experience it while in first person.
Everyone using "invisible helmets" should, in my very own, not too humble opinion, go back to play some Barbie or other make-up and dress-up game. I spent about an hour with the Dragon Age 2 face-creation kit, but the game annoyed me out of my socks after not even an hour of actual gameplay and a felt ten hours of nonsensical cut-scenes with annoying accents and a beardless dwarf.
I do hope, however, that Bethesda will find the time and motivation to put the amassed funds to good use and, well, reinvent their engine in a less buggy way. Some of the bugs I encountered were little more than "fun" and mildly annoying, others grabbed immersion by the floppy ears and spun it around just for the heck of it. Oh, I just remember another fun one: Sitting down to improve my blades, but the smithing subgame just never starting. Life would go on around me, people would come, chat me up, go to sleep, get up in the morning - I was frozen trying to sit down to sharpen my tools of destruction and make some cash off the 300 pounds/kilos/stones of surplus weapons. No can do, said the game. So I saved and called it a day. Next day, When I loaded from that very last save... yeah, I was still stuck. It already happened with the funky enchanting table, but that only lasted a couple of minutes at the very most. Not so this time. The whetting stone was cursed, and about ten minutes of trading, improving and making the inventory a little less cluttered were lost. All hail the Autosave!
During my trip though Skyrim, missing actors seemed to be caused mainly by dragons randomly eating them, or my misinterpreting people attacking me for whatever reason as valid foes worthy of beheading, but most of the time the engine did acknowledge my errors.
If, however, some quest givers call the cops, er, guards on me after I enter the instance they asked me to clear out, or the radiant engine orders me to interact with people who have been dead for weeks, I somehow come to believe that that particular bit would have needed a bit more polishing, and I would have preferred less bugs over yet another incarnation of Herbert West's face creation kit from beyond.
I think other obviously mostly missing content like the bard's college are very well missed opportunities fed to the deadline demon, but in the bigger picture - and Skyrim is close to being a rather crowded Hieronymus Bosch tryptich as interpreted by Geof Darrow - it's not that big of a deal, just yet another nice-to-have-had that could eventually be fixed by some Bard's Tale expansion.
Everyone using "invisible helmets" should, in my very own, not too humble opinion, go back to play some Barbie or other make-up and dress-up game. I spent about an hour with the Dragon Age 2 face-creation kit, but the game annoyed me out of my socks after not even an hour of actual gameplay and a felt ten hours of nonsensical cut-scenes with annoying accents and a beardless dwarf.
I do hope, however, that Bethesda will find the time and motivation to put the amassed funds to good use and, well, reinvent their engine in a less buggy way. Some of the bugs I encountered were little more than "fun" and mildly annoying, others grabbed immersion by the floppy ears and spun it around just for the heck of it. Oh, I just remember another fun one: Sitting down to improve my blades, but the smithing subgame just never starting. Life would go on around me, people would come, chat me up, go to sleep, get up in the morning - I was frozen trying to sit down to sharpen my tools of destruction and make some cash off the 300 pounds/kilos/stones of surplus weapons. No can do, said the game. So I saved and called it a day. Next day, When I loaded from that very last save... yeah, I was still stuck. It already happened with the funky enchanting table, but that only lasted a couple of minutes at the very most. Not so this time. The whetting stone was cursed, and about ten minutes of trading, improving and making the inventory a little less cluttered were lost. All hail the Autosave!
During my trip though Skyrim, missing actors seemed to be caused mainly by dragons randomly eating them, or my misinterpreting people attacking me for whatever reason as valid foes worthy of beheading, but most of the time the engine did acknowledge my errors.
If, however, some quest givers call the cops, er, guards on me after I enter the instance they asked me to clear out, or the radiant engine orders me to interact with people who have been dead for weeks, I somehow come to believe that that particular bit would have needed a bit more polishing, and I would have preferred less bugs over yet another incarnation of Herbert West's face creation kit from beyond.
I think other obviously mostly missing content like the bard's college are very well missed opportunities fed to the deadline demon, but in the bigger picture - and Skyrim is close to being a rather crowded Hieronymus Bosch tryptich as interpreted by Geof Darrow - it's not that big of a deal, just yet another nice-to-have-had that could eventually be fixed by some Bard's Tale expansion.
As for the whole questing thing, it's kinda the point to become a super-powered god-hero by the end of the game. My first character was an assassin/mage. I contracted vampirism as soon as I could for the vision spell (hoping it would be night vision AND detect life like it was in Oblivion, had I known it was just the Kahjiit's night vision ability, I likely would have just made a cat) and spent the vast majority of the game just creeping along with the Blade of Woe doing over 700 damage with the stealth attack criticals (15x bonus from talent along with double damage from the Jester's Gloves). There literally wasn't anything I couldn't kill in one hit. When the shit hit the fan and I was forced into combat, I'd switch to my magic gear and melt people's faces off with Destruction magic.
However I had friends who were having just as easy a time with fighter classes. They all went into Heavy Armor, making their own with Smithing, saying that by the end of the game they were nie indestructible power-houses going around killing everything in one hit. The point being that if you do it right and don't focus on side-skills like alchemy and enchanting and what-not first, the combat-style you choose should and will pay off for you in the long run.
As for the facial generator, I thought for this game it was almost impossible to tell what changes were being made other than with the hair-style. My second character was meant to be a Dark Elf warrior so I tried to give him a stern, tough look...but he came out looking like a flesh-covered Draugr. All in all though I gotta agree: I do think that full-scale customization is really neat for full-on 3rd Person RPGs, but for games like Elder Scrolls where it's primarily 1st Person it really doesn't make that big a difference if that's blush on your character's cheek or a festering tumor.
However I had friends who were having just as easy a time with fighter classes. They all went into Heavy Armor, making their own with Smithing, saying that by the end of the game they were nie indestructible power-houses going around killing everything in one hit. The point being that if you do it right and don't focus on side-skills like alchemy and enchanting and what-not first, the combat-style you choose should and will pay off for you in the long run.
As for the facial generator, I thought for this game it was almost impossible to tell what changes were being made other than with the hair-style. My second character was meant to be a Dark Elf warrior so I tried to give him a stern, tough look...but he came out looking like a flesh-covered Draugr. All in all though I gotta agree: I do think that full-scale customization is really neat for full-on 3rd Person RPGs, but for games like Elder Scrolls where it's primarily 1st Person it really doesn't make that big a difference if that's blush on your character's cheek or a festering tumor.
Seems to me sliders and the like work better with multiplayer games, so you can actually set yourself apart from the people around you.
I'm guessing Mr Cro plays on a console where he's not able to take screenshots. I have over 200 screenshots, a fair amount of them featuring my character sans helmet. Sometimes in armor, sometimes in town wearing nothing but his civvies. So yep, customisation good. Gief moar.
I can never make any character look like I want with those sliders. I prefer to have just a couple of preset choices of face, hairstyle, haircolor, maybe a bit about the eyes, and screw the others.
I wonder if Croshaw realizes he actually comes up with good ideas sometimes when he is doing these. You see i was agreeing with him the whole time until he mentioned pin pointing the region of the world your accent comes from and that made me go "HA! i would actually love for that to be in a game. Every one of my characters would have a thick irish accent!" XD just for the lulz.
Ok game developrs, quit wasting time and disc space on facial modifications and just give us an "accent feature."
Ok game developrs, quit wasting time and disc space on facial modifications and just give us an "accent feature."
A friend of mine recently bought Skyrim, played it for about 48 hours straight, and took it right back to store where he bought it. He said that if he was ever going to do anything productive ever again, he didn't need virtual heroin hanging around his house.
I finally started up Dragon Age: Origins a while back, and am absolutely loving it. I love a good story when it's a directed experience, but I still typically enjoy free roam abilities. Loved Fallout 3, and RDR was great...really should go back and play it some more.
Skyrim is on my to-play list, if only I had the time...many hours to be sacrificed
Skyrim is on my to-play list, if only I had the time...many hours to be sacrificed
I always strive to make my characters as ugly and retarded as possible, just so Liara has to make out with a pockmarked, sub-neanderthal Shepard.
If I'm creating a character I know I'll care about, I'll tinker with their face, and get them right where I'd like them, given the choices. Other times, I'll find a preset, then tweak a few things (hair, beard, nose size), or just mash randomize until I like what I see. Though, there's a happy medium here: Invisible helmet option. All the attribute bonuses, all the defense, and all the lovingly slider-crafted ugly mudbaby faces.
But your point does stand--it's point in gaming is arbitrary, most of the time. You can look however you like, but if you spend most of your time in first person, and the character doesn't speak, and then you cover your face with a giant helmet, then there's little point to spending the time intricately crafting the face, for it might as well be a wooden mannequin head (albeit, one that can shout, in Skyrim). Almost all of the slider impact in Skyrim stems from two choices: race, and gender. No amount of sliding will ever make a character remark "wow, look at the brow ridge on that one!" or "I wish my sons had a jawline like that!". It can work in something like Saints, where you see the face as much as you like, the character actually talks, and the faces adequately transmit emotion. Especially when using a flamethrower on a guy in a hot dog costume, and the character is smiling.
But your point does stand--it's point in gaming is arbitrary, most of the time. You can look however you like, but if you spend most of your time in first person, and the character doesn't speak, and then you cover your face with a giant helmet, then there's little point to spending the time intricately crafting the face, for it might as well be a wooden mannequin head (albeit, one that can shout, in Skyrim). Almost all of the slider impact in Skyrim stems from two choices: race, and gender. No amount of sliding will ever make a character remark "wow, look at the brow ridge on that one!" or "I wish my sons had a jawline like that!". It can work in something like Saints, where you see the face as much as you like, the character actually talks, and the faces adequately transmit emotion. Especially when using a flamethrower on a guy in a hot dog costume, and the character is smiling.
Is that...Bruce Campbell? Looks like him, a couple years back, maybe. Butcher, Baker, Boomstick-shaker?anonymity88 said:
Whoa Yahtzee what happened?! Usually I love your sharp, concise observations on the state of gaming in these highly enjoyable articles. This one fell flat though, seemed to meander without a purpose and then came to a quick, unsatisfying end. Just like my sex life Eyoh!