PhantomEcho said:
Athinira said:
Again I say that this is hardly terrible writing.
In fact, this has NOTHING to do with writing at all. This is just one of the many core attributes of large games with massive numbers of NPCs in them. RPGs don't have time to develop multiple thousands of answers to every reaction for a character that's really only designed to fill space and provide a slight bit of humor.
She would be spurting the exact same line because it's relevant to her character: "Generic Housekeeper NPC for Fort". They only even gave her a name because she's a unique personality... but not much more than that.
(...)
Yes, we'd ALL love for the world to respond to our every action... but hey... didn't they do that with Fable? Isn't this the same internet where everyone hates Fable? So it seems like a lot of 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' to me.
...which is why Skyrim perhaps SHOULD have taken a cue from some other games. Particularly Baldur's Gate.
You see, the developers of Baldur's Gate understood that if you keep uninteresting/generic characters around, it brings out their robotic tendencies,
and for that specific reason, the developers understood that characters sometimes needs to f*cking DISAPPEAR! If the mentioned Fort in Skyrim had been a sidequest in Baldur's Gate instead, BioWare would perhaps have made Agnis either do something useful (provide information) and then have her flee the scene afterwards, never to be seen again.
It's a perfect demonstration of the fact that sometimes, less is more, and Agnis ironically becomes a much more colorful and interesting character when you make her flee the scene and disappear so you can't track her down later and spam your "Talk" key until you realize she is a robot. There is nothing wrong with her being a shallow character, but Skyrim makes the fatal flaw of keeping her around, which eventually means that players are going to discover that she is shallow. It's like doing a long story, but stretching it out too far until the audiences becomes bored. Sometimes, it's best to stop while the fun is at its peak.
PhantomEcho said:
If you're getting caught up in minor NPCs' reactions, then you're getting caught up in one of the LEAST IMPORTANT parts of the game. This is something that yes, while a bit jarring sometimes, DOESN'T HAVE ANY SIGNIFICANT IMPACT on the playability or enjoyability of the game.
Ah, the good old "You are playing it wrong" argument. Is there where i go fetch the Steve Jobs "You're holding it wrong"-picture just for emphasis?
Listen, if it didn't have any significant impact on the enjoyability of the game, then this article wouldn't exist to begin with. It obviously had an impact on the article writer, and while i haven't been to that part of Skyrim yet, i can tell you that it would also impact mine (and have so already, just with several other characters than Agnis).
It might not have impacted you, but you don't represent anyone, and the shallowness of most NPC's in Bethesda Games is one thing they have been critisized for MANY times before, so obviously it's something many people consider to be detriment to their experience.
PhantomEcho said:
Skyrim has it's share of problems, and flaws... but it is HARDLY terribly written, and a FAR CRY from soulless. If someone had said this to me back when we were still playing Oblivion, I would have agreed. But Skyrim?
There is a difference between "not being something" and "hiding something".
Skyrim exceeds it's predecessors because it's much better at cloaking/hiding it's faults through improved design, but many of them are still there, and people - especially the ones who were annoyed to no end by the bugs - are eventually gonna discover them if they pay close enough attention.
Now don't get me wrong, it also directly fixed many of the flaws, especially of Oblivion, but the basic formula is still the same, and many of the same problems persist. I will applaud them for going so far and improving the series so much, but at the end of the day, they still have a long way to go.
