First Person: Skyrim is Soulless

Firia

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I like to think characters like this one are prime targets for the Dark Brotherhood quests. They may not have any "important" connection to the world, but they're also innocent. Perfect. ;)
 

Ragsnstitches

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New game? Not perfect? Undoubtedly popular? Sensationalist topic head? Nothing new here...

People always want to complain about something popular when they think they're missing something. I think I will stick with Jims opinions, since I like it better and it relates more to my feelings towards the game.

Heck, even Yahtzee had a better experience then this guy.
 

Athinira

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Jonluw said:
But including a function in the game is not the same as inviting the players to take it to its logical extreme.
Modern warfare lets you use grenade launchers. Is the fact that there isn't enought grenade launcher ammunition in the game to let the tube-enthusiasts play through the game using only that? No, I wouldn't say so.
Features/functions without limitations ARE going to be exploited by players to the logical extreme. They always will. And that is why your analogy is not appropriate, because grenade launcher ammo being limited is, ironically enough, a LIMITATION, and like i said earlier, limitations can be good. Even though there isn't infinite grenade launcher ammunition, Modern Warfare still allows you to play with it for a while, which is enough. You don't see the min-maxer complaining that there isn't infinite loot in the keep either do you? The mere fact that there is limited ammunition in Modern Warfare is in itself an appropriate limitation which only hightens the fun, because it makes the time that you actually CARRY the grenade launcher more enjoyable, knowing that you can't do it all the time.

Let me give you an appropriate example of how i would fix the min-maxing problem in Skyrim by imposing a limitation.

Imagine if the keep talked about in the original article got devoid of items after you leave it the first time. You clear out the keep, loot it, go to sell the stuff you looted, but when you come back to loot the rest, it's gone.

Not only can this limitation make sense in the context of the game (someone else looted the keep while you were gone), but it would also improve it for the min-maxers. Why? Because the goal of the min-maxer is to make the absolutely best performance with what he got, and by limiting what he got (you can only loot the keep once instead of coming back several times), you make him able to min-max faster and help him progress faster in the game without having to feel that he wasted an opportunity to min-max, and at the same time you also make him do a min-maxing consideration about which loot to bring and which loot to abandon, which further stimulates his min-maxing-mind for more enjoyment?

See how this works?

This is what I've been arguing all the time: Functions need limitations, else they aren't enjoyable. Another way to play almost every game is turn on god mode, but we can both agree that this typically isn't as enjoyable in the length.

Levethian said:
Athinira said:
What i mean by that is that if a game INVITES you to do something, but then makes doing that something unenjoyable/sucky (for whatever reason), then it shouldn't have invited you to do that something in the first place.
Not sure Skyrim invites players to indiscriminately pick up every item in every dungeon and trawl it back home repeatedly for hours non-stop, any more than it invites players to run into a tree.

I don't think Skyrim actively invites any manner of play, except by occasionally pushing quests in your face and making enemies hostile - it just lets you play how you like. That's the TES mantra I think, and long may it remain so.
An "invitation" is something that carries a benefit (either related to gameplay and enjoyment). Running into a tree has no benefit (unless you for some obscure reason find it funny, in which case I'd say i find you a strange human being) so there is no reason to do it.

Picking up every item in the game and selling it has a gameplay benefit for the min-maxing crowd, and since you can pick up every item and sell them, this is a direct invitation for them to do that, else they don't find themself stimulated (if they don't do it, they get the internal feeling of having missed an opportunity for more money which detracts from their experience).
 

weirdee

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btw, due to the "radiant" wild encounter system, you WILL be attacked for things you've done earlier, although to be fair most wild encounters are hostile anyway.

also, you're not really supposed to pick up everything because hell, there's a weight limit for most of the game

seriously, just put it down and don't bother, it's only like 20 gold

PUT IT DOWN
 

Machocruz

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Your actions do matter in Skyrim. I killed a chicken, and everyone in Skyrim was tyring to kill me. Awesome living world with consequences...


And lol at people suggesting LARPing in a video game.
 

Sinclair Solutions

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Zachary Amaranth said:
Isn't open and without consequence exactly what gamers want out of Skyrim, though?
Maybe, but I am not one of those. I don't play video games as often as I'd like, so when I play an open world game (or any game), I want to feel like I am actually doing something with the short amounts of time I put into it. With games like Fallout, Skyrim, and even Borderlands, there sometimes feels like there is never any progression when people don't give two shits about you. It feels like your not doing anything.

Red Dead Redemption, in my opinion, made even the side quests feel very important by putting some serious feelings and emotions behind each quest giver and person you interfered with. You feel like you are changing these people's lives. It makes even the shortest amounts of playtime interesting and full of weight. This is also the appeal of linear games to me.

Just a personal preference, but it really makes all the difference to me.
 

Jonluw

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TheMatsjo said:
Jonluw said:
I don't think "people who need to have all the gold in the game" is such a big subgroup of RPG gamers that Bethesda should sacrifice realism
Just a funny little tidbit: I like how you call having a carrying limit realistic in a game where you can carry a dozen pieces of armor without as much as a back pack.
I know. The limit is quite unrealistic. What I see it as is introducing a semblance of realism, while catering to the common player's need to carry many items, while avoiding absolute imbalance.

I just need the fact that you can't carry infinity items to sustain the realism, because this introduces the gameplay aspects of priority and a need for storage separate from your own body cavities (where Elder scrolls characters evidently store their items).
Athinira said:
A game that invites you to play in many different ways and SUCCEED in making all of them enjoyable is after all a rare gem that should be treasured.
"A Jack of all trades is a master of none."

I respect both of your viewpoints, I think an accurate summary would be that you have a fundamental disagreement over what this game should try to accomplish.

The Elder Scrolls series has gone the way of the jack of all trades, offering many things, but excelling in very little. This is a very justifiable choice, especially considering the mod-ability of the games. It's a compromise on many levels that delivers an extremely diverse, but ultimately hollow experience. So yes (Jonluw), the game is geared to cast a very wide net.

If TES had gone the way of the master it would have by necessity (in all likelihood) have become a far more narrow, focused game. I agree that if a game includes something, it can also be criticised on those aspects if it fails to deliver. So yes, from a mastery standpoint Skyrim fails in many ways to deliver on its promises. I think your (Athinira) criticisms are valid, but I think it's been a conscious choice on Bethesda's part.

The only way to satisfy both viewpoints would be to build a master of all trades game, but that's quite a tall order. I think Bethesda chose to go the way of the jack of all trades, and so far it's worked out well for them, and offers a lot of something for everyone. But, I do agree with the OP.

PS: just realised my wording's not exactly smooth, but I hope the content is at least legible.
I agree, they are casting a wide net.
And while they can't make all paths satisfying they do focus on making the most used ones more polished.
The point where I disagree with OP and Athniria is on which paths they should polish, evidently. I am completely okay with the game not placing focus on the role of "marrying, and living a humble blacksmith's life", because I feel this is not the kind of experience the game is mainly trying to deliver.
 

The Harkinator

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Jun 2, 2010
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A few gripes about Skyrim:
- No perception marks for enemies (like in Fallout)
- Pacing at the end of the main quest is horrible
- I don't know if the game can decide if Dragons returning or Stormcloaks vs Imperials is a better main story
- The intro quest is an awful introduction to Stormcloaks vs Imperials (the Imperial character actually has the decency to apologize)

But apart from those things its my favourite game of the year, I love it so much.
 

Athinira

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PhantomEcho said:
You're just talking in circles now.

You call me hypocritical in an argument which is at least as hypocritical as you claim for mine to be, all the while failing to understand the point. The point is that you're not SEEING the compromises that others, like me, have had to make to accommodate others. You only see what YOU perceive to be a flaw, and base your argument around that.

Well I see your PLAY-STYLE as being a flaw. And yet I welcome you to it.

What I don't welcome is Bethesda changing the entire structure of their game to suit you. Because you're not a majority, nor are you more important than me and folks who like to play like me. We all make compromises so that other folks can get the things they want.
The one talking in circles is you. You see, you keep having the illusion that any change i want in the game is gonna ruin your experience, when in fact it's not.

I haven't ONCE argued that they need to change the entire structure to please me. I said that they could have done it, and they could do it without ruining your gameplay and with very simple changes. It's a win-win situation for everyone.

All they need to do is understand that limitations can improve a game.

In my previous post before this one (it's a seperate post to my last reply to you, you can find it here [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/6.331000-First-Person-Skyrim-is-Soulless?page=3#13452298]), i demonstrated how i would solve the min-maxer problem in Skyrim by simply making any dungeon/keep only lootable once after you cleared it. This makes min-maxers not feel they missed out and makes them capable of moving forward, it doesn't ruin anyone elses gameplay, it makes sense within the game world and it fixes a problem. See the point?

TheMatsjo said:
"A Jack of all trades is a master of none."

I respect both of your viewpoints, I think an accurate summary would be that you have a fundamental disagreement over what this game should try to accomplish.

The Elder Scrolls series has gone the way of the jack of all trades, offering many things, but excelling in very little. This is a very justifiable choice, especially considering the mod-ability of the games. It's a compromise on many levels that delivers an extremely diverse, but ultimately hollow experience. So yes (Jonluw), the game is geared to cast a very wide net.
Except that it's not a disagreement over what it should try to accomplish. My argument is that the game could accomplish EVERYTHING if the developers just did it right. Being the "master of all trades" isn't impossible :eek:) It does, however, require dedication, intuition, talent and above all else, common sense in game design.
 

Levethian

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weirdguy said:
btw, due to the "radiant" wild encounter system, you WILL be attacked for things you've done earlier, although to be fair most wild encounters are hostile anyway.
I like random encounters - really adds to travelling. So far found 26 different encounters.
 

Jonluw

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Athinira said:
Jonluw said:
But including a function in the game is not the same as inviting the players to take it to its logical extreme.
Modern warfare lets you use grenade launchers. Is the fact that there isn't enought grenade launcher ammunition in the game to let the tube-enthusiasts play through the game using only that? No, I wouldn't say so.
Features/functions without limitations ARE going to be exploited by players to the logical extreme. They always will. And that is why your analogy is not appropriate, because grenade launcher ammo being limited is, ironically enough, a LIMITATION, and like i said earlier, limitations can be good. Even though there isn't infinite grenade launcher ammunition, Modern Warfare still allows you to play with it for a while, which is enough. You don't see the min-maxer complaining that there isn't infinite loot in the keep either do you? The mere fact that there is limited ammunition in Modern Warfare is in itself an appropriate limitation which only hightens the fun, because it makes the time that you actually CARRY the grenade launcher more enjoyable, knowing that you can't do it all the time.
No, but I did see the min-maxer complaining about merchants not having infinite amounts of money and players not having infinite amounts of inventory space.
Let me give you an appropriate example of how i would fix the min-maxing problem in Skyrim by imposing a limitation.

Imagine if the keep talked about in the original article got devoid of items after you leave it the first time. You clear out the keep, loot it, go to sell the stuff you looted, but when you come back to loot the rest, it's gone.

Not only can this limitation make sense in the context of the game (someone else looted the keep while you were gone), but it would also improve it for the min-maxers. Why? Because the goal of the min-maxer is to make the absolutely best performance with what he got, and by limiting what he got (you can only loot the keep once instead of coming back several times), you make him able to min-max faster and help him progress faster in the game without having to feel that he wasted an opportunity to min-max, and at the same time you also make him do a min-maxing consideration about which loot to bring and which loot to abandon, which further stimulates his min-maxing-mind for more enjoyment?

See how this works?
Yes. And like I've been saying: Skyrim isn't catering to the min-maxing crowd, so they have no incentive to include this feature.

And as I've also been saying: I really need to finish my homework before going to bed, so I really can't put any more effort into this debate.
 

Nurb

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Dec 9, 2008
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He has got a point; hints of a souless experience without any real recognition of your efforts or decisions.

My own examples:
-Became Harbinger of the Companions and the guards still ask if I "fetch the mead" and I'm still talked down to by guild members.

-The info I found at the Thalmore Embassy shows it doesn't matter which faction I decide to help win the war, which I was really debating with myself on.

-I have no option when dealing with the gods' demands, I either accept or leave the quests unfinished, but if I do comply, it doesn't show in the world anyway beyond an artifact that I've advanced beyond using anyway.

-I can't play a "good guy" and take down the thieves guild if I feel like it; I have to frame a guy that I just helped and called me a friend, but if I do to progress the story, he doesn't act any differently.

-A whole town watches me kill a dragon and absorb its soul, but then goes back to making smart-ass remarks "Let me guess, someone stole your sweetroll"

-Same goes for being a thane; I punch someone for disrespecting my position and suddenly I'm getting my ass kicked by the whole damn town.
 

Athinira

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Jonluw said:
No, but I did see the min-maxer complaining about merchants not having infinite amounts of money and players not having infinite amounts of inventory space.
That's because it's a limitation you can get around (but it's very bothersome to do so), which in the end means that it's not really a limitation. You can get around the inventory problem by returning to the keep multiple times, and you can get around the merchant problem by searching far and wide for more merchants. These are bothersome solutions, but they are there, and the min-maxer is going to put himself through them to satisfy his desire to min-max.

Jonluw said:
Yes. And like I've been saying: Skyrim isn't catering to the min-maxing crowd, so they have no incentive to include this feature.

And as I've also been saying: I really need to finish my homework before going to bed, so I really can't put any more effort into this debate.
And like I've been saying, that's a blatant lie. Skyrim is only second to WoW in a game that invites to min-maxing, and ALOT of the players who bought the game play it because they enjoy min-maxing. If it wasn't catering to min-maxers, it wouldn't allow you to min-max to the degree it does in the first place. Bethesda understands that many of their customers are min-maxers, so they don't ignore it (they just don't understand what to do with it). It's a ridiculous statement, just as ridiculous as vanilla raiders in WoW saying that the game wasn't ever going to cater to casuals.

But enjoy homework and sleep well.
 

PH3NOmenon

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Yes. Yes, yes a thousand times yes.

What point is a game in which you're "free to do anything and everything" if npc's don't acknowledge and react to whatever you do.

Imagine a skyrim but where dialogue would exist calling you out for only killing women. Or where you'd actually get yelled at for selling a questreward right in front of the quest-giver's eyes. "That was a gift, you callous jerk!" Or "Where on earth has all my cookware gone?" after robbing a household. Where people would starve if you stole all their food and they were out in a distant guardstation. Better yet, where the guards will get annoyed and desert if you leave them nothing to eat but biscuits and steal the rest.

I wouldn't care if the world is half as big, if you could actually interact with the world.
 

MarsProbe

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Zachary Amaranth said:
SonicWaffle said:
If you make big, world-changing decisions and the world fails to change notably, it can be an immersion-breaker to say the least.
Honey, EVERYTHING is an immersion breaker.

The sooner you learn how useless the word "immersion" is, the better.

"First person breaks my immersion!"

"Third person breaks my immersion!"

"Health packs break my immersion!"

"Regenerating health breaks my immersion!"

"Lens flare breaks my immersion!"

"HUDs break my immersion!"

"The inability to see my status breaks my immersion!"

"Immortal kids in a fantasy game break my immersion!"

Lack of consequence may be an immersion breaker, but I'm sure not being able to roleplay out a consequence-free murder fantasy breaks a few thousand other people's immersion.
I find the biggets immersion breaker when playing Skyrim is still being able to see the room in which the console and TV I'm playing the game on is contained. Until Bethesda fix this glaring flaw, I'm just not going to be able to get fully immersed in any of their games.

Though really, none of that matters, just as long as I'm able to send a group of bears hurtling off the edge of a mountain just by shouting at them, the rest is just gravy...:)
 

winter2

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Therumancer said:
winter2 said:
Agnis? I could have sworn I killed her as part of the Dark Brotherhood storyline. Maybe I'm wrong.

For me, Skyrims soul lives in the environment it gives us. I have spent hours just jaunting through the hills enjoying the snow and wind.
I believe you are correct Agnis is a Dark Brotherhood target.

Most NPCs seem to have some use, if you haven't found it, then chances are you don't have the relevent quest/storyline.

You might be going "huh, what" only to find out what was going on later on down the road.

Going by the other games in the series, The Dark Brotherhood isn't as evil as they are portrayed even if the members are kind of twisted. The concept is similar to that whole Wanted/Weapons of Fate thing, where they kill people for the greater good without it nessicarly being obvious why. I get the impression Sithis and The Night Mother play the role of nilistic murder machines for a higher purpose and I believe that was spelled out in some other games. If you look into some of the things going on (the stories told through the enviroment) there is oftentimes a clear reason why your killing someone... like say a cult shrine in their basement, relation to another NPC, or whatever else.

Oh and if you attack Agnis if I remember she's a little tougher than you might expect... I'm just saying. :)

"Oh please don't hurt me..." :p Gullible much.

A response to the article as much as to the message I'm quoting.
Hmm.. for me personally I happened upon her while she was sleeping I think. A sneaky arrow made short work of her.

Overall I have to say that the Dark Brotherhood storyline felt a little more tame than in Oblivion. I seem to remember having chills going down my back towards the end of it.

Or maybe I'm just remembering it with a slight sense of nostalgia. Hard to say these days. :D
 

SgtLion

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"I have just realised NPCs in games aren't always 100% perfectly finished and that I don't have reasons to care about them," Is basically what I read from this.
 

Kimarous

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Athinira said:
If a game can be played "wrong" in the first place, then it's the fault of the game, not the player, because for some players, playing the game "right" isn't enjoyable.
That is the silliest, most untrue statement I have seen in a long time. Any game can be "played wrong."

When I first played Ocarina of Time (my third console game ever), I honestly tried to play it like Mario. I get to Queen Gohma and thought, like with bosses like King Bob-Omb or Whomp, I only needed to strike the boss once every time it got stunned. You know what happened? The battled dragged, and dragged, and I eventually died because I ran out of means to stun it. I fought it this way multiple times for over two hours and I got really, really angry with the game.

I WAS PLAYING IT WRONG!

I eventually figured out that I was supposed to, oh yeah, keep attacking it. It wasn't like Mario and I wasn't supposed to play it like that.

So don't you go spewing nonsense like "if a game can be played 'wrong,' it's the fault of the game," because that is complete and utter bullshit.
 

Skratt

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Athinira said:
StriderShinryu said:
While I get the general point of teh article, I can't help but think that part of the problem was the author's own expectations and approach. It may be true that the Agnis situation is odd, and I felt the same thing when I ran into her, but there is some responsibility on the part of the player to put themselves in the role rather than have it be handed them entirely by the game.
No it's not.

It's a games responsibility to draw you into an immersive experience. You can't just tell a player to take up a very specific mindset (in this case particularly, you are telling the player to take up a mindset where he ignores all the faults and shallow areas of the game on purpose, but by that argument, any game can be great).

If a game requires you to go into it with "the right mindset", then it's not GotY material, because i can mention a lot of games out there who have succeeded drawing in different audiences who normally didn't play that sort of game and didn't know what to expect. Take a game series like Modern Warfare. Even though they use a very generic formula, the gameplay is so compelling that most people will be able to pick that up and enjoy it without any particular mindset. In fact, it's almost impossible to go into Modern Warfare with the wrong mindset.

Skyrim is, at its best, a game which offers you a great amount of freedom, but 'freedom' isn't what everyone wants, and more importantly: The freedom is in most cases rather shallow (which is why this article was written in the first place).

Which is also why I'm going to pick up this quote for the last part of this post...
Zachary Amaranth said:
And they probably never will.

But it hasn't really stopped people from being "immersed," regardless of what you've argued.
...and point out that it hasn't stopped a lot of people from NOT being immersed either :eek:)

And i feel this really is the core problem of Skyrim: People keep claiming it's a deep and expansive game, but while it's certainly huge, it's also in fact a rather shallow game. Now, there isn't anything wrong with a game being shallow (hell, Modern Warfare is rather Shallow too, and it's still the best selling game series ever), but there is something wrong with trying to pretend to be something else, and this rather breaks up the immersion for many people.
I would disagree. You (as in the player) define your own happiness. If you watch a movie and enjoy it, that is all you. You may enjoy the hell out of a movie that your neighbor hated. Happiness is defined by disposition, not by circumstance. Nobody, and I mean nobody, can make you happy, but you.

Someone gives you something, you either like it or you don't. The thing they gave you is completely indifferent to your level of enjoyment.