First Person: Skyrim is Soulless

[Athinira]

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?

"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 ) It does, however, require dedication, intuition, talent and above all else, common sense in game design.

 

[Levethian]

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]

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]

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]

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.

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]

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]

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]

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..." 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.

 

[SgtLion]

"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]

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]

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...

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 )

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.

 

[Skratt]

...
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.

LOL, well said.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Maybe Agnis didn't react because that was the 5th time that had happened that week, and it was only Tuesday.

 

[Skratt]

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.

Seriously, can I forward your post to Bethesda? I think that idea is good stuff.

On second thought, if I had too much fun having the world reacting to all of my shenanigans, I'd probably be divorced for ignoring my wife and family.

 

[Levethian]

An "invitation" is something that carries a benefit... Picking up every item in the game and selling it has a gameplay benefit for the min-maxing crowd

I don't disagree. Only, it's strange that Dennis is compulsively obsessed with the net sale value of every item in Skyrim, and yet so thrown by an 'off' response from an NPC. I didn't know min-max'ers overlapped with serious role-players. I am educated.

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.

-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"

Totally commiserate. My experience with the killing a dragon in town was quite different - Afterwards, they encircled the dragon, amazed at the beast and to be in the presence of Dragonborn. It was a great moment.

The only immersion-killer there was that they killed the dragon, I just shot at it from behind a bush.

The pursuit of this degree of freedom is admirable, even if Bethesda has a ways to go yet.

 

[Athinira]

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!

Using the wrong tactics/making the wrong decisions and "playing a game wrong" are two different things. It's not the same at all. When I'm talking about "playing the game wrong", i mean playing the game in a way the game doesn't invite you to in the first place.

From your description (having never played the game), it seems like Ocarina of Time is a game that doesn't paint a flowing weak spot on a boss and instead invites you to experiment until you find the right tactic, which you eventually did. So you didn't play the game wrong ;o)

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.

Except that you don't define that yourself. What you enjoy or don't enjoy as a human is a product of your personality, NOT of your free will. I can't "decide" what i like or don't like. At best, i can try to enforce a mindset upon myself, but that's still a "fake" mindset in the same way that trying to convince myself that I'm in love with a chair doesn't make me in love with it.

And I'm having fun with Skyrim. What I'm arguing, however, is that I (and MANY other people) could have had so much more fun if Bethesda has just improved on some of the games flaws and had a better sense of game and world design. The worst part is that they are actually really close.... but still no cigar :-(

Like it or not, as human beings we react to stimuli (including digital entertainment), and while every human is different, there is typically some stimuli that we statistically react to more than others. It's not that Skyrim lacks good stimuli, to me it's more like it's attempting to drown us in some of it while withholding the rest.... i just want to taste it all and live to see the day! ;P

I don't disagree. Only, it's strange that Dennis is compulsively obsessed with the net sale value of every item in Skyrim, and yet so thrown by an 'off' response from an NPC. I didn't know min-max'ers overlapped with serious role-players. I am educated.

I don't get people who always say that "I didn't know X overlapped with Y". Everything can overlap with almost everything. Human diversity at its finest ;-)

 

[Hal10k]

By the time I had logged as many hours into New Vegas as I have in Skyrim, I felt like I had big decisions to make that were really going to change the world of New Vegas.


That's how I felt. Preparing for the big battle, preparing for taking over New Vegas.
Bam, end, finish, a nice powerpoint shows how everything has changed.

That's it, not stop playing the game or make a new characer.

*Sigh*

HUGE disappointment. Really, I loved the game, but I was so disappointed in the end that I have never touched the game since I've seen the end credits.

That's the primary reason I wasn't quite as oogly-boogly over New Vegas as some of the other older fans were: it doesn't really feel like I've made an impact when the game feels the need to sit me down and explain that I've made an impact, then casually change the subject if I ask for any details. It's still a good game, and to be honest, none of the games really did this well; it's as if the entire franchise has some crippling fear of the "falling action" portion of the plot. But the original Fallout at least gave a token falling action with the conversation with the Overseer, and you got to witness the results of some of your choices firsthand after the resolution in 2 & 3 (with the expansion). I still liked the game, and I understand why they couldn't personally demonstrate all of your choices, but the ending just felt dramatically unsatisfying to me.

 

[Sentox6]

I wish people would stop referring to Fallout NV as if it represents Bethesda getting it right, so to speak. Yes, they published it, but Obsidian developed it, and it shows.

Obsidian is, imo, an underrated developer; their execution seems to fall short of their intentions more often than not (KotOR 2 is a great example). I suspect they just need more money and time.

I've always felt that Obsidian lies somewhere between Bethesda and Bioware: content-drive vs character-driven. YMMV.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

I haven't played Skyrim yet, and I probably won't for a long time, but I guess I'm lucky since this wouldn't affect me. I probably would've just happily stolen everything in the fort without a second thought.

 

[violent_quiche]

Fair comment. By the 500th time Adrianne the Warmaiden blacksmith lady said ?you get things done, I like that? (my personal ?arrow through the knee?), what began as an affirmation that I was making a difference became a meaningless, rote reminder that this was a game and this was all I was going to hear from her. At least people have stopped trying to start a conversation with me while I am trying to fight a goddam dragon. Or maybe I just stopped noticing.

Although I don?t regret the purchase, I am less entranced by the world as the hardcore fans so that doesn?t help. Having put close to 90 hours into Skyrim I can speak to it?s addictive quality, but once the magic of upping skills and attaining gear wore off, everything became far less engaging so I?ll probably sell up once the main quest is done. It feels that in the quest for scope, Bethesda sacrificed depth- a smaller cast with longer and more varied quests would have contributed enormously to it?s longevity, for me at least.