Misterian said:
What's up with writing so that Grey Wardens only live to be 30? their lives are already on the line fighting Darkspawn, especially the ArchDemon, so what's the point?
I can explain this one for you. Its largely to show that they are not totally immune to the Darkspawn taint. Some last longer than others, but at around 30 they start hearing the Archdemon's calling them from the Deep Roads or W/E, and are compelled to follow. This is because the Darkspawn blood they drank is turning them into a ghoul.
Largely, its to show that the Grey Warden's aren't big bad baddasses who can pimp around the world forever. Eventually, even your Warden will fall to the taint. It gives them a sense of Mortality - though maybe that mad Wizard in Wardens keep will be able to change that.
OT: Nearly Everything. 90% of everything to use a clichéd number.
Currently, in particular, Skyrim.
It is alright, yes. Does it have amazing scope? Yes. Is it gods second gift to Earth, so brilliant I will need nothing else for the rest of my life until the next TES game? No.
The bugs are far too numerous and annoying. No BS about 'Its Bethesda'. That is not an excuse. If it is a bug that breaks part of, or the whole, game for me - there is no excuse for it. Some of these bugs would even have been easy to fix - they did something like it at other points in the game that still let quests and such work.
Next, the gameplay was mediocre at best. There are only so many times you can spam click to kill an enemy and find it interesting. Its not many for me. The puzzles were, at first, a welcome relief to normal gameplay in modern games, but after they used the same puzzle 20 or more times, it got old. The AI for everything was absolutely pathetic, leaving enemies and companions alike to die very quickly on every trap, hill and anything.
The UI was horrid, especially the inventory - though things like the favourites bar, spell menu, level up screen, ect. were horrid in how they handled, and focused too much on trying to look good.
Even on highest graphical settings, the game looked mediocre at best, and terrible at worst. I cannot stand seeing a 256 texture covering a large rock inside a cavern. It makes my eyes bleed. To put it in perspective, 256 is the size of the textures used for eyes. Other textures were usually less offensive, but after hearing so much about how amazing it looked, I was thoroughly disappointed until I installed 40-50 mods to fix its graphics. With the new HD TP, maybe that will have changed. I haven't managed to drag myself back to see if it has yet.
There were a few interesting or cool dungeons, and fewer awesome dungeons, but most were extremely samey - seemingly using the exact same rooms in a slightly different configuration. No, I am not looking for a million new assets to be made and such. I can guarantee though that modders using current in game assets will be able to make more interesting dungeons than the samey ones around now. Interesting design things that aren't what I expected are what I'll be looking for. That Dwarven ruin that had a section of passage going down vertically, with pipes on the wall to jump to and such, was interesting. That bones in the gears challenge was interesting. Walking through rooms with the same name and same basic, linear layout of most other Dwarven Ruins/Crypts/Caves ect. is not interesting.
Dragons, for being such a large part of the main story and marketing, are some of the worst portrayal of Dragons I have seen for gameplay purposes. They are at their best when flying - which seems to be along a semi fixed path - and absolutely pathetic when landed. Hell, town guards can take them down with no trouble. There is no need for the Dovahkiin. Now, if they were able to simply rape an entire town and barely be hurt, and the Dovahkiin was actually NEEDED to fight the dragons, maybe it would be interesting. As is, no.
That is a basic outline of some of my main problems with Skyrim. I don't hate the game, but its only worth one playthrough for me, and really isn't that fantastic.
