So, now that the honeymoon period is over... (Skyrim thread)

[Jitters Caffeine]

Unfortunately, the game has no sense of progression. Finding the next best equipment or getting the next perk in a skill tree was the only thing I could do to feel any accomplishment. The world seems so apathetic to everything I do, the characters are boring, the dragons go from simply easy to being a chore to deal with, and the ambient quests are little more than fetch quests that are usually solved with fast traveling to the closest place to your destination and dealing with whatever small opposition you find.

There is a reasonable amount of progression in Skyrim. Theres levelling your character which makes you a much more formidable fighter. Theres the guilds where you climb the ranks to eventually control the guild, this is more so with the thieves guild because you can return them to their former glory of basically controlling the entire country. That's pretty much all the progression there is in any game, levelling and guild wise.
Quite honestly there have been very few characters in AAA games that have actually interested me. I'm lucky if theres 2 or 3. So character wise Skyrim was no big disappointment because the bar is pretty low anyway.

I agree, the difficulty scaling is pretty bad. They needed to keep the Oblivion way of setting it from 0 to 100. Then we could fine tune it to something that feels right. But yeah the levels in Skyrim is Easy and then the last one is ridiculously hard.

Fetch quests are in every game and are almost always the most common quest type. Basically all quests can be broken down into a few groups. theres collect X from location/person Y. Theres kill X at location Y. Then theres a mixture of both kill X and collect Y. It's pretty hard to design a quest that isn't along these lines. Borderlands is an example of it done really really bad. If you look at Fallout you will see the exact same kinds of quests over and over and over, only variation is who, what and where.

Sure, you can become the leader of EVERY guild in the game all at once. But what happens? No one in the game reacts or cares. There's no satisfaction of being the Archmage of the Mage's College when my Alteration is my highest Magic skill at like 33. Or if I'm the Listener of the Brotherhood or Thieves guild with a sneak of like 20. Being the leader of the Companions and the leader of a guild of Werewolves? Completely trivial when your underlings are refusing to talk to you until you go shake down some shop owner in a town across the map. It all feels so meaningless.

In Fallout 3, if you take out Paradise Falls, Little Lamplight will be much more responsive to you and actually want to talk to you even though you're a "Mungo". Merchants will start circulating in the area more and give you discounts for taking out the slavers that harassed them. You FEEL like you've accomplished something. Alternatively, if you join the Slavers, you get to go out into the world and bring them new slaves, which will make people much more apprehensive to talk to you, Three Dog talks about how much of a menace you are to the Wastes. No one seems to give a rat's furry ass WHAT you do in Skyrim as long as you don't do it in front of a guard.

 

[VaudevillianVeteran]

I think I'm done with Skyrim for now until there's an update or something along those lines, I actually started playing it after the hype so that helped.
I loved the game, the only two things that irritated me was the glitches and minor quest exhaustion.
The latter I can forgive as you can work on quests as you please, instead of doing quests you can wander around the beautiful environments.
But the glitches. The glitches. Why the glitches?
The worst one being the glitch where I was unable to use ANYTHING, no crafting, no enchanting, no sitting, no nothing. Had to lose an hour of progress due to this.
There were a few minor quest glitches that I thankfully fixed, but if I hadn't the quests would be unable to be completed.
But yeah, other than that, I really liked the game, especially since I'm new to The Elder Scrolls series, I've even invested in trying Oblivion out.

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

I think I'm done with Skyrim for now until there's an update or something along those lines, I actually started playing it after the hype so that helped.
I loved the game, the only two things that irritated me was the glitches and minor quest exhaustion.
The latter I can forgive as you can work on quests as you please, instead of doing quests you can wander around the beautiful environments.
But the glitches. The glitches. Why the glitches?
The worst one being the glitch where I was unable to use ANYTHING, no crafting, no enchanting, no sitting, no nothing. Had to lose an hour of progress due to this.
There were a few minor quest glitches that I thankfully fixed, but if I hadn't the quests would be unable to be completed.
But yeah, other than that, I really liked the game, especially since I'm new to The Elder Scrolls series, I've even invested in trying Oblivion out.

If I had to place my biggest complaint about the game, or at least what I really NOTICED the most between Skyrim and New Vegas, it would have to be the total lack of interesting Characters.

 

[VaudevillianVeteran]

If I had to place my biggest complaint about the game, or at least what I really NOTICED the most between Skyrim and New Vegas, it would have to be the total lack of interesting Characters.

I think there are a few memorable characters, I could name a few of the characters (outside of the Daedric Princes) that stuck to mind. Admittedly I get what you're saying, although it must be difficult to flesh out so many characters to their full potential for such a vast game.

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

If I had to place my biggest complaint about the game, or at least what I really NOTICED the most between Skyrim and New Vegas, it would have to be the total lack of interesting Characters.

I think there are a few memorable characters, I could name a few of the characters (outside of the Daedric Princes) that stuck to mind. Admittedly I get what you're saying, although it must be difficult to flesh out so many characters to their full potential for such a vast game.

They didn't have any trouble in the Fallout series. There are actual robots that are more memorable than most of the plot important characters in Skyrim.

 

[Griffolion]

I played the main story and a great deal of the side missions, but after about 80 hours my interest tailed off. I'm not one of those people that can restart a new character, because even though I could go off on a totally new play style, I already know what's going to happen (more or less) and so I just lose interest. Skyrim is a mightily good game though.

 

[VaudevillianVeteran]

They didn't have any trouble in the Fallout series. There are actual robots that are more memorable than most of the plot important characters in Skyrim.

I think I can remember maybe a few characters from Skyrim that were mildly interesting and I enjoyed. Even then they weren't plot-central and didn't say much.

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

They didn't have any trouble in the Fallout series. There are actual robots that are more memorable than most of the plot important characters in Skyrim.

I think I can remember maybe a few characters from Skyrim that were mildly interesting and I enjoyed. Even then they weren't plot-central and didn't say much.

That's something else that bugged me, no one seemed to care what you were doing. Whether you were becoming the head of every guild in Skyrim or literally saving the world, the most you got was a small line of ambient dialogue shouted at you when you entered town. Just never felt like I was actually making a difference.

 

[VaudevillianVeteran]

That's something else that bugged me, no one seemed to care what you were doing. Whether you were becoming the head of every guild in Skyrim or literally saving the world, the most you got was a small line of ambient dialogue shouted at you when you entered town. Just never felt like I was actually making a difference.

It was rather strange that you were literally saving the world and the only thing guards noticed was what kind of skills you were high in or occasionally which factions you were in. Even if they didn't know that you were saving the world, the fact you were the goddamn Dragonborn should've made more waves than it did.

 

[CyanideSandwich]

None of the characters or factions seemed interesting and I just couldn't bring myself to give a shit about anyone or anything.

The opening part of the game alone was incredibly boring and the combat was stale to the point where every time I encountered an enemy I just sighed and mashed the attack button. Not to mention how often you get attacked by wolves and saber cats and every time the loud, obnoxious music starts playing made Skyrim the first game where I turned off the music.

This was one of my BIGGEST issues with the game. There wasn't a single character I gave a shit about. They all just felt like cardboard cutouts waiting for the protagonist to show up so they could say their line of dialogue, give their fetch quest, or shout their ambient sounds into the air. In New Vegas, I cared if someone died. Because I had become attached to them. Especially my companions. If Veronica died, I would reload the game because I CARED about whether or not I saw the end of her personal story. Even at the cost of hours of gameplay. In Skyrim, if Lydia died? Fuck if I care. I'll just find another random NPC to carry the shit I plan on selling at the next town.

I cared when people died in Skyrim. I became attached to them. You know how? I didn't rely on the game's developers and writers to make them valuable to me, I used this thing called imagination to feign sentimental value. This led to real sentimental value.
I cared about characters dying in freaking Cannon Fodder in the SNES because I allowed my imagination to make them sentimentally valuable to me. Even though they were 8-bit soldiers who I knew only by their name and their rank, I found myself having a mental breakdown every time one was K.I.A.

 

[Yuno Gasai]

None of the characters or factions seemed interesting and I just couldn't bring myself to give a shit about anyone or anything.

This was one of my BIGGEST issues with the game. There wasn't a single character I gave a shit about.

I have to agree with this, although despite my issues with the lack of emotional attachment to NPCs, I was still able to derive enjoyment from Skyrim. I think that was primarily because it was one of the first games I've played where I see something off in the distance in-game, and know that I can go there, regardless of how long it'll take to travel there.

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

None of the characters or factions seemed interesting and I just couldn't bring myself to give a shit about anyone or anything.

The opening part of the game alone was incredibly boring and the combat was stale to the point where every time I encountered an enemy I just sighed and mashed the attack button. Not to mention how often you get attacked by wolves and saber cats and every time the loud, obnoxious music starts playing made Skyrim the first game where I turned off the music.

This was one of my BIGGEST issues with the game. There wasn't a single character I gave a shit about. They all just felt like cardboard cutouts waiting for the protagonist to show up so they could say their line of dialogue, give their fetch quest, or shout their ambient sounds into the air. In New Vegas, I cared if someone died. Because I had become attached to them. Especially my companions. If Veronica died, I would reload the game because I CARED about whether or not I saw the end of her personal story. Even at the cost of hours of gameplay. In Skyrim, if Lydia died? Fuck if I care. I'll just find another random NPC to carry the shit I plan on selling at the next town.

I cared when people died in Skyrim. I became attached to them. You know how? I didn't rely on the game's developers and writers to make them valuable to me, I used this thing called imagination to feign sentimental value. This led to real sentimental value.
I cared about characters dying in freaking Cannon Fodder in the SNES because I allowed my imagination to make them sentimentally valuable to me. Even though they were 8-bit soldiers who I knew only by their name and their rank, I found myself having a mental breakdown every time one was K.I.A.

Unfortunately, with a world that's so sterile and lifeless, I can't even feign interest. If the world doesn't care what I'm doing, then I don't care about the world.

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

That's something else that bugged me, no one seemed to care what you were doing. Whether you were becoming the head of every guild in Skyrim or literally saving the world, the most you got was a small line of ambient dialogue shouted at you when you entered town. Just never felt like I was actually making a difference.

It was rather strange that you were literally saving the world and the only thing guards noticed was what kind of skills you were high in or occasionally which factions you were in. Even if they didn't know that you were saving the world, the fact you were the goddamn Dragonborn should've made more waves than it did.

You really FELT like what you did made a difference in Fallout 3. Clear out the settlement of Slavers? The merchants made their rounds more often. Joined them? They hiked up their prices. What happens if I become the leader of the Companions and the new Listener of the Brotherhood? I get a couple lines of random dialogue.

 

[ExileNZ]

I have to admit I get a lot less into the role (at least as far as people are concerned) compared to other, more atmospheric games (like Gothic).

That said, I'm over 100 hours in and I spend a lot of my time just wandering around, exploring the map, clearing out ruins and looting stuff. I'm having great fun, though I'm doing so by largely ignoring the story - as soon as I got revealed as the Dragonborn (Shouts are fun!) I stopped advancing it completely.

I mostly just do my own thing, and often spend hours trying to do a certain part 'just right'. Less so, now that I've finished leveling up Sneak, but I have spent an enormous amount of time trying to assassinate groups one at a time.

Reminds me, I have to find some other blessing stone now...

 

[VaudevillianVeteran]

You really FELT like what you did made a difference in Fallout 3. Clear out the settlement of Slavers? The merchants made their rounds more often. Joined them? They hiked up their prices. What happens if I become the leader of the Companions and the new Listener of the Brotherhood? I get a couple lines of random dialogue.

That's exactly what I was thinking of.
Oh and a couple lines of dialogue and two new merchants. That you will never use or go past.

 

[TorqueConverter]

Haven't played it but it looks good to me from what I have seen. I adore fallout 3. I'm waiting for that engine to receive some firearms and loose the Nordic fantasy elves and wizards horseshit. When that happens, I'll throw fistfuls of money at my screen until the game appears. I don't care if they call fallout 4 or something entirely different.

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

You really FELT like what you did made a difference in Fallout 3. Clear out the settlement of Slavers? The merchants made their rounds more often. Joined them? They hiked up their prices. What happens if I become the leader of the Companions and the new Listener of the Brotherhood? I get a couple lines of random dialogue.

That's exactly what I was thinking of.
Oh and a couple lines of dialogue and two new merchants. That you will never use or go past.

The game just feels so impersonal... There's just no motivation to care about anyone or anything in the world because nothing you do changes anything in it.

 

[Veldt Falsetto]

Skyrim: Awful game, incredible world

That's how I feel anyway

 

[VaudevillianVeteran]

The game just feels so impersonal... There's just no motivation to care about anyone or anything in the world because nothing you do changes anything in it.

The story itself is good, really good. But it's not necessarily your story. Even during the Civil War quests, which I was slightly worried would change things so I did last... nothing. Nothing was different.

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

The game just feels so impersonal... There's just no motivation to care about anyone or anything in the world because nothing you do changes anything in it.

The story itself is good, really good. But it's not necessarily your story. Even during the Civil War quests, which I was slightly worried would change things so I did last... nothing. Nothing was different.

I REALLY don't like time-travel plots...