The Elder Scrolls Woes...a rant

[Eacaraxe]

I've been thinking the past few days, I honestly wouldn't mind playing an Elder Scrolls game again. It's been a while since I've done it, and it just sounds like a fairly good idea. So I sit and think to myself, "which would I play?".

Arena? Nah.

Daggerfall? The best Elder Scrolls game hands-down? The one with the great big wide open world and near endless possibilities as to how to play? The one where you can actually ninja, merchant, and diplomacy your way through most of the main quest? The one where reputation actually matters, and you can do bar none the most ridiculous game-breaking mechanics overpowered godlike stuff from the very character creation screen?

The one that I'd have to spend hours performing the Herculean task of emulating, unofficial patching, and modded my way into a half-functional Frankensteinian mutant beast of a game, and still have to save every half hour in a different spot to make sure I don't lose progress when the game crashes, and when it does it doesn't eat my save along with it?

Okay, well, what about Morrowind. Daggerfall may be the best, but Morrowind's my favorite. The epic quest of a lowly prisoner's journey to becoming Elf Jesus, just never mind that Elf Jesus may be a bipedal gecko or giant cat hooked on kitty meth. The sweeping tale of an island under siege from a divine plague, of burgeoning feudal nationalism and religious zeal as tradition meets head-on with urbane Romanesque values of law and order. The classic epic of...being a feudal NEET for twenty hours while you're grinding alchemy, enchanting, athletics, and acrobatics in Balmora for those sweet x5 level bonuses.

Oblivion? Ah, the one where Jean-Luc Picard gives you a necklace before taking a pointy stick up the pooper, and you give it to Boromir to watch a kaiju fight. The one with level scaling so ridiculous "Medieval NEET Simulator" becomes less a joke and more an obligation if you want to have a functional character past level 20, unless you go the pro gamer route and just never, ever sleep. Get those glowing lava-gineys moistened up, because I just can't wait to penetrate deep into the hot realms of Oblivion to fondle Mehrunes Dagon's pulsating stones.

And that leaves us with Skyrim. Which admittedly has the best bashy-bashy, slicey-slicey mechanics, and is probably the conceptually closest to Bethesda's entire idea of making a role-playing game where how you play actually determines how your character grows, instead of the other way around. It's also the one where 95% of the game is semi-randomized bear arse collection, and NPC's may occasionally make mouth-noises resembling words but I don't really care because they're just keeping me from getting to the next triangle on my mini-map.

So...is OpenMW any good? I hear tell you can actually mod it nowadays to have game mechanics more in line with Skyrim's, therefore bypassing the "medieval NEET simulator" aspects of the game, and getting your Nerevarine on right away.

 

[laggyteabag]

Ive had a lot of time to think about how I feel about Bethesda games, and I came to the conclusion after about 200 hours of Oblivion, 250 hours of Skyrim, and a handful of hours across Fallout 3 and 4, that I just don't really like them all too much.

I like being dropped in a world, and being able to point myself in any direction, and being able to find stuff to do. I like being able to kill another man, and be able to loot whatever they were wearing, instead of the game rolling some arbitrary dice about what they were carrying

Aaand... thats about it?

The combat has never been great, and neither has the story. Sure, there are quests to do, but they are rarely interesting. Sure, there are lots of distractions along the road, but they are rarely worthwhile.

What this means for me, is these games are as large as oceans, but as deep as a puddle.

Bethesda games, for me, just tend to be buggy, broken, and boring. Mods can help some of the way, sure, but why bother spending hours curating the perfect list of mods to make the game tolerable, when you can just play something good from the start?

Each to their own, I guess, but I'd rather just play Divinity Original Sin 2, again.

 

[Eacaraxe]

Ive had a lot of time to think about how I feel about Bethesda games, and I came to the conclusion after about 200 hours of Oblivion, 250 hours of Skyrim, and a handful of hours across Fallout 3 and 4, that I just don't really like them all too much.

Bethesda's storytelling went off a cliff between Morrowind and Oblivion, and they fell into the trap of leaning too hard in the "you're the promised one destined to save the world in crisis" pit wherein the player character is perpetually reacting to events that surround them, but don't involve the player character in any substantive way to preserve the "tabula rasa/player self-insert" nature of the game. The later games try to push a sense of urgency upon the player through external events, but don't back that sense of urgency up through consequences for inaction, and that destroys any forthcoming sense of immersion or investment in the game's story.

Daggerfall and Morrowind are far more superior games, narratively-speaking, for that. Certain points of Daggerfall's main quest are timed and there are some nasty consequences for failing to meet them, but beyond that there is no sense of urgency imparted on the player and they're free to do as they will. The PC (and therefore, player) are straight-up told at the beginning of Morrowind's main quest they have the advantage of time, and they're not just free but encouraged to perform other tasks until such a time they feel ready to start pursuing their main objectives.

The difference is subtle but important. The earlier games give players agency to be proactive, as befitting an open-world immersive RPG. Those later games lean heavily on reactivity, and players are forced to choose between immersion and agency.

That said I have heard really good things about Tyranny, though.

 

[Samtemdo8]

Just play Daggerfall Unity if you want the best experience from Daggerfall.

And Morrowind is the best game but also one begging for a Remake, and not a remake that dumbs it down to sin.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I never quite "got" the fandom behind the Elder Scrolls games. I always found them ugly games with shitty combat and unbelievably poor AI. I think the novelty of being able to run around anywhere and find shit to do blinded people to how broken those games are. Because they had the illusion of size, people forgave all the bugs.

But frankly because the game has to let you run around wherever whenever it means they can't tell a great narative throughout the whole game. What you get is small little snipits of passable writing which is enhanced by the player just stumbling around the world and finding "passable" quests.

It's quite a good illusion, but it's an illusion nonetheless. And it's one that has increasingly fallen more and more apart, not because Bethesda has revealed themselves to be shit with Fallout 4 and 76, because neither of those games are much better or worse than anything else they've made.

What's breaking the Elder Scrolls Illusion is the quality of games coming out around them. Games like The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 (probably), Divinity 2, Disco Elysum, games that are offering better versions of what Fallout and Elder Scrolls are trying to be. Whenever one of these more polished and better written games comes out, more and more cracks in Bethesda's shit begins to appear.

 

[laggyteabag]

The later games try to push a sense of urgency upon the player through external events, but don't back that sense of urgency up through consequences for inaction, and that destroys any forthcoming sense of immersion or investment in the game's story.

Daggerfall and Morrowind are far more superior games, narratively-speaking, for that. Certain points of Daggerfall's main quest are timed and there are some nasty consequences for failing to meet them, but beyond that there is no sense of urgency imparted on the player and they're free to do as they will. The PC (and therefore, player) are straight-up told at the beginning of Morrowind's main quest they have the advantage of time, and they're not just free but encouraged to perform other tasks until such a time they feel ready to start pursuing their main objectives.

The difference is subtle but important. The earlier games give players agency to be proactive, as befitting an open-world immersive RPG. Those later games lean heavily on reactivity, and players are forced to choose between immersion and agency.

Yeah, I feel like this is really one of my big irks with open world games. Supposedly urgent objectives are laid out, but then the player has complete agency as to when they will decide to complete them.

In Fallout 4, it is "Go rescue your baby", and in The Witcher 3, it is "Go find Ciri", yet in neither case are any consequences levied against the player for dawdling, and in both cases, the game really encourages exploration.

As you mentioned, as the player, I need to make the decision as to whether or not I should beeline the main quest, like I feel the main characters would realistically do, but at the risk of missing out the rest of the game, or if I should just put the main quest on hold for every sidequest that comes up, but then risk feeling like "Would Geralt really stop trying to track down Ciri, just to find this old lady's frying pan?".

I do wish that games would play around a lot more with campaign failures, or bad endings - or just time frames in general.

In Mass Effect 3 you are tasked with getting enough support from allies win the war, and support is earned through main and side missions. I really like this approach, because it contextualises sidequests in relation to the main plot, and I do often feel that yeah, Shepard really would go out of their way to check some space wreckage for survivors, if it meant more help - but at the same time, you are given complete agency as to how long it takes before you enter the final battle, so you can just tick all of the boxes around the galaxy, before you decide to complete the final mission, and the only realistic way that you can get a bad ending, is if you just don't care enough to do the side content.

In this instance, I feel like a timer would have greatly benefitted the urgency of this mission, and this is something that is even demonstrated in Mass Effect 2. In ME2, after one mission, your ship is attacked, and your crew is abducted. After this point, if you do any missions other than the rescue mission, more and more of your crew will die. Of course you could just do all of the critical missions before the one where your crew gets abducted, so there isn't anything to do but the rescue mission, but the concept is still cool.

Or like something in Dead Rising, where you have a time limit from the beginning, and if you don't complete the main plot within that time, you fail - but at the same time, missions only appear at certain intervals, and side quests can only be completed within a certain timeframe, too. I really like the concept of "You have X amount of time to do as much as you can. Chances are, you wont be able to do everything, so just do your best", and something like this could really help to make main plots in games like the aforementioned games feel a lot more urgent, and it could also create some interesting dilemmas like needing to choose between what missions you want to complete, because the clock is ticking.

 

[CriticalGaming]

The Witcher 3, it is "Go find Ciri", yet in neither case are any consequences levied against the player for dawdling, and in both cases, the game really encourages exploration.

The hunt for Ciri is not presented with the same urgency as the "hunt for your son" though. It is made clear that Ciri is somewhere, but in hiding and the player's fuckabouts are played off as Geralt investigating a search for her. Which lets the adventure feel a bit more organic and doesn't feel like don't looming over you at all times while you shag the blacksmith's daughter or whatever the hell else.

It isn't perfect, but I don't see how much better it could be while still letting a video game happen in the meantime.

In Mass Effect 3 you are tasked with getting enough support from allies win the war, and support is earned through main and side missions. I really like this approach, because it contextualises sidequests in relation to the main plot, and I do often feel that yeah, Shepard really would go out of their way to check some space wreckage for survivors, if it meant more help - but at the same time, you are given complete agency as to how long it takes before you enter the final battle, so you can just tick all of the boxes around the galaxy, before you decide to complete the final mission, and the only realistic way that you can get a bad ending, is if you just don't care enough to do the side content.

I disagree.

ME3 is exactly the thing you pointed out about Fallout 4 and Witcher 3. In ME3 the threat is not longer a threat. The Reapers have arrived and are systematically going through the galaxy to obliterate everybody. Yet Shepard has to do a favor to earn the trust of all his allies again so that they'll join him in the reaper fight. Why? The fucking galaxy is going to end, are you saying you wont help me save the universe unless I do a favor for you first? Also this is the 3rd game and Shepard is known through the galaxy at this point, so why do people still treat him like an untrustworthy person when everything he has said and done up to this point has been for the good of everyone, and he has also proven he'll stand in harms way to get things done as well.

It doesn't make any sense at all to me.

You like that approach better that's fine. But I couldn't disagree more with your reasoning on this one.

 

[Eacaraxe]

But frankly because the game has to let you run around wherever whenever it means they can't tell a great narative throughout the whole game. What you get is small little snipits of passable writing which is enhanced by the player just stumbling around the world and finding "passable" quests.

That's actually exactly the reason why I like Morrowind, the dialog and quest journal text is really only the surface level of the story. It's the bread and butter of the main quest, sure, but everything Morrowind has to really say is conveyed through environmental storytelling, subtext, and the ways multiple quest chains intersect and conflict with one another.

I mean, one example. It's one thing for an NPC in Morrowind to mention House Telvanni are kinda dicks, really aren't anyone's friends, and are in conflict with the Mages' guild. It's another entirely to tuck into Mages' guild quests and actually do stuff to screw over House Telvanni, and for that to have consequences (however slight) later in the main quest. Or, to join House Telvanni and embark on a series of merry capers across Vvardenfell that stand to piss off everybody from the Mage's Guild to the Tribunal Temple. Then you realize the Telvanni aren't nearly as isolationist and non-interventionlist as they seem, they're waging a take-all-comers war of influence against the other factions on the island, by subtly undermining the efforts of everyone else to gain influence and power comparative to the Telvannis'.

Or, get stuck between the Fighters' Guild and Thieves' Guild, and be eventually forced to choose between one group or the other because of later quests that directly conflict with each other. Or worse, be working with House Redoran at the time you're forced to make that choice which may wreck your reputation with it as well.

Or, be working merrily alongside House Hlaalu, get sucked into the Cammona Tong...and all the sudden, the Imperial Legion hates your ass. Who would've known House Hlaalu is just as xenophobic, nationalist, and self-interested as the Telvanni, but merely puts forward an Imperial-friendly front for the sake of politics?

 

[Drathnoxis]

A long time ago somebody on the Escapist mentioned Nehrim: At Fate's Edge, a total conversion mod for Oblivion that they claimed had far better writing than the base game. I've always intended to give it a try, but have never gotten around to it.

 

[laggyteabag]

A long time ago somebody on the Escapist mentioned Nehrim: At Fate's Edge, a total conversion mod for Oblivion that they claimed had far better writing than the base game. I've always intended to give it a try, but have never gotten around to it.

There is also Enderal: Forgotten Stories which is a conversion mod for Skyrim, by the same team as Nehrim. I also haven't played it, but I hear very good things about it.

 

[Dreiko]

After my underwhelming experience with the outer worlds I ended up going back to skyrim, it had been like 6 years since I last played it so I just got the upgraded ps4 version and started a new char. About 50 hours in and having a lot of fun bashing skulls with my orc berserker lol.

The game still manages to hold up despite being 9 years old, it's often beautiful or epic too, and the sound design is awesome as always.

 

[deleted20220709]

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[Drathnoxis]

What's breaking the ESI is rather that the latest main-line ES game was Skyrim in 2011. There has been no serious contender for massive open world fantasy RPG since. Fallout 4 was 2015 and is probably the biggest refinement to the Beth formula yet.

That's not true. Skyrim has come out at least 3 times since then.

 

[Gordon_4]

ME3 is exactly the thing you pointed out about Fallout 4 and Witcher 3. In ME3 the threat is not longer a threat. The Reapers have arrived and are systematically going through the galaxy to obliterate everybody. Yet Shepard has to do a favor to earn the trust of all his allies again so that they'll join him in the reaper fight. Why? The fucking galaxy is going to end, are you saying you wont help me save the universe unless I do a favor for you first? Also this is the 3rd game and Shepard is known through the galaxy at this point, so why do people still treat him like an untrustworthy person when everything he has said and done up to this point has been for the good of everyone, and he has also proven he'll stand in harms way to get things done as well.

It doesn't make any sense at all to me.

You like that approach better that's fine. But I couldn't disagree more with your reasoning on this one.

I'm in the middle of playing Mass Effect 3 - I've just done the Citadel Coup mission - and Shepard isn't gallivanting around doing random favours: they're securing alliances and resources. Cure genophage=>Krogan support for Palaven=>Turian fleet to retake Earth. Solve the Geth and Quarian issues=>obtain single largest fleet for war effort and one of the single best infantry forces in the galaxy. Most of the other missions are done with the same logic: N7 missions are small surgical strikes Shepard performs to rout entrenched enemies (usually Cerberus) so larger, dedicated forces can hold them. The only stuff that feels like just screwing around for screwing around's sake is Citadel. Which is meant to feel that way. Even though Shepard is the one doing a lot of the hard stuff, they're still one part of a whole. Admiral Hackett is the one actually coordinating all the resources Shepard manages to obtain.

Hell I seem to recall there was an awful lot of complaining in the game's early days that exploration missions like the ones with Mako in ME1 had been removed.

 

[Eacaraxe]

What's breaking the ESI is rather that the latest main-line ES game was Skyrim in 2011. There has been no serious contender for massive open world fantasy RPG since. Fallout 4 was 2015 and is probably the biggest refinement to the Beth formula yet...

The problem to me isn't time frame but rather the confused nature of Elder Scrolls' genre over the years. The older games are, in retrospect, better understood as immersive sims with RPG mechanics and character progression rather than first-person CRPG, and that core identity has been lost over the course of Oblivion and Skyrim. Witcher, on the other hand, stayed pretty true to genre (narrative-driven action/RPG) through the entire series despite adapting open world gameplay.

...I am not sure if I completely agree with the "vast as an ocean, deep like a toddler pool"-sentiment about Skyrim or Fo4, but there's something to it...

I do, but not most typically use the idiom, as most of the time when it's used it refers to linear and repetitive quest design, removal of attributes and skill governance, removal of custom spells, enchantment restrictions, and the like. It's about how the game's towns, quests, and factions operate in largely isolated bubbles which do not interact nor intervene with one another, and regardless who you are or what you do the game exists in a predetermined status quo and little changes.

 

[deleted20220709]

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[Eacaraxe]

If by the older games you mean Daggerfall, I can see how it measures as a proto-Immersive Sim. Morrowind is not really set up for that, seeing as how there are quite a few quests, even within the main quest, that you simply can't do unless you spec, to some degree, for combat (or break Alchemy/Enchanting). That's a massive betrayal of the Immersive Sim ethos, and what arguably pushes Morrowind more into Sandbox/open world RPG territory.

I agree to an extent with Morrowind in that there are some cases where the player is forced into a particular set of actions, but they're still given pretty significant leeway as to how to achieve those ends, and to resolve them doesn't necessarily mandate abusing game mechanics. In the main quest, the only really difficult fight the player is forced into is Dagoth Gares, and I remember that having several potential resolutions that don't necessitate killing as the only thing that needs to happen is for the PC to contract Corprus. You don't have to kill Ordros or Vemyn to retrieve Sunder and Keening.

Dagoth Ur round one is so undertuned as to be defeatable at level 1 (that's kind of his intent at that point), and if I remember right you don't even have to kill him as he teleports away if his magicka or fatigue are drained; Dagoth Ur is more of a nuisance than anything else in the game's finale, since he just teleports around and chucks easily-avoided fireballs at you that don't do much damage anyways. If you're playing smart you don't even strictly need Wraithguard to destroy the Heart, just quick reflexes and a pocket-full of basic health potions. More or less everything else can be worked around. I don't really consider it "breaking" enchanting to build up a decent set of constant-effect chameleon/sanctuary equipment, or at least charged items with potent chameleon/sanctuary effects.

Cliff racers on the other hand...

 

[SupahEwok]

I do, but not most typically use the idiom, as most of the time when it's used it refers to linear and repetitive quest design, removal of attributes and skill governance, removal of custom spells, enchantment restrictions, and the like. It's about how the game's towns, quests, and factions operate in largely isolated bubbles which do not interact nor intervene with one another, and regardless who you are or what you do the game exists in a predetermined status quo and little changes.

The best idiom of Skyrim I've ever heard is that it's the potato chips of gaming: endlessly eatable but quickly bland and unfulfilling.

 

[Dreiko]

The best idiom of Skyrim I've ever heard is that it's the potato chips of gaming: endlessly eatable but quickly bland and unfulfilling.

I agree with the potatochip metaphor but with other aspects. It shares the one more chip/quest element, where you decide you will stop, but then say just one more, and you end up playing for another 3 hours with this pattern intermittently repeating itself.