What made Skyrim so good?

[sXeth]

Pretty looking, and pretty welldone for a relatively vast world.
Cool soundtrack.
An interesting setting, still rooted in the general WRPG schlock, but with enough flavor to distinguish itself.
Dragons.
The quests they put some effort into shined pretty well.

That said, I've found it increasingly over time to be weighed down by its flaws.
Combat - The button layout really. For all the "dual wielding" control hype, it still came down to Attack+Block. Highlighted when you couldn't block with a sword/axe while keeping a spell handy. The dual magic was also rather a let down, not doing anything but increase the invisible numbers.
Dragons - As cool as they initially are, they wear thin fast. Alduin being the prime example, especially comparing his cutscene power and level of intelligence (yes, its prescripted, I know) to his generic method in later fights. The fact that the dragons only come in two types, with some easily missed name changing and damage scales is a letdown too.
Radiant quests are bloody terrible. Especially used to pad out the few well made quests in the faction lines, or give an ongoing activity. Cool, I'm the Harbinger of these badass warriors, go get some guys mead out of a wolf den.
The more interesting aspects of the setting are largely downplayed, in favor of the more or less generic evil demon/demigod invasion plotline. Civil war, Forsworn, the fall of Winterhold, Dragon Priests, are all heavily on backburner for the go to "SLAY THE DRAGON" plot.
The monsters wear out fast, the level scaling is still in (with a few minor exceptions, and only slightly less obtrusively then Oblivion) and it quickly feels stale and non progressive.

 

[Mauler]

Well the sandboxing and just doing nothing and still enjoing hours of gameplay made the all TES games good I guess Skyrim was not an exeption because it was newer and had some prettey awesome features DRAGONS!!!, Shouting, dumbed down guild system(i remember that in morrowind i had to play for a week to go through telvani house sets to get to be owner of awesome centurions and mushroom) soo yeah...

 

[tkioz]

What made Skyrim so good? The open world with masses and masses amount of content. that's pretty much it. It turned an otherwise shitty game into a huge seller.

And before everyone jumps on me, otherwise it was a pretty shitty game. The UI was terrible, the character graphics were meh, the story was so-so, the character models themselves were so deep in the uncanny valley it wasn't funny, the 3rd version view was horrible, and the first person view was obnoxious... but the massive open world with so much to do made up for all that.

One day I'd like to see a game with Bioware's storytelling chops, Bethesda's open world, and the graphics and combat from Assassin's Creed... would be so awesome.

 

[Chris Tian]

One day I'd like to see a game with Bioware's storytelling chops, Bethesda's open world, and the graphics and combat from Assassin's Creed... would be so awesome.

That would be awesome, i think thats why game development should be more like movie making. Meaning, instead of having always the same developer team, they would hire a completly new crew for every project. Then they could bring together the very best in every field.

OT: I always ask myself that about Skyrim. I spent houndreds of hours on that game so its save to say i realy love it, but while i could make a long list of flaws i could not pinpoint wehre it excels, besides the beautiful and vast open world.
Maybe its that Skyrim does everthing just okay enough, coupeld with the exploration of the world.

 

[Izzy1320]

In my opinion, jaded as it may be, Skyrim was best summed up by the reviewer (And I forget which site I saw this on) who called it a game with the 'width of an ocean, but the depth of a puddle.' It may be true that no draugr dungeon is exactly the same, but if you've walked through around five or so, you start feeling that tiring sensation of deja vu when you enter another. The same thing applies for most of Skyrim's dungeons, as it also did for Oblivion. Characters may all be fully voiced and have their schedules and all that, but the vast majority of them never have any impact on the player's story whatsoever, simply being more random faces in a crowd. Quests don't have the variety that they used to have in Morrowind, and a large number can be summed up by 'Go to _____ and reach the end'. While the location and type of ruin that _____ is may differ, reaching the end almost inevitably requires a slow slog through a number of enemies, systematically slaughtering them on your way by.

None of this is meant to imply that I didn't enjoy the game. I did, sinking over a hundred hours into it and not even having finished the main story yet. The primary issue that I found was that it continued the rather depressing trend of Oblivion of simplifying what was once a varied and many branched string of different combat options. Playing through Morrowind, there were throwing weapons, bows, spears, staves, one handed weapons, two handed weapons, big weapons, small weapons, and about 50 other skills that could be learned. In Skyrim, this is boiled down to two types of armor and 3 or 4 types of weapons. The options simply aren't there anymore. There are many things that Skyrim doesn't do well, which can be applied to numerous bethesda games. It's buggy, the characters are shallow aside from their assigned arcs, and the story... could use some work. It's good that you can finally feel like the hero, Dovahkiin, Dragonborn, bane of the scaled lizardy things, when in Oblivion, all you ever were was some kind of glorified sidekick. That in particular always annoyed me about Oblivion, especially after Morrowind, where you were quite literally the reincarnation of a god, Nerevar.

Overall? Skyrim? It's a good world, with countless things to discover and see. If only those things didn't feel familiar quite... so... often.

 

[Malisteen]

The world is great, and just exploring it was quite enjoyable to me. The npcs were all pretty static, and the quests and dialog options rather shallow and repetitive, but the world was fantastic.

I actually preferred the streamlined gameplay of skyrim compared to morrowind. All the nitty gritty details got in the way for me. I had difficulty immersing myself in the game because the awkward combat and constant inventory shuffling and menu digging was always distracting my attention. If we could have a game with Skyrim's mechanics, open world, and procedurally generated events, Morrowind's plot and quests, and the npcs & dialog options of a mass effect or a dragon age, I'd be pretty happy.

 

[happyninja42]

For me, and I'm still playing Skyrim, it's the flexibility of character concepts. I can make a sneaky assassin character, who never explores except under the cover of darkness, and have one game experience. And then make a heavy armor, 2 handed Avatar of Talos, who Shouts his victory over each dragon he's slain with a mighty Fus Ro Da!! And then turn around again and make a Garrett-esque thief from the titular game series, who never actually kills anyone, and spends all his time finding ways to sneak in and out of these hostile dungeons, with all their loot. Each of these examples is a completely different experience of the game, and my actions/motivations are completely different in each scenario.

For me, the game really doesn't put too many limitations on the game for the player, your main hindrance is your imagination. In the above mentioned thief concept I made, I gave him a calling card for the houses he stole from. I went around and gathered up every Quill I could find, and as I left a house, pouches bulging with stolen loot, I would drop the feather on the doormat, just inside. Yeah this never came up in game in any way, the guards never started talking about the Feathered Bandit, but I enjoyed the bit of flair it gave my concept, and it inspired me to try and tackle larger, and tougher buildings. I even considered making myself a Kill on Sight level criminal in each capital, just so I could add the extra challenge of having to move through a hostile city without being seen.

With my Avatar of Talos, I always used Intimidation options whenever given the choice, I accepted any and all challenges offered to me. I never looted the Burial Urns, or from the corpses of Draugr, because my guy was a True Nord, and to dishonor the dead in such a way was unthinkable. He never snuck about, so dungeon "crawls" were actually blitzkrieg sprint sessions that were incredibly fun to experience. I would Shout my presence in dungeons, drawing the enemies to me in large groups, because that's just how that guy rolled man!! *flexes Thu'um muscles*


I'm still coming up with concepts left and right for Skyrim, in large part to a website called The Skyrim Blog, which is an awesome resource for roleplay ideas, character concepts and the like, to revitalize your Skyrim experience. Each time I'm finding new aspects of the game I didn't see before, or simply enjoying seeing the game progress in a different direction than the last. The sandbox nature of the game structure, I think, is it's greatest strength. It lets you the player, be free to try out just about any concept of gameplay you can think of, and the game will allow it. Other games, you are railroaded in how you can proceed in the game. inFamous, for example, is one of my favorite game series to date, and I love it to death, but if you wanted to try and play that game without you know....shooting everything with lightning, you won't get anywhere. But, if you want to make say, a pacifist Priest of Arkay (a god known for neutrality in nature), who doesn't actually inflict damage on anything (except undead), then you can! You can totally hire a follower, pick up an animal companion, and then cast nothing but buffing spells and healing spells, and let them do the combat for you. I have in fact, done this exact idea. And Skyrim let me. It didn't slap me in the face and say "NO! That style of play isn't allowed here!! Now pick up a warhammer and go smash faces!!" Instead, Skyrim said "Okies, no probs man, here's a couple of tools for you to use in that concept, knock yourself out" And then it patted me on the head and sent me on my way, to explore Skryim in a pacifist manner.

To me, that is the greatest appeal of the game, the sheer amount of variation and customization that is provided to the player. And on top of that, the Workshop is overflowing with other creative ideas by players, that has enriched the experience even more.

 

[Silly Hats]

I had about 80h on PS3 and about 156h on PC. I love the game, I think that it refined TES in a way that suits my play style, it wasn't 'dumbing down' the gameplay. The previous games were great, though can get a little wanky.

I absolutely love games that encourage experimentation and exploration. I tend to inject my own Role Playing into the game and like to fill in the blanks myself. Most gamers want to get dragged along by a plot and get hit over the head by a story, games like Skyrim are different to Witcher - I love both in their own ways but they're different in so many different ways. So I tend to treat TES more like I would if I were playing DnD.

People talk about the game being too easy, but it should be up to the player to make decide that grinding enchanting and smithing to 100 isn't the focus of the game and isn't the point of the game aside from completionism. Try not exploiting and use what you find with the gameplay that you find best.

Also, Bound Weapon Assassins are fun.

 

[Nexxis]

I like the bugs in the game. They make me smile (unless they break the game in some way). I also like the mods that go along with it. On its own, I like the game's exploration. It's a huge world that feel very alive, especially if you come across factions fighting or a thief trying to rob you. I don't care too much about the graphics. Overall, I find the landscape to be boring most of the time, with the exception of the cliff views which I think are very nice. Overall, it's a blob of white and brown, to me. I do like the auroras at night, though. Those are pretty. Storywise, the game feels very "meh" to me. This is the first game that I've played in the Elder Scrolls franchise, and I find myself either confused or not really caring, much. After doing a bunch of side quest, I don't feel like my character is as important as some of the early quests would like for me to believe. Dragon shouts can be learned (you just get them automatically); pretty much everything fights dragons and they can even succeed in killing it; Except for a few main quests, no one cares you're the dragonborn; You're mostly an errand boy/girl through most of the game. I haven't played the game in a while, but some mods get me interested enough to jump back on for a bit.

 

[Dale Ware]

Shouldn't the thread be what makes Skyrim so good? After being recommended it for AGES, I only just started playing, and played 20 hours in 2 days...

The combat isn't great, the first hour or two are slow, but i suppose thats the same for most games... but thats about all i dislike about the game thusfar...

The map is HUGE, its interesting to traverse while being varied and challenging at the same time... I don't think i've even played a game where i've both accepted dying so easily in one way, but gotten so frustrated at other deaths...

 

[DragonStorm247]

Skyrim has a strong design focus and knows what it wants to be. It accentuates a core drive of exploration, and reinforces it well. Some games don't know what they are about, or try to do everything and fail. Not Skyrim.

 

[Gregory Weldon]

I also own Oblivion, but I just couldn't quite get into it. I just didn't quite feel like I had total freedom. I have this when I play Skyrim. One thing that gets me is when I'm being guided along these rails and can't do anything out of the norm. With Skyrim, if I see something in the distance (mountain, house, etc), I can go there. If I have a mission to complete but don't feel like doing it right now, I just walk around and find caves to explore and loot, while looking for more Walls of Power.

The combat system is definitely on the clunky side, but as others have said, that's not why I play an Elder Scrolls game. With how many skills there are, if you concentrate on leveling up too many skills, you become overpowered. Then nothing poses a challenge, and you get bored quickly saying this game sucks. As soon as I saw how the leveling system worked, I immediately changed my perspective. I began to truly roleplay. I decided right then and there when I made a character if I would be 2-hander wielding berserker that would specialize in restoration, or a magic user specializing in Alteration and Destruction. I focused on just a few skill sets and suddenly the game had more balance. I didn't feel like I was just walking over enemies.

Just my opinion on why some people may not fully enjoy the game. Oddly enough, I just started playing it again recently and really getting immersed into the story. I bought it for the PS3 originally and now I own the PC version with a few mods to pretty it up. One thing that killed my immersion and disrupted the flow on the PS3 version was load times. Dear freaking god, the load times were at least 15 seconds minimum for just entering a house! PC version has none of that; I can load a room or brand new area before the little blurb on the screen can be fully read.

 

[Kael Arawn]

Bethesda make Skyrim awesome because there a super experience developer working in a field that they have dominated FOR A NEAR ETERNITY NOW


So yeah developer applying magic coding sauce makes skyrim good because they made it

 

[superpandasauras]

I thought Skyrim was the best thing ever, it was like I was in a trance, and then Dawngaurd came out and I noticed pretty much all of the flaws at once. Haven't played it since.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

Someone will hate me for this, but it showed off just how good Fallout 4 can look and how easy the modding should be for it this time around. I simply cannot get immersed in Skyrim with the NPCs that populate it and a few other factors at play. I'm still shocked that the same company made Fallout 3 (might be 2 different teams). Regardless of appropriateness, there's nobody in Skyrim that's as memorable to me as Moira is. I have a feeling that the NPCs and the lore is actually quite awesome if that's the kind of thing you're into. Combat was boring to me, especially bringing with me the 100+ hours of Demon's Souls. I think Bethesda should look at Zeno Clash, you can have melee/brawling in the first person and have some weight and..."oomph" to it.

 

[lordmardok]

Skyrim is good because of its scope. The epic scale of the world and that you can literally go anywhere. It's the kind of thing that gamers will forgive a lot of mistakes for. That said, I'm of the opinion that it's only really playable on the PC thanks to mods. The reason it's playable on Consoles despite lacking the mod capability is because, let's be honest, it's a good deal better than most of the tripe you end up with on the console.

 

[happyninja42]

I've had the game a little over a month, completely unpatched (because I have no internet at home). Completely unpatched, the game can be very painful to play through. The game is incomplete, and I know that of course its not completely finished because they go gold and then release a day-one patch - I mean this game needed at least half a year to be finished. In just about every single aspect of the game there is incompletion, brokenness, or both. I have to doubt how much of beta playtesting feedback they actually applied to the game by the time it went gold, because it looks like none at all to me. Besides all of that, the game is still dated and feels like in a lot of things it tries to replicate the recent Fallout games while managing to somehow take a few steps backwards in functionality. A lot of smaller features that were touted by some fellow gamers seem very gimmicky to me, like marriage for example, which is basically "Hey, you're decent in combat, wanna stay on call at my house? Oh, free apple pie, gold, and you're a vendor who will buy my stuff at 3AM? Sweet."

I imagine that post-patch, the game is about an 8.5/10 - quite enjoyable, worth playing, and is a good value. Unpatched, as it is now, probably a 6.5/10

See, for me, that's another thing that's cool about Skyrim. The fact that even though the game isn't perfect, the developers provided the fanbase with a toolset to try and fix issues. And to include other content that they just didn't have the time/resources/imagination to think of. Sure it's not perfect, and neither are some of the "fixes" that players make with the Creation Kit, but it's an ever changing experience, building and correcting the issues from before, to make something even better. Most games won't give you permission to do that, much less hand you the toolkit to attempt it.

 

[Wolfhowl the shadow lurker]

Best game i ever played when i got it and i still love it, i love how you can do whatever you like, i like how you can mix whatever you like and still play, i like how you can walk around aimlessly in its world and still find things to do, i like how well the music fits, i like how you never need to do quests to enjoy it and i like how you will never run out of quests, i like how its DLC adds to it and just makes it better, i like how cool going underground looks.

To me thats what made skyrim the best game i have ever played,

also i think morrowind is very overrated COME AND GET ME