What's so great about Elder Scrolls?

[Levethian]

There are no other games like TES. If you need to be led by the nose around a narrative, or can't function without multiplayer, then it isn't for you. You might think carving your own fate in a fantasy world is boring, but assuredly it will think you're boring in return.

you gotta love the genre to fully understand I think. It's like Minecraft. If you don't like it, you won't see what's so great about it

Mainly this, though.

 

[Axyun]

Even though I typically enjoy a good story-driven game, Oblivion satisfies my craving for exploration and dungeon crawling. Its story is very weak and uninteresting and I absolutely loathe the leveling system but I love wandering away from town and stumbling on dungeons, keeps, shrines, caves, etc.

I really wish modern day MMOs had the exploration feel of TES games. I'd much rather spend hours exploring and not gain a single point of EXP than level up quickly while grinding the same mobs in the same damn place.

I'm that guy in WoW that bought the game on release and has 8 characters, none of which are at max level because I spend the bulk of my time just wondering around and finding neat things to do instead of snoring my way through a raid.

Lastly, the mod-ability of TES games gives them longevity beyond most modern games.

 

[Eggsnham]

I've been on these forums for at least a LITTLE while now, and I've noticed that in damned near every thread related to extremely good games Oblivion or Skyrim comes up. I've never personally played either, and I was wondering, why are they so great? Oblivion seems to be THE RPG that is apparently the greatest thing ever made, while Skyrim appears to be the second coming of Christ. I have seen a handful of trailers for both, and neither look that good to me, they seem quite boring, but clearly everyone on this site seems to love them. Again, I haven't played, but after everyone on these forums I'm definitely considering giving Oblivion a shot, I just want to know what makes them so great?

Because Elder Scrolls games follow a simple formula of "do what the fuck you want!"

Immediately after being released from prison, usually on your way to execution or a prolonged death in a dark cell; you can go around and kill shit, steal shit, do quests, hunt for rare or legendary items, level up, explore the world (which is always full of dungeons, ruins of lost civilizations, etc.), you can even explore the lore of the land by speaking to anybody in the game or reading the books full of short stories found throughout the libraries and shops; and you can do any of these things the minute you step out of prison.

There are thousands of things to do at any given time while playing a TES game to the point where people have spent thousands of hours playing just one of the Elder Scrolls games.

Also, Oblivion had some really fun glitches and bugs to exploit. There was one in particular that I used to get my characters agility stat so high that if I even so much as tapped the jump button, he would launch into the atmosphere and die when he came down about five minutes later. He would also fly off several feet into the air if I started walking too fast.

Good times.

 

[EvilPicnic]

I've only played Oblivion and I thought it was a good game, but not great. Certainly not as awesome as it was bigged up to me to be.

I get what people are saying about exploration, but I found the exploration to be a bit tedious as there were only generic-fantasy-towns and generic-fantasy-dungeons to explore and no truly interesting characters to meet or places to discover. It was missing a human element for me.

I also found the main quest to be poorly written and badly paced (I reached the end and was like, alright: climax time! Massive demon to fight... wait, what? Someone else kills it for me? What the fuck?)

So with the main quest not giving me much of an incentive to go out and find new places, and the blandness of the world not enticing me to investigate what's going on in the village over the hill (oh, another town of brown huts full of identikit npcs. This was worth it) the open world sort of closed up for me.

Hopefully this is something they'll fix in Skyrim.

[EDIT]

I would also like to point out that making a mod-friendly game, open for you to explore wherever does not mean it can get away with having a shitty main plotline. The two can exist together.

Example: Baldur's Gate.

A 13-year old game that still has an active modding community, with hours and hours of sidequests and locations not at all linked to the main quest-line, which is extended hugely by the massive mods that people make. Yet the Bhaalspawn saga is a story full of characters that are still memorable to this day ('Go for the eyes, Boo, go for the eyes') and a plot that is solid enough to have been adapted by pretty much every Bioware game since.

This isn't me saying BG is better than TES. It's me saying that you can have this and this, your cake and eat it. Oblivion could have had endless exploration and an awesome story, but it didn't. Skyrim still might.

 

[Blade1130]

How about a counter question, what seems boring about them?

I guess I should've answered this back when you asked it, would've made this discussion a lot easier. This might be part of the fact that I keep seeing the same damn trailer in all the ads but have seen a few others and in general, it feels like a big world with nothing in it. Judging by what everyone else is saying this is probably not true but that's the impression I get from it. For instance all the Uncharted 3 trailers depicted Nate in a desert next to a crashed plane, looking for the "City in the Sand" or whatever, and that kind of worried me. Because if half the game takes place in a desert then that does not offer very interesting level design, it all looks flat and unimaginative. Now I'm certain Naughty Dog is smarter than that, as is Bethesda, and won't do it but it's the same feeling I get from all the Oblivion / Skrim trailers, a lot of nothing.

A couple people asked what games I like, and I guess it's MAINLY shooters, though I never really got into CoD or Battlefield. I have played hundreds of hours of Team Fortress 2, and slightly less in Left 4 Dead 2, I have played every Half-Life game all the way through several times, and Portal is Jesus (ask me who my favorite developer is). Of course in terms of RPGs I've played both Mass Effects many times through, along with the original Deus Ex, and Human Revolution, and I'm a long time fan of Zelda if you count that as an RPG. Though that's still kind of debatable.

A couple people compared Elder Scrolls to MineCraft, and I guess I should point out that I do have MineCraft and I keep switching on off between playing it. I never got into the multi-player aspect of it, but I found myself unable to come up with something to do. I would play for a few hours each time an update came out, but then have nothing to do and quit. Once I dug a tunnel to the center of the Earth and a tower to the top of the world I couldn't come up with anything else to do. I do still need to give Terraria a try though.

 

[Hal10k]

I'd say that Fallout 3 has much more atmosphere, a higher amount of interesting characters, and a more involving story.

Pity the Fallout 3 story is ridiculous and poorly done with plotholes the size of my ex-girlfriend's...hands.

So while New Vegas's storylines might be better on average, FO3 has enough outliers to make it more memorable to me.

Memorable like "You need to use a Magic Machine Which Can Re-Creat Life to make technology we already have working work on a larger scale?" despite that being an engineering problem and not a science-y one? Or that you already have this technology as shown by your magic house robot who can generate pure water on his own. Or that water is meant to be ridiculously easy to purify radiation out of and Liam Neeson is a terrible scientist?

Or how for some reason the entire last mission of the game is the Brotherhood not wanting the Enclave to do the exact same thing they were going to do for no apparent reason other than that the Brotherhood wanted to get the credit?

Or your completely bullshit capture in Vault 87 which makes no sense?

Having a memorable storyline isn't very good if it's memorable because it's stupid.

The issue with the purifiers is, as you yourself pointed out, scale. Note that it takes Wadsworth an in-game day to purify a liter or so of water. Not exactly practical on a large enough scale to provide water for the entire wasteland, which was the point of the project. The GECK had some pre-war tech inside it that would allow them to purify water more efficiently. And yes, I know the Potomac wouldn't be irradiated anymore in real life (or any other part of the wasteland, for that matter), but it's a firmly established matter that physics in the Fallout do not work the way they do in real life (radiation turns people into immortal zombies, laser beams have significant mass, self-aware computers composed of vacuum tubes and transistors are the size of warehouses rather than the size of the moon, etc). The water being irradiated is the sort of science you'd see in a 1950's sci-fi movie or short story, so it flies for me.

The point of the assault on the purifier isn't to start the purifier before the Enclave. The only reason you even have to start it immediately after storming the rotunda is that the Enclave have sabatoged it. The reason the assault is such a priority is that the Enclave are still setting up defenses, and if the Brotherhod waits any longer, the Enclaves defenses will become insurmountable. Since the Brotherhood aren't willing to hand away an advantage like the purifier, they decide to attack.

I didn't see a problem with the capture in 87. You're hit with an unspecified piece of Enclave tech, probably something special that only works in small spaces (maybe a cryo grenade or something), and then they cart you out of the Vault via whatever super secret entrance that the super mutants use to get in and out. It's established that the Enclave have tech that allows them to survive higher doses of radation than you, so as long as they dope you with some beforehand, they can just trot you out the front door.

 

[Stall]

There is nothing that makes TES great. They are nothing beyond buggy, boring, bland fantasy games that are terribly written and designed. Unfortunately, Bethesda has a huge following and an incredibly devout defense force that feels compelled t praise these half-baked RPGs at every turn.

Morrowindis the only onewith some redeeming features. Play that one if you must.

 

[Vrach]

How about a counter question, what seems boring about them?

I guess I should've answered this back when you asked it, would've made this discussion a lot easier. This might be part of the fact that I keep seeing the same damn trailer in all the ads but have seen a few others and in general, it feels like a big world with nothing in it. Judging by what everyone else is saying this is probably not true but that's the impression I get from it. For instance all the Uncharted 3 trailers depicted Nate in a desert next to a crashed plane, looking for the "City in the Sand" or whatever, and that kind of worried me. Because if half the game takes place in a desert then that does not offer very interesting level design. Now I'm certain Naughty Dog is smarter than that, as is Bethesda, and won't do it but it's the same feeling I get from all the Oblivion / Skrim trailers, a lot of nothing.

A couple people asked what games I like, and I guess it's MAINLY shooters, though I never really got into CoD or Battlefield. I have played hundreds of hours of Team Fortress 2, and slightly less in Left 4 Dead 2, I have played every Half-Life game all the way through several times, and Portal is Jesus (ask me who my favorite developer is). Of course in terms of RPGs I've played both Mass Effects many times through, along with the Deus Ex, and Human Revolution, and I'm a long time fan of Zelda if you count that as an RPG. Though that's still kind of debatable.

A couple people compared Elder Scrolls to MineCraft, and I guess I should point out that I do have MineCraft and I keep switching on off between playing it. I never got into the multi-player aspect of it, but I found myself unable to come up with something to do. I would play for a few hours each time an update came out, but then have nothing to do and quit. Once I dug a tunnel to the center of the Earth and a tower to the top of the world I couldn't come up with anything else to do. I do still need to give Terraria a try.

Yeah, this is what I expected. Well, for a start, TES is great because it's about freedom. If you are the kind of player that likes getting told what to do all the time, it might not be the game for you. TES takes you through a quick introduction, tells you it has no clue who you are and lets you loose on the world to do whatever you want in it within the limitations of gameplay.

However - this does not mean there's nothing to do nor that the level design is uninteresting. In fact, level design is something Bethesda is probably best at. Oblivion got a lot of complaints it was a bit of a copy-paste design, but frankly, even it had varying landscapes, it just happened to be mostly set in a lush environment where it was largely forests and meadows. In Skyrim however, Bethesda said they focused even more on diversifying landscape, giving you everything from green meadows to frozen ice peaks.

As far as what there is to do... if you're looking for one overarching storyline - it's there. But it's not the main focus of the game. Don't get me wrong, the main storyline is likely gonna be awesome, it's just that if you ignore everything else, you're not gonna feel like you've completed the game at the end of it. If you're simply looking for amount of things to do though... well, you're in for a treat.

TES has a ridiculous number of quests in the game. There's different guilds (main being Warriors, Mages, Thieves, Assassins, few more in Skyrim I believe) and their storylines, there's Deadra quests (Gods/demigods sending you off on tasks) and loads of other factions as well as NPCs throughout the towns and even scattered across the wild who need things from you. It's really hard to run out of things to do in TES games and even then, you're not really done with it.

Primarily the game is about exploration. As such, just experiencing the world around you and visiting places is a huge part of it. The beautiful part of TES is that if you can see it, you can get there. There's no invisible walls (other than the edges of the entire world map, but you've gotta stop somewhere, the game is obviously not infinitely big), there's no trickery of "this mountain is too steep for you to scale so you're gonna have to turn around now" and no similar bullshit. You just take your gear and set off in whatever direction you please. There's also a multitude of dungeons to explore and while they may not always have quests (although with Radiant Questing, plenty of quests will lead you into them anyway), but you'll always have reasons to explore them - lore, gear, facing monsters etc.

But again, if all you're looking for is a clear, concise and most importantly linear narrative - you're not gonna find it here. This is a game that's about making your character and having him take his place in the world the way you want him to. It's a bit similar to Minecraft in that way, but unlike Minecraft, it has PLENTY of gameplay other than what your imagination is capable of. You don't have to have a vast imagination to play in it at all, but it still gives you plenty of room to add yourself to the experience and customize it the way you want to.

The game's combat is in line with the world - it's free. It's not complicated and if you're expecting a bunch of power attacks, fancy button combinations for sweet moves and such, you're likely gonna feel it comes a bit short on that. But on the other hand, the freedom it gives you is something I find much better, more enjoyable and by far the most immersive. It's also something heavily improved upon by Skyrim, by allowing you to now customize how you fight by choosing different weapons/spells/etc. for each of your hands.

 

[Dansen]

People without imagination tend to find elder-scrolls boring. Not saying that everyone that dislikes it has no imagination but one of the biggest complaints is story and that there is nothing compelling or interesting, honestly, I haven't played a single bethesda game with any interest in story, because I can make my own fun!

All I do is goof of and find my own fun in the game, more often than not I will just wander into the wilderness and explore things, if there is one thing I have noticed about rpgs it is that anything placed off the beaten trail usually exists for a reason and whats great about bethesda games they usually have a story behind them. I often make themed character, like in Fallout NV I made a black nerd with the four eyes perk, his major skill was science, he had godawful speech and he only carried energy weapons. Not everything needs to be done a certain way in order to have fun!

If you don't like it fine, but please don't go around saying it is bad game, its a great game you simply don't like it.

 

[AlternatePFG]

I really don't know honestly. Don't get me wrong, the background lore of the series is interesting (Okay, mostly in Morrowind) and exploring is always fun, but I've found the mechanics of the games much to broken to really enjoy them. (Especially in Oblivion)

Skyrim seems like they're fixing some of the bad aspects of the series, but I'm still not really that interested. Exploring Oblivion was so dull for me, there were some really good questlines (Loved the Thieves' Guild quests) but the actual locations were repetitive and the main plotline was really boring.

Morrowind was better, but I never played it past more than a few hours for some reason. Lost interest. *shrug*

 

[Amnestic]

The issue with the purifiers is, as you yourself pointed out, scale. Note that it takes Wadsworth an in-game day to purify a liter or so of water. Not exactly practical on a large enough scale to provide water for the entire wasteland, which was the point of the project. The GECK had some pre-war tech inside it that would allow them to purify water more efficiently. And yes, I know the Potomac wouldn't be irradiated anymore in real life (or any other part of the wasteland, for that matter), but it's a firmly established matter that physics in the Fallout do not work the way they do in real life (radiation turns people into immortal zombies, laser beams have significant mass, self-aware computers composed of vacuum tubes and transistors are the size of warehouses rather than the size of the moon, etc). The water being irradiated is the sort of science you'd see in a 1950's sci-fi movie or short story, so it flies for me.

But you don't need the GECK to make magic science to make it work. You need smart people to make the stuff work on a larger scale. Like I said, the purifier ceased being a science issue once they admitted the tech has been workable on a small scale and then turned into an engineering one.

The point of the assault on the purifier isn't to start the purifier before the Enclave. The only reason you even have to start it immediately after storming the rotunda is that the Enclave have sabatoged it. The reason the assault is such a priority is that the Enclave are still setting up defenses, and if the Brotherhod waits any longer, the Enclaves defenses will become insurmountable. Since the Brotherhood aren't willing to hand away an advantage like the purifier, they decide to attack.

Wait, what? When did the Enclave sabotage the purifier? Why would they do that? They wanted to turn it on! Colonel Autumn wanted to use it to help attract people to the Enclave and...frankly? I say let 'em. Aside from being a bit forceful, the Enclave weren't really all that evil in Fallout 3. Eden was an exception, but Colonel Autumn basically staged a coup leaving him as leader and...well, while a bit of an ass?

He wasn't really 'evil' as far as his actions go. That you never got to choose to join up with the Enclave is a pretty major flaw as well. You're forced to fight them for no real reason other than that Bethesda seemed insistent that you side with the Brotherhood.

I didn't see a problem with the capture in 87. You're hit with an unspecified piece of Enclave tech, probably something special that only works in small spaces (maybe a cryo grenade or something), and then they cart you out of the Vault via whatever super secret entrance that the super mutants use to get in and out. It's established that the Enclave have tech that allows them to survive higher doses of radation than you, so as long as they dope you with some beforehand, they can just trot you out the front door.

Yes. The 'magic' anti-radiation stuff they have which you never get access to despite entering the Enclave's main base and ransacking the place, and then their backup base at Adams Air Force Base. Nothing like a Magic McGuffin to help avoid plotholes whenever they come up.

 

[Hal10k]

But you don't need the GECK to make magic science to make it work. You need smart people to make the stuff work on a larger scale. Like I said, the purifier ceased being a science issue once they admitted the tech has been workable on a small scale and then turned into an engineering one.

To use an imperfect analogy, that's a bit like saying I should be able to start my own Apollo program because I know how a bottle rocket works. Or that a computer technician from the 60's would have no trouble building a Dell laptop. Yes, the scientific theory was there, and given enough time, they probably could have scaled it up into a Potomac-sized purifier. That was the original goal of the project, before the start of the game. However, actually developing a more efficient purifier was obviously a rather difficult problem. Why would they keep trying to develop the technology on their own when they could figure it all out from the GECK in a small percentage of the time? It wasn't a "fix everything" box, it was a "fix everything faster" box.

Wait, what? When did the Enclave sabotage the purifier? Why would they do that? They wanted to turn it on!

When you reach the rotunda, Dr. Li contacts you over the intercom and tells you that the Enclave sabatoged the purifier after realizing that Liberty Prime was casually strolling up to the Memorial (Don't ask me how she knows. Sensors or something, I guess). That's the reason you have to turn on the purifier: the water pressure has been building u as a result of their sabatoge, and it's going to wreck everything unless you relieve the pressure, activating the purifier being the only immediate solution. The Enclave hadn't captured it expecting to destroy it, it was just one last "Screw you, Brotherhood" gesture.

I like to imagine a group of Enclave scientists sprinting to the emergency exits, while one guy justs stays in the room and starts whacking stuff with a wrench.

Colonel Autumn wanted to use it to help attract people to the Enclave and...frankly? I say let 'em. Aside from being a bit forceful, the Enclave weren't really all that evil in Fallout 3. Eden was an exception, but Colonel Autumn basically staged a coup leaving him as leader and...well, while a bit of an ass?

He wasn't really 'evil' as far as his actions go. That you never got to choose to join up with the Enclave is a pretty major flaw as well. You're forced to fight them for no real reason other than that Bethesda seemed insistent that you side with the Brotherhood.

You can't side with the Enclave because, by the time you meet them, they've killed your father. Whether or not that matters to your character is irrelevant. Autumn isn't stupid: he isn't the type to say "Hey, I just killed your father, so I'm positive you won't betray me. How's it going, new best friend?" Even if you expressed interest, Autumn probably wouldn't accept you. He'd constantly be expecting to be stabbed in the back for revenge otherwise.

Yes. The 'magic' anti-radiation stuff they have which you never get access to despite entering the Enclave's main base and ransacking the place, and then their backup base at Adams Air Force Base. Nothing like a Magic McGuffin to help avoid plotholes whenever they come up.

You also don't get access to Eden's horde of eyebots, or a pet mind-controlled deathclaw, or your own power armor factory. The Enclave has a lot of tech, much of which isn't easily transportable, or understandable to a person who isn't completely familiar with their technology, especially in the brief period that you're given access to it. I wouldn't expect to learn how to build a car by charging through a Mercedez-Benz factory shooting a shotgun into the air. You don't see the entirety of either establishment, either, just the small segments necessary to gameplay. The magic Rad-X storage could easily be in one of the closed-off rooms.

also, it's not like it isn't at least foreshadowed. You can see Autumn inject himself with some as James floods the purifier with radiation.

 

[Amnestic]

You can't side with the Enclave because, by the time you meet them, they've killed your father. Whether or not that matters to your character is irrelevant. Autumn isn't stupid: he isn't the type to say "Hey, I just killed your father, so I'm positive you won't betray me. How's it going, new best friend?" Even if you expressed interest, Autumn probably wouldn't accept you. He'd constantly be expecting to be stabbed in the back for revenge otherwise.

That's a load of old tosh. Your dad killed himself. The Enclave didn't shoot him. Liam Neeson exploded the purifier, choosing to set back the project in favour of not letting someone else finish his job. He could've given it up, walked away and regrouped with the Brotherhood later. Instead, your Dad blew himself up. The Enclave didn't do shit to him.

You also don't get access to Eden's horde of eyebots, or a pet mind-controlled deathclaw, or your own power armor factory. The Enclave has a lot of tech, much of which isn't easily transportable, or understandable to a person who isn't completely familiar with their technology, especially in the brief period that you're given access to it. I wouldn't expect to learn how to build a car by charging through a Mercedez-Benz factory shooting a shotgun into the air. You don't see the entirety of either establishment, either, just the small segments necessary to gameplay. The magic Rad-X storage could easily be in one of the closed-off rooms.

also, it's not like it isn't at least foreshadowed. You can see Autumn inject himself with some as James floods the purifier with radiation.

So...wait, is the magic Rad-X too complex/bulky to use or is it as simple as jabbing a small syringe into your leg? Why do none of the Enclave - including Colonel Autumn - have any of it on them at all? You'd think Autumn would want to make sure he always has some on him after it saved his life.

It's a magic mcguffin to try to dodge around plotholes which only creates other plotholes as to why you never get access to it despite coming across literally hundreds of Enclave troops, exploring vast areas of their bases (plural) including science labs, living quarters, armoury areas...

It wasn't a "fix everything" box, it was a "fix everything faster" box.

So rather than use the GECK on something else and spreading the wealth, they choose to make their own jobs easier. They're not bad scientists, they're just lazy and immoral. That's sooooo much better.

 

[Dimitriov]

It's not even that great of an RPG, it's horrendously broken, ugly (And I don't just mean "outdated graphics", it's ugly), boring characters, story, and writing. However, it is pretty fun and huge. If you've played Fallout 3 and/or Fallout: New Vegas, you'll have fun, if you've played an RPG for BioWare or any other developer with really good writing, you'll be bored to tears with the story and characters.

Graphics never meant much to me, as long as I can tell what I'm killing and that I'm succeeding, I don't really care what the game looks like. Although the last time I said that, guy told me there was something called Doom that was right up my alley... I've never played Fallout 3 or New Vegas, though they are also on my list of "shit I need to play eventually", however I have played both Mass Effects many times through, but never got into any other BioWare games. Sorry, Dragon Age does NOT look interesting to me in the least, maybe I'm just crazy...

If you don't like the trailers. then you may not like the games. It seems to me by the wording of your post that fantasy RPGs aren't your thing.

You do have a point, Middle Ages era games were never my cup of tea, although I do like the Sci-Fi/cyber-punk style ones much better, ie. Mass Effect, Deus Ex, Halo. But I've been trying to branch out a lot more, exploring genres I never got into. For instance I've never been one for horror games, but I got Amnesia the other day simply because I heard it was really good. I still want to play Silent Hill at some point, where exactly can I get that now anyways? I also generally don't like Real-Time Strategy games, but damn do I love StarCraft, though that one isn't very recent... Let's put it this way, I'm not really into the fantasy RPG's like you said, but I'm trying to give it a try, and I figured the "best" one should at least come off as "decent" to someone who doesn't like the genre.

Aha! I get to pull out my old "cheese argument" from way back when on the WoW forums!

If someone doesn't really like cheese, they find even cheddar a bit too sharp, then says well I might as well try the "best" cheese because at least it should be decent, so they go and get some really expensive blue cheese, for example, do you think they will enjoy it?

Sadly the best game of a genre you don't care for probably isn't going to be decent in your opinion, in fact you might enjoy some of the worst examples more. The very things about it you may hate are exactly why some people will love it.

Basically, I love the ElderScrolls games for the world they create. There is so much history, back story, and such a large world for you to explore that you can spend days (real world days) just wandering around learning about the world you are playing in. For me that is fantastically fun. For you? I get the impression it wouldn't be.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

OP, here is an honest (not paid off) review of Oblivion, from a true rpg enthusiast. http://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=129

Why is he a "true RPG enthusiast"? Because he wrote a biased, rambling, attack review of a game he didn't like and is apparently blind to the merits of?

Maybe I should write a review tearing apart Bioshock. I'll call it "honest", and represent myself as a "true shooter enthusiast".

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Morrowind is better than Oblivion, but the Elder Scrolls series is unique in that they offer a sandbox world of adventure in which the story simply happens to take place. The player can play their choice of character, do quests they want in the order they want, fight how they like, be good or evil, explore and adventure, craft/enchant what you like and so on.

Play Morrowind, seriously. After you get off the boat, make some decisions and consider what to do next, remember what your motivation is. 10 hours later, consider your motivation again. I can guarantee the two will be entirely different.

That's why Skyrim is so anticipated. It will be a current gen (well, 5-6 year old at least) version of its predecessors. Player choice, freedom, exploration, adventure, playing on the player's terms, NOT the developer's...that's the ES series. Plus, Behtesda have always released the SDK shortly after release so players can add-to and create their own content, adding new mechanics, adventures, items and characters, tweaking and refining the experience.

If you installed FO3 today and went to FONexus, you could craft almost any game you chose by selectively downloading various mods. If you like RPGs and haven't experiences Elder Scrolls 3 or 4, you're missing out. Oh, and play Baldur's Gate II while you're at it. It's probably the best PC RPG ever made, alongside Planescape: Torment.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

You mad cause he actually told the truth about it? LOL

And go ahead and write a review on Bioshock, i'll read it.

I'm mad because I correctly identified a stupid, biased review as stupid?

If I called a duck a duck, would I also be "mad"?

Here, let me help you out:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/biased

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/objective

http://www.lc.unsw.edu.au/onlib/critrev.html

Good luck on educating yourself!

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Oh and one last thing, if you play Oblivion, get started on the Assassin's Guild quest chain. As well as being quite disturbing, particularly your guild brethren who are simply incredible (the dictionary definition, ie. impossible to give credit to), the quests and one in particular are like nothing you'll have played before.

Enter conversations with the assassin cute girl for some serious mind-messing, and speak to the orc to learn about his time at a child's 7th birthday party.

But best of all, there's a quest at a mansion (Cheydinhall I believe) where you are locked in with 6 other guests. What ensues is a murder-mystery like you won't believe. It's one of the best, most enjoyable and memorable quests of any RPG I've ever played.

Oh oh oh, and you must do Sheogorath's Daedric shrine quest. (To other's who've played Oblivion, is it the one I'm thinking of?).

 

[Hal10k]

That's a load of old tosh. Your dad killed himself. The Enclave didn't shoot him. Liam Neeson exploded the purifier, choosing to set back the project in favour of not letting someone else finish his job. He could've given it up, walked away and regrouped with the Brotherhood later. Instead, your Dad blew himself up. The Enclave didn't do shit to him.

James committed suicide so that the faction he disliked wouldn't gain access to the purifier. They may not have killed him, but they were responsible for his death. Hence, Autumn probably wouldn't consider it a terribly good idea to let his son into their ranks, especially since, when you get right down to it, the only thing you are is some kid from the wastes. The Enclave has a standing army and its own trained scientists. They've never needed to recruit, and I don't see why they'd make an exception for somebody who was even more likely to betray them.

So...wait, is the magic Rad-X too complex/bulky to use or is it as simple as jabbing a small syringe into your leg? Why do none of the Enclave - including Colonel Autumn - have any of it on them at all? You'd think Autumn would want to make sure he always has some on him after it saved his life.

It's as simple as sticking a syringe in your leg. The technology required to produce it is the complex part. You're running through a series of claustrophobic halways containing technology you're only barely familiar with. Even if you come across the chemical processing plant, do you honestly expect to be immediately able to recognize it, examine it, figure out how it works, and carry any necessary bits and pieces of technology out with you, all in the space of about five minutes?

It's a magic mcguffin to try to dodge around plotholes which only creates other plotholes as to why you never get access to it despite coming across literally hundreds of Enclave troops, exploring vast areas of their bases (plural) including science labs, living quarters, armoury areas...

Considering Autumn is the only one who uses it, I'd say the magic Rad-X is restricted only to important personnel for use in emergency situations (or when they specifically need to cross areas of high radiation). They likely wouldn't store it at every single locale that they visit. They would only need to keep it at Raven Rock, a large part of which you do not see (note all of the "Inaccesible" doors.

Not finding it on Autumn's corpse is indeed a small plot hole, or at least a minor case of gameplay and story segregation. I could think of a few scenarios that would result in its absence, but I'll concede the point.

So rather than use the GECK on something else and spreading the wealth, they choose to make their own jobs easier. They're not bad scientists, they're just lazy and immoral. That's sooooo much better.

They're using it to turn a river full of dangerously irradiated water into something humans could actually use to survive, something that would have taken decades of research to complete without the GECK, assuming the science team even managed to survive for that long. I wouldn't exactly call that "immoral", especially considering that at no point is it suggested that they had to destroy the GECK to incorporate its technology.

 

[Blade1130]

I figured the "best" one should at least come off as "decent" to someone who doesn't like the genre.

If someone doesn't really like cheese, they find even cheddar a bit too sharp, then says well I might as well try the "best" cheese because at least it should be decent, so they go and get some really expensive blue cheese, for example, do you think they will enjoy it?

That's an... interesting way of putting it. Although I guess I should have worded it a little better. What I should have said was, that if this game is as good as everyone says it is, then someone who doesn't like the genre should be able to see why they like it, and understand what it is the game did right or wrong. I'm not sure if that's really helping me right now, but hopefully that clarifies what I meant.