Why is Skyrim popular?

Recommended Videos

Legendsmith

New member
Mar 9, 2010
622
0
0
BloodyThoughts said:
They're both getting probably the same amount of praise, and as of recently, people seem to be turning on Skyrim for, whatever reason.
For the exact same reason that people turned on Avatar. It looks really pretty, but once you start looking for depth you find that it isn't there.
 

IamLEAM1983

Neloth's got swag.
Aug 22, 2011
2,581
0
0
Legendsmith said:
BloodyThoughts said:
They're both getting probably the same amount of praise, and as of recently, people seem to be turning on Skyrim for, whatever reason.
For the exact same reason that people turned on Avatar. It looks really pretty, but once you start looking for depth you find that it isn't there.
Depth is a subjective concept. Some people liked Avatar enough to go look for the companion books and to coax the linguist Cameron had hired to design the Na'vi language to finish the job and come up with a complete lexicon. Some people like it enough for fanfics and fanart to be produced. Others don't. The same goes with Skyrim.

I like to go around collecting books to garnish my shelves, and to slowly work up my cash so that I own every single house in the game and fully furnish each of them. I like to take off, ignore all of my quest markers, and go looking for blue butterflies or torchbugs. I like trying to figure out if the designers had a sense of Skyrim's various ecosystems, of which plants grow where.

I enjoy visiting the settlements and Hold capitals and to imagine what these places would be like on a more realistic level. I like to imagine Whiterun as a busier and livelier place, thanks to the suggestion the game already provides me with. I enjoy seeing how the locals draw sustenance from the surrounding natural resources. When I'm bored of it all, I just head West, where the steam vents are. I like seeing how lush, verdant and comparatively warm the place feels, compared to the cooler, grayer tones used elsewhere. I like the locals' banter about how the weather turning *almost* warm in Skyrim is grounds for a joke or two.

Of course, when all of the above fails to maintain my interest, I like how I can slaughter an entire capital's citizens, die in a blaze of glory as I'm hacked apart by guardsmen (potentially decapitated in the process, as well). Then, of course, I reload my latest save and resume being a worthy Dragonborn. I like how everything's possible, as the writers at Bethesda thought up the concept of Dragon Breaks. Everything I do, no matter how silly, is canon. Everything happens in another Skyrim, in another universe of the same exact place. I've been as much of a stalwart hero as I've been a complete maniac. I've been a walking god thanks to the console just as I've been a puny weakling who turned the difficulty up to Master because he was feeling masochistic.

To me, that's depth. Tons of it, in fact. Skyrim doesn't have the literary acumen of the Lord of the Rings series, obviously, but it captures the same epic feeling in a different manner.

Can I be wrong? Could you disagree? Of course. Everything's subjective. Even so, I'd humbly suggest that you give Skyrim a whirl. If you don't blindly adhere to what your quest log tells you to do, you'll find so many things the designers didn't think about or all the little secrets they did think of just waiting around the corner.

Don't dismiss Skyrim as just another case of graphics over substance. It's not just pretty, dude. Get in the right mood, and it'll suck you right in.
 

Ashcrexl

New member
May 27, 2009
1,416
0
0
i just want to point out that you have clearly not read or watched a single review or analysis or trailer or gameplay footage about skyrim. all you seem to have learned about skyrim are the headlines of articles highlighting a few issues the game seems to have. yet you are all confused as to its popularity. hm.

also, people who are not hardcore zelda fans are kind of sick of its annual release schedule.
 

Cole257

New member
Aug 12, 2008
62
0
0
Jailbird408 said:
I love Skyward Sword. (It may seem weird that the first paragraph of a thread has no apparent connection with its title, but bear with me.) It's beautiful, well-written and solid, and really pushes the Wii's hardware to its limit. It is a game that everyone deserves to get, and a game that would turn any graphics junkie or motion-control naysayers into followers of the Nintendo way.
It would, but for some reason, everyone seems to be ignoring it in favor of a completely different game.
Now I have not played this particular game yet, but from what I've heard about it, I'm not sure I want to. A sub-standard if not retarded script, bugs and glitches in every corner of the game, a completely broken and lazy PS3 port and gameplay mechanics that have been outclassed by so many games before it add up to a game that doesn't deserve the memetic status it holds.
I'm not saying it's bad. I'm saying its place in the hearts of everyone here... confuses me.
Which brings me to my question: How did this all start? What were people looking forward to in Skyrim, why did they even care about it, and why is "Arrow to the Knee" of all the lines in the game quoted and twisted like it's an untruthful cake?
tl;dr: Why is Skyrim popular?
I don't find waving around my arms to be "unwinding," as video games are supposed to be...
 

Jailbird408

New member
Jan 19, 2011
505
0
0
I have 28 new messages in my inbox, this post has 151 replies, and I feel I've made an enemy of everyone here.
I'm bailing.
 

DeadlyYellow

New member
Jun 18, 2008
5,141
0
0
Here's my reasons why I enjoyed Skyrim more than Skyward Sword:

-I don't need to leave my room to play on the native system.
-I didn't have to shell out extra money for attachments to play.
-Skyrim (surprisingly) delivered something vastly different than it's predecessor. Skyward Sword, not so much.

Jailbird408 said:
I have 28 new messages in my inbox, this post has 151 replies, and I feel I've made an enemy of everyone here.
I'm bailing.
Folding on your statement? A more cynical version of me wants to make the joke that you are now a true part of the gaming community.
 

TheDrunkNinja

New member
Jun 12, 2009
1,875
0
0
Jailbird408 said:
I have 28 new messages in my inbox, this post has 151 replies, and I feel I've made an enemy of everyone here.
I'm bailing.


Happens to the best of us. It's okay. I admit your original post was a bit... misguided, but if you put more thought into your future topics before you post, you'll find the Escapist to be more forgiving. It's sometimes not surprising that we're considered a rather elitist forum community, but still, just think before you post, okay?
 

nsqared

New member
Nov 1, 2011
88
0
0
Jailbird408 said:
Now I have not played this particular game yet, but from what I've heard about it, I'm not sure I want to. A sub-standard if not retarded script, bugs and glitches in every corner of the game, a completely broken and lazy PS3 port and gameplay mechanics that have been outclassed by so many games before it add up to a game that doesn't deserve the memetic status it holds.
As many have said before me, please go out and play a game before you bash on it. Heck, i read about the bugs and glitches and and the "completley broken and lazy PS3 port", and i still bought it. For my PS3. And it's still fun. Two of my friends had never really cared about Skyrim or TES before, and now they're really into it and bought it for their PS3 too even though i told them about all the weird things.
In fact, i haven't played Skyward Sword.
But i don't plan to, because it's for the Wii and i've heard that the Wii has terrible graphics, bad motion controls, the writing is weak and after all, i've never played a zelda game, so what the heck?
That's basically what you're saying, but in my case.
EDIT: Welcome to a forum. Next time, think before you post.
 

Balobo

New member
Nov 30, 2009
476
0
0
You're not going to get a bunch of fanboys to admit that another great game comes close to their favorite game. They'll just shit on it even though they've never played it and it's been pretty well received. Then again, you shat on Skyrim without playing it at all in your post so it's everyone's fault why this thread is shit.

Yeah, I saw a post earlier in the thread that summed up my feelings about discussing Zelda on The Escapist. Basically, don't do it. You'll get a bunch of "hur dur rehash" idiots rearing their heads, for instance. Refrain from mentioning things other than Skyrim and Minecraft.

They're radically different games aiming to do different things. Bethesda just happened to pump more money into Skyrim's advertising budget.
 

C2Ultima

Future sovereign of Oz
Nov 6, 2010
506
0
0
So essentially, you're saying that you haven't played Skyrim, but you heard a couple of things on the internet, and therefore, it's not worth playing?

And you also like Skyward Sword, because that's relevant, somehow.


To answer your question, it's a good game, and it's fun to play. That's all there is to it.
 
Jan 29, 2009
3,328
0
0
Because you've asked this question on an internet forum dominated by PC gamers who collectively frown upon the Wii when not talking about how cool PC gaming is while simultaneously worrying about how manly they look as shown by their selection in games. Admitting to playing something as kiddy as a Wii game would shrink their internet egos and make them feel bad about themselves while all the serious gamers look over from their grittified fantasy game (not some barbarian console shooter, like MW3, mind you) and laugh at them.
Skyward Sword is also immensely popular, just not so much on this site.
 

SL33TBL1ND

Elite Member
Nov 9, 2008
6,467
0
41
Skryim being anticipated for quite a while it's high meme density may have something to do with it. Also since this site is very PC oriented, and with not that many Nintendo supporters people aren't going to be speaking about Wii games as much.
 

Eclectic Dreck

New member
Sep 3, 2008
6,662
0
0
I'll answer the Arrow in the Knee question I suppose. I don't find memes funny. Or annoying. They are just things that happen around me and, at best, I wonder why they picked that. Sure, I was often told in Oblivion that there existed mudcrabs more fearsome than me (a claim that might be true in the opening hour of the game when I'm dressed in rags and armed with a dull knife) and so understood what that became a thing. But in Skyrim, I probably heard the Arrow in the knee line a half dozen times across more than 100 hours of play. It was a thing that makes sense for a guard to say. Sure, it seemed to happen to more guards than seemed reasonable but I didn't fault the game (nor see it as being strange).

No, where I to pick a meme, it would have been something related to people being snotty. The guy derisively asking if I'd been to the Wind District might make sense when I was dressed as a peasant with only a few coins to my name but when I stand as the hero of Skyrim on two counts, the head of a number of notable organizations all with more wealth than the nation of Skyrim, armed with weapons that could make gods bleed and protected by armor that cost more than the average fortress it seems a bit strange.

When I decided I was done with the game, I went for the Master Criminal achievement. The easiest way to get the bounty was to murder a person in each city. In Windhelm, I choose that Dark Elf who, without fail, asked if I'd been to the wind district. Just tracked him down and stood in front of him with my sword out. When he started to assume I had not been there, I lopped off his head and dragged his corpse to the fountain in Windhelm while utterly ignoring the pitiful attempts of the guard to stop me.

The kids might have been annoying, but that guy didn't have the benefit of artificial morality armor.
 

Yeager942

New member
Oct 31, 2008
1,097
0
0
The OP does have a point. Oblivion didn't get anywhere near this much attention, but Skyrim is household name now.

inb4 fus roh dah
 

ImmortalDrifter

New member
Jan 6, 2011
662
0
0
All I'm getting from this is either you're trolling, or you're a bawwing Zelda fanboy.

Your critisms are vague and baseless, and you use the term "nintendo way".
 

RaNDM G

New member
Apr 28, 2009
6,044
0
0
What's the point in comparing two completely different games? Skyrim and Skyward Sword both have their own niche audience. Let people enjoy what they want to play.
 

The Dutchess

New member
Feb 24, 2011
158
0
0
I don't get Skyrim either ... bugs, glitches, retarded NPCs, horrible first person combat

But then I don't get the Zelda stuff either. Is it a nostalgia thing because you played it when you were young? I never played any of them ... they kind of look like they're for kids. I also think the Wii sucks ass compared with any other platform. I am of the Yahtzee mindset when it comes to motion controls - won't go near them.