Witcher 3 Developer Calls Skyrim "Casual"

[OneSpiran]

While it's a stretch to call Skyrim casual and I like the game quite a bit (140 hours before I got bored) the game is very light on actual systems and reactivity. It's ultimately a hollow game where you may be the guy who is the leased of every guild and saved the world but nobody in said world will note that.

The new skill system is also considerably more pointless than the earlier games and the game can't be lost and it never pushes back towards the player. Nothing has consequences and nothing ultimately matters. You may be able to sneak stab a dragon in the tail and kill it with that one stab but some dude will still call you milk drinker.

Casual game it may not be, but a game that doesn't demand anything or indeed give anything, that it is.

This is possibly the most discrete way of expressing how I feel about Skyrim, it's just so.. Depressing? There's nothing to fill the 'Elder scrolls' niche and there's only so much Morrowind overhaul you can play, I'd like a game closer to what I enjoy, but there isn't one and I don't hold hope for the future installments.

 

[Farther than stars]

"We are heavily story driven and open world. This hasn't really been done before-"

Yeah, except for, you know, everything that Piranha Bytes has ever created or the 'Fable' games. Or don't those count because they're too colourful?

PS Morrowind did a great job at a rather story driven open world game

I think the criticism leveled against the Elder Scroll games is fair, because their stories aren't exactly straightforward, since you can play for pretty much hundreds of hours without even touching on the story. Or you can focus on the story and finish Morrowind in ten minutes. So to say that the Elder Scroll games are 'story driven' seems a little far fetched.
But what annoys me about this statement is that Mattson seems to think that his game is the first open-world RPG to be story driven, which is very ignorant of the entire history of RPGs. So, yes, he does seem to be getting ahead of himself.

 

[Trueflame]

Actually, "casual" is a great way to sum up Skyrim. It's not casual like the casual games you could play on your phone, or in the traditional gaming sense of the word, but it is certainly casual by comparison to previous Elder Scrolls games, continues the trend of games to become more streamlined and casual, and really fairly simplistic. You don't have to customize your character traits, any character can do anything, loot and enemies are still somewhat level based, and so on. Skyrim is heavyweight only because it's a major release and a landmark RPG game, not because of any intricacy or complexity within it. Pretty casual, and I respect CDProjektRed even more for saying that.

 

[In Search of Username]

Well, most people I know who play Skyrim don't play any other RPGs, I'll tell you that much. Hell I know a few people who play no other games but Skyrim. That's generally a sign that it's not something you need to be any good at gaming to get into. I wouldn't call it casual by gaming standards in general, that's reserved for Angry Birds as far as I'm concerned, but by RPG standards, hell yeah it's a casual game.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

They're taking inspiration from that godawful Robin Hood movie? Really?

I look forward to the part where Geralt is saved by an army of little masked children riding ponies.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

Skyrim is like a giant ballpit. The Witcher is more like an adventure playground. I can definitely see where he is coming from.

 

[faefrost]

Gee? You think maybe ol' Jonas might be baiting us in order to start a conversation that equates his game with Bethesda's long running gazillion dollar franchise? This is cheesy marketing. Nothing more. I really had hoped that we, the gaming community, had learned to recognize this sort of crap and ignore it by now?

 

[Caiphus]

Hmmm, slightly sensationalist headline there.

I was gonna come into the thread at be all "Probably not a great idea to slag off many people's favourite game for no apparent reason. Why would you even do that?". But he didn't, really.

There are many ways in which Skyrim is reaching towards casual. For a large scale RPG you don't get much more accessible than Skyrim. Which is a point in its favour, mostly. Especially on its lower difficulty settings, where combat essentially becomes 'stand in front of enemies and mash Left Mouse Button'. But whatever.

 

[Abomination]

as for the mention that they are using a russel crow movie for inspiration, well thats nothing really to brag about haha

To be fair the Robin Hood movie was very accurate with its environmental and timepiece setting. The armour, weapons, buildings, and behavior of individuals was very accurate of a feudal setting. It honestly should have just been called ANYTHING other than Robin Hood but I guess you have to use a well established IP to get people's bums on seats.

CDPR is accurate with how "casual" the RPG elements of Skyrim were. The setting was great, the graphics were top-notch, the voice acting was solid, the combat was engaging and the open world mechanics were some of the best we've ever seen... but the story and reaction to character decisions was flat, dull and simplistic. Kill the Emperor? A guard occasionally says something along the lines of "Emperor dead! " and everything else is the same. The Stormcloaks or Empire wins the civil war? Guard models change. That's it.

In the Witcher 2 when you made a decision you saw the effects of it on the story as a whole. New options became available or not. A decision in Act 1 to toss a guy a sword or not can result in a town breaking out in a non-human hunting riot or a giant celebration with whores on tab and cheers all around... and that's small potatoes to the effects your choices in other acts have.

Spoiler

Don't save Triss in the final act and it makes what happened to the mages in Dragon Age II look like a small altercation over the cheque in a restaurant.

 

[Amir Kondori]

Skyrim may not be a casual game but it is certainly the most streamlined and accessible of all the Elder Scrolls games. Compare it to Morrowind or even Daggerfall and you can see Skyrim is their least "hardcore" rpg yet.
Its almost become an action game at this point.
Also, Andy, are you kidding me with this, "With its massive open world, competing factions, huge array of NPCs, widely varied environments, hundreds of dungeons and deep, flexible character creation options,"?

1. Wide as the ocean, deep as a puddle
2. Factions that don't progress in any meaningful ways
3. NPC's that for the most part are boring and lack meaningful interactions
4. Wide variety of environments like really snowy mountains, less snowy hills, barely snowy valleys
5. Hundreds of mostly samey, uninteresting dungeons
6. Least flexible character creation options in a modern Elder Scrolls game yet

Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the game and I have dumped about 150 hours into it. I still lament how much it has been streamlined and simplified.

 

[AJey]

Sorry, but I would rather take Skyrim's "casual" approach than Second Witcher's supposed complexity. Almost half of the in-game time was spent in dialogues. I want to play the game, not listen to it.

God forbid a damn RPG has a story.

Which the witcher has, and in fact its story blows even Skyrim away due to how branching it truly is. Especially since every single choice has a huge consequence attached to it, even the tiny ones.

Well, first of all, I am not complaining about it having a great story (and yeah, it is great). How did you draw a correlation between excessive dialogue and story? last time I checked, there are numerous ways to convey a story; relying mostly on dialogue is not efficient.

Secondly, when it comes to games, gameplay is the most important element, not story. You can have a good game without a good story, you cant have a good game without good gameplay. Dont get me wrong, I love a good story, but gameplay is always a priority.

 

[Andy Chalk]

Also, Andy, are you kidding me with this, "With its massive open world, competing factions, huge array of NPCs, widely varied environments, hundreds of dungeons and deep, flexible character creation options,"?

Sure, why not? FWIW, Skyrim is my least-favourite Elder Scrolls game yet, largely for the reasons you mentioned, but there are few better examples of a modern, mainstream "core" RPG. I've got 123 hours on Skyrim myself, obviously I enjoyed it and got a lot of mileage out of it, but I also never finished it because my interest just fizzled out - once exploring dungeons and ruins got dull, there just wasn't enough meat on the bone to hold my interest. My great hope is that the next TES game will offer up an experience more akin to Daggerfall or Morrowind, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

Speaking purely as a an ignorant pleb, who's only got Yahtzee's review of the Witcher 2 to go on, I can safely say I'd prefer Skyrim's hodgepodge of underdeveloped mechanics to the Witcher's needless complexity added only to justify it's existence on the PC.

Unless the Witcher is actually really good, and not tedious at all. Somebody give me the lowdown on it?

 

[Racecarlock]

I've called games things before. Where the hell are the full page articles about me?

 

[zefiris]

If the word "Casual" had any meaning, then Skyrim would be its definition. Skyrim is no commitment, you can just go anywhere, do some stuff, feel rewarded, drop it for a week, and come back. Sure, you may have forgotten stuff, but it doesn't matter. You can enjoy it fine, you missed nothing.

And that's good! That's what a sandbox game like this is for. You can play it hardcore, just like any other game, but looking at what the game purely is, then it's the most casual friendly RPG on the market.

Casual isn't bad, or rather, it shouldn't be bad. Sadly, dudebro gamers, as usual, pretend it's bad, just like they pretend blue sky or colors are bad, but that's dudebros for you.

 

[Troublesome Lagomorph]

Honestly, compared to all the other TES games, Skyrim is amazingly dumbed down. There's so much less... everything, really.
Seriously, go play Morrowind and you'll see what I mean.
If you want to see just how dumbed down it is, I suggest playing Fallout 2. You'll never look at Skyrim the same way again.
PS: yellow journalism gets old fast. Please stop.

 

[Extragorey]

Misleading article title. As the writer begrudgingly admits halfway through the article, the CD Projekt Red person wasn't calling Skyrim a "casual game" ala Farmville or Angry Birds. He was just saying Skyrim is an easy game to get into for a few minutes or a few hours of aimless wandering and mucking around - i.e. a fairly casual mode of gameplay.

 

[scw55]

I would agree Skyrim initially is a casual game.

But:
Mods can turn it into less-casual.
The load time between places and loading the game for myself actually stops me playing it casually. By the time I get on, I actually want to spend time in the world.

The world is immersive despite the quests being shallower than Oblivion's. The dungeons are better, so I personally just explore. I only do quests which draw my attention. I'm not going to 100% Skyrim.