FaceFaceFace said:
Joccaren said:
Well, why did it deserve to get any higher? It wasn't great by any means, and after 10 minutes I had experienced everything it had to offer. There is no real reason for re-playability, and several semi-game-breaking bugs. The world was large and open, but felt dead, and after the first hour the game stopped being fun. I'd imagine Yahtzee had the same experience as I, and kept pushing on to see if it got more fun, but just found more of the same. The best thing Skyrim did was the grey choice between Stormcloaks and Imperials. In Yahtzee's own words [Though when reviewing a different title] "Everything it's done has been done before - and better". I'm surprised it even made it to five, and I'll agree with Yahtzee it was probably peer pressure. I don't get at all what everyone finds so great about it, except Jim Sterling's ideas on how the game proves the industry wrong.
You're really emphasizing the 10 minutes thing, aren't you? I'm not going to tell you that your opinion is wrong, but when you state that a game most people say is great "wasn't great by any means" as fact, you're expecting an argument. So I'll give you one.
The game has no replayability and you experienced everything in it in 10 minutes? The simple fact that people play the game for hundreds of hours completely destroys your ability to say that. Maybe it had no replayability for you, but it definitely has replayability. And 10 minutes? The game isn't just dungeons, you know. There's a huge amount of interest in just wondering around and stumbling on things, like a lighthouse full of bodies that starts an unexpected quest to find their murderer or a sunken ship or a shrine to a dark god who commands you to go solve their problems. Not to mention all the side quest-lines with their own plots, characters, tones, and several hours of gameplay. Then there are numerous playstyles which, due to the leveling system, become more defined and distinct as you go along. Archery or magic in the first ten minutes is definitely not archery or magic 10 or 20 or 50 hours in. There's a lot to do in Skyrim and there's a lot of variety in doing it.
TLDR: You didn't experience everything in Skyrim in 10 minutes, you experienced 10 minutes of Skyrim in 10 minutes. If you didn't like it it's fine that you quit(not like you need anyone's approval anyway), but people aren't playing it for 100s of hours because it's the same ten minutes over and over. That's just false.
You seem to think I spent only ten minutes in game. I have sunk 200+ hours into it, hoping it would get better. It didn't.
Magic is the exact same at the start and end game, except that you have a different spell that you continually cast until you're out of mana, then drink a mana potion or run round like a retard until your mana fills up.
Archery is very similar at the start and end game too. What do the perks do? Allow you to zoom in? Slow time whilst you're zoomed in, that's the big one. Its still the same motions as it was early on, with nothing much changed.
Exploring would be interesting if they focused more on making each area look different to the other areas. Get me a screenshot and I'll get one of an extremely similar looking area. There are a few uniquish areas, but most of them are the same thing in a slightly different order. Hardly exiting.
The same deal goes for quests. Outside of the questline ones (Dark Brotherhood, Thieves Guild, Companions, College of Winterhold, Main Quest About three Daedric quests (Sanguine, Molag Bal and one other I can't quite remember), they were all the exact same quest, just with a different location.
Now, for your 'You couldn't have experienced it in ten minutes'. My first ten minutes of Skyrim went something like this:
-Finish intro
-Ignore everything, head to that cool looking dungeon over there
-Complete first of many samey dungeons, this one feeling unique because it was the first one.
-Use all main styles of combat, to get a feel for which one I liked best (Single Handed Warrior, Single Handed Assassin, Single Handed shield warrior, Stealth archer, Warrior Archer, Destruction magic [Admittedly the other magics were not available at that time. After that time, I found out for the most part that conjuration is the most boring way to play the game, illusionist and alterationist can be interesting, but turns into a repetitive grind once you get a good style])
-Go to riverwood and get dumped with misc quests and a storyline quest.
Now, did I fight a dragon? No.
Does it matter? No. Dragons are some of the least interesting fights in Skyrim. A bear can kill one. Solo. No joke. I saw it happen. Dragon fights consist of waiting for it to land/stay still so I can stab/shoot it with my sword/bow/magic repeatedly until it dies.
The main problem with dragons, like everything in Skyrim, is that they are far too easy to kill. Short of a Chuck Norris topless hand to hand style battle, there is no challenge to them. Even with that, just chug 1 potion of resist fire and punch away. You'll eventually kill it.
The problem here isn't so much that they are too easy in and of itself - in Morrowind after a short while everything was piss easy and you could accidentally a god. The problem is that the fun things like hovering, scroll of Icarian flight or W/E, custom spell making, ect. were taken out to give the game some challenge and a form of balance, whilst the game itself presents no challenge and I'll be damned if its balanced.
The most redeeming feature of Skyrim is its mods - yet they are not the game itself, and Bethesda actively tried to stop you from using too many with their removal of Large Address Awareness from the PC version.
Skyrim contained a brief breath of fresh air from most titles of the day, but it was hardly remarkable or amazing in its own right. I had much the same experience all my friends had.
First day "Skyrim is so intense I play BF3 when I need to calm down"
End of week: No-one playing Skyrim, all on BF3. Except me, the ever hopeful it-might-get-better that played DN:F almost through to the end because the first 20 minutes were refreshing and I had hoped it would get back to that sort of thing.
Other than the surface of the world being mostly open and without loading screens, what was so amazing about Skyrim that makes it better than any other game this year? One feature doesn't redeem an entire game, especially when the only thing different about that feature is 'mostly no loading screens'.
Now, all that said, I'm off to play Skyrim. Not for the game, but to see just how many NPCs my PC can handle at once. I'll see if I can get a good 300 v 300 battle going somewhere...