Skyrim will still have some good humour to it, that im sure of. I would be completely fine with Skyrim if the game has a dark atmosphere to it. It will make the main quest more fun, and it suits the situation going on in Skyrim with the civil war taking place.

They did a pretty good job with the atmosphere in Fallout 3.
In one hand you have your Dunwich Building, and in the other the Raroach King.
So I think they can do it again.

Dark Atmosphere with an appropriate sense of humour.

The Norse believed that life was short, dark, and cruel. They held onto the little joys they had in life, embraced suffering, and laughed in the face of death. That was the true mark of wisdom and courage in their society.

This is absolutely true, but Bethesda has never really been one to follow trends. Instead it seems as though they just try to make the game as good as they possibly can, which gives me a little hope.



This is a good question! I guess the reason I was worried is because I've seen many games suffer from taking the "darker, edgier" route, and a lot of times it seems that it's done as a cop out to appeal to the masses rather than a legitimate stylistic choice. While Bethesda isn't exactly known for selling out, they do have to pay the bills. On the other hand, they might just think that the trend is really cool, and they actually want to follow up with it.

Keep in mind, I haven't played the game, so who really knows. This is all just speculation about a trend I don't really like on my part. I just wanted to see what the rest of you guys thought!

I dont see that happening. If anything, though its not at all likely, the humor would transfer over to that of the earlier Fallouts. Black and slightly awkward humor.Ya' know, the stuff that makes you go "Ha ha ha ha......oh....oh god thats terrible!". But, I really dont see that happening. I enjoy both brands of humor btw.

Plus, Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect werent dark imo. Again I go to the early Fallouts, now THAT was dark. Grim, just our self destructive nature in its purest form.

This, exactly!

Excellent.

Drunk Nords everywhere.
Im sure there will be humor to be found.

Personally I prefer the 'darker' setting (even though it may be a trend I haven't heard of). I felt that previous ES games, especially Oblivion, were too clean. You have the Oblivion crisis, monsters roaming the landscape and a 'medieval' setting, yet everyone is happy and wealthy and all people like each other (apart from a few friendly and helpful beggars and some minor differences between people). Reminded me a bit of Star Trek Voyager. I would prefer a more realistic approach with poverty, crime, prostitution etc. I think Skyrim will be pretty tame in that regard anyway, but it's a step in the right direction (for me at least).

Humor has nothing to do with it imo, there can be lots of humor even in a dark setting. And I think there will be lots of it.

THANKYOU

"Dark" and "edgy" usually comes off as trying to be all "cool" and "mature" for me, and I usually interpret it as anything but that. I don't mind a more serious storyline with strife and such, but when a game tries to be all "dark" and "mature" that just comes off (in my opinion) as bland and mopey, especially with the cliché of "our game designers forgot how to use color." Thank goodness Skyrim doesn't look to go that far.


The Thieves' Guild is my favorite part of Oblivion, but then again it was the first part I played so it has a special place in my memory. I loved the lawless yet just feel of it. It was right up my alley.

Skyrim may feel "edgier", maybe: but atmospherically I still think Morrowind has the most bleak and depressing world in the series, along with Daggerfall. Yet these have just as many silly quests and charming NPCs as the other games in the series. I'm sure there's nothing to worry about.

I think so, too. As others have said, I'm hoping to see at least one naked Nord.

Does anyone pay attention to the set up information anymore?

This is 200 years after Oblivion.
The Empire is crumbling.
Morrowind has effectively been decimated.
There is a civil war ongoing in Skyrim.
And the bloody cherry on top is the return of the dragons (who are carnivorous pyromaniacs and proud of it, apparently), heralding the return of Alduin and the Grand Gobbling of Eternity™.

And facing that is one little Dragonborn, dropped right at ground zero, who has no empire, no army, no support, and as far as we know, only one overaged Blade as mentor.


Hm.
Yeah, that's rolling on the floor material, all right......


Call me old school, but death and destruction and the Ending of All That Is usually is considered serious business.....

have you ever played demons souls? this video game proves that dark fantasy can be awesome!

MOM ????

Bad example. Oblivion's nuclear bloom did make the sky too blue and the grass too green.

This is one of the things that probably worries me the least. There's a good chance that there are going to be a few things that we as a community hate about Skyrim, so I'm prepared for that. As long as the good outweighs the bad (and the bad can be changed with mods ) then I'll be happy.

But like it's already been said, even if the game is designed to be darker and edgier, there will be places and people who are quite the opposite. If you wanted my oppinion, I'd say that you probably have nothing to be worried about on this front. But that's just what I think.

Todd's said mead halls are city hubs, and we spend a lot of time between quests in them. This makes mead halls perfect, for Nord style shenanigans. The halls' bards should tell jokes, recite stories, and play music, to keep the city sane between days. Not only are Skyrim's bards pretty wild, but if dialogues between NPC are character and context driven, not random lines from a shared pool of quotes, mead halls would add fantastic ambiance. If they really want to give us a break from Skyrim's grim world, the mead hall is how. If mead halls aren't this well developed, then screw new locations, the first dlc needs to make it happen.

Perhaps so but I'd personally take that any day over a generic "this is so serious and gritty and gray and brown" setting.

To hell with the funny. Bring on the darkness!!

No matter how bleak things may ever be in Tamriel, no matter how much the danger seems to just escalate with every new game, rest assured that we can always expect to run into a talking animal with deep pockets, a guy stuck inside his own painting, a naked Nord frozen to the ground, a hammer so heavy and powerful yet so unbelievably useless, a Khajiit on the edge of the map who talks about were-sharks and naked liches, or an Orc who thinks he's a Khajiit and goes "Meow!".

cant there be such a thing as dark wonder? and don't worry Im sure there will be humor because it couldn't be a really good game without varying themes.

Yep.

I don't think it'll mess up Skyrim, but the whole "Darker and Edgier" trope really needs to die down a bit - it's way overused these days by people trying to demonstrate that they're serious/mature/artistic.

Yeah, I'd prefer it not to be too grim and dreary, but I'm not really worried about that. Battlespire was their game with the darkest atmosphere, but it wasn't humorless. (Mostly because a lot of the dialogue was you encountering various daedra and insulting each other until a fight happens.)

Please, I don't think Beth can make a dark game, even if they wanted to. FO3 is as close as they can get, and even then there were so many bizare situations that you can't even shake a stick at em all. Half the time they're not even trying to be funny and the games end up being hillarious.

I remember one them the depths of hell that was Oblivion was breathing down on Cyrodiil, and the mages guild were happily asking me to go get a stick so I could power it up for my staff. Nice to know they were worried about me possibly getting killed by the red gate sitting right across the road from the cave entrance.

Or time time I was getting chased by the Tallon group or whatever they're called in FO3, and I mean a huuuuge gunfight that lasted a good half hour with mini nukes being shot and snipers on rooftops and railguns pinning me down, and a guy ran up to me randomly, through all the gunfire, and paused everything with that zoom in time to talk in your face animation asking if I wanted to buy some broken down robot while a grenade was passing behind his head on screen.

Because of their non linear nature, anything can happen at any time. And because these things are scripted to happen, but not when, they happen at the strangest of times. If Beth really wanted to make a dark game, they would need to make a linear fallout. If they continue with the sweet open worlds they make which they will, I don't think they could do it.