A good plot doesn't need to be fixed. It stands on its own and does not have a massive hole at the end.

FO3's plot didn't need to be fixed, and if you ask me it got worce with the dlc "fix" that everyone wanted so they could play after the main quest. They should have stuck with the way they had it, if anything.

To their defense, what were they supposed to do? Fallout fans are used to an ending, but Beth games fans weren't, anyone coming from MW or OB would just expect to continue after what to them is just the main quest.

Oh, I know why Beth did what they did. I just think it ruined the story. It was a great story of a son following in his parents footsteps, and giving their life to finish their work. Then, all of a sudden the kid survives, just because with no explanation besides you were lucky. I don't see why they needed to change it. They all ready gave the player a past, in that they were a vault dweller. They gave us a father and a mother. I don't see why they needed to change the ending so the player lived like MW and OB, when the beginning was so different all ready.

Fallout isn't TES, and we as a consumer base should have had the brains to be ready for that.

FO3 was just a recycle of ideas form FO1 and 2.

So no it isn't.

The writing isn't just for the story. it's for everything. The way the quests join up in the main quest, what npc's say, what your replies are. Although it's not a massive problem, it would be nice to get a little better in this department.

"I'm looking for a middle aged guy, maybe you've seen him?"

In Morrowind the characters talk more like information kiosks than having personality.

And yeah... Stuffs.

Their writing tends to be a bit bland. You can tell the difference in writing quality when you play New Vegas compared to 3. Their writing can always use improvement.

that doesnt seem like a very good defense...

besides, why are people complaining about the stories, anyway? i like the stories in TES just fine, whats wrong with them?

people complained about the story in the game "prototype" as well, but i liked that, too.

i think people are just spoiled beyond belief nowadays, they cant appreciate any damn thing.

Wow, could not disagree with you more about the writing. KOTOR had Bioware make it, with one of the best stories of any RPG and great gameplay. It was a perfect combo. KOTOR 2 literally felt like BS made up by Obsidian because they were handed a great IP and ruined it with bad gameplay and a completely ridiculous story made up of weird soap opera characters and no point in the long-term. The KOTOR universe is one of the best parts of the greater Star Wars universe as a whole, and The Old Republic is going back to that thanks to Bioware. I couldn't stand KOTOR 2, and I don't even recognize its existence as a legitimate entry for the IP. KOTOR and TOR will be the only ones for me, because Bioware knows how to make a good linear RPG. That's all there is to it.

EDIT: Sorry for the off topic post. As for Skyrim, my opinion is that Bethesda knows it has a poor track record with story in many areas, so I think they will do better than ever with Skyrim's writing just to prove the point, and to make it the best TES game yet.

This. Why are so many people making up excuses on Bethesda's behalf for bad writing? The game world doesn't have to be linear for the NPC's to have character and depth or for the player to have good dialogue choices. After Fallout 3 being, at least, a step in the right direction and Bethesda's collaboration with Obsidian I'm hoping that Skyrim will have an interesting open world AND good characters and dialogue.

Your character is special because he is a Dragonborn , he fights dragons and his duty is to save the world .

If this is the main story concept what you can expect about the writing ?

Umm.....what?

I don't know what you're trying to say with that.....

I'm sure LARPing (or 'playing make believe' as some people call it) is enjoyable for some but for me unless the game recognises the choices that you are making then it is inherintly worse. Oblivion provided a large number of linear quests, you could choose which order you complete them in to be sure but once you started the quest there was only one single green arrow lit outcome.

Certainly hope that they have better writing. It's never been their strong suit, but with any luck they'll have kept with the dialogue tree style from Fallout 3. Even better would be if they had brought the dialogue editor from the new GECK across - developing branching and interweaving dialogues with that editor is about 100 times easier than the clunky old method of using the topic tab.

Um, well. the thing is it's aComputer Game. Even the most obtuse, complicated, multi layered rpg with a thousand plot threads, is still just 'playing make believe.'

Michael Kirkbride once called Vivec the most well realised character in computer game history, If Skyrim contains anything even half as interesting as the Tribunal I'd be very glad, I can't quite see it though, I'm of the opinion that Bethesda have diminished somewhat when it comes to the really far out storytelling.

On the other hand, their world designers go from strength to strength, Fallout 3's wasteland was masterful work, an OCD dream, I just hope they've contracted some of the old guard to write up some insane lore, which I hear they have :thumbsup:

Now that Emil has taken up a bigger role in Bethesda (wrote the Dark Brotherhood questline), I suspect it will be better.

I loved killing Rufio

How so? A member on a forum with perhaps not the best writing skills can still criticize a supposedly professionally written story. Now I want to make it clear that I think that Bethesda's writing is fine. Not perfect, but it doesn't bother me in the slightest. OP has his own opinions on the matter.



Because it's an RPG. RPG's are supposed to be story driven. Again, TES's writing has never bothered me, but it may not be deep enough for some people. No one's spoiled for hoping for slightly better writing from an RPG of this caliber.

Whoever said good writing doesnt matter in TES is a [insert preferred insult].

I'm sick of shallow storylines and bad writing in games. It can ruin the experience if every NPC seems like a shallow husk and all the quests are just boring fetch quests. Fallout and F:NV seemed to have improved a bit from Oblivion, so I have hope.

So because Elder Scrolls is heavily focused on dungeon crawling and exploration gives them the excuse to have horrid writing?

I agree with this. Not saying Oblivion or FO3 had bad writing, but could be improved for skyrim.

The issue with trying to make the characters have depth in Skyrim is, the deeper individual NPCs are, the less flexible it becomes when dealing with absurdly-behaving PC's. It would be a lot harder to program individual NPC reactions to players prone to random assault and larceny than to just have generic behaviors that fit a wide number of characters for a given action.

The issue isn't "Quantity vs. Quality" in NPC design, it's "Interchangablity" (Good for sandbox) vs. "Personality"(Good for RPG). If too much emphasis is put on interchangeability, a player can't get invested in the gameworld except in the very, very broadest of strokes. Fable has 100% Interchangability in its NPCs, but it works for that franchise because the main character is that detatched and aloof from the gameworld. On the other hand, if there isn't enough interchangability in the NPCs, the game will have a harder time getting the player to become invested in the gameworld because of the contrast in behavior when the PC does something unpredictable and high-profile... like vaulting over a building and stabbing the Mayor in the face (Wearing nothing but a flag on his head, with a bust of Tiber Septim held in his off-hand) before running off without "Finishing" the job. (Interchangable NPCs would be expected to ignore it after the "STOP! YOU VIOLATED THE LAW" sequence is resolved, but having developed NPCs not have any programmed response to such an action would cause consistency issues if they do demonstrate cognition of lesser actions, like giving a beggar a coin.)

Another issue is trying to decide which NPCs should have depth and which can be shallow. To an extent, the PC chooses which NPCs are important to them, and it's a waste of resources to characterize the ones that are ignored by the player at first, or randomly chosen to take a sword to the face by the PC before NPC opens his mouth. It makes sense to have people developed on the amount of non-trivial interaction (Quest Characters (During quest) > Legendary figures(Vivic, etc) > Faction Leaders > Chronic questgivers > Innkeepers > Shopkeepers > Trainers > Quest-related Characters(off-quest) > Filler NPCs). I think while the NPCs in Oblivion were too generic out of the box for the quantity of them, their framework gave a good, strong balance between interchangability and individual personality... but that framework just had too many blanks left in it.

...And New Vegas was still released as a buggy mess, nobody's perfect, including the devs of the originals. When making statements on which game was better in your opinion, you should be realistic on peoples capabilities (in this case, that would be the devs at Obsidian).

EDIT: sorry, I got sidetracked there. I, of course would like to see better writing than in Oblivion's main quest line. It seems to me that the writing for some DLC's and sidequests are better than that of the main quest lines of oblivion or Fallout 3.

Not neccessarily. TES games are character driven which is just as valid a way to go. Story driven games tend to be linear and limit character freedom, neither of which are ideal in a RPG.

Bethesda has a good opportunity to make a game where writing and their form of gameplay (namely exploration) can go hand in hand. It saddens me to see all the horrible lines and hollow characters in games that should be filled with life.