There used to be a time where we didn't NEED voice acting for every damn line of dialogue in the game to keep the ADD afflicted children engaged in the game. Look at Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment...or hell, KOTOR. Time spent not worrying about voice acting and shiny graphics is time spent developing plot complexity and gameplay. Personally, I could do with more of Chris Nolan and less of Michael Bay in my TES games. But that's just me.

Actually, no. This is the easy stuff.

Dialogue options that let you play out multiple different reasonings for why you do the things you do take damn near no effort at all to put in, and having a couple lines responding to the difference is hardly any more effort at all.

Giving the player multiple options for how to solve problems, giving you options between killing/showing mercy upon/negotiating with/whatever your opponents doesn't take an entirely new campaign to introduce, it's just adding on a little extra onto an already existing quest.

This is the stuff Deus Ex and Arcanum were built around, and what made them such utterly classic games, in spite of their many flaws. Bethesda pales before the shadow of companies like long lost Troika.

well this isnt a biased poll now,

i like using one kind of character, i like being the good guy but i want the option to be a bad guy, i want to follow the story but it should be determined by what i do or choose
I almost never replay an RPG immediately because its 90% the same even if i choose different options ( lame imo)
why do i replay an RPG?
to do what i havent done before, if its in mass effect i become the bad guy if its elder scrolls i do what sidequest i didnt do and if its been long enough just replaying will be fun

That's pretty much how i play TES' and Fallouts. Quests are just an excuse to kill people or creatures in new and exciting ways :hehe: There really isn't much else going for them after the first playtrough (and with the quality of Bethesda's writing it usually doesn't have much going for it in the first time either).

This is something I was expecting Bethesda to have figured out after Fallout New Vegas and I honestly don't understand how they keep making the same mistake. As it currently stands it's only so much playtime in Skyrim until you realize all the quests are exactly the same, travel somewhere and kill some guy or retrieve a book from his dead body and then return to do it again and again for the same outcome EVERY SINGLE TIME... where is the surprise? where is the replayability?

There are no meaningful choices to make and quests are so basic there is only one outcome for them. I haven't been to half the towns yet and already I've lost interest because once I get there I'll get the same quests as everywhere else, with unmemorable stories that I have no capacity to shape. It's a real shame too because this game started off so strong... oh well back to Fallout New Vegas..

Sounds to me like some folks are missing some old school SSI, games.. I agree thou, as far as charector alignment in rpg games in this day and age, its dead... With all due respect to the brotherhood quest, you could role play your alignment a little, in dialogue choice.. But yes, charector alignment in rpg's are dead, hell I bet these developers don't even understand what the [censored] we are discussing, not to mention most people, who never played table dice and books role playing.. It is funny thou, you have to go back to old RPG's to get the depth, and richness.. :brokencomputer:

Greetings,

You know, I actually registered to be able to comment in this thread…
As a 35 years old gamer and a 20+ years veteran of both video and table top games I agree to disagree.
Firstly let’s get the basics out of the way… Just because you (and this is not aimed at anyone in particular) have a deficiency in your imagination it does not mean things are not designed well enough.

Can you justify playing anyone else than Nord? Is this question for real? I am playing a female imperial, raised in Skyrim, orphaned, survivalist, one day she attracted too much attention from corrupted official, events unfolded against her, she ran and just so happens she came across the Imperial ambush of Stormcloaks and was mistaken for one of the rebels. She spoke nothing of why she was there as it could have gotten her in even worst trouble… then… then the game started. Hope this answers your question… and if it does not it certainly confirms my comments about the state of peoples imagination (and this terrible trend of expecting everything else to be spelled out to you that is ruining a video game industry).

Designers stealing the game and your character from you? Wait a second… you did not know what the game was going to be about beforehand?
You did not chose to play it anyway? What is it that you want from the game? Because I can see you are quick to complain but actually do not note what you expect it to be. I game mastered completely free games with no plot and no story and all that the players ended up doing was hacking some undead in the dungeons before they got bored. On the other hand I have now ran a 4 campaigns long, spanning 10 years, successful game that is story and plot driven yet still gives characters plenty of choice… players are still here wanting to play it.

Low consequences environment? Are you after role playing (check the definition of the term) or role playing lite? Are you after realism or high fantasy with no consequences for your actions. If the second is your preference I direct you to BioWare games. They do not know what role playing stands for and their moral system is by very definition an offence to the term moral system.

There is nothing wrong with Skyrim and it’s take on the plot. It tries to emulate real life in quite realistic fashion and in shades of grey, without this artificial BioWare [censored] meters that tell you how good or how bad you are and most of all without the story evolving around you, seriously this protagonist centred morality and events BioWare crap is really scaring me to bits and makes me cry for the future of RPG computer games.
Skyrim treats you like an advlt (though not as well as Witcher 2 does so). One that was born with a gift and was thrust into unusual and grand events. Here what you do and how you do it is up to you… all in a sandbox environment (I challenge you to find me a close second best to this).

I have no idea what expectations you have from the game so perhaps if Skyrim is not meeting them, stop playing it and go back to table top gaming. I am content with playing Skyrim and two table top campaigns at this time and I get something different from every one of them… an excellent combination in the end one that I found and worked to achieve and never expected to be delivered to me by someone else. Because let’s face it, to expect a video game to cater for your specific need, that by the sound of it you even do not know (or are unable to express) what it is… is not really possible.

Last but not least, I am taking a stand for those who DO LIKE the game the way it is, because it is what they expected from it, it is what they bought it for. Try not to be so self-centred, just because you may not be enjoying everything it does not meant that others do not either. Last but not least, join modding community, invest your time and money to make this what you want it to be… otherwise your complain is no different from that of a spoiled brat who did not get for Christmas what he/she demanded, by the virtue of being alive alone.

Kind Regards

New Vegas was made by a different company.

Obsidian's all about complex quest chains & webs. But their world design svcks - which is why I like FO3 better than FO:NV - for one, FO:NV's way too linear in the first half. For two, the world's not interesting to explore.... anything that doesn't have something to do with a quest is barely there.

Bethesda does shallow, cliche quests... but they design amazing worlds. Considering that I enjoy just wandering around and exploring in these games, that's a good thing.


This is probably why I didn't like FO:NV as much - since it was based off the FO3 engine, I went into it expecting a Beth game. Instead, I got an Obsidian game. Now in threads like this one (and the "it's so easy" threads), it seems that people are going into a Beth game and expecting either an Obsidian game (or Dark Souls).

The first question is different for me. I play different RPGs for different reasons. For example, I played Lost Odyssey, a game which I absolutly loved, for the story-line. I already knew it was linear and had a lot of cut scenes. I enjoyed it immensely. It was like playing a really long interactive anime movie, if you know what I mean. The voice-acting, the music, the story-line, the game-play was all great, IMO.

I play games like TES to with open-endedness in mind. The fact that I've played 45 hours so far without touching the main quest, not one single part of it, is a testament to that. I have no dragon shouts, I haven't seen a dragon except for the scripted one in the beginning. I am playing the game world the way I want too and have not been forced into anything.

Hold on... Bethesda told a fantastic story here. All of you who complain that it wasmt exclusive enough alway had the option ( as with all Bethesda games) to ignore it and make your own. I'm not a programmer but I think you are asking far too much to expect them to make the ENTIRE game flow fluidly with your random gameplay choices. I played a reasonably good person and other than getting svcked into the dark brotherhood thing, I feel like its all been very well done. I dunno, be grateful
For what you have, IMO...

.. So basically if you want to role-play an assassin and you stumble upon the mages guild, you've lost control of your charcater?

Logic wins..

Wait, wait, wait. If you would have said this before release, people would flame you because of Radiant Story! I guess Radiant Story is not as awesome as it was claimed? I, personally, haven't encountered much besides random quests with Sacred 1/2 quality.

Usually it's a mixture of all of it, leaning more to the story and the world than my own personal character though.

im confused by the op. are you upset that your character is predetermined to be the Dovahkiin?? have you never played a TES game before? morrowind you were the reincarnation of neravar. oblivion might be the most detached game, as you are only there to guide martin to his destiny.

Which just makes me wonder why Bethesda doesn't hire on some Obsidian guys, or get some consulting going, or something... They can clearly both learn from one another, although I'm far more interested in seeing Bethesda improve.

Beth makes a good forest, but all the trees are blocky, ugly, and utterly unmemorable. If they just learned to create the sorts of things that let players get drawn into the game, and get attached to some of the characters, instead of just dumping a lot of procedurally generated generics in your lap with template-based interactions, it would make a world of difference.

Your poll does not provide options to allow me to include my opinion on the given topic.

In the context of Skyrim, I play it for the polt and character development.
I usually about about 2-3 characters by the time all is said and done. Im still on my first however. None of this "at least..." crap.
After beating a Bethesda RPG, I dont replay it. I keep on playing. I only replay if I lose my save file.

I'm sorry, but once again, no. This is easy stuff, so long as you simply have a design strategy to allow player choice.

Look at Alpha Protocol, (Obsidian Entertainment, again, incidentally,) and in that game, virtually no matter what choices were being given to you, you generally had three ways to respond to any situation - Professional, Aggression, and "Suave".

All that really took was sitting down and making the design choice to make every single conversation allow for three possible types of responses... and many of these did little more than change the next line or two of dialogue, although consistently picking options of a specific type would eventually lead to the game reacting to you as a consistent whatever personality type and giving you perks based upon your personality choices.

That's still ultimately a bit restraining - you may not necessarily want to be any of those three, but some fourth option, of course - but it still at least gives you SOME control over your choices.

While yes, my character avoids doing Dark Brotherhood when I don't want to play as a sadistic fiend just for the evulz, I would feel far too left out of the game to not play ANY of the quests I don't feel fit my character's personal choices - I'd basically only get to do two or three quests in the whole game! Bethesda could massively improve itself with the slightest amount of effort, but they just don't care. Not anymore, anyway.

As an old gamesmaster from the time of the birth of tabletop RPG's (Yes, I have original copies of D&D and Aftermath, as well as numerous others), I doubt that we will see truly interactive and responsive choices for a long time yet.

As a GM, I could either steer players down a path I had created for them, or respond in an appropriate manner, or if they were deserving, cause some long-lasting but temporary harm for annoying 'god'.

Very hard to do that in a video game with a reasonable price and doesn't need 1TB of hard disc space.

Not really, the landscape is just sad.

OP: Who cares really? The game has a plot.. deal with it?

This poll is basically (traditional) TES vs Bioware.

I like both, but I want TES to stay more TES (customization and possibilities) than try to go bioware's way (at least the way it is now. Before, bioware made nice D&D games too / neverwinter).

Although, I don't see why both can't be reunited sometimes. Looks at dragon age 1, it was not that far. Yes the character classes and custo was pretty basic, but I loved the way your background/past was interwined in the rest of the game, and the possibilities with NPC's.

But then again, it is a game where you usually have a party of NPCs. TES I see more of a game world that you roam alone.

To put it simply i won't buy another TES if they don't put more time into character depth backstory and interaction Skyrim should be better in this area. Yes i'm a player of BioWare games and why not they make great games with very well written storylines.

An interesting discussion, to say the least. I've clocked in just over thirty hours on Skyrim. It's still a great game, but I find the dialogue options to be a bit lacking.

I absolutely love Skyrim and have been having a great time with it. That being said, in any situation where there is the implication of real choice it would be nice if they followed the rule of three. Present three options. It doesn't have to follow the Bioware version where there is good, evil, and indifferent. The three options just have to be different enough from one another to allow a variety of characters to react to a situation in a variety of ways.

If I had a single complaint concerning the RPing aspect of the game it would be that there are too many instances where my choices are "yes" and "maybe later." That being said, I can get around this with a bit of imagination. I can choose the "maybe later" option and then imagine that my character gave some sort of scathing reply to an inappropriate request. That sort of thing helps a lot in allowing me to get through the quests.

I really don't mind some parts of the plot effecting my character. Being Dragonborn is in line with what I'd consider fully acceptable, as it's something that I get going in. It's not something that's thrust upon the character, it's supposed to be a part of the character that they didn't know about because there were no dragons around who's souls they could steal.

The next bit is in response to the earlier spoiler tagged section and involves spoilers and semi-specific quest information:

There are plenty of options for Skyrim. Mostly it is in the quantity of quests, so you develop your character by ignoring quests. I've come across plenty of quests that let me have different outcomes. Mostly they're like the quest in riverwood with Sven, the elf and that general trader's daughter. If someone sends you on a quest to steal something, you can go and speak to the person you're supposed to be stealing from double cross the thief, and then you can go and steal from that person anyway if you want because you know they have something valuable, and you don't have to share it with the quest giver. There are quests where you can "help" people and be the good guy, or cut a deal with the bad guys to avoid fighting them by turning over the person you're supposed to be helping. I've also failed quests and gotten no reward from them.

The main quest doesn't give you that much "choice" but so what? Not everything in life is a choice.

I'm sure the devs would love to make unique quest lines for all the 10 races, develop the guild quest lines more with more choices and generally put more options into quests anywhere they can. But they have deadlines and budgets. Then people complain that the devs focus to much on graphics and voice acting, and then you have thousands of people complaining about "low res textures" and "no dx 11 support". Can't please everyone. I personally love voice acting, it makes even the boring dialogue a little bit interesting.

I honestly don't know why people try and RP with computer games, that are inherently limited, and then complain about it. I don't see how a game can ever possibly have "enough" content to not seriously limit RP. Even Skyrim, the amazingly huge game world that it is, the god knows how many quests it offers, is still very limiting. When you're interacting with a computer... I don't think you can ever really expect that much. Either you take the game for what it is, and RP within the limits of it. Or you just use your imagination to fill in the gaps.

I find text only RP much more enjoyable as it has no artificial limits.

Why does the OP present his personal opinion of table top as if it's a fact? What makes it more annoying is he literally implies the makers of these video game RPGs must not have played them as they don't agree with him. He could have actually started an interesting discussion, but instead his lack of critical thinking has turned this into nothing but an arrogant rant. Yes, people with creative friends with talent actually do play table top RPGs to experience a good story, one they have personal freedom in effecting. If your DM just let you do whatever you wanted, you had a bad DM, or you are a bad DM.