In Morrowind, it was fairly easy to max every stat, leading you to only really need one character if that was your goal. However, in order to experience every faction quest line (many of which directly conflicted), it was necessary to have multiple characters of varying factions and skills. Playing one character for lengthy periods of time was eventful and rewarding. I rarely found myself bored in Morrowind, and the land felt truly expansive (possibly due to the lack of fast travel, but that's a discussion for another day).

In Oblivion, it was fairly easy to max every stat yet again. Also, NONE of the quest lines directly conflicted (exception: SI slightly, maybe a few others). Therefore, I played through every facet the game had to offer with a total of two plays, the second of which was all business, the first of which was more adventure/relaxation oriented. I was highly entertained by Oblivion right up until I completed this endeavor. I'd systematically worn the game out. I then proceeded to mod the game even FURTHER into the ground. Oblivion is my most played game by a significant margin and I have nearly 3000 hours logged in total (owned since release, and every Summer I've gone back to it for significantly less enjoyable stints).

In FO3, it is possible to, in one weekend, play through several major quest lines in a fairly short amount of time. The multiple paths (karmic as well as methodically) lent themselves to many possible plays. Additionally, the level cap forced a player wishing to experience the game 'fully' (as I always try to) to play multiple times (by limiting perk choices and giving an effective total stat point cap). The perk system ALSO forced this sort of play, particularly through the later perks and their VAST differences in the overall feel of game-play (even if not so vast as some of those in FO: NV). Playing one character enough could often become boring, and some players find starting a new character (or even branching off an existing save) to be boring and repetitive. If I'm doing the same basic tasks, even if the story is somewhat different and I receive different rewards, the content grows stale rather quickly. With that said, I find returns to FO3 to be MUCH more rewarding than returns to Oblivion or Morrowind. Despite playing Oblivion MUCH more, I've made many more characters in FO3 and completed the same quests over and over again much more. Even if I can't mill out the game like I did with Oblivion, it feels like it lasts longer, and it's ALWAYS a legitimate option to pass some free time.

I find the primary factors here to be exactly how branching the game is (FO3>MW>OB), and the possible abuses of player stats (FO3>MW>OB).

So here's the rub. Skyrim has shown features from a variety of these games. The character progression is not as easily abused as Oblivion's, because even if it is on the stat end, it can't possibly be on the talent tree end (as you're forced to specialize among the available trees). This promotes multiple plays. However, radiant story attempts to ensure an experience which lacks repetition, promoting BOTH multiple plays AND a single, all-encompassing play. The idea (as it seems to me) is that the experience will be more varied throughout, leading new characters to do less of the same stuff over and over again. Example: In FO3 I always start by going to Megaton. It's obviously the game's intention, and is really convenient. In MW I always start by chilling in Seyda Neen (?), stealing that guy's ring back, collecting taxes off of the corpse, and then eventually moving on to Balmora to join a House/faction. This is also clearly intended (as the main quest points you right to Balmora, and there's no reason to ever go back to Seyda Neen once you leave it). In Oblivion I go to Vilverin (you see that huge ruin RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE!?!?!?!?!? Yeah, go there. You get this stuff that starts a quest, and you see some dungeon detail that doesn't exist ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE GAME outside of questing zones. SWEET!), then sell my goods in the Imperial City, and do the first few quests that catch my eye (because there aren't really that many available there, although it's better than the other two games).

Conversely, Radiant Story is all like, 'DON'T PANIC! We'll make sure you have the most unique experience possible in as many quests as it is befitting!" This is awesome. This means that if all I do is take quests (assuming that all quests were generated with Radiant Story, which they're not), and then go to dungeons that they tell me to go to, I should eventually explore every dungeon in the game. (Although I somewhat doubt X shopkeeper is going to send me across the map to find his daughter who disappeared five minutes ago.)

Finally, the factions in Skyrim (yet to be revealed), will hopefully follow FO3's major quest path philosophy. You may get a quest from someone to kill someone else (who is a quest giver). You may get quests that directly conflict other quests, or could get you permanently removed from X guild that you're a member of. This would avoid that whole, 'LOOK AT ME I'M THE ARCH-MAGE IN PLATE WITH 25 DESTRUCTION LOLOLOLOLOL' sort of shenanigans that I certainly not only encountered but deliberately sought out in Oblivion to prove to myself and my gaming friends that it was broken and wrong.

Hopefully, Radiant Story, factions, and perks will interplay to make Skyrim fulfilling for one character (unlike FO3), but also very viable for multiple playthroughs (unlike Oblivion), without failing in other vital areas (unlike Morrowind).

If anything is unclear, just let me know. I'd be glad to clarify. I'd rather spend five minutes rewriting part of this than have this thread go under because one idiot jumped up in the air, began waving his arms, and accused me of live virgin sacrifice or animal mutilation or TES hating or some other such equally despicable crime.

Thanks for reading if you made it this far (I wouldn't have), please post any thoughts below! Looking for some interesting discussion on this here >.> Thus the forum post, I suppose.....

well seeing as how il probably own it for years multiple play throughs will be inevitable

I always do a character tailored for each guild, then either make one for the Main Quest or choose one of my characters that I did a guild with. From there I do mods and make my own challenges, such as never going into a city (usually with a wilderness house mod that doesn't give me a bunch of free crap), no items past ones I get at starting tutorial, 100%/max difficulty file, that kind of thing. Currently replaying FF7 using only Green Materia (magic like Fire and Cure) attacks. I just got out of Midgar.

So that being said I can always make a game fun again.

I've always liked multiple saves. I enjoy role-playing with my classes, with such generic fantasy characters as the noble warrior, the cunning thief, the wise mage, things like that. So even if the entire game can be played with one save, I think I'll definitely have at least a few. I enjoyed Morrowind's methods of conflicting factions, lore-wise at least, because I've never been able to imagine opening a history book and one person is the leader of the fighter's guild, mage's guild, thieves guild, etc. as could have happened in Oblivion. But as much as I enjoyed it, I doubt we'll see anything like that again. A shame, but nothing is stopping anyone from only completing certain factions, which I think is a fair trade to those who may disagree with me.

I played hundreds of hours of MW, OB, FO3, and FO NV.

I plan to play for hundreds of hours on Skyrim.

Im honestly so sick of comparing games. Everyone has different opinions which makes debating the differences pointless. I absolutely LOVED Fallout. But at the same time while I was playing it, I always thought TES was better in so many ways. However, each game stood on its own. They are remarkebly similar, yet completely different. I love both, and dont think either was better than the other.

All I remember is that FO and TES are both rare gems in the gaming world. Im happy with whatever I get.

I think that having the option to complete multiple factions with one character leads to shorter faction quest lines. Just like in OB and FO3. MW had these ridiculously non-linear, expansive mashed-up tasks that sent you around the world and back. OB gave you the same things in the same order over and over again. And there was less of them per faction. So if you say: 30 hours of content of faction quests per character. If those factions conflict, you can get 120 hours of sold RP heavy, lore-friendly, story driven content from that. If you say that those factions don't conflict, you get 30 TOTAL hours of loosely connected content.

That's just based on what I've seen in the past three games.

To spice things up I do the same trick that I did when I played WoW. I take off my pants and see how it effects gameplay. Although, I miss out on the comments of other players, especially when raiding.

Except this isn't a debate thread. I'm presenting some thoughts I had. Sorry that you don't like that I'm using a public (or at least up-for-public-use) forum to present my opinion honestly.

I guess they dont call you maxwell the fool for no reason :tongue:

All kidding aside, Im torn. I kind of liked the split factions in MW, but I hated them in NV. NV main quest was just a confusing mixed up jumble of different factions, most of them meaningless and playing almost no role in the end game. Without spoiling it, in the end it narrowed down to about about 4 options, all of which felt mostly the same and pointless to me.

It seems like there is going to be some sort of faction conflict in Skyrim, I just hope that its stepped up far from what we saw in NV. Even Morrowind's Houses seemed better than NV's factions.

....Not this again. Why is everyone always so defensive if you dont immedietly jump on their side and agree with them? Read my posts I agreed with you, I never said I didnt like what YOU were doing. I said what I didnt like doing.

And just for the record, since your OP is all based on your personal opinions, it IS a debate. Welcome to forum life.

Bethesda didn't develop New Vegas, it's pretty much entirely irrelevant to any discussion of TES games. That's why I excluded it, silly!


EDIT:
It really wasn't my intention to be defensive. And I've been on this forum much longer than you'd think (lost old password, old email hacked, just regained interest in posting). Other people also disagreed with me. I didn't mind that. You simply said that my thread was pointless. I disagree. That's why I posted it -.-

Let's please stop this before it gets a perfectly good thread locked.

The is a lot more depth to the NV endings than some people give it credit for. Although, it does mean you have to do a lot of reading and paying attention to subtleties and I know that is not fun for probably most players.

Fair enough. I didnt so much as say your thread was pointless, I really just meant that I have read SOOO many discussions on how Skyrim should be like FO 3, or NV, or MW, or OB, or Dragon Age, or Fable....and honestly I feel like Skyrim shouldnt be like any of those games. It should be like Skyrim. And regardless of whether you mentioned NV there were serious faction choices in that game and Bethesda or not it was a FO spinoff that they supervised. My point is that I dont like the way those factions were set up.

But back on topic I dont mind the idea of different factions, I just dont want them to be used cheaply as a way to FORCE people to play the game again. I dunno, something about that really bugged me in NV. Its not a bad concept for a video game whatsoever, I just dont really like being forced to play the game again with a different character just to see another factions missions.

It kind of goes both ways you know? I like the idea of factions, yet in NV they bugged me to all hell! Lol

I sort of think that they design their games so you can play it any way you want to or as close to that as possible. Works for me. Reading your dissections almost made me want to never play another game in my life. Too much over thinking takes the fun our of everything. So, you enjoy your dissection and I'll just enjoy all the little joys I find along the way.
:shocking:

Yeah. Really, my post isn't meant to argue that it should be like this or like that. The idea is that certain features presented ARE, speaking factually, promoting certain methods of playing. I think that they've taken a very unique direction with it and can't wait to see what happens with it. The build up in my post was all reference material.

Also, when I use the word 'force,' it only really applies to completionists (like myself).

X playthroughs. Why? Becasue in TES games, it doesn't matter how thorougher I think I am, I ALWAYS find new content in a subsequent play through. And TES content is worth not missing.

I think my first character in Skyrim will be cursed to walk backward for his entire journey. It should make combat interesting at least!

And it's starting to look like Skyrim will be the closest to that yet.

I'm not the kind of person that goes and ends up making over 20 characters, but I'm not the kind who only sticks with one. My first/main, will be a character with which I will complete just about every quest with (except for those to do with conflicting guilds), and explore just about every dungeon. It will be huge.
Then, I'll go ahead and probably come up with two or three more, and that'll do me. Maybe an evil thief or assassin, a righteous mage, and a hunter.
No matter what though, I'll definitely svck out all the possible content in the game.

I'll play Skyrim with three characters at least.

In the first playtrough I allways follow the MQ closely while I RP whatever character I choose. When the quest is done, that character is deleted. Then all the fun starts with my next two saves. One for powerlevelling, and one for my hardcoe RP-character; Iggy, a blunt and drunken khajiit who mostly just mezz around.

If I make some bad choises I sometimes restart my godlike-character - I want her to be perfectly perfect. But I never discard Iggy, my khajiit, nomatter how pearshaped he gets. In lack of khajiits in FO3, his alias - a human drunkard-character - turned into a raving lunatic of a religious fanatic whom I finally hated so much that I 'forgot' him in a irradiated pool of water., The only longstandng RP-character I have ever scrapped completely.

When I know the story in Skyrim and is able to read on this forum without stumbling into spoilers everywhere, then I'll create my god and a drunken khajiit, as usual. But I don't know what my first character will be like. Maybe a Dunmer. They need a hero.

heh I don't think I've ever gone into Vilverin first thing (or even early in my playthrough), not once... I honestly don't know why it just never occurred to me to that I should

Seeing as I expect a replay of my Obliv - F3 cycle ( play oblivion a lot, play some other games, play oblivion a lot, a few other games, more oblivion, F3 comes out ... play f3 a lot and so on) I'd like there to be conflicting storylines and choices, also some personality differences as well as in questlines that my character might solve differently. Not so much on good/evil lines but on just personality ones, so that even if I have 2 characters who are not evil sons of [censored]es they still might not have made the same choices along the way.


As a side note... anyone else just as excited for the next Fallout with the updated engine?

[quote name='itsgrady' timestamp='1301979254' post=
All kidding aside, Im torn. I kind of liked the split factions in MW, but I hated them in NV. NV main quest was just a confusing mixed up jumble of different factions, most of them meaningless and playing almost no role in the end game. Without spoiling it, in the end it narrowed down to about about 4 options, all of which felt mostly the same and pointless to me.

It seems like there is going to be some sort of faction conflict in Skyrim, I just hope that its stepped up far from what we saw in NV. Even Morrowind's Houses seemed better than NV's factions.
[/quote]
Yes. FNV is the only game released (not made) by gamesas I can't replay.

OP. Oblivion with mods have unlimited fun factor for me.

I will have more characters then most small nations before the first week is out...

Dont you dare do that!!!! :flamethrower:

Im too busy worrying what TES VI is going to be like.

I read it all because it looked clean and organized into separate paragraphs. This is definitely something the developers should ponder.