Hey guys. It's been a while since I posted here but I thought a few of you guys may appreciate this.

I made a video on Elder Scrolls games, with a particular focus on Skyrim. I want to know what you guys think of the game 4 years later, in comparison to the other games, and rpgs in general.

Do you think Skyrim is a good game?

Do you think it's a good rpg?

How would you have improved upon it, if at all?

How would you make the next Elder Scrolls game?

Let's have a friendly discussion on this!

Video link (in case anyone's interested): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNi4DrZEeT8

Edit: Crap, I meant to title this "A look back AT Elder Scrolls games". Oh well.

As far as I'm concerned, Skyrim is definitely my favourite rpg in terms of "freedom". That said, I'm playing Morrowind again, to learn more about the lore, and, regarding the lore, Morrowind is my favourite place.

Yeah, Morrowind is a clunky game don't get me wrong, but I just wish Skyrim had retained that sense of being an actual PERSON living in a virtual world. Skyrim just ignored everything that made my character special. The others games had this problem to an extent as well, but somehow it felt worse in Skyrim. I think it's because the previous games at least had minor nods to who you were and how your character developed. Morrowind forced your character to actually be GOOD at certain skills in order to advance in factions for example, while Skyrim let my orc warrior become the guildmaster of the College of Winterhold after casting a total of 3 spells. It's little stuff like that that ruined the game for me.

Maybe I just expected too much.

That's the problem: many people do not make choices for their characters. It's not because your Orc CAN become the Archmage of the College of Wintherhold that he MUST become the Archmage of the College of Wintherhold. It's up to you to make your character special.

That's exactly that freedom I love so much in Skyrim.

True, but this mentality makes the world feel so...artificial to me. Like nothing I do really matters. Like there's no gravity or purpose to anything I'm doing. Sure, I can use my imagination, but at some point I have to wonder why I'm playing the game in the first place if I have to use so much of my imagination to make it fun.

I do understand your argument, however.

Honestly, all your objections apply to Oblivion also. I don't see by your reasoning what the big difference is. I immerse myself in each game just fine thank you. I personally have felt a little more immersed with each game and if you were immersed, why in God's name would you even try to make an Orc warrior Archmage. This isn't having to use your imagination but stubbornly trying to break the game. again actually improved a bit from Oblivion as you did have to know a spell to even get in.

I frankly didn't bother to finish the video when you pulled out the tired " mile wide but inch shallow " stuff. No pitchforks just don't want to hear the same old same old again.

Skyrim is a good, even great game to me. The difference between it and the rest of the series is that it feels...rushed in a lot of aspects. Skills were conceptually sound but suffered from poor implementation, despite being one of THE big backdrops of the story, the Civil War seems like a rushed mess with little bearing on the actual game, the Radiant Quests were all a bunch of dungeon dives with very few actual quests breaking up that monotony, the Dragon Cult needed a lot more exposition on itself, and so did religion in Skyrim as a whole. Despite all of this, I still actually enjoy it better then Oblivion.

Really, Skyrim could have had a coherent story with a good amount going on if more time was dedicated to that aspect of it. Rebuilding the Blades by itself should have been apart of the broader MQ, as should the Civil War. Fix those two things, and I felt the experience would have been a lot better then it was.

I wouldn't say literally all of his objections apply to Oblivion, and I think largely what impacts his perception is the overall summation of problems present in both. I'll break it down into my main gripes with Skyrim, things I think it did better, and a brief summary of what I think could correct the problems.

Cons:

Personally, for me the dialogue issues were some of the biggest problems. I didn't feel like I could really talk to anyone in many of the towns I went to, or if I could, the dialogue options would be utterly dismal. People say the same thing is true of Oblivion but I completely disagree, at least as far as the average NPC is concerned. I only remember encountering a few NPCs in the game that had very little dialogue or no unique dialogue options. I've seen people here advocate for even less dialogue options/interactibility and way more NPCs but I don't personally feel this would benefit the series at all. I've also seen people mention that it's unrealistic to be able to interact with every NPC in a given area but I feel like this isn't the case and that it would largely impact player freedom. I'm not going to argue that Oblivion had way more interesting NPCs than Skyrim, since I don't think that would be beyond a stretch to argue, but I just feel like on average, the towns/cities felt more... lived in.

Other than that, during my time playing Skyrim, I encountered several quest-breaking bugs and generally jarring quest sequences (Cidna Mine, some stuff in the Civil War questline, etc.). One could say that Oblivion was glitchy as well, but never do I remember even once in my 1,000+ hours spent playing Oblivion having a quest broken due to a glitch. One could also argue that both games were equally crashy, but personally, Oblivion would crash about every 1 - 3 play sessions, whereas Skyrim seemed to crash about once every 4 - 5 hours.

In regards to your comment about your frustration of a total non-mage being able to become the arch mage in a matter of hours, I mostly agree with you. I do think it should be possible to join a guild even if you are mostly a warrior but I think after awhile there should be systems in place that hugely impact your ranking in the guild and how far you are able to go in it. I feel like even though the same thing could be said in both Oblivion in Skyrim, the leap from newly-joined mages guild associate to arch mage is more prominent in Skyrim due to the fact that the college questline is much shorter than the mage's guild questline in Oblivion (I personally disagree with some that it's a totally bad questline and I enjoyed many parts of it, although I think that the necromancers were too unidimensional). Ultimately, it's the sum of the parts, rather than specific things that both games share, that seems to be influencing his (and to an extent my own) perception regarding Skyrim. Related to the magic guild, something else I disliked in Skyrim was how shallow magic actually was. I really loved how it felt and I'll definitely had the best magic feeling/look in any TES game, but I think the spell effect variety needed to be much deeper by about 4 or 5x what it is (I don't mean this just in regards to 5 fire damage vs. 10 fire damage, but different effects entirely). I also hated how there were barely any unique spells to find in dungeons. A warrior can find a rare blade or axe, why can't a mage find a unique spell (although Oblivion definitely didn't do this either)?

I also wholely agree with you in regards to your comment about attributes being cut (not sure how this one would relate to Oblivion, other than the system itself being too clunky/redundant in the game). There was a lot that could have been done with them and there still is a ton of use for them. Ultimately, I agree that it led to every character sort of ending up the same, although I think that was largely a problem with many of the shallow perks as well. I thought some of the perks were great but some of them wouldn't allow you to see any difference in character performance.

Further, I also didn't like the quest writing and I can only remember at most 5 quests that I ever experienced during Skyrim (I even remember Cidna Mine but not for how good it was). I felt like quest-wise, a step back was taken from Oblivion. I also didn't like how many of the quests would seem to advertise factions (although similar things happened in Oblivion, just not to the same extent, I would argue) and ultimately feel sort of like the game encouraged the player to do everything all at once.

Pros:

Unfortunately, my list of pros probably won't be as long as my list of cons, but that's just due to my personal preferences in regards to what Skyrim presented.

I really liked the world design in Skyrim much better than the world design in Oblivion, although I did find some parts of Skyrim to be a bit repetitive (The Rift and The Reach in particular). Still, I ultimately enjoyed the different mountain trails, drastically different areas of scenary, etc. more than I did in Oblivion (although I will admit that Cyrodiil had a certain charm, but that might be due to Oblivion being my first TES game more than anything). I also feel like Skyrim had the best arcane feel to it and visually portrayed just how weird the series can be better than anything previously (in terms of visual/graphical effects, not story-wise or anything relating to world-portrayal so much). The magic system also felt better than it has ever felt before, and I definitely loved the inclusion of perks into the TES series. I also liked the armor and weapons in Skyrim much better than Oblivion (with the exception of a few daedric artifacts in Oblivion and Dawn/Duskfang, which is still probably my favorite sword in TES). Smithing and crafting were also welcome additions into the series, along with numerous other small touches like this (jobs, food creation, etc.).

Ultimately, I certainly like Skyrim and admire many of the systems that it put into place but I don't really feel like it went as far as it needed to with fleshing almost any of them out. I'd say it improved in many ways from Oblivion but I think that most of those ways were more so action-oriented components and things that relate to general aesthetic and world flavor. Still, I felt like it had a bit less soul than Oblivion had, but I don't really expect many people to agree with me here, as this perception comes from my own unique preferences.

Future directions:

Personally, I think what they should have done/could do is input attributes and had them mediate perk efficiency. Did you just get a perk that allows you to run faster? Well, if you have an Agility/Dexterity of 5, that increased running rate isn't going to help much, but if you have an Agility/Dexterity of 50, then you'll see a major increase in the perk effect. Did you just pick a perk that allows you to knock people down with certain blows? Well, if you have a Strength of 5, that probably won't help you much, but if you have a Strength of 50, then you'll be knocking people all over the place with your heavy blows. So on, so forth from here. I also think that attributes should also have independent effects as well, i.e. intelligence leading to you filling in journal entries better, endurance meaning that diseases impact you less harshly, although I could also appreciate a system that would have these things join in as perks as well.

In regards to factions, I'd prefer to have a layered system for each faction. There could be training-oriented components to a faction, job-oriented components to a faction, and story-oriented components to a faction. I'll just use a mage faction as an example since it's easier for me to think of. When you join a mage guild, you start off as an associate, something that anyone can achieve no matter their aptitude. Moving up in the guild, however, would involve receiving letters of recommendation from higher ups by participating in "learning activities," such as going to some in-game "lecture" about lore behind certain magical classifications/spell types, magical history of certain buildings/areas, etc., in addition to practicing new spells with fellow "classmates" or things along those lines. One could also complete jobs that are appropriate for their rank, which can also help them increase their overall rank and not all of the jobs would necessarily require magical use. Ultimately, there would be a limit to how far a non-mage would be able to go, though, without completing certain "learning" activities and mastering certain spells/techniques, etc. Lastly, there would be the story layer of each faction, which could slowly unfold once the player reaches a certain rank/standing in the guild.

But yeah, I feel like this is starting to get into a bit of beyond skyrim territory, so I'll leave it at this for now.

Skyrim is my favorite, with Oblivion being second. Wth Daggerfall, Morrownd and Oblivion I felt like I was handling spreadsheets with all the menu Windows. That's one big reason I'm glad Skyrim got rid of gear repair. The was so annoying.

With Skyrim, I am actually enjoying the world instead of bringing up windows all the time

The only gripe I have against Skyrim is the lack of lore. Well, there is lore, of course but it's not very visible. Dragon tongue: only http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Dragon_Language:_Myth_no_More about it and you can find it only if you play the main quest or Dragonborn. Nordic pantheon: there are carvings in the Nordic temples but there is no explanation (at least I haven't found any yet) in game about them. Who were these gods? What were their teachings? All knowledge about them is exterior to the game, and it's incomplete. That's a pity...

I actually rather really really enjoy skyrim. My only problem is a lot of the cool ideas they put into the game weren't fleshed out, especially writing wise but otherwise I love the world, the feel of the combat and just everything. Also the modding scene is really cool as we get a lot of these awesome, well made mods.

I agree with some of the points raised in the video, but disagree with the end conclusion.

Did Skyrim make some poor decisions on how to deal some of the problems in previous games. Stripping out redundancies was an improvement, but it perhaps wasn't the BEST improvement. And i think that's where the reasoning goes off track. An improvement doesn't have to be dramatic to be an improvement, and removing many of those redundancies to reinforce standing systems, while not much of an improvement, nor the best, was an improvement none the less. With any improvement tend to arise new problems, however, which can be seen even more clearly with combat in Oblivion and it's absurdly easy back-peddle abuse.

Skyrim DOES have some major problems, particularly in how dialogue is handled, but in most ways I do feel it's a step up from Oblivion. Removing Classes, implementing wider crafting, better world design, better magic mechanics (even if it's a bit bare on options), and far more interesting characters are all signs of progress, even if not the most dramatic of improvements.