I recently played through Bioshock again, and I've come to the realization that the magic in Skyrim is a sad bastardization of Bioshock's plasmids. It has all the cool looking animations, but Bethesda forgot to make the spells have actually interesting effects. The plasmids in Bioshock were actually fun, they really felt empowering and encouraged experimentation. Skyrim's magic is just awful. You blast a guy with a gout of fire in Skyrim, and he doesn't even react to it. You send thousands of volts of electricity through an opponent, and he is totally unfazed... really all of the different elemental effects were just retextures of each other. The "spray" spells in Skyrim became totally useless after a few levels, and you basically have to rely on dual casting projectiles to stunlock enemies. No point in combining different spells in each hand because it doesn't do anything interesting. All in all a very weak and boring magic system for mages focusing on Destruction. As for the other spell schools, they functioned exactly that same as in Morrowind and Oblivion, but Bethesda axed a good percentage of spells and effects. Very, very disappointing.

It really feels like Bethesda spent all of their time just making the spells look nice, and didn't spend any time actually making the magic system fun.

I have fun with it. More fun than I've ever had with previous titles. I could care less where the idea was borrowed from.

Oh, and I love your avatar pic. WUTANG!

Yes we know.

k

Magic in Skyrim is not that bad.
Of course it could use a lot more tweaks and improvements , and don't forget Spellmaking and MORE spells.

I had lots of fun with the magic system in Skyrim. Not that I use magic all that often, but I've made a couple mage characters now.

Spells overall are lacking, mostly due to the incomprehensible loss of spellmaking. Destruction is the only school that is truly lacking (cost to damage ratio is out of whack), it just doesn't live up to it's name unless you abuse the holy hell out of the system (alchemy + enchanting).

Here's the thing about spellmaking. Oblivion's destruction magic was so lame and boring, the game pretty much HAD to have spellmaking to make it interesting. Skyrim's is actually fun by itself now, therefore it isn't needed. Not saying I wouldn't want it in, but if the new system for some reason made spell making a problem, I'd rather have the new version. Of course it was probably just cut due to time constraints.

Magic is certainly the most visually appealing of any other TES game.

Destruction is fine, but it doesn't work the same as you might expect from prior TES games. There is no need to use dual cast and Impact in order to be a devastating Destruction mage, nor is there any reason to use other schools (unless you want to do one of those hybrids, of course). However, it is necessary to learn how the Destruction school works in Skyrim and it may not be to your personal liking. It isn't at all underpowered, though, unlike some people's claims (i.e., it can handle anything in the game with no problem even without dual cast and Impact).

The real problem is the removal of spell making from an RPG (or rather a game that claims to be an RPG). Anything that reduces player choice of customizing characters is a very bad decision for an RPG as it undermines the entire foundation of the genre. Same thing for deciding to have outcomes based on player ability/skill rather than character ability/skill (i.e., the latter is role playing but the former is action, not role playing).

In any prior TES game, the point of a mage character was to actually create spells, not use stuff that had already been made and was "general public" use. It is not true that Morrowind or Oblivion spells were "boring" per se, but rather that they were basic spells for everyone to use, particularly to learn basic spell making and enchanting effects. The genuine mages would craft their own spells, though.

I might agree with you had we had the ability to combine spells into one overcharged spell, but we don't even have that. Could be due to time constraints, could be something else entirely, but whatever I hear come from Todd and Pete's mouths, I take with a grain of salt...perhaps I should take it with the whole damn shaker.

It's an action roleplaying game. I don't think TES was ever really tried to be a full on rpg. The blending of the two is what attracted me to the series anyway. As for choice, yes. More choice is important, but so is an actual fun system of combat. Magic's much more enjoyable now. What they could do though is add more magic effects. There isn't really any reason to lower the amount of spell effects we have.

That would have helped, I agree. That and more spell effects for destruction like weakness to fire and so on.