It is all a matter of taste. I wear armor based on its looks, and I generally do not like the look of mixing things up. For example, I think http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v90/subrosa_florens/oblivion/Oblivion591.jpg, or if http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v90/subrosa_florens/oblivion/Oblivion617.jpg It is all a matter taste. I am also possibly different from most, in that my characters almost never wear the vanilla armor or clothing any more. I have played Oblivion so much that most of the vanilla stuff just bores me. I get their gear from mods, which usually have a very distinct look to them, so they do not mix well with anything else.



I am with you on this. Something that can fixed with a mod, or by ignoring it, is an issue. It means that something is not working, or is not what you want from the game (for example, I can't speak for anyone else, but I want my magic resistance to work, and my dragons to fly forward, not backward...). One is a matter of taste, like with mixing your clothing, or not liking how every pair of pants my female character puts on magically turns into a skirt. No game is going to be 100% exactly how you like it. There are just too many people in the audience for the developer to try to appeal to. But there is no excuse for things like magic resistance not working, or that damn witch not taking your bloodgrass, etc...



It is all just a matter of personal taste on the mixing things up. We just have different likes there. But I can see your point of wanting that feature. It have no trouble with simply always wearing matching greaves and cuirass. But you being stuck with a one-piece jumpsuit is something that you can never change. That is a choice that was removed from you.

I think Morrowind makes up for it by magic being a lot less potent. For example, my first character wanted to get a shield enchantment on her Chitin Cuirass. But it was literally impossible for her to get even a constant 1% Shield on it. The Chitin it is made of is a material too low to hold that strong of an enchantment. You would need something like ebony or glass. Aside from the armor, constant effect enchantments were much weaker then one shot ones, and could only be gotten from grand souls. So if you had a set of ebony armor, you might be able to enchant each piece to get a 10% shield total. Basically what you can get enchanting one article of clothing in Oblivion.





You have never worn a long skirt before have you? They are difficult to move in, tripping you up, and limiting how far you can stretch your legs when you take a step. They would spell death to any fighter who tried to wear them. Much safer to go naked. At least then the men you are fighting might be too distracted staring at your genitals to defend themselves. Plus, the Celts did have a precedent for fighting in the buff.

Quite right on the once piece armor. Mail was at least a pair of pants and a shirt, plus more. But then again, some suits of IRL armor could come in hundreds of pieces, and I am sure no one wants to go through adding each one when playing the game. The ten or so pieces in Morrowind is enough of a chore as it is.

What I think is a major factor in the devs going to the one piece armor suits is simple convenience on their part. It is fewer unique items to create in the construction set and place in the world, both in NPCs inventories, and in loot containers or just sitting out in the open. Another thing I found when creating sets of bound armor, is that you need a separate magic effect for each individual piece of armor. In my Witchcraft mod, I was using 4 magic effects just to make one set of bound armor (with no helmet). I made a another set using the DB armor as a base, and got away with using only one magic effect. So there is a big incentive with anything summoned to go one-piece.



Or just make the effects you can get weaker across the board. IMHO, the sigil stones in Oblivion are just way overpowered in what they give you. One of the reasons I stopped playing Artemisia is that she was doing the main quest, and so was enchanting everything with sigils. Eventually she just became overpowering because of it, and the game stopped being a challenge.

On topic of mixing clothing and armor, I′m all for that. If I want my character to wear an iron cuirass with blacksmith pants and elven boots, along with a dwarven helmet and the wrist irons, then I want to be able to. Not that it would look good but that′s beside the point. It′s about freedom of choices, with no restraints.

Right, I haven't. I wasn't expressing a preference for the style, anyway (and had no illusion about the practicality.) I was looking at the "world" in which we are role playing these characters, making some assumptions about local attitudes and fashion, and concluding that it would be "appropriate" for a female character to make that choice.

Your alternative suggestion sounds a lot like Wild Elf, as it happens.


I think there's another reason. In a word: "clipping." If you make a whole outfit that's basically all one mesh, you don't have the problem of one piece of clothing clipping through another when the body moves and bends.


It's not just the sigil stones. It's all the enchanting. In Oblivion, all clothing enchantment is constant effect, and very cheap. And all weapon enchantment is "on strike" (and also very cheap.) In Morrowind you had a lot of clothing slots, but between the scarcity of highly enchantable stuff, and the cost of doing it, only a high-level character could make use of all that enchantment -- and such a character was beyond needing the enchantments!

My arguments for more clothing slots are for improved costume opportunity (role play), not for more power. I'd actually prefer that enchanted items be much rarer, and I'd love it if enchantments would "wear off" after a certain number of uses, beyond which it couldn't be recharged. "Go ahead and use that water-breathing ring, but just be warned that, someday, when you least expect it, the enchantment will dissolve..."

Sorry--I would have responded sooner, but had a poor night's sleep. Plus, my wife and I had a brunch appointment with some friends. In any case, onwards:


Lazy developers would never choose Morrowind or Oblivion again as settings, because lazy doesn't equate to stupid. Reusing the same setting, meshes, etc, of Oblivion would raise more hackles from players than anything this side of noumenal existence; arguably even reusuing the same basic locations would have sent out a few shockwaves. It would be a literal admission of creative dryness. Slapping new graphics and voices on a major market game product is essential, and it helps of course to place it all in the context of a new setting that's been discussed, before. This has nothing to do with laziness. It's all about keeping a job and not seeing your division folded into your parent megacorporation, Zenimax Media, which makes damn good sense.


Well, yeah. I've been writing as much for quite some time. In fact, I've been repeatedly pointing out that though Skyrim isn't my kind of game as is, it's definitely not dumbed down, but just as fine a product as Morrowind and Oblivion, aimed at a different market. I also believe huge sales can be attributes to horrible and excellent games, alike. So? I'm afraid I don't know what you're getting at, here.


Let's see. First, there are many games that take just as long as the ES games to create, and they don't support mods; so the idea that modding is supported because of that fact would seem unproven--or every other developer would logically be getting in on the act. Second, gamesas doesn't "heavily support mods," as support implies both a process and a concept of nurturing. They supply an excellent tool for modding, then ignore any subsequent questions or comments. (They haven't even yet provided that tool for Skyrim, more than two months into game release. With Oblivion, it was provided a few days before the game came out. This proves nothing conclusively, but it is symptomatic, I think.) That's it.

The evidence that they use mods for ideas comes from the sheer number of features, major and minor, in Oblivion and Skryim they've added on account of much appreciated mods from their last ES title. Hundreds of house mods in Morrowind; houses show up in vanilla Oblivion. Hundreds of companion mods in Oblivion; they show up in vanilla Skyrim. There are plenty of other examples. It would be possible to blandly claim that taking the new ideas of others instead of formulating their own shows a great interest in "the concerns of players everywhere" to use a popular PR phrase, but it also means less time spent thinking through pieces of game design. Not lazy, but...suggestive.

Let's put it in context. I'm suggesting they've grown lazy in certain respects because of a group of reasons: first, there's a lengthy history of taking some the most successful mods from the last game and lifting all their features for their next ES game. Second, they don't "fill out" features, such as weapons and armor variety, and spellcasting, leaving them for modders to do; and third, because the developers allow heavily criticized game sub-systems to stand without any alteration--such as the leveling and scaling in Oblivion (two different things), or the ported mess of a UI in Skyrim--knowing modders will work hard to substitute their own. And fix the messes the development teams left.

Any number of convoluted explanations can be provided for just about any conduct by anybody, but when a series of actions together point to a certain conclusion, possible explanations need to be clearly and logically backed up. I greatly enjoy the gamesas ES games, and have from the first. I've reviewed each one upon its release. But the evidence to me suggests that the developers have recently started counting on modders to take up the slack when they don't finish things, or make choices that produce results that simply aren't of decent quality. If you don't find this to be the case, that's fine, but those are my reasons for believing this to be so.

Bethesda does reuse meshes and textures between games. The wisp stalks from Oblivion are prominent in FO3. I do not know what they are called there, as FO3 does not have pickable ingredients, so you never see a name for them. They are found in caves and tunnels, typically with a lot of radiation and/or toxicity. All they did was give them a green tint, and a slight green glow. They also reused Morrowind's mushroom trees for the Shivering Isles. Walking around north of Vivec is like taking a stroll through the SI. The only thing missing are the Dark Seducers and Golden Saints. Skyrim's lockpicking system is exactly the same as that in FO3. The only thing missing is the screwdriver. Likewise, the quest advancement sound effects are exactly the same as from FO3, as are the entire way that quest messages flash across the screen. To be honest there is so much FO3 in Skyrim that sometimes I expect to see an Enclave trooper or a Brotherhood of Steel paladin appear there. That is just a few off the top of my head.

As you suggest, I do wonder if Bethesda chooses not to fix things they know are broken because they know modders will fix their mistakes for them (like the Unofficial patches for Oblivion). But with the X-Box being their primary platform, and the PC only being one they port to as an afterthought, I do not see how that can be. Most people cannot play modded Oblivion because Microsoft will not allow it. I think it is just the old syndrome of the developers having completely arbitrary and unrealistic deadlines placed on them to ship the game, finished or not. Combined with too few people to get the job done correctly. Lets face it, this is endemic all over corporate america, not just the gaming industry. That is not something that is going to change anytime soon, because corporations would rather have cheap then have quality.

Agreed, and it was made even worse by them picking 11/11/11 which meant that a release date slip would be a massive embarrassment.
The instant I saw that date I was sure that Skyrim would be released even less finished and more buggy than usual.

I'm all for both of these suggestions, though as I often like to point out, there's no reason the latter couldn't be made a player choice when you start the game. I'd even like to see an ID skill that lets you determine such things as what the enchantment is on an item, or how badly worn a sword is, or at its highest level, about how many casts of an enchantment remain--or when it will wear out, approximately. But since gamesas is moving in the opposite direction of removing skills rather than adding them, I can't see this being included in Skyrim. And it would be damn hard for a modder to program. I can't in fact recall a new skill ever being added to Morrowind or Oblivion. Can't be done without extensive scripting, probably not with that, either.

Unproven? Maybe back when they shipped the CS with Morrowind it could have been considered a gamble but not at all now.

I say "heavily supports mods" because they basically give you the tool they used to make the game. Sounds very supportive to me.

What would you have said if they completely left out houses and companions? Their community shows that this is what they want and then to ignore it?

"Filling out features" is very subjective. I don't feel like anything is missing. That's my opinion, obviously your's differs. The UI, just like Oblivion's, took some getting used to, but I use it just as easily. You see faults where I don't see them.

This is one thing that puzzles me. With Morrowind and Oblivion the construction sets were available when the games came out, if not on the game disc itself. But here we are are with Skyrim out two months, and still no construction set? My impression is also that it is the same tool the devs used to build the game world. If that is true, obviously they have it. So where is it?I wonder if they are working on ways to integrate it into Steam, so it can only be used through Steamworks, and cannot be used by people offline. My understanding is that was how it was going to work, so Steam could control all the mods made for the game.

I meant by unproven, that the fact the construction set hasn't been available for more than two months after Skyrim's release when it was available days before Oblivion's doesn't prove that gamesas now regards PC-based modding as a minor matter. I don't think so, at least.


Please don't devise Straw Man arguments, and then try to put them in people's mouths. They show disrespect for the opinions of others. -Of course I wouldn't have said that. If gamesas had designed it's own interesting gaming sub-systems for Oblivion (and no, persuasion isn't one of these) or fixed the ones they made that were very problematic and regarded as such by many, I would have said that they were finding new, creative ways of evolving their series. Which is what I've written about game developers who do just this. As it is, I feel the ES games are all excellent, but they show a slacking off in creativity (in my opinion) and a reliance upon unhired help--modders who spend thousand of hours on their mods--to pick up the slack. Bear in mind, I'm not trying to coinvince you of anything, one way or the other. You've decided to argue with me on this point.


Opinions are one thing, agreed: facts are another. Vanilla Skyrim contains far less armor and weaponry variety then vanilla Oblivion, far fewer stores, far fewer spells and potions, and no spellmaking. These aren't opinions. These are facts. The reasons for this can be argued back and forth, but my opinion is that it's because gamesas's development team has decided to rely upon modders to supply just these things that modders did a great deal of in Oblivion; and in my last post I provided three pieces of reasoning I thought backed this up. I haven't really heard a different explanation from anybody that satisfies me, though I'd like to believe otherwise if I logically could.

As we speak the CK is being beta-tested by the modding community. This is something Bethesda has never done before and personally I feel that is a good move. There is some more information (but not a lot) on it in this thread: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1335660-bethblog-update-out-for-ck/

Chaka ZG;

I stopped after coming close to characterizing people who "Love Skyrim" because I couldn't see any value in making generalizations about them, particularly negative ones-as you have with, "people who love Oblivion". When referring to me, please include me in your spacial alignment of, "people who love Morrowind and Oblivion", rather than just Oblivion-; I know you want the constellations correctly mapped and charted. And include source notes next time, for your continued psychological studies of those people. Let us know when it's published. Earlier I wondered aloud if a generation raised without reading were different than I- and I think they are, but that really leads us about as far afield from the topic as your own post did. Chaka ZG- I always speak for my opinion. There are many who agree with me- but I'm not an elected official, nor have I ever suggested in a single post represented even a majority or anything other than my opinion. We hope you survive your irritation.

It's not debatable choices have been removed from Skyrim, only your opinion of the game. You think more highly of it than I.

I'm glad you like Skyrim. I've said that- more people may like Skyrim than the earlier titles. You go on to knock Oblvion's caves as all the same, make a derrogatory reference to a human anatomy part, and think this means Skyrim should be superior- to at least those basking in your posts. Yes, Skyrim has better graphics, though I could say in the same manner you used that they also look, "alike' and naming the different structures, as you did, 'barrow', castle, dungeon, etc doesn't really make them different from one another, only differently named. They are drawn in a majority of cases in a similar fashion- just as Morrowind's and Obivion's were before it. Skyrim's structures disapointed me only slightly because once again, they were drawn in a similiar vein throughout. I think they should use different artists for different structures. It's fictitious world, Bethesda can say the, 'ancient Nords did that".
And none of this matters to me, and I doubt to you despite your post that this means Skyrim is what? Better graphics? Yes, it does have better graphics. Every new title should have better graphics and game play mechanics. Skyrim is different to earlier Elder Scrolls games in the loss of choices formerly made by the player, including magic and attributes, and a loss of both NPC interaction wtih the player and between themselves. Do you wish to say this is not true- that there are as many choices, as much NPC interaction?

Either you do not miss these assets and choices, or do not find them significant to your game. And that's fine with me- there isn't any award, for loving either Skyrim or Morrowind or Oblivion.

There are many things I'm glad they improved from Oblvion, and one is the writing. I don't think any of my heros in Skyrim have ever said something like, "What evil lurks in Sancre Tor?" as they did in Oblvion. Thank goodness for that. The world in Skyrim is chock full of adventure- thank goodness for that. The writing and dialogue is more sophisticated, which is mostly a positive. They kept Soule for music- great. I ordered a signed copy. You must have been disapointed as a reader with all those cliche's as well.

But the character build is not as extensive, the choices fewer, and the game is not the same kind of playing experience. You and many like it better. I wonder how many times I will end a post with, 'Maybe Todd Howard got it right- knew his audience' before you actually read it, or better yet, acknowledge I've been saying it all along?

Graphics, game play mechanics- these are improved in Skyrim and should improve every new game. Loss of choices, of interaction., for myself and many others, not a good thing. Will you like it as much after you've played it through several times?

It may well be the loss of an extensive character build for the rest of the series. Bethesda is using the character build it made for fallout 3, where Howard stated he learned to make a game... .

I'm glad you read a lot of Science Fiction, but young people in the United States/West do not read as much as they used to in prior generations. Making games to reflect this change is not neccesarily anti intellectual, because these kids are sharp. I ask my son to take care of the electronics frequently at my home. They use social networks, 'multi task', and have a different skill set.
Skyrim is as good a game as Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas; it should be, because it's built almost the same way. If you haven't played them, do so. I'd like to hear what you think. Your background in Science fiction does not prove Skyrim has a better character build, or there are not less choices in it. It does prove, that one can read and still love Skyrim. I wasn't aware that was something that needed proving.

Without the extended character build, Skyrim will probably not be as long playing for me. You probably have other things to do anyway.

I haven't seen the quote from Howard on this, but I find it interesting. Fallout 3 leans heavily on the previous Fallout games for lore and story; if you took out all the elements it inherits (characters, factions, history, post-apocalyptic setting...), I wonder how much "game" would be left. Its story and depth are weaker than the previous releases. Character creation is lifted almost unchanged from those previous games (except for the ability to edit faces.)

What Fallout 3 brings to the series is 1st-person real-time action, high quality 3D graphics, and an increase in voiced dialog. It adds almost nothing in terms of "game," other than a change from semi-turn-based RPG to real-time shooter RPG. It adds shine to what was already a gem, with better graphics, better music, etc.

It takes away complexity and difficulty, though, because character interactions are simplified, dialog has fewer options, and quest pointers and "enemy pointers" are visible on the HUD. Factions are simplified into "good" and "bad" (do FO3 players know that in previous titles, you could actually have dialogs with Raiders, and make deals with them?) You're told where to go, and what to do there.

It appears to me that there's a trend here, with Bethesda gradually simplifying each successive game, taking out any player choices that, in previous games, would have resulted in "branches" in the story line. This, of course, makes game development much easier and cheaper, because now they only have to create a linear "movie" for the player-character to act out. Join the Brotherhood, fight the Enclave, go through the motions of choosing, and then, just to convince you that you really had a choice all along, we'll throw in multiple endings!

I appear to be knocking FO3 here, and I'm not; it's really a good game. It just could have been a lot better if it had retained a little more of the quirky "real choice" flavor of the originals, and had tried a little harder to have an actual story going on. Purify the water in the Tidal Basin? Really?

A lot of big game studios seem to be going for this "make a movie" approach, where the player is required to act out their part exactly as directed instead of, you know, actually playing. It's depressing.

I have not seen the quote by Todd Howard, but I do see what he is talking about whenever I watch King Coins videos of Skyrim. Elements taken from FO3 are very noticeable. I even once joked that they had the Talon Company, because aside from the armor, one encounter seemed exactly like those we always had with the Talons in FO3. I really enjoyed FO3 too, but agree with you completely. A lot of choices in doing quests are removed. The main quest is especially a rail that you are driven along with no way of turning the locomotive. The only real option you get is But the game plays out exactly the same no matter what. You just get a different ending video. Not really much of a choice.

Being able to join the Enclave would have been good. Same with being able to become a raider, and perhaps even take over Evergreen Mills as the new Raider Boss. Or being able to play a ghoul or other non-human, etc... Let alone not being forced to be a 19 year old vault dweller (although the previous FO games also forced pretty much the same background on you too. You could not be a native wastelander in FO1 for example). One of the real disappointments for me was that you could only choose from four races to play, and each was exactly the same except in appearance. I guess having played Oblivion before I did FO3 shows here, because I like different races being, well, different. That way you can have a new experience every time you play a new race.




To be honest, I think they are copying Bioware there. Ever since the KOTOR games, that is exactly how their titles work. Heck, even the NWN titles were very linear, with only a few side paths you could briefly take along the way. It means they can put more depth in the story, but it also means that you are playing out the story they have written for you, not creating one of your own. I have found that the open worlds that Bethesda creates lend themselves most to people being able to do the latter, not the Bioware method. It seems that Bethesda is really shooting themselves in foot, but taking away one of the strongest elements their previous games had.

True, but at least the two earlier games didn't force a role on you. You could be any sort of bozo. You could be a nasty, dishonest whiner, whom the vault overseer picked for the job to get rid of him. In fact, if you look at the pre-fab "starter characters" they gave you, there was a muscle-bound lunkhead, a sneaky criminal type, and a persuasive talker, as I recall; all of them were characters that a wily overseer might prefer to have "outside" rather than in. You weren't the kid of a world-famous scientist who would have saved the world if he hadn't decided to go hide in a vault, and it was all your fault for being born, kid!

Glargg;

Yes, he told some interviewer that making Fallout 3 taught them how to make a game. Sorry I don't have the link or note. I read and then forget where....I'm not tuned to this industry at all. This was before Skyrim came out.

Did you play Fallout New Vegas- because that was done by the same studio that did the earlier fallouts with at least some of the same people. I like it, but it's buggy at times. I actually like it better than Fallout 3, but I love the desert, so that could be it.

I can't seem to recall right now if in Fallout 3 you can increase skills through use or it's only with assignment at level up? I think it's only at assignment with level up. That if true, is the one real difference between Skyrim and Fallout 3. Otherwise, they are constructed in very similar ways.

I grew up reading (I've never had a television and do not want one), but I dislike Oblivion's character system. Mount & Blade has a much better levelling system. "Better" meaning "less grindy," not "more dumbed-down."

@fable2: I hope you're wrong! ...about spell casting being a task for the modders. But you're probably right, which means I'll be out 20 bucks.


Just in case you don't know this (because a lot of people seem to have missed it when Pete officially tweeted this info last summer): armor sets (greaves and curias) are melded in Skyrim because it's less work for the game's engine. This allows more NPC's to be on-screen at one time with less chance of a crash. It allows a much greater draw distance, too. Ever notice how we can see enemies from much further away than in Oblivion? This is why. It also allows clouds and snow to be more "dynamic", moving around this way and that. In Oblivion, a lot more energy was needed to allow Cyrodiil's more complex body suits to be on screen, from what I understand.

So this being said, if I had a choice between mis-matched armor sets and all these other things, I'd personally choose all the other things. It's beautiful being able to see a bear or a group of bandits from what seems to be a quarter mile away. If I ever get the urge to wear leather armor with iron pants, I can always fire up Oblivion.

CoC: Dark Corners of the Earth and Doom 3 immediately springs to mind...

Dragon Age 2, and the first one, although to a lesser extent - and ME1 and ME2, again not as blatantly as DA2
It suited them though, they are that type of game...

On READING and Skyrim;

I'm the culprit, I'm the one who wondered.....but not in a negative, as has been taken, but in pondering change. Its simple; I'm old; more of you are not. I read constantly when young, many today do not. My sons do not read much, by comparison with my own life and the life of my peers.

Reading requires the delay of gratification. The perk system is much less involved with less choices than previous ES character builds, as is the lack of guild builds in Skyrim. When I was young, they said my generation had been exposed to the most information of any group since mankind began. That was true until you came along. Most of you have grown up with computers. You utlize social networking, various other devices, and would scoff at the old joke about not being able to program a VCR. Many of you are not aware there is such a joke, and know VCR's by their childhood with mom and dad, probably associating them with Disney tapes.

But the bottom line is there is less overhead, less baggage? to use a negative, less quest requirements and less choices in Skyrim than in earlier titles. That means Todd Howard knew something about his target buyer. What was that? That they had other things to do in life than participate in lengthy guild quest lines or putting together a character? Only he knows- I just wondered aloud.

It's not about IQ. It's the future of gaming, and of the type of intelligences who play these games and buy them. That is what I wondered. People change. You wouldn't offer the same kind of entertainment to a kid in rural England in 1700's you would today. They'd hang him for witchcraft even if it were possible.

This market is only going to get bigger. I hope someday there are target games for everyone.

I hope so too. Books still sell very well, with hit books selling in the hundreds of thousands or even millions, so lots of people clearly still love to read. Just look at the Kindle and Nook for proof that it applies to tech-friendly modern people, too.

I personally have always loved the written lore in TES games. I've spent hours and hours just reading in-game books and thinking about them and then looking for aspects of the game world which show a relationship to what I've read. As much as anything, the in-game books help make these games real to me. I also love Oblivion's journal system, since it can be read and pondered and, after a quest's completion, remains as a log of one's noteworthy accomplishments. It's one of the reasons I came back to Oblivion after little more than a month with Skyrim. Skyrim's quests are designed around reading as little as possible (they give very little text, often foregoing what would be considered necessary text in older titles); text is eschewed in favor of the GPS system. Make no mistake, I love my car's GPS system, but when I play a rpg I want to get my head into the game world. A GPS rips me out of the game world and takes me right back to the real world. For me, that's a bad thing.

I love technology. Thanks to having a dad who was ahead of his time I grew up with computers starting in the late 70's (before I was 10 I could program in BASIC and PILOT, then Pascal, Lisp, etc.) And I've been playing video games since Pong. But I also played pencil-and-paper Dungeons & Dragons for years, and DM'd a campaign, and I still read every night before I sleep... or there's a high chance I won't sleep well. So I'm a bit of blend between the past and the present.

But when it comes to more text and more depth and more choices in-game, I am 100% with you Old Grog.

Let's hope there's TES games for us in the future, or at least options in-game so that the attention deprived can play on GPS mode and us "old farts" can play in Text-rich mode.

Text, lore and depth is important to me as well and if that makes me an old fart, then so be it. A shiny glossy game with little, if any of that, is a game I won′t look at twice. It′s what distinguishes a great game from mediocre ones, the ones that are played "just because I happened to have a moment over"

A prayer to Odin for more well-made deep games in the future. Games, made not only with huge profits in mind

I have no problem making the statement that they seem to be leaving it up to the modding community to work out the disgustingly inept UI that Skyrim has. It's so obviously built for the console gamers, that it's almost unusable for the PC users. I'm through playing Skyrim until there are some meaningful UI changes. And you had better believe that I won't recommend the PC version. I'm sad to say that I am waiting for the modding community to help me get a game that is playable. In the meantime, I'm going back to Oblivion and Morrowind.