Same here..

Then, and I don't mean offense by this, you apparently don't like having to think when you play video games.
Fallout 3 was literally "herp derp shoot bad guys" and Skyrim was "herp derp kill dragons." Fallout New Vegas was interesting and had a better storyline BECAUSE each character had a lengthy backstory and motivation behind their actions, BECAUSE each character would bother to tell you about themselves instead of saying "herp derp Belethor derp derp general goods store derp work," BECAUSE the decisions you made actually had a believable and realistic impact on the world around you. Skyrim on the other hand is poorly written because no one realizes you've killed all these dragons, no one gives a damn that you trapped a dragon and let it go, the majority of the world doesn't have dialog beyond two lines of dialog they spout CONSTANTLY. And motivations? What motivations? He's a damned dragon, so apparently that means he wants to destroy the world. And the transition from new kid to leader of the guild in Skyrim is terrible.

Characterization totally needs some help. Thus far only npc I felt was interesting at all was Paarthanax. Tullius and Ulfric come close, and I did appreciate how featured they were for being major protagonists/antagonists. Certainly better handled than Meredith and Orsino. ?? Still most of the side npcs feel flat. It's like those dead guys whom you stumble upon who have journals have more depth than the living characters you can interact with.

Well, the majority here understands it.

As for your "linear" argument, it works both ways: Why would you want to find your father? Why would you want to aid him in his holy quest? Why would you want to join the BoS? Why can't you join the Enclave? :swear:

I don't get why are you complaining about FNV storyline being linear (peaceful guy?) and then praise the F3 one which actually forces you to side with the knights in the shining armor aka BoS wheter you like it or not(and even makes any of the faux choices redudant thank to the BS DLC). Double standards much? :wink_smile:
Also: Arcade Gannon, Chief Hanlon, Rose of Sharon Cassidy, Mr. House, /thread


With all due respect, this seems like the most weirdest opinion I've seen so far. I never thought I'd live to see people complain about "too much factions & choices it makes my head hurt" :unsure2:

May I ask what was your reaction when you've heard of the Witcher 2? :laugh:

I use to write for Bethesda, but then I took an arrow to the knee...

Lol. You people are hilarious. Have fun waiting for the next obsidian fo title.....oh wait. There is a good chance there will never be one.

For the record. Having more pointless choices and pointless factions to join sides with does not equate to better writing.

If you had to choose one of the major holds to 'back' before fighting alduin this would be just like Nv. That's all they were just pointless choices that all led to the same basic terrible ending. I guess I dont see lame choices as better writing.

Oh, I was expecting a meaningfull conversation. How naive of me. :sadvaultboy:


No one said that.
However, did you actually bothered to compare the scale and quality of both characters or questlines before sweeping it under the table with your usual "I hate choices" attitude?

Compare Jericho to Craig Boone. Boone, the typical angsty, angry and depressed emo sniper looks like a Shakespeare material compared to the ex-raider who has like... 3 lines of background dialogue at best.
Compare the Factions: Most of them are not some washed up Good'n'Evil and actually offer a lot of fredom for your role-playing. It is a role-playing game, not a linear corridor shooter, remember? :wink_smile:
Compare the plot: A simpe revenge story slowly evolves into a power struggle over a Mojave Wasteland and.... quest for saving the DC Wasteland and destroying the Evil Wizards Enclave who for some reason came back from Fallout 2 and turned into homicidal murderers.


With the exception the ending is actually different according to your choices you've made earlier. Not much into watching Epilogues are ya?

But whatever floats your boat. :fallout:

I hate choices? Hm. Funny I thought this would be a meaningful conversation. But instead your making things up. Speaking of meaningful convos, I know your type after reading your posts in this thread. YOUR the guy who puts words In peoples mouths and not a single one of your posts is not arguing with another poster. None. Your the type who always wants to get his way.....in internet arguments that is. I can tell you have a lot of experience In this field. How proud you must be.

I think its just a matter of age and and mindstate. Some people like a masterfully created novel. Like advlts and other mature individuals. And some people like choose your own adventure books with colorful drawings and where they get to pick what happens instead of the author. We usually call those people children. It's ok though one day you'll hopefully be able to join the advlts at the big boy table. If you can muster the strength to get offline and stop arguing that is (p.s.- we call them troll)

Watch that potty mouth, kiddo. Judging by your profile I could be old enough to be your father.
And instead of actually adressing my points you resort to Ad Hominem and some ridiculous assumptions about my identity? I like how people like you act like they have a PhD in bull[censored] :thumbsdown:

Nice sweeping commentary about the books too, buddy.

Get the hell over yourself, armchair warrior.

And yes there were lots of choices in Nv, but it didnt make the story any better. The choices were simply which pre determined path you went down, and they were forced upon you.

Skyrim Is such a better game in so many other apects, and imo story. But even If Nv did have a better story its still no where near as good as skyrim.

My favorite games of all time are
Morrowind
Oblivion
Skyrim
Fo 3
Fo nv


I'm not gonna sit here and keep arguing which of my favorites was better than the others because I'm my mind its obvious. Each new game has improved on the past one in almost every aspect

Aww. The wittle baby dropped his ba-ba

I'll get over myself now. Go read a goosebumps, kid.

Already out of arguments insults? Try harder, junior :snoring:


That is true. More choices is not necessarily better writing (and I've never said that), however, I don't see why "choices" supposedly feel more forced than... you know... no choice (aka forced, linear, railroaded) at all. But that's just my me. :shrug:


Let me clarify something: I do not have a problem if you prefer F3 or Oblivion over NV or Skyrim, I am just interested in your reasoning behind it, thus offering you some of the comparison, not claming that more choices equals instant win.

Morrowind blew my fragile lil mind with the depth and detail within its various stories and such, playing casually it took me roughly two years to finish at lvl 78 or something.. excluding expansions and im sure i even missed some dungeons , caves etc.. oblivion, well it was not morrowind but that took me 3 months to complete.. all quests etc. Still had some very interesting quests that were engaging, not to mention playing the otherside of the coin with the DB. Still prefer the sanctioned and honourable Morag Tong though . Skyrim? took me 4 days to finish..100% achievements, with nearly 20 broken quests all the while the world was cracking and breaking apart.Im not angry, maybe a lil sad. An old favorite seems to be targeting and moving towards a demograph im not part of.And im ok with that. i got a good +-10 years out of the elder scrolls and i will still more than likely get the dlc but afterwards, i think im done with bethesda. They are catering for a new generation of gamer with different tastes , wants and needs and i get that. There are still plenty of Devs that still cater for gamers like myself, as well of having a huge catalogue of older games that although graphically mite be dated but still have enough meat on their bones to keep you playing. So yeah it is kinda sad but such is life no? and yes, the writing behind the story\ies of the game or lack thereof such as depth, characters etc.. has been the biggest deciding factor in me moving on.Heres to maybe a new generation of elder scroll fans and hope that they get as much out of the series as i have.

My day job is a Test lead/Software tester and I write scripts and screenplays part time.

Where do I send my CV?

this game is an open ended fantasy single player game designed to certain specs. There is a certain amount of freedom in when and how you complete things BUT not complete freedom. People seem to buy this game thinking it will suit their expectations which they have conjured up in their head. That cant happen it is designed to have mass appeal and from there modders make mods that make it more individualized and personal.
if you come into the vanilla game with a wierd approach like levelling without killing anything or playing it like youre an NPC you should anticipate some difficulty as you are missing a lot of the content in doing so.

Of course youre allowed to complain about the storyline....freedom of speech but...do you know how the game was put together? Did you attend developer meetings? Do you know how much time they had to write the storylines? Do you know what ideas had to be dropped because they didnt work in such a massive game as this?

the story writers they have a re FINE. What I think is needed is for critics to be a little less harsh seeing as they werent involved in decision making about the storyline and have no idea what went on.

they seemed to work in past games, and those are the very things that drew most of us to the elder scrolls.. those very things have taken a back seat. The very essence of what made TES, TES has been stripped away.. whats left is a shallow attempt at a dark age open world action adventure COD.

I can see someone running from New Vegas because the choice makes your head hurt. After making my first character, I spent like a week just feeling depressed whenever I played the game, not knowing what I viewed as being morally right anymore. I would load it up, then shut it back down and play Fallout 3 instead, where I could shoot at stuff because it had a sign on it that said "I'm the bad guy."
Then I had an idea of playing New Vegas not as an extension of myself, but rather I'd make a peon NCR soldier. Just some die-hard patriotic NCR soldier who, no matter the costs or the weight of the decision itself, would ALWAYS work towards the good of the NCR. I freed myself of any and all thought, acting only as a soldier, and then in the process I got front row seats to see what the NCR was really all about.

And that's when my love for New Vegas began. I made a Legionnaire, a BoS Paladin, a Great Khan, a White Glove supporter of House...I wanted to see ALL the perspectives, I wanted to know who WAS (imo) morally correct. I didn't run away from the tough question, I found a way to have fun and play the game a dozen different ways while still digging deeper to answer that initial question.

I can see why someone would put New Vegas down because I myself almost did, but holy hell I'm glad I didn't.




Lol'd hard. This explains so much.




It equals better writing because of the complexity of the situation and how believable the characters are. The entire game is a giant balancing act of giving the factions allies, enemies, beliefs and goals, tieing all of those into quests and then still managing to make them believable and have an actual impact on the world around you. That's how it's well-written.
Furthermore, you do realize Mr. House is the personification of capitalism, basically? The NCR, democracy, Yes-man, anarchy, the Kings, freedom, the Followers, idealists? All of the factions (not all, but a LOT) are personifications of different philosophies, political stances and social theories. As an example, the Kings are the personification of freedom in my opinion. Why? With an NCR ending, the Kings can survive. Freedom can live within a democracy. Same can be said for anarchy, where they'll also survive. Under capitalism, it CAN, but only if the person or group plays ball with the big guy in charge (which is exactly how it works: their survival depends on if House is pleased with their actions during a certain quest or not). And under a dictatorship? No, they can't survive. Not under any circumstances.

You see how I actually have to apply the knowledge I learned from literature classes in order to understand the big picture? That to me says it's well-written. It's well-written because the creators actually put thought and care into EVERYTHING. There's a message or a lesson for the player in almost everything you do.
Skyrim on the other hand, you'll struggle to find a single instance of such a case. The same can be said for Fallout 3. It's just "herp derp kill bad guys derp derp," where Skyrim also suffers from incredibly bland characters who lack emotion and actual backstories, and both don't even bother writing more than one path for the player to walk down.

If you took the time to play through the guild quests at the max skill/level in Morrowind, you'd find they aren't so long either. The difference is the lack of fast travel meant that you actually had to take your time.

The problem is that today, everyone wants to just do all the quests right away, and therefore, it's shorter. Fast travel + no desire to stop and smell the roses = rushed.

The best way IMO to handle the main quests?

Yes, PLEASE get better writers/designers! The world is so great, but it feels dead and repetitive. They spent so much time building the world, that they forgot to give its inhabitants meaning, and the entire main quest and civil war felt entirely tacked on and phoned in. The fact that Alduin's battle is no different from fighting any other dragon in the game, along with the lack of interesting boss encounters overall (various named dragons/dragon priests, who are all almost carbon copies of each other with no unique tactics) is underwhelming. Even Ulfric, who is hyped up as being a formidable opponent falls completely short.

My major complaints:

1. We NEVER got to engage in any kind of meaningful protagonist to antagonist dialogue. At least Morrowind let us question Dagoth Ur, and Almalexia at least had some sort of motive. But Alduin...a being who may be directly descended from an actual god? Nope, nothing of substance at all outside of his little quip at us early in the main quest. They don't even explain why the three vanquished heroes are suddenly able to withstand his power, or why he is suddenly able to be destroyed in Sovngarde.

2. Lack of branching quests with alternative outcomes. I hated this so much, there was literally little to no choice presented in any of the quests I have done outside destroying the Dark brotherhood, which is kind of a non-option since it is vastly inferior in the content you get, and the reward. There is no option to oust Maven Blackbriar, no option to work around having to bully the honest people of Riften for the thieves guild, no way of doing the companions questline while refusing to become a werewolf....nothing!

3. Lack of dialogue that actually allowed us to employ our skills to turn the conversation in our favor, something I greatly enjoyed in New Vegas. Even the base speech skill was underused..and could be sidelined by just brawling.

4. Lack of meaningful quests with meaningful resolutions and content. The quest to return the lexicon to Avanchzul (or however you spell it) was fairly interesting, but when we finish it...there's nothing! We can't ask Fathoms about why they actually went there, we can't ask her who the other Argonian actually was (sibling, mate?) or anything about her companions. It's just go here, finish the quest, nothing. She acts completely as if we never even met after its done.

5. Potentially epic moments ruined by terrible execution and choices. The civil war? boring and miniscule in scale. Battling Alduin in Sovngarde? Pathetic and nearly impossible to lose. Flying on Odahviing to "envy the Dov?" Cuts to a loading screen and instant travel. Fighting the first dragon at level 5? What the heck, I shouldn't even be able to stand a chance against the weakest possible dragon until level 20!

Fact is, the game is simply restrictive, in its own way. I've said it before: It's got a great looking world that's fun to explore and there's lots to discover, but so little of it has any real substance. It's a game of endless distractions and trivial amusemants that's afraid to offer you anything better because it would impede your ability to "do whatever you want".

And even then, the lack of options present in quests fails it in fulfilling its own mantra. Instead, we have exploits, poor difficulty, mechanics and balancing, generic radiant story quests that eventually cycle through each other, and many other shortcomings that mar...what could have been a truly amazing game...by making it simply good. In short, it has failed to truly tread any new ground that Bethesda has not already trodden. We know Bethesda does great game worlds and lore, bu their not earning any points from me for doing what was already expected of them.

Hey, I'm an engineer for a major tech company and I write novels part time. I'll write dialogue for Bethesda, lol, and I can certainly write romances for them though they'd probably be very steamy. I'm an author of romantic(erotic) science fiction.

If I were to single out one thing that completely ruined Skyrim for me, it would be the poor writing. I play ES games because I love the lore, the setting, the universe, and most of all I love having my characters interact with all these things. The open world aspect is great and all, but without decent storylines and a reactive game-world, all it amounts to is a shallow, empty husk.

The basic ideas behind the various faction questlines and the main quest itself aren't bad in of themselves. What is bad though is how they were executed. Their pacing was completely off, lots of very interesting points weren't fleshed out or developed, the main characters were all really shallow, the total arcs were short, and most importantly they were all missing a decent third act - i.e. some kind conclusion - the part where the gameworld reacts to the questline.

** College of Winterhold spoiler **


** MQ spoiler **


** DB spoiler **


Lastly, as an example of a great missed opportunity, we have the Falmer. They are supposed to be the Snow Elves - a race of Elves that the Nords slaughtered mercilessly back in the day - and they have supposedly not been seen in a very, very long time. They could've easily been used to add that extra "something" to Skyrim, the same way the Dwemer added an extra "something" to Morrowind. Instead, we got disgusting, cave-dwelling, blind goblins (blind because the Dwemer fed them toxic mushrooms - really???). :sadvaultboy:

** MQ spoiler related to the Falmer **

There were some decent stories in Skyrim... And they DID remember to cater to some of our requests from Oblivion... Specifically, many faction quests had custom special effects and environment manipulations built just for them.

Many of the storylines started ok, but ended meh. We asked for less grind and more epic quests, and they obliged... But it cost us quantity, which is what is necessary for guild rank teirs and the like.

There was a distinct lack of choice in this game. I should be able to say No more often.

The scope and complexity of the game is a difficult discussion. My gf can't play it; she wrap her head around the open world. I have trouble playing it because it feels too simple. Given the choice, Bethesda chose the path that would generate more revenue and catered to the mainstream... And it was the right choice, even if I don't like it.

More coherent writing, or higher quality writing would have been nice. More depth to the various factions would have been nice too. I guess, if we were willing to wait until mid 2012, it might have been possible. In the mean time, they delivered what we asked for as Oblivion faded away, and they delivered. We should be more careful what we ask for.

:lol:
Some fan-boys/girls are really becoming desperate when it comes to defending Skyrim, I see. ^_^


It's already in 'Skyrim Cheats, Hints, and Spoilers', so your complain about spoilers is invalid.


A lot.

OT:
I agree.
Still, the biggest problem, when it comes to story, quests and stuff like that, is how they are executed, actually.
They are all linear!
Skyrim isn't a sandbox game, it's a multi-linear game - just a bunch of linear stuff connected!

Why am I forced to be the Arch-Mage at the end of College quests?
Why am I forced to be the Harbinger at the end of Companions quests?
Why am I always some child of destiny who's name has been written in the starts and has to be champion of something?
I say, if I want my name to be written in the stars, I should go there and write it myself!
The worst part of it is the fact that it's all too bloody easy.
In Morrowind and Oblivion, I at least felt that I somewhat deserve those titles.
In Skyrim, I feel if it was simply given to me (whether I like it or not). >_>
Oblivion was taking a step in right direction when it comes to that stuff since we were not the heroes of that tale, but just an errand boys and girls to true hero, Martin Septim.

Yeah I thought the same. Tried using this as an example before of bad writing but nobody got it. To me this is bad writing because it's missed potential. They had this elf race that was an open canvas. The lore was they were THOUGHT to be dead, with the keyword being "thought," as if Bethesda was suggesting they'd someday appear. Fast forward to Skyrim, what did they do with this open canvas, where they were free to do WHATEVER they wanted with a potential 11th race?

Goblins. [censored] Goblins.

And why exactly did the Dwemer feed them mushrooms, anyways?

+1 Guild and civil war quests were NOT well done. Which is a shame as the OP mentioned the art work and design of the world is BEAUTIFUL, the score is amazing, I love dragons (when they aren't flying backwards and they could be a bit harder), etc....but the quests are way too short and don't have nearly enough consequence on the world when you've finished them and yes, the Morrowind style rankings was much better.

People have become the ARCH MAGE without any skill in magic. That shouldn't ever happen. Ever. (Read a scroll to get past the initial entrance and then never need magic again beyond perfunctory 1st level cantrip style anyone can cast spells).