I know how you feel...

I'd rather they employ proper DMs than proper writers. If two resumes cross their desk, one is a screen/script/novel bestseller, and the other has 15 years of running games at his FLGS, the first should be binned.

Hire them both, Tale!

A three dimensional character isn't just poetic license. They actually have three dimensions:

(1) Physical: The most obvious, and the most overlooked. A tall man does not interact with the world in the same way that a short one does.

(2) Sociological: Covers introversion/extroversion, political, spiritual, and personal preferences. Basically, overall comportment

(3): Psychological: The nitty-gritty. Thoughts, hopes, dreams, ambitions, fears, neuroses, phobias, etc. The real egg of the character were real change starts.

How many Skyrim NPCs can you name that demonstrate all three?

I agree!

I'm talking about WHY he gets the quest to restore it to its former glory in the first place. If you're completely incompetent, you ar eNOT going to get trusted in any kind of organisation. It makes complete sense. Would you expect to become, say, a builder if you don't nkow how to build? No. It's just ridiculous.

As I said, freedom is nothing without limitations that can be pushed through hard work and self-improvement.

Otherwise I might aswell just be the head of the guild to begin with.

I didn't read the entire thread because I'm rather lazy, but my two cents:

I feel as if a more detailed and immersive plot would have ruined the game for me, personally. You're not supposed to know every detail about every character because you're not the god narrator, you're just someone who lives alongside them. Subtle hints in conversations; tonalities, mannerisms, etc, were rich in this game (at least I thought so). There were several times when I became cautious when talking to people, hesitant to go along with them because of their personality, and how their words made me wonder if they had other things going on. For example...while I agree with most of what Ulfric was talking about, I just can't trust the man. I may have helped lead the Stormcloaks to victory, but I cannot trust him. Why? Just the way he talks, the way he carries himself, and the subtle things he says. I don't want to know his back story in excrutiating detail because it would ruin the sense of hesitation I get when dealing with the man. That kind of thing. I have no idea if my point got across as to how one affects the other though. <.<

Basically, I felt as involved with the quests as any resident of Skyrim would, and I feel as if that was the purpose. I don't want to be some all powerful savior god. I want to be an average person with a few extra abilities who can just so happen to save the world, then return to a somewhat normal life.

Part of the blame goes to full voice out, you can't write stories as well when you have a limited budget for dialogue lines.


A prime candidate for this would have been the mages college. You want to be promoted to the next grade? Pass the test and cast these spells.

New Vegas did it, and since Bethesda published it, I'm guessing they funded it.

New Vegas currently holds the world record for most lines of recorded dialog in a video game. The voice actors were VERY good too, with quite a few famous faces among them.

Dunno wtf happened with Skyrim... I think part of it is that both Skyrim and New Vegas have the same philosophy: cheap voice actors voice basic no-name people, quality voice actors voice important characters. The reason Skyrim falls apart in this whereas New Vegas doesn't is that the important characters of New Vegas ALSO have the most lines of dialog, the most detail and the largest conversations. You're willing to look past "Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter" because you just had a 5 minute conversation with Felicia Day. In Skyrim however, the important characters often have just as little dialog as the no-name characters.

Problem isn't writing, its the voice acting. Well voice acting in itself isn't the problem in itself, but it is the cause of the problem, and the real problem is, the disk space. There is simply no way in hell for Bethesda to fit detailed quest dialogues to 1 DVD disk. (I seem to remember Skyrim having more dialogue files than Oblivion, but can't find the source right now)

You can't simply have a great story for Mages guild, fighters guild, thieves guild, dark brotherhood, misc quests AND main quest, at the same time, within a fully voiced enviroment. I'm pretty sure they had to cut corners on lots of quest lines in order to fit them in. Recording same lines with 15 different actors doesn't help either.

I don't think this is a budget issue, since they've been hiring high profiled voice actors for the last 3 games now. I'm pretty sure they could've used that money to hire less known actors to make more voice overs and result would be leagues and bounds better than the current situation. We can afford to lose Saul Tigh if it was a trade between him and coherent story-lines.

I'm hoping this will be the last TES game of this generation consoles, and the next xbox ships with a blu-ray so that we can have more voice files. After that, budget will become an issue. I'd prefer having text/voice hybrid approach with quests, but we all know thats never gonna happen because its too "mature" for their "audience".

I agree with most of the statements, I do like how they changed Skyrim's main quest to the PC being the hero again. I didn't like Oblivion's main quest for this reason, I felt like Martin's butt monkey errand boy. If I play a single player game for more then 40+ hours, I better be the main hero or it was a fail. I mean even the lame Dragon Age 2 let the PC be the hero.

Just as an example...

Craig Boone, Fallout New Vegas follower:

(1) Physical: Cold, expressionless, stiff, silent, never takes his 1st Recon Beret off and will complain if you take it/give him a different hat.

(2) Introvert, NCR supporter, believes in karma, prefers sniping to close-range combat and though he supports the NCR he is capable of seeing their flaws, such as how far west they've allowed the Legion to move, how Oliver is General instead of Hsu, how Bitter Springs was a bad move.

(3) Focuses on revenge while seeking death. His dreams died right before his very eyes thanks to the Legion, and thus he has no fears, but only lives on to destroy the Legion.


Ulfric Stormcloak, major character of Skyrim:

(1) Physical: Wears noble's clothing. Has a beard and possibly (?) unique hair

(2) Hates the Legion, believes in the Nine Divides (not Eight), likes Nords

(3) Hopes to become king of Skyrim, drive out foreigners, become independent of the Legion and continue to worship Talos and run Skyrim as a nord country.




While you can write detail to both, I think you can also see how with Craig Boone, I can DIRECTLY answer everything you've listed. With Ulfric Stormcloak, a lot of it is filler. For instance his fears (or lack thereof), I have no idea. Also worth mentioning that Boone is an optional companion, (and a very quiet, introverted one at that) whereas Ulfric Stormcloak is probably -THE- first character that comes to mind if people think of Skyrim.

Oddly enough, the part that I connected with the most in Skyrim, wasn't even a quest. I'm not sure which dungeon I was in, but it had some old skeletons/journals of Dunmer trying to come to Skyrim after Red Mountain erupted. They covered a small accounting of their escape from Morrowind into the tunnels they were trying to pass through. As I kept pushing through, and finding more journals, I was hoping I could do more with the information, but nothing was to happen. Just some good story, which i greatly appreciated. Sadly that was the highlight of Skyrim for me. I love the game, played the crap out of it, trying to get myself excited for another play through with a different character though.

Yes. The quest lines are too short and too shallow. They took five years to craft an amazing, believable world and a game that is great fun to play and forgot to give us good narratives to follow.

I guess we'll have to wait for Skyrim's SI to get a deep storytelling experience. Maybe there'll even be choices. With consequences.

That's fair enough. Role-playing an average joe who follows orders, saves the day and then goes back to doing whatever is a perfectly legitimate way of playing the game.

However... More detailed and well-written questlines really won't affect that style of play too greatly. Most of the depth and context is added through optional dialogue. If you want to play a character that has no problem trusting the higher-ups, then by all means, just ignore all the extra stuff. So, IMO, it makes no sense to argue that this would really ruin your gaming experience.

Let me give an example. Have you played through the main quest in Morrowind? You could have easily gone through it without 'speaking' to the main characters and learning about the intricacies of what was going on; there were simple, clear-cut orders (with just a little bit of background) that you could've followed. But there was so much extra dialogue available for those of us who enjoy getting into the thick of things, and for me (and I'm sure for many others), this made the experience a whole lot more enjoyable.

Edit: Also, wouldn't it make sense for your average joe to have to do a lot of grunt work for the factions before becoming their go-to guy? Bad pacing is a really severe fault of the current faction questlines. Better pacing would make for a more organic experience. It would really make you feel like you belong to a noteworthy order, instead of a pathetic, poorly managed one, that is in desperate need of saving.

People are right about voice acting too.

It is a major problem. On the one hand people expect it in a modern game, and it can greatly enhance an encounter. On the other hand, the techonology and budget limitations currently mean that it greatly reduces replayability, roleplaying, branching quests, and sandbox-choose-your-own-course gaming.

I'd prefer a hybrid system similar to the Baldur's Gate series, with voice content initially but then goes into text (admittedly, others won't).

At least until the techonology exists to have text-to-voice systems that work well or space limitations/budgetary restraints are removed such that we can have our cake and eat it too.

Agreed with most of what have been said here.

The quests aren't bad, they're very short and let us NO choice. RPG, no choice? Doesn't fit together.

I can't even chose to let the girl in Riverwood know that both of her pretendants are writing fake letters... This is basic, and it's the first quest you get when you start. You can chose to help one, or the other, but can't say the girl that they're both morons and try to get with her.... Talk about an RPG..

With the Alik'r or whatever is their name there's the same kind of problem. The girl asks for help, you go find the redguards, they say she is the real bad person. Fine. What about asking her to explain about that? Oh, yeah, you can't...
This is the kind of basic things you could do, in dragon ages, in nwn. Nearly every quest of these games offered you these options. Now I'm not saying these are better games, they're way different, but not having this kind of choices in Skyrim is really disappointing.

Some said voice-acting is the problem, but they could have get over it by giving deeper informations with books or notes, leading to quests without questmarkers or quest entry in your journal, where you actually have to read and think. Like in an RPG... Well maybe there are such kind of quests but we didn't find them yet. It would surprise me a lot, as opening a book in order to take it, without even reading it, instantly gives you a questmarker if the book has some use.
(By the way, the new french translators did crap job and didn't even rename the books with the name they had in morrowind and oblivion...).


But imho the real problem is they spent too much time working about "radiant questing". That may please some people. And that pleased me on my first character. Until I noticed these quests had no depth. Not a single one of these quests has a goal, an incentive so you should go there. It's just "Go there, kill that". Oh wait I visited that cave 2weeks ago and the item I'm supposed to find wasn't there.... I'm pretty sure I already took everything that was in that big chest, who refilled it? Spiders put stuff in it? Seriously? Must be that "friend" that I never met and who keeps sending me letters... I suppose adding an NPC who wanted to meet you and who would explain why he wants you to do something was too hard work.

Instead of spending so much time on making a very high number of radiant quests (can keep you occupied for a long time if you don't care doing the same thing all over again), they should have let these quests be somewhat rare (hence, surprising), and focus more on making the different guilds fun. Only did thieves and mages for now, after 100 hours of playing, but that's because I've done these two guilds soon enough to know that guilds quests were very short.

Short and linear, without what made them fun in previous games. I didn't like when my master told me I wasn't skilled enough to get a promotion, but it makes sense, and you're proud of going up when you finally can. I'm not proud at all of being arch-mage.
I liked having to visit every city to be accepted by the different mages guilds in mw and obli. Here you got a mage at each jarl castle, and the only quests they give you is radiant quests when they do.... Come on scripting a quest doesn't take that long, it doesn't have to be something spectacular at every time. Just something better than "go there, get this, bring it to me, i give you gold". Put a story behind it, a reason why this npc wants us to go there.

Missions to save the kynareth tree in whiterun are fine for that, you get two missions that follow each other, you have a reason to do this, and when it's done you have some consequences (the tree is nice, people thank you, pilgrims come to the city). This is little but the time spent in that is way better-spent than working on random questing..


Replayability? I don't think so. I'm already bored of the dungeons, they're all the same. Keep on going, kill, kill the first big room, little chest, kill, kill the second big room, kill the boss, big chest, little chest hidden, shortway to exit. I didn't even lost my way in the labyrinthian... Every dungeon is a corridor until boss, with sometimes puzzles (one or two weren't that bad and you had to think a little bit) and traps with huge colored activators. No point in sneak perk to avoid traps as you can't miss em anyway.
I want some huge dwemer ruins where I can lose myself, like in morrowind where you could spend an hour looking for that dwemer cube if you didnt go the good way on first try.
I want some non-level-scaled dungeons, where you get slaughtered if you enter too soon, and with unique artifacts inside.
I want more monsters than draughr, wolfs bears and random bandits. Where are the daedras? only seen a few atronachs so far, seems a bit weak for 100 hours. Did the necromancers forget how you summon a bonelord since morrowind? Where are the monsters? It looks like Skyrim is just Norway with undeads in caves...
I want.. I want.. I want the CK.

Sorry about the wall of text.

Can I just say that I was dissapointed when the Thalmor had poncey high-faultin' British accents, rather than being voiced by whoever did Boone? They're supposed to be terrifying, they could at least sound the part. Hell, they could have even sounded a bit Irish if you're going to insist on the "Old world elves and nords, new world humans and orcs" bit.

But back on topic, I was kind of dissapointed in the lack of depth of any of your possible sidekicks. I'd understand if you had major or minor sidekicks, some of whom would be more fleshed out than others, but they're all unimportant people who revolve around you. Oh, and apparently in fist fights defeat really does equal friendship.

I actually quite liked the storylines themselves. The problem was that they were all squashed into 5-10 quests rather than spread out in a more natural way. Double the length of the college on Winterhold questline with more dungeons, filler quests and "lessons in magic" (like the one with the ward at the beginning) and the writing would have made sense. It was only the feeling of being made archmage after you just arrived that made it feel rushed/forced.

OMG hahahahahaha The Naked Nords! I remember them! Yea, that game had a lot of FEDEX quest AND no quest markers or fast travel, at least I don't remember fast traveling anywhere LOL. OMG I can't count the times I got lost... wandering around for HOURS! LOL

I actually think that Skyrim's quests are very well thought through, very interesting and I like the puzzle aspects in many of the quests/tombs.

I just wish, for once, that my character could talk! Well, I guess I can be thankful for hearing her voice when she shouts!

Here's the problem. Though I appreciate that you did wonder if any of the NPCs had anything else going due to their mannerisms... they don't. Even the main characters have no depth. You can discern nothing about them other than their barest motivations and nothing you can do will ever, ever change them. Taking Longknife's Boone example a bit further. Boone is totally optional but if you do take him on as a companion it takes forever to earn his trust and there's a million things you can do to forever lose it. As he trusts you more and more he opens up. His history, and why he is as forlorn as he is, starts bubbling up until finally you understand him. You can then help him close the one loose end in his life and how you go about doing that changes him from that point on. Not only that but it gives you insight into a huge portion of the FO lore as you're talking to a direct observer of a huge event.

The point is, you can skip that entirely, but if you do want to know what makes the character tick it's there. There isn't a single equivalent character like that in Skyrim. Not even the main ones.

Next elder scrolls game they will focus on story, them people will be here complaining about the world. Never will everybody be happy because people get this Idea in their head of what the game is, then get dissapointed when its not exactly how they hoped.

I think it is sad that one of the best games ever created has to deal with all of this negative bashing. Go play the game instead of complaining about what it could have been

I agree, guilds are a bit more shallow. The people are fine I think.

The biggest example is the companions. I did two quests and already they're asking me to become part of their inner circle and become one of them. I was really shocked when this happened and had to check my log to see how many quests I did.

Winterhold college is fine imo, except is so empty. It was empty when I arrived and after


I think places, cities, and guilds in general need more generic NPCs to brighten up the place.

Also, If I had it my way, there would be no voice acting and it would all be text, so it would be less on voice actors and more on writers and how well they can tell a story.

Fixed for you.

I'd love to play it if my PS3 version wasn't too broken to play.

Perhaps if it actually was one of the best games ever created there wouldn't be quite so much negativity.