Excuse me? How does it not work like that? Bethesda has spent 4 years making this game, with 100 people, working anywhere from 40-70 hours a week. If you seriously believe that all the time spent on this one feature could not have been redistributed to give us a dozen other gameplay options, I don't know what to say. It takes time to add content. Time spent on combat takes away from time spent on magic. Time spent on quests takes away from time spent on world building. Time spent on dragons has taken away from other features we won't be seeing but which could have made a game as interesting as any flying lizard.

And as far as the whole "without teh dragons there is no story!" Well, fine. Maybe they'd develop the Fighter's Guild and Mage's Guild stories instead, rather than just a bunch of fetch quests. Why wouldn't the head of the Fighter's guild make a grab for power in the absence of a king?

@St Frantic

I actually agree with you on a lot of points, there are a TON of aspects about Skyrim that do have me excited. Like the crafting, for instance...but I think of how much more could have been done if dragon's weren't such a big focus. I'm not saying they won't rock, but I'd certainly hate for them to be too much of the game.

Bukee is right. Given they changed the engine added new animation,combat,more weapons,more armor,made changes to the races,re-worked the leveling system,added crafting,jobs,better AI interaction....really i could go on,AND,there's still loads we don't know.Sorry but your running into a brick wall son-shine.

Yes they could have, but they didn't. They decided to tell a story about dragons, which makes perfect sense considering some of the story elements in Oblivion. And since they're going to tell a story about dragons, they can't possibly be devoting too much time towards their development. Frankly, having a story based on dragons sounds alot more interesting and imaginative that some power grab by the Fighters Guild.

I can't believe we really came to "Dragons are too good so they took too much from the rest of the game." First of all, their the main plot, so they should get large focus and secondly, there are groups when making the game. There are a hundred people that worked on this game, there was a set group that made dragons. The rest of the game was still being made when dragons were being made. Todd even said that the dragons came out better than they hoped and that was while they were in the middle of development. People should realize that they have set groups that work on specific things so nothing was "taken" from the game as the group that worked on dragons were assigned to dragons, just like the 8 assigned to dungeons worked on dungeons and didn't take from the rest of the game.

I'm not the one denying common sense and basic logic.

The dev team has a finite amount of resources, including time. Each feature takes a certain amount of resources to develop. I never said that dragons prevented any and all other features from being developed...only a certain few which are just as deserving of attention.

Oh but you are. Dragons are the central focus of the entire game. How could they possibly devote too much time towards them? If Skyrim had a main story about a Fighter's Guild power grab like you suggest, then maybe you'd have a point. But it doesn't, it's all about dragons. Everything else is secondary to that theme.

But which features could have possibly lost attention because of a small group of people assigned to making dragons, one of the main plot devices in the game?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7J4F3bs3Pk the trailer for Morrowind.

No voiceovers.

No cinematics.

Just gameplay. The plot of the main quest is entirely irrelevant to the majority of the game. Yes, it's there. But if it wasn't, the game would still be 99% of what it was with it.

C'mon mate,give it up....You've dug yourself in a hole and can't climb out....it's ok you know. :thumbsup:

A separate, small team worked on the dragons.

I say the same to you.

If you think dragons are the most important thing for the Elderscrolls right this minute...that's your opinion and your very welcome to it.

If you think that Todd somehow managed to conjure all the scripting, designing, modeling and animating that was necessary to include them out of his own butt, independent of the work of required for the rest of the game...I yield. I cannot compete with that blind ideology.

Yes, there was a separate team. But it's not as if they would have been chopped up into dogmeat if they didn't need dragons...they would have been reassigned, and other features would have been included, or existing features (like combat, magic, stealth) could have been further refined.

I was having a little fun with you man,settle down.....C'mon,jump on my little boat,fetch some mead ,and let's paddle to skyrim.

Not only did they have a separate team working on the dragons, but if I remember correctly, the rest of the project had like twice as many people working on it as compared to Oblivion. There is no way this game is going to be a let down.

What could possibly be better than adding massive, dynamic, insanely awesome [censored] DRAGONS to the game?

Why can't we have dragons and climbing? but really?.. is it confirmed that there will be no climbing? Rocky crags, mountainous terrain and we'll still be jumping about like idiots to get where we want to go? Oh well.

Fair enough. Anyways, I'm off to class, so I couldn't continue to be obstinate even if I wanted to. Have a good'un.

I would say, and I know a lot of people would agree, that the main quest, which is the story that the game tells us, the part that will pass to be lore, is quite relevant for the game (look at Oblivion, or at Morrowind, it drove the events in the game), and as relevant for us, the players.

Your right, how dare they make a small team of developers who only job in the entire game was to work on dragons while the other 90 some people worked on the rest of the game simultaneously. Just imagine what Morrowind would've been like if they didn't have to spend so much time on the pesky Sixth House content or how the game could've had more little features if they hadn't have spent the developers time to make a main quest at all. See what I'm talking about. Saying they shouldn't have worked on a main plot device feature because it could've been used on some other, unnamed little feature just doesn't work. Dragons took a handful of people many months to make. I'd agree with you if the entire development team worked on them for months but it was a handful of people who's job was to make them and they apparently according to all the reviews, did an amazing job. If you think about it, what your saying also brings up the point of, what about the people that worked on the features that you want in the game. Their time could've been spent better working on dragons or on adding more quests. See what I mean. Every feature has their set team and they all have their own time to be spent on by a certain select people. Because a handful of people worked on dragons for months didn't take away from any feature because the how can you take from a feature that is hypothetical and doesn't exist? If it did exist, another part of the team was already working on it. See what I mean?

Post limit.