Minigames can be good if they're done right. The Oblivion lockpicking and persuasion minigames were just poorly designed.

That would make it a tad more interesting, don't you think? Label it whatever you want, having some sort of interaction>than no interaction. I'm not knocking the overall idea behind it, hell I was pumped when I first heard of it. "you can chop wood" I read, and I was so excited at that. When I find out it's really "you can watch a short animation of chopping wood, not so pumped .

There's leather working too.

I liked the lockpicking one, except once you got good at it it was too easy to pick locks above your skill. Persuasion was a joke though! Nothing is wrong with a "mini game". Honestly when you first heard we could chop wood, didn't you too think it would have been some sort of mini game?

Chopping wood is turning out like sitting. "you can even sit on a chair or a bench". (player clicks on chair, brief sitting animation plays out, player receives cookie). Lol I'm in no way saying we should have a chair minigame, just that they are both click and watch a short animation.

@Dragonborn. I know there's leather working, sounds cool, until it's just another little animation, heres your leather! Honestly its not a big deal, im just slightly disappointed is all. My great hope is we get to use the rewards for watching these animations to use in smithing, alchemy, probably not enchanting(unless we can enchant fillet mignon? Lol). Heck I hope I read it wrong and it's more than a small animation, like when you sit in a chair.

What do you prefer? Mashing the A button?

I think that's the problem with the lockpicking minigame - it's based on a skill, but really depends more on the player's skill/timing. Same thing with persuasion, way too easy even if your speechcraft/personality are low. Minigames in RPGs like these should be heavily and apparently dependent on skills, or they should be not connected to a skill at all. Woodcutting, mining, cooking, farming, and fishing will not have an associated skill, so a minigame might work better for them.

But anyway judging from the behind the scenes video it looks like smithing, enchanting, and alchemy will be recipe systems, with an animation of your player doing the action to make it more interesting. Same will probably go for cooking, but the others just seem like they should be some sort of minigame rather than just clicking to make your player do something while you take a smoke break.

That said when I say "minigame" I'm not talking about some little 2d timing game that cuts away from the action. It needs to be built into the system correctly. If I want to believe that my character has a level 100 security skill I need to see him actually lockpicking.

Yup. I wanted to mash the A button. Oh why oh why can't they let me mash the A button!

Too bad they don't have you working on the game, then I would have received the wood chopping mashing the A button game I dreamt of.


Ya that's exactly what I would have figured, and had assumed the non skill based activities were going to be non skill based activities. Nothing as complicated as mashing the A button mind you, but something with a bit more depth to it.

Be grateful we have this at all. Skyrim's not a life simulator, it's a videogame. Chopping wood and stuff is a nice bonus to fighting dragons and crawling dungeons.

Im sure he is grateful, but like me, he thought there was more to it then just an animation. And its a pitty there isnt a little mini game to them.

As for "what would you rather mash the A button?" - i love how much thought process you put into that idea. I bet you "play" games by watching video's of them? what would you rather touch the keyboard/control pad? cmon, think a little bit more! the mini games in Oblivion had nothing to do with mashing the A button. Were they perfect? no, but was more fun then just watching an animation of them picking a lock or whatever