Disclaimer: Please note that I love this game (190 hours into it already, yikes!). There are many wonderful things to Skyrim, and Betheada have poured a lot of creative energy into it. Just as there are many things to praise about this game, so too are there valid criticisms. I am taking this opportunity to voice one of these criticisms, to share my disappointment about a particular aspect, despite enjoying the game. Obviously no game is perfect, obviously no game can please everyone. As rational advlts we can and should open dialogue to discuss what we see as potential improvements for the creative direction of this wonderful series. Please be aware of that before reading/commenting. Also, there will be discussions of quests, so be warned of potential spoilers. I'll avoid as much as possible.



Quests, particularly the guild questlines.... Seem significantly more generic and less story-driven in Skyrim. There are obviously some GREAT quests, and I love the Lore-ish overtones in some of them.... But there is this inescapable feeling of repetitiveness and one-dimensionality to the narrative that I have never felt in a Bethesda game before.

Just to clarify, I am not speaking of the Radiant "Miscellaneous" quests (Obviously those were always going to be dull fetch/kill chores, that's fine). I am actually referring to the named quests with their dedicated stories. I find myself not really caring about progressing them because all too frequently all the stories are much of "fetch this thing you never heard of until just now from this dungeon" or "go kill this person in this dungeon", rinse, repeat. This is alarming, because I have been absolutely riveted by previous titles from Bethesda and found it hard to stop progressing. I WANT to be as enthralled in Skyrim, but finding myself simply not caring due to uninteresting stories.

By the way, please don't feel it necessary to mention specific instances of awesome story telling in Skyrim, because I am not suggesting they don't exist. They clearly do. But for every good quest or story, there are a substantial more of generic ones, a ratio never encountered in a Bethesda game before. That's what I am concerned and disappointed about.... There just seems to be a substantial amount of generic quests in Skyrim, whereas in Oblivion and Morrowind there were more variety.

The Mages questline is an apt example. The mages questline was supremely short, had a shallow and formulaic plot, an obvious and one-dimensional antagonist, it provided little to no backstory of any of the plot elements, and abruptly ended with a nonsensical and highly implausible outcome. I literally had a mouth-dropping "WTF" moment when the guy announced I am now arch-Mage..... I 100% was just thinking to myself "oh good, this story is now picking up in pace...." when it abruptly just ended like that. I seriously thought defeating Uncano was chapter one.... It instinctively felt like that. That I would have to go meet with the Psijic order, and continue uncovering the mystery of the Eye. That Uncano's interference with the Eye had inadvertently tainted the link to Aetherius, starting a chain of events that could have potentially ended in Nirn losing magicka altogether, leading you to journey to cleanse Magicka... . SOMETHING like that. A story with an actual intriguing plot. After all, at the beginning.... You are warned by the Psijic Order that you have accidentally set of a chain of terrible events, and that a great danger lies ahead. And all that happened to be was some snotty High Elf made a power grab? That was absurdly anti-climatic. And then after this incredibly quick and boring story is finished, this old wizard who has been working at the college for decades, turns to you, a student who has been there for mere days/weeks... And announces you Arch-Mage..... It was just insane. Also, why on earth did the Psijic order wait until AFTER Uncano tried to use the eye before taking it??? They knew he would try, they knew it was dangerous, so why on earth did they sit around twiddling their thumbs for the disaster to occur, and THEN appear announcing they are going to take it???? It's just.... Ugh!




Anyway... I kind of started to rant there, and although I have similar disappointments to most of the other questlines.... I will simply provide my proposal for what Bethesda should do for future TES games....... Use fantasy novel writers!!!! This is already happening a bit with games, it would be great to see a real investment. It would be soooo ludicrously awesome to get the likes of Feist, Pratchett, Sanderson, Rothfuss, etc.... Involved into crafting really fascinating stories within the TES realm. There is so much potential for good story telling in TES, and sadly I have been disappointed with most of what Skyrim is offering.

Well said, pretty much agree with you on all points. Have very much enjoyed some stories and quests here and there but most lack depth. Especially the Winterhold quest line as you pointed out. It should be a candidate for a total rewrite/revamp in a patch.

I want to play your version of the college of winterhold quest line lol

Yeah, extending the story would be great. For the College of Winterhold Honestly, the stories are so rushed and abrupt.... The Companions was similarly one-dimensional and shallow.

Pretty much the Thieves Guild is the only questline I fully enjoyed.

Ha ha, thanks. If only I had access to Bethesda's resources *chuckles*

Really?

I hated the Mages Guild style questlines in Oblivion. I hated that there were so many huge and major threats just poping up at the same time as Oblivion gates appearing everywhere. There really should only be one world ending threat going on at once in a game like Skyrim, which means that the 'guild' quest lines should be relegated to dealing petty internal squabbles and politics. Edit - No that's not quite what I want, but I don't want the 'guild' questlines from being about world changing things. They are just small guilds, leave world changing for history books and the main questline.

You actually want every quest line in the game to come down to some major catastrophe? Why? That would just belittle the threat from the main quest story and personally I don't want that. I want the quest lines that I take up to actually have something to do with the group I'm 'questing' for that doesn't come down to we awoke an ancient threat/ we started events that will lead to blah blah blah/ oh know we have accidentally destroyed the universe, go fix it and then carry on with the now pathetic seeming problem of the dragons, actually come to think of it we have the power to destroy the universe why haven't we dealt with the dragons already? You see my problem.

It may be that the mages questline is too short but then the Oblivion one wasn't that long either after you took out the rubbish "Go visit all the towns and do stupid time consuming quests for us in all of them" quests. But do bear in mind it isn't the mages guild, it's a small group of mages largely located in one building so it's not going to be able, logically, to offer nearly as many opportunities.

As far as the other, standalone, quest's go I really can't see the problem. Granted there are the standard fetch and carry quests but there also real gems out there. The daedric prince quests that you don't know are daedric quests when you start them are brilliant, the Silver-Blood Forsworn questline in Markarth is brilliant to. And so are a dozen others I have done and there are probably a dozen more that good that I haven't found yet.

Skyrim isn't like previous ES games, there isn't just 3-4 major guild questlines, the main quest, than a bunch of other pointless things.

Instead there is the main quest and then a whole raft of lessor quest lines and then beyond them are the fetch and carry types.

Bethesda themselves actually stated prior to release that there would be less emphasis on the Main Quest in order to reduce trivialisation of the other questlines, and I agree with that sentiment. The ideological beauty of Elder Scrolls is that we all craft our own stories. So yes, all the different questlines should feel big and important in their own way. And that is a design choice Bethesda themselves supposedly strived for (yet evidently did not succeed).

However - you have misinterpreted one thing. I am not suggesting a major catastrophe is critical for a story, far from it. Naturally there are many types of plot devices that do not rely on disaster to advance a story or make it interesting. The problem is Bethesda didn't really use ANY of them. As an avid reader of Fantasy, the totally bland and one dimensional stories were all the more glaring. Much of the narrative in Skyrim is a series of disconnected, emotionless chores. For example, the College of WInterhold's story can be surmised as: Collect an Object > Collect another Object > Bad Guy uses first Object while you were gone > Collect Another Object to defeat Bad Guy > End.


So what I desire is simply better story telling. Longer, plausible plots, fascinating plot twists, use of Lore, believable characters and motivations, and so forth.


Lastly, there was no need to mention the Daedric quests (I knew someone would), which is why I had provided this beforehand: "By the way, please don't feel it necessary to mention specific instances of awesome story telling in Skyrim, because I am not suggesting they don't exist. They clearly do. But for every good quest or story, there are a substantial more of generic ones, a ratio never encountered in a Bethesda game before."

OP did not compare skyrim with oblivion, so not sure why you brought that up.

he's request and/or suggestion is simple and understandable, he wants quests to have more depth, or at least last longer. he isnt asking ever quests to be "save the world" type, so again, dont know where you got that idea.

it's fine if you enjoy the quests, but it simply make no sense saying side quests can not be as interesting as the main one.

mage college for example, as the OP stated, abruntly ended without telling you what the heck you have being doing other than telling you that you have just got promoted.

again, it's cool if you like it. But I find the guild quest being shallow and for the most part, linear and unexciting.

I somewhat do agree with you... one of the most awesome zones in the game (blackreach) is used in two differnt quests, also for the main quest you have to attend the College of W. which is also a kind of recycling...

now you mentioned it, i have had the mq force me to join thief's guild...

(Possible SPOILER)




I was astonished to see how fast my character went from rookie to Harbinger in the companions quest-line. I'm saving dark brotherhood for the end, that's one guild I really don't want to be disappointed with.

Dont hope for too much..DB is equally disappointing.

Yeah.... After just two quests you join the Inner Circle of the Companions? You've gained the trust of these hardened warriors instantaneously? It was crazy.... Very rushed.

Unfortunately.... There is the same degree of "rushed" to DB, sorry to say.....

I think the thieves guild main questline missions were awesome, but still the thieves guild was done the wrong way.

First of all, there was way too much straight up combat and way too little actual sneaking/pickpocketing/lockpicking in the main questline. The side missions had plenty of it, but I pretty much disregarded those because OMG THE GUILD IS IN TROUBLE GO AND DO THE MAIN QUESTLINE. It would've been cooler if you'd have to work your way up the thieves guild like in oblivion, and you had to do a quota of side quests to advance. Then the thieves guild would feel like it's more a thieves guild and less an adventuring guild.

Same goes for the mage guild btw. It would've been really cool if you needed to do sidequests that had to do with specific schools of magic to advance. It just feels like bethesda applied the philosophy of "everyone should be able to finish this guild". The actual magic parts of the mages guild are optional while the generic combat part of the guild is mandatory. Same for the thieves guild.

Mage's guild quest in oblivion was quite boring as well. But yea all the guild quests in Skyrim were :confused:
Bethesda was too busy with creating more interesting dungeons, they forgot to craft nice plots

i actually like the quests in oblivion
they had length and were for me very interesting
but...
and not at all in skyrim
boring..generic and why should i bother quests, and i think their radiant ai or whatever they called it is causing the glitches in the game
i am not sure what they were doing in this game its replay value for me is zero [i put in over 120 hours one playthru-one character]. i will play it again when the dlc comes out
just as i did dragon age 1 and 2 but not start a new game

instead i will play oblivion again

I didn't mention the technical side to how the questlines and guilds work, but there are many problems to them, yup.

Making the skill archetypes optimised for the questlines would have made a tremendous contribution. The Thieves Guild partially implemented this - but it could have been better. Bonuses to rewards for not being detected, and no enemies being killed... Would have been a great inclusion to all the Thieves Guild quests. Similarly, the Mages Guild should have required the specific use of spells to make quests easier or even accessible. For example... Perhaps a really, really thin ledge you have to walk across and could fall off and die, and its completely dark and you can't see it.. Making it REQUIRED to use Magelight or Candlelight in order to see, and make passage across safely. That's just one example where the use of magic could have actually been used to strengthen the questlines.

Another technical feature SHOULD have been the inclusion of skill requirements again. They were so, so logical and good in Morrowind. Of course a player should have some aptitude in the skills of a guild before they can advance in ranks!!!!

My biggest gripe is definitely the lack of story telling in this game, though. Too many quests aren't stories. They are a series of disconnected, meaningless chores.

The guild quests weren't the best and they were quite short. It seems like they were focusing more on giving you as much content as possible as quickly as possible. Want to be a werewolf? Bam! 2 quests and your there. However, I still enjoyed doing the quests and I think the side quests (not the misc) are much better in this game.

Go there, kill that, pick up that, get back, rinse & repeat 2890 times....THE END

No he didn't mention Oblivion and I didn't say he did I was using it as an example.

And yes actually he did make the allusion that he would like more world ending plots.



No I do think it would have been nice to have more length in the quests. But for some reason people seem to think that it's a problem that had never existed before Skyrim. Skyrim has just done away with the 'filler' go kill some rats quests in the guild questlines. Probably in an effort to make them seem more action packed. And lets face it most people hated those old newbie missions.

But that's how it's always been. Morrowind was filled to the brim with fetch quests, simple killing quests and quests where you had to deliver an item to someone. I actually think the quality of quests has only been improving throughout the series.

Once again I;ve been lucky enough to pick up the good not boring version of a TES game. I'm finding the quests actually more interesting than Oblivion. I'm not all the way though the mages guild but so far its got lots of personality. Ingernal I've found the quests and enemies and allies have lots more nterst and personality

I only need to finish the Thieves guild and College but so far every other guild is disappointing in some way.

DB- Somewhat disappointing, they just rushed you through it.

Battle for Skyrim- The same quest was repeated 5 times, very repetitive.

MQ- Anticlimactic ending, Alduin takes 15 seconds to kill.

Other then these Skyrim is amazing, and I have around 70 hours in and I'm no where close to exploring everything. Hopefully future DLC's will have better stories.