» Sat Aug 06, 2016 3:52 pm So don't get me wrong, Skyrim still is a great game and ordinarily I would just pop it in - but with the remaster on the horizon I want to "save myself". I guess I just wanted to make a thread to celebrate its unique successes, and hope that a lot of those successes carry on to TES VI. I may [censored] about the deficiencies of Fallout 4 along the way (which if I've learnt anything by now, is a great way to get a rinsing on Bethesda forums). Basically, I'm looking to reinforce Bethesda making more games just like Skyrim. As a caveat, I never actually played any of the other Elder Scrolls games, but I am a veteran of playing other classic RPGs with attribute systems (Arcanum, FO 1/2/3/NV, VtMB, Icewind Dale 2, KoTOR, etc.). Plus keep in mind, these are all my opinions.
1) The game was almost perfectly streamlined in terms of character progression. Many people decried and bemoaned the loss of attributes from Oblivion when Skyrim first hit, but I do think the idea of an attribute system is a little retrograde. It's somewhat ludicrous to propose, even in a fantasy game, that this race always has +5 strength and -2 agility with this race has always +2 intelligence, etc. People vary, and either I want a situation where they races are treated as fundamentally equal in a sense of their capabilities or I want a game where they are fundamentally very different in their capabilities (with them being fictional, there's no real world race equality argument you can conceivably extrapolate from a race in a fantasy game, just to put the real world guff aside).
I thought the "learn while you do" system in Skyrim was ingenious. For once, you have a system that makes perfect sense - you practice a skill, you get better at it. I really am not sure why a fair few people didn't like this system - it makes far more sense than, "I just stabbed an ogre in the eye and got a certain amount of generic XP which I invested into becoming a blacksmith - because obviously that logically follows." And to curb the sense that this game had been streamlined too much, levelling a lot of these skills was actually hard and did require effort and planning. I also appreciate some of these skills were easier to level than others, being slapped around in heavy armour should be a harder skill to learn than the high risk high reward skill of pickpocketing. Further, the (slightly) meta levels people go to in order to level these skills also worked logically - in real life, if you could heal almost indefinitely and wanted to learn better how to position yourself to best make use of the armour you're wearing, wouldn't you do so?
All in all, both these factors produced an extremely organic system of play, which also made sense on a logical level (why should every member of every race be the same in terms of capabilities, why shouldn't people learn through doing?) that offered both challenge and yet appealed to common sense. All in all, it was pretty sweet.
FO4 gripe and some nitty-gritty:
Spoiler
2) Skyrim was a great example of the high fantasy DnD archetypal adventure. First of all, the sandbox. Imagine player DnD pen and paper with a dungeon master, he has his ideas of what you want he wants you to do, but you and the rest of the players go, "Yeah, we want to go north. We don't know why we want to, or what may be up there, we just want to go [censored] north" The dungeon master, though obviously upset his grand plans haven't been realised, now has to make a new idea of what's happening in the north - and so stories unfold.
Skyrim perfectly achieves that adventurer sensibility. The fact that you are Dragonborn means you have a destiny, and destinies can wait because - you know - they're predestined. It really reinforces the idea of going off and doing your own thing, and experiencing unexpected consequences of doing your own thing, like few games have before.
Further, I found most Skyrim stories lacking in drama but high in spectacle and grandeur. For a fantasy game, this is not a bad thing. Too much drama in a fantasy game (Game of Thrones style) gets you too invested in one particular thing and detracts from the original sandbox adventurer ideal. In Skyrim, loads of the time, I investigated things not for their dramatic hooks but to dig into the lore and history and setting of the place. Plus the game offered amazing visuals, Blackreach - anyone? Discovering stuff like that further adds to the desires to explore.
FO4 gripe:
Spoiler
Further, the tone was never right for FO3 or FO4. FO1/2/NV has an appreciation that the world has ended, and gives that sense of bleakness and dramatic weight - but at the same time it has a sense of life carrying on, with the appropriate levity and mock of the values which contributed to the war. I never got dramatic weight in FO3 as it played too heavy on the surreal notes and set the game up as goodies vs. baddies, whereas FO4 was way too much Shaun-centric to make much of what you did in the setting have much heft - not good paired with its ineffectual levelling system. As a modern adaptation, NV gave dramatic heft without pre-supposing a role, much like Skyrim - and yet it had a tone matching the universe too. Take note, Bethesda - if I'm searching for a son in TES VI heads will roll!
3) Combat, in the end and fully patched with Legendary difficulty, was great. Multiple ways to achieve what you want (straight up melee, sneak attacks, ranged attacks, mind control, offensive spells, turning into some sort of crazy monster, or just avoidance of combat in general) and with so many approaches it always stays fresh and interesting. Legendary was also hard, and didn't presuppose anything like not being able to fast travel and not being able to save when you like.
FO4 gripe:
Spoiler
I think Bethesda got their wires crossed between New Vegas's hardcoe mode and between people (the italics are for a faint sense of disdain, but I understand "different strokes for different folks" so I'm not here to judge individuals preferences to gameplay - but for god's sake if you want to play a medieval sims game play Sims Medieval!) wanting realism. hardcoe mode added some realism, but that realism added to difficulty and not to time wastage in the form of tedium like FO4 (and genuinely people don't have that time to spend on your game in their evenings). These concepts were confused in FO4, and it was detrimental to players like me having experience of FO3, FO:NV and Skyrim.
If you want different modes Bethesda, appreciate people like their concepts exclusive. Now when I play FO4 I feel like a loser for not playing max difficulty, but I don't have time to play max difficulty and it be rewarding because you muddled saving concepts (and realism health concepts, plus time-saving fast travel concepts) with difficulty! Give your games a couple of modes, for god's sake!
What I'm trying to say is, Skyrim was a colossus of merging the right level of character streamlining with the right level of adventurous (sometimes ineffectual, but beautiful, sandbox - to its benefit) with the right level of difficulty - and when you think of it a shedload of role-playing left in the player's hands. It was a thoroughly fun game to play, which is why if they don't make any irritating additions to gameplay, I'll be definitely picking up the remastered version. It was an RPG for a modern age, executed exceptionally.
I have an enduring Redguard RP wielding a 353 damage Stalhrim greatsword imbued with 50 points of Chaos Damage, that will set her straight!
