Hello Skyrim Community,

I have a very interesting concern that I do not believe has been brought up previously. With that being said, I truly loved the idea of Oblivion gates and taking the fight to the enemy on their home turf. However, after one Oblivion gate to the next, the task became more tedious and more of a job, than something actually enjoyable and fun. Now my question to all of you is will dragons be the new Oblivion gates in Skyrim? There is no right or wrong answer to this question, but merely your own personal opinions, and I would like to hear them. From what we have heard about the development of dragons, they sound absolutely amazing and not being scripted is only icing on the cake. However, could they at one point in time become more of a job than actually something that's fun?

May the spoils of Skyrim be ours!

Redguard King

Its all dependand of the dragon combat ai and the havock physics. I don't think smashing a dragon's face with my sword and watching it react like it does could ever get old, but we'll see I guess. I think it will be a lot of fun though, even the 10'th time you fight one.

In terms of role, the dragons fill a similar niche to the gates. The real question just comes down to "Is fighting a dragon more fun than walking into Oblivion to grab a sigil stone?" I'm inclined to believe so, but we'll need to actually play firsthand to see for ourselves. What may seem exciting and fun could get boring after a while, but we won't know for sure until that time comes.

I absolutely hate jumping to conclusions, but from what I've seen and heard it sounds like the dragons will be the new oblivion gates. It's unfortunate that you have to fight them early. I hope if you do, it will be a baby or you will be forced to run for your life.



Wow, I really want Cyrodiil remade. The gates of Oblivion should've spawned you into Dagon's realm, which is it's own massive world that you explore instead of a few random linear levels. Maybe if you make your way through the main quest you'll eventually find Dagon's throne. He's the prince of destruction through natural disasters. There should've been tornadoes, tsunamis, etc. I digress...

Agreed.

As mentioned above, we'll have to see. When I got the idea of running through hell to grab a stone to shut it down, travelling through Daedra infested lands amidst oceans of lava, it sounded very exciting! Then I did a few, and it got boring quick. Even if the interiors changed and you got some nice loot from it, for some reason, it got very boring for me very quickly. It svcked because Dagon's realm looked awesome, I love Daedra architecture.

Hopefully, the experience of fighting a dragon is fun, although in theory dragon fights sound like they would go in a similar fashion everytime you fought one, and thus would get boring quickly. The continuous addition of Dragon Shouts will give us the reward, and will provide more entertainment the next time we face off with a dragon.

This pretty much sums up what I think. Altough, from what I know you may not know when a dragon appears, thus making it at least a bit more exciting. In Oblivion you could choose whether you enter the gate or not (when it wasn't for a quest at least).

There's still not enough information concerning this though, but I have my hopes up.

I can see the similarity, but I doubt a dragon fight will take more than 1-2 minutes to be done. The only thing that could really annoy me would be to be attacked too often, something like the cliff racers.

I can't really be certain at this time, of course, though I think the most important thing is whether or not Bethesda can keep dragon fights from becoming repetitive. We're told that they're actions are non-scripted and unpredictable, but this doesn't guarentee that fights against dragons won't eventually start to feel like you're just doing the same thing over and over again. If Bethesda can truly succeed in making dragons not repetitive, I think that will help a lot. Also, another factor that contributrd to making Oblivion gates tedious was that they tended to be very long and drawn out. I've sometimes spent multiple in-game days on one Oblivion gate, and these are things you'd probably do many times over the course of the game, in scenery that gets rather repetitive. Oblivion gates were often much longer than they needed to be, or really should have been,which was made even more annoying by the fact that often, you really didn't actually have to traverse that much space, but there was forced longevity due to impassable barriers that could only be circumvented using fairly indrect paths, often, you could just see the tower right there, but needed to go through a long network of caves to reach it due to hills too steep to climb in the way. Hopefully with Skyrim's dragons, Bethesda will remember that while they can't be killed too quickly or they won't feel suitably epic, they also shouldn't get carried a way and draw out each dragon fight to the point that it stops being epic and just becomes annoying.

I voted "need more information" because, well, like people have said above, I don't think we know enough yet. But I completely agree with you about the Oblivion Gates in Oblivion. Closing an Oblivion Gate was my least favorite part of the game, and I never closed any gates that weren't part of quests. Part of the problem was that there was so little variety in Oblivion, not only did we only have five(?) random Oblivion maps, but everything ended up looking the same--it was one tone throughout, no matter which map you were in.

I'm hoping that the dragons will be more along the lines of a "secret ingredient" that will spice up the game at intervals. It would be nice if there were different types of dragons, or at least different personalities (some would want to swoop down and fight you head on, others might like to strafe you, etc.), but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

The difference for me is that a dragon is a creature. Creatures are fun to fight and have multiple different ways to defeat it. The Oblivion gates always ended with you grabbing the sigil stonestone their was no way around it. The lack of options in the Oblivion gates is why I think they got boring for most people. Ultimately though I don't have enough information to conclude if a dragon will only have one way to defeat it.

Fighting dragons definitely will take less time, so I'm sure it won't get boring as fast.

My least favorite thing about Oblivion gates was the tedious passages and tunnels that made them long, tedious and sometimes, dead boring, but I believe that fighting a dragon does not require tedious navigation through dungeons, so my answer is no, they will not be, if anything, similarly boring to OB gates. bliviongate:

Meh, dragons should be difficult and long imo, they need to be something best avoided, and dangerous if you choose to fight; else why isn't anyone else going out and successfully smashing them?

Imo, the Wyverns in Monster hunter (3, I think) have the right idea. If you choose to fight one instead of run away you better bring everything you got.. BUT if you know you can't beat them, they're fairly easy to avoid without having to engage, as long as you're careful.

I agree a little less lava, make it a horrible place with different flavors of pain!


Also remember people we had to walk to the sigil stone but in this game the dragon flies to you!

I don't see how fighting a dragon could be compared to fighting your way up tower(s) to get a sigil stone. It remains to be seen yet how the battle of fighting a dragon can go but it's a long fight to a sigil stone with loot, traps and multiple enemies using magic and weapons along the way. I love closing Oblivion Gates.

bliviongate:

i think they will be more like clifdragons on the annoyance scale

I never like being in the realm of OB and it didn't help at all that all places were exactly the same. Dragons in Skyrim as said will be unscripted and not repetitive. As long as I enjoy fighting them they will never be annoying. OBs gates were annoying from the beginning.

I would really like to believe they aren't like the OB gates. Even the first OB gate wasn't fun for me, only the last one with that giant machine coming out of the OB gate to destroy the city. THAT was challenging and fun... but I didn't like ANY OB gate...

Well, there's a little game called Shadow of the Colossus, and when it first came out a lot of people were worried that it would get repetitive, saying "It's nothing but boss battles" and "But won't it be the same thing again and a again?"

Then the game came out and every Colossus was fought in a unique and challenging way.

Now, I don't expect quite this level of variation from the dragons. After all, they're dragons, how much variation can you get? But if you put each dragon in a distinct environment and give it some objects with which to perform scripted actions, you may actually be able to make it more varied. Plus, the Dragon Shouts will allow you to fight stronger dragons in different ways. For example, you may get the dragon shout to knock back enemies, and the next dragon you fight can be crashed into walls if you use that shout on it. However, the next dragon you fight might be more stable while flying, and so you have to change your tactics to fight it effectively.

It's all about changing the things a player is used to. That's how you get variation. You give the player a tool to use, let him get used to it, then take it from him or render it useless, so that he has to adapt to a new play style.

The Oblivion gates were stupid, Pointless even But the dragons will have a point, learn new dragon shouts, and they will attack on towns will be cool, but hopefully the attacks wont be too bad

I voted "need more information" because, obviously, we do. But I fear that dragons will be much like Oblivion gates, and actually in two senses. Not only am I afraid that they'll become tedious and repetitive, but that they'll always be there, hanging around, nagging at me when I'd rather be out doing something entirely different.

I think it is far too early to judge whether the Dragon fights will be the new Oblivion Gates.

As long as there is variation between the fights I think they will remain exciting, the Oblivion Gates all had to be closed the same way hence why they were just tedious. The way you fight with a dragon will come down to how you choose to fight it. Unless Bethesda decided to ruin it by adding some HORRIBLE quick time events to end a dragon fight.

I shall wait until November and the first time I actually throw down with one of the scaled beasties before I make judgement though. And knowing my fanboyism I will love them regardless. :tes:

I chose the 3rd option because we do need more information. The reason Oblivion Gates were so boring and monotonous were because they took such a long time to destroy. The champion was slaying monsters as he normally does, only this time it is on different terrain. I'm hoping that dragon fights will be short and extremely intense; it shouldn't be exactly like fighting any other monster. I honestly don't think they'll become as boring as fast as the gates did because, obviously, a dragon will most likely be able to be destroyed faster than one of those portals; and I think this is what Bethesda strove for.

As opposed to the grotesque amount of Oblivion Gates there are only 20 or so Dragons. I heard there was a limited number of them. There may be to little and it would take several playthroughs for us to get are fill.
Still Oblivions gates get interesting again when you stop visiting them for a while.

Yes! The game would benefit if you have to flee the first couple of times. This would make it more rewarding when you slay your first dragon (which I suppose will continue to exist in the world at the same strenght until slayed).
Later in the game you should also be forced to flee sometimes! (impossible to win the fight - no matter how many times you load) - this would also make it really interesting for hardcoe players (when am I actually confident enough to get head-to-head with the particular dragon?)

No baby dragons IMO! There is different kinds of dragons, some are stronger others are weaker (but you shouldn't be able to slay the weakest dragon until lvl 8-10 [lvl 4-5 in Oblivion] or something and that should be one hell of a tough fight!).