This a post on how i was introduced to the Elder Scrolls franchise. [If this is too long for you to read then don't]

I first discovered the Elder Scrolls with the purchase of Oblivion. I had never encountered a previous title from the series and never read nor heard about the series before. I am an avid PC gamer who does play RPGs mainly but for what ever reason i never encountered the first 3 chapters of the game. i had played many many other RPG games both obscure and best sellers. i have also been gaming since the apple ii, so well over 25 years.

i bought oblivion in 2006 and I started the game up and I hated it. I hated the first person view point, (yet i enjoy the occasional FPS), I hated the player skill over character skill aspects. i hated the levelling system (for the character specific). I was so upset i wanted my money back because i felt like I was "conned" this wasn't an RPG it was a fantasy FPS. I even phoned Bethesda Studios and Ranted at them about being mislead. I couldn't sell it because it was a PC game and you can't get returns for PC games because people fear you will just pirate the disks and then return the game. I was stuck with it so I threw the game onto my book shelf and it stayed there for 6 months,

I then got bored one night and i saw that the game was still installed on my computer i had just deleted the short cut and not uninstalled the game, (having no Hard drive space crunch). So i started it up and played the game again. I played around for about an hour and hated the levelling up system and having to make sure I levelled up x number of skills tied to each attribute so I got the best stat increase. For me it made the levelling system feel like a spread sheet, making sure i got all the stats increased with the skills but never over levelling a skill for fear I'd lose future stat increases, Ugg hated this. I went online to see if there was a mod that just gave you the stat increase easier. I found one that overhauled the levelling up system completely and used that.

So I started the game again and this time I kinda learned how i wanted to play and enjoyed the magic system. I went to join the mages guild but got turned away at the university I was feeling a bit bummed but went to cheydinhall to start the process. Where the guild house leader tried to kill me. I was pissed, (in an RP sense) so i quit the mages guild and went back to the imperial city where I was trying to find something to do. I discovered the Arena and became Grand Champion. Yet when I did my fellow blue teammate turned out to hate me and i was feeling at a lost again. So i left the arena and bought my first home in the water front and went to sleep. Poof the Dark brotherhood appeared to me and said join our family Finally i had a group that actually wanted me. i ran through the Dark brotherhood quest line and discovered something.

I had come to actually like most of the mechanics i hate when i first bought the game. hated so much i felt i was ripped off, and honestly felt that way because the game was so different from any RPG experience I have had. Yet i love the first person perspective, I still wish 3rd person was viable however. i loved player skill component to the game because I saw myself improve as i played even though at first i svcked. i found myself discovering nuggets in the game that i loved. i loved that the NPCs had lives and lived them. i loved that the game scaled to me. (I know others hate this but i felt it was the best design choice for the game. My experience was impactful because I was able to be the Grand champion at lvl 10. If you don't take lvl 10 as anything but a META game stat that has nothing to do with your power level but only a stat that measure progression from a fixed starting point. then it doesn't seem all that odd. My ability wit ha sword was VERY high and shield because i started out as a mage but switched. So lvl 10 didn't at all represent my abilities as a warrior. So it wasn't a power measure which other rpg use for level. It was simply a rough guide for the engine to give me challenging enemies.

I found myself exploring the game and realising that i was wrong. I was honest about how I felt about the game and i honestly hated many aspects but when I became immersed in the world and forgot about them I found that I actually grew to like them. Some i never liked, the way characters levelled up i can't stand.

My point is that our expectations of how things are done in the past or how we are use to them are not sufficient reasons to be against things. Gamers are a strange bunch we demand innovation in out games yet seem to get angry when games add them. I hope to see more innovation with skyrim, as oblivion open my eyes that i had become too set in my expectations on how a RPG should play.

Do not misunderstand me some people will hate given features period full stop. I will never like the way oblivion levelled characters yet I loved the way the game scaled to you so you were always challenged. So long as you didn't use exploits. Yet i know that other people are never going to like that system. All I am saying is that we need to keep an open mind about Skyrim and the innovations that may or may not be introduced. A feature you may hate after a couple hours of play may turn into a feature you love after 10 hours of play.