What if Skyrim had 2D graphics, but 10 times the content? Larger cities, 500+ NPCs in each city, MUCH longer quests, unique characters, little voice acting BUT with a stellar script? Let's take some examples :

Planescape : Torment
My favorite game of all time (from all genres) AND my favorite book of all time. Yep, this game is both my favorite game of all time AND my favorite book of all time. The story, the characters, the writing, all unparalleled. 800,000 total words in the game, worth of 5,000 pages (if it were a book). In a way it's like reading a book, but you can change it as you read it, and you can see the results before your eyes as you're reading. The game is like a life-changing experience. Back when I played it the first time, it changed the way I think, it left such a big impact on my mind. It's also regarded as a classic game, behemoth of RPGs. 2D graphics do not hold the game back, not by one bit. A game made with emotion and heart.

Baldur's Gate Saga
Similar to Planescape : Torment, but with more creature variety, more battles and action. The substance in this game is amazing, it takes thought, tactics before you plunge into battle. You need to use your wits to solve puzzles. This game can be overwhelming and simple at the same time because it doesn't depend on the game, but on the player. There are hidden meanings in the text that can really shorten you way to quest completion when identified and unlocked, whereas when you don't identify the hidden meaning, you would go a long trip, exploring around and finding even more quests and things to do. A win win game aspect. Again, it's a game with a 2D isometric graphics engine. Another game made with emotion and heart.

Problems I see with today's gaming :

Games Void of Heart.
The problem I see with Skyrim (and not just Skyrim, but with today's games in general) is that they are cut and over-simplified, targeted at a much more inexpert and young audience. They are also geared towards making as much $$$ as possible, "The craftsmanship can go to hell, all I see is $$$ and luxury." Games void in emotion and heart, really.

Graphical Over-Attention.
If a game doesn't look good, I won't play it. That's how people are reasoning nowadays. Developers are over-focusing on graphics and looks, like a god creating a beautiful chick with empty personality. No sophistication, no excitement, no emotion. Look at Skyrim, it's beautiful really, you won't, no, there's no way in hell you would get bored looked at the landscape in Skyrim because it's just too damn beautiful.. BUT this is a game, not a vacation 3D tour. Skyrim seriously lacks depth. You see a small lake in the desert and after a whole day without taking a shower, walking in the desert for 24 hours, you look at the lake with excitement and you run to it and jump in it, only to break you knee because it's so damn shallow.

I don't need spoon feeding. It's unnecessary. I only need descriptive text and a 2D picture to 'render' a 3D model in my brain, I don't need the engine to render every little tiny bit of detail for me because I can do that on my own, just give me a place to start.

I don't even think about the graphics when I play these 2D isometric games. I don't think about what I see, I think about with I THINK I see. I find nowadays' graphics to be too spoon feeding (if that's the correct term), more geared towards lazy people who do not want to use one of their most treasured gifts, imagination and sense of art. Even text can help you render a 3D model in your brain, unless you're totally illiterate.

Multiplayer Focused, All Fun, No Experience and Lacking Substance.
This is not geared towards Skyrim, because thankfully, Skyrim is one of the very few latest games that does not focus on Multiplayer, in fact, it doesn't even have Multiplayer. Though I wanted to mentioned this point anyways. Developers are aiming to "Let's give them a map, let's give them some enemies, let's give them some Co-op and let them have a little fun." and that's it. KILL KILL KILL relentlessly and senselessly. No motivation besides Stone Age instinct. Games like the ones I mentioned above, not only give you fun, but also give you a life changing experience.

Do you think Skyrim would be a success if it had 2D isometric graphics but 10 times the content? I doubt this but I want to hear your thoughts. Also how would you prefer it?

Discuss.

No Just No....

What you have to remember about Planescape and Baldur's Gate is that those graphics were absolutely remarkable for their time. SO, to envision Skyrim with 2d grapics would be like Baldur's Gate with 8 bit Nintendo graphics. That would have svcked! I think competitive graphics are 100% necessary, especially in RPG's where immersion is what the developer's goal should be.

Now, to answer your question in a purely hypothetical sense: No. I love these graphics way too much, and I already find the amount of content daunting-- not to mention that mods are right around the corner.

EDIT: I do wish that there was more strategy and puzzle involved in Skyrim, as well as a MUCH larger dialogue tree of options (even if they result in the same end).

Unfortunately people are all about graphics nowadays... so Bethesda would lose money. Skyrim is fine how it is though to get more content wait until february for mods to get developed.

Want want want want want.

I love 2D isometric games. Only problem is we wouldn't get to see Nirn's incredible sky.

No. In this day and age we shouldn't be asked this question. They can do beautiful 3D worlds with rich content. They just don't want to. The time/resources excuse is just bull, the programmers do the programming, the artists do the models and the writers do the story, there is plenty of time to be excellent in all departments with the same budget, if you hire the best people and if you know how to reach your goals.

Well you mentioned some good points but you mentioned immersion. Skyrim's over-simplified, small cities, lack of unique characters with unique personality and depth, and short, straight-to-the point quests are not what I really call immersion. Huge cities, full of unique and interesting characters that don't feel like dummies and long quests in a way that every quests feels like an epic journey is what I call immersion. Also, DIALOG OPTIONS, oh how I wish Skyrim had more of those.

About the graphics, yes, unfortunately stellar, almost photorealistic graphics are must nowadays. I would rather sacrifice a bit of pixels on the screen than sacrifice outstanding depth, really :/

Your proposition is too vague. 2D graphics do not promise 10 times the content (you just listed 2 good 2d games, there has been thousands good or not), furthermore you seem to have, like so many others, fixated on a single flaw in Skyrim (simplicity) and judge the whole product by it.


This.
There is a reason those past games have "poor" graphics.


And last, your "10 times the content" is something that is just impossible to achieve. Skyrim already has a very advanced radiant AI, there are truckloads of the most unexpected things people do and say. Your great "STELLAR script" is a very vague term and once again is not guaranteed by poor graphics.

I think you should reconsider your statement.
And stop comparing apples to oranges.
And plus, video games are no longer the joy of a small elite. There is a reason games become more focused on casuals and newbies: majority of users are such.

Skyrim is hardly the best game I've played but it most certainly does not deserve all this criticism.

all that matters in games is the point when time/dollar spent = fun/dollar spent
a $60 game should be fun 60 hours.

I had loads of fun with skyrim, it lasted 132 hours
therefore the game was worth every penny. but to be fair, i havent beaten it yet so it will be longer.

MW3 was fun for 36 hours. therefore it was a bad purchase.
graphics wouldn't have mattered, but better online would have since the online portion was boring in about 8 hours.

you cannot just release a terrible looking game in todays market, because it isnt fun to look at crap all day for the most part.
since TES is about the world you explore it has to be good looking. and for the scale of the game it looks great.

multiplayer is never a bad thing, unless single player suffers for it. this seems to be something people on this forum do not understand.
if skyrim came as is, then suddenly co-op, it wouldn't get worse, just better; assuming it wasn't unplayable due to lag or bugs.
multiplayer when done right increases the value greatly, so its fine to have it as long as you don't go the route of bioshock, and put multiplayer in but have the singleplayer suffer greatly.

No. Part of the charm of TES is that I can see and live 'in' the world they've created. It just wouldn't be the same if I had to use a 2D view.

What if? I'll tell you what if.... no one would have bought it. Sorry OP, but done is done. I share your frustration with the puddle deep storylines, but I don't think switching back to Daggerfall graphics is the solution. I think shrinking the landmass would allow for deeper stories... but then you're sacrificing what makes TES games so special.... It is a conundrum. I made http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1303018-would-you-play-a-tes-game-with-a-deeper-story/page__p__19610777#entry19610777 games. I think having a "big world, thin story" game along side a "small world, thick story" game released on staggered schedules would be the best way to go.


As for your points, most people play a game once and that's it. They might not even finish it! Look at the statistics BioWare gathered regarding DAO and Mass Effect. Those were popular games too with huge fan bases, yet many people never finished the games. Even our beloved TES games are going to be played through once by many people and then put aside. The fanatics will play many times, but the fanatics are only part of the business. The game has to have a broader appear, and that means great looking graphics.

As for them being easy, that's because most people play games to relax and have fun, and often that means fun with their friends. They don't want something that they have to learn. Learning and struggling to understand something is what you do at a job, not what people want to do at play.
Multiplayer itself will fade out again. It's something that comes and goes in the industry.

I'm a gamer since the 80 and Nope i love Skyrim and love the graphics of today i wouldn't go back. Nostalgia make you think this way ..

Yes. Only because I loved Baldur's Gate.

I would trade in my "3DSkyrim" for a "2DSpriteSkyrimWith10xTheContent" any day of the week.

You should add a third option to your question.

Would you play a text based Skyrim game with 100x the content?



Imagination is a terrible thing to waste.

]removed[

So true.

But I happen to think that isometric graphics are timeless. Every now and then I go back to BG2 for a session, and never once find myself thinking about the graphics. To put my thinking into perspective, I went back to play Oblivion after Skyrim and just went "ew". Couldn't help it lol.

VERY specifically BG2 though, cos if i remember correctly it has some kind of 3D engine mode or something. DEFINITELY not the likes of Icewind Dale though, which by todays standards looks like a puddle of pixelated vomit.

no, i love the elder scrolls because they are the only open world rpg with first person view, Also skyrim has lots of content, it is a big open world ya know

I would love an elder scroll in 2d, however youre wrong in the idea that 2d sprites would save disk space and allow more dialogue. 2d sprites need to have each animation drawn separately, each race, each armor and weapon set and combination of them would need to be drawn separately. 3d graphics actually allow to save resources and time, in oblivion for example they used one animation set which was shared for all races.

I think that the biggest problem with the game nowadays is voice acting. Take a look at your installation folder, you will see that the voices.bsa is larger than the textures.bsa. Morrowind had more dialogue options and longer questlines than skyrim yet the game still had amazing graphics for its time. If they had made the game with text instead of voices they would have had 1.5 gigs free to use in more textures or dialogue options. They hired some famous people to make the voices too, the money would have better been used to hire more writers instead. And even then, some people agree than the voice acting was not too good.

Thank you for that line of text, I forgot to make a point in the OP. I don't need spoon feeding. It's unnecessary. I only need descriptive text and a 2D picture to 'render' a 3D model in my brain, I don't need the engine to render every little tiny bit of detail for me because I can do that on my own, just give me a place to start.

Also as FernandoCruz said, I don't even think about the graphics when I play these 2D isometric games. I don't think about what I see, I think about with I THINK I see. I find nowadays' graphics to be too spoon feeding (if that's the correct term), more geared towards lazy people who do not want to use one of their most treasured gifts, imagination and sense of art. Even text can help you render a 3D model in your brain, unless you're totally illiterate.

I fail to see how 2D is better than 3D. Planescape: Torment and Baldur's Gate were all created from 3D renders converted into 2D sprites, so that an efficent 2D engine could be used. However, once an isometric high-performance 3D engine was invented (people like to forget that FPP was used in most games initially because it's less resource intensive than isometric view), all future games were envisioned in full 3D. For example, Fallout 3 (Van Buren) featured a fully realized 3D engine with support for skeletal-based animations and dynamic lighting.

This also relates to the rather silly, fallacious argument that some "just want a 2D isometric clone of [insert older, better realized game with less hi-def graphics]!"



Have you noticed that often the same people who moan about older graphics in games are the same people telling Skyrim skeptics to use their imagination?

No, no and no.

Developers are artists and if you insist on destroying the art that has progressed around them, then whats the point?

Wait what, is this the comparison between terraria and minecraft?
Lawl

Fun fact:
I see the same people, who told others in other threads to imagine and fantasize the dialogs, choices, crafting skills limitations etc etc, voting for "no". Why?
Imagine. fantasize the graphics!

On-topic - yes i would love it

I prefer "fantasizing" the graphics, than having to fantasize dialogs, choices, options, content good character development etc

Please provide an example of Skyrims "very advanced Radiant AI". Maybe like how you can put a bucket on any shopkeepers head in the game to break their line of sight and rob them blind while they stand at the register?

I found all of Bethesdas claims about "radiant AI" to be extremely exaggerated and somewhat shady when compared to the reality of "radiant AI".