» Wed Dec 07, 2011 4:52 pm
Short version: Skyrim fixes Oblivion’s biggest shortfalls.
Oblivion was so damn generic. Dungeons were built out of stock sections, so similar you’d swear it was procedurally generated. Identical ruins were scattered throughout the world, identical each time you found one. The world itself was bland and cookie-cutter as it could be.
The loot was generic –all the items were too much alike, and without any unique items there was little reward for marching down the bottom of a dungeon. You’d likely only find the same randomly generated items you’d find in any chest in the world.
The spells were generic – because spellcrafting let you create your own spells. The obvious problem it had was that being able to craft any spell you can imagine means that no spell is unique. If there are no unique spells, then you have no compelling rewards to give wizards.
Characters were generic… and nothing beyond personal dedication stopped the characters becoming a samey mish-mash of skills.
Even the gameplay was generic. Level scaling meant that every battle was an equally generic challenge – no mater where you were exploring.
In Skyrim there is something new and exciting around every corner. The different sections of the world all feel very different. Swamps, mountain-tops, plains, hot pools, tundra… the wildlife, the plant life, the monsters, the environment is all noticeably unique.
Level scaling isn’t gone, but much of it has been fixed. There are strange and dangerous places out there that selectively level or don’t level at all… as anyone that stumbled into a giant camp can attest. Dungeons have set levels (say 1-7 or 20-30) – that scale somewhat, but not over their own minimum or maximum. Sometimes you’ll find that the area is suspiciously ‘spot on’ for your level, but you can still find areas far above or below your level.
Braving a low level area makes you feel god-like, while braving a high level one gives you a chance to get your hands on gear much better then anything else you might find. And that’s because…
Loot in dungeons is a lot better. They now offer a guaranteed mixture of non-levelled loot that is suited to the difficulty of the dungeon and some random worthwhile leveled loot. Braving an area well above your level lets you get you hands on whatever non-levelled high-level gear is stored within. And unique and legendary items (that would be impossible to craft yourself) hidden throughout the world give you additional reason to delve into the dungeons.
I’ll always remember my first dungeon in Oblivion had a note with a little backstory in it… and it hinted at connections in the city… links that weren’t actually in the game. That’s the only dungeon with a backstory I found in Oblivion – Imagine my disappointment when there were never any others with an interesting premise. In Skyrim most of the dungeons have some sort of a story if you look around for it, and if there is a note that hints to connections in a city, then that thing that t’s hinting at is damn well there.
The dungeons themselves are much more interesting this time. There are still the odd generic cave corridor, but a lot more work has gone into lighting and decorating different locations to create unique areas to explore. And many of the areas have massive unique sections that reward your for exploring.
Spellcrafting is gone – and I hate that we lost it. But that opens the door to hunting out rare and unique spells. It means that mages have something to aspire and look forward to. Not to mention the new dynamic of combining or duel-casting spells.
And while I’m still grumpy at the total lack of character attributes, the new perk system almost makes up for it. When it comes to effectiveness the perks are far more important than the skills are. It means that even if you max out all your skills, no two characters need ever be alike. You can be the ultimate wizard, thief or fighter – but you can’t be all three.
The world is well-built and sensible in a way Fallout 3 was not. Each capital I’ve visited is unique visually, but also in how it works. One is a mining city, one a trading centre, one an agricultural city. There are a few “what the hell are those two locations doing so close”, but they aren’t so jarring as they were in previous games. And in a few cases they are even explained (“Yo – that area up the hill is freaken me out, cause it’s so close. Can you deal to it?”)
There have been some great moments with the ‘new’ radiant system, which seems to do what the old radiant was always supposed to do: Create a living world.
I’ve been berated for littering, told off for acting a fool, asked to stop shouting in the city, been handed back a sword I dropped because ‘I think you lost this’.
At one stage I was going to hand in a quest, in a small town – one that had no walls or loading screen. As I arrived a random, unscripted dragon swooped down and attacked the town, destroying two of the guards with flame breath…. And then the bugger landed, picked up the quest giver in its mouth and then threw him out off into the far distance. I was just like, “well… I guess I’m not getting paid then…” Brightside: I was able to retrieve a cash reward from the guy’s corpse when I found it, much much later.
