Heh. So, it doesn't matter if anyone never reacts to anything or if anything you're doing doesn't change anything in the world, just use your imagination... yeah, right. I agree that people lack imagination for video games nowadays, but not for these reasons. It's funny, Bethesda loose a lot of time and money into voice acting or radiant AI, which is not necessary at all. Why do you need NPCs to go on with their lives when you're in a dungeon killing monsters? Why do you need to see them sitting for hours in the tavern only to go sit in the temple for some other hours? Does it matter that an NPC stands still all day long or does the same walk pattern? He's there when you need him, and it's irrelevant what he does after you leave. But it doesn't really mean he's ALWAYS standing there, just use your imagination. It's way better than witnessing his underwhelming routine and AI, much better than something which comes off cheap. Like voice acting, voice acting only limits the number of dialogues and the complexity of the quests, and that's where imagination also comes. Do you need to hear some awkward acting? Do you need to hear someone ask you to do a quest while using telepathy to give you the missing information? THAT is a problem.

The Agnis bit is also a problem. In Skyrim, the world barely ever reacts to anything you do. The world is beautifully designed and all but is lifeless. You do a quest, and the moment you finish a quest it's as if nothing happened. Thing is, it's part of the fun of playing video game RPGs, to see the consequences of your actions. Yes people lack imagination nowadays, but that's not where the imagination should be handy, not to fix or complete things, but for unnecessary things like voice acting or radiant AI. You're not missing on anything if you read dialogue or if someone doesn't stands still in 3 different places instead of 1, but you sure are missing something if that voice acting takes complexity out, or if the world doesn't even react in any way to what you do. He's much right on this aspect. Someone asks you to do something in Skyrim, and they cut the quests short. You need to deliver an item to someone, but instead of the NPC being glad for what you did and rewarding you, it's the guy you're giving the item to who does so. You return to the quest giver, but since the quest is now "complete" in your quest-log, the person will act as if nothing happened. You could just add a line of dialogue, like in the case of Agnis. But add all these lines of dialogues, and it becomes time consuming and expensive when you record people acting them. It may sound like nitpicking, but add all these little bits together, and the world really feels oblivious to you. You talk to someone, get a quest, finish the quest and that's it. In Morrowind for example, there were no "quests". What I mean, is what you had to do was written in your journal as you talked to NPCs, there were no "quest complete" messages, you were the one to do what you wanted with your quest, the one who deemed the quest complete when you wanted to. Skyrim works too much, even more than Oblivion on the whole quest-log thing. You start a quest, finish it and that's all. Next one. And the world of Skyrim is designed around that. It's not about how the world reacts to you do, but simply what you do.

If that problem the Escapist guy lifted isn't a problem but just him lacking imagination, why are we even playing games? We could very well imagine anything we wanted the way we wanted and that'd be all cool. The imagination bit should be about design choices, not to fill up the lack of content or flaws. I think one of the worst offenders is the Windhelm murder quest. The barmaid at the tavern gets killed, but outside of the quest, the people you need to talk for the quest (and even then there's like 1 or 2 who reacts about it), no one reacts about that. WORSE, after the quest is all done and I get my "quest completed" message, I go talk to the owner and guess what she tells me? "Don't worry about Susanna, she's only flirty for the tips". What are you talking about?!?! She's [censored] dead! Why don't you get another barmaid? Why aren't you devasted your young employee got mercilessly killed? Why no one of the usual clients talk as if nothing happened? Yet some dude told me about how it is terrible that a killer was on the loose and killing young girls. What the hell? And that's not all! For the quest, you get the killer while's he's attempting to kill another girl, the girl, you know, running and screaming for help. You kill the bastard, but she reacts as if nothing happened! No "gosh I thought I was done for", nothing. No one even did came for her help. No one commented on witnessing a near-murder. Just total indifference to you both saving a life and killing the one who is probably behind all these murders. And then the moment you get the "quest completed" message, not a single person will comment about this event anymore. Windhelm never had any killer on the loose, the tavern lacks a barmaid but that's not because she was killed by a maniac, there just never where any barmaid in the first place.

It's like, Skyrim is this huge world, but it will always stay that way. There's like only the Stormcloaks/Imperial questline that changes anything, but that's like obligatory. Heck, Whiterun's smith won't even comment on Baalgruf not being jarl anymore, even if she hoped he would recognize her as a blacksmith or anything. A new line of dialogue appears for merchants and such, but that's it. In Morrowind, working for a Great House could make you kill an important person of another Great House for example, working against the others. Being in the mages guild made the Telvanni be not favorable to you for example. People reacted much more to what you do. Even in Oblivion.

Skyrim is an awesome game for sure, awesome as an action/adventure game. But as an RPG, it's the weakest of the series for sure.

Nor have they spent any time inside a dwarven ruin...

And FFS, what about the BOOKS? There's a few of them that give you quests, and many of them give you some tremendous backstory to the ancient world you are exploring.

I respect your opinion, but have a slightly different perspective. As a programmer myself, Beth had adequate budget, resources, a five year time frame, and an existing code base from Oblivion, FO3 and NV to leverage with this game. Let me make clear that I adore both Oblivion and Skyrim and they are both excellent games in my opinion. But, that doesn;t mean they can't have been better. I ran into the hag @ the fort early in the game also. I was also reflective of her fate.. For some reason, I actually envisioned her as some type of vampire, waiting for the next residents to feed upon. I have no problem using my imagination for that, and agree that it is not practical for Beth to flesh out specific dialog for every npc in the game.

On the other hand, I think that further detail to important npc's in the game would provide the "soul" many are missing. Specifically, I think it would have been worthwhile to put more emphasis in evolving the relationship and dialog associated with spouses, followers and companions. If they were aware and opinionated (supportive or otherwise) about your character's progress, it would be sufficient to make your character feel as though his actions had some consequence. Guilds are another important issue. If you become the head of a guild, missions and associated dialog with suboordinates should also evolve. One of the most aggravating aspects of Oblivion was when mage scholars had the audacity to diss you as arch mage. Any scholar who did not have time for me was reverse pickpocketed a poisoned apple. The game does seem to evolve based upon quests (such as changing of the guard as a result of civil war actions), but it does not seem as epic as when all of the guards around Cyrodil assembled and pitched tents at the Bruma castle to help destroy the great gate. All a result and direct consequence of your character's willingness to close the gate threatening their city.

Skyrim is an excellent game. I can use my imagination and enjoy roleplaying in the game. But, some small targeted tweaks to important npc's and guildmates would help to make an awesome game even better in my opinion.

You had the same for Oblivion, and in Skyrim I've been called "Dragonborn" by guards and NPCs, and have received a "We're thankful for waht you did. We will never forget It." greetings. The only problem is that I'm still called "The new guy" or even a Werewolf, which I no longer am. It's clearluy a bug.

I hate this thread.threads on this site used to make me smile.

Ah, but therein lies the problem.

The game's main antagonist is a World-Eating dragon god-thing. Dragons are supposed to be back in full force, seeking carnage and destruction. First few minutes of the game show Alduin razing a town to the ground. (Something he never does again, I might add. He is quickly relegated to a pretty pointless exercise of flying around and reviving other draongs, who again do nothing except get slayed by the Dragonborn.)

To what end is all this??? The dragon "threat" fizzles out like a wretched fart. Nobody - except for a handful of people - seems to be bothered anymore. The best reaction you get is a generic "careful - there be dragons" remark, mostly from the guards, if they're not calling you a sneak-thief or asking you to conjure them up a bed.

The gameworld completely failed to properly portray a sense of danger. So it's no surprise that vanquishing Alduin is also an event that fizzled away like fart.

Same can be said about the Civil War. Besides some generic remarks, there is no sense of danger. This is supposed to be a brutal civil war that tests a Nord's allegiance to his/her kinsmen and Empire. But bleh... almost nobody seems to care.

Keep making up these excuses for Bethesda. It's hilarious watching blind followers make up nonsense.

This is a video game. A game where traveling is made near irrelevant thanks to fast travel. A game where when you marry someone in Riften, the moment you go back to where you asked that npc to marry you the NPC is already there.

I'd love to hear your excuse about the DB storyline. Or thieves guild. Or companions.

Let's hear this imaginative brain of yours. It's more entertaining than PLAYING the game itself since you just LOVE imagining things in a game rather than seeing it happen with your eyes!

The issue becomes that many people have provided examples of how other NPC's and interactions have had consequences but everyone is ignoring them. This leads others to feel like people won't be happy until every single NPC has an independent scripted dialogue for each and every decision they make, and that's unreasonable.

There are NPC's who react to you. There are NPC's who change their behavior and dialogue choices. But not all of them. So the game svcks apparently. And anyone who smooths out those issues with their own stories are blaspheming idiots too.

>.>

Worry not, this always happens when a new game appears. Soon enough the hatred will be slowly washed away.

Ask all of the artists, writers, and programmers who poured their hearts into the making of this game for the last 5 years if Skyrim is soulless. I'll bet you'd look at all of it in a completely different perspective.

No the guy wants his accomplisments recognized.

Are you NOT annoyed that after you become archmage the guards still say "Oh your that mage from the mages guild." Or the whiterun court mage says if you have the aptitude...IM THE FREAKING ARCHMAGE.

Better yet, become Harbinger and though they say there sorry for the previous ones death, your still the new guy who gets the mead.

Or more better yet! I ran through half the Stormcloaks rebel quest, then went to solitude and the IMperial soldiers there were all "Hi citizen." Like they didnt SEE the stormcloak gear I had on. Like they didnt know I had killed at least 200 of them. Word doesnt get around? Oh wait I stole something from a house 5 weeks ago, and every guard knows...What??

My favorite is the fact that I have become Thane of every Jarl I can find that I can do, which is 5 I think. Then I go to the companions and they havent heard of me...really? Ive taken down hundreds of forsworn, killed dragons, saved towns, collected multiple artifacts, destroyed a vamp cult...etc etc. Yet theyve never heard of me?

The game is awesome, and Ive RP'd tons of different kinds of characters. But to have this obviously blatant disregard for your actions is inexcusable.

Instead, they spent time programming and designing time-consuming and useless features like radiant AI or voice acting. It takes minutes to write a few additional lines for a completed quests depending on what happened, and programming that into the game should be quite easy and fast. Unless you use voice-acting. Then it's major resources.... Just look at the amount of dialogue Morrowind had, it's certainly possible. You just need to cut voice acting for dialogue. You'll also get more complex quests in the process that doesn't require telepathy.

So...you haven't played any other TES games then? Because this is normal. Typical. Every day.

Maybe you had higher expectations than I did. I honestly saw this coming a mile away. Sorry you're disappointed.

Look, this guy reacts to you after you complete a quest! Your argument is moot! What the hell is that reasoning? The problem isn't that every single NPC doesn't react in a satisfying manner, but that way too many of them do. It's not nickpicking at all when you play the game you are constantly wondering why some quests were not more polished or why so many people are oblivious to everything that happens. A problem I have with Skyrim dungeons, is that MOST of them are designed the same way, and have that magic door at the end that opens up to the beginning of the dungeon. It's a minor gripe, but you just can't come in here and say "look, dungeon x and y don't work that way, you're nitpicking" when clearly at least the 3/4 work that way.

Skyrim is not soulless, it's just that at times it's not as exciting as one would expect it to be. And here's why:

- it's not a heavily scripted and linear RPG, it's an open world, it's not supposed to svck you in the story at first glance because there is no linear story to follow
- people have lost the ability to roleplay. Nowadays they just run like hell from A to B killing everyone in between and they don't bother to read any books so they have little or no background on the quests they are following
- last but not least, voice acting. That's what dumbed down NPCs interactions nowadays. There are just too many combinations to cover every scenario

That being said, the Dark Brotherhood quest alone is worth the money, at the end I almost shed a tear. I'm 150+ hours in the game, still enjoying it like the first day and couldn't care less of what people think of it.

*back to play*

OK - something needs to be said:

Reaction to player actions does not mean a one-liner from an NPC.

This is an ongoing problem in ES games, at least going as far back as Daggerfall (never played Arena, so don't know about that one). What really svcks is that there has been no improvement on this (rather important) aspect since Morrowind - in fact, there has been a recession. At least in Morrowind most of the NPCs would react with one-liners and would have their disposition towards you altered depending on what you did or what faction you joined, etc. This reputation system is now all but gone, leaving us with a more sterile population.

While I agree, Todd Howard himself has actually said that this is there goal. I remember in a video, he said that at its core the game was "Going through a cave killing things and getting loot". Sad indeed.

QFT. It is both a boon and a bane to immersion. It's great to hear someone talk to you, but a game with as many possibilities as Skyrim suffers from the lack of budget and hardware space to voice nearly as much as it needs to to feel truly immersive.

I've seen it said before here, but we are gonna be a happy group when text to speech works so well you can't tell. People will be able to script in so many possibilities and designers won't be shoe horned into limited branching (or unable to patch changes because the voice actors are done their job).

Sorry voice actors.

That said, one NPC has made me feel like he's real and that's J'Zargo the cat (spelled wrong) in the college. Something about him just makes him feel more alive to me than most of the NPCs. He's also the only one I see having a life at the college cause he is always practicing his spells.

Then for the love of Talos, STOP reading it. You have whined before and you know what you can expect. Start another thread, engage in some other discussion but don't complain about something you have control over.

I caught the teacher of restoration practicing in her dorm as well, multiple times. ;]

QFT

The only change though is D&D if you were a jerk and declined to help somebody but kept coming back and asking them to get their quest. Eventually the DM would have them deny you so you would have missed out on that quest. Here you can be as nice or as mean as you want to be and it literally has not effect on the reaction.

Example is Stalleo in Treva Watch. I can tell him over and over I don't have time to help him liberate his home and possibly his family. Eventually he should stop offering to pay/reward me if I clear out his home. However no he just keeps talking to you the same way.

This guy needs some http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4sUPvDZfog

Guys..Use your imagination.Or do you think its childish or too stupid? are you guys too mature and cool for it?

to be honest it must be soulless because all u ever did was travel when u fast travel it resets everys one that was walking in the world of skyrim for example u [censored] to 2 am auto everyone is in be