No it doesn't mean a thing. If the author prefers a Diablo style hack-n-slash, then it's neither his nor the developer's "fault" (perhaps more the author's fault for trying to make Skyrim be Diablo). If he prefers a cinematic game that he will play once and uninstall that is more like a movie than a game, the same can be said.

post from another thread...........

i usually like to play snarky characters but when caezer told me what he would do if i kept the attitude up i immediately realized i was barely adequate gear and was surrounded by his houseguard. i got nicer after that. there are NO instances in skyrim like that. when you tell the first jarl in whiterun about the attack you get an option to reveal that your an escaped convict. how the hell does he know you werent being executed for slaughtering a family. you just get some general response about being forthright about being a prisoner. compare that to how the brotherhood of steel treats you if you enter their bunker before meeting "punching chick". they put a tracking collar on you for crying out loud and the BoS are only a minor faction in the game.

Her name was Agnis. She wasn't attacking me, so wasn't an enemy. I clicked on her to try and begin a conversation. "I just cook and clean and do whatever they ask of me," she said. I thought, "Why isn't she reacting to the two dead bandits at her feet?" If she was being held prisoner, which I took as her meaning, then why wasn't she glad to see two of her captors dead? I clicked on her again.

"I can't even keep track of all the people who have been in and out of this fort," she told me. "They come, they go, I barely notice!" I sighed at the lost opportunity for some proper roleplaying. Why didn't the game developers recognize the emotional potential in this encounter? I could have told Agnis she was free, and she could have fled to the nearby city of Whiterun where I would have found her later and basked in the good deed I'd done.

People who play shooters are not beneath you. Stop being so derogatory to people you don't even know, it makes you look like an arrogant [censored].

See, my own take on Agnis is that she lives, has always lived, and always will live at, Fort Greymoor. Her comments said to me that it didn't really matter who else lived there - they were all transient occupiers. Only she was constant. As such, it didn't really matter to her whether the bandits lived, died or were replaced.

She's kind of like a ghost who hasn't died yet.

Well....I don't know what to tell you, but maybe you'd be better off playing a Bioware game or a JRPG. It's pretty obvious that The Elder Scrolls is not intended to be as plot-driven as those types of RPGs, favoring open-ended sandbox play.

I will agree that the one-liners from guards and some townsfolk could've used more attention (which leads me to wonder if they were rushed). And Speechcraft skill needs a good overhaul and expanded functionality; beyond simply merging it with mercantilism (that doesn't change the fact it's always been a weakly implemented skill, even since Daggerfall).

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.

I don't even need the graphics, really, just give me a breath of fresh air with the combat and Daggerfall would be the only game (aside from the Fallouts and Morrowind) that I play.

Arrogant? I was only pointing out that it's better to stick to simpler more linear games if you don't have any imagination.

One word: Imagination

This reviewer should obviously just stick to cod and battlefield.

We should all obviously imagine the game has no flaws.

Let's all imagine you can kill children.

I remember that being the goal of a lot of the quests in Daggerfall, except loot was sometimes replaced as a monster you had to kill or a person you had to rescue. Going through the dungeon and killing things was the only thing that didn't change between most quests.

I've enjoyed the non-combat situations of Skyrim more than I have in any other TES game, and it doesn't pressure me into a dungeon anymore than Daggerfall, Morrowind, or Oblivion did.


I'm glad I got into Daggerfall later. I still find the swinging the sword with the mouse fun.

Some put much more importance on conversation in RPG's than others. Personally, selecting from someone else's dialogue options and thoughts are not my idea of RP. I'm just happy that Skyrim lets me Tab out of conversations where there isn't a choice that I like. My way of saying "I'm done talking to you" and move on.

What the hell is wrong with you?

Yeah, it's not like there are no Radiant Story elements by killing/stealing from somebody...

And reputation apart from when it's too low or too high doesn't mean much. Oh no, you don't get gifts if you're not fully good or you won't get attacked on sight when you're not fully bad with the faction.

Your actions are hardly mentioned and NPC reactions to random things are hardly any different. They say something funny when you throw stuff around or when they find a body in both games.

And choices are always there even when it doesn't poke your eye right out. Somebody questioned why cannot you just kill the guard because he knows your secret. Guess what, YOU CAN!
Oh no, you cannot decline the quest you just started? Guess what, DON'T DO THE THING THAT IS WRITTEN DOWN FOR THE QUEST.
Want to rob a place but there's a wake person in the way, I guess you have no choice there, except either drinking an invisibility potion, using an arrow or a shout to make them go somewhere else, find another way... no, these are not choices.

And you must be obviously forced to join one of their factions of the war... no, wait, no you're not, you can even make a peace treaty in the main quest.

There must be a lot of roleplaying elements for that blind guy and that crazy lady, why can't they become your companion, it only makes sense, right?

Seems his entire rant can be boiled down to " not enough NPC dialogue"

I finally realized the problem I was having with Skyrim: It felt soulless. I may as well have killed Agnis and taken her stuff, because what did it matter whether she was there or not? I suspected that nothing I did would ever matter, and that has been my experience as I've progressed through the game. Skyrim is a huge world drawn with a level of detail that entices us to lose ourselves there, and is filled with things to do, enough to keep us occupied probably for years. But it also feels empty and pointless.

Everyone is so impressed with Skyrim, but I can't help thinking about another open-world role-playing game published by Bethesda last year, Fallout: New Vegas. By the time I had logged as many hours into New Vegas as I have in Skyrim, I felt like I had big decisions to make that were really going to change the world of New Vegas.

Perhaps I haven't arrived at that point yet in Skyrim, but I'm finding it difficult to continue caring about a world that feels completely indifferent to me and what I'm doing.

He wants 10x more dialogue and scripted conversation.

I guess he wanted Skyrim's release to be delayed to 2020?

No, he was using that as one example of what is endemic in the game.

And all this, use you're imagination crap that people keep saying? That's for me and my character. I use my imagination to envision a backstory, and my characters motivations and why they'd choose to do what they. It's the job of the game designers to use their imagination to craft an immersive believable world where NPCs have backstories and motivations that can be explored. The world is supposed to present you with characters that you can RP with. You can't make any meaningful RPing choices when nothing you do matters and everyone is a bland cypher. If you have to make up crap to try to explain why an NPC is doing something ludicrous then the designers failed in that aspect of the game.

Agreed.

What's funny is that these same people are the same ones who claim the series is "dumbed down" because map markers and quest arrows "hold your hand", yet they can't comprehend the element of "choice" unless it's explicitly spelled out for them in a "Choice A" or "Choice B" dialogue tree.

Lol, you know. Not starting a war, but the consoles are being pushed to the limit as is with Skyrim, people that think we could have what the author is writing about, in this gen, are delusional. Want Fallout choices for every quest? Prepare to lose half of the quests.