Skyrim is Soulless : V - Skyrim

» Thu Dec 15, 2011 7:06 am

I'll have to agree that Skyrim lacks "soul" but for another reasons. I don't know why but it feels so... hollow. It's not the lack of proper dialogue as I felt much more "in" Fallout 3 for example. Is it the environment? The silence? There is not much music in the game... Truth is even Oblivion felt more captivating for me, and that's saying a lot.

I like Skyrim a lot but it's... weird.

Lack of music, no people around, 99% of enemies are either generic bandits or critters... mysteries of my life. Maybe I'll be changing my mind once I get further in the story.

In Oblivion the wow moment of the world was when I came out of that dungeon and the light of the world hit me. I felt captivated.

Same thing with Fallout 3.

In Skyrim, I was already outside in a carriage and there wasn't that "wow" moment for me in so many of the other previous games, even Morrowind back in its time had that Wow moment. They tried to appeal with action. But action never "wowed" me.

And Skyrim is soulless. I wanted to try a character without fast traveling. However, there is nothing on the roads. All the dungeons are somewhat connected to a quest. And all I can do is pick flowers?

» Wed Dec 14, 2011 11:54 pm

Yeah, but in Daggerfall we had choices, which made up for the tedious dungeon crawling. Not that I hate crawling, I just don't feel like it should be, essentially, the only thing that really has any effort put into it. There needs to be some leeway in there.

Daggerfall still amazes with what it accomplished for it's time. I mean, the only real problem I have with Daggerfall is the lack of certain armor types (one type of leather, one type of chain, and then about seven different types of plate armor). Since I got into the game late, it also feels aged to me, but I can definitely understand why the fans of Daggerfall can only be disappointed with TES games nowadays.

But, honestly, I have never felt I had a choice in any previous TES games other than "do it" or "not do it."

Spoiler

I told Mehrunes Dagon that I wasn't going to kill that guy who wants to recreate the Razor. I lost the Razor, but I felt like my character was actually allowed to have a voice in what was happening for once.

I can not say that about any other TES game. It isn't the many different ending choices that Daggerfall has, and the main quest of Skyrim in general is pretty much killing dragons. But I still like the choices Skyrim gives me for the more minor quests, and helps me feel like my character is more real.

That's just my experience with these games though.

» Thu Dec 15, 2011 11:55 am

And in real life, you don't learn the stories of everyone you encounter.

If you need everything spoon fed to you, and can't find meaning in your actions without the game screaming at you "YOUR ACTIONS MATTER!" in big bold letters across the screen, then I don't know what to tell you.

I find plenty of meaning to my actions, and plenty of NPC response to my character, from my choices all the way down to the gear I have equipped.

what responses? aside from the handful of overly used comments if your naked how does that mean anything. some stormcloak wonders if you found that imperial armor off of a corpse but it doesnt occur to him that you might actually be an actual imperial soldier. how does that make any ingame sense. they are at war if you see a couple of imperial soldier running towards ulfrics castle the logical thing would be for the guard to at the very least intercept and question you or just outright assume you are attacking and attack you on sight.

@wyan wasted ranger you didnt play the game then at all. starting up the solar tower gets commented on, helping out freesiders gets commented on, the van grafs attack you if you do the nonviolent side of the cassidy quest. save the prisoners in that town and/free the town from the republic or help the legion either way its commented on. NCR outpost is taken out its commented on. if you piss of the BoS clunkheads they go out and kill followers of the apocolypse. get rid of the deathclaws at the quarry and people comment on it, in fact they comment on it all the way out in boulder city. there are tons more examples. did you even play for more than 5 minutes?

» Thu Dec 15, 2011 10:28 am

Daggerfall still amazes with what it accomplished for it's time. I mean, the only real problem I have with Daggerfall is the lack of certain armor types (one type of leather, one type of chain, and then about seven different types of plate armor). Since I got into the game late, it also feels aged to me, but I can definitely understand why the fans of Daggerfall can only be disappointed with TES games nowadays.

But, honestly, I have never felt I had a choice in any previous TES games other than "do it" or "not do it."

Spoiler

I told Mehrunes Dagon that I wasn't going to kill that guy who wants to recreate the Razor. I lost the Razor, but I felt like my character was actually allowed to have a voice in what was happening for once.

I can not say that about any other TES game. It isn't the many different ending choices that Daggerfall has, and the main quest of Skyrim in general is pretty much killing dragons. But I still like the choices Skyrim gives me for the more minor quests, and helps me feel like my character is more real.

That's just my experience with these games though.

it's better than Morrowind's ending, which went: "I love u Neravar, but no matter what you say, this game needs to end with you killing me because I dun trust you lol."

» Thu Dec 15, 2011 6:36 am

I agree w/ you 100%

Personally, I preferred New Vegas. Obsidian has always been incredibly talented at creative and flexible quest design and interconnected worlds.

But when I bought Skyrim, I knew what I was buying. Beth generally gives you less options, less flexibility, but rewards you with a huge, dense world to explore.

I mean, would I like some F style choices in an ES? Sure, but they couldn't have huge ramifications, otherwise a Dragonbreak would occur. But lesser choices? Sure. I just don't see that happening in this gen. You see how much they had to compromise to even get Skyrim to play on the consoles. If we did get NV style choices, we would get the same limitations NV had, which was all of the faction (guild) quests really just being part of the MQ for the different choices. Put said choices in Skyrim and your already short guild quest lines would be even shorter.

» Thu Dec 15, 2011 5:43 am

200+ posts, time to close this.