» Sat Nov 16, 2013 11:22 am So I decided to go ahead and create a 2nd thread. I found this topic quite interesting and worth keeping a discussion about so here is thread #2! I hope everybody doesn't mind me doing this...
~Prev Thread~
Spoiler
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1477894-skyrim-a-step-up-or-a-step-down/
~My Thoughts~
Spoiler
I believe Skyrim is a step UP from the previous games... Why? Well... First thing first; what does Bethesda do best in TES games? Simple! Open world and the roleplay freedom of simply going anywhere you want and doing anything you want to do. Those are the two best things that Bethesda is best at...
When you compare Skyrim's open world to the previous titles... Skyrim just wins mainly because Skyrim was hand crafted fully, instead of using random generated areas... So Todd said and I think the game itself is enough evidence... There is enough small simply little things all around the game world that was definably hand placed and from all my experience, I hadn't seen any pattern with trees, rocks, etc... Normally a random generated landscape will reveal a pattern of some sort... And the big piece of evidence... Every single interior areas, including houses and dungeons, are all completely unique... In previous titles, dungeons specifically were mostly random generated by using some 'pre-made areas' and placing them together to make a full dungeon... Skyrim? Nope! Every dungeon is unique in its own little way making every dungeon extremely awesome experience, instead of the feeling of "I've been here before" or "I know where this is.." etc... Therefore, Skyrim's world is the most fully unique one out of the all TES games thusly making that a pretty BIG step up.
The second thing I mentioned was the roleplay freedom... Firstly, Skyrim is the ONLY TES game which you have complete SAFE freedom from the start... In Arena, you have none really. Daggerfall, you are in danger of losing the MQ if ya don't start it. Morrowind, you are in danger of losing the MQ if ya lose the papers... Oblivion, you are forced to carry a "quest item"... Skyrim, no danger of failing the MQ and no forced "quest item"... You can simply 'untag' the quest and do what you please from the start... And if you do eventually want to do the MQ with that character, you have the freedom to go back and do it... And now only that but with pretty much any major quests... You have the freedom to do them or not without danger of failing at any time, mostly. (There are some selective quests in Skyrim you can technically failed though)... So, therefore you are not, so to say, handcuff'd to any quest at all which will allow you to well ignore it or do it. Up to you. You are not forced into any quests at all in Skyrim without failure so therefore, you have complete freedom over the quests you wish to do. Plus the obvious you can pick up and do whatever you want without limits, which has always been there since Daggerfall, thing adds into this... So, overall... I say this was a good step up from the previous titles...
Now, those are just two simple things that came to mind... There is still THE BIG PICTURE to look at between all Elder Scrolls games to get an idea how Skyrim truly is compared to the previous titles!First thing first... My full opinions on each main Elder Scrolls game...
Arena - Overall, it was an alright start but had way too many limits on the player and the game itself was really only good until Jagnar Tharn was dead.
Daggerfall - Was definably a HUGE step up from Arena and allowed the player to have so many freedoms and so many choices of guilds, items, skills, etc... Problem is, a lack of variety and uniqueness. Every armor, weapon, etc are all just recolors... The unique quests are part of the MQ and prolly Daedric (Never got to doing them all in DF)... So Daggerfall had a lot of freedom, but lacked a lot of variety... Plus the glitches, even after the official patches...
Morrowind - Once again, another big step up. The quests were amazing for sure, the items are all pretty unique, and the variety was pretty AWESOME... BUT Morrowind BIGGEST problem was the Luck system... I, personally, can't even play, let alone enjoy, Morrowind without modding the whole Luck system to an actual reasonable believable level... Really, I can't. That's Morrowind's biggest downfall and that's what keeps me from playing Morrowind... And let not forget the many other things that Morrowind did lacked in quite a lot, with the added annoyances on top...
Oblivion - This game was mostly a step down from Morrowind. Graphics and engine was good. They fixed up the Luck system pretty dang good to a point where I can play it without mods just fine. Problems? The game lacked depth and interesting stories in most parts... Only a few hand selected quests I can name that I enjoyed quite a lot. The rest just felt like work and annoyances to me... Oblivion, however, is still the funniest TES game we've had and did brought some good memories... Just good to have the memories and really not interested at all in going back playing it.
Skyrim - And now finally Skyrim... The point of this thread. Skyrim, overall, did a pretty good job even though Bethesda removed some things (And even brought back others)... It seems like they wanted to try a few new things (Smithing, perks, etc) which in turned was acceptable by me and even removed things that I always disliked in prev TES games (I hated Armorer with a passion)... Skyrim's biggest problem would be the major storylines were not at all great... Most of them were alright and were not annoying to replay but they were not 'memorable' awesome... And only a few selective I can name right now that was just downright filth (TG)... So to me, overall... Skyrim was pretty much a step up from prev titles and is also my favorite one to play...
And now as for specific things about Skyrim...
The very first major change that Skyrim has was the new perk/level system... Bethesda fully removed the old "str, intelligence, etc" thing and added in a new level system in its place, with perks... Personally, I like this change. It felt more reasonable to me plus the perks themselves also allowed more variety in characters, which in turn gives me more playtime. So I say this big change was a pretty good step up.
The second major change was mostly to skills themselves... Replaced Armorer with Blacksmithing, which made me happy. Enchanting is back! (Why they removed it in Oblivion is beyond me)... My only dislike was the change of "Blades/Blunts" to "1H/2H" but it doesn't bother me that much to really care.
And the last major change I wish to discuss is the magic system... Some people say the magic system made a HUGE poop... And I disagree. Ye'h, Bethesda may have removed Spellmaking but this is the first TES game where I can be a mage without making my own spells personally... They made sure the default spells are reasonable enough... Heck, due to the perks, some spells are way too overpowered... Ha. Plus, first time ever we had a variety within the destruction school... A variety. That is awesome in my eyes...
Anyways... I can go on with this but I think I've made my point by now and am done. So now, what are ye' thoughts?
When you compare Skyrim's open world to the previous titles... Skyrim just wins mainly because Skyrim was hand crafted fully, instead of using random generated areas... So Todd said and I think the game itself is enough evidence... There is enough small simply little things all around the game world that was definably hand placed and from all my experience, I hadn't seen any pattern with trees, rocks, etc... Normally a random generated landscape will reveal a pattern of some sort... And the big piece of evidence... Every single interior areas, including houses and dungeons, are all completely unique... In previous titles, dungeons specifically were mostly random generated by using some 'pre-made areas' and placing them together to make a full dungeon... Skyrim? Nope! Every dungeon is unique in its own little way making every dungeon extremely awesome experience, instead of the feeling of "I've been here before" or "I know where this is.." etc... Therefore, Skyrim's world is the most fully unique one out of the all TES games thusly making that a pretty BIG step up.
The second thing I mentioned was the roleplay freedom... Firstly, Skyrim is the ONLY TES game which you have complete SAFE freedom from the start... In Arena, you have none really. Daggerfall, you are in danger of losing the MQ if ya don't start it. Morrowind, you are in danger of losing the MQ if ya lose the papers... Oblivion, you are forced to carry a "quest item"... Skyrim, no danger of failing the MQ and no forced "quest item"... You can simply 'untag' the quest and do what you please from the start... And if you do eventually want to do the MQ with that character, you have the freedom to go back and do it... And now only that but with pretty much any major quests... You have the freedom to do them or not without danger of failing at any time, mostly. (There are some selective quests in Skyrim you can technically failed though)... So, therefore you are not, so to say, handcuff'd to any quest at all which will allow you to well ignore it or do it. Up to you. You are not forced into any quests at all in Skyrim without failure so therefore, you have complete freedom over the quests you wish to do. Plus the obvious you can pick up and do whatever you want without limits, which has always been there since Daggerfall, thing adds into this... So, overall... I say this was a good step up from the previous titles...
Now, those are just two simple things that came to mind... There is still THE BIG PICTURE to look at between all Elder Scrolls games to get an idea how Skyrim truly is compared to the previous titles!First thing first... My full opinions on each main Elder Scrolls game...
Arena - Overall, it was an alright start but had way too many limits on the player and the game itself was really only good until Jagnar Tharn was dead.
Daggerfall - Was definably a HUGE step up from Arena and allowed the player to have so many freedoms and so many choices of guilds, items, skills, etc... Problem is, a lack of variety and uniqueness. Every armor, weapon, etc are all just recolors... The unique quests are part of the MQ and prolly Daedric (Never got to doing them all in DF)... So Daggerfall had a lot of freedom, but lacked a lot of variety... Plus the glitches, even after the official patches...
Morrowind - Once again, another big step up. The quests were amazing for sure, the items are all pretty unique, and the variety was pretty AWESOME... BUT Morrowind BIGGEST problem was the Luck system... I, personally, can't even play, let alone enjoy, Morrowind without modding the whole Luck system to an actual reasonable believable level... Really, I can't. That's Morrowind's biggest downfall and that's what keeps me from playing Morrowind... And let not forget the many other things that Morrowind did lacked in quite a lot, with the added annoyances on top...
Oblivion - This game was mostly a step down from Morrowind. Graphics and engine was good. They fixed up the Luck system pretty dang good to a point where I can play it without mods just fine. Problems? The game lacked depth and interesting stories in most parts... Only a few hand selected quests I can name that I enjoyed quite a lot. The rest just felt like work and annoyances to me... Oblivion, however, is still the funniest TES game we've had and did brought some good memories... Just good to have the memories and really not interested at all in going back playing it.
Skyrim - And now finally Skyrim... The point of this thread. Skyrim, overall, did a pretty good job even though Bethesda removed some things (And even brought back others)... It seems like they wanted to try a few new things (Smithing, perks, etc) which in turned was acceptable by me and even removed things that I always disliked in prev TES games (I hated Armorer with a passion)... Skyrim's biggest problem would be the major storylines were not at all great... Most of them were alright and were not annoying to replay but they were not 'memorable' awesome... And only a few selective I can name right now that was just downright filth (TG)... So to me, overall... Skyrim was pretty much a step up from prev titles and is also my favorite one to play...
And now as for specific things about Skyrim...
The very first major change that Skyrim has was the new perk/level system... Bethesda fully removed the old "str, intelligence, etc" thing and added in a new level system in its place, with perks... Personally, I like this change. It felt more reasonable to me plus the perks themselves also allowed more variety in characters, which in turn gives me more playtime. So I say this big change was a pretty good step up.
The second major change was mostly to skills themselves... Replaced Armorer with Blacksmithing, which made me happy. Enchanting is back! (Why they removed it in Oblivion is beyond me)... My only dislike was the change of "Blades/Blunts" to "1H/2H" but it doesn't bother me that much to really care.
And the last major change I wish to discuss is the magic system... Some people say the magic system made a HUGE poop... And I disagree. Ye'h, Bethesda may have removed Spellmaking but this is the first TES game where I can be a mage without making my own spells personally... They made sure the default spells are reasonable enough... Heck, due to the perks, some spells are way too overpowered... Ha. Plus, first time ever we had a variety within the destruction school... A variety. That is awesome in my eyes...
Anyways... I can go on with this but I think I've made my point by now and am done. So now, what are ye' thoughts?
Note: Please remember this is ONLY about official TES content from Bethesda. Mods do NOT count.
Official DLCs and patches can be counted though!
