I think it's a very well thought out and balanced OP

I think there's a lot in this game that doesn't feel as engaging as previous TES games.

What I will say though is the actual land of Skyrim is amazing, and great to lost in. SO I love playing the game, despite it's faults

I'll ignore the PS3 lag issue from my assessment seeing as that only seems to be affecting me and a handful of others stupid enough to buy it on the PS3

I think the problem is that we all expected, and in all fairness were led to believe, that they would innovate and expand on their winning open-world RPG formula and that they would iterate this forward to its next logical step. We all expected that the next open-world Bethesda game we played would build on and enhance everything we loved about these products.

What ended up happening is that we got something like Oblivion 1.5, which would have been absolutely fine if they had just said 'guys this is going to feel like Oblivion 1.5.'

I think a lot of us feel that they even took a few steps back from the Fallout titles in many ways.

Todd Howard is an intelligent, talented guy but someone needs to tell him that it ain't 2006 anymore and they have to work harder to expand on what makes their games great, not just repeat it with different textures and voice actors every couple of years.

I think most Elder Scrolls fans want to sit down and play a world that feels almost as compelling and interesting as real life. That's of course not possible yet but Bethesda should be TRYING to get there with every RPG release.

Well said OP, I agree on all points and even some of what other people have been saying. I got so disappointed when I realized I wasn't enjoying my time playing it.

-Exclusively dungeon crawl quests
-Very lacklaster and disappointing questlines
-Lifeless NPCs and therefore cities
-No sense of real leveling and stats
-General simplification substituted with gimmicky shallow stuff

About a week after I stopped playing, some of my classmates who play CoD all the time started explaining what Skyrim was like to other people. I was mortified at what I was hearing "You like run around and kill things... and there are dragons but the cool thing is you can do whatever you want. It isn't like a campaign or anything." "Like fallout? that was kinda cool... i guess" "Yah only... its like ancient times." "What? that sounds kinda gay." "No its cool, you can like dual-wield fire and stuff.
:cryvaultboy: :sadvaultboy:

I disagree totally...

I loved Bethesda's first games... Arena, Daggerfall and Morrowind, but Fallout3 and especially Oblivion I did not like very much.
With Skyrim it seemed like they fixed 90% of my issues with Oblivion.

Skyrim is a HUGE, let me say this again.. HUGE step up for Bethesda compared to Oblivion.

Keep up the great work Bethesda, you surprised me with this one! Love it! Best game from yall since Morrowind!

There is not one thing that Oblivion does better then Skyrim other then arguably the UI.
Story is better, combat is better, controls are better, characters are better, voice acting is better, graphics are better, performance is better, its far more balanced then Oblivion and the list goes on. Not to mention its just a million times more FUN then Oblivion was.

Skyrim = a step in the right direction, great to have Bethesda back!
The gameworld feels so much more alive and its not boring like Oblivion was.

I didnt think Bethesda would ever be able to do a better job then they did on Morrowind, but Skyrim is just as good if not better in alot of ways. Oblivion felt more like a action game to me, Skyrim is much more of an rpg to me (like New Vegas was to F3 and Morrowind was to Oblivion)

You're right, the story, combat, controls, voice acting, graphics, and performance are all better than OB but we are all having major problems with the GAMEPLAY, the core of the game. You could say that... BF3 does all these things better than OB but obviously they are entirely different games. I so envy you for loving this game so much. I really wish I would enjoy it more but I just don't and I think its for the reasons I put above.

Ok. But, then... why post incessantly on the forums of a game that you are so disappointed with? I mean, honestly, I'm curious, so enlighten me. Dragon Age II was one of the worst games I ever played, but I didn't go on the forums and try to spoil it for those people who DID indeed enjoy the game. Instead, I put the game on the shelf and allowed it to collect dust, which I'd argue is definitely a more sensible and mature thing to do. Just my opinion.

The point that you quoted is actually not so "bloodcurdingly irrelevant" after all. Its a fair point. If you prefer one game to another, its only rational that you should then go back to playing the preferred game. I didn't lose much sleep over my disappointment with Dragon Age II, I simply went back to playing Origins. So sad to see that others are less capable in this regard.

Great review. Completely agree. How Bethesda overlooked all this is baffling

I miss Ayelid ruins... They were big, lot of open space ambients and there wasn't a single way to navigate through them.

90% of the new dungeons are more or less elaborate corridors.

Oblivion Ayelid ruins + Skyrim better leveled enemies + Morrowind static loot = WIN

Its wierd, as someone who owns every elderscrolls game from Arena to Skyrim, I was worried about Skyrim being to much like Oblivion, but to my surprise I am having the same amount of fun as I had years ago playing Arena, Daggerfall and Morrowind. For some reason I just did not like F3 and Oblivion as much as Bethesda's other games, Skyrim though I feel like a kid playing the first elderscrolls game again :spotted owl:

Sorry to hear you are not enjoying it, I hope you enjoy it more later on!

The thing i dont get is people saying 'oh ive played 60 hours and am level 20'... how do you guys level so slowly?

I seem to level at a ridiculous rate without even crafting. Even things like selling and buying levels me, making potions levels me, picking pockest and locks level me. I hate that i level so fast but am i just expected to stand around with my hand on my cawk?

Don't use power stones, don't use crafting/alchemy, don't use trainers, explore every dungeon or wilderness thoroughly. These are the golden rules if you don't want to level up too fast.

To the OP: had you asked this question in the pc forums the answer would have been a resounding yes. Wrong direction.

There are many different places and people to know. NPCs have their own dialogues and stories. I have yet to find an NPC that has no such story. There are quests to make deliveries or talk to others, probably calling the player's attention to some other interesting NPC, item or location.

Take the first welcoming to the Companions for example. All the nice things happen in the middle of the action. Probably a design decision, you treat other Nords with honor, there is no need with pompous gala awarding you for the quest, talking about every NPC story as you enter. You get to know a bit of their stories, but just like someone says, this is your moment, not theirs. And you get to discover things by talking to them. More than talking, you probably learn more by watching them and hear their opinions. And every citizen seems to be a very opinionated fellow. That's hardly repetitive for me. Perhaps I have missed something?




Just like someone told me once, you have to imagine great cities, filled with hundreds of people all over the place. They all do not show up because of practical limitations. If you could visit Cyrodiil right now, it would be this desolate territory ravaged by war, famine and other atrocities. The White Gold Tower was sacked a number of times. Hammerfell is supposed to be invaded by the Thalmor. Skyrim is short on the path to civil war. Even the dark elves comment about Morrowind and why they came here (and also thinking why they didn't continue their journey). That is grand and can all be encountered inside the game, through books and hearing NPCs (not so much talking, just observe).


It is as dungeon crawl as discovering the history of this mortal plane. Skyrim is supposed to be a landmark about the history of civilization in Tamriel. From Ysgramor to Talos. The stories are told in the lore. You revisit the places written in the books and that's the good thing about this game. It seems so real you actually have no reason to doubt it!


And about the classes, leveling is there, no restrictions. You can be any class you want, it just does not have a label. If you want to be a mage use perks to your advantage. Overpower yourself because that's what perks do. I don't understand some people who say you have to restrict your alchemy/enchanting/smithing. I bet you're not having fun, you milk drinkers.

If every citizen is opinionated, then dont they all have similar personalities? is that not repeditive?

sorry, was just taking the mickey; i do know what you ment, even if i dont agree.

in all seriousness though, you still seem to be only pointing out that npc's have decent backstories, which is a good point. My main gripes were the repeditive quest content, poor loot and the reduction of classical rpg elements.



I envy you, i really do. Well, untill some meraculous overhaul mods come out, im off to play through tes3 and 4 yet again. Perhaps after those two, enough mods will have come out, and the game will be fun for me.

Edit:replied to ulrim

@OP

You have obviously not accepted a drinking contest yet! Let me know when you do... It'll put your world on its head!

I have accepted a drinking contest. I did say the deadric quests were fun.

All the counter evidense to my claim of boring quests has been the deadric quests and none of the guild quests or sidequests.

All the companies have given up on the RPG market.

Dragon Age Origins to Dragon Age 2

Oblivion to Skyrim [I unlike some people liked Oblivion. Despite the lack of some things it was still fun and good]

Fable 1 to Fable 2

The RPG market is turning into COD with RPG elements. And it's [censored]. I love creating my own character and adding as I please, spellcrafting, etc.

The only thing I have done in Skyrim are the Deadric quest because they are interesting, they have personality. They tell you why you should care, what you should do and why. Yet this is lost on all the other NPCs.

"Go kill this dragon way far from town", but why? Why should I? It's sitting on top of a word wall. It doesn't look like it's going to attack anyone at any time.

Oblivion's Quest and Journal system was great because it had character and it had a story. It's why I am doing this, what I am doing.

I'm also disappointed in Skyrim for there not being a "No" option. It's all pseudo choice. You can tell them No, but they just say come back when you changed your mind. When I say "No I won't steal that ring for your Brynolf, it means no. No I won't break the law" And I won't change my mind.

Sry, but this is bogus.

Attributes added variation to your character. Mages would not only hit less hard, but also less often in Morrowind, which represented their combat skill.
There is no such thing in Skyrim, nor oblivion. In Skyrim your magica pool is the only thing that decides whether you cast a spell successfullly or not. This is very poor.

Agility would determine wheter you hit your target with a bow or not, which is perfectly fine and plausible. I don't think I would hit every single shot if I was in a combat situation and not a trained archer.

Charisma would determine peoples disposition towards you and act as a governing attribute for illusion spells, which again, is plausible. In Skyrim you can't even influence people anymore except for very few occasions.

Willpower would influence your magic resistance, which now is a perk in the alteration(???) tree. Magica regeneration is only affected by enchanted items.

Strength would determine your close combat damage - with every weapon (including fists). Now the only way to improve hand to hand combat is getting a perk in heavy armor (which has to be lvl 30!?) and wear heavy gauntlets (???). Why would any martial artist do that?

Speed - yeah. In Skyrim a Two handed warrior in full plate armor will eventually be just as fast as a ranger with light armor.


The point is, that apart from taking options away from the player (which is a terrible design in itself), every character can be equally successful in any skill with the same effort.

An old, skinny mage in Morrowind would have around 30 Strength and 10 Blunt weapons when created. An Orc warrior would have 60 Strength and 45 Blunt Wepons being a lot more efficient hitting stuff with an axe. On the other side, the Mage would have 150 magica and 30 Destruction, regularly casting frostbite, while the Orc with 50 magica and 10 Destruction would fail 90% of the attempts

In Skyrim both have a fixed set of stats in the beginning. This might be easier, but easy =|= better, especially in an rpg. Without the option of making it harder (apart from playing on Master, which is a joke)

The cherry on top of that nonsense-cake are the waystones. The phenomenon described above is now even worse, since a Mage can just go and pick the stone of the warrior in order to learn one handed combat even faster.

There is no way this is better than the previous system from a roleplayer's view. Implement a "classic mode" and everybody is satisfied.

The scripted quests are fantastic, i\ve enjoyed them all. They are unique, fun, and replayable. The guild quests are too short.
I miss morrowind's faction style where you really felt yourself climbing the ranks, oblivion did it too, but not as strong as morrowind.
That bieng said they are still well scripted and replayable.

Oblivion was a huge step down from morrowind. Skyrim is a huge step back up. We have more of everything in skyrim.
We dont have the same amount of content as in morrowind (From what I gather) but the content is of higher quality, so fair trade.

Skyrim's world is organic,everything feels right. Just earlier i found a tree that had crushed a small river-side cottage, the remains ofi its owner were stuck beneath the fallen pine.
And there on the ground beside him was lusty argonian maid pt 1.

The whole world of skyrim is a charachter telling a story, and you play a part between the pages.

That is a step up.

I've also found many more armor types so far than i have in oblivion, and they look nicer mix and matched than they were in that title.
We don't have as many as in morrowind and can't be as experimental with them.
But it takes alot more money and technological power to be able to chalk a game with LOADS of stuff (like morrowind) on an improved graphics engine
(As far as I know) So they are limited and have to prioritize. For example, They combined greaves and chest so there would be more armor and npc characters available within the game.

The game has faults, but minimal compared to the Massive improvements it's shown over oblivion, and fallout as well. This is my favourite bethesda game yet.
It ties with Morrowind.

Call me crazy but this feels much more like an RPG than oblivion did, because the world is alive, whole, and imbued with a superfluous symmetry that took these designers
ALOT of effort to pull off.

All right, i'm done now

Its such a shame that rpg's have come to this. Well, theyre not really rpg's are they, like you said. I dont understand why the masses dislike the genre so much, or why game companies dont continue to target those who do still enjoy them, for there will be many still out there. Was dragon age origins or morrowind failures? People like me still play morrowind, 9 years after its release. Its just sad. Well, a whole group of people are going to have to find new past times.

It really is. A lot of people are "Action now" type of people. Even my own father watches me play Skyrim and he goes, "That game looks so nice it makes me want to even play it. But I know it would bore me because it's to much walking". He's the Halo type of person. Who wants "Action Now" and instant reward. Where as I have always liked slower story based characters. Character based and not action based.

For the same reason a [censored]load of stupidity like twilight-saga or Transformers turns into blockbusters: The masses are heavily involved with their reallifecrap (= working 8 hours, driving to work and back 2 hours, shopping, eating, house-taking 2 hours, 7-1/2 sleep, Rest must be spared with wife, children, parents, hobbies), they just want to have fun with the two hours of free time on their evening. It looks nice. It moves nice. There′s a sixy [censored] in it. And I′m rewarded after my two hours of gameplay with six level ups, before my wife yells be to bed.

So I′m happy.

Everything the OP mentions has something to do witn in-depth-quality, things, you don′t recognize without the right amount of time or intellectual ability to abstract (and this is no offense. Most people can′t or don′t want to abstract their hobbys, they are un-critic as long as it seems to make fun on the surface).

Accept that some people are capable of intellectual abstraction, while others are not. The first ones give Skyrim a 4,5/10 score, the others a 10/10 because IT LOOKS SO AWESOME AND DRAGONS!!! AND STUFF AND THAT CHICK LYDIA IN HEAVY ARMOR!!!!.

I agree with pretty much everything the OP said. Really well written post IMO.

And for crying out loud [censored], shutup!

Posts like "Go play Morrowind then" Or "If you don't like it, don't play it" are useless, immature and really pathetic.

if you disagree, that's fine, if your of the mind that the game is perfection, great! But just because someone does not like certain aspects of the game doesnt mean they are automatically wrong! Especially as the OP made a descriptive post without insulting the game or devs and just stating issues he (and many of us) have with the game.

No where does the OP say that the game is rubbish not not enjoyable. Its constructive criticism,

Just for the record, if you disagree with the OP and have stated as such in an advlt way then that rant was not aimed at you. It was aimed at the 5 year olds who took offense and gave a 5 year old reply.

I am a long time fan of The Elder Scrolls. I am not a fan of the Fallout franchise, but I do own FO3 and FO:NV. Recent posts have reminded me how shallow and rambling the Fallout 3 main quest was. Skyrim is the Fallout 3 of the Elder Scrolls series. The main quest is shallow and rambling. I got off of it for some reason, lost track of which quest resumed it, and now I don't even feel a need to return. In the last week, the most frequent reason for being in Skyrim has been to reference game behavior, not to play. I think my character is in Wind-something standing in front of some inn, a right depressing place to be, which is a fitting allegory for the game itself. As a matter of fact, I find myself wondering about a statement that someone made in a review where the basic terrain map for most of Tamriel is included with Skyrim. I have disabled the borders and might simply walk down there to see. I know it will be empty, but my character needs to get out of Skyrim and head south into Cyrodiil just to see if that reviewer was right.

Fallout New Vegas is a better computer role playing game than Skyrim will ever be. The quests are engaging and progression in the main quest is something that you just feel you need to do. I was still playing New Vegas up until Skyrim came out. Maybe Obsidian needs to take over the Elder Scrolls series.

To tell you how Skyrim currently ranks in my playlist, I spent the last couple days in World of Warcraft mindlessly making hundreds of Thanksgiving foods and killing about 250 turkeys. World of Warcraft is a terrible role playing game. It is a game that has been created to appeal to as many as possible, has virtually no story that anyone really cares about, and is the poster child for mindless repetitive questing. Yet, for all the effort that Blizzard makes to appeal to the non-RPG crowd, there are more elements of a computer role playing game there than in Skyrim. It is sad that a game like World of Warcraft, where the majority of the vast millions who play have no real interest in role playing, is a better platform for building a character than a game like Skyrim with deep roots in the genre.

After finishing most of the game (and i don't mean the main story) i have to agree about the repetitiveness of quests.

But what is even worse are dialog scripts. Npc's seem to "understand" less than in previous games with npcs talking about the weather in the middle of an invasion or a dragon attack. Some do not "understand" that you have become a master in their guild, others don't "understand" that you saved their city and so on. My list of broken dialog scripts is endless.

Another thing that killed Skyrim replayability for me is scaling. Yes i can go everywhere from the start - which sounds good but it isn't. Wherever i go i will know approximately what enemies i will meet and what loot i will get since it scales too. I've completed almost every single hole/cave/ruin in the game the first time entered them without any hassle. Also i could almost guess what loot quality i would get, more or less, according to my level - the only thing that was changed was the random enchantments. Felt like playing a static action open world game.