I never thought of morrowind and oblivion as sandboxes unless you count the construction set.

Removing attributes makes the game more sandbox IMO, no need for that useless restriction. Yes I know RPG QQ.

You make a good point, and I tend to agree.

Its like, for an open-world RPG a developer needs to get the world setting right, including interactions with NPC's and the culture and society, but you also need to provide the player with sufficient tools to let them define their character and its place in the world.

At this stage I'm I feel quietly confident Bethesda have improved the former in Skyrim, but due to the scale of changes made and the lack of explanation, its not clear that they have got the latter right.
Hopefully more hands on demonstrations or dev interviews will help us see what the changes to character systems means.

Less sand to build with = more sandbox? Can't say I can follow that logic

Consider;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_world

I would just like to add as well that I feel Skyrim is giving some of the best options for role-playing so far. I know not everyone agrees on perks but it does open up a lot of possibilities, take this for example:

I make a character who uses smithing, blocking and one-handed skills. If this was Oblivion, that would be that really, "my character is a smith who excels at using shields and one-handed weapons."

In Skyrim it could become: "My character is a smith who focuses mainly on creating great weapons (weapon crafting perks) and uses this to create axes for personal use. Although he can handle any one-handed weapon easily he would much prefer an axe over a sword or mace (axe perks). He is also skilled at using a shield, but even better at using it as a weapon against his opponents (blocking with offensive shield perks)."

Even the non-skill stuff has larger RP implications. Cooking for example is great one for me as one of my main characters is a ranger who lives in the wilderness. Before I used to hunt animals for pelts to sell but now I can also get their meat and cook it for personal use or for sale. Animal pelts can also be used for tanning which falls under the blacksmith skill and leather scraps can be used to upgrade hide and leather armours.

We can also capture bugs (not sure what they do gameplay wise, might be for alchemy) so I'm definitely going to play a character who has a hobby for bug collecting. It's other little details too like mining requiring a pick axe rather than just being a vein that contains metal, so even if I never use smithing I can at least play a miner who sells on ore to black smiths, including adventuring to dangerous, forgotten mines to get the rarest ores to sell.

The perks system definitely gives us a lot of options.

more like... less barriers in the sandbox = more space where you can play however you want.

Attributes isn't your sand! It's a rule, a redundant rule in TES. Attributes is what helps contain the sand and removing them opens it up.

More kids shall be getting sandy 11-11-11.

And this is the reason for streamlining ... three or four paragraphs is too long ...

And I had to walk 10 miles to school in the snow up hill both ways.

This worries me, I hated the fact that in Oblivion once you had saved Kvatch (which happened very early on in the main quest) EVERYONE knew about it and kept greeting you "Oh, the hero of Kvatch!!". There was no way to be discreet about it, that it was so early on is what made it especially annoying.

I can buy it if the people who actually witnessed the event comments on it, but if everyone in the world all of the sudden recognize me everywhere I go that's a bit too much. I guess it's a way for the player too feel "special" which seems to be oh so important for some people, it doesn't do it for me and I have no need for it. Let me be secretive and mysterious instead.

I read it, though it was quite long, I enjoyed hearing of the games I haven't played.
The dramatic dislike for the evolution of the TES series is obvious.. And annoying. As to the OP, I disagree with you. I see the majority of changes to be improvements, and suffering amount for content seems a very reasonable idea to me.
Generally he sounds like a whining fan wanting "the old days" when the pixels were a half-inch wide and the game was copy and pasted.
Sorry, I don't mind.

The very basic system of Oblivion and Morrowind (only ones I've played so far) didn't help me RP a character at all. There systems where practically designed to have you take advantage of them in the opposite manner to try and get what you wanted. The whole 'only major skills' level you while minor skills have no cap of major penalty on them was an issue. The way stats where delt required you to focus per-level up, and HP from stat was halted at a specific lvl. Basically requiring you focus on HP from the get-go then ignoring it later, as doing it the other way around or 'steadily' had the opposite effect. It made no damn sense.

All in all I think Skyrim, due to the perk setup, will let me actually build a character in the manner which I want. The only major critism I have with Skyrim so far, though I understand it, is the no ability scores. They didn't 'do' much in the past 2 games, didn't really matter what you picked no one really responded to them much at all so they where mostly just combat oriented. I think that, ultimately, is the biggest issue all around with the series as far as roleplaying. It's very hard to 'roleplay' in a world where you don't actually get to have much in the way of conversations. You just select bullet points mostly and a yes/no in a few situations. More so with Oblivion, Morrowind at the very least had factions where you couldn't pick 'all'. Had to choose sides so there was at least some real RP choice involved with that.

I'm hoping Skyrim has more choice in that kind of stuff, but as for building your character the perks already beats the last two systems for that. And if you want to play a char with low HP but 'moves quickly'. Ware light Armor and put your points in Stamina. You'll have great mobility but be a weakling so you still have that so some extent, sort of anyways.

Ah, but what IS the sand, then? Keep in mind that it has to be something provided by Bethesda, not the lack thereof, and not your own imagination, because paying money for that would be pretty silly.

I'd suggest that this depends on what is achievable in the new system. Can I roleplay a knight with a face like a busted but-hole and the manners of a wart-hog? Will my character concept be recognised by the game world and will the game world react to my character in a manner approriate to my concept?

If their are perks that can set my physical apearance to fugly, so that the AI knows how to make NPC's react then great, but if not then thats a limit that did not exist in the TES games which had a personality attribute that allowed such a character.

I like skills and always have liked skills as character definition better than attributes. Dynamic perks that had both positive and negative effects would be fun, I wouldn't mind seeing a 'homely' perk that defined you as ugly.

I like skills too, because they work well at defining a character, but I'm perfectly happy to live with less skills, as long as it does not limit role-playing choices.
The problem with skills however, is that they are not very good at defining your characters innate attributes, like comprehension, appearance, hardiness, or disposition. You can easily be an expert haggler that is either simple or brilliant, thugish or elloquent.

China called, they want their wall back

then go take your meds and read it :wink_smile:


I'm just very disappoint because almost all of my play styles have been removed in Skyrim, except for one generic: The nord warrior.

Also, what's up with these stupid guardian stones? Do I have to youtube where these are just to get a mage stone for a mage guy?

I agree. Very valid points and I hope we'll get an answer to them all in due time. Very well written!

It all depends on how you define a "sand box game". Most of us consider a "sand box game" to be any game where you can generally go where you want and basically do what you want... so that obviously includes TES, but it also includes games that don't give the same amount of freedom, like Red Dead Redemption, and even Assassin's Creed. As for them taking the sand from the sandbox... I'm not sure what that even means... like, they're taking away freedom? or customization? Maybe a little here and there, but I think they make up for it by adding more in new places... Example: You don't have as many customizable armor slots, but you can now customize things like face paint and scars, even your character's muscular build.

Excellent read, pay no mind to the TLDR, they are more or less non contributers. all your points are utterly valid, they don't bode well either for the series, but of course Beth and the legions don't care its another TES and thats all that matters and in a sense pre Oblivion thats all that should matter given Beths Track record I "guess" but with the advent of Oblivions boasting and failiure to deliver, and now Skyrim thats even less in many regards Im not even looking forward to gameplay anymore, just the story , Lore and World.

However, there is no way in hell Skyrim cannot Pass Oblivion, No way, not a snowball's chance in hell. the fiery version.

So you agree with several other posters that the social systems as discussed in Skyrim are once again heading in the right direction?

Would it just be the systems that allow you to define your character that you are concerned about? (things like attributes/skills/birthsigns) or are you also concerned about other areas of choice like weapons/armor/spells?

My thoughts are that people are [censored] complaining too much. If you don't like it don't buy the [censored] game.

How eloquent.
Might I suggest; http://www.sepo.net/books/english-grammar/style/