No, you still lose role playing value. I can't play a character who is skilled only in long swords, but not with claymores. Obviously, there is a practical cut off---We can't have infinite skills---but that doesn't mean that there isn't less role playing potential. When we examine things like this in the context of TES, which has had separate skills for different weapons, things like this can certainly be classified as a loss.

What you're describing is artificial, player-imposed restrictions. That's no different than speed runs or any other challenge players have decided to set for themselves. Without the game imposing restrictions (less effectiveness with weapons your character is unskilled in), the difference is largely meaningless. At least when we're discussing what your character can do. What they will do is another question, one more about preferences and personality than hard restrictions.

:rofl: borked: bork = to attack (a candidate or public figure) systematically, especially in the media. :rofl: I'm sure that this isn't what you meant by that word, but I luved it nonetheless!

Perhaps a better term for it is LINEAR. The TES series is becoming more LINEAR.

Now this isn't so much about Skyrim, because MAYBE Bethesda learned something from all the criticism surrounding Oblivion, but maybe not.

Take Deus Ex for example which I am currently playing now. I am playing a pre-defined character... I didn't get to choose the name, background, etc. However, I consider it a FINE RPG. Why... because I get to choose how he acts. If I want to go through the whole game being a sneaky hacker who never ever has to get blood on his hands.... I can do that. If I want to find information in the police station, by walking in the front door guns blazing like the Terminator.... I can do that too. Someone holding a hostage... how does my character want to handle that... I get to determine how the character defines himself by his actions. THAT was missing in Oblivion. There were few options for ever handling a quest in anything but one very specific way. For all its open-world feel, it was a pretty linear game, where most options to handle anything were pre-determined for you. Sure you may have been able to decide where you go and what quests you accomplish first, but you pretty much always had to accomplish them the exact same way. That is NOT Role-playing. That is little more than reading a book, except you get to choose in which order your read the chapters.

What you can do is defined by your skills, stats, attributes.

Try the urban dictionary.

That, of course would be your opinion, not mine, not others. Your vehemence and hostility toward me and others is unwarranted.

The fact that you can either use this or that at one time is a big restriction.

Roleplaying is PRETEND.

Don't talk BS when you haven't played the game.

Perhaps a better term for it is LINEAR. The TES series is becoming more LINEAR.

Now this isn't so much about Skyrim, because MAYBE Bethesda learned something from all the criticism surrounding Oblivion, but maybe not.

Take Deus Ex for example which I am currently playing now. I am playing a pre-defined character... I didn't get to choose the name, background, etc. However, I consider it a FINE RPG. Why... because I get to choose how he acts. If I want to go through the whole game being a sneaky hacker who never ever has to get blood on his hands.... I can do that. If I want to find information in the police station, by walking in the front door guns blazing like the Terminator.... I can do that too. Someone holding a hostage... how does my character want to handle that... I get to determine how the character defines himself by his actions. THAT was missing in Oblivion. There were few options for ever handling a quest in anything but one very specific way. For all its open-world feel, it was a pretty linear game, where most options to handle anything were pre-determined for you. Sure you may have been able to decide where you go and what quests you accomplish first, but you pretty much always had to accomplish them the exact same way. That is NOT Role-playing. That is little more than reading a book, except you get to choose in which order your read the chapters.

In that fashion, if you are decent at role playing, you should be able to role play ANYTHING.

Also a character who uses nothing but spears? imaginary spears someone?:whistling:

Not whining about spears again, just proving you wrong.

I'll make my own opinions thanks. I don't want to ignore every piece of information that comes out and reserve my judgement until I buy the game, there's a possibility that Skyrim will just be Oblivion 2.0.

No hostility, just tired of the same PR lines being trotted out again and again without justification. It's more than opinion. TES is a series. You can argue the changes are good, you can't argue that mechanics and systems in other games (especially those in past TES games) are irrelevant.

I mean, half the justifications made for the changes are, "But it was so poorly executed in Oblivion," or, "It was so annoying in Morrowind." But as soon as someone brings up Morrowind or Oblivion or Daggerfall or whatever to claim a decision was not good, then everyone jumps on that, shouting, "New game! Old stuff doesn't count!" You can't have it both ways.

Which is still a restriction regardless of which one you're skill in and which you aren't. That's a limitation in either system. One just makes further distinctions between different weapon types.

Everything from what we've seen or heard have been from gameplay videos and journalist write ups. Every single one of those people were playing a pre set character on a pre set difficulty (easy) at a very early stage in the game. Not nearly enough basis to determine whether a game will be easier than its predecessors; but go ahead and tell yourself whatever you like.

Good points, but role-playing was born before computer programs were capable of producing advanced images, let alone interactive scripts. You can do all of those things you mentioned, plus anything else you could do in reality plus anything you could do in your imagination. If you wanted to, you could say that computer gaming has "dumbed down" role-playing by placing limits on our imaginations.

The OP wasn't talking about things being added or removed, (s)he was talking about the imagination having a more active role in role-playing, computers or not.

It's just not the same without game induced limitations and features. In Fallout 3 I didn't roleplay eating and drinking. In New Vegas, it was easy. Why do you think there are so many RP mods out there for Oblivion?


The reason Skyrim is a ROLE PLAYING GAME is because it provides tools to allow us to RP. By your definition, Call of Duty is a role playing game because we could pretend that tamriel had a massive industrial and technology movement and that we are mages with guns.

Source on the difficulty setting? Also considering TES' track record, You can see they're not getting any more challenging.

Source is from the forums, someone posted their PAX gameplay experience and noted that the difficulty was set at easy; go look for it if you wish. It makes sense that they'd set it to easy so they didn't have people dying left and right; this isn't Dark Souls where everyone expects to die at any given moment.

TES games only got less challenging from Daggerfall to Morrowind and that's only because certain enemies could 1 shot you with spells. When Morrowind switched to Oblivion there was an illusion of difficulty change simply because they dropped the stupid dice roll hit system.