Lack of content? Are you kidding me?

Maybe you should take at the Skyrim Prima Strategy guide and tell me the game has a "lack of content".

http://www.primagames.com/blog/something-to-shout-about-1 http://www.primagames.com/blog/skyrim-official-strategy-guide-blog-2-sanity-sappi

I'm really liking Skyrim as well, but overall, I'm not a fan of the streamlined system, however, it will not keep me from playing the game. One reason I really like the past TES games (sans Oblivion) so much was customization. I like being faced with having to make more decisions. I mean, isn't that partially what role playing is all about? I like spending points in a plethora of categories, ie. Strength, Dex, 1 handed weapons, polearms, restoration, etc... That being said, for a lack of a better example atm, I think Bethesda's decision to streamline a lot of the customization would almost be the equivalent of Gran Turismo or Forza deciding not to have a garage where specific parts are installed on your car, you can just spend points in Acceleration, Brakes, Top Speed, etc... However, I realize they need to do what they need to, to appeal to the masses, and really, as long as I have a nice large sandbox to run around and kill or sneak by people any way I please, I'm happy.

Oblivion is unplayable to me at the moment. Skyrim is 10 times better in every aspect. You must not have an eye for anolyzing..

Skyrim is 10 times better than Oblivion.

Which is like saying pizza is better cooked than raw. Amazing what a game can be, when you take the time to finish it before release.

Unfortunately Skyrim being better than Oblivion is not saying much, for fans of true Role Playing. Skyrim is a great story driven, fantasy action game. Numerous quests, adventures, factions. Immersive puzzles in dungeons. A decent variety of enemies, spells, weapons and perks. Ditto for equipment. Collectibles and rare, static, hand-placed loot. You can even power game if you want. And all of this is great and fun.

But it is not role playing.

See, somewhere along the line, developers became convinced that levels, skills and loot = role play. This is, unfortunately, the new face of role playing. Gone is a complex, believable world where choices and consequences matter. (Unless you are a fan of Fallout: New Vegas, that is, because that they got right.) Gone is the opportunity for your allegiance/alignment to matter. Be as evil as you wish or as pure as a fresh-faced Paladin. It won't matter because you are still the chosen hero.

You have a role to play in Skyrim. What you do not have is a choice in how or why to play that role.

Developers have forgotten what role play meant. They have forgotten what it meant to adopt the role of a character and play that character to a hilt. Voicing a character, thinking like they would, and approaching conversation, locked doors and chests, city guards and indeed shop keepers as the chosen character would.

Role playing does not mean looting. It means intimidating a shop keeper into lower prices. Or persuading them down. It does not mean leveled lists. It means exploring the world your way and finding what is there organically. It does not mean levels and numbers. It means acting in accordance with your role and practicing skills and tactics your adopted character would utilize.

Unfortunately, the WoW generation has largely killed Role Play as it once existed. I hope that some developer comes along and remembers what Role Play actually meant, when it mattered.

The thing is, is you can do most of that in Skyrim without any game mechanics. If you're a mage, decide not to loot anything other than spells or materials and restrict yourself to never using a weapon other than a staff. If you're a thief, try to steal everything in a store, stay at the inn and role-play having a drink, run from dragons, and avoid taking quests that are for fighters or mages.

Role-play is mostly something that happens in your own head. It's a nicer way of saying, "use your imagination". If you're looking for a single-player video game that perfectly emulates the Pen and Paper system, you're not going to find it. What Skyrim DOES do, however, is provide quite possibly the most plausibly believable virtual world ever created. This makes it easier to RP in.

Roleplay... i think that term doesnt fit a Pc/Console game... want roleplay? Go find some budies and play pen & paper rpg like d&d or vampire the masquerade. There you can do whatever you want, when you want, and like you want... without restrictions.

Anyway, speaking of rpg games on pc/console, Skyrim seems simplified a lot in the wrong way. Simplified doesnt mean dumb in this case, but less content, options, variation... its less versatile when its comes to create a character.

Aa... i played Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion and now Skyrim. Daggerfall and Morrowind are masterpieces. Skyrim is not, doesnt mean is a bad game, but doesnt feel 100% Elder Scrolls like its used to be.

Complex doesnt mean harder to play, in my opinion, a game is complex when you have more options, when games is more elavorated, more rich in every aspect.

I like Elder Scrolls, im not attacking Skyrim... but i cannot deny, im kinda dissapointed with game, i expected more. Maybe thats my problem... in these days game market isnt the same 10 years ago. Its a shame, but its like everything.

Just think of Daggerfall or Morrowind... and not only Elder Scrolls games, Fallout 1 or 2, Arcanum, Warcraft saga (now they just stick with World of Warcraft because of the profits).

Someone that have played the old Elder Scroll games when they were released, and have a long list of rpg games played, can see what is happening with Skyrim.

Try to be critic, and no just a blind fan.

I hear you and I agree for the most part. I must say though, I'm pleasantly surprised with Skyrim so far and I really feel it's a step back in the right direction. Compared to Oblivion, there's a lot more role-playing opportunity here. Things are simplified, yes, but the system seems to "work" much better than it did in Oblivion and it's not in the way like it was there. While I'd certainly prefer the stats of old, I can appreciate what Bethesda is trying to do with the "organic" approach to character development and I really think it's intention is to be MORE RP-ish. They started it with Morrowind, went bat-shz crazy in Oblivion, and seem to have honed in on something much closer to what they're envisioning here.

You certainly can't quite get that "anonymous" feeling you could in Arena and Daggerfall, but to be honest that's really difficult to accomplish in a hand crafted world like this. There's bound to be some trade off in that respect when you turn away from the procedurally generated stuff like Arena & Daggerfall had. There were obviously huge drawbacks to that approach too, so it's not like it was patently superior.

And LOL about how much the term "broken" gets thrown around now. Remember Daggerfall at launch? Hehe...THAT was a rough game. Make sure you save before entering that dungeon son, you may literally not be physically capable of ever leaving...

I really tend to question all these people who apparently played so many RPGs in their life, if they even know what the hell they're talking about when they bring up meaningless facts as "complexity"...

I never got an answer what this "complexity" means, why is it good, how do you achieve it. I know what it isn't. It isn't having multiple versions of the exact same weapon or armor. It isn't having to go trough multiple loops to achieve one thing you could achieve by changing it directly.
I asked, what is it really, that Skyrim lacks, that Morrowind has, that makes it a "real RPG"? Because stats doesn't, you do the exact same thing as before, the characters were always about a mixture of warrior/mage/thief, no number of stats or skills changed this, this was the case just so in Daggerfall as it is in Skyrim (heck, when choosing pre-made classes by answering the questions, it calculates by the combination of these three classes). Making your character strong to raise damage or making your character better at one-handed weapons to raise damage make no difference.

SImilar to the whole "lack of weapons" thing, that hardly means anything. The choice hardly matters when there are no difference between the choices. Spears were basically swords with a longer reach, that's about it. Hell Skyrim made the weapons more distinct with their perks, making axes do bleeding damage, and maces ignore armor and the like...
Was Baldur's Gate a big RPG because you could equip a katana instead of a shortsword? Magical weapons have a lot more variety in this part, they're actually give out different effects. The difference between a Falmer sword and a normal sword is the same as a katana and a longsword in Morrowind.

Spellmaking have nothing to do with RPGs. Spellmaking is a different system with its ups and downs. Ups are that you can create your own spells, downs are that the system need to be simplified so you can actually use it, so it becomes nothing else than throwing different colored balls. While Skyrim's magic system is far from perfect, it already gave much bigger variety of spells than I've seen in Oblivion or Morrowind.


I've played all TES games, I've played a lot of Old school RPGs, yet I don't go on how "RPGS ARE RUINED", "YOUNG PEOPLE CANNOT APPRECIATE IT ANYMORE". No, Skyrim IS an RPG, we haven't lost anything without gaining something of equal value. You can still create unique character, and about as unique as you could ever make one.
And honestly, if somebody brings up how Divinity 2 or Witcher 2 had a deeper system than Skyrim, they're obviously full of [censored].

I respectfully disagree. The Witcher has a long history in the original novels by A. Sapkowski, which has some best real-life inspired lore I've ever read, mirroring both Slavic, German or Nordic mythology too.

And seriously, you can't compare the characters and story of TW2 to the half assed attemp in Skyrim and call it beliveable on top.
Does Skyrim's storyline have different non-linear paths with consequences, REALLY interactive gameworld or mostly shade-of-gray characters that follow their own agendas as opposed to Mr. McEvil who just wants to destroy everything (Hint: He's called Alduin)?


Big cookie from me, since I agree with everything you've just said. :cookie:

The strength of TES lies in exploration and good old fashioned dungeon crawling, not writing or characters.


Funny enough, I was reffering to it too, since the jerky cam, [censored] up targetting and such should have been already fixed in the newest 2.0 patch.

That sentence is win.

I feel like Skyrim is little more than an extension of Oblivion into the northern reaches. It comes with almost all of the same issues Oblivion had while even introducing some of it's own. It's beyond baffling when people tell me that they hated Oblivion but love Skyrim.

Skyrim = Best Game Ever Made

Morrowind. It outclasses Skyrim in almost everyway except graphics. Is 10 years old modern?

I think it was less the whiners, or even the people who debated intelligently, and more the massive overhaul projects like OOO and how popular they became.

Debate is one thing, going out and remaking the game into what many, many people considered a better game is another.

People have there opinions, they can say what they want...I respect that, sure.

What I don't like is people making sarcastic comments like "Oh no, the next installment will be an Interactive game like Heavy rain!!!"
And people who are complaining for the sake of complaining and not naming the great things about this game.

Honestly, I played every TES game except Arena.
I hyped up Morrowind a lot, to which I was disappointed.
I didn't feel like It lived up to Daggerfall.

Then I thought nothing of Oblivion, I watched no trailers, no gameplay, no interviews...The game amazed me, why? I didn't hype it up.

I did the same with Skyrim, I love it! I'd rather it to past TES games anyday! because I didn't hype it up....

Ultimately, it's whatever you make it.

I'm making it fun...apart from the technical glitches involving freezes and the occasional ctd (which really are par for the course in a Beth game), it's good. Flying mammoths and foes disappearing into the ground aren't a real issue.

If you don't love the game, you are in the minority. Nothing wrong with that, but it's a fact, as the insanely high metacritic score can attest to.

How anyone can put Oblivion above Skyrim is difficult for me to comprehend, but I suppose it's possible for people to feel that way.

Someone complained about the washed out, gray and dull colors. Use the FXAA post-processing mod. I use Preset 1, and it really brings out the details in the textures (sharpens) and gives the color palette so much more depth.

I'm not disappointed at all, Skyrim was everything that I expected and then some. Easily the best game I've ever played.

This I gladly accept being full of crap, because I think the Witcher 2 system is a lot more deeper than Skyrim simplistic system.

I love this game!

Hmm you've played both games right? I like all the ES games but...yeah, Skyrim isn't anything like Oblivion aside from have a more next-gen look than all the other ones. A lot of the conflicting view come from how one views the game. I for one don't consider Skyrim a sequel to Oblivion(yes V follows IV). I get the references of what happened in Oblivion(which i played to death) but I went into Skyrim hoping for something new and that's probably why I like it.

PS: only thing i really miss is the little make people like you wheel minigame

I only complain about Elder Scrolls games in relation to other Elder Scrolls games. Taken by themselves each game is a serious contender for best rpg ever made. By comparing and contrasting the different games and our dislikes/likes about them we can help Bethesda make even better Elder Scrolls games. That said, I think Morrowind nostalgia is getting a little out of hand. Morrowind had a very unique setting and atmosphere that Oblivion and Skyrim just don't match up to (Skyrim is much closer though). However, outside of atmosphere/storyline/factions Morrowind is horribly outdated compared to Oblivion and Skyrim. Anyone who says melee combat was better in Morrowind than in Skyrim is smoking crack.

I spent entire nights trying to mod Oblivion to something I would want to play.
I changed the UI, character models, environment effects, how leveling works.
I just couldn't get into it no matter how hard I tried.

I didn't play any of the other Elder Scroll games.
I loved Fallout 3 to death. Skyrim feels more like Fallout 3 than Oblivion.
I didn't really like New Vegas as much for some reason.

The Skyrim world is huge. The graphics are great. I honestly love the feel of the melee combat and I love the spells. The 3 crafting skills are fine with me. The AI is as good as I'd ever expect from any other game.
There are plenty of ways to make myself overpowered if I choose to but I can very easily ignore them if I want. I never feel forced to play a specific way to be effective on normal mode.

I'm no elitist so "difficulty e-peen" doesn't bother me here. There is no raid gear envy in this game. Everything is attainable and I have fun collecting things even if I don't have a reason to use them.
The loot is abundant and even if it isn't always an upgrade I can sell it, buy mats and make or enchant something that is useful to me.

At this point I can say this is one of my favorite games of all time.

Kingdoms of Amalur looks to be one like that...although it's a bit cartoony comparatively.

I don't understand why they removed so much. I mean, they should be adding not taking away. Why are they limiting you to not being able to cast magic with a sword and shield in your hand? Why all of a sudden do you need to chose and switch when needed? Creating your own spells in Oblivion was a set up from Morrowind. Why did that need to be thrown out the window. Would it have killed then to leave it in for those who enjoyed it? They brought out a DLC for horse armour in Oblivion, yet in Skyrim we are back to square one with no horse armour-could this not probably have been standard by now?

The leveling system was pretty poor in previous ES games but the attribute bit worked fine, why the need to turn around and change it to a perk type leveling system i saw in a crap hack and slash game back in 2008? again with the choice and exclusion. Why, when i have built my sneak skill up to 70 do i still need to go and buy a perk to let me take down bad guys in one shot? A perk that could be better spent on other combat or armour related aspects when these kind of perks were all standard as before.

Skyrim is good, it is very good. But given the amount of time since the last game and the boasting of how large a team they had working on it compared with the previous games-it should be better. It could so easily have been alot better.