» Sun Dec 11, 2011 4:27 am
That's it!
I've been trying to put my finger on just why Skyrim doesn't deliver 100% for me, and someone said... it's a theme park. Well, more of a theme park than a sandbox. This is a debate going on over at Old Republic since that game, while advertised to have sandbox features, is really just another theme park MMO. That game doesn't sit well with me because of it--while it's fun and entertaining, it becomes glaringly obvious early on that you're just along for the ride and don't really have an impact on who or what your character is/does.
Theme park games, for those who don't know, are those which set up areas of questing to which you are shuttled to and from. In this case, you could consider each hold and its respective capital city to be a different "world" or "attraction" within the theme park, and you go shuffling off from hub to hub to complete your quests. In opposition to a theme park is the sandbox--a gameplay philosophy that TES fans are quite accustomed to (Daggerfall). In a sandbox game, systems and features are not tied to any specific location and most gameplay is left to the player to decide how and when to do it. For an easy point of reference, the difference between a theme park game and a sandbox game is the difference between Dragon Age II and Morrowind, respectively.
It seems--and you might call it a bit of a stretch--that Skyrim tries to be both of these things. Theme parks typically appeal to casual gamers because the content is clearly defined and laid out for you; you simply have to find the time to explore and enjoy it. In Skyrim, this is made clear by the compass and map markers, the quest hubs of cities with relatively few meaningful questing opportunities initiated out in the wilds (stumbling upon a ruin is the emergent gameplay of a sandbox, but chances are you stumbled upon it because you had a quest from an NPC in the city who told you to go to that area), and the at-times awkward level-scaling. In the other aspect, Skyrim is an open world which encourages you to explore at your leisure, uncover information about the world itself, and choose when to quest and where.
The problem for me is that the playstyles are at odds with each other; when I feel more inclined to venture off and do my own thing, the quest journal has a habit of reminding me that there are a bunch of NPCs counting on me to do this or that, and so I feel inexorably pulled back into the A-to-B questing routine. Or, when I'm out taking care of business for the Imperials, I suddenly feel like I'm missing out on all of the content floating around me as I go from fort to fort. In essence, I'm being pulled in either direction and neither meshes well with the other. From a roleplaying perspective, it makes figuring out your character's decisions a bit more difficult (do I help the woman find her son or do I delve into that ruin I see at the top of a mountain?). If I do one, I feel I'm missing out on the other--the game forces me to do all things at all times.
I'm certainly over-thinking the whole thing, but being heavily invested in Skyrim (both emotionally and monetarily) I felt as though something just didn't sit right with me. And that was it: Two wholly different game design principles competing with each other and putting me at odds as to which I will choose to engage in. I think that previous TES games did a better job of managing the two sides of the coin--rewarding emergent gameplay and questing, while at the same time encouraging you to follow the path from A to B.
The OP is simply saying he could use more of a sandbox in his theme park. I completely agree.