This kind of thing farther drags down this game, how about a reputation system where the world actually acknowledges your actions for good or ill. Also we need a faction reputation system as well, let your deeds be reflected and let people recognize your actions. People should know if you are the head of a guild or the factions should know your a member of another unless its a shadowy organization like the Dark Brotherhood. Also what about skill requirements to advance in a guild.

I played fallout newvagas for 22 hours then got bored

I played skyrim (and currently playing skyrim) for about 100 hours and still strong

I find you cna play skyrim the way you want with your character, you want to be a merchant, monk , priest, salesmen, hunter, fisherman and plenty of others. There a lot of fetch and kill quests but there is so much content. I wouldnt mind if your choices made more of a outcome but Im very happy with the game.

One thing that I feel they should have improved is dialogue options and how people react to your status

I agree to a point. I thought I was safe playing an evil character and doing the DB quests, but I was forced to do something good toward the end, it was a crime imo bethesda. Never should a character be forced to do something good or evil. Pretty simple imo.

Thats only happened to me once in 200 hours though.

Actually there are lots of consequences to your actions throughout the game. Unfortunately you would only see that if you somehow managed to explore every single thing before you did any quests and then explored every single thing after you did all the quests. . Some areas change specifically for a quest and are different if you were there before or come back later. Granted, Most changes are little changes and most players will never see them making you feel like nothing you do really matters in any way.

Making Decisions and being able to take the story in a different direction is the MAIN reason I got some much hours and enjoyment out of games like Dragon Age Origins and The Witcher 2.[censored] you take those away and you are left with a game that may be ok on a first play through but playing it again is completely pointless.It is not that hard to give RPG gamers what they want why developers deicide to give us anything but that is mind boggling.

For the love of God, please let them do it.



As for what Bethesda's doing wrong?

On one hand, I think Bethesda needs to drop their phobia of canon endings. The Warp in the West should've been the biggest wake-up call for them that yes, you DO have to pick a canon ending. Instead, no, they're still phobic of canon endings to the point where instead of simply accepting they're an inevitability and creating multiple endings without worry, they opt to take away choice from the player to fix it, so that NOBODY can beat the game and then later find out their character doesn't qualify as canon.
What's wrong with canon endings? I LOVED Fallout New Vegas partly because the Courier was such an interesting and new type of protagonist for an RPG. He was a blank slate, but he wasn't. You were free to form him, but you weren't. The game gave you all the freedom to make whatever character you like while silently hinting at traits of the canon Courier, making each new addition to the story not only another chapter in the story of the player's character, but also another chapter in that of the Courier. Each DLC was the chance to write a chapter and read one aswell. What Bethesda's doing? We can't write a chapter, basically. We can only read an incredibly, INCREDIBLY bland chapter they've written. They're so phobic of canon that they avoid portraying ANY personality within character dialog, let alone any real choices. So instead of reading a story about a charming, badass Courier who's on a search to find his own beliefs, we get some Dragonborn guy who.....well fights dragons and that's about it. Instead of being able to write a character that is a sly but selfish businessman who manipulates and backstabs all the factions to his benefit, we get to write....well basically we get to write if our Dragonborn fought the dragon head-on, defeated it with a spell or stabbed it in the back.


On the other hand? I just think it's bad priorities. There's no reason for Skyrim to be this shallow. Skyrim had what, 5 years development total, but 3 of those were spent making the engine and the foundation? Ok, but Fallout New Vegas had the engine and many of the world items provided (not all, many of the DLCs for example show lots of new textures and items), but then only had a little over a year of development time. The end result? New Vegas is released and some of the Obsidian devs say "sorry, we didn't have time to flesh out the Legion further, to develop West Side and North side beyond being minor unimportant "nations" and we had to cut Ulysses." Nevertheless, the game feels finished, the only noticeable thing missing being a lack of towns for the Legion. Meanwhile, what's Skyrim doing? Well the game feels incredibly shallow but the devs all comment and say "yep, definitely a finished product." Really? Are you sure? Are you just saying that because it's bad publicity, or are you saying that because you actually believe it? Not sure which one worries me more....
Skyrim's world is beautiful, yes, but honestly I'd take a living, breathing world with a compelling story over a jagged mountain top anyday. I hope I'm not the only one.

Lastly though, I worry about the quality of their writers to begin with. I'm sorry, but the main quest plot was absolutely abysmal. Compared to Morrowind, where Dagoth Ur is a compelling antagonist with a story, or Oblivion, where we understand that Mehrunes Dagon is doing what he's doing because he's basically like a Roman God; obsessed with his realm (and meanwhile Mankar Camoron is somewhat interesting himself), what does Skyrim provide? "herp derp i destroy all cuz i iz dragon." Wow....

Kind of use to have that rep system in previous TES games....

I'd like to jump back to this.

C&C is not a singular , independent design concept. It is simply referring to a specific type of quest. One that is reactive and offers the player the opportunity to explore the different options available to their character (whether those be moral/tactical or dependent upon that character's skills). TO say that "TES has never been about choice and consequence" is missing the point. TES is about questing. Good quests will be interactive and reative, not simply linear pre-determined affairs.

TES has never had especially good combat. But Beth still makes efforts to improve on it. Why is the attitude towards freedom within a quest not given at least equal priority?

not going to quote wall of text

One of the best things about Bethesda is the fact they do not do multiple endings.

Vivec betrayed and murdered someone who believed in and trusted him and the other members of the tribunal to gain power that eventually failed them and in doing so caused their homeland a great deal of damge.He also was someone who threatened "If you ever stop loving me I will kill you." by letting the Ministry of truth crash.

Because of these things I put Vivec down like a dog.Most game devs would say nope didn't happen because he is a very interesting Char. we want to keep around.

Bethesda made letting him live and killing him both possible with one little rumor."The Daedra have taken Vivec"(not the exact rumor but close enough for govt work)

If you let him live his removal from future events is explained and if you killed him you realize it is just more lies from the temple.

To me that is far better than here is four endings we will pick the winner later.

I remember when oblivion came out the enormous outrage and a lot of harsh comments about it. However Skyrim has completely justified this response by making a game that has no soul to it.
The world is lifeless and the quests are more bothersome/spoonfed to you in an act of desperation to seize your attention. I dont even remember the last time I had to walk up and ask about a problem
in skyrim they all just came up mumbling about bears or how their wooden spoon was stolen by fargoth.

In comparison to New Vegas which I have started playing a new character again it seems that the Elder scrolls has finally put the nail in its coffin for me. They deliberately knew about modding community
so they set up a steam service so players have to make the game for them. It was the point where even scripts and missing dialog options where it crossed the line for example the mage in white run talking about
learning spells in winter-hold when you are the *spoiler* archmage.

I look at vegas and you got gambling a small extra feature of a game where skyrim had no mini games of any sort (maybe the tag LOL in solitude).
Not only this but the choices you made were really impacted on getting ambushed by enemies of different factions
and expressions of fear or admiration when you commited different acts. Dont forget the fact that you also got given speech/barter and a tonne of different persuasive dialogues in the whole game in comparison to skyrims main quest only approach.
Finnaly the ending was much more diverse and told a different story every time.

You want to know why you don't have choices and consequences it's because it doesn't fit the story they want you to have.

That would be a fitting complaint against Bioware, not Bethesda. Beth's problem is that they want to keep the game wide open, to have everything possible for any character.

It's assumed (correctly) to not be valued as much as pretty graphics and combat by the broader market. If you have a budget of X, you're going to concentrate on pretty graphics and combat as much as you can, and then work the other good stuff in if you have enough time and/or resources remaining. Again, though, I think the marketing deadline screwed them. You can see they started to implement things but then dropped them in order to have the product ship in time.

Of course, now that the game's succeeded regardless of its shortcomings, Bethesda will have no reason to build on this in its next title. I hope I'm wrong, and that the company's not that shortsighted, but history is against me on this front.

It would be nice if you could make choices that actually meant something but the game is still great.

Let me ask it this way.

How much more money would they have made if it had the Ideal amount of C&C IYO?
It is a business not a hobby.

LMFAO

money money money.....Mooonneeyy Bethesdas all about the Benjamins. it's things like this that make me start to side with people who don't view video games as art.

If you are a developer that views video games as art you will probably have a lot of stories about when you used to make video games for a living

It's difficult to quantify these things. They probably would have lost more sales than they gained, though: the game would have been described differently in reviews/previews if C&C was a huge selling point, so mainstream gamers could have been left with the impression that it's too much of an RPG, and that could have turned them off.

In the longer term, it tends to be better for RPG devs to keep C&C in their games. When they remove too much of it, their games become bland, the company becomes more mainstream, and it eventually fails or is bought by another company that then sets it up for failure. Bethesda's situation is a bit different because they're a private company. Maybe they're smart enough to not make the same mistakes other RPG developers have? I don't know.

3 months after release and we are still seeing detailed arguments about the game on the forums.

Looks like whatever Beth did, they did right.

I disagree 100% if you only create things for money you will be bankrupt in much more meaningful way.

yeah...keep thinking that mate.

I think they only class them as art so they can score arty-farty chicks. RPG's are more literature than art....which pretty well fits fps into the lower class of paperback porm category...

I will keep thinking it youngster, after all, you spent your money on the game.

How much C&C would satisfy you?
Would having a few factions that have branching options be enough?
or
Does the Main quest,Every faction, and random quests(not counting Radient Story quests) need some options/


In other words does it have to be the meat or is having it as a spice good enough?

But you will be able to buy food in a more realistic way