the reason why there is so much its more action game than rpg "bs" is really look at what they are focusing on. Which aspects did they improve and what aspects did they just ignore or leave out.

To me, after all the back and forth of it all, it boils down to its easy to rp when not doing anything game related, but actually participating in the actual game makes it hard as hell to stay in charector.

To me its an easy fix per se as far as writing. All they needed to do was make the player actually play the role that the quest or guild needed, give us the option to say no, and give us options to further things when theres a scenario that would force us into a role that goes against our rp or at least in those situations something to be happy to stay at that point.

Yes they added chopping wood, marriage, and with a dlc to grow a garden but actual game content they focused heavily on the "action" side and skimped quite a bit on the "rp" part.

If they would stop trying to reinvent the wheel every game and keep what worked and add or improved what was missing or didnt work then I would say they are heading in the right track. But as it is now, they focused to much on flash and action and lack alot in actual substance the game itself when playing what the game offers is severly lacking.

Ow ya, im surprised that we are ok with the copy and paste factions they are handing us. Vanilla game we could chaulk it up to them being rushed but when they do same thing in a dlc thats not rushed...

Yes but he didn't make the final decisions in those games as he did with OB and SK.

Yeah... he actually kinda did.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/General:Todd_Howard


EDIT:Here's the guy who made the decisions.


http://www.uesp.net/wiki/General:Ken_Rolston

I thought he was a assistant or lead designer in those 2 games.

Morrowind if im not mistaken, they was going under and so morrowind was their go big or go bust game. If im not mistaken, with morrowind they pulled out the stops because that game was to decide if they continued making games or not. Though very possible I maybe wrong.

I chaulk it up to the people in charge having different tastes than back then or just basically trying to reach out to the players who play a game only once so they tried to make the game as fun as possible for that one playthru. Either or or both. Either way they did make a fun game but how it was designed to me didnt leave much room for replayablility to encounter new scenarios. I love replaying tes games but this one dosent offer me anything to come back to.
But then again, there are people who see skyrim as being perfect or close as and hey I figure its time to pass the torch to the market they cater to. I know im not their targeted customer anymore and thats ok. Gimes change, people change, the game was still fun for that one playthru. I got my 60 dollars worth outta it.

He was Project Lead for Morrowind, that I know.
Also yeah, the spinoff games were failures in the sales department, so I think it was go big or go bust.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/General:Ken_Rolston
Morrowind - Lead Designer, Writing & Quest Design, Original Concept

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/General:Todd_Howard
Morrowind - Project Lead, Additional Writing & Quest Design, Original Concept

Todd howard was above Ken Rolston

Sometimes I feel like their financial stability since those days has kind of worked against them. Sure, they've taken risks since then that could have ruined them, but to be honest, I'm not sure total failure was in the cards once they were able to put their games on consoles. Oblivion only further put ES on the map, and that's the probably the most criticized entry in the series thus far. Not only that, but every game they make is bug-ridden as hell, and yet their consumer base only grows.

BGS could stand to be a little hungry again, I think. I'm not saying they've made crap games since Morrowind or anything, I'm just saying their current path is a worrisome one, not because they're not pleasing me, but because they're heading towards the "games people play because they're the games to play" arena, and that's a precarious one at best. Admittedly, they've probably been heading in this direction from Morrowind onward, not Oblivion onward. It just may not seem that way to some (including myself) because Morrowind is the one that had a chance to break instead of save them.


True, though it's always possible that Ken was responsible for a lot of the best ideas. Then again, maybe not.

Sure, when they are raking in the dough. That's the nature of any business. Collectively, the primary interest is to make a profit. Individually, I have no doubt there are several people who legitimately value the work that he or she has done.

Probably a bit of both? Bethesda is also made up of many people, unless you're just talking about Todd. I can definitely see it isn't a purely commercial incentive for most of the staff shown, especially compared with other studios.

Todd came to the forefront with Morrowind, which was an amazing game especially for its time and especially in comparison to Daggerfall. So yeah.. the hate is kinda strange.

The hate is mostly because of the shameless lying to people and his juvenile "splosions are awesome" type thinking. He isn't called the Michael Bay of the video game industry for nothing.

If he were the Michael Bay of gaming, then his games would have amazing graphics. So I doubt your claim.

I have never heard anyone call him the Michael Bay of video games.......... ever.

Like, literally, nothing about his game design even mimics michael bay, CoD is Michael Bay, MoH is Michael Bay, Gears is Michael bay, but Elder Scrolls?

all I can say is WHUT?

It's mostly when it comes to Fallout 3. Everything exploded in that game, even things that shouldn't have.

What did Todd Howard say that was "shameless lying?" Could you provide a few examples?

"Spears impossible to implement due to engine limitations" Gamejam or what and they show spears as clear as day.
"Fallout 3 will have hard choices" 99% of the game is black and white.
"Party members have strong and defined personalitites in Fallout 3" Surprise, surprise, they're just human shields with little to no personality.
I'm sure others can come up with a lot more instances, but these are the ones that comes to mind when thinking about Todd Howard.

No they hate Elder Scrolls, they purposely make it to so they can make an awesome feature then take it away just to giggle at outraged fans.

When I try to find the source for this on the Internet, all I get is unsourced spam, just like this.

Todd has said (and here's my own bit of unsourced spam) that they did not do spears because it would take time, and they preferred to spend that time on other things. Todd said it for Oblivion and he said it again for Skyrim. It makes no sense for him to change the story he has been running with for years, especially when the story is so darn reasonable. It makes more sense that people misheard what he said, or took what he said out of context, or only parroted what someone else said in some forum.


Maybe Todd did say that the engine made spears impossible, but it may be that few know why.

Hard choices cannot be black and white choices? I'm sorry but your sentence literally makes no sense to me.


This is a matter of opinion. Lying is about facts.

That's a popular quote, I'm pretty sure he said that somewhere since I have a very faint memory of reading something like that in one of the initial interviews about Skyrim. I have to give it you that I'm not sure now, because I did a google search and nothing came out except what you said, useless [censored]. Oh well.
In the fan interview, however, which I do have a source on (it's right here on this site) he said it's because they wanted to get the other playstyles right, but that turned out to be a lie too because mages are nerfed as [censored], the only way to get them right is to powergame.

What I meant is the game is full of stuff like blowing up Megaton or not, selling the Wilks kid to the slavers or not, blowing someone's head off or not. These are not hard choices to make because it's clear which is right. To me a hard choice is deciding whether I tell the Master about the fatal flaw in his plan or not, killing the BoS for Mr House or not, or the choice in the Pitt to give an example from a DLC for F3. I don't see why they couldn't put choices like the Pitt a lot more into the core game.

Is it now? How can NPCs have strong and defined characteristics when they barely say anything and many times are as generic as they can get? F3 companions are only a little bit deeper than Skyrim core game companions.

The radiant ai demo for Oblivion, you can do everything npcs can do in Skyrim, manipulate the local economy, do these fall in the "facts" category?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9A6QHLIWg0 Behold, spears. Developed in one week's worth of work, according to this video.

God, that video [censored] annoys me. The song that is playing is catering to the "lol internet culture" crowd and the little message at the end has rather unfortunate implications.

I'll be honest, I've never seen it all the way through. The music made me find another video before the halfway point. I just remembered the spears because it's been a major discussion point since Oblivion.