Skyrim - The Remedy For An Overly-Connected Age

[Drithius]

I have a serious question for all the Skyrim "roleplayers". How do you contend with Bethesda constant lack of choice with quest design? The goal of the game is to kill 99% of everything you encounter.

Example: I had not done the Red Eagle quest since the first time I picked up Skyrim 3+ years ago, so it was completely fresh to me. What a letdown when, at its conclusion, Red Eagle is just yet another mindless automaton to whom I can't say, "Yo dude, I'm on your side, I'm trying to drive out the Imperials from your motherland."

So how do you roleplay yourself out of utterly dull "me barsh barsh you die die" Bethesda quest design?

 

[rjshae]

I had to restart it three times before I finally got the gaming experience I wanted. Now it's grown a little boring. Ah well…

 

[Ripper]

So how do you roleplay yourself out of utterly dull "me barsh barsh you die die" Bethesda quest design?

With about 250 mods.

 

[DArtagnan]

I don't necessarily disagree with your reasoning here, philosophically. But practically speaking, IMHO, ESO is a rather good argument counter to yours. I really disliked online Elder Scrolls with COOxMine37 and L33T87 buzzing around me. I seem to prefer the solitude of Tamriel in a solo game. At the same time, I do enjoy other multiplayer games, even played WoW for a time.

You're suggesting that ESO is as good as Skyrim when it comes to what Skyrim does best? I can't agree with that at all.

Skyrim is a giant sandbox with a rather impressive amount of player freedom and total non-linearity. ESO is a hybrid between the traditional MMO and TES - and while I admire the game and the effort, there's no contest when it comes to giving players freedom and the sense of exploration and reward that Skyrim offers, as it doesn't need to consider multiplayer balance issues, and there's no reason not to let the player kill most major NPCs, and so on.

Multiplayer != MMO.

What I would want to see from a future TES game would be a strong cooperative feature, combined with advanced modding ala Neverwinter Nights.

Something like that would be fantastic, in my opinion.

 

[DArtagnan]

I have a serious question for all the Skyrim "roleplayers". How do you contend with Bethesda constant lack of choice with quest design? The goal of the game is to kill 99% of everything you encounter.

I don't need a small selection of pre-written dialogue choices in a conversation, here and there, to make a choice feel meaningful in a game. Skyrim offers freedom of character development and behavior on a level that very few other RPGs can match, and that's not about dialogue trees to me. It's more about how the game allows you to approach any given scenario, and you can completely avoid killing in many cases - either through sneaking or persuading, for instance.

So how do you roleplay yourself out of utterly dull "me barsh barsh you die die" Bethesda quest design?

Maybe by being different in terms of what I want from games than you?

Overall, you seem like a very negative person when it comes to games - and you seem extremely adverse to giving new ways of doing things a chance.

Essentially, I don't think anyone here has the capacity to make you understand how it's like to not be like that.

But I give you my personal guarentee that it's fully possible to enjoy Skyrim in ways you might have missed - or don't care about.

 

[Archangel]

What I would want to see from a future TES game would be a strong cooperative feature, combined with advanced modding ala Neverwinter Nights.

Something like that would be fantastic, in my opinion.

And an option for a GM player to help those cooperative players have more fun

 

[joxer]

DA:I vs Skyrim

Knew someone will do it.

Skyrim IMO can't be helped, it's a rubbish game with nice visuals, nice music and one superb DLC that continues to live on just because of modders' creativity.
DA:I on the other hand, with just a few tweaks, would be a nearperfect game. Those tweaks are in fact nothing else but ditching consolecrap design out of the game.

Before someone thinks I suddenly changed my opinions on EA and Bethesda, I didn't.
Posted exactly these words on TheSims4 official forum yesterday: I hate EA. That forum is heavily moderated and is not nearly as liberal as Bioware's forum. Still I was not banned. Yet.
Hating EA doesn't instantly mean I'll spit on all their products. Just like hating Skyrim bugs didn't prevent me to slap 10/10 on Bethesda's brilliant Dishonored.

DA:Bears, regardless of it's negatives, is still more RPG and more epic than Dead Dancing Spiders can ever be.

 

[TheMadGamer]

@dart

Couldn't have said it better myself.

 

[Ripper]

Posted exactly these words on TheSims4 official forum yesterday: I hate EA.

Nicely done, Joxer. Keep up the good work.

 

[joxer]

I will, count on that.
I'm not one of those Steam crybabies with level 0 trolling multiaccs scared to post on official dev/publisher sites under actual account.

 

[jd]

Brilliantly, brilliantly put.

And we need more games like it.

I so agree with you. There are a nice batch coming out now or near future too. I have drifted away from MP gaming myself.

 

[sakichop]

I loved Skyrim and its success doesn't suprise me.

I probably played it very differently than most though. First off I never played it vanilla. I started modding it day 1.

2nd, in my 400 hours I never made it past finding the horn or whatever in the main story. I spent my time just exploring, find a note and it leads to a cool quest, overhear some one mumbling about something and it leads to a cool quest, just wander aimlessly and you guessed it, run in to a cool quest.

Skyrim was never about being a great epic rpg for me. It was about taking a world, making it mine with mods and then losing myself in it for hours and hours.

So honestly I don't know if Skyrim was a great game, but I know my skyrim was.

 

[luj1]

This article is over-glorifying Skyrim. The columnist concludes that, 1) since Skyrim there hasn't been a focused, high-quality single player experience, and 2), Skyrim remains untouched, the high king of the open world sandbox. Can't really agree with either of these ridiculous claims.

The main reason for Skyrim's success (besides of cheap marketing tricks and infantile approach appealing to young console owners) is a superb editor and the modding community. The vanilla game was virtually unplayable at launch. 11/11/11 was a disgrace to the industry and history of game-development.

People tend to forget that every subsequent Elder Scrolls single player RPG since Morrowind has been dumbed down and progressively streamlined. It started with Oblivion, which actually isn't so bad when compared to the likes of Skyrim.

 

[Brysos]

While I agree that the article doesn't really 'prove' that the single player aspect of Skyrim is the key to its success, I do think there has been a shift of studio focus since WoW first came from single player RPGs to MMOs.

This has been a disappointing trend for players like me who prefer single player games. My enjoyment of single player games is less about solitude and more about time. MMOs require a certain level of commitment and large blocks of uninterrupted time, single player games are much more flexible.

 

[crpgnut]

What Skyrim does still today is generate multiple page threads of passionate debate. There are very few games that do that here, BG and the Fallout serie being in that select group.

 

[Archangel]

I loved Skyrim and its success doesn't suprise me.

I probably played it very differently than most though. First off I never played it vanilla. I started modding it day 1.

2nd, in my 400 hours I never made it past finding the horn or whatever in the main story. I spent my time just exploring, find a note and it leads to a cool quest, overhear some one mumbling about something and it leads to a cool quest, just wander aimlessly and you guessed it, run in to a cool quest.

Skyrim was never about being a great epic rpg for me. It was about taking a world, making it mine with mods and then losing myself in it for hours and hours.

So honestly I don't know if Skyrim was a great game, but I know my skyrim was.

Cool quests? You must be talking about some from mods as I don't remember any from vanilla

 

[Drithius]

So how do you roleplay yourself out of utterly dull "me barsh barsh you die die" Bethesda quest design?

With about 250 mods.

No amount of mods change the fundamental design of the game - at least none that I've found. Some mods may introduce new quests that offer a more intelligent, interactive experience, but they don't overhaul the pre-existing quest content. And some may overhaul the difficulty of the game such as Requiem, but they still don't address the elephant(s) in the room - C&C & reactivity.

I've been playing through the game again for the past month or so, but despite my earnest attempts at overhauling the game with mods and approaching the game from a wanderlust perspective, the shiny vistas and moody dungeons are starting to wear thin and I can feel myself losing interest. The game is just the same series of unevolving encounters over and over again.

 

[Ripper]

@Drithius

I agree with you about the extreme blandness of the base game, and you're right - it can't be fully corrected with mods. But, although it wasn't sold as such, to me it's more of a toolkit and a very well made landscape to play around with. I've spent far more time tinkering with it, modding it, and learning its systems, then I ever did playing it. I learned a lot, and had a quite a bit of fun.

In terms of the actual game experience out of the box, I'd be in the strongly critical camp, but for me it was still a terrific purchase.

 

[SpoonFULL]

Skyrim's success is in the high level of personalisation it offers - that's it!

 

[Archangel]

@Drithius

I agree with you about the extreme blandness of the base game, and you're right - it can't be fully corrected with mods. But, although it wasn't sold as such, to me it's more of a toolkit and a very well made landscape to play around with. I've spent far more time tinkering with it, modding it, and learning its systems, then I ever did playing it. I learned a lot, and had a quite a bit of fun.

In terms of the actual game experience out of the box, I'd be in the strongly critical camp, but for me it was still a terrific purchase.

I doubt that all 17 000 that still play it daily do modding and playing like you.
What keeps them at it?