Skyrim Skyrim, lacking a soul?

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Eh, a lot of the games mentioned in this thread didn't have very good NPC's either. The characters in the Gothics, Ultimas, Daggerfall, Morrowind, etc, are very one-dimensional.

I will give you that Daggerfall and Morrowind also had the Bethesda trademark bland generic npcs, but if by Ultimas you are including Ultima 7 I will have to most vehemently disagree with you.

Every single npc in Ultima 7 was an individual. There were no generic npcs. Everyone had their own specific dialog and many had quite a bit of it. The Piranha Bytes games also tend to have more individual npcs and specific dialog.

Most npcs in Oblivion had generated faces and spoke generated lines from the same few voice actors (and yes I realize there is no voice acting in Ultima 7 so they didn't have to deal with that). Even if we are talking quest npcs where Bethesda does give unique and specific dialog I personally found the ones in Ultima 7 and 7 part 2 on the whole to be far more memorable than Bethesda npcs. I really struggle to think of any memorable npcs in Oblivion at all really.

You are certainly entitled to your opinion and I'm not saying you are 'wrong'. I know that different people take different things out of the same game, but I just really struggle to understand how anyone could think that the Bethesda npcs are anywhere near being on par with those in Ultima 7 or even the PB games.
 
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Agrees with everything Motoki say. I have not played Ultima 7 but Gothic (I include Risen here) games over all had much better NPCs than Oblivion.

In my first play through of Oblivion, I just did the main quest and not lot besides. Now please tell me a sing decent NPC in the Oblivion main quest? I think Morrowind was slight better in this regard (i wanted to know what happened to the blade guy).

I don't buy the argument that open world RPG somehow cannot have good story with memorable NPCs. I think it can be done and to an extent that PB games does this (they haven't succeed fully).

I do however agree it hard work to make most or all the NPC memorable but they should at least try for the main quest. In oblivion, they didn't bother to try. I hope they try in Skyrim.

Also it was very obvious in Oblivion that most of the NPC you meet are scripted. That just killed the game for me. I never had this feeling in any of PB games.

The other reason why i think Oblivion lacked a soul was the overland world was bloody empty. Nothing happens. Hardly any monsters attack, hardly any NPCs around etc. The overland world felt dead. It did not feel lived in. This is in contrast to any of PB games.
 
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