Elder Scrolls 'Bethesda' phenomenon

Interesting debate. I don't use reviews/previews for anythign but general information on the mechanics on a game and possibly a heads up on a potential issue that may or may not actually exists. I say that because some reviewers don't even seem to know the game they are playing and have reported bugs that were features and vice-versa.

In general I am a PC player and find many things slanted towards console. I also find some games getting dished for more traditional game styles which to me is a plus. So I treat reviews/previews like reviews on books or movies - more to get general information then to decide if I will buy a game.

Thing is I have never gone by a review to purchase a game as gaming taste is so subjective. Instead I read up on mechanics, look at screenshots, read intereviews, and try to figure out of the content and design is up my ally.

In regards to the OP's post, I somewhat agree that there does seem to be a slant towards current companies and even countries.

Is this the same in the reverse though? I am only asking as I have no way of knowing. How are games in the UK, Germany, Austrailia, etc., reviewed when it is a local game versus non-local? What type of review did W2 get in its home country?

On a side note didn't DA2 get some criticism from review/previews? They are a big name still. In some cases companies can also have a good reputation which I think does influence some things. Blizzard certainly has a reputation for making polished games. Bethseda has a fairly good repuation, Oblivion aside ... and lets face it many people did like Oblivion.

I am enjoying Skyrim as I continue to play it and indeed their open world character is their very strong feature and improves over their previous outing. It does deserve a 8.5 but it should be compared fairly to other rpgs as not many of its features are new or ground breaking (e.g. crafting in Risen was so natural, logical and introduced well compared with the menu ridden one in Skyrim). I guess that the ability for modifying the game allows addressing of its shortcomings.

I apologise for my ranting, but I just felt sorry for some of the rpgs that have done some features very well and yet received the inevitable very low scores by mainstream review sites, which ofcourse many go by (although I tend to also look at user reviews as some others have indicated in this thread) and sometimes inhibits innovation.

Agree somewhat with the UI gripes. I'm still early in the game and may be missing some vital clues concerning combat but seems its weakest point. I really liked Risen's combat system where I had full control over my character. The fatalities seems totally random too. Other than that its looking good, and dungeons seems large and voluminous too.

Moriendor said:

User score is even less reliable because often times if there is a huge fanboi community and their fav gets slammed they'll send out a call to arms on the most popular forums and Metacritic/Gamerankings gets swamped by an angry fanboi mob hammering the game with 10/10 scores.
Or the other way around… like if the game uses a certain DRM scheme that the fans of the game are hating then you have an angry mob of fanbois 1-staring a game into oblivion regardless of the game's actual qualities.

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It would be very interesting to see how some of these games' (particularly Dragon Age 2) user scores would look if you threw out all the 10/10 and 1/10 scores.

This reminds me of Benford's Law : http://api.viglink.com/api/click?fo...enford's_law&jsonp=vglnk_jsonp_13212937225501
(This link was copied&pasted by me from another RPGWatch forums entry, by the way … Don't know why it looks that way …)

I "demo" the game together with LA Noir and gave it a good 2 hours, it is boring crap with bad combat , terrible 3rd person animations and the UI feels worst than haemorrhoids ; i don't get how magic got that annoying , even OB had it better.
Loot is trash and NPCs have no depth or character, i hate it more than Risen ( that btw lasted 2 more hours in my drive) .

Rockstar took my money while Sk got uninstalled, i think there is a reason Beth never releases demos and it isn't for saving us the trouble.

SpoonFULL said:

After 5 years of developments, many mods, reviewers and players feedback about how poor the melee combat system is and is still as cluncky as Oblivion. I don't know what else to call this other than lazy. As far as the witcher's is concerned, the story is the highlight of this rpg and it drives the pace of this game, the choices within and game design - I can't imagine this being an open world rpg, and if its rich stories are broken down and spread like Skyrim, it would be a massive open world rpg.

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Seems to me that they've completed the transition from RPG to action/adventure with extremely light RPG elements which they started with in Oblivious.

I ESPECIALLY appreciate removal of stats and the spellmaker, and further reduction in skills. They seem to love their dumbing down, and teh fanbois eat it right up… Now back to actual RPGs.

[EDIT]
Oops almost forgot, I wonder how much those reviews cost Bethesda this time around...
[/EDIT]

cutterjohn said:

[EDIT]
Oops almost forgot, I wonder how much those reviews cost Bethesda this time around…
[/EDIT]

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Well IMDB has budge for Skyrim as 100 million. However someone said the game cost 50 million to make so I guess all the glowing reviews cost them the other 50 million!

Jokes aside Skyrim is very good game so far for me personally

I don't care about review scores most of the time. I'd rather just see what actual gamers have to say on a certain game - that combined with my own interest in the genre & setting plus features, price, etc., decides whether I buy the game or not.

I especially don't trust reviews that come out too early. I think you really need to spend a goodly amount of time with a game to properly judge it and it seems some reviews are written after only a few hours worth of gameplay.

So if a game comes out and the mainstream sites are giving it a 6/10 but my fellow gamers are raving about it (sensibly of course, meaning not being completely oblivious to flaws), then I will most likely check it out.

Reviews are only worthwhile if you know the specific reviewer has tastes similar to your own. I've enjoyed games that got panned (like AP) and disliked games that got raves (numerous).

Just don't get caught up in the pro or con hype.

I have only played Skyrim for a couple hours, but I can see where you're coming from. Personally, I think Skyrim is great so far, but I have definitely encountered some glitches and have experienced better combat is some other more harshly reviewed games. It makes you wonder about the sort of bias that these reviewers have towards certain games and certain companies. Risen (one of the most bug-free games I have played, Gamespot gave it a negative for "various technical glitches" on its way to a 7.0), the Dragon Knight Saga (Gamespot noted simplistic combat and gave it a 6.5), and New Vegas (Weaker reviews compared to Fallout 3. Gamespot noted "occasional glitches"), are three games that come to mind when I think about this.

Out of the Bethesda games I have mentioned (Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim), the only review which noted bugs on Gamespot as part of "the bad" was Skyrim. That being said, I think the sheer scope and size of games like Oblivion and Skyrim helps make up for a lot of their short-comings (still doesn't explain the New Vegas thing to me).

You guys realise that Elder Scrolls games have like 50-90% more content than Witcher 2, Risen, Dragon Age, etc? Elder Scrolls games have their own systems, with thousands of items etc. Most RPG's have like 15-20 pieces of armor, or maybe 2-4 different graphical looks, while Skyrim has loads more.

If those other games had this amount of content -- hundreds/thousands of quests, hundreds of unique dungeons/caves, then I'm pretty sure reviewers would let combat mechanics slide if they weren't fully up to date, for example.

Elder Scrolls games usually have around 300-400 hours of non-repetitive gameplay too. Most other games have around 100 max, and they usually get repetitive long before that.

I wasn't a huge fan of Oblivion, or Morrowind. I thought they were ok, but I just couldn't dig it. The main reason I tried out the Elder Scrolls games in the first place was because I'm a huge fan of open world games/games with huge areas that feel/look real. Unfortunately, developers seem to make their worlds smaller nowadays to appease the gamers who want action.

Open world rpgs or games should be somewhat realistic in size -- walking to a town would take 15 minutes ingame, etc. There should be some interesting stuff scattered around the world of course, but worlds should be larger to promote a sense of achievement as you reach an awesome new place, for example.

But those kind of worlds need a massive amount of monsters, quests, etc as well to make it interesting. They can't simply scale up a map, cause that would be quite boring. They would have to duplicate the amount of unique monsters, bosses, items, quests, towns, npc's, etc. You know what I mean..

Jac_Solar said:

Elder Scrolls games usually have around 300-400 hours of non-repetitive gameplay too. Most other games have around 100 max, and they usually get repetitive long before that.

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Maybe we play different TES games, i prefet to cut and eat my penis rather than spend 300 hours playing "non-repetitive" oblivion , i guess you consider fedex quest as varied.

Tragos said:

Maybe we play different TES games, i prefet to cut and eat my penis rather than spend 300 hours playing "non-repetitive" oblivion , i guess you consider fedex quest as varied.

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After the game bugged (Got stuck in a dungeon with no key or lockpicks to get out.) I stopped playing (I had played for around 15 hours perhaps.), and totally lost interest — I've tried to revisit it a couple of times but I couldn't get into it.. If you know what I mean? Same with Morrowind.

The 300+ hours estimate is what I've heard other people say, in regards to the "Elder Scrolls" series. I've played around with them enough to know the mechanics and workings, and those very high numbers seem possible.

Perhaps it's a bit high, but my point was that they generally provide far more content than other single player games — to the point where they can't even be compared.

Jac_Solar said:

Perhaps it's a bit high, but my point was that they generally provide far more content than other single player games — to the point where they can't even be compared.

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Maybe, but I found Gothic 3 and Fallout:New Vegas to contain huge amount of 'interesting' and varied content. Can't compare to Skyrim as I only went through 10 hours before stopping for more interesting endeavours in Gothic 3.

Tragos said:

Maybe we play different TES games, i prefet to cut and eat my penis rather than spend 300 hours playing "non-repetitive" oblivion , i guess you consider fedex quest as varied.

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Holy hell! If this wasn't so funny I'd be a little scared of you right now

SpoonFULL said:

Maybe, but I found Gothic 3 and Fallout:New Vegas to contain huge amount of 'interesting' and varied content. Can't compare to Skyrim as I only went through 10 hours before stopping for more interesting endeavours in Gothic 3.

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Gothic 3 is an excellent game IMO. That game still has the greatest, most beautiful and most atmospheric world in any game, by far - no other games even come close I think. Skyrim has loads, loads and loads of content, but it still isn't as great as Gothic 3's world.
I don't think I've said or thought this for any game, but Gothic 3s world really makes you feel part of it.

Exploring is truly exciting, and new locations are even more exciting. The design is unparalleled in the world of gaming.

If I remember correctly, it took awhile to 'get into' the game -- it started out feeling like a mediocre game, except the world, which was superb throughout the game (I didn't finish it, but I've thought about installing it again -- but I think the outdated graphics will ruin the gameplay.). It was very hard and even though the combat was somewhat bugged or odd, it ultimately was for the better, because it made exploring very exciting.

Gothic 4 was terrible compared to its predecessors, though. The world was scaled down like 50%, and that alone basically ruined the game, not to mention the extremely simplistic combat, item, skill and loot system (If I remember correctly.)

I was quite surprised when I started playing Gothic 4, because I expected something more like the previous games, but instead I got a linear action/adventure game.

I only played Gothic 2 for a couple of hours or less, and I was very young so I don't remember that world as well.

Jac_Solar said:

Gothic 3 is an excellent game IMO. That game still has the greatest, most beautiful and most atmospheric world in any game, by far - no other games even come close I think. Skyrim has loads, loads and loads of content, but it still isn't as great as Gothic 3's world.
I don't think I've said or thought this for any game, but Gothic 3s world really makes you feel part of it.

Exploring is truly exciting, and new locations are even more exciting. The design is unparalleled in the world of gaming.

If I remember correctly, it took awhile to 'get into' the game — it started out feeling like a mediocre game, except the world, which was superb throughout the game (I didn't finish it, but I've thought about installing it again — but I think the outdated graphics will ruin the gameplay.). It was very hard and even though the combat was somewhat bugged or odd, it ultimately was for the better, because it made exploring very exciting.

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Totally agree. By the way, have you tried the latest community patch for Gothic 3 (1.74 I think). It makes a whole world of improvements and additions (general and combat balancing) and is very stable even at high settings. At the beginning I thought the combat was limited to button mashing but it is not and includes a strategic aspect where you have to parry and charge for critical strikes (it reminds me of the Witcher's combat). As far as Gothic 3's graphic, I thought they were amazing and slightly ahead of their time - the creature animations and physics were well done and so were the environments.

Ugh, I hated the neon glowing harvestable plants. Very tacky, otherwise I need to try it again.

Thrasher said:

Ugh, I hated the neon glowing harvestable plants. Very tacky, otherwise I need to try it again.

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I guess the brightness of various plants was necessary to find them in the lush and dense vegitation in the game.