Topic: Killing Dragons and Stuff (Skyrim)

[Shorty McNostril]

So yeah,  rented it out yesterday. People have been hyped for this game so I thought I would try it out to see what all the fuss was about.  I have to say that so far it isn't doing it for me. 



Now I have never played an Elder Scrolls game before so I wasn't fully sure what to expect.  Admittedly, I have only played it for a couple of hours so far.  I have it for the rest of the day so I'll try some more a bit later and see how it goes.


The game looks and sounds absolutely stunning though (X360). 


What are your thoughts on it?

[Ceric]

Anything with Elder Scroll in its name I advoid now.  Been burned to many times.

[broodwars]

My best friend is picking the game up today, as he was a big fan of Oblivion (when Quests weren't breaking on him).  He'll be bringing the game over tomorrow so I can get some hands-on time with it before I decide if I'll be picking it up as well.  I'll make up my mind then, as I have $45 in gift cards coming in the mail I'd like to use on a game before the holidays.

At the moment, though, I'm on the fence when it comes to this game.  I didn't play Oblivion, and I hated Morrowind.  I found that game incredibly dull, as it felt like I was constantly wandering over the same square mile of terrain investigating copy & pasted dungeons killing the same enemies.  The world felt fairly generic High Fantasy and the story was fairly uninteresting.  I never did finish it.

I did like Fallout 3, though...when it wasn't crashing on me (which was often on PS3).  I did find that when I knocked out the main story quests and had all the best gear my character could use, I really stopped caring about the world at that point and just got bored wandering through the same 3-4 environment templates; grabbing the same loot; and killing the same enemies in not particularly hard ways.  I'm really concerned about running into that in Skyrim as well, as well as hitting major technical issues like I did in Fallout 3 (despite this being a new engine, reviews are already citing crashing issues and breaking quests).

From the looks of things, though, Skyrim seems to be much more user-friendly than Morrowind was, so I think I could probably get into it.

[Ceric]

IF someone convinces me to get this.  I'm not making the same mistake and I'm getting the PC version because it can be modded.  Curse is trying to get modders right now.

[NWR_insanolord]

I will buy the PC version if CrossOver supports it, because while I'm interested, I'm not interested enough to boot into Windows to play it.

[Morari]

Morrowind is easily one of the best games ever made. Period. It was mind-blowing for its time, and has held up surprisingly well. I went back and played through it again just last year. It's all the better now that there are entire environment rebuilds and graphical updates available through modding!

I haven't played too much of Skyrim yet. Hopefully next week will afford more freedom in my schedule. Sadly, it suffers from a lot of obvious console-itis right off the bat. Shitty list menus for everything, odd duel-wielding designed for gamepad triggers, and worst of all... mouse acceleration! It looks like most of the mouse problems can be solved in the INI, though.

Still, the game looks gorgeous outside of some odd human faces and muddy clothing textures. More so than anything though, the game is visually interesting. Oblivion suffered from a lot of dumbed-down console choices as well, but was even farther disgraced by an absolutely boring story and setting. Skyrim looks to sidestep that thus far. Of course, I'm biased as I've always played as the Nords.

It's far, far too early to comment on just how well it stacks up against Morrowind. I already get the sense that it'll easily surpass Oblivion, though. Of course, the game will be even better to go back through and play again next year once the community has thoroughly modded it.

[Ceric]

I think that is my problem.  I've never played an Elder Scroll on PC and I always hear the Mods are what really make it.

[Chozo Ghost]

It's probably best to wait a year before buying this. Not just because of the inevitable price drops, but also because since this is a Bethesda game there are bound to be a **** load of bugs so you will probably want to wait until they've patched as many of those as they are going to.

[oohhboy]

I can't stand any of the Elder Scroll games. The gameplay doesn't have any cohesiveness to it and what worse the combat is terrible. The very same sins carried over to Fallout 3, the only game that is "Quasi Elder scrolls" I could tolerate enough to finish. The gunplay is absolutely rubbish, you unload on someone but they act like paper cutouts, completely unfazed. You couldn't play the game without VATS since that was the only reliable way to kill or wound an enemy without receiving massive amounts of return fire and they made the AI that way because of VATS. Quite frankly, the Oblivion engine is the worse framework they could have chosen for a fallout game.

Sure there were some pretty cool moments, but it doesn't take away the fact most of the game just isn't fun, the worse sins you can commit in a game. The mods helped, but the gameplay foundations were built on sand. You have done something very, very wrong when I finish the main story line and I think "Thank god that's over now I never have to play this again" followed by the next thought "I would go play Pen and Paper RPGs over this if it wasn't all vampires, high fantasy and LARP".

So I will be giving this game a very width berth and go play Mount and Blade for that medieval combat fix.

[Morari]

Fallout 3, and especially New Vegas could be easily turned into full-on shooters with just a handful of mods. Of course, given the series' roots, that wasn't really the goal nor the point for Bethesda. As far as the Elder Scrolls go, Skyrim's combat is much more satisfying than its predecessors. Morrowind was all dice rolls when it came to even making contact, whereas Oblivion only checked your stats to see how much damage to apply to successful hits. Skyrim isn't quite on par with Zeno Clash's combat, but it's definitely satisfying.

As for bugs... I keep hearing that argument leveled against the Elder Scrolls and Fallout games, but I just don't see it. Unless I have a couple dozen mods installed, the games behave themselves more or less as well as any other game. Even still, some forgiveness is in order. These are huge worlds, with open structures. It's harder to fine-tune and play test than your generic, linear action titles.

[oohhboy]

While a full on shooter with RPG stats ala Stalker would not have been completely in the spirit of the numbered Fallout series, it would have been far more playable and fun. If they wanted an rpg experience, they should have used a full on turn based or a WEGO system for combat. Instead they halfassed it with VATS becoming equivalent of spell points paired with broken real-time combat with an AI that wasn't constrained as your character was. Instead of hiding to reload a gun or even to regenerate health, you hid so you could get more AP. For a lot of people mods weren't available and if you have to resort to mods to have a playable game out of the box, the game isn't any good.

There were bugs, crashes, plenty of general unpleasantness, but I didn't bother mentioning them since fixing those doesn't fundamentally fix the game. It doesn't matter that it was a huge open world. They didn't test the gameplay fundamentals. They didn't ask themselves, what happens if someone doesn't play the game exactly the way we envisioned after we gave them the tools to do so otherwise. They didn't make a small map with all these gameplay elements and see how they interacted with each other. I doubt they even tried to pen and paper it on a back of a napkin. The thought process was "How can we shoehorn Oblivion stats into a Fallout skin", not "How can we modernize Fallout to use 10  years of technological and gameplay advancements". Stalker proved an open world FPS could work even with buildings you could enter in real-time. KOTOR had a modernized realtime RPG system. Deus Ex showed you can mesh RPG and FPS together.

Bethesda has no excuse for the mess that is Fallout 3. Not to mention that asinine ending. I am evil because I sent a mutant invincible to radiation to push a button inside a high radiation environment instead of needlessly committing suicide so I can be a wasteland Jesus. Bethesda couldn't even catch such a glaring issue in the climax of the game, how much thought do you think they put into everything else. No excuses.

[Chozo Ghost]

VATS was the biggest problem I had when playing Fallout 3 on my PS3. I enabled the Mysterious Stranger perk, and I didn't come to find out until later that that was a big no no. There were times where you are engaging enemies over long distances or weird angles and he would appear but never be able to kill the enemies, so the game would be stuck in a really slow limbo for a very long time until either you died or the game crashed.

There were also times when the game just froze up for no reason at all and the system had to be reset. That really sucked if you played a few hours and didn't save your game.

Bethesda has no excuse for the mess that is Fallout 3. Not to mention that asinine ending. I am evil because I sent a mutant invincible to radiation to push a button inside a high radiation environment instead of needlessly committing suicide so I can be a wasteland Jesus. Bethesda couldn't even catch such a glaring issue in the climax of the game, how much thought do you think they put into everything else. No excuses.

Haha! Yeah, I remember that. Not only are ghouls and such immune to radiation, but they are actually healed by it, so not only would sending Charon or what's his name... Uncle Leo? in there not be a bad thing, it would actually be beneficial to them. There is also the robot thing that you could partner with, and he should have been immune to the radiation also. It should have only made you evil if you sent one of the human characters in there.

[Morari]

For a lot of people mods weren't available and if you have to resort to mods to have a playable game out of the box, the game isn't any good.

The game doesn't need "fixed", though. It plays perfectly fine as is. It can certainly stand to be improved upon however, and that's where mods come in. Just like in any game. For those people without modding capability, they have only themselves to blame. Just say no to consoles.

The thought process was "How can we shoehorn Oblivion stats into a Fallout skin", not "How can we modernize Fallout to use 10  years of technological and gameplay advancements". Stalker proved an open world FPS could work even with buildings you could enter in real-time. KOTOR had a modernized realtime RPG system. Deus Ex showed you can mesh RPG and FPS together.

I agree with this, if nothing else. Fallout 3 (and New Vegas) would have been better off had they not been crammed into Oblivion's shell. Except that KOTOR is boring.

[broodwars]

So my friend was over today, and I played through the opening sequence of Skyrim before he had to go.  Eh, it's ok.  It plays well enough that I'll probably pick it up sometime this coming week, though the game seems to chug a bit on PS3 with some minor framerate issues.  Seeing the game in person, it looks much better than the Fallout 3 mod it looks like in internet videos.  I like the dual-wield system, though I wish the game would actually tell you if a weapon is single or two-handed.

I see, though, that Bethesda still seems incapable of putting together a character creator that didn't make everything look hideous.

I liked what I saw, though I'll probably start over when I actually get the game so I can pick a different origin.  I usually pick an Elf-type character when I play these sort of games, but I just could not make a decent-looking character in the little time I had to work with, so I picked an Imperial.  Besides, I'd like to take my time next time around and savor the experience.

[Chozo Ghost]

I want to make a Hulk Hogan character and go berserk on everything and anything I see.


(but that will have to wait until I get the game first)

[broodwars]

I want to make a Hulk Hogan character and go berserk on everything and anything I see.

You won't have to try that hard.  The default Imperial and Norn models are pretty close to that already.

[Morari]

What'cha gonna do brother, when Hulkamania runs wild on you?!

[broodwars]

What'cha gonna do brother, when Hulkamania runs wild on you?!

You call the Ultimate Warrior...and then run for cover from the incoming wave of total nonsense.   

[ShyGuy]

I played this game. It seems like all the NPC characters are racist!

[Oblivion]

My friend came over to my house and bought the game. I played it for about two hours. I ended up grinding for a while and going to a nearby city and murdering the whole damn town. It was pretty fun. Other than that I thought it was kinda...blah? If that makes sense.

[Chozo Ghost]

My friend came over to my house and bought the game. I played it for about two hours. I ended up grinding for a while and going to a nearby city and murdering the whole damn town. It was pretty fun. Other than that I thought it was kinda...blah? If that makes sense.

Well... when you murder everyone it makes the world a pretty empty and boring place because there is no one left to interact with.

[Oblivion]

No, I starting killing everyone BECAUSE it was empty and boring.

[Morari]

Your heart and soul is empty and boring. I feel sorry for you.

[Stogi]

First time I played Elder Scrolls was a long ass time ago on the PC. Don't know which game or version.

Anyway, I tried to steal something from someone's house while he was in it. Needless to say, he didn't like that. He tried to kill me, but I ended up killing him first. Next thing you know, someone else bursts in and sees this guy dead on the floor, so I had to kill him too. It was basically like the episode of Futurama where Leela becomes a bit more spontaneous.

Long story short, the whole village was dead. That's when I became bored and never touched an Elder Scrolls game again.

[Oblivion]

That's kind of what happened with me. I just got bored.