Here;s Skyrim's biggest flaw (In my opinion anyway)

[Renegade-pizza]

The game doesn't feel all that epic to me.

Spoilers ahoi(but seriously,who hasn't finished EVERYTHING yet?):
1]When I joined the Fighter Guild-in-all-but-name, they led me into a chamber and turned me into a werewolf after one mission. I was like: Ohhhhhkay? That was...something...I guess?

2]I joined the Imperial Legion and helped them crush the rebellion (let's face it, they've been running an Empire for centuries, without it imploding on itself, they must be doing something right). When we assaulted the castles, it felt like clearing a bandit camp, not storming the gates and gaining an important piece.

3]The battle of Whiterun? Where we stopped the rebellion once and for all. It felt quite epic actually. A massive city, burning. Soldiers everywhere, fighting for their lives against the f***ing Dragonborn? It was the most engaging part of the game for me, but it still managed to hit speedbumps when I got lost or waited for something to guide me onto the next stage.

4]When you finally defeat the ultimate evil dragon (who's name I forgot really quickly, but could mod to be a pony and/or pro-wrestler), I didn't feel like I was fighting the greatest threat to Skyrim Evar!It felt like a surprisingly tough dragon battle. I felt underwhelmed and disappointed.

I will admit, Skyrim has its epic moments. When I visited the temple to stop the Villain's dastardly plot, I felt like the ultimate hero. I smashed draugr left and right. I smashed dragons and looked awesome while doing it. That was the best part of the game for me.

I'm not bashing Skyrim, I really enjoyed the game. Sadly, I didn't get that same feeling of awe like in SPOILERS!!!! Mass Effect when the Citadel was besieged and the Alliance jumped straight into the fray. Or in Dragon Age when we stormed Denerim's gates. Yes, I am a Bioware fanboy. Or in Starcraft, when I stormed Char and destroyed the Zerg. Also a Blizzard fanboy.
i just didn't get that same feeling of saving the...EVERYTHING!

 

[TheCommanders]

I'm actually in agreement, but here's the thing. I've always felt the elder scrolls was a more individual kind of adventure, just a solitary guy who wandered around doing crap. I never really expected it to feel epic the way I do a mass effect or dragon age game. That being said, the fact that in game they build up some of these events, and they have very disapointing climaxes, not to mentions a lack of affect after the fact, really kinda shot them in the foot. It really bothered me, for example, that after I crushed the rebellion (I'm with you on the empire), half the people in the world didn't even know that the rebellion was over. Talking to the Jarl of Solitude (for example), she still thought that Ulfric was alive, even though I had personally executed him... fail.

 

[Thespian]

Yeah, every time I did something that was part of a big quest line in Skyrim, I immediately boarded a train to Underwhelmedsville Tennessee. It was in the big adventures I did on my own for the lulz that I had fun.

Two MAJOR problems related to lack-of-epicness that I had:

1 - The end of the Mage Questline, where

Spoiler

You do some quests, bum around in a crypt, and then all NPCs of importance die and they make you Arch-Mage. WHAT? I was like, "I'm level fifteen, I can shoot some fireballs from my hands, so you're making me ARCH-MAGE? Seriously?

Can't tell you how embarrassing it was to have to go to the mages the next day as Arch-Mage and ask them if they could teach me some spells...

2 - The end of the Imperial/Rebel war, where I sided with the Imperials. It's like you said,

Spoiler

It just wasn't epic enough. And Ulfric was way too easy to kill. I basically just strolled into his home and gave him a good smack. The Rebel uprising was about as fierce an opponent to defeat as a cranky puppy. That's it. You just *****-slap Ulfric across the room and he's done for. I didn't even kill him myself because they were like "Do you want the honour?" and I was like "Meh."

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

The game doesn't feel all that epic to me.

I think that's just an issue with Bethesda. I had the same problem with Fallout 3.

Actually, I enjoyed Skyrim more because, at least during a few moments, I felt it.

Oh, and for the record, I haven't finished the main plot yet. I'm level 63, I've logged over 165 hours, and I stopped playing the main plot when I got Dragonrend. Cause... yeah, Dragonend. Nor have I done the civil war (because my character couldn't care less - also the war makes it easier for her to steal shit).

Just sayin - it is possible to play for two months and NOT actually reach certain plot points. THAT is what I love about Skyrim (and other Bethesda titles). I don't go in for Epic - I go in for Broad and Unique.

Unique as in each player plays it differently, not unique as in original.

If I want an epic story... Bioware. Or Xenogears/Xenosaga.

 

[Etteparg]

I often felt like the moments that were suppose to be epic wern't and the more mundane things were actually better. The final battle with the empire and alduin were kind of let downs but I was more immpressed when I dropped a piece of armor in a tavern and the owner walked over picked it up and said here you dropped this.

 

[Epona]

I just can't get into it. It doesn't have the same draw (for me) that Morrowind and Oblivion did. I think Skyrim will be soon forgotten about, it's a live fast, die fast kind of thing as people realize it was all smoke and mirrors. I play RPG's to build my character up. I like to watch my character improve. Without attributes I am only playing for the story and the quests and neither are very interesting.

 

[evilneko]

I just can't get into it. It doesn't have the same draw (for me) that Morrowind and Oblivion did. I think Skyrim will be soon forgotten about, it's a live fast, die fast kind of thing as people realize it was all smoke and mirrors. I play RPG's to build my character up. I like to watch my character improve. Without attributes I am only playing for the story and the quests and neither are very interesting.

Funny I have the opposite reaction. Oblivion was just meeeehhhhh all over. Skyrim I can actually get into. Lack of the typical str/dex/int/etc stats doesn't bother me at all.

As for epicness, "epic" is highly subjective but I agree they pretty much failed on a lot of the things they apparently thought were going to be epic. Dragons are pansies unless you're just stupid, only the first one can be much of a threat and even then only if it's your first playthrough and you've no idea how to deal with it. Hell I was playing a mage and managed to get killed by everything but a dragon at least once.

On the other hand, I found plenty of epicness in other things. I enjoyed the Winterhold College questline (I was thinking to myself much of the time about how this one questline was big enough that a decade or two ago it would've been an entire game by itself). One quest (IIRC, part of the college questline) had me getting a book from a chest guarded by giants. I hadn't yet figured out how to kill giants (that would come later, and be pretty rewarding when I discovered it) and had to come up with a way to swipe the book without getting squished. Eventually, I figured out just how far they'd chase me, left Lydia somewhere way off, and snuck in with an invisibility potion. Grab the book, run like hell to get out of line-of-sight, pop another invis potion and sneak away. Awesome. Also, the first time I killed a hagraven after dying several times to either her or her witchy friends... gulped a fire resist potion and charged across the bridge to her with a ward in one hand and lightning in the other, then switched to sword and board once I was in her face...yeah, that was fun.

 

[saintchristopher]

My only real problem with Skyrim (and this goes for the rest of the TES games as well) is that I never actually role-play. I just go in and do everything. Having a character who winds up Arch-Mage of the College of Winterhold, the savior of the Thieves Guild, a high-ranking assassin, a Nightengale Warrior AND the same person who saved the world from the Armageddon Dragon just serves to make all of those accomplishments feel ultimately hollow.

I appreciate that Bethesda wanted an all-inclusive adventure. But by making some avenues mutually exclusive, they would have been able to let the game keep its sense of mystery, of places unexplored. It's... bigness. Does that make sense?

 

[wurrble182]

all this talk about skyrim, just makes me wanna play it again!

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

I've been saying this for a while now. The game just doesn't FEEL exciting or epic like you've said, and the whole experience felt boring to me.

I've been in a kind of long running debate with a friend of mine about which series is "better" between Fallout and TES, and a lot of the points you brought up were ones I used with the lackluster story that was presented in Skyrim.

 

[TheOneBearded]

I've been saying this for a while now. The game just doesn't FEEL exciting or epic like you've said, and the whole experience felt boring to me.

I've been in a kind of long running debate with a friend of mine about which series is "better" between Fallout and TES, and a lot of the points you brought up were ones I used with the lackluster story that was presented in Skyrim.

Well, the Fallout series is better because it has the bettor lore and story. If something has a good story, many things could be done with it. To be honest, I had a more fun time with F: New Vegas than with Skyrim because I liked the lore, the characters, and the environment. With Skyrim, yeah the environment is amazing (its best quality), but I didn't care about the people and the story. Most of the stories in the game were done already (become a werewolf, be the sole person to save the entire world, etc). With New Vegas and Fallout as a whole, it is fresh and extremely enjoyable (unless you are into adrenaline games like COD).

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

I've been saying this for a while now. The game just doesn't FEEL exciting or epic like you've said, and the whole experience felt boring to me.

I've been in a kind of long running debate with a friend of mine about which series is "better" between Fallout and TES, and a lot of the points you brought up were ones I used with the lackluster story that was presented in Skyrim.

Well, the Fallout series is better because it has the bettor lore and story. If something has a good story, many things could be done with it. To be honest, I had a more fun time with F: New Vegas than with Skyrim because I liked the lore, the characters, and the environment. With Skyrim, yeah the environment is amazing (its best quality), but I didn't care about the people and the story. Most of the stories in the game were done already (become a werewolf, be the sole person to save the entire world, etc). With New Vegas and Fallout as a whole, it is fresh and extremely enjoyable (unless you are into adrenaline games like COD).

Something I can't stand about Elder Scrolls games is how I NEVER care about these non-entities they call characters in their games. It takes more than giving an NPC a name for it to be a character, and even the companions (albeit more numerous in Skyrim than any given fallout game) are painfully boring and serve as nothing more than a suitcase with a sword. Sure Veronica could attack and carry shit for me, but I CARED about why she was following me. Boone had a gun, but you knew WHY he was doing what he did. Why is Lydia following you? Because you told her to... Riveting. Fallout is more than just "Elder Scrolls with guns" it's a better story, better written, and more immersive experience, and I'll say that to anyone.

 

[nokori3byo]

I found plenty of epicness in the game. The two genuienly groan-worthy parts of the whole 250 hour experience were:

1. Almost the entire Civil War questline. Honestly, it felt like about eight people turned up for that war.
2. The draggy conclusion of the Thieve's guild questline. It should have ended with the resolution of the Nightingales quests, which felt suitably heavy and unlike anything else in the game. Instead, they sent you on a merry journey to complete more than a dozen lame, generic quests around the world to unlock the "special" (lame, generic) quests that allowed you to assume leadership of the guild and nab the cheevo. That was just poorly conceived.

Apart from that there were a couple of bugs which tried their damnedest to make important quests unfinishable. I walked through the door leading to the big setpiece moment at the statue of Irkthrand, only to discover that my mates had been locked outside and I was frozen in place, unable to interact with anything. Then the was the Daedric quest at Nightcaller Temple. The NPC Erandur turned out to be the most broken thing in the game. I had to keep reloading, force shout him and shoot him in the face with an arrow just to get him to climb a flight of stairs. It got to the point where finding a way to juke around the bugs just to finish a quest was a game unto itself.

 

[targren]

i have several beefs with skyrim but the main one is that the level cap is brutally low at 50, ive got many skills that are id level to very high i will never have a spare perk to use in making them only slightly better than starting level skills. unless you make 1 character per class build youre in for a world of hurt when your sneaky kajit arse has to do the mage collage and companion quest lines.

The level cap isn't 50. When I stopped playing, I was a legit level 68, with all the stats and perk points that entailed. Unless that's something dopey they did on console versions...

 

[nokori3byo]

i have several beefs with skyrim but the main one is that the level cap is brutally low at 50, ive got many skills that are id level to very high i will never have a spare perk to use in making them only slightly better than starting level skills. unless you make 1 character per class build youre in for a world of hurt when your sneaky kajit arse has to do the mage collage and companion quest lines.

The level cap isn't 50. When I stopped playing, I was a legit level 68, with all the stats and perk points that entailed. Unless that's something dopey they did on console versions...

Nope. I was playing on X-Box and was a legit 72 when I packed it in. The Skyrim wikia lists the level cap as being "around 80."