The World of Skyrim Means Nothing...

[Frostbite3789]

It's funny, I still had plenty of NPCs complaining about the war after it was over, in a sense that to them it was still actively being fought.

Gotta love those dialog system bugs.

What's funny is that like half of the guards programmed quotes, several shouts that are useable by dragons, and a large chuck on other NPC dialog, is bugged due to an error in how the game picks what dialog options to use.

What's even more funny is how broken the random encounter system is, ever wondered why there are no werewolves outside companions quests? there are, they are just bugged

What's even funnier is the the game just flat doesn't recognize the things you've done. Finished the DB questline, which had me interacting with the Thieves Guild at times.

Start Thieves Guild questline, they act as if they've never seen me and I'm not the head of the DB. What the hell? We've met, I'm not some random low thief you chose.

 

[shrekfan246]

It's kinda realistic how nobody gives a shit about anything you do. In real life the NPCs would gush over your actions for a bit and then be all like "yeah, yeah but what have you done LATELY?"

Is that an Eddie Murphy quote I see?

OT: Eh... I don't really see what the point is that you're trying to get across, OP, but for whatever it's worth, I agree with Zhukov about seeing some games that realistically implements restrictions on what the player character can do in order to build a more natural feeling world.

 

[SajuukKhar]

What's even funnier is the the game just flat doesn't recognize the things you've done. Finished the DB questline, which had me interacting with the Thieves Guild at times.

Start Thieves Guild questline, they act as if they've never seen me and I'm not the head of the DB. What the hell? We've met, I'm not some random low thief you chose.

That's odd because when I did The Thieves Guild quests first, and when I had to talk to Delvin for the Dark brotherhood quests, he said a special line

it was something along the line of "here for business(maybe it was jobs) boss?", you say "no I'm here on dark brothehrood business" Malory then says "ohh alright then, I see your making friends all over"

I wouldn't be surprised is some flag does get set right thus preventing the real dialog from occurring in the reverse situation.
.
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Also why would anyone else remember a guy who came in, like twice, to talk to Malory? No offense but everyone else really SHOULDN'T remember you because they dont know who you are and your a no one to them.

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

My only problem with the world is the characters.
Name me one memorable character you met in Skyrim.
Yeah, thought so.

Cicero, J'zargo, Maiq the Liar, Parthurnax, Odahviig.

I just named 5, your move Jynthor

But yeah I agree that the world is rather static, still I got about 250 hours of enjoyment out of it, so i dont regret my purchase in the slightest.

 

[Mad Sun]

My only problem with the world is the characters.
Name me one memorable character you met in Skyrim.
Yeah, thought so.

Belethor, at the general goods store.

 

[Epona]

I guess I saw the ugliest 40% then.

Considering most of the intro sequence, and the path to whiterun, the very first part of the game , is mostly not in the mountains, and mostly snowless, you apparently quit in the first 5 minutes.

Really, this game isn't beautiful. The graphics look a little better than Oblivion on the highest settings. The colors are very dull.

 

[Woodsey]

My only problem with the world is the characters.
Name me one memorable character you met in Skyrim.
Yeah, thought so.

LYDIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

The colors are very dull.

That's what makes it pretty. It's muted, bleak - and it accomplishes a real sense of place.






OT: I like it as a setting (Bruma was my favourite city in Oblivion). I do take issue with the rather bewildering number of people who don't recognise at least one of my roles as the Arch-Mage/killer of Alduin/Black Hand of the Dark Brotherhood, but... eh. It's certainly something they need to work on, but the size of the world and the amount to explore lets me forgive it. Everything's a compromise (unfortunately).

 

[SajuukKhar]

OT: I like it as a setting (Bruma was my favourite city in Oblivion). I do take issue with the rather bewildering number of people who don't recognise at least one of my roles as the Arch-Mage/killer of Alduin/Black Hand of the Dark Brotherhood, but... eh. It's certainly something they need to work on, but the size of the world and the amount to explore lets me forgive it. Everything's a compromise (unfortunately).

Well
-No one saw you kill Alduin
-Being the listener of the DB isn't something people outside the DB would know
-Thieves guild leader is iffy itself, and in a similar situation to DB leader
-Most people in skyrim hate magic, so I dont see why they would know who leads the college.

 

[ZeroMachine]

Think of things on the surface level with TES lore, and yeah, it's dull as fuck.

But, look up Dragon Breaks, the lore about the gods, and for the love of the Nine, look up CHIM.

 

[SajuukKhar]

CHIM, only through loving all things, which means loving oneself since oneself is all things, can one attain it.

Loading save-games? CHIM
using the inventory and pausing time? CHIM
The Elder-Scrolls construction kit? CHIM

 

[Frostbite3789]

Snip

Well, it's implied the DB and Thieves Guild to business together and Astryd is good friends with the Thieves Guild. So, wouldn't they want to get to know the new head of the DB? Half their business is information, that's a pretty big hole in their network if they aren't aware of that.

And yeah you did it the other way around.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Well, it's implied the DB and Thieves Guild to business together and Astryd is good friends with the Thieves Guild. So, wouldn't they want to get to know the new head of the DB? Half their business is information, that's a pretty big hole in their network if they aren't aware of that.

And yeah you did it the other way around.

Well its implied Astrid does business with Delvin, not the thieves guild as a whole. DB stuff is something Delvin probably doesn't talk about much.

Also, it is made clear in the thieves guild questline that the DB and thieves guild leave each other alone for the most part.

It's most likely something only Vex, Delvin, Brynolf, and Mercer know about, and I doubt they would tell everyone about it unless you wanted them too.

 

[pure.Wasted]

Well, it's implied the DB and Thieves Guild to business together and Astryd is good friends with the Thieves Guild. So, wouldn't they want to get to know the new head of the DB? Half their business is information, that's a pretty big hole in their network if they aren't aware of that.

And yeah you did it the other way around.

Well its implied Astrid does business with Delvin, not the thieves guild as a whole. DB stuff is something Delvin probably doesn't talk about much.

Also, it is made clear in the thieves guild questline that the DB and thieves guild leave each other alone for the most part.

It's most likely something only Vex, Delvin, Brynolf, and Mercer know about, and I doubt they would tell everyone about it unless you wanted them too.

Maybe it's possible to come up with a plausible excuse for why there is so little consequence for your actions... but at the end of the day, does it really matter? The simple fact that there is little consequences for your actions is boring in and of itself, whether it was deliberate or not.

Freedom to me doesn't mean "going wherever I want." If I wanted that, I'd play WoW. The lands there are just as (if not more) interesting to look at. Freedom means choosing how I influence the world around me.

That's why Bethesda's games have never done it for me. I'd rather have a smaller world with genuine consequence, than a vast one where my decisions only impact the NPCs I happen to be talking to at the time. And they insist on going vaster and vaster every single time.

 

[bluesession]

... I know you'd like to kill the smug prick who tried to have you executed...

THIS! Exactly this.
One of the times skyrim completely disapointed me was when i reached the town with the thieves guild.
So everyone tells me how misserable they are because of the guild, and i mean EVERYONE. I'm a goody do gooder so I decide to go end with this troublesome guild, you know be a little batman but with 2 swords (and a backpack FULL of healing potions).
Long story short, I couldn't kill them (for anyone that didn't play the game: you can't kill quest NPCs)... Yeah, you can't. *Disapointment Sigh*

So yeah Skyrim sucks for MANY MANY reasons, described by the OP.
But the truth Is that I didn't play 60 hours (and im reinstalling it right now) of Skyrim because of it's (not)unique artstyle or it's terrible story, I played because it is a good game to wander through the wilderness and it presses the button in me that makes me feel "vacation".

 

[SajuukKhar]

Maybe it's possible to come up with a plausible excuse for why there is so little consequence for your actions... but at the end of the day, does it really matter? The simple fact that there is little consequences for your actions is boring in and of itself, whether it was deliberate or not.

Freedom to me doesn't mean "going wherever I want." If I wanted that, I'd play WoW. The lands there are just as (if not more) interesting to look at. Freedom means choosing how I influence the world around me.

That's why Bethesda's games have never done it for me. I'd rather have a smaller world with genuine consequence, than a vast one where my decisions only impact the NPCs I happen to be talking to at the time. And they insist on going vaster and vaster every single time.

Almost none of the things you do in Skyrim SHOULD have noticeable consequences, outside of a few dialog lines.

One of my biggest pet peeves with New vegas is how unrealistic the consequences for your actions are. Obsidian over-inflate everything to an unrealistic degree and it kills most of the enjoyment I get out of the mange.

I would rather have a game were consequences make sense then one were everyone gets all foaming at the mouth over every little action you do.

 

[pure.Wasted]

Maybe it's possible to come up with a plausible excuse for why there is so little consequence for your actions... but at the end of the day, does it really matter? The simple fact that there is little consequences for your actions is boring in and of itself, whether it was deliberate or not.

Freedom to me doesn't mean "going wherever I want." If I wanted that, I'd play WoW. The lands there are just as (if not more) interesting to look at. Freedom means choosing how I influence the world around me.

That's why Bethesda's games have never done it for me. I'd rather have a smaller world with genuine consequence, than a vast one where my decisions only impact the NPCs I happen to be talking to at the time. And they insist on going vaster and vaster every single time.

Almost none of the things you do in Skyrim SHOULD have noticeable consequences, outside of a few dialog lines.

One of my biggest pet peeves with New vegas is how unrealistic the consequences for your actions are. Obsidian over-inflate everything to an unrealistic degree and it kills most of the enjoyment I get out of the mange.

I would rather have a game were consequences make sense then one were everyone gets all foaming at the mouth over every little action you do.

My point was that a "freedom RPG" that is designed such that the choices you're presented with should not, logically, have interesting consequences... is a poorly designed freedom RPG. If it doesn't make sense for your quests to affect the world in interesting ways, scrap those quests and make new ones. If it doesn't make sense for your NPCs to be terribly affected by the player, the conflict around them isn't being set up properly.

 

[silver wolf009]

My only problem with the world is the characters.
Name me one memorable character you met in Skyrim.
Yeah, thought so.

M'aiq says many things. Many things that make him an interesting character. If they're lies or not remains to be seen of course.

OT: It might have been there for me, but I didn't let it pull me out of things. When I played, it never really got to me.

 

[SajuukKhar]

My point was that a "freedom RPG" that is designed such that the choices you're presented with should not, logically, have interesting consequences... is a poorly designed freedom RPG. If it doesn't make sense for your quests to affect the world in interesting ways, scrap those quests and make new ones. If it doesn't make sense for your NPCs to be terribly affected by the player, the conflict around them isn't being set up properly.

95% of quests shouldn't have large impacts on the world, and those that do affect the world should not be mentioned outside the immediate area that they occur in, if you design a contrary to that, then you have done so wrong.

Making most of the quests have some noticeable impact on the world kills all believability, and turns most of the populous into drooling monkeys whose sole purpose in life is to spout praises to your character in some obvious and illogical ego-stroking event.

that Mr. New Vegas commented on even 1/10 of the things he did shows how god-awful they set their consequences up.

 

[pure.Wasted]

My point was that a "freedom RPG" that is designed such that the choices you're presented with should not, logically, have interesting consequences... is a poorly designed freedom RPG. If it doesn't make sense for your quests to affect the world in interesting ways, scrap those quests and make new ones. If it doesn't make sense for your NPCs to be terribly affected by the player, the conflict around them isn't being set up properly.

95% of quests shouldn't have large impacts on the world, and those that do affect the world should not be mentioned outside the immediate area that they occur in, if you design a contrary to that, then you have done so wrong.

Making most of the quests have some noticeable impact on the world kills all believability, and turns most of the populous into drooling monkeys whose sole purpose in life is to spout praises to your character in some obvious and illogical ego-stroking event.

that Mr. New Vegas commented on even 1/10 of the things he did shows how god-awful they set their consequences up.

Perhaps the problem here is that I haven't explained what I mean by "consequences." I don't want NPCs to do nothing but talk about my latest accomplishments. I want NPCs to live in the world they live in.

A hypothetical scenario:

You're playing a typical fantasy RPG. You arrive in an isolated human town, the folks are nice enough but something a little weird is going on. You do some digging around and find out that the town council is made up of Cthulhu-worshipping cultists. What do you do?

A) Leave the town because this quest doesn't interest you, or your main quest is too urgent to stop in every single village and solve their shit.
B) Kill the city elders and burn down the town hall, their place of ritual worship.
C) Tell the people (including NPC Bob) what you've found, convince them to rise up against the council elders and take their city back.

If you did A), you come back eventually and find the whole town deserted. After a while, noteable NPCs you've encountered in other cities begin disappearing one by one. The cultists got wise of your suspicions and moved their operation, but not before turning all the regular folk into ingredients. You can find Bob in some tavern halfway across the country, trying to drink away the horrors of what he saw before he got away.

If you did B), because there's no longer any form of government, the town falls into disarray. The asshole blacksmith decides he should try his hand at playing king, turning the place into a fort. Half of the NPCs manage to escape and make an exodus to the nearest village, where they have to beg for food on the streets. Bob is the blacksmith's reluctant lieutenant, and can still be reasoned with to turn this whole thing around without getting everybody killed... if you so choose.

If you did C), this town goes on to be perfectly fine, but hostilities increase in other nearby towns, because some people there think they can start a revolution by claiming their government is a bunch of sociopathic cultists, too. Bob, hero of ThatTown, goes to one of these villages to convince everyone to calm down.

See what I mean by consequence? All perfectly reasonable, and the NPCs don't revolve around you in any way.

edit: and if you did a smaller quest that ends with Bob leaving town, first, then he doesn't do any of those things he did above. Seems like a very small thing, except if you ended up doing C) and then tried your hand at calming things down, having Bob by your side would make it much more likely that you would succeed.

I used big plotful things in my example simply because it's easier to imagine without me needing to invent a crapton of particular characters with particular backstories. Instead of towns and cultists and revolution, we could be talking about the relationships between a crapton of different NPCs, these relationships changing over time based both on your involvement in their lives, your involvement in the world around them, and themselves. Much less work for devs, much more work for me now if I wanted to make a scenario out of it.