What is it with Elder Scrolls games?

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

I think it's for either: 1) casuals who just like to piddle around, do random quests, explore, and look at scenery, i.e. people looking for a mindless time waster; or 2) really serious role-players who just need a sandbox world and can make up their own story in their head and play along.

I didn't get it, either. I played it about a week, and was like WHAT... THE... F*CK... this game is BORING. How is it so popular? It's a Scandinavian hiking simulator.

But what I've learned since then is that I hate massive open world games. I am a OCD completionist, so exploring every inch of a massive map and doing every quest when there are hundreds, most of them of the fetch variety... it just leads to agonizing tedium and boredom for me. Too much freedom is a bad thing for some people. I like more linear RPG's with an strong, engaging main story, and that is the opposite of Skyrim.

Yeah, fair points all, some people just aren't going to like that type of game. Being a relatively casual gamer and someone who cut their teeth on PnP RPGs where there was a lot more freedom to do what you wanted, the Bethesda FPRPGs are the first and last CRPGs to really do what I want (though NWN was pretty good too as a dungeon crawler).

 

[WeepingAngels]

It's way more than that. According to Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games], it's the 10th best-selling video game in the history of video games. Hype doesn't explain that. Unsubstantiated hype fizzles out at some point, usually followed by a strong backlash (see Dragon Age: Inquisition). There are apparently millions and millions of people who really do love Skyrim.

Well, when people talk positively about Skyrim it's usually about the mods. So mods have sustained the game IMO, not anything Bethesda did.

 

[WeepingAngels]

I think it's for either: 1) casuals who just like to piddle around, do random quests, explore, and look at scenery, i.e. people looking for a mindless time waster; or 2) really serious role-players who just need a sandbox world and can make up their own story in their head and play along.

I didn't get it, either. I played it about a week, and was like WHAT... THE... F*CK... this game is BORING. How is it so popular? It's a Scandinavian hiking simulator.

But what I've learned since then is that I hate massive open world games. I am a OCD completionist, so exploring every inch of a massive map and doing every quest when there are hundreds, most of them of the fetch variety... it just leads to agonizing tedium and boredom for me. Too much freedom is a bad thing for some people. I like more linear RPG's with an strong, engaging main story, and that is the opposite of Skyrim.

Yeah, fair points all, some people just aren't going to like that type of game. Being a relatively casual gamer and someone who cut their teeth on PnP RPGs where there was a lot more freedom to do what you wanted, the Bethesda FPRPGs are the first and last CRPGs to really do what I want (though NWN was pretty good too as a dungeon crawler).

It's kind of a simple, dismissive explanation to say that people who don't like Skyrim just don't like open world games. There are probably lots of people who like other open world games but dislike Skyrim or liked previous Elder Scrolls games but dislike Skyrim. Skyrim took a few steps back from Oblivion and Oblivion took a few steps back from Morrowind. It's a pattern, Fallout 4 is said to be less RPG than Fallout 3 and Skyrim got it's perk system from Fallout 3.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

It's kind of a simple, dismissive explanation to say that people who don't like Skyrim just don't like open world games.

There are probably lots of people who like other open world games but dislike Skyrim or liked previous Elder Scrolls games but dislike Skyrim.

Yeah, it is.

Yes, I would imagine so.

 

[CritialGaming]

It's kind of a simple, dismissive explanation to say that people who don't like Skyrim just don't like open world games. There are probably lots of people who like other open world games but dislike Skyrim or liked previous Elder Scrolls games but dislike Skyrim. Skyrim took a few steps back from Oblivion and Oblivion took a few steps back from Morrowind. It's a pattern, Fallout 4 is said to be less RPG than Fallout 3 and Skyrim got it's perk system from Fallout 3.

Considering The Witcher 3 is in my top 5 games of all time, it should be clear that I love open worlds. But those worlds have to be done right. I liked Final Fantasy 15's open world. I like open world. SKyrim being open world isn't the problem. The shitty writing and shitty game mechanics are the problem.

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

*shrug* On the one hand, I completely disagree experience wise. I liked Skyrim just fine and can pick it up now with some mod souping up.

But on the other, I actually do understand why OP feels that way. Some people it clicks with, some people it don't.

Also, whoever praised Morrowind for it's MEChANICS? Tell me, when you poke at a piece of meat on your dinner plate, do you keep missing until your fork skill increases to the proper level? No wonder they're so skinny, I guess...many of them can't hit something right in front of them.

 

[WeepingAngels]

*shrug* On the one hand, I completely disagree experience wise. I liked Skyrim just fine and can pick it up now with some mod souping up.

But on the other, I actually do understand why OP feels that way. Some people it clicks with, some people it don't.

Also, whoever praised Morrowind for it's MEChANICS? Tell me, when you poke at a piece of meat on your dinner plate, do you keep missing until your fork skill increases to the proper level? No wonder they're so skinny, I guess...many of them can't hit something right in front of them.

No one praised Morrowind for the battle mechanics. I did say this in post #4.

Combat did improve over previous games in the franchise but as you said, it's still not satisfying.

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

No one praised Morrowind for the battle mechanics.

Addendum Forthcoming did, it was more targeted at him.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Also, whoever praised Morrowind for it's MEChANICS? Tell me, when you poke at a piece of meat on your dinner plate, do you keep missing until your fork skill increases to the proper level? No wonder they're so skinny, I guess...many of them can't hit something right in front of them.

Her ... and Morrowind mechanics makes you feel awesome, and say what you like missing is important. It shakes up combat and makes agility builds fun. It means you have more tools beyond block and move backwards.

Also, everytime I play Morrowind I make Destruction and Alteration heavy characters.

Morrowind feels like a toolbox in an open world game. Oblivion and Skyrim feels like that game that tried way too hard to create game balance and failed miserably, and also made all of it unfun.

 

[brucethemoose]

Unpopular opinion here.



I love the BGS games (Skyrim, Oblivion, FO3, hell even the much-maligned FO4) not for the main stories. Or the characters. Or the gameplay. And, dear god, not for the performance or quality of them.

It's the DETAIL. There's just so much freaking stuff to discover, and none of it is forced upon you.

I'll give some examples: In Skyrim, I stumble into blackreach, this freaking enormous, beautiful underground cavern. I run into the remains of a long-dead expedition down there, among many other interesting bits of lore.

In FO4, I enter a random building. No quest, no one told me to go there, just looked interesting. A mister handy wants to hire me for a position in a science lab... OK. So I go in, get trapped like a lab rat of course, and discover this long string of lore about these poor bastards who were trapped in a science sweatshop by a manager as the world outside burned in atomic fire. I walk into another building, learn that a deathly boring logistics robot I ran into earlier was actually a prototype AI haphazardly transplanted into an Assaultron that advised the president during the not-so-cold war, among other things.

And, dear god, the Shivering Isles in Oblivion... it's been a long time, but every single settlement was chock full of mental writing from the insane residents.




See, the TES games are primarily exploration games to me. The gameplay is just filler, and (with a few exceptions) quests are just convenient directions to interesting places filled with lore and stories to read through, as well as beautiful sights and sounds to take in. And, unlike other games, the wide-open nature lets you skip the stuff you'd rather not read and move to something else.


Now, I'm probably in the minority. 99% of Skyrim players aren't gonna pick up and read a book unless it has a quest marker on it.

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

Also, whoever praised Morrowind for it's MEChANICS? Tell me, when you poke at a piece of meat on your dinner plate, do you keep missing until your fork skill increases to the proper level? No wonder they're so skinny, I guess...many of them can't hit something right in front of them.

Her ... and Morrowind mechanics makes you feel awesome, and say what you like missing is important. It shakes up combat and makes agility builds fun. It means you have more tools beyond block and move backwards.

Also, everytime I play Morrowind I make Destruction and Alteration heavy characters.

Morrowind feels like a toolbox in an open world game. Oblivion and Skyrim feels like that game that tried way too hard to create game balance and failed miserably, and also made all of it unfun.

Didn't make me feel awesome. Made me feel like a chump. Here I was a full on heavy metal no shit warrior build, and yet swinging that axe at a monster who's making no effort to dodge or parry yields nothing but air somehow. Took me right out of an otherwise excellent experience. Sorry, I had more fun when I realized that if I took the time and, you know, AIMED, I'd actually hit instead of missing while firing point blank.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

Unpopular opinion here.

That's not an unpopular opinion, I'm pretty sure that's a large part of what a lot of the fans of the Bethesda FPRPGs like about them.

 

[sageoftruth]

That's my point. He's the one saying that it's factually garbage. I'm saying that it's garbage to him, yes; however, that doesn't objectively make it garbage... and that's a fact.

Again, you seem to misunderstand what we're saying. The OP implied that the game - regardless of how others view it - is garbage.

Opinions are opinions man. The game is a hot stinky turd. Do I really have to say, "In my honest opinion....Fuck this game. Fuck it right in it's sweaty meat hole." for you to understand it is just my opinion? I really shouldn't. So when I say the game is garbage, I mean that in my eyes the game is shit. Skyrim, to me, has absolutely ZERO redeeming qualities to it.

I'm afraid that's how language works. There's a number of ways to say it. You can say "I'm not impressed", or "I don't see any appeal", or "It's garbage in my eyes". The "I" is the important part there. It helps in a way too, since it makes you think carefully about how the game affected you. Otherwise, it just comes with the unspoken assumption that you see it as fact. If you want to keep reviewing games and don't want to become the next Moviebob, you'll want to start getting on that.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

That's my point. He's the one saying that it's factually garbage. I'm saying that it's garbage to him, yes; however, that doesn't objectively make it garbage... and that's a fact.

Again, you seem to misunderstand what we're saying. The OP implied that the game - regardless of how others view it - is garbage.

Opinions are opinions man. The game is a hot stinky turd. Do I really have to say, "In my honest opinion....Fuck this game. Fuck it right in it's sweaty meat hole." for you to understand it is just my opinion? I really shouldn't. So when I say the game is garbage, I mean that in my eyes the game is shit. Skyrim, to me, has absolutely ZERO redeeming qualities to it.

I'm afraid that's how language works. There's a number of ways to say it. You can say "I'm not impressed", or "I don't see any appeal", or "It's garbage in my eyes". The "I" is the important part there. It helps in a way too, since it makes you think carefully about how the game affected you. Otherwise, it just comes with the unspoken assumption that you see it as fact. If you want to keep reviewing games and don't want to become the next Moviebob, you'll want to start getting on that.

Wow, are you serious? There's no such thing as an objective rating for any kind of art, thus every review of any game or anything ever said concerning a game is an opinion. You don't have to state that every feeling you have about a game is your opinion because you literally can't state as a "fact" anything about game (outside of technical specs). Stating "I [this]" or "I [that]" doesn't do anything. You think people wouldn't have gotten butthurt over Jim Sterling's Zelda review if he just put IMO before or after HIS score? If someone does think a game is garbage, they do see it as a fact; a personal fact, which is an opinion.

Moviebob actually makes money on his reviews... He must be doing something right. I still get more out of his movie reviews than any reviewer on Youtube whether I agree or disagree with his analysis. By the way, my opinion on Moviebob is an opinion and I'm not in any way saying Moviebob is factually the best movie reviewer on Youtube just in case if some people didn't get that.

 

[brucethemoose]

Unpopular opinion here.

That's not an unpopular opinion, I'm pretty sure that's a large part of what a lot of the fans of the Bethesda FPRPGs like about them.

Maybe for Morrowind.

But as I mentioned, I don't think most Skyrim players are diving into the textual lore like I tend to do.

Perhaps I'm wrong. I have a very cynical view of the average gamer, I suppose.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

Maybe for Morrowind.

But as I mentioned, I don't think most Skyrim players are diving into the textual lore like I tend to do.

Perhaps I'm wrong. I have a very cynical view of the average gamer, I suppose.

I was referring more to the rest of your post, not so much making sure you've read every volume of the Biography of Barenziah.

 

[Kerg3927]

That's my point. He's the one saying that it's factually garbage. I'm saying that it's garbage to him, yes; however, that doesn't objectively make it garbage... and that's a fact.

Again, you seem to misunderstand what we're saying. The OP implied that the game - regardless of how others view it - is garbage.

Opinions are opinions man. The game is a hot stinky turd. Do I really have to say, "In my honest opinion....Fuck this game. Fuck it right in it's sweaty meat hole." for you to understand it is just my opinion? I really shouldn't. So when I say the game is garbage, I mean that in my eyes the game is shit. Skyrim, to me, has absolutely ZERO redeeming qualities to it.

I'm afraid that's how language works. There's a number of ways to say it. You can say "I'm not impressed", or "I don't see any appeal", or "It's garbage in my eyes". The "I" is the important part there. It helps in a way too, since it makes you think carefully about how the game affected you. Otherwise, it just comes with the unspoken assumption that you see it as fact. If you want to keep reviewing games and don't want to become the next Moviebob, you'll want to start getting on that.

Wow, are you serious? There's no such thing as an objective rating for any kind of art, thus every review of any game or anything ever said concerning a game is an opinion. You don't have to state that every feeling you have about a game is your opinion because you literally can't state as a "fact" anything about game (outside of technical specs). Stating "I [this]" or "I [that]" doesn't do anything. You think people wouldn't have gotten butthurt over Jim Sterling's Zelda review if he just put IMO before or after HIS score? If someone does think a game is garbage, they do see it as a fact; a personal fact, which is an opinion.

Moviebob actually makes money on his reviews... He must be doing something right. I still get more out of his movie reviews than any reviewer on Youtube whether I agree or disagree with his analysis. By the way, my opinion on Moviebob is an opinion and I'm not in any way saying Moviebob is factually the best movie reviewer on Youtube just in case if some people didn't get that.

I agree with this. I sometimes say "in my opinion" or "IMO" just because I know someone who disagrees will respond saying that it's "just my opinion" and I try to save them trouble by saying it first. But it shouldn't be necessary. People can and should be able to tell the difference between opinion and fact in a post without it being spelled out for them.

 

[brucethemoose]

Maybe for Morrowind.

But as I mentioned, I don't think most Skyrim players are diving into the textual lore like I tend to do.

Perhaps I'm wrong. I have a very cynical view of the average gamer, I suppose.

I was referring more to the rest of your post, not so much making sure you've read every volume of the Biography of Barenziah.

I actually don't read the books (bar The Lusty Argonian Maid), I was talking about the middle ground: the short notes, terminal entries, things scribbled on the wall, posed corpses etc. Things that tell a story about where you are at that exact moment beyond what a quest NPC will, not so much the deep lore that you could read anywhere.

I guess alot of fans do pay attention to that stuff.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

I actually don't read the books (bar The Lusty Argonian Maid), I was talking about the middle ground: the short notes, terminal entries, things scribbled on the wall, posed corpses etc. Things that tell a story about where you are at that exact moment beyond what a quest NPC will, not so much the deep lore that you could read anywhere.

I guess alot of fans do pay attention to that stuff.

Yeah, especially with fallout, whenever I see a "which is your favourite?" thread I find people praising the environmental design and environmental storytelling of Bethesda (and to an extent Obsidian, although people tend to concentrate on their actual storytelling), their detailed worldbuilding is a big draw for a lot of fans as far as I can tell.