Why can't many games do exploration as well as Skyrim?

[endtherapture]

Skyrim, Oblivion and Morrowind are three very special games regarding their exploration in my opinion. They're just on another level for exploration and environmental storytelling.

Walking around the lands in these games don't give you any completion percentage, any experience bonus or anything, but they're simply the best designed and most fun to explore. Walking to the top of a mountain or finding a little cabin in the woods with a bear in is just so satisfying in these games, but I'm not really sure why.

Having played AC and Dragon Age Inquisition recently, as well as other RPGs like Kingdoms of Amalur, they just don't have the same allure to exploring as the TES games. In KoA, there's just not much really interesting to find in the world. In Dragon Age, it's got a good world designed but it isn't really fun to explore, despite you getting experience points for planting flags. Same with AC, which really becomes a bit of a chore climbing up the towers and unlocking the map.

So why is TES so much better at this than other games?

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Is it? Maybe it's just me but I don't find the hundreds of caves with the exact same symbol puzzles good exploration. Dragon Age isn't great either, about the same level as Skyrim. Risen/Gothic has both of them beat in my opinion. Everything should have a reason for being where it is and not feel randomly placed. Every building or hut or cave should have a story behind it, and you don't get that with Skyrim

 

[endtherapture]

Far Cry 3/4 aren't similarly good at exploration?

You can explore around, and find a hut hidden in the trees (FC4), or an abandoned shack down on the beach (FC3). You can find hidden caves, which may lead to a stash of loot, or maybe some old abandoned WW2 bunker.
In FC4, you can also run across random encounters (for karma), although these can sometimes get repetitive.

Is this not similar to Skyrim? (only with guns?)

I dunno I haven't played them so I don't feel like it's my place to comment on these games.

 

[The Madman]

I've actually been really enjoying exploring in DA:Inquisition so far. The levels are big enough to give a good sense of scale and each location is unique enough to stand out. Several times now I've been left nearly breathless by some of the sights the game has delivered and I've been having a blast poking around and finding all the hidden caves and little details the developers littered around the various locations.

But then I'm also not really a huge fan of Skyrim either so perhaps it's a personal preference. I like smaller more dense locations as opposed to the massive sprawl of the Elder Scrolls series post-Morrowind. Gothic 2 is a great example of a game I felt struck a nice balance in that respect. Not too small, not too big, but dense with lots of little details and corners to discover.

 

[josemlopes]

I dont think Skyrim does exploration all that well, and it does give you experience points for everything, plus the whole "Something something discovered".

Your other examples like Dragon Age: Inquisition and Kingdoms of Amalur are basicly MMOs without multiplayer so you can basicly forget natural exploration of anything.

Better games for exploration in my opinion are Stalker, GTA V (the game is packed with stuff if you take time to look around and pay attention) and Gothic, now that is good exploration.

 

[Muspelheim]

They've got the sort of budget that allows them to hire cohorts of people to make landscapes, fill them with content, path them and connect it all up, as well as enough time to do it in.

Of course, there are many other reasons, but they spend their advantage as a AAA-developer rather well.

Is it? Maybe it's just me but I don't find the hundreds of caves with the exact same symbol puzzles good exploration. Dragon Age isn't great either, about the same level as Skyrim. Risen/Gothic has both of them beat in my opinion. Everything should have a reason for being where it is and not feel randomly placed. Every building or hut or cave should have a story behind it, and you don't get that with Skyrim

It could be down to personal preferences, but I didn't feel that same sense of disconnect in Skyrim. It was a huge step up from Oblivion in that regard. The caves, ruins and mines did feel like they had a reason to be there. The set dressing was much better at telling a decent enough story.

It could've been done better, of course. That is the disadvantage of having so many as opposed to a few distinct.

 

[SmallHatLogan]

I think what Skyrim does right is the sense of scale and having a fairly varied landscape to keep things interesting. For me though I only liked the overworld. Exploring caves/camps/strongholds got very old very quickly. And there's only so much exploring you can do on the overworld

I much prefer Morrowind (yes I know you mentioned it too), Fallout, Far Cry 3 and Just Cause 2.

 

[Username Redacted]

I think what Skyrim does right is the sense of scale and having a fairly varied landscape to keep things interesting. For me though I only liked the overworld. Exploring caves/camps/strongholds got very old very quickly. And there's only so much exploring you can do on the overworld

I much prefer Morrowind (yes I know you mentioned it too), Fallout, Far Cry 3 and Just Cause 2.

Haven't played Morrowind but very much agree otherwise. I would say that one thing that really stands out with Far Cry 3 is that outside of the animals that the enemies you encounter in the game are much more organized among themselves than the enemies that you encounter in some of the other games being discussed.

To me Skyrims biggest issue with its dungeons is that the dungeons are both too predictable and not predictable enough. When I enter generic cave #2137 I know that it's going to be either a single room, a short loop, a long loop or a long linear cave in its design. That's pretty predictable. Where it can be annoying is when you can't tell quickly enough which one you're in. Is it going to take me 15 minutes to clear this cave or it it going to take 1.5 hours? I understand that backtracking is always an option but then that cave is never getting cleared. /annoyed completionist

 

[Ihateregistering1]

There's a few reasons I think it does it well:
Varying landscapes and weather: the north is snowy as all hell, the south is warmer and nice, the west has bogs and swamps, and the east has hot springs but is largely flat. This adds personality and character to the map.

Just the right size: This is my personal opinion, but the world feels large enough that you really feel like there's tons to do and see and you really feel like you're 'exploring', but not so large that it becomes overwhelming. Just Cause 2 (for example) was a game that I just found overwhelmingly large.

 

[endtherapture]

No mention of any of the Fallout games particularly 3 and New Vegas? The early ones are understandably limited on locales and dungeons, but the FPS ones are great when it comes to exploration. The Wasteland in Fallout 3 is sort of its own living being, which feels like its alive with its massive amount of random events. New Vegas, instead of having a lot of open wasteland travelling with tons of random encounters, decides to pack tons and tons of locations quite close together,all with their own story.

I also absolutely love Far Cry 2, because it basically matches that description of Fallout 3, but thrown into overdrive. Its not a game that is afraid to punish you, either. The "feel" of Far Cry 3 is definitely superior, but Far Cry 2 did a lot better with making you feel like you're stuck out on the middle of the wilderness with everybody trying to kill you, and there are just overall a lot more memorable moments IMO.

STALKER games deserve a mention. Its a travesty that I've yet to play them, seeing as they seem exactly up my alley. I've heard pretty much nothing but a net positive for the games.

Oh yeah I really love the New Vegas way of doing it. There were a lot of big locations in those games which had context and story behind them. I remember the rocket test site and several of the vaults scattered around, as well the the town which was a massive casino/theme park.

Skyrim was good because it just had a lot of scattered forts, ruins, cabins and watchtowers which made the world feel big. Since they were in disrepair and old, it made the world feel very ancient and with history, as well as making Skyrim feel desolate and old.

If they could combined the set piece, individual story locations from New Vegas with the ancient feel of Skyrim it would be pretty awesome.

 

[Zhukov]

Eh, I thought the exploration in Skyrim was kind of shit.

Well, maybe "shit" is a bit strong. I found it lackluster.

It's exciting initially when you have this big ol' world waiting to be explored but the game doesn't have enough variety to spread over its space. The content has this modular mass-produced feel that ensures that repetition sets in quickly.

I mean, I can't remember any one particular Cave-o-Draugr. I know there were in fact many Cave-o-Draugrs in the game, I remember laboriously clearing out quite a few. But none of them stand out, they all just blur together in my memory. Same goes for Fort-o-Bandits, Camp-o-Orcs, Halls-o-Robots, Hive-o-Goblin-ish-thingies, and so on and so forth.

Instead of feeling like hundreds of locations, it felt like about a dozen copy-pasted over the world to pad out the numbers.

Plus, when you get somewhere there isn't a great deal to do. You just kill everything that moves and loot everything that doesn't. The shitty combat (mash left click, tap right click if you're feeling fancy, hold left+right click if you're a mage) stops the first part from being much fun and the lack of interesting loot (oh look, this armour is 10 more armour than your current armour, amazing!) stymies the second part.

What makes me sad is that off the top of my head I cannot actually think of another game that does exploration better. Maybe it's just not economically viable. Exploration requires a large world, lots of varied things to find in that world and things to do with the things you find. Creating all that, while also providing good mechanics/story/whatever might just be too much work and resources for any given developer.

 

[Godhead]

I think that out of the big 3 Elder Scrolls, Skyrim was the weakest in just about everything, only beating out Oblivion in exploration because it's not the same acre copy pasted ad infinitum. The new Fallout games were really good in terms of exploration. (especially 3, though that might be due to the fact that I've lived most of my life in the DC Area and actually recognized a large portion of the landmarks)

The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games were also fantastic in their exploration, especially since the games difficulty made it as if you were just another person trying to make it in the Zone instead of some Avatar of death and destruction. The above ground sections in the Metro series were also very good for exploration. Also, Just Cause 2, just because it was so fun to grapple hook/parachute literally everywhere.

 

[Grace_Omega]

I probably value exploration over any other gameplay activity, but I'm somewhat dismayed that it seems to so often come parcelled into large open world games, which often feel like they're full of padding and uninteresting filler. I wish more developers would embrace exploration in more constrained settings.

Dragon Age Inquisition's world being split into discrete chunks means that every area feels completely unique and is exactly as large as it needs to be, giving a hand-crafted feel. There's nothing in that game that feels like it's there just to fill space, everything is designed to be interesting to look at and explore.

An even stronger example would be something like Gone Home, which models a single house and does it with a huge level of detail. When I was playing Far Cry 4 recently (a game I ended up being largely indifferent to) I kept imagining the same sort of open shooty-stealthy gameplay but taking place in a large building or set of buildings, a smaller area that could be rendered in far more meticulous detail, so that every single enemy encounter could feel hand crafted and unique rather than giving the player a certain number of activity types and then repeating them over and over again with slight variations.

In fact something very like that has been done before- the original Metal Gear Solid. Shadow Moses isn't "open" in the traditional sense, but you really do feel as if you're exploring that place over the course of the game.

Basically, I appreciate a good open world as much as the next person but I feel some developers are getting a bit carried away with chasing bigger and bigger worlds instead of more interesting worlds. Exploration can actually be more interesting if you try to do more with less.

 

[Benpasko]

Dragon's Dogma has some really fun exploration, there's equipment EVERYWHERE if you look, and it has climbing and platforming. The only downside is that the world is half the size that game deserves.

And as others have said, STALKER. If you haven't played Call of Pripyat, go play it. Srsly.

 

[Evonisia]

Last time I played Oblivion I travelled on foot between the towns to do the Mages Guild, best decision I ever made in the game. But remember that all three of those games love copy paste, so when you find something different it feels special. Other games don't usually have the assets to do anything beyond making a pretty landscape.

Or in other words, TES is the only one that it bloated enough to afford it.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

For me, first-person makes a huge difference to the overall experience. I can't really feel connected to a world being explored if I have to play with camera angles to get a decent look at something - it's a fundamental barrier between it being my experience, and me simply moving a puppet-avatar around its world. TES allowing for both cam views is an ideal solution (especially as Skyrim's 3rdP mode is actually functional).

I also think TES being true open-worlders makes a big difference. DA:I can be beautiful (eventually... even on the dreadful 360 version), but I can see the edges of the map easily, and know that most of the game is littered with MMO style filler. In Dragon Age I'm there for the story and characters - in TES, I'm there to make my own. Bethesda aren't exactly a bunch of genius designers (it's casual as feck, and the combat barely qualifies as a mechanic... ), but for me they give environmental stories or contexts to various areas quite deftly, so it feels like you personally discover events and characters. That incentives me to want to head out and see what's over the next hill/mountain/ruin.

 

[loa]

All you find are overwhelmingly the same draugr caves, bandit camps and maybe the odd dwarf cave here and dragon there over and over so the exploration part is really limited imo.

Morrowind and dark souls did it better with the surreal environment and great enemy variation.
Morrowind with the downright batshit flagrantly game breaking things you can find such as a potion of infinite jump height or levitation (can't have that in skyrim. Stop having fun guys) and dark souls because the environments are just masterfully crafted and memorable.

 

[Westaway]

Skyrim's exploration falls flag because of enemy scaling. No matter how far you travel, you're going to be fighting enemies your level, and it feels as if you have made no progress.
New Vegas on the other hand rewards you by showing off some high level areas, telling you you're too weak right now but may later return to conquer them. It also has some hidden high level areas such at the Deathclaw Promontory.