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

[chocolate pickles]

I think part of why Skyrim worked was that 1, there was a lot to find, and 2, there was a sense of reward - hearing that little sound effect when you found a new area, watching you map gradually feel it - that kind of felt like an xp bar in it's own sense.

Fallout 3/New Vegas (obviously) were similar, but in ways did things both better and worse: On the one hand, getting xp for exploring was a definite advantage to do so, and considering scavenging was a major part of the game, was good for getting caps. There was also the thrill of almost 'going down the rabbit hole' - you could enter a building thinking you'll clear it in 5 minutes, then end up there for 20, killing new enemies, exploring the fluff, or maybe even tracking down a unique weapon. However, in general, Skyrim had MUCH better locations - some of fallouts were definitely a bit bland/uninspiring.

 

[Nazulu]

I didn't care for the exploration in Skyrim after awhile. I can't go back to the game anymore because I found it so boring, so maybe I shouldn't be here, but I must say something.

I preferred the exploration in Ocarina Of Time, actually my favourite was in Super Metroid. The rewards were big (extending health and finding new weapons that open new doors, etc.), and while a lot smaller, all the places were different and mostly lead to new paths, or a boss, which you have to love. And most importantly, I actually felt like I was going deep into something. This only happened once for me in Skyrim when it came to Black Reach, and just stopped there.

These random finds like yours with the house containing a bear just doesn't mean much in the scheme of things really. I preferred finding the story's that lead to new scenery, but nothing was different there honestly, and it didn't add much to my characters either, so I mostly found them all forgettable. I know a lot of people here can do it, but I can't play the game again because it mostly feels the same, and most of it doesn't mean squat in any final result, especially when it's so freakin' easy.

 

[Dizchu]

I actually think that in terms of exploration, Minecraft's scale and unpredictability make it really compelling. I like gathering supplies for a temporary home so I can just hike for ages across the landscape, building myself a little home to reside in for every nightfall. Of course, once you get to the edge of the map very strange things happen [http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Far_Lands].

EDIT: Oh damn, they got rid of it. This upsets me.

 

[laggyteabag]

Skyrim certainly had a sense of scale sure, but there was very little to do in it, and anything that there was to do, never really felt impressive. You found a cave, very interesting, but what is in it? Bandits/Draugr/Dwarven Machinery/Falmer and that is about it. Any interesting unique loot? Well you can bet your ass there isn't. There can be hundreds of locations across Skyrim, and they can all have handcrafted interiors, but when they are filled with the same 4 varieties of monsters (3 of of which boil down to "guys with swords") and no real interesting loot to speak of, there is very little reason to ever venture into them. Hell, for all of Oblivion's faults, even that did exploration better than Skyrim, because at least it felt like there was at least some variety in terms of inhabitants. It is kinda sad when all of the game's exploration boils down to "oh look, another cave", it just makes it feel like even though we are in this huge fantasy setting, there is nothing interesting in it aside from a hole in a rock. Don't get me wrong, I like me a good cave, but at least include something else to discover, and not just another bloody cave.

 

[Flammablezeus]

Check out Frontiers. It's coming along really well and reminds me more of older Elder Scrolls games than the most recent ones which just try to hold your hand everywhere and subvert exploration (unless modded a bit.)

 

[Dansen]

Skyrim never gets me excited for exploring, mostly cause it is a generic fantasy setting, not to mention all its impressive landmarks are cities that are indicated right on your map, you never get to find anything cool in that game. I'm so happy that the Skywind conversion project exists so I can visit Morrowind with updated graphics.

The game that really itched my exploration spot was actually the first Dark Souls, on my first play through. Every zone was different from the last and you could end up reaching a lot of what you could see. Not only that but there were a bunch of incentives to look around. You could find cool/useful weapons and armor, items that could shed light on the lore and NPC that could also expand upon the lore as well as provide useful services. I felt like I was an archeologist uncovering a lost civilization. Not to mention it had two really well hidden areas that would have stayed relatively unknown if not for the internet. I love Ash Lake.

I think the best games for exploration are those that provide incentives for you to do it, and skyrim isn't one of those games for me.

 

[sanquin]

I actually feel like there is more interesting story to be found in DA:I than in Skyrim. Maybe it's just me, but every letter and book you can pick up has a story, or has a story inside of it. Sure you can't pick up as much as in skyrim, but still. And the world is a lot more interesting to me as well. To me, Skyrim started to feel very much the same after a few elven ruins, forts, or caves. And it's not like the world of Inquisition isn't varied. You have a desert, snowy mountains, area's with hills, lush forests, a gloomy coastline with wild seas and rain, a dark swamp, etc. I guess it comes down to preference.

Skyrim, DA:I, Fallout 3/NV, Far Cry, Assassin's Creed...they all have similar exploration imo. The three things that only really change are the means of travel, the hud and the setting.

 

[J Tyran]

Every building or hut or cave should have a story behind it, and you don't get that with Skyrim

How do you know it didn't? Not every single one does but many of them do and its not always obvious, like one hut I have seen several times in hundreds of hours of Skyrim and only noticed a tiny bit of environmental storytelling there.

Its a hut with angry Skeevers in and around and it and a dead guy, so the Skeevers killed him right? Easy and obvious assumption to make and I made it myself until this last time I noticed some details, there was a pile of wooden bowls with half eaten food in front o f the hearth, the dead guy had no wounds, there was a recently built cairn outside with peice of jewellery placed on it.

And a single bottle of poison on the table near the dead guy on the bed.

The Skeevers were pets and the dead guy must have been recently bereaved and killed himself out of grief, this random hut had its place in the world and this tiny piece of environmental storytelling was woven into the world.

There are many little bits and pieces like that.

you never get to find anything cool in that game.

So you're saying that places like Black Reach, the Aetherium Forge and some of the unique ruins on Solstheim aren't cool?

 

[endtherapture]

I actually feel like there is more interesting story to be found in DA:I than in Skyrim. Maybe it's just me, but every letter and book you can pick up has a story, or has a story inside of it. Sure you can't pick up as much as in skyrim, but still. And the world is a lot more interesting to me as well. To me, Skyrim started to feel very much the same after a few elven ruins, forts, or caves. And it's not like the world of Inquisition isn't varied. You have a desert, snowy mountains, area's with hills, lush forests, a gloomy coastline with wild seas and rain, a dark swamp, etc. I guess it comes down to preference.

Skyrim, DA:I, Fallout 3/NV, Far Cry, Assassin's Creed...they all have similar exploration imo. The three things that only really change are the means of travel, the hud and the setting.

The environmental storytelling in Inquisition is frankly awful. It's just lore that is dispatched through you going up to points in the world and pressing A. Then you get a horrible black box with caps lock white text telling you some random lore that happened in this place long ago. At least in Skyrim they used clutter items and the world itself to tell these stories and give it a good feel rather than having static codex dispensers placed throughout the world.

In addition, the world in Skyrim just feels open and big, like the real world. As beautiful as Inquisition looks, it's just too gamey for me. Everything feels like invisible corridors, the jumping mechanics are awful and enforce this, and instead of actually being in a mountain land or a wide open desert, I feel like I am exploring videogame corridor illusions of these places. The lack of NPC routines and a day/night cycle really takes something away from Inquisition.

 

[Saetha]

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, uh, gotta disagree there. I generally prefer 3rd Person, but I never use it in the TES games. Your character's animation looks too jittery and puppet-like, and they seem more like they're superimposed over the landscape rather than truly meshing with it. Nothing about it looks very organic. Which I'm... not terribly troubled by, you're obviously encouraged to play the game in first person and that doesn't bother me too much, but while the option for a third person perspective is there, it's nowhere near on par with games meant to be in the third person.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Because most games don't go for it's huge scale. It's one of the reasons I am so excited for the Witcher 3.

Also, not sure why so many people are saying that areas are copy and pasted in Skyrim. It's quite clear that each cave and ruin had some unique design for it. Yes, there's similar architecture, but that's a big difference. You'd expect cities built by the same race to have similar architecture. I personally liked the similar architecture, if a cave transitioned into a Dwemer ruin, it was noticeable. You could anticipate what would be coming next.

As J Tyran said, one of the best things about the game is that almost every location has a story to go along with it. The story might be a quest, or it might be more subtle. It makes the world feel lived in.

 

[sanquin]

The environmental storytelling in Inquisition is frankly awful. It's just lore that is dispatched through you going up to points in the world and pressing A. Then you get a horrible black box with caps lock white text telling you some random lore that happened in this place long ago. At least in Skyrim they used clutter items and the world itself to tell these stories and give it a good feel rather than having static codex dispensers placed throughout the world.

In addition, the world in Skyrim just feels open and big, like the real world. As beautiful as Inquisition looks, it's just too gamey for me. Everything feels like invisible corridors, the jumping mechanics are awful and enforce this, and instead of actually being in a mountain land or a wide open desert, I feel like I am exploring videogame corridor illusions of these places. The lack of NPC routines and a day/night cycle really takes something away from Inquisition.

I think the word you're looking for is immersion, not exploration. As DA:I is definitely more 'video gamey' than Skyrim. But you're saying that like it's a bad thing, and I don't see it that way. They're video games, I'd expect most to be 'video gamey'. Yet instead most go for 'realism' and 'immersion'. I'm not saying either one is better. It's just that I think you might have set your expectations in the wrong places for DA:I.

As I said, I for one, like how they did most of DA:I. Yes the jumping sucks. Yes they use terrain to create the illusion of a large area while it's actually not that big. (though they at least don't use invisible walls as far as I noticed.) Yes Skyrim's world is more immersive than DA:I's. But I like both for what they are, rather than comparing them to each other and saying one is better.

 

[Unsilenced]

Is skyrim really a game to hold up here? Basically everything is in a cave full of viking zombies, the location of which is marked on your magic GPS by a single line of dialogue from an NPC. If a citizen of skyrim so much as loses their purse, you can bet it's somehow going to end up in a cave that's full of drauger, combination locks that have the combination written on them , and traps that you can just cheese with a healing spell. Maybe some bandits too, if they're feeling extra creative.

To answer your question though; exploration is the least rewarding thing to make rewards for, from a developer's point of view. Time spent on the main quest is time making stuff that 100% of players are going to see. Time spent making a random event that only appears on this one road at 5am on a tuesday is content only maybe 5% of players are going to see. If you spend more time making that other content, that means less time making stuff for the main quest, and reviewers are not going to know anything about that quest given to you by an old lady in some cave hidden in the corner of the map. When reviews come out, they're all going to be "8/10, absolute shit, not a long enough main quest"

Basically, they want to make sure as much content as possible gets shown off just by stumbling through the game. Things that can only be found by random exploration are things that aren't going to be found by the majority of players, and are thus a very poor return on investment.

 

[Noontide]

It's more that people other than Bethesda aren't bothering to attempt it. I really wish they would though, Bethesda games have a lot of flaws and I think the only reason they get away with it is because there are no alternatives in the free-roaming RPG genre. They need some harsh competition to force them into improving themselves.

 

[V da Mighty Taco]

Group me in with the "Skyrim wasn't really that good in the exploration department" crowd. Even when compared to Oblivion, Skyrim's exploration system falls flat due to very dull, repetitive enemies and almot all of the locations in the game looking exactly the same - snowy, rocky, and / or dwarven. Oblivion, while having a much worse leveling system, at least had numerous biomes throughout Cyrodiil and had enemy variety out the ass. Even the ghosts had several different versions, let alone something like the highly varied Daedra in that game. Skyrim, on the other hand, seriously feels like two-thirds of the enemies you face are either Draugr or Bandits, and that gets old fast. The Elder Scrolls games also have a nasty tendency for most of the locations to not really have much of a point for you to visit outside of getting some random loot that mid-late game you almost always just end up selling. Skyrim added Dragon Shouts to make trogging through caves a bit more interesting later on, but even then exploration jut ends up feeling like a tedious chore by the end as you know exactly what to expect and what awaits you at the end.

If you want to talk about good exploration, just look at the main Fallout games (FO 1 through 3 and New Vegas). Every location you visit in those games has a story to tell, not every location even gives you a reward but focuses on atmosphere or it's aforementioned little story instead, and those that do often give you some sort of unique and powerful item that you'll usually enjoy finding even at max level. Some locations even come with their own one-of-a-kind enemy that appears nowhere else in the game, such as the legendary enemies from NV, the Super Mutant Behemoths from 3, or the Mother Deathclaw from 1. And of course, not every location you find that's not part of a major city or faction is filled with hostile denizens, but sometimes of regular people or even non-humans (FO 2's Vault 13 springs to mind) that will talk with you and / or may even be part of a quest that you haven't encountered yet. Add in all of the cool or hilarious little things that can happen in the random encounters (Bridge of Death, anyone?), and you have a series of games that make exploration fascinating no matter how far into the game you are.

Unless you find Pariah Dog, of course. Fuck that mutt.

EDIT: For whatever reason, this thread is making me want to play Shadow of the Colossus again, despite not really being an exploration game (you're not really rewarded all that much for going anywhere but to the next Colossus, even if you're a tail / fruit hunter). How quaint.

 

[DementedSheep]

Honestly I don't think skyrims that great. Occasionally you will come across an area that's just amazing but mostly it feels like a huge amount of nothing. Its a good turn your brain off game and it can be brilliant with mods but the exploration never grabbed me. It might just be that it's too big. I prefer a bit more focus.
I had more fun exploring the barren wasteland of FO3. I also like dark souls for exploration more than challenge so I guess I have a thing for dying worlds.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

I... you sure about the question? Because that would imply that Skyrim exploration is actually good and not boring as hell. See one cave, you've seen them all. It doesn't feel rewarding or exciting at all. I've had more fun exploring in Kingdom of Amalure or however it's named and that game is basically single player WoW. Hell, Hyrule Warriors feels more exciting to explore than Skyrim.

Morrowind did it damn well. There is the Fallout series. Older Zelda games (any Zelda game besides Skyward Sword), heavily modded Minecraft, adventure/hardcore question maps in Minecraft, Xenoblade Chronicles, Just Cause 2. They are leagues better than Skyrim as far as exploring is considered. KOTOR games as well.
I'm having high hopes for the new Zelda game. Huge world but hopefully lots of hidden handmade stuff.
Most older RPG games have way better exploration than anything Skyrim can offer. The only selling point of Skyrim is "it's huge". But the world itself feels lifeless. Not because it's empty but because it's not made with love. It's not handmade the same way the older games were. It's basically done with a terrain brush tool and one dungeon.

EDIT: And that doesn't even include the problem with the mob scaling. A huge part of the great adventure feeling in Morrowind was that some areas are dangerous while other aren't depending on your level. You could clearly see your progress and it added tension to the game when you go off exploring some area that's clearly out of your range. Level scaling is one of the worst things in Skyrim.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

I recently got back into Skyrim and even finally bought Dawnguard. It was pretty great exploring the Vale for the first time. I was not expecting the thing that happened on the lake. Perhaps like me, some here have forgotten what it was like to actually see new stuff in Skyrim because its still pretty good. Not as amazing as it could be, but still better than most other offerings.

With regards to the rest of the DLC, I tried out Vampire Lord and the improved Werewolf, and both are pretty fun. I couldn't choose one I prefer over the other though. VL has spammable detect life pings, paralyze/telekinesis, easymode life drain spell plus a ton more things I don't even use. Downsides are that you are kinda fugly, and daytime is a bad place to be outside. Being a generic vampire has almost zero upside apart from the new Lord form though. You get cool eyes, some frost resistance etc. but again the daytime is a no no and if you aren't using illusion or sneaking you aren't really getting much upside. Especially not from that pathetic life drain in default form. Feeding is optional and actually weakens your powers which is totally opposite of logic. It does reduce sun damage but so does the wait function..

Werewolf was something I NEVER used before the DLC because it was asking to get your ass handed to you. You simply made yourself weaker and basically naked for middling damage, and that was it.

Now though, its actually pretty damn awesome. Bitchslapping giants off their feet, going ham on anything, making them flee in terror. All good. Not as funny as popping things into the sky with vamp grip but still fun.

But all that comes at a price. You have to put all your crap back on every time you change back and you need to requip the ring of Hircine/equip the power for EVERY transformation beyond your default one. Vampire Lord doesn't have this issue. Your gear goes away but it is reequipped when you revert form. It is simply laziness on their part not to have bothered changing that from vanilla when they updated the form.

The new sun spells are great, crossbows are great, Serana grew on me but I still prefer no followers, and the Dragonbone greatsword is pretty snazzy.

But, it comes with a heavy price. Wolves no longer howl since I installed Dawnguard. Much glitch, such rockjoint..

Oh and dragons have gone back to that habit of flying in and studiously ignoring you, flying around killing everyone and everything that it NOT you and avoiding coming anywhere near you except to prevent you from fast traveling. That shit had been sorted out a long time ago but apparently Dawnguard reverted their ai back to troll mode when it was done ripping out wolf vocal chords.

 

[snekadid]

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.

No, those areas are why New Vegas isn't an open world game, its called railroading. There is no reward because all they did was put 12 deathclaws in a spot so that your low level character can't sneak by all their forced content. There is nothing there to take advantage of, thus exploration there is more pointless than in skyrim.

Fallout 3 is by far one of the best suggestions made thus far. Both ridiculously big and loaded with interesting things to explore and lore to discover.