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Elder Scrolls How would Skyrim have been without the Decline caused by consoles?

Cryomancer

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Here is how I think :

  • Attributes will be part of the game. And impact the gameplay way more.
  • Vampires will take sun damage as Daggerfall, Morrowind and late stages on Oblivion
  • Cities will gonna be open like on morrowind hence levitation/mark/recal and other spells would exist
  • You would't be able to become the gran master of all factions, like in Morrowind, certain quests of one faction will force you to kill members of a opposite faction
  • No immortal NPC's
  • Polearms
  • Spellmaking with all new spell effects
  • Reputation with NPC's, locations, guilds, and overall world faction
  • Way more reactivity. You wond't be able to kill the emperor and join in the imperial legion. In fact, doing it should make you wanted in every city not controlled by the stormcloaks
  • Magic will be HATED not only in few dialogs with certain mages. If you are a magic user, you will be misstreated. Certain shops will refuse to sell things to you, you will be forced to be in shakles before talking with certain NPC's like important Jarls and doing magic in mid of the city be illegal in many cities. Guards will refuse bribes or take the bribery and arrest you despite it or attack in sight unless you have very high persuasion.
  • The graphics would be even better
  • More mature themes, like xenofobia from the stormcloaks and authoritarianism from the empire.
  • Morrowind style armor mechanics instead of armor just reducing damage by percentage
  • Surviving in the extremely cold and tall mountain would be very hard.
  • Classes.
  • (...)
And lastly but not less important. TemplarGR would't like it cuz it would not be the video game eqquivalent of fast food.
 

TemplarGR

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There is nothing wrong with a game being designed to also run on consoles. A larger market can lead to better sales potential which can lead to better production values. Some people are satisfied with Underrail graphics but others think that their 8 core cpus and 32 GBs of main RAM and Geforce RTX 3XXXs are kinda wasted on underrail. And Skyrim, while able to run on consoles, was much better in quality settings on PCs anyway. Plus mods.

As for Skyrim being simple, simple is good. People misunderstand what an RPG actually is, mainly autistic people who confuse excel spreadsheets with role playing. Simple does not equal shallow, and complex does not equal deep. I love quality streamlining in games. Removing tedium while adding cool new gameplay possibilities. Skyrim was leaps and bounds better than Morrowind and Oblivion, that is a scientific fact.
 

ADL

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Nothing about consoles kept Todd and his team from making dreamboy's dreams come true. He's just a guy who has a clear disdain for RPG mechanics and emergent gameplay despite talking about how much Darklands, Krondor and Ultima inspire his projects every time he gives a fucking interview.
 

Cryomancer

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Skyrim being simple, simple is good.

I din't said that Skyrim is bad. In fact, Skyrim IMO is a great open world "free roaming" game, but could be much better if had more stuff present on previous games. The game is 10 yo and the graphics still great.

Eg :

jsq4LlL.png

mainly autistic people who confuse excel spreadsheets with role playing

I agree, but there is a sweet spot between having FATAL level of "spreadsheets" and no attributes. People reacting cuz you picked a flower and killing the emperor of Tanriel with no consequences.
 
Last edited:

Humanophage

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It's too hard to imagine how gaming would have been without the decline caused by consoles. RPGs were going from strength to strength, and even regular women were playing stuff like Fallout 2 and Baldur's Gate 2. I recall many of the female students liking Bloodlines at my university. Normies would have had a much better taste, much greater tolerance for complexity, and dumb games would be treated like pop music rather than like they are the norm.

 

Cryomancer

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I recall many of the female students liking Bloodlines at my university.

Yep. VtMB has a huge female audience, IDK why.

---------------

Anyway, I know that I will get a lot of hate for this, but I will be honest. I have way more fun with Skyrim than with BG3 or DOS2.
 

TemplarGR

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It's too hard to imagine how gaming would have been without the decline caused by consoles. RPGs were going from strength to strength, and even regular women were playing stuff like Fallout 2 and Baldur's Gate 2. I recall many of the female students liking Bloodlines at my university. Normies would have had a much better taste, much greater tolerance for complexity, and dumb games would be treated like pop music rather than like they are the norm.

This is a lie. PC RPGs didn't decline because of consoles. During the PS2 era (2000-2006) PC RPGs were already in steep decline yet not many western RPGs had hit the console market.
 

Cryomancer

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. PC RPGs didn't decline because of consoles. During the PS2 era (2000-2006) PC RPGs were already in steep decline yet not many

I disagree. We had IWD2 and NWN1/2, Gothic 2 and tons of other amazing RPG's this time... Skyrim, being honest I prefer it over many games praised here. DOS2, BG3 and Pillars 1/2 are the most iconic examples. Some people here tends to put skyrim in "diablo 3 shit tier" which is unfair.

Just compare archery. In DOS2, you can't hit elephant sized targets at 14m. In skyrim, you can enchant your bow, chose the arrow, snipe at hundreds of meters away if you can deal with the gravity affecting the projectile and use poison in the arrowhead. Hitting a moving target at far way with my bow or my ice lance is very fun and satisfying.

Despite my critique due the lack of consequences for being a vampire, vampire lords in skyrim has a lot of cool stuff to do. People sadly hate skyrim cuz they only see things which skyrim lost but they don't see the 1001 amazing things that it has. Recently, I installed a mod which adds water magic. Casting tidal waves are very fun. There are also cool stuff in skyrim not present in morrowind, like shouts with dozens of different effects(not saying that skyrim is better than morrowind, only that I like both and still prefer morrowind). My point is just that skyrim could be better

My standards for RPGs are not high. Is the game more than a endless gear farming cooldown managing? If yes, I can like it. I can't stand DA:I, D3, WoW and the 666 clones, but can play skyrim for hundreds of hours.
 

TemplarGR

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We had IWD2

Niche game, 2002, based on a then obsolete engine. It was a good game, i enjoyed it back then, but it was more of the same of the previous gen, really.


NWN1 was arguably shit in single player, and NWN2 was shit in general. NWN1 became cool in multiplayer with mods eventually, and NWN2 got a cool expansion for storyfags, but both were hardly impressive.


Gothic 2, again, a 2002 game. A great game for sure, but just the last hurrah of the PC exclusive era. Not without faults, we loved it DESPITE its faults.

All in all, a few notable far and between games do not constitute a healthy genre but a niche genre. During he same period you could name a gazillion quality FPSes, RTSes, etc.
 

Spectacle

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Asking what Skyrim would have been like without console decline is like asking what WW2 would have been like without WW1.
 

Cryomancer

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niche genre

More tactical RPG's was always a "niche" genre. In 90s, the most popular game was Doom and the most popular self entitled RPG was Diablo 1(if is a true rpg or just a dungeon crawler, is another discussion).


-----

Anyway, Enderal seems way better than skyrim. I will test it.
 

Saerain

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Magic will be HATED not only in few dialogs with certain mages. If you are a magic user, you will be misstreated.
Was that previously written into Nord culture and they've brainwashed it out of my memory already?
 

unseeingeye

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Strap Yourselves In
This thread reminds me of that "What if Skyrim was good?" video by Zaric.
Skyrim is like an amalgam of mobile game presentation and an arcade interface.
 

Cryomancer

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Magic will be HATED not only in few dialogs with certain mages. If you are a magic user, you will be misstreated.
Was that previously written into Nord culture and they've brainwashed it out of my memory already?

The dialog in the college of winterhold, they say that is the unique place where they can practice magic in skyrim, except that you can summon daedras in mid of any city and nobody cares.

This thread reminds me of that "What if Skyrim was good?" video by Zaric.

This? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go27bgPJTPY&list=PLCTdSgjkZy-9pFFt74vchciwJ3AdCazw4
 

Sandsch

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The UI wouldn't probably be as god-awful as it is. Skyrim's vanilla UI is painful to use.
 

Gargaune

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Everything would be better without the Decline caused by consoles. Sliced bread would be better without the Decline caused by consoles. It would just be bread.
 

Hag

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Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is.
It would have been the greatest RPG ever made. From UI to story, from combat to spell-casting, it would have been only the greatest refinement in computer gaming, pristine design and clever gameplay, catering to all PC players, from casual hack-and-slashers to hardcore TES lore nerds.
Truly, a gem of a game has been lost with the arrival of consoles in the late 80s.
 

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