sea's (Mostly Technical) Skyrim Initial Impressions

[Phelot]

Guys I have bad news: PEOPLE ON THIS SITE ARE HAVING FUN WITH SKYRIM!!!

WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE GOING TO DO?!?!?!

So much prestige lost... So much history down the drain.

 

[7hm]

It's pretty much what I expected.

I doubt I'll spend all that long in it, but I don't regret buying it.

They can't all be turn based shitty graphic gems.

The UI is fine for a gamepad.

edit: the tutorial is boring as fuck. Better than oblivion's though.

 

[Shannow]

It's by no means perfect, and yeah, hype is definitely a factor. Having said that, at the bare minimum, you can turn off the shitty quest / settlement / dungeon markers and you have a fun hiking simulator. No, it's not the best game ever. No, it's not better than Morrowind. It's sure as hell better than Oblivion, though, and much more fun of a hiking simulator compared to New Vegas (which I quickly got bored of - never played Fallout 3)

I think a big complaint with the game, ultimately, will be that a large majority of the outdoor scenery, including towns, is snowy, which means white. There are non-snowy areas, but trudging through endless snow blizzards, with the terrible "snow covering" effect will probably get old. I guess it only makes sense given the game's lore, but I'm sure it's going to be a sore point with some.

It's pretty damn atmospheric, if nothing else.

That's just it though. There's nothing more. If you will, for a moment, put away the highly improved atmosphere and the admittedly decent game world design, and look at what you have left. You've a shitty and further dumbed down character/class system, poor combat, mostly uninteresting enemies, mostly run-of-the-mill quests, crappy dialog as always, still the shitty follow the quest compass!! gameplay style, boring items/weapons/armor and enchantments, no spell maker, heck not even an interesting spell, and tons of other stuff. Basically it's still the same old shitty Oblivion underneath, and it's actually even worse than OB in some areas. But this time they managed to hide it under an actual good atmosphere and a better game world design.

Here skyway, that actually made me doubt the positive reactions. Your nonsense (really, you wrote so many plain wrong stuff about Morrowind it generated lots of Fremdscham in me) didn't.

Anyway, how is level scaling in this? So far I've only seen a comment, claiming it wasn't an issue. But that's not very informative

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Guys I have bad news: PEOPLE ON THIS SITE ARE HAVING FUN!!!

WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE GOING TO DO?!?!?!

So much prestige lost... So much history down the drain.

Streamlined.

 

[Comrade Goby]

What's wrong with fun?

 

[Trash]

That's just it though. There's nothing more. If you will, for a moment, put away the highly improved atmosphere and the admittedly decent game world design, and look at what you have left. You've a shitty and further dumbed down character/class system, poor combat, mostly uninteresting enemies, mostly run-of-the-mill quests, crappy dialog as always, still the shitty follow the quest compass!! gameplay style, boring items/weapons/armor and enchantments, no spell maker, heck not even an interesting spell, and tons of other stuff. Basically it's still the same old shitty Oblivion underneath, and it's actually even worse than OB in some areas. But this time they managed to hide it under an actual good atmosphere and a better game world design.

Skyrim in a nutshell. As a Bethesda game it is incline, as an rpg it's shit and as an action adventure it is mediocore. Great hiking sim though.

 

[Haba]

This is the Codex where your average thread on old school/actual new indie RPGs average about two or three pages and threads on stuff like Skyrim, Mass Effect, etc. average about twenty pages.

Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you aspies? How the fuck do you expect us to post 20 pages every god damn time someone makes a thread about a game that we already discussed to death on release, 20 years ago?

With indie games, codexers tend to show enough courtesy that they don't bash the shit out of them. Usually, at least. New shit gets long threads because they are new. And easy targets.

For a newfag such as Skyway, it sure can be frustrating that no-one is willing to discuss that classic cRPG they've just discovered, but with a bit of common sense it shouldn't be too hard to realize why that happens. But looking at this thread, common sense isn't what you retards have in abundance. Apparently you're not allowed to see anything good in anything without it becoming blind fanboy love on an icon of decline.

 

[Crooked Bee]

I didn't play Oblivion (well, I did, but I only finished the tutorial dungeon and quit), so I can't really tell if Skyrim improves on it. One thing good about the game, are high-level enemies and the difficulty in trying to deal with them is high to impossible. Another good thing, are small non-plot-related encounters, such as a group of Justicars (or something like that) escorting a rebel prisoner, or a nobleman who is for some weird reason walking on foot from Windhelm to Solitude to attend a royal wedding, or a kid who mistakes you for a summoned assassin and asks you to kill the school headmaster, or many pieces of dialogue you can overhear that lead to a side quest, etc. It feels like effort has really been put into those, even if they never go beyond the clichéd RPG stuff with average RPG writing. The improve-by-use system, which I generally dislike, feels smooth and logical so far without leading to overpoweredness; my character is level 10, I'm a thief wielding two-handed weapons (yes, I'm experimenting ). I switched from heavy to light armour midway, which is now a decision I kind of regret -- the game seems to reward consistency and specialisation from early on. I also regret investing in Magicka for the first few levels, when I thought "well maybe I could be a thief/mage kind of girl". I don't really see myself maxing everything out, especially given that I'm not intent on spending several hundred hours on the game. The "you can only train 5 times per level" restriction is also a good thing.

All that said, I can't really recommend the game, it's only curiosity that keeps me going, and I'm probably not even going to finish it. The problem is, I'm bored of exploration already. There seems to be a lot of exploration, but in fact there isn't any: the world of Skyrim is too monotonous and bland for that. Whoever says the world design is good must be joking. I've explored two large cities so far, Whiterun and Windhelm, and am now in Winterhold, as well as a couple of villages, and they're all basically the same; I can barely make myself thoroughly explore new locations now. It looks like, if you've been to one of them, you've been to them all. In other words, it's nothing like Morrowind, sadly. The dungeons I've explored (the one in which you get a dragon shout, the one that culminates in a dwarven golem construct, and a couple of others) aren't any better -- they're all linear and boring. It seems that by "dungeon design" Bethesda only understands painting corridors in different colours and populating them with different kinds of enemies, not actually making an interesting dungeon. Whoever says the dungeon design is good, I hate you. Which means the game is nothing like Daggerfall or Battlespire as well. It really feels like a game with no strengths.

I honestly can't think of a single RPG with challenging puzzles.

Dark Heart of Uukrul.

 

[commie]

Biobeth fanboy rant

Fucking butthurt fanboy.



I agree 100% though...


@ Crooked Bee

Good impressions. Seems that abandoning it after a few hours was the right thing to do.

 

[ksjav]

"It's not a quest if it doesn't give you XP." Skyway, ladies and gentlemen.

No it means that you have no choice but to choose combat quests if you want to be more than level 1 in the game no matter your strawman here. As well as more interesting quests than FedExing items from point A to point B.

hahaohwow.jpg Pulling shit out of your ass is at least fun for you I hope. Non-combat quests in general increase your non-combat skills (SHOCKER RIGHT THERE), since most of them require you to use them, be it sneaking past someone or convincing somebody. And pretty much all the fetch quests I encountered get you a skill upgrade as a reward, like some aspiring trader teaching you speechcraft if you get her a mammoth tusk, or an ex-merc teaching you one-handed for finding his fathers sword(these are free of charge). Also usually there are gold rewards right? And there has always been skill teaching in TES? Do the math dumbshit?

I'm all for bashing games, but doing so on their actual faults. And so far those are first and foremost the UI, which is as bad as the one in Gothic 1, but as with that one you get used to it after a while.

Then there is the health/magicka regen. In retrospect the root of the problem was in Morrowind, where playing a mage meant you waited for 17 hours at least 12 times in each dungeon to replenish mana. The health regen is slow enough to not disrupt the flow of combat (at least on the highest difficulty, don't know if it's higher on lower ones). Mana regen is quicker, but the cost of spells, especially without investing perk points, means your rate of casting spells is very low regardless of regen unless you invest into spell school perks. Basically it's a whole different spellcasting mechanic to static magicka pools altogether. Of course one could make it all static and the player would simply do what they did in Morrowind and rest for 17 hours 12 times per dungeon. One could make passage of time important within the context of the game instead of introducing, albeit slow, regen, but that's Bethesda for you.
I would prefer to lose health regen altogether so food can find it's niche as low level healing that at present moment it fails to do.
Also another problem is the potion chugging with seems to be limitless (compared to Oblivion's alchemy based limit on active potions) and health/magick/stamina potions take effect instantly. inb4 mods will fix it

Third fault I feel is the somewhat linear dungeons (at least those I've been to). Linear levels were the reason I wiped Rage off my HDD after demoing it, and the fact that it was piss poor easy on "nightmare" difficulty (at least that's not something I can say for Skyrim at this point). It's OK for smaller dungeons, like some bandit caves (luckily dungeons are designed with specific concepts in mind, such as a cave of mammoth poachers, where they are dissecting a corpse, and there's unique dialogue for the denizens of the dungeon), but the large dungeons that are linear can get pretty annoying. However if they can provide interesting enemy encounters (such as the room full of too-tough-for-me zombos where I had to use the complex's traps to deal with them) with enough variety it would be passable.

 

[Trash]

Perhaps Skyway should play a few rpg's games before he wants to talk about them. It sure would make his 'contributions' less facepalm inducing.

 

[Vb]

Game is surprisingly fun on Master difficulty, when going into areas with enemies that can one-shot you.

For instance, as a poorly geared level 4 caster, I spent over 30 minutes bringing down a giant with my piss-poor novice spells, while evading his attacks and avoiding getting inexplicably stuck in the terrain. The fight started sometime at night, and by the time the giant went down, the morning was dawning in the game. Pity that a mammoth decided to cut short my celebrations by using my neck to rest its legs.

The world seems well-realized from what little I've played. The weather effects are well done, snowflakes in particular, and seeing mists of cold air sweep over rivers is as inviting as the looming misty mountains are ominous. It's very atmospheric, as expected of a hiking-sim, at the very least.

I haven't seen too much of the quests, but they do seem rather simplistic, with some minor C&C attached every now and again. The books serve as an info-dump once again, but the decent writing in at least some of them (from Morrowind ?) just underlines the fact that on comparison, the actual writing for quests/dialogue/characterization can be summed up with a single word: dull. The atrocious voice acting makes the writing look even more pedestrian.

The UI is atrocious though. Really fails to take advantage of the KB/mouse combo, being a port job from the consoles. Even plugging a game controller in, the skill trees are cumbersome to navigate. A case of style over substance, if ever there was one.

At the moment, I find it to be dumb fun for killing time that I lack, as long as I don't expect some profoundly deep experience.

 

[villain of the story]

I don't see any people masturbating or overhyping the game here to be honest.

Don't you know, three people talking positively about any game = MASSIVE MAJESTIC ORGY FOR THE GAME KKKODEKS SUX LOLOL

Anyway, I tried to play it some more but nope, the interface just puts me off. Drawing a comparison to Gothic is nonsensical because Gothic isn't inconsistent about what parts of the interface needs a mouse or keyboard and combat in Gothic punches far more clarity instead of this weird timed button mashing shit. I literally got tired just for dealing with the interface. For now, I'll let it hover in my hdd, though.

The game has a very distinct "back to Morrowind" type of feel to its art direction, btw.

 

[made]

Game is surprisingly fun

Joined: 08 Oct 2011
Posts: 8
Location: Seattle

Nice try, Jaesun.

Shame about the UI. Modders will have to rework it from the ground up this time around; a different font and bigger window won't really cut it in this case.

 

[IronicNeurotic]

Its better than Dragon Derp 2.

Bioware and Bethesda switching places in our codex hate?

 

[MetalCraze]

... No.

Since its "skill by use" that means if I use a bow I keep getting better and will reach 100 before the races without bow as a skill get there.

Yes 2 levels before them since all races have "skill by use". Big deal.

This is not a "level up - raise your skills" system, not to say your example shows once again your ignorance as you pick what were your 10 points go in at level up ... mana, health or stamina and lets say if you think a character with 200 mana can beat a character with 200 health ...

Actually it is a level up raise your skills system. When you level up you pick one of whole three stats and also skills (called perks) that are mostly dmg++ "Skills by use" are mostly a number that tells the game whether you can pick a "perk" or not.

What part of "skill raises by use" fails to register? if I wanted I could have 100 in all armor skills by standing next to a rat and let him hit me as long it was neither a Major or Minor skill I would never level up.

Except it would've taken you a much longer time in Morrowind instead of Skyrim where you gain numbers at a greater speed since there are no major/minor skills.

Can attempt at doing so right away, he cannot do everything right away ... heck the game allowed me to pick a Master lock and what happened was I wasted every single picklock I had.

Except the only difference between master lock and novice lock is that you need to have more lockpicks. Once you find a sweet spot (which is easy to do) nothing else matters.

And I think crafting is even worst because somethings can only be crafted if you have the Perk, no Ebony Swords without the perk.

Except by the time you will be able to craft them (unless you grind to do it early) you will get to them regardless. And what's lol is that a mage character has zero problem wearing the heaviest armour.

Funny, I go a rescue quest and a "get me a mammoth tusk" that since it was a miscellaneous quest meant there was no GPS marker.

Except mammoth tusk is a part of a bring me X quest.

How do you know? you clearly have not played the game and even if they are corridors ... its a dungeon, its have corridors.

Linear corridors. Can't you read?

Feels pretty big.

To you Skyrim also feels like it has C&C. Except when you reach Whiterun you already walked through 1/3 of a map (and all you did is walked through a single short mountain path)

Outside combat, rely on it in combat and you dont stand a chance.

What part of "you can have a healing spell at lvl1 with any character" don't you get?
Mana regens extremely fast combat or not so if just jumping around enemies to regen health is too boring just hold one of buttons to constantly heal yourself.

Its about timing, position and reach and just because you can win by bashing at the target long enough for it to die does not mean its the right way to do it.

Yes you also need to be within hitting range of weapons in... all other games. What timing are you talking about? Swing at enemy until he dies since he still gets the damage blocks or not. Except with a block he doesn't do attack himself.

Miscellaneous quest do not have markers, kinda of a bitch when the game creates a quest and since it cannot give directions for it you have to check on the Journal the name and were the place is on the map (bounty quests are annoying because of that).

Opening your map to see where quest happens marked on it (which is a quest compass) - it requires a titanic willpower

But when something happens in the same city nobody gives you any directions. Like "go bring this sword to X". So yeah I'm new here where the fuck is that X?
So you are forced to open the journal and make quest active to see where quest compass points on the map otherwise you will only have to guess where that fucking character is since they also tend to move.

Its more natural that Oblivion that felt small since everything was 5 feet away and frustrating as there was no indication of character progression.

Everything is 5 feet away in Skyrim too. You can have a guard tower and then 30 meters away from it - evil giants.. standing in one place. I also don't understand what you mean by an "indication of character progression" - both here and there you level up and that's it. Skills don't really matter.

Its not New Vegas but its certainly not Oblivion II.

But both New Vegas and Oblivion are bad games

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

Game is surprisingly fun on Master difficulty, when going into areas with enemies that can one-shot you.

I spent awhile fighting a running battle with a Restless Daugr at level 2. First time I met him he tanked everything I threw at range and smacked me into a wall. Second time that ice spell chewed through my health. So next time I came prepared. Blasted with Flame spells on both hands, ducking away every time he got close until I ran out of magicka. Then I lead him on a merry chase through the Barrow and right into the blade trap from earlier. While he stumbled through that I used the little magicka I'd gained back to heal my wounds and applied a weak paralyzing potion to my iron mace.

Hit him, and then when he went down poured on the Flame. I have to admit it was pretty satisfying.

 

[MetalCraze]

And you can do it all in Oblivion as well. From retarded difficulty that makes you deal barely any damage to enemies that can soak a shitton of it to using traps in dungeons as weapons. But Oblivion is shit because everyone made fun of it back in the day so I need to be Kool too and ride with the flow

Nothing wrong with that and actually better to actually play the thing to be able to critique it rather than to do a Skyway and rage about the fine faults of games that one has never played or don't even exist.

So what you say is that if one doesn't like something in an overhyped game that you are all hyped up about - he has never played it and his opinion doesn't matter

But if one jizzes all over it and makes up stuff that isn't there (like sea's "interactions with NPCs" with "liking you enough" while at the same time making fun of Oblivion:Roleplaying) - he is actually a critic to whom everyone must listen

 

[Metro]

This is the Codex where your average thread on old school/actual new indie RPGs average about two or three pages and threads on stuff like Skyrim, Mass Effect, etc. average about twenty pages.

Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you aspies? How the fuck do you expect us to post 20 pages every god damn time someone makes a thread about a game that we already discussed to death on release, 20 years ago?

With indie games, codexers tend to show enough courtesy that they don't bash the shit out of them. Usually, at least. New shit gets long threads because they are new. And easy targets.

For a newfag such as Skyway, it sure can be frustrating that no-one is willing to discuss that classic cRPG they've just discovered, but with a bit of common sense it shouldn't be too hard to realize why that happens. But looking at this thread, common sense isn't what you retards have in abundance. Apparently you're not allowed to see anything good in anything without it becoming blind fanboy love on an icon of decline.

I prefer 'herpaderps' to 'aspies,' thank you very much.

 

[ksjav]

And you can do it all in Oblivion as well. From retarded difficulty that makes you deal barely any damage to enemies that can soak a shitton of it to using traps in dungeons as weapons. But Oblivion is shit because everyone made fun of it back in the day so I need to be Kool too and ride with the flow

Only that in NOTR fashion you can level up come back later and take care of the problem (like I just did with one particular dungeon which was too hard to tackle previously, so I assume that's how it works based on my hands on experience with the game), but in oblivion your enemies were always locked to your level? Or you forgot about that? Oh wait, you didn't play Oblivion you did "I need to be Kool too and ride with the flow". Nevermind, keep fighting the good fight!

 

[commie]

So what you say is that if one doesn't like something in an overhyped game that you are all hyped up about - he has never played it and his opinion doesn't matter

But if one jizzes all over it and makes up stuff that isn't there (like sea's "interactions with NPCs" with "liking you enough" while at the same time making fun of Oblivion:Roleplaying) - he is actually a critic to whom everyone must listen

Maybe sea is a bit carried away which is the other side of the coin, but you certainly do yourself no favors more often than not with your own brand of half-truths, total lies and bizarre fabrications, not to mention your unique ability to deliberately misunderstand a point someone else has made. A shame as regarding some games that you actually have played, your opinion can be quite worthy and even I respect your opinions regarding certain genres. Maybe your love of KOTOR and BG has instilled some sense of inadequacy and you feel the need to prove that you're worthy of Codex KKK's with constant snarling at everything but there really is no need. It's no shame to like Bioware games, let it go man and just come out...

 

[MetalCraze]

Yes Oblivion did one thing worse (even though it did a lot of other things better) - that makes it a total shit.

 

[hoverdog]

played a bit. I gave up really quick due to horribad, terribad, herp-derp shittiest UI i've ever witnessed. Won't be touching the game until a good ui mod comes up. the intro area itself is much better than in oblivion, but a bit too MAJESTIC - it's really atmospheric (especially in the beginning before the dragon arrives), but killing several legionnaires right in the beginning of the game is just stupid, UNIMMERSIVE! You can get their equipment too, which locks off some early games scavenging (I liked being thrown into the game with just a rusty dagger and a couple coins). It would be easy to make the player lose his robbed goods, for example he'd need to jump into an underground river and thus lose all his spoils.
the graphics, even though Skyrim is still using gamebryo, are much better than in oblivion - and the game works on older computers too.

i'm reserving my judgement for now, MODDERS GIVE ME UI


oh, and please stop quoting skyway. i'm not ignoring him for nothing you know

 

[ksjav]

even though it did a lot of other things better

Enlighten me.

 

[MetalCraze]

Maybe sea is a bit carried away which is the other side of the coin, but you certainly do yourself no favors more often than not with your own brand of half-truths, total lies and bizarre fabrications, not to mention your unique ability to deliberately misunderstand a point someone else has made.

Except I wrote nothing but truth about Skyrim and even gave details why.
Or stuff like "win a fist brawl with a fighter character (which is easily done with mage) and get her as a follower" is really "neat consequences" and "character liking you enough"?

Or "the game can be played without a quest compass, you can open your map to see marked locations!" which is exactly the same thing as the damn quest compass. The only difference is that you need to open the map to instantly know where to go. In Morrowind you actually had to look for those locations.

And then you see bullshit like "you need timing and positioning in combat" - I don't understand what he means. Unlike in TW2 when someone blocks he still takes damage. Meaning attacking > blocking in any case since blocking means you don't attack yourself but take damage regardless. So you twitch LMB to win.

A shame as regarding some games that you actually have played, your opinion can be quite worthy and even I respect your opinions regarding certain genres. Maybe your love of KOTOR and BG has instilled some sense of inadequacy and you feel the need to prove that you're worthy of Codex KKK's with constant snarling at everything but there really is no need. It's no shame to like Bioware games, let it go man and just come out...

When Codex was orgasmic about DA:O and I was bashing it I was getting a lot of flak too. Exactly like in this thread they were ready to tear me a new one. Except I also praised Risen which despite being consolish was still Gothic. But you see DA:O went on to become Codex GOTY 2009 and Risen went largely unnoticed. Except a year later exactly the same people started shitting on DA:O using the same arguments as I did. Oh and I also liked Divinity 2 that came out the same year as DA:O btw but also was ignored by the Codex.

My opinions are always unpopular because to get KKKs you need to go with the general flow and I go with whatever the fuck I feel. So who gets KKKs here?

Enlighten me.

Spellcraft, non-linear dungeons thanks to which they suck a little less than what's in Skyrim, much bigger and more open gameworld without mountain walls, more "skills", birthsigns adding + and - to characters and that's from the top of my head.