Skyrim is worse than Oblivion in every way

[Excidium]

Oh God.

for those that are seeing a frog in an ice cube.

 

[Falkner]

Those ARE some pretty impressive infiltration skills.

 

[malko_sundervere]

An immortal but seemingly inconsequential NPC made me uninstall. The game was practically goading me into killing him, but I couldn't. It was extremely frustrating and completely killed whatever sense of freedom the game gave me.

Same here, as I described earlier. It's fucking ridiculous.
None of the other content in the ~15 hours of gameplay I'd seen that far redeemed it for me after that point. I just dropped the piece of shit where it was and went and finished Lonesome Road.

 

[Gord]

An immortal but seemingly inconsequential NPC made me uninstall. The game was practically goading me into killing him, but I couldn't. It was extremely frustrating and completely killed whatever sense of freedom the game gave me.

Interestingly Skyrim seems to have a huge number of immortal/essential characters, although Bethesda has been bullshiting around how Skyrims RadiantStory will be able to transfer quests to other NPCs if one gets killed, and so on.
Seems they screwed up and couldn't get it working in time for release, so they just hammered essential flags on every second NPC.

Well, there's some hope that it's a bug in some cases and will be fixed in a patch.

If this is a reason to uninstall, on the other hand, well that's up to you...

 

[Admiral jimbob]

What the fuck is it with these Daedric quests? The House of Horrors one and the Namira one have both been completely forced upon me then railroaded me into eating baskets of puppies without once giving me the chance to say "no". Actually, that's not true. The House one gave me the chance to say no just so it could surprise me by forcing me to beat a defenceless old man to death with a club. Twice. Thank you, Bethesda.

 

[Gord]

The quests are so linear it fucking hurts.

For a super retarded moment see the Forsworn quest in Markath, at the end I enter the shrine and there are guards waiting for me with "STOP! YOU HAVE VIOLATED THE LAW" and if you choose "resist arrest" there is no way to further do anything with this. And they have a fucking immortal NPC with them.

Then if you go out and go into the mine, there's a door that simply cannot be opened (no interaction).

I have just played that part myself and encountered no unkillable NPC. You seem to either have been hit by a bug or were simply not able to win a probably rather hard fight.
I had to reload once, on my first try they hacked me up fast. The second time I first used Unrelenting Force, then a scroll of Firerain or Inferno or something like that, quickly followed by a dose of Sanguine's Rose. The rest was managed by a few applications of my axe.

However, it is pretty clear that you are supposed to surrender here. Even if you win, the guards outside will try to arrest you, too. It makes sense, though, as you managed to upset some very influential people and now basically the entire town is after you.

I guess if you are fast or strong enough you can leave Markath, but the town will stay hostile.

 

[Black Cat]

The majority of consumers were pretty satisfied with black and white photography back in the day. It wasn't until they were offered something better that their standards improved. Same can be said about most industries. Uneducated consumer units don't hold valid opinions on things.

The problem is that in this case the games KKKodex crave are the proverbial black and white photography they are happily moving away from, and we are nothing but those resisting progress. Most people don't want the games KKKodex wants not because they are uneducated but because they find them boring and time consuming as hell. We should not forget the industry did not really took off to become big money until it stoped cattering to those wanting such games.

In those places where a big enough market still exists for such games, like in Japan, they still come out in fairly great numbers.

 

[Gerrard]

I have just played that part myself and encountered no unkillable NPC. You seem to either have been hit by a bug or were simply not able to win a probably rather hard fight.

I could've killed all of the guards in Markath if I wanted (and I did, pissed off). Maybe guards don't scale to your level. There was this guy Legate whateverhisname who happens to be essential with them in the shrine.

But when I say "was", I mean "is", because something fucked up and now I can't enter the shrine anymore as the fucking guards are STILL THERE and still want to arrest me even though I finished this quest.

I also seem unable to buy the house there due to another bug (missed a dialogue with the Jarl and now it doesn't show up anymore).

TOOOOOOODDDD

 

[DraQ]

Soo what is the Kodex Kritikal Konsensus on Skyrim so far (tl;dr)?

And if it's positive, is it positive because it's actually decent enough, or is it positive because after oblivious, acrania and derp age 2 putting your ballsack into a meat grinder seems to be a blissful experience?

The spells were generic – because spellcrafting let you create your own spells. The obvious problem it had was that being able to craft any spell you can imagine means that no spell is unique. If there are no unique spells, then you have no compelling rewards to give wizards.

Sooo... Having an unlimited array of spells was generic, but having a set spell set isn't? I see.

Correct... because if there is a set spell list, and some of those are rare, that makes it unique within the game, and therefore it's fun to find. Unlike any spell in Oblivion, none of which are fun to find, because whatever you found was no different to what you could make yourself.

Except if you're making a large array of spells for your game, you will probably make some sort of editor first, laying down a groundwork for spellmaker, because spellmaker is just that - an editor with some extra constraints and nicer interface.

So either editor doesn't hurt the uniqueness because any spell you may want to implement is going to be breakable into more fundamental components, or no unique spells are possible with or without editor.

OTOH, spellmaker does amplify the feeling of playing an actual mage rather than mobile artillery emplacement - mages are thinkers, they research new spells. When you see a spell in game named Melf's Minute Meteors, or Alzur's Lightning, or Shalidor's Mirror they are named this way because someone named Melf, Alzur or Shalidor invented them like a true mage should. Except the PC is never a true mage, but some lousy bum only capable of using others' work - apart from games like TES, that is - save for Skyrim.

Additionally, since spellmaker has constraints, you can make unique premade spells that achieve what wouldn't be possible with custom ones, for example because of casting cost always exceeding maximum magicka player can have, and make those unique or rare. You can also implement shitload of effects and make some of them rare or unique. Additionally, you can add modifiers and formulae as additional spellcrafting components - formulae will be templates according to which spells can be made, while modifiers may decide whether, for example the spell will create a projectile, whether this projectile will home on traget, if there will be an AoE, what kind of AoE, etc.
Finally, you can add physical and ritual components, physical would have to be replenished, while ritual ones would have to be learned making yet another kinds of perfect candidates for rewards.

Spellmaker prevents nothing, lack of spellmaker prevents playing an actual wizard.

BTW: Can anyone please mention a few of those mythical (and MAJESTIC) unique spells that couldn't be made with a spellmaker? Not just in Skyrim, any cRPG.

This post illustrates nicely why there is not much sense in discussing this topic.

The most basic example for "what is an rpg" goes something like this:

"You travel along an old road in the woods. Suddenly you hear muffled sounds from the scrubs close to the road. What do you do?"

Voilà, you are already playing an (admittedly very basic) rpg.
Stats are a way to give some structure and tangible feedback, but they are not necessarily required to make it an rpg. A good enough DM can make a good rpg session without any stats.

Sure, but stats are required for a cRPG, because computers are dumb and require everything to be formalized, while scripting every particular state transition by hand is obviously insane and prohibitive in terms of space and work required.

I don't particularly care for stat increases, though.

 

[circ]

Soo what is the Kodex Kritikal Konsensus on Skyrim so far (tl;dr)?

And if it's positive, is it positive because it's actually decent enough, or is it positive because after oblivious, acrania and derp age 2 putting your ballsack into a meat grinder seems to be a blissful experience?

Think it's now gone from few haters, mysterious occasional posters appearing praising the shit out of it - to few stragglers now calling it retarded. Wait a few months and it's going to be retarded mostly, and then for TES VI - it wasn't so bad with mods, but TES VI is awesome!!

 

[SCO]

I've heard the main quest is retarded.

Not morrowind level?

 

[Clockwork Knight]

When you see a spell in game named Melf's Minute Meteors, or Alzur's Lightning, or Shalidor's Mirror they are named this way because someone named Melf, Alzur or Shalidor invented them like a true mage should. Except the PC is never a true mage, but some lousy bum only capable of using others' work - apart from games like TES, that is - save for Skyrim.

Well, I always thought it worked this way because wizards are usually withered old men that spent their lives mastering the secrets of magic, the art of telling logic to suck a dick...while the player characters are usually adventurers who just killed babby's first goblin. Melf, Alzur or Shalidor probably studied to be able to create these spells (and used other guys spells in the meantime), as it wouldn't make sense to name them after some guy if any reasonably skilled mage could cook equivalent spells up in a quick trip to the spellmaking bench.

Of course, none of this matters because making your own stuffies is fun.

 

[1eyedking]

Ugh. I somehow ended up installing Morrowind and later Daggerfall because Skyrim left me wanting a good, "open-world" RPG.

Terrible mistake. The entire TES series are just one big fuck-up, completely devoid of quality content. They're all goddamn LARP simulators, for fuck's sake GIVE ME SOMETHING, A MEMORABLE NPC A MEMORABLE LINE A MEMORABLE PLACE JUST ANYTHING GODDAMMIT.

Installed Gothic instead, and bitch that's how sandbox rolls, at least until I hit Chapter ZELDA MODE ON.

 

[Majestic47]

my only memorable scene in skyrim so far is watching a mammoth falling from the sky...dying upon landing.

Or...cutting up a father in front of his little son.

The kid goes 'I hate you. I hate you so much!'

 

[Data4]

Watching the kids go all "Ding-dong, the Witch is dead!" after killing the orphanage lady was pretty memorable, if not a bit disturbing. Yeah, she had it coming, but... damn.

EDIT: But the complaint is valid. Every other RPG out there that is generally considered good has their characters that really stand out. None of the TES games have that, at least not to a degree that people can say "Take so-and-so in [random TES game], now there's a character that's really well written."

 

[SCO]

m'aiq, disagrees.

He think he was perfectly fine, enlightening heathens about the order of the world.

Why such gems as:
"M'aiq is glad he has a compass. Makes it easy to find things. Much better than wandering around like a fool."

and

"I do not wish to fight on horseback. It is a good way to ruin a perfectly good horse... which is, to say, a perfectly good dinner."

Or

"Levitation is for fools. Why would we want to levitate? Once you are up high, there is nowhere to go but down."

Clearly explaining things as they are.


Yeah, fuck you bethesda.

 

[JoshTheDennis]

I find that Bethesda has (had, I should say) a way of writing really interesting works of fiction that cater to the more philosophically minded and also to the more emotional and visceral character and narrative aspects of fiction. However, when their jive-ass director Howard and their equally fucking lame PR-driven management get a hold of the creative power of their writers and actually translate the writing into a game, they absolutely trivialize all of the imaginative themes and characters and transform them into shitty and generic pseudo Tokien-esque stereotypes. I remember reading about what was to be the subject matter of Skyrim in Morrowind in books like Children of The Sky and Five Songs of King Wulfarth, and remember thinking about how intriguing the idea of having the breath as a central religious and metaphysical concept was. Then I get around to playing Skyrim on a friend's PC, only to find out that the Bethesda machine churned yet another actually creative idea into a few boring-as-shit old men (who, if I remember correctly, had to be gagged because they literally could not open their mouths without fucking things up, yet deliver dry as shit dialogue in a British accent with no problems) who teach you how to throw a few generic varieties of fireball or some other boring spell with no emotional or even gameplay impact whatsoever. They should drop the pretense and just make fantasy action games for dipshits.

 

[Gord]

Except the PC is never a true mage, but some lousy bum only capable of using others' work - apart from games like TES, that is - save for Skyrim.

Yes, unfortunately, but as someone else pointed out, that would probably mean spending years doing research and nothing else. But yes, I liked the spellmaker and am very sad that it is gone.
By the way - I think you should never have the possibility to become arch-mage in the TES games for much the same reason, maybe save of forcefully killing half of the guild.

As for the game, it's, imho, one of the better TES games, but it's a mixed bag.
Attributes are gone (save for meta-attributes health, stamina, mana) but there are perks, which probably can make your character more unique than with the half-assed implementation of attributes we had before.
Art direction is back.
Much better dungeons, but they are still linear.
Spell effects are spiced up a bit, but spell-maker is gone.
Shouts are better than expected, plus they are another reason to explore and give you a few additional magic effects.
Writing is still Bethesda, but better than Oblivion level.
Shit-ton of quests, but quality is varying - some are randomly generated, too.
And as always, mods may be needed for some of Bethesdas worse decisions, but I hope that at least a few things will be addressed in a patch.

Edit: Forgot about these:
Crafting offers some nice options, but repair is gone.
Enchanting works similar to Divinity 2: To learn an enchantment, you have to destroy the item at the altar.
Level scaling is similar to FO3, overall it's much less noticeable, but it's still there. Contrary to unmodded Oblivion you feel your character getting stronger and it's no Bandits in Glass Armor either. Also apparently regions get locked to the level they had when you first visited them (not entirely sure how it works).

As you can see by reading the topics, for every thing I or others found ok-ish to good, there is also someone bitching about how it is utter shit in reality - I guess you have to decide for yourself.

 

[Palantas]

Thread creator and everyone else complaining about this game and Oblivion: Wait...you played Oblivion, hated it, and then you actually went out and bought Skyrim? In that case, you and Skyrim deserve each other.

 

[Data4]

Thread creator and everyone else complaining about this game and Oblivion: Wait...you played Oblivion, hated it, and then you actually went out and bought Skyrim? In that case, you and Skyrim deserve each other.

Fucking torrents... how do they work?

 

[GMonkey]

No replies, so I'm gonna give this another go:

Hi there fuckers. Those who have tasted the latest in decline please comment on the following answers:

What are the consequences of doing quests in Skyrim? Do NPCs recognize you as, say, the leader of the Mage's Guild?

They recognize you in incidental dialogue. If you do a lot of good work for a community, individuals may randomly give you trivial gifts (gold, bits of crafting materials, etc.)

Is there a reputation/fame system? Do NPCs recognize you as, say, the leader of the Mage's Guild? Do NPCs change behavior if, for example, you assassinate their neighbors?

There's no explicit reputation system, but I believe individual towns have a simple one running under the hood (see earlier comment about gifts and incidental dialogue). The amount of incidental dialogue is huge, both in telling little stories between characters in the various towns, and in response to certain quests / achievements. The criminal system is by hold (Skyrim's term for a municipal region, the game has 9). If you kill or steal from people who have family, and are caught, they may send a thug or assassin after you, and of course the guards will demand you pay bounty or go to jail.

Do quest lines branch?

Some quests certainly do have multiple outcomes (i.e. you can make a choice), but I'm not far enough in any of the quest lines to say if there's true branching over multiple quests. Maybe someone with more experience can comment?

Do completed/failed quests enable or disable quests in other quest lines? Are there quest lines that are mutually exclusive?

Yes.

Are there any quests that don't involve fighting or killing?

Yes.

Finally, I assume the game doesn't have an economy or an ecology.

Correct. It does have what I would call an ambient ecology, in that there are non-hostile creatures you can watch / hunt / hang out with, and animals will attack each other. There's the spectacle of a basic animal order. But it's certainly not simulating predation patterns and the effects of predator success/failure on population.

This doesn't sound like Oblivion level retardation to me.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

The guilds are horrible. They feel less like guilds than even Oblivion's did; they're basically one building in one city which hands out a chain of themed quests then spontaneously decides you're the boss. You don't even get promoted in between.

 

[DraQ]

When you see a spell in game named Melf's Minute Meteors, or Alzur's Lightning, or Shalidor's Mirror they are named this way because someone named Melf, Alzur or Shalidor invented them like a true mage should. Except the PC is never a true mage, but some lousy bum only capable of using others' work - apart from games like TES, that is - save for Skyrim.

Well, I always thought it worked this way because wizards are usually withered old men that spent their lives mastering the secrets of magic, the art of telling logic to suck a dick...while the player characters are usually adventurers who just killed babby's first goblin. Melf, Alzur or Shalidor probably studied to be able to create these spells (and used other guys spells in the meantime), as it wouldn't make sense to name them after some guy if any reasonably skilled mage could cook equivalent spells up in a quick trip to the spellmaking bench.

Well, then the real problem is allowing the PC to go from utter n00b to an epic level wizard (or any epic level character) in < 1yr, because making epic shit is an inherent perk of being an epic dude and this part doesn't violate logic in any way.

Also, with good spellmaker making good spells requires playing according to archetypal mage strength which is intelligence.
Maybe they should've added a spellwright skill to determine efficiency penalty of custom made spells.

 

[Tel Velothi]

Most memorable scene in Skyrim:

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Yes, it is very emotionally-engaging. You can feel the giant's sorrow as it cries tears of blood that fall on the PC's face, for he knows he's being carried away not to be eaten, but to be killed for the dragon's sadistic pleasure. He is such a broken (giant) man that he doesn't even move anymore, and peacefully falls to his death.