The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Discussion

[ceddo]

This masterpiece of a game came out a few days ago and has blown my mind. I'm curious to know which of you have played it and what your thoughts on it are.

This is without a doubt the best open-ended RPG I have played to date. The level of detail in every city and environment is mind-blowing, and even after 20-odd hours of playtime, it feels like I've barely scratched the surface of this awe-inspiringly vast world.

Discuss!

[Stoat]

The screenshots look gorgeous. I don't jump on games until six months later and the price comes down. I are poor.

[Beeston]

I've logged 43 hours on Skyrim since release, and I feel like Skyrim (like all bethesda Games) lacks Character, although it is the closest yet. The Witcher topples Skyrim in that regard, as every place you go to has a unique aura to it, and there is no Comparison when it comes to Story. That's one of the pitfalls of creating an infinitely modular game like Skyrim; every small town is nigh indistinguishable from each other, and with the thousands of NPC's you can't write too much dialogue from each, so there's very little to no character development, which is a Shame. If I can get some voice actors together, I hope to change that.

Speaking of, since we're all artists here I'm surprised that Ceddo hasn't spoken of modding it yet. I have a few things in mind that I would like to concept, model and import into the Game world and create for myself, that's why I'm excited for it. I will eventually end up spending much more time in the editor than the game itself, like I did with Oblivion.

[megaten]

I've been having a lot of fun with this. I rarely get games when they release but I always end up playing with mods rather than the game. I do agree Bethesda games lack character but playing through Skyrim I think they've made a good few steps in the right direction.

[wiggum]

I'm about 20hrs in and I'm very impressed so far. I'm not much of an RPG fan, but this is pretty much everything I've ever wanted out of an open world RPG. It improves on the majority of the issues I had with Oblivion, like the cities, towns and dungeons actually being distinguishable from one another, for the most part.

The peoples and cultures all feel unique, but nothing really looks out of place. I was never a fan of the way the Kajit and Argonians looked in previous games, but they seem to fit in a whole hell of a lot better now.

I also think the gameplay is improved. Combat, magic, crafting, enchanting, conversations, leveling and pretty much everything else are the best I've seen in any RPG (I don't play many RPGs, so take that with a grain of salt).

Skyrim gets so much right that the flaws present are all the more noticeable. Combat, despite improvements, can still sometimes feel floaty and awkward. Every NPC feels the need to say annoying dialogue to you at every opportunity, even if you aren't looking at them. NPCs also have this thing where they won't turn to face you during conversation, that really annoys me...NPCs are a bunch of rude assholes. The menus are still a tad clunky, and the map doesn't show paths, which sucks when you're having trouble getting to the top of a mountain. There are also a lot of little glitches, but that's pretty much par for the course in any big open game like this (red dead redemption anyone?)

The flaws don't detract much from the overall experience, I'd say any long time fan of Bethseda's work will hardly notice most of them, but they must be mentioned in hopes that future games won't suffer from these same flaws.

I'm no reviewer, but based on what I've seen so far this game deserves no less than 9/10.

[ceddo]

I do love the idea of modding but since I'm on PS3 that isn't really an option for me. Plus the fact that I have never made a 3D character before. Skyrim-inspired sketches is as far as I'll go I guess!

I agree that there are many flaws, most of them common to Bethesda RPG's in general (characters look totally robotic & expressionless on PS3, I saw that on PC ultra setting they look almost perfect) but for me, those issues that almost ruined Fallout hardly matter at all in Skyrim because it's so damn beautiful.

[Psychotime]

I'm so lost as to why so many people seem to be so excited for this game, and this is coming from a person who loves Bethesda's Fallout games.

But the most important thing about Fallout that makes it so much fun to play is the SETTING. What other setting is anything like Fallout's 1950's inspired post apocalyptic future?

What is interesting about an apparently by the book DnD setting? Someone please tell me what makes it different enough from any other fantasy based RPG, from Dragon Warrior to Dragon Age to Demon's Souls to Ultima?

[BlightedArt]

I haven't played many games psycho mentioned other than Fallout... I'll agree that the setting for Fallout is what makes it, and was executed really well.


But Skyrim is rich with content and possibilities, and the visuals look really nice.

Feels like you get a lot more freedom in what you want to do, the world is incredibly rich (same size as Oblivion I think, but chocked full with more stuff).

Random dragon encounters force you to think on your feet, and take advantage of any nearby NPC's that'll help you in the fight, or make you choose to fight or flee if you're on your own.

You can do a whole range of skills and basically make any amalgamation of characteristics that you want... I'm a bard, assassin, thief that dabbles in destruction magic a little. Shouts make you feel really powerful when taking on larger groups. I think the fighting in Skyrim and Oblivion feels really good, the clashing and staggering really pushed it to another level for me, but it annoyed other people.



For me though, I love going back to Tamriel, since playing Morrowind then Oblivion and reading a bunch of the books and doing a lot of the missions, Tamriel starts to feel a lot more like a real place to me, and it's sort of like going back to a story series you enjoy, you want to know what happens to the place and the people in it.

[Psychotime]

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I haven't played many games psycho mentioned other than Fallout...

Neither have I. But I do wanna give one of the Dragon Warrior games a go just because of Toriyama, and Demon's Souls because it's supposed to be HARDCORE. But that just goes back to why I'm confused by Elder Scrolls. When you take away the Fallout's setting, you've got nothing left but a buggy and awkward engine. Part of Fallout's strength was how much fun it was despite the obvious glitches that always persisted the longer I'd play in one sitting.

I didn't mind getting stuck in walls, items not appearing when they should (or falling into the floor and becoming unobtainable), or the slow reloading. The game was such as blast I could ignore them where in another game it'd kill any enthusiasm I'd have, and that's quite an accomplishment in my eyes.

I was one of the unlucky saps who decided to get the PS3 version of Bayonetta when it came out. And the difficulty ensured there's be alot of reloading. Slow...slow reloading. But guess what? Bayonetta's one of the best action games since Devil May Cry 3, so I didn't care if it took time to wait after I died (which was alot) I finished that story mode before they put out that patch. (That just tries to go around the slow loading times by downloading the game into your hard drive, which is a bit annoying, and is something I've seen every Capcom game I've played do besides MvC3) The slow loads were worth it. (Story is stupid as hell but that's besides the point.)

Back to Elder Scrolls, I'm assuming the engine has had some improvements, though.

[s.ketch]

Fallout 3 and Oblivion had the same engine, gamebryo. It's a terrible engine, I hate it. Skyrim is built in modified version of gamebryo, my guess is the modified part went to graphics and animation along with updating it to use DirectX 11 features. Other than that, it's still the same ol' engine.

I just hope they switch to something else before Fallout 4.

[Brendan N]

Fallout 3 and Oblivion had the same engine, gamebryo. It's a terrible engine, I hate it. Skyrim is built in modified version of gamebryo, my guess is the modified part went to graphics and animation along with updating it to use DirectX 11 features. Other than that, it's still the same ol' engine.

I just hope they switch to something else before Fallout 4.

Anything other than idTech5 would be a surprise and a disappointment.
gamebryo is an awful engine, it's the single reason I could not finish Fallout 3. And I really tried.

[TinyBird]

Heck, apparently if you play right (or wrong, depending on how you think of it), you can turn into a werewolf or a vampire! That alone is almost close enough for me to try this game. The second one is that it allows 3rd person camera, meaning I won't be getting as violently ill! And then there's snow in the game and dragons, so for me it's really a must try, though I'll be getting it later.

[Brendan N]

I'm so lost as to why so many people seem to be so excited for this game, and this is coming from a person who loves Bethesda's Fallout games.

But the most important thing about Fallout that makes it so much fun to play is the SETTING. What other setting is anything like Fallout's 1950's inspired post apocalyptic future?

What is interesting about an apparently by the book DnD setting? Someone please tell me what makes it different enough from any other fantasy based RPG, from Dragon Warrior to Dragon Age to Demon's Souls to Ultima?

You can apply this logic to the Call of Duty/Battlefield/Medal of Honour series of games as well. There's nothing interesting about the Middle East or the newest rendition of the M4 Carbine. Or the EA sports franchise, whose entire annual development cycle seems to revolve around who to put on the cover. But these game sell far better than most other games.

It turns out people aren't interested in interesting - fuck knows what they are interested in. They just have really low standards and a really high propensity to herd-mentality.

(I mean just look at how OP's praise has nothing to do with actual gameplay. BTW I don't consider Fallout 3 to be a successful game either.)

I'm such a hipster nerd.

[Damien Levs]

The menus are still a tad clunky, and the map doesn't show paths, which sucks when you're having trouble getting to the top of a mountain.

That's what the Clairvoyance spell is for :P

I agree that Bethesda has it's flaws in their open ended RPG's...I am about 40 hours in so far...(need to calm down, should be studying!!!!!) I have had a few crashes and some bugs in certain quests, but wth....I've had these with all Elder Scrolls games...sort of makes it a fun quirk in some ways. Yes, I am a massive Elder Scrolls fan.

I think the improvements are very well presented...The leveling system alone is a lot more streamlined and fluid...I am also happy that you can travel to a place and find an enemy that is way above the level of you. Like those damn frost trolls when you're at level 3...nasty creatures. Morrowind had me hooked, Oblivion had me Hooked and Skyrim has certainly got me hooked : /

I have been looking forward to the next Elder Scrolls release ever since I cleared the entirety of Oblivion...and I am looking forward to spending a lot of time with this game...But in a more 'willpowerful' manner.

Something I would really like to see in this game via DLC (as I am on XBox) is some sort of mailing system that can happen between your characters...So my mage can craft enchanted armour for my other characters etc...nothing like having an over powered lvl one character.

Great game, many great times ahead :)

[Smashed_Pumpkin]

Personally I don't think Skyrim lives up to all the hype it generated. I'm not saying it's not a good game but it still has the usual frustrating aspects that so many of Bethesda's games have. Although it does feel a lot more like a living world than Oblivion did, it still doesn't live up to the feel of a lot of other games. Something that frustrates me Bethesda's games is that instead of admitting that they can't do hyper-realistic graphics and go for a more stylized art direction, they simply cavort right on into uncanny valley with copious amounts of normal mapping and high resolution textures. Something that also annoys me is that during scripted sequences in certain quests, when you as a player are stuck to the spot so as not to break the sequence of events unfolding before you, the animation still manages to look messed up with characters feet slipping all over the place and actions lining up how they should. Surely the nature of these scenes, being scripted and the same each time, have no excuse what so ever to look shoddily put together. An example can be seen at the very start of the game when you watch one of the Stormcloaks getting executed, the animation of the guard that pushes him down onto the chopping block is visually jarring with her feet sliding over the ground and just generally looking rather robotic. Maybe this is my ignorance of how these parts of games are done but surely if it is possible for the animators to make the individual actions seemingly look alright, why can't the entire scene be handled in a cohesive way. After all it's effectively a cut-sequence with the player "removed" from the equation.

Right! rant over..... As far as role playing games go it is pretty cool, anyone with an interest in fantasy gaming should definitely play it as I think it is the closest a game has got to truly letting you loose in a fantasy world. Sure the story isn't as solid as games like The Witcher or Dragon Age but in those games you just "follow" the story, Bethesda have got as close as any game to having the player "create" their own story.

[Psychotime]

They just have really low standards and a really high propensity to herd-mentality.

It has to be the latter. I hate to say this, but my brother will rant up and down about how the new Modern Warfare is a piece of crap because of the tiny story mode and lack of any innovation since Black Ops.

And yet he still bought it because it's what all his friends are playing. Last time I checked he's more of a Battlefield fan.

[xerenity]

I'm totally getting Skyrim on Friday.. watched some Let's Plays on Youtube of it, and damn.. lol


The character look customization alone could keep me busy for awhile. :D

And I'm in the SW:TOR beta for this week too. I don't think I'm gonna be getting a whole lot done for a few days. :P


And about CoD, I'm pretty much done with that series now... Treyarch is in charge of development (bleh :\), and they're also adding a subscription service for DLC content... I think at this point they've gone too far and I just don't have time to invest in their little cash cow...

[Brendan N]

It has to be the latter. I hate to say this, but my brother will rant up and down about how the new Modern Warfare is a piece of crap because of the tiny story mode and lack of any innovation since Black Ops.

And yet he still bought it because it's what all his friends are playing. Last time I checked he's more of a Battlefield fan.

Yeah, but the reason the Modern Warfare series got popular in the first place is - in part - because of low standards. Modern Warfare was a good enough game when it came out, but Modern Warfare 2 was awful as far as I was concerned. Other's somehow didn't realize this and continued to purchase MW3, because apparently MW2 was good enough to sell them MW3.

Also it's become a fad to hate on the CoD series (among others) without knowing why (my previous post would actually be guilty of this). I have some real technical issues with these games, and I don't think other people recognize many of these issues.

I felt that there were many flaws in Oblivion (and fuck you, agreeable Oblivion fans, because you don't know what those flaws are. If you did you wouldn't be a fan.) But people don't see what I consider to be big flaws in game design. Hence my accusation that they have low standards.

Again, I'm a real hipster nerd. I even play Starcraft wearing oven mittens because using your fingers is too mainstream.

[xerenity]

Also it's become a fad to hate on the CoD series (among others) without knowing why (my previous post would actually be guilty of this). I have some real technical issues with these games, and I don't think other people recognize many of these issues.



I know why I dislike CoD now... way back when, it started as an experience of warfare that was like WWII movies. It was thrilling, things would happen as if a story were unfolding around you. That was the awesome CoD..

Now it has gotten so far away from where it came from, that it's kind of laughable... the single player experience is cut down quite a bit and it's now considered an almost exclusively multiplayer experience..

The way that aiming is handled in the game makes it an "epeen", ego boosting game. I've played black ops on ps3 and headshots are easy, just aim for the upper torso. It somehow seems to register as a headshot every time.

Maybe that's just me being nitpicky, but I played counter strike 1.6 quite a bit and the difference is amazing. :P

Okay, I'll shut up now, I've derailed enough. :D

[BlightedArt]

It's all the nuances that really make the game for me. Which, to be honest, I haven't seen executed that well in other RPG's.

Random things, picking ingredients from the wild for alchemy, then seeing salmon swimming upstream as you do so, then fighting off a bandit trying to draw a road toll out of you. After that, I traveled home to my house in Whiterun, went to the market place for a few minutes to find some Salt Piles, to go home and cook some food... obviously for the health bonus you get from what you cook, which ended up saving my life against a 1 vs 1 with a dragon later.


But the little things, picking ingredients, seeing random happenings in the wild (coming across a few farmers being attacked by a troll and jumping in to help), cooking food (WILLINGLY wandering around a marketplace and not being bored), using the different tools available for smithing, working in a lumber mill, and other random events that you come across when travelling one place or another really sold Skyrim for me.

The fights and adventuring are still what I play for, and taking down a dragon makes you feel like a boss, but the nuances that you encounter along the way really push the experience that much further.

[JDSart]

I installed it, as i am in my last few days of semester i havent started playing but a couple hours.

Seems pretty solid, the scenarios are more interesting, enemies too, better animations, dialogs dont stop time , combat still floaty but is much better with the two hands ,etc Its what Oblivion whats supposed to be in order to be actually fun. And forgetting that bull enemy leveling system is a great plus, one of the first things i checked in the reviews.

I admit i´m not very good with rpgs or open world games, feels like im doing something wrong all the time, or missing out on stuff , i kinda get confused without paths. But definitely will be giving this one a good try.

[Stacybean]

I agree with what BlightedArt said and disagree with what Beeston said. The lack of contrived "character development" is what I love about these games. Wanna skip a boring generic fantasy story? Press O! Wanna wander off for a while and see what kicks your ass? Go ahead! So much room for imaaagination and personal RP (nerd.)

I feel like I miss things too Rene but that pushes up replay value for me.

Despite all that I gotta agree with some of what Brendan N said. I'm about 25 hours in and it only crashed my playstation 4 times. However my brother hasnt had issues and he made his Oblivion game completely unplayable. I had to stop using VATS in fallout 3 because of how much it froze my game, and I didn't play New Vegas but my brother was not able to finish that game because of crashes. He tried as well. How can a company release UNPLAYABLE games? (I know that New Vegas was a different developer_but still.) Oh well, I still have fun. There's not many other games I can stand playing these days

[xerenity]

Despite all that I gotta agree with some of what Brendan N said. I'm about 25 hours in and it only crashed my playstation 4 times. However my brother hasnt had issues and he made his Oblivion game completely unplayable. I had to stop using VATS in fallout 3 because of how much it froze my game, and I didn't play New Vegas but my brother was not able to finish that game because of crashes. He tried as well. How can a company release UNPLAYABLE games? (I know that New Vegas was a different developer_but still.) Oh well, I still have fun. There's not many other games I can stand playing these days

Well, bethesda has a seriously bad track record when it comes to releases, but generally I ignore it because the gameplay is almost always solid.

I've found, on the ps3 version of skyrim, if the game seems to hang on me, I just hit the ps button on the controller and it seems to unlock the game..haven't really had any problems but that so far.

And, for the record, the game is awesome... I like the fact that most of the time you're going around doing quests, then something interrupts you and you start going off on wild tangents all over the place... :D

[blazinwolf]

I love it! I have 55 hours logged on it. /sob

It reminds me so much of red dead redemption. So many things to do, big world, interactive. (and glitches) lol

It's funny because I hated oblivion with a passion. They really made the game great so far. It's not perfect by all means, but the cons are just not that significant for me. I think the menu could have been designed better. Perhaps maybe switching weapons could be done just by scrolling the mouse, instead of the favorites system I have right now. ...or did I miss something?

[BlightedArt]

Here's a screenshot of my character









http://jacehall.hdfillms.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/skyrim-meme-82.jpg

[Straight Edge Ryan]

Been spending too much time playing Skyrim. At work I made a helmet out of pizza boxes and made all the waitresses call me "Dovahkiin" for the rest of the night

http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/381723_10150410611989675_510014674_8129443_6149410 19_n.jpg

[JDSart]

Okay, got back to it.

I did the first dungeon, retrieved the claw thing then went to Whiterun and killed the first dragon, joined the companions and proved my honor retrieving the shard with Farkas.

Right now i feel like i have done more, and enjoyed myself much more at it than with the entire experience of Oblivion. I got to give it to Bethesda for learning from their mistakes, and improving.

And its truly gets rather addictive once you learn the ropes around it all. Though i´m keeping it in small dosis, :D hopefully

[MellowPsycho]

I can't play this until I'm done with Batman Arkham City. Oh well, this is one of those games that only get better with time due to mods.

[Stoat]

Okay. Whew. About 300 hours in, and I guess I'm ready to give it a rest for a while.

Wow -- loved this one. Funny, Oblivion bored me silly. I didn't even finish it. But even though Skyrim was essentially the same game, they'd plugged enough holes and added enough elements that I got totally sucked in. This is the first game that felt genuinely open-ended and grow-your-own. Not that I don't have quibbles with it, but this one was totally worth my coin.

My dude: Muffin, Destroyer of Worlds. Never underestimate the deadly combination of Sneak and Archery.

[Star Eater]

Busy with my second playthrough with my big beast of an orc. I love it, been a TES fan since Daggerfall and this is my favourite in the series.