The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Catch-All

Running Man wrote:
Higgledy wrote:

In Fallout 3 the genitals of several characters had rotted and fallen off.

Pfft Skyrim is just Fallout 3 with intact genitals.

They didn't rot off. They mutated and ran off, shouting accusations of strangling.

I regret using the word "irrational".

But I'm happy to know that I'm not only the one oddly attracted to snowy fantasy worlds. I climbed to the top of the Jerall Mountains, looked north, and thought, "Soon, all that will be mine".

Maybe they can license Uncharted 2's brilliant snow emulation technology?

Anything as long as the snow is better than Oblivion's "Why are these snowflakes following me?!" screen overlay effect.

In other news, oh God I'm so excited for this!

0kelvin wrote:

Anything as long as the snow is better than Oblivion's "Why are these snowflakes following me?!" screen overlay effect.

I thought that was quite clever how they did that to get 99% of the way to a good snow effect, but it was so distracting when you were moving.

I'd have to go back and look, but I remember kind of liking Oblivion's snow effects. Of course, you also didn't spend much time among them, so maybe they just didn't wear out their welcome.

Bring on more Elder Scrolls! I can't wait (well, despite the fact that I have to....)

I had no problem with the snow effects in Oblivion. I could see the forest for the trees.

I really don't want to be excited, I really don't, but then I go play Morrowind, or read some lore stuff, and I hope against hope.

I guess they weren't kidding with "all new gameplay and graphics."

ruhk wrote:

I guess they weren't kidding with "all new gameplay and graphics."

Nice, very nice. This neatly bears out my hypothesis that trailers, movie and game, generally follow the same formulas for their beats.

ruhk wrote:

I guess they weren't kidding with "all new gameplay and graphics."

Yeah, a lot of people have been saying it'll just be Oblivion with spaceships. But I'll give it a chance anyway.
[/deadpan]

LobsterMobster wrote:
Running Man wrote:
Higgledy wrote:

In Fallout 3 the genitals of several characters had rotted and fallen off.

Pfft Skyrim is just Fallout 3 with intact genitals.

They didn't rot off. They mutated and ran off, shouting accusations of strangling.

Correct. If I'm not mistaken that's where the Centaurs came from right? I'll leave it to ya'll to guess what they're spitting at you.

Hmm...we'll have to wait and see.

Daggerfall: YEEESSS!!!
Morrowind: YEEEESSSS!!!
Oblivion: OH GOD, MAKE IT STOP!
Fallout 3: meh

Honestly, they don't have to work hard to surpass my expectations at this point, because they're so low. Which makes me really sad, because for a while they were churning out some really amazing stuff. TESV will have to be really amazing to get back into my good graces. Which would be totally awesome, I just don't think it will be.

Any word on if axes will still be blunt weapons?

I don't understand people's hate towards Oblivion. I can see not liking the game, relative to say, Morrowind, but I'm always surprised by the comments I see that label Oblivion as downright repulsive. Is this just hyperbole, or do people really hate Oblivion?

I'm sure that some people actually do hate it. Most don't, but I do think that you are underestimating exactly how disappointed some people were by it.

My major beefs with the game are as follows:
The main plot was comparatively boring and linear, with few meaningful choices in it.
Fewer interesting gameplay elements, the biggest example for me was getting rid of Levitation. That was a skill that I really enjoyed a lot, and the fact that they scrapped it solely to make the towns prettier made me very sad. They also contracted the number of available skills quite a bit, which led to less character choices. The lockpicking minigame that replaced actual character skill was alright, the speechcraft wheel was atrocious.
I am not entirely sure about this, but didn't they get rid of enchanting items?
Last but certainly not least is the enemy scaling, which completely broke immersion for me several times. I'm sorry but once highway robbers have Ebony armor and guards can one-shot most demons I just don't even feel like making an effort anymore.

In short, I didn't hate it. It was fairly fun and I played it for a long time (at least 30 hours), though I never got around to beating it. It was, however, bitterly disappointing and took several steps backward from Morrowind, which leaves me more than a little skeptic about the 5th release.

Minarchist wrote:

Any word on if axes will still be blunt weapons? ;)

Yes, they will just fix the attack animation by making you swing it like a frying pan.

Edit: I loved Oblivion. It was the reason I found GWJ as well. /disclaimer

I said it before in another post, I LOVED Oblivion for about the first 30 levels. I also didn't even touch the main story. To be honest, I STILL have not finished the main story in Oblivion. It was just a wide open world that I enjoyed exploring it for hours on end. To me, that makes it a great game, despite all the flaws I see

Grubber788 wrote:

I don't understand people's hate towards Oblivion. I can see not liking the game, relative to say, Morrowind, but I'm always surprised by the comments I see that label Oblivion as downright repulsive. Is this just hyperbole, or do people really hate Oblivion?

I'm glad someone else said it because it f*cking floors me. As I said earlier, Oblivion won GOTY around here, it is generally better reviewed than Morrowind. I have tried to play Morrowind (it came with a graphics card I bought in 2003) and it was broken as hell and a brick wall as far as accessibility.

If not hyperbole, I get the feeling the phenomenon is similar to what I've seen in the Dragon Age 2 thread. People like something so much that any change in the successor is considered blasphemy, without consideration if it works as its own game.

[edit]

Yonder makes some very valid criticisms below, good job.

Grubber788 wrote:

I don't understand people's hate towards Oblivion. I can see not liking the game, relative to say, Morrowind, but I'm always surprised by the comments I see that label Oblivion as downright repulsive. Is this just hyperbole, or do people really hate Oblivion?

I believe that it has to do with context. If taken on its own, it may be a good game. There is enough in there for a lot of people to find something to like and amuse themselves with. The problem is that it does not stand on its own merits. It is a successor to a very important game. As such, it is judged in a very different context. Within the context of being a 'better' Morrowind it fails many people's expectations.

Minarchist wrote:

Reasons he hates Oblivion

Those are mostly good points, though in a few places I think you're expecting a bit much of a video game. Suspension of disbelief needs to be employed on occasion.

I would suggest you avoid Skyrim, though. Oblivion and consequently Fallout were better received critically and at retail, so those are going to be the basis for the games going forward.

Grubber788 wrote:

I don't understand people's hate towards Oblivion. I can see not liking the game, relative to say, Morrowind, but I'm always surprised by the comments I see that label Oblivion as downright repulsive. Is this just hyperbole, or do people really hate Oblivion?

I clearly can not speak for everyone, but yes, I thought it was downright repulsive. For example:

  • We went from really unique and highly-realized settings in the previous games to Generic Tolkein Fantasy Setting #32
  • Level scaling was atrociously bad and broken
  • Interaction with townspeople. Not just the zoooOOOM IN ON FACES! thing they had going, but the fact that you could be talking to a beggar who would have appropriately-downtrodden speech, then as soon as you exit out he'd make the "upper-class twit" comment that you hear from the same three voices in every other town
  • The fact that you couldn't freely flow in and out of towns. Completely changed the game for me.
  • Levitation? Where are you?
  • Perhaps most importantly, the main quest made no sense. In all previous TES games, the plot was specifically written to be a slow build that could take place over a period of years, so it made sense that you could dick around in the world for as long as you wanted before completing it. In Oblivion, there's this incredible sense of urgency of "OMG portals to Hell are opening everywherez!!1!1" and then....nothing? No invasion? They just open them and wait for you to come in and steal their stuff and kill their spider babes? It made no sense.
  • Big-name voice acting actually detracted, in my opinion.
  • The way stealing and home ownership worked. How could you steal something in one town, ride the fastest horse to another town, and have those shop owners know that it's stolen goods? Did I not see the telegraph cables or something?
  • The lore lacked any depth from the previous TES games. Even the books were ultimately disappointing. For a counter-example, read the links that were recently discussed over in the "Morrowind 2010" thread.

I could go on, but I think that's enough and I don't want to thread-jack too much.

EDIT: Oh, I forgot an important one, the overly-consolized menus. At least give an option for more Morrowind-style inventory on the PC port, instead of making me scroll down for ten minutes every time I want to sell a spoon.

Regarding enchantment and alchemy, they removed so many options and depth from it. On one hand I understand why they did it, to control what the player could do more. On the other, it just butchered the experimentation and what you could get up to with it, to make it almost worthless (especially when walking up to someone and shaving them repeatedly works so well). Yes the abilities could be game breaking from the 'desired' experience so you could complete the sprawling game in under 5 minutes, but you had to discover that knowledge, go get the materials and figure out the systems. You could make some overpowered constant effect armour, but you had to work to get it in so many ways (you need a big soul stone, a big soul from a powerful enemy, and a (I'm not kidding) ton of cash). In Oblivion they just took it all away.

Blind_Evil wrote:

...Those are mostly good points, though in a few places I think you're expecting a bit much of a video game. Suspension of disbelief needs to be employed on occasion.

I don't get this, is it really expecting too much for a game to be at least equal to the game that preceeded it?

I understand the relative aspect of people's frustration with Oblivion.

I never played Morrowind, so Oblivion was my first taste of a really "open" world experience. I loved the hell out of that game and I still play fairly often. In fact, Oblivion was probably my first +100 hour game. That said, even with everyone's astute criticisms of the game, I am still troubled by just how harshly the game is judged. It's a matter of taste, so I guess I'll just have to live with people placing Oblivion into the same category as truly abysmal games.

Having seen Fallout 3 though, I am pretty optimistic about Skyrim, because I guarantee you the developers know exactly what we are arguing about and will fix at least some of the problem present in Oblivion.

Based on Fallout 3 and its mechanics, I predict:
- Improved theft system
- Improved dialog and ambient chatter
- Better main quest
- A wider variety of weapons
- Some sort of perk system
- An enemy system akin to Fallout 3, in which enemies are leveled based on your first experience in any given area
- A re-vamped experience system
- Dismemberment (it looked silly in Fallout, but slashing away in Oblivion was sillier)
- Improved magic system
- Improved inventory system
- Better animations
- Better graphics

/hopes and dreams

As an Oblivion apologist, I think a lot of the criticism of Oblivion is justified. In an attempt to broaden the audience they took out a lot of things that made TES series special. I thought it was a really good game (after appropriate modding to remove level scaling, for instance) but it lacked the depth of previous games, certainly. But as an open world game it was, in my opinion, really good. I enjoyed the various landscapes and just tooling around Cyrodiil. It shares many of the same flaws as FO3 but also most of it's strengths as well.

But yeah, I can see peoples' points about it not being a good TES game.

Blind_Evil wrote:
Minarchist wrote:

Reasons he hates Oblivion

Those are mostly good points, though in a few places I think you're expecting a bit much of a video game. Suspension of disbelief needs to be employed on occasion.

Suspension of disbelief I can manage, but when you're talking huge-budget quintuple-A titles, I expect things to at least be thought through on a fifth-grade level.

I would suggest you avoid Skyrim, though. Oblivion and consequently Fallout were better received critically and at retail, so those are going to be the basis for the games going forward.

*sigh*...I know. Although I wonder how much of this was due to them being designed (and therefore readily available) on consoles, as Morrowind was quite well-received critically and was the GOTY for many people. The late console port was not so great, though. I think you'll pretty much always sell more units when you have full console + PC availability, rather than just PC. Not to mention a greatly expanded marketing budget, which you could afford due to the success of Morrowind.

I wonder how much of the lore-related stuff is due to them not filling the gaping hole created by the departure of Michael Kirkbride.

Scratched wrote:

I don't get this, is it really expecting too much for a game to be at least equal to the game that preceeded it?

That's the catch though, subjectively for some people, the overall gameplay experience of Oblivion exceeds that of Morrowind. For others, it doesn't. I think its a personal choice to say one game is 'less' than the other. Qualifying why specific changes don't do it personally is helpful, but it doesn't change the fact that some people feel like a nut, some don't.

I guess I'm a nut. I really enjoyed Oblivion. It was different from Morrowind for both technical and design decisions, and I was fine with that. I got a lot more enjoyment out of Oblivion, but I can see how others may prefer specific aspects of the earlier title.

I started playing Oblivion, for the first time, a couple of weeks ago and have put about 25 hours into it. I hadn't played Morrowind. Normally I find it somewhat difficult to play older gamers, but I quite like it.

While I do understand people's skepticism given issues that people had with Fallout 3 and Oblivion, it does make me sad that this thread is full of Negative Nancies and the Mass Effect 3 thread is all "SQUEE!!" It's not like the Mass Effect games were perfect either...they just didn't have a Morrowind preceeding them to turn them all into curmudgeons.

Plus, mods are there to ultimately fix at least 50% of what you personally don't like about Bethesda games. They might not be as polished at launch, but they ultimately turn into deep, satisfying experiences.

Dysplastic wrote:

While I do understand people's skepticism given issues that people had with Fallout 3 and Oblivion, it does make me sad that this thread is full of Negative Nancies and the Mass Effect 3 thread is all "SQUEE!!" It's not like the Mass Effect games were perfect either...they just didn't have a Morrowind preceeding them to turn them all into curmudgeons.

I think you have a pretty healthy mix of opinions in this thread. And some of us aren't all hyped up for Mass Effect 3, but that may be a battle not worth fighting.

Plus, mods are there to ultimately fix at least 50% of what you personally don't like about Bethesda games. They might not be as polished at launch, but they ultimately turn into deep, satisfying experiences.

I think this debate has raged before on GWJ, but if you have to get the community to fix your game, it's not a good game. I went back and Played Oblivion with a lot of those mods installed and there were still too many things about it that irked me. Conversely, although I run with a huge litany of mods on Morrowind (I posted a screenshot of my mod folder in the Morrowind 2010 thread), pretty much all of them are content addition mods, not gamefixes. The only exception may be the mod I have to greatly increase the number of faces and hairstyles you have available, and even that could be considered content addition depending on how you look at it.

Grubber788 wrote:

I don't understand people's hate towards Oblivion. I can see not liking the game, relative to say, Morrowind, but I'm always surprised by the comments I see that label Oblivion as downright repulsive. Is this just hyperbole, or do people really hate Oblivion?

It does remind me a lot of the reception Thief 3 receives, which is the main reason I don't bother posting on TTLG anymore. Sure T3 is consolized and a step backward in some respects from T1/T2, but is it really the slap in the face some people perpetually get in a huff about?

Minarchist's huffs are well reasoned, and being 100 hours with one faction questline left, I can't deny them, but they obviously haven't detracted from the game for me either. But then, I liked Thief 3 (and Fallout 3), so what do I know? Well, at least that I'm on the same page as Emil Pagliarulo.

But I share Grubber's FO3 optimism. Oblivion's criticisms were loudly voiced and began to be addressed in FO3. Skyrim should only be better still. Right?