LogFAQs > #941123695

InfestedAdam posted...

I felt satisfied with FO: New Vegas after finishing most or all of the companion quests, the DLC quests, and most of the different endings of the main quest.

For FO, I'd argue that you've "beaten" it when the game literally ends. Like, you see an ending, and the game stops you from playing any more. That's "beaten".

Sure, you can go back, play multiple run-throughs (I certainly did), explore to greater or lesser degrees before initiating the endgame, and so on, but you've still "beaten" it the moment you play the ending. Whether or not you do all the companion quests/side quests/exploration really isn't a measure of whether or not you've beaten it, just how much of a completionist you are (it's the difference between "beating" an Assassin's Creed game and "100%ing" Assassin's Creed game).

The problem with Skyrim is that it doesn't really HAVE an "ending". The main quest just sort of peters out and leaves you in the world, everything still pretty much the same, and depending on how you play, the main quest may not even really FEEL like the main quest, just "chapter one" (and you could even argue whether or not Alduin really even IS the main quest, as compared to the civil war). So there's no one real definitive endpoint you can point to and say "this is where you beat the game".

I'd almost be willing to argue that beating the Ebony Warrior is "beating" the game, but even then because of how different playstyles affect leveling (and with DLC added in), you could still have a ton of content left untouched by the time he shows up and complains about no challenges being left and nothing left to do.



Zeus posted...

The campaign is really just the two main questlines. Everything else is more a completionist thing, although the guild quest chains are as close as you might get to a secondary campaign. (Overlooking that the DLC each has a separate campaign.)

Yeah, but because of how the game is designed, they don't really feel all that much more "significant" than just beating side missions. So it doesn't feel like "this is the main game" as much as it feels like "this is a succession of strung-together missions".

The civil war has more effect on the world as a whole than Alduin's plot does (Jarls change, the major cities will show "siege" damage afterwards that is never repaired), but for the most part, in both cases everyone in the entire world will react to you in exactly the same way, nothing else changes, nothing ends or is really closed off, and you can go right back to doing every sidequest or faction quest right from scratch (and other than being able to use "I'm the Dragonborn" to get into the College, none of those factions even remotely give a shit that you're basically one of the highest ranking Stormcloaks/Imperials in Skyrim, and just saved the entire world from an evil dragon).

So the Alduin and civil war quests don't feel like the "core" game, that you've "beaten" after finishing them. They wind up just feeling like part of the overall gameplay loop (a major part, but just a part nonetheless). In some cases, the faction questlines can feel just as significant or epic (if not more so) than the main quest and civil war do.

Which is why I implied it's hard to really draw a line under a definitive "ending". Some people might say, "Sure, Alduin and the civil war and you're done, everything else is extra", other people might say you have to do both of those plus all the faction quests, someone else might say you have to get every Achievement/Trophy (but not necessarily all in one run), some people might say you have to do EVERYTHING in one run, and some people might say you haven't "beaten" it until there's literally no quests left anywhere other than the infinitely respawning radiant quests (and some might even argue that you can't beat Skyrim, ever, because those infinitely respawning quests means the game never really ends).

By some definitions I've beaten Skyrim more than a dozen times. By some I've only beaten it three times. By some I've never beaten it once.
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