Current Events > Imagine if Skyrim had better writing and an attribute system

(+) Yeah! (+)

Literally my only gripes about the game tbh. It kinda limps by just on the strength of the lore alone but holy hell the dialogue and quest lines are so sparse and the freeform character building is just too forgiving. Such a marked jump from the rich plotlines and dialogue of Oblivion

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Imagine it it had better combat

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Try_Another___ posted...

Such a marked jump from the rich plotlines and dialogue of Oblivion

"they call me the rat lady because of all my pet rats"

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Only thing that made the game playable for me was going into OP werewolf mode and tearing everything up.

Writing was so bad.

I do have a couple of memorable moments from the game that I enjoyed though. Like a glitch that made it impossible to enter a town because I couldn't clear my bounty so I had to sneak everywhere and talk to NPCs when they were sleeping so they wouldn't run off and call the guards

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R1masher posted...

Imagine it it had better combat

The melee combat is kinda laughable. I guess I kind of expect that from a first person game though? I cant think of an FPS that has good melee

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averagejoel posted...

"they call me the rat lady because of all my pet rats"

lmao

you got me

but for real, oblivion quest updates are like I've heard that a famous painter named Rythe Lythandas has gone missing. Apparently, his wife Tivela has been frantically searching for him. Perhaps I should visit their home here in Cheydinhal to see if I can assist with the search.

and skyrim quest updates are like kill the dragon at shearpoint

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Skyrim quests are like "please retrieve my sapphire from zombies in a dungeon"

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Meh. It's ES. Skyrim does have better diegetic storytelling than the rest of the series, which I really liked. ES writing has never been particularly strong-- even Morrowind, which was probably the series' storytelling strong point, wasn't really that great when it came to the writing.

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Hexenherz posted...

Skyrim quests are like "please retrieve my sapphire from zombies in a dungeon"

Yeah then you get there and open the chest and suddenly your eardrums blow out to the sound of YET ANOTHER HAND TOUCHES THE BEACON

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After I hacked my way through a hundred draugr I turned the difficulty all the way up and then just had to hack at each draugr twice as much.

Ive never been more bored with a game. Played 20 hours and threw the disc away when I was packing to move to my new house.

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vigorm0rtis posted...

Meh. It's ES. Skyrim does have better diegetic storytelling than the rest of the series, which I really liked. ES writing has never been particularly strong-- even Morrowind, which was probably the series' storytelling strong point, wasn't really that great when it came to the writing.

like I get the writing may not be the best in ES, but in Skyrim they cant even be bothered to write anything more than like single sentences to describe each quest

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Try_Another___ posted...

The melee combat is kinda laughable. I guess I kind of expect that from a first person game though? I cant think of an FPS that has good melee

theres a lot of games that do it better, it doesnt feel grounded in this one, Ive heard it likened to swingy arm on a skateboard

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R1masher posted...

swingy arm on a skateboard

fuck, never going to unsee that now


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Try_Another___ posted...

like I get the writing may not be the best in ES, but in Skyrim they cant even be bothered to write anything more than like single sentences to describe each quest

... I'm not exactly sure what you're after. That sounds like every fantasy WRPG ever. JRPGs only differ because the protagonists are always confused and need a powerpoint presentation to understand what they have to do.

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vigorm0rtis posted...

... I'm not exactly sure what you're after. That sounds like every fantasy WRPG ever. JRPGs only differ because the protagonists are always confused and need a powerpoint presentation to understand what they have to do.

I mean I guess I expect a AAA blockbuster video game to seem like it was written by and for literate adults who can stand to actually read something for longer than a quick glance. Bethesda has literally done it correctly before, Oblivion and Morrowind both had dialogue and quest journal updates that were way more dense and detailed than in Skyrim

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Ah, I see. Yeah, I don't really go back to the journal. I thought the in-game books were written as well as ever, though. As to the dialogue, I disagree when it comes to Oblivion-- I think it was every bit as bad as Skyrim. Sure, the interaction minigame exists, but... I'm not sure whether that's a positive in Oblivion's case.

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Try_Another___ posted...

but for real, oblivion quest updates are like I've heard that a famous painter named Rythe Lythandas has gone missing. Apparently, his wife Tivela has been frantically searching for him. Perhaps I should visit their home here in Cheydinhal to see if I can assist with the search.

and skyrim quest updates are like kill the dragon at shearpoint

tbh I'm less concerned about the way the quests are described before undertaking them than I am about the quests themselves

though it's true that Skyrim's writing quality is extremely inconsistent. the Forsworn questline and the Thieves Guild questline stand out as particularly terrible

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vigorm0rtis posted...

Ah, I see. Yeah, I don't really go back to the journal. I thought the in-game books were written as well as ever, though. As to the dialogue, I disagree when it comes to Oblivion-- I think it was every bit as bad as Skyrim. Sure, the interaction minigame exists, but... I'm not sure whether that's a positive in Oblivion's case.

well the main thing with the journal is that when the writing is dense and detailed, you can come back to a half finished quest after a long time and remember what is going on. In Skyrim I find myself with quests that I got at some point that just say like investigate Alftand and I dont really remember the context and the game doesnt offer any. The books were written as well as ever, Ill give them that. TES has always had very good lore.

And as far as Oblivions dialogue goes, it is bad from the players perspective, as most dialogue options are single words, and the interaction minigame didnt make much sense, but the lines that other characters actually say to you were a lot more fleshed out and believable than the dialogue in skyrim.

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My biggest gripe is that forced followers don't play nice with stealth archer builds. I ended up starting the Companions questline relatively later than usual, and I was still terminally allergic to melee combat at the time, and I wasn't good enough at stealthing at the time to compensate for Farkas's clanking ass, and whenever Farkas got spotted by an enemy and I wasn't in combat he'd just be running to my location with draugr hacking at him and not fighting back because the AI wasn't smart enough to defend itself while I wasn't in combat, and I didn't have good enough gear to properly help him out. Only reason I cleared Dustman's Cairn on my stealth archer is that you can sneak attack all the draugr at the end without activating them by clipping into the sarcophagi with a melee sneak attack.

And then there was that one time I had to clip through a gate at the end of a dungeon because it wouldn't open after solving a puzzle, the method for which I only knew about because I watch ymfah videos...
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averagejoel posted...

though it's true that Skyrim's writing quality is extremely inconsistent. the Forsworn questline and the Thieves Guild questline stand out as particularly terrible

it is really inconsistent, and you really notice when you get into one of the quests that is written well (e.g. most of the Daedric quests).

another issue is that sometimes the narrative is fairly strong, but the questlines themselves are so condensed and everything plays out so quickly that it feels unnatural and awkward (main questline, dragonborn DLC, etc)

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On topic, I was most disappointed by not being able to create spells. I know Howard tried to justify it with some half-assed "making magic more mysterious" nonsense, but... come on, man. I loved being able to make my own ridiculous spells in previous games.

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vigorm0rtis posted...

On topic, I was most disappointed by not being able to create spells. I know Howard tried to justify it with some half-assed "making magic more mysterious" nonsense, but... come on, man. I loved being able to make my own ridiculous spells in previous games.

if Todd Howard spent half as much time on worldbuilding as he does on industry posturing I wouldnt have made this topic

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Try_Another___ posted...

if Todd Howard spent half as much time on worldbuilding as he does on industry posturing I wouldnt have made this topic

Eh... I'm not a fan of how things are going with Bethesda, but I kind of disagree. A lot of people who complain about lack of depth in worldbuilding in Skyrim didn't pay attention to the details that I liked most. You know, there's no quest attached to it, but if you fish around it looks like Rorikstead is probably filled with daedra worshippers. There's a lot of that sort of thing the game doesn't reward you tangibly for, but I like looking for it.

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vigorm0rtis posted...

Eh... I'm not a fan of how things are going with Bethesda, but I kind of disagree. A lot of people who complain about lack of depth in worldbuilding in Skyrim didn't pay attention to the details that I liked most. You know, there's no quest attached to it, but if you fish around it looks like Rorikstead is probably filled with daedra worshippers. There's a lot of that sort of thing the game doesn't reward you tangibly for, but I like looking for it.

See I agree that little things like that are great, and I do enjoy that sort of stuff, but its just easy to look at Skyrim and see so many missed opportunities. We know theres a civil war, for example, and we know the thalmor are crushing tamriel under their boot, and we know that there are separate holds in skyrim that are ideologically opposed to one another, we know that there are highborn families in the different holds, why didnt they explore these things more? Bethesda is good at worldbuilding in the sense that they can create a very detailed static world for you to inhabit, but when it comes to plotlines theyre mostly concerned with trying to center it on the player and make you a hero. I would love to have seen more fleshed out storylines involving any of the plot details I mentioned above, just generally would have loved a more reactive world that changes around you in more tangible ways

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Try_Another___ posted...

See I agree that little things like that are great, and I do enjoy that sort of stuff, but its just easy to look at Skyrim and see so many missed opportunities. We know theres a civil war, for example, and we know the thalmor are crushing tamriel under their boot, and we know that there are separate holds in skyrim that are ideologically opposed to one another, we know that there are highborn families in the different holds, why didnt they explore these things more? Bethesda is good at worldbuilding in the sense that they can create a very detailed static world for you to inhabit, but when it comes to plotlines theyre mostly concerned with trying to center it on the player and make you a hero. I would love to have seen more fleshed out storylines involving any of the plot details I mentioned above, just generally would have loved a more reactive world that changes around you in more tangible ways

skyrim was pretty well-rushed but it seems like they're learning from their mistakes with es6. ten years and still little news so it seems to me like they're taking all the time they need for the next one.

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TheHoldSteady posted...

skyrim was pretty well-rushed but it seems like they're learning from their mistakes with es6. ten years and still little news so it seems to me like they're taking all the time they need for the next one.

I hope youre right. I would love to actually see the full potential of the kind of time and resources that bethesda has available to them

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Yeah, that's fair. The civil war was painfully underbaked, particularly if you ever look into the cut content-- so much more was planned and just not finished. The Forsworn feel like an afterthought. NPC dialogue needed to change more if you're the Harbinger of the Companions or whatever.

Now that I'm thinking about stats, though, there needs to be a serious overhaul. If you didn't grind your non-combat skills you'd end up being under-leveled, particularly if you playing anything but a dedicated warrior-type. I'm not actually sure how that'd work. Level-scaling and stat advancement has always been problematic in ES.


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TheHoldSteady posted...

skyrim was pretty well-rushed but it seems like they're learning from their mistakes with es6. ten years and still little news so it seems to me like they're taking all the time they need for the next one.

I mean, I want to be optimistic, but contemporary Bethesda isn't even competent enough to get Creation Club releases out in the timely manner (to elaborate, they've been sitting on content that someone else created for them for over a year and still can't be arsed to put together an update to release it.) I can't bring myself to believe that ES 6's development hell is due to them really tightening down the screws to deliver a robust, well-developed and masterfully-written experience.

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Elder Scrolls 6 is going to be like "You want to be a member of the Thieves Guild? You're gonna have to prove your worth by stealing this rare gem" and then you steal the rare gem and they're like "This was the ULTIMATE GEM you're our god now and you control everything", for all the guilds.

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I wish they kept the terrible rag doll physics from Oblivion in Skyrim lol

It was cool wacking someone until they basically crumpled into themselves lol

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Bro, the Oblivion dialogue is nearly identical to Skyrim's. You get almost no choices whatsoever. It's guild stories are better though, I'll give you that. But not as far as choices, roleplaying.

If you want good quests and writing and choices, gotta go back to Morrowind.

Hexenherz posted...

Elder Scrolls 6 is going to be like "You want to be a member of the Thieves Guild? You're gonna have to prove your worth by stealing this rare gem" and then you steal the rare gem and they're like "This was the ULTIMATE GEM you're our god now and you control everything", for all the guilds.

man even in skyrim, I barely knew how to cast spells but was made the leader of the mages

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ThyCorndog posted...

man even in skyrim, I barely knew how to cast spells but was made the leader of the mages

And everyone and their dog had to comment on how awesome you were as ultimate mage god or ultimate thief god or ultimate assassin god

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I hate how badly magic scales... in fact, build viability in Skyrim leaves quite a bit to be desired in a game geared towards creating your own character.

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vigorm0rtis posted...

Level-scaling and stat advancement has always been problematic in ES.

100% agree. Its very watered down in Skyrim but Oblivions leveling system was just downright incoherent

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VerisimiIitude posted...

I hate how badly magic scales... in fact, build viability in Skyrim leaves quite a bit to be desired in a game geared towards creating your own character.

Magic is completely half baked in Skyrim. Like the fact that for each school of magic you are required to spend a perk point to reasonably cast master level spells and then theres only one master level spell for each school

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JimmyFraska posted...

Bro, the Oblivion dialogue is nearly identical to Skyrim's. You get almost no choices whatsoever. It's guild stories are better though, I'll give you that. But not as far as choices, roleplaying.

If you want good quests and writing and choices, gotta go back to Morrowind.

Player dialogue is bad in Oblivion but NPC dialogue is so much better than in Skyrim

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Try_Another___ posted...

Player dialogue is bad in Oblivion but NPC dialogue is so much better than in Skyrim

"Do the bones speak to you too?"

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fvPoqLkLkw

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Skyrim suffered because they learned the wrong lessons from Morrowind and Oblivion and butchered the game to meet a stupid ass release date.

And despite rereleasing the game however many times now, theyve put no effort into restoring lost content or even adding a lot of the Game Jam stuff.

Imagine how much more they could have milked the game if each new release had actually new content to go with it.

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Try_Another___ posted...

Player dialogue is bad in Oblivion but NPC dialogue is so much better than in Skyrim

Okay, that's actually a really good way of putting it. Fair.

CommonJoe posted...

And despite rereleasing the game however many times now, theyve put no effort into restoring lost content or even adding a lot of the Game Jam stuff.

Imagine how much more they could have milked the game if each new release had actually new content to go with it.

My brother and I work on mods for these games and we get so pissed at this. I would even bet there are individuals in Bethesda who would be happy to put that stuff in for fans. However, from Bethesda leadership's point of view:

Why make it better when fans are still buying it? We'll put those features in when they stop buying/save that stuff so they buy TES6.

It's the corporate mentality applied to art, and it's a shame that's how it works.

JimmyFraska posted...

It's the corporate mentality applied to art, and it's a shame that's how it works.

Forreal. Itd be one thing if there was just nothing once the expansions were done (like the waits after Morrowind and Oblivion) but the constant rereleases is what really makes it stupid.

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JimmyFraska posted...

My brother and I work on mods for these games and we get so pissed at this. I would even bet there are individuals in Bethesda who would be happy to put that stuff in for fans. However, from Bethesda leadership's point of view:

Why make it better when fans are still buying it? We'll put those features in when they stop buying/save that stuff so they buy TES6.

It's the corporate mentality applied to art, and it's a shame that's how it works.

this is pretty much the issue with the video game industry in general now. No one wants to take a risk on anything. Even Obsidian played it safe with the Outer Worlds.

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