Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

sea said:
For the record, I really like Skyrim. I just hate how it sets up so much potential and then completely squanders it. Instead of giving you interesting quests revolving around those social and political conflicts, instead it gives you fetch quests for magic artifacts and bear pelts and crap like that.
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Lolz. Have you ever seen Bethie fanboy/girl posts? That's all they want, man! They'd be fucking content to sit and play house all damn day. They don't want C&C. Look how up in arms people were with FO:NV!

Also: Seriously, guys. Pot and bourbon.
 
@Surf:
Markarth and Solitude will demonstrate what I'm saying best. If you've already been to those places, then I will take the time to be more verbose.

@Sea:
You seem to be further than me. Sad that you can't do some of the things I was hoping would come. Me and aenemic seem to be in the same boat - avoiding the faction picking as long as I can.
 
Walpknut said:
Herp
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TwinkieGorilla said:
Derp
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I like how you resort to call on people instead of actually replying to the post in a reasonable manner like Maka did.

Makagulfazel said:
@Surf:
Markarth and Solitude will demonstrate what I'm saying best. If you've already been to those places, then I will take the time to be more verbose.
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I've been to Markarth and did a couple of quests there - sadly by that time I was already fed up with the game and thousands of random fedex quests. That's a real pity because for the first couple of hours I really enjoyed the game. If I ever pick it up again I'll visit those places, but I wouldn't mind a more verbose explanation you suggested.

If you choose the empire-faction, do they atleast thoroughly apologize for you being almost executed before they send you right on the next quest which could potentially kill you?


@sea: Good post, as per usual.
 
Surf Solar said:
I get what you mean and I like freedom in games too (though I prefer tigher narration in games) - but I don't like "Freedom" if it is on the cost of actual interesting content in the game. Why should one explore something when everything is the same or badly written...
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Exactly. Having an unorganized game is fine if the content is interesting but when it's all killing boars and fed-ex quests the game is crap. It has nothing to do with how the game is organized and everything to do with the amount of bad content in the game. Sure, side quests are optional but if the content is bad then it shouldn't be included, that's why editing is so important.
 
RE: sea's post

That's the biggest issue with skyrim. It solved the problem of being shitty and generic. It looks great, the lore is great, the dungeons are great. it's almost perfect open world fpp arpg. Until you get to quests and story.

If only it had F:NV level writing, it would have been an instant classic. As is, it's a great 20-30 hour adventure.
 
Surf Solar said:
If I ever pick it up again I'll visit those places, but I wouldn't mind a more verbose explanation you suggested.
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[spoiler:4a32b54f73]I was like you, "Fuck the Imperials, they tired to execute me." Chose to go with the Nord fella to escaped from the dragon. The more I explored, though, the more the lines started to blur. The Nords do seem to be the good guys right from the beginning. You get to Whiterun and you're like, "Look at all these haughty-taught Battle-Born muthafuckas." How dare the Imperials forced the Nords to give up Talos worship. How can some of them be okay with that?
You get to Windhelm then you're like, "Wha?" The other races are treated like shit and you find out Ulfric used the Thu'um to kill the king. Isn't that how the Gods became angry in the first place, by off-handedly using those powers? Ok, whatevs, give him a pass.
Then you get to Solitude and they're having a public execution. The King's widow expresses her concern for the Dominion, saying that the axing of Talos worship was necessary to keep from having another feud with the Thalmor. She still asks that the King get a proper burial by including a offering to Talos among the offerings to the other gods.
In Markarth, you find out that Ulfric was claimed a hero by expelling the Forsworn, but he had also used his Thu'um then. The Forsworn, what are they pissed about? The Nords invading and taking over their land, then not allowing them to worship the old Gods. Lol, irony. Then, the prominent Nords in the area, the Silver-Bloods, are taking advantage of their fellow Nords by using the influence of the captured leader of the Forsworn.
At this point, the Imperials seem like a pretty "good" option. If the humans keep fighting each other, it'll be easy for the Thalmor to win a war against the people of Skyrim, if not the entire empire.[/spoiler:4a32b54f73]

So, that's from my perspective. I don't know if the Imperials ever apologize, why you're in the wagon in the first place, most of the lore concerning the Thalmor and the Great War. But I'll still say the moral ambiguity is well developed in this game.
 
I was also pro-Stormcloaks (well, more like anti people-who-wanna-chop-my-head-off, but still) but I have gradually been drifting out of them. The first thing you see in Windhelm is how racist they are (and almost all of them too! It's not like Dunmers have better places to go, their homeland was nuked by a friggin asteroid and a volcano torched the rest), and then you listen to Ulfric and his crony spill out drivel about being ''the true sons of Skyrim'' and all that, and they only become more unpleasant as the questline goes. But the final nail in the coffin was the [spoiler:ae16d7aa76] Thalmor document revealing that Ulfric is one of their agents, there to undermine the Empire. OK, Big Picture mode is on now, no way I am going to help a guy in league with these assholes.[/spoiler:ae16d7aa76]

Apart from the shaky attempts at morality detailled by Sea, I also quite like Skyrim. Only complaints are the horrible UI (can live with it, but still...) and the still-present and illogical level scaling (Bandit Chiefs being tougher to kill than Trolls, Cave Bears and Dragons? cmone on Beth these guys should just stop being threats at level 20)
 
I got Meeko and lost him, stupid dog keeps runnign away and attacking Bears on the way to Riversted, J'zargo likes to speak about J'zargo in the thrid Person but is the only companion with anything resembling a personality, him and Utherglugluh the Unbroken. I don't have that much problem with the quests sending me off to the other side of the map, I just wait until I have enough quests pointng me there to actualy start traversing the map to make a fetch quest, I mostly liek to explore the Snowier part of the map on my own will with no quests askign me to necesarily. I am planning on completing the main quest either helping the Empire or no one at all.
 
On top of that, the Imperial and Thalmor characters you meet are all either jerks or just generally unsympathetic (I mean really, who do they have? the General?), while the Nords are presented as simple, hardy folk who just long for a good drink and a wench at their side. To me it seemed like Bethesda tried to frame the Stormcloaks as freedom fighters, so much so that I have to wonder if they unintentionally made them significantly less likable than they meant to.
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I see it the other way, in a sense. Imperials are mostly reasonable and proud (the General, but also his Legate and the guy who you escape with, Hadvar or somesuch). Stromcloaks seem to mostly be racist loudmouths. The run-of-the-mill Nords are mostly friendly, butnot all of them are Stromcloaks. The Companions are a good example.

Also, I do not fnd the writing to be bad per se. It's not Obsidian/Black Isle level, of course, but some characters are likeable, and severl quests are well written and have twists and turns (I liked A Night to Remember the most myself, the Thieves Guild also has a lot of interesting quests). Dungeon Design also much improved, it seems every single one has a unique quirk. One memorable instance had virtually no enemies, and slightly creepy light balls emerging from nowhere and following you around, making for a tense ''when will it stops being so damn peaceful??'' atmosphere. It all ended in a cool boss fight with great rewards. It's really far above Oblivion's endless randomly generated crap.
 
So is Skyrim better than Oblivion?

I've been debating whether to buy it or not. I think I'm going to wait until a couple more patches come out or maybe just for the inevitable GOTY edition.
 
Courier said:
So is Skyrim better than Oblivion?

I've been debating whether to buy it or not. I think I'm going to wait until a couple more patches come out or maybe just for the inevitable GOTY edition.
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I think that question's been answered over and over in this thread. but yes, it's a lot better than Oblivion. it's the same basic gameplay, but it does pretty much everything better than Oblivion.

the game is a pretty buggy mess at the moment though, so if you're not aching to check it out, you might as well wait for it to be patched/modded.
 
Makagulfazel said:
Surf Solar said:
If I ever pick it up again I'll visit those places, but I wouldn't mind a more verbose explanation you suggested.
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[spoiler:72ae0e3507]I was like you, "Fuck the Imperials, they tired to execute me." Chose to go with the Nord fella to escaped from the dragon. The more I explored, though, the more the lines started to blur. The Nords do seem to be the good guys right from the beginning. You get to Whiterun and you're like, "Look at all these haughty-taught Battle-Born muthafuckas." How dare the Imperials forced the Nords to give up Talos worship. How can some of them be okay with that?
You get to Windhelm then you're like, "Wha?" The other races are treated like shit and you find out Ulfric used the Thu'um to kill the king. Isn't that how the Gods became angry in the first place, by off-handedly using those powers? Ok, whatevs, give him a pass.
Then you get to Solitude and they're having a public execution. The King's widow expresses her concern for the Dominion, saying that the axing of Talos worship was necessary to keep from having another feud with the Thalmor. She still asks that the King get a proper burial by including a offering to Talos among the offerings to the other gods.
In Markarth, you find out that Ulfric was claimed a hero by expelling the Forsworn, but he had also used his Thu'um then. The Forsworn, what are they pissed about? The Nords invading and taking over their land, then not allowing them to worship the old Gods. Lol, irony. Then, the prominent Nords in the area, the Silver-Bloods, are taking advantage of their fellow Nords by using the influence of the captured leader of the Forsworn.
At this point, the Imperials seem like a pretty "good" option. If the humans keep fighting each other, it'll be easy for the Thalmor to win a war against the people of Skyrim, if not the entire empire.[/spoiler:72ae0e3507]

So, that's from my perspective. I don't know if the Imperials ever apologize, why you're in the wagon in the first place, most of the lore concerning the Thalmor and the Great War. But I'll still say the moral ambiguity is well developed in this game.
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Thanks!

It doesn't really win me over but it helps knowing what you meant.
Though I have to say that I don't really buy that "Nords=Racist" schtick. I've seen 3 people with that attitude, (some woman infront of windhelms gate, some drunkard in the tavern and the Jarl) - others either didnt seem to care for the dunmer or even pity them. This is quite a stark contrast to seeing all of those Legion guys being pricks and assholes. (those random encounters on the worldmap where you can see them dragging more nords to the execution didn't help either).

As for if the game is better than Oblivion, I don't know. In some regards it is really better (Atmosphere, it's more "mature", music is better), but most of the parts are just the same as in Oblivion (dull, boring dialogues, lifeless towns, boring quests, dungeons even designed by hand feel all the same etc)...
 
So... if you find out so much about the nords later on... can you switch the sides then or are you locked into your initial choice forever?
 
TwinkieGorilla said:
Surf Solar said:
dull, boring dialogues, lifeless towns, boring quests, dungeons even designed by hand feel all the same etc
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Man. Life just sucks, duddn't it?
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Thank you for this wonderful contribution.

Lexx said:
So... if you find out so much about the nords later on... can you switch the sides then or are you locked into your initial choice forever?
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It seems you can't. :)

I just found this (spoilerheavy) post on the dex, this should make the Nords (or atleast Ulfric) appear more relative to the moral ambiguty we've had earlier:


At gameplay hour 38, I've decided to join the Stormcloak, because they seem to be the bro. But soon after I can't help but feel wtf is this shit, these guys are bloodthirsty arses even worse than real life Gauls. They are all fucking racists against anyone and anything.

And the fucking second quest was,

[spoiler:88e73074d5]Taking over Whiterun, which is where MY house is located, and I have FRIENDS there![/spoiler:88e73074d5]

And the worst happened just half an hour earlier since now, when I discovered via the main quest

[spoiler:88e73074d5]Fucking Ulfric is a fucking THALMOR ASSEST[/spoiler:88e73074d5]

Holy shit I can't help but feel myself almost faint over. It's not unlike in Witcher [spoiler:88e73074d5]joining the Flaming Roses only to find they are fucking owned by the big evil one[/spoiler:88e73074d5].

And the game doesn't allow me to resign. I now have three choices:
1. Live through with the C&C, and continue serving them.
2. Rewind back to 30 hrs later, before joining the Stormcloaks, and continue playing from there.
3. Rewind back to 67 hrs later, right at the whole beginning, and join the Legion guy while escape Helgen.
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Especially the second spoiler is pretty interesting. :D
 
Fuck me. I should have not opened that second spoiler. Oh schmell, I was thinking about going the other route for the bigger picture anyway.

[spoiler:71369643d8]Plus, the Nords hypocrisy/irony concerning the Forsworn helped seal the deal, although I killed their leader for being a pseudo-philosophical bandit.[/spoiler:71369643d8]

I had the same problem with the Witcher - I stopped playing. Completed it the second time around with the other faction(as opposed to neutral) so I could copy over my save to Witcher 2. That feature ended up being pretty underwhelming.. Oh schmell, got me to beat the first game with all the patches. If you hated the Witcher because of long load times and finicky combat, you should give it another whirl now that they patch the hell out of both games.
 
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