Why Skyrim Sucks
Вставка
- Опубліковано 14 чер 2024
- It’s been ten years since Skyrim released, and a lot of people call it “Bethesda’s Last Good Game”. As a pretentious RPG nerd, I’m going to try and explain why I think that’s just a little messed up, as well as speculate on how The Elder Scrolls 6 can move forward from this past decade of questionable Bethesda titles.
TL;DR REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE TODD REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
00:00 - INTRODUCTION
03:15 - The Open World RPG
04:57 - The Ouroboros of Suck
07:37 - PART 1: Open World Game Design
08:02 - Four Core Design Pillars
10:31 - Good Open World RPGs
13:25 - Unravelling the Ouroboros
17:02 - PART 2: Skyrim Bad
18:20 - Art Direction
20:32 - Exploration
27:00 - Combat
32:20 - Writing
47:38 - PART 3: Moving Forward
50:07 - "Unrestricted Freedom"
52:07 - Writing
57:47 - Combat
1:06:57 - Exploration
1:10:42 - Part 4: The End
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#skyrim #elderscrolls #elderscrolls6 #starfield - Комедії
I know this isn’t the kind of content people sub to my channel for, but I have a lot of fun making these while GuP stuff is cooking in the background. Hope you enjoyed it regardless!
Honestly it's enjoyable though.
I hope you can keep this up whilst piecing together the next gup abridged. Your writing is fantastic.
You say that, but I literally just subbed after watching this, so...
Better balance your audio
Everytime an ad comes my ears get blasted because your voice is 50% quiter then the rest of the platform.
@@appleseed8282 Sorry about that! My audio has been wack for awhile now - for some reason everything sounds WAY louder in Premiere than it does when it's exported. Next one will be better for sure.
Your content's underrated, this analysis is too good, I genuinely thought you had 70K subs *at least*. Only problem I had was the low sound but I just increased the video's volume.
Skyrim is like a RPG Gateway drug. You get a taste for RPG mechanics, but once you try the real deal elsewhere, you can never go back or look at it from the same perspective.
Yeah, this is fair. I probably should have talked a little more about how Skyrim is okay when enjoying it on a really, *really* basic level (i.e., just a way to kill a few hours), but if you want an OUNCE more than that, you're not going to find it.
and now i can't play baldur's gate because all the numbers are scary.
@@manboy4720 Meh, I personally just cant stand the isometric sort of top down crpg game design. Just don't like that style of game.
Fair. I remember being a young, naive child playing skyrim and having an absolute blast. Now that I've matured I can really see that it isn't much more than a relatively hollow, "go through the motions" type of RPG where it hits all of the cliches of the genre without ever really getting the player invested in the story very much. The most egregious sin of all in my opinion is just how boring and uninteresting 99% of the enemy encampments you find are, whether it's a random location on the map or a story location it's either another virtually indistinguishable Nordic ruin #123968716 with Draugr, or it's another bandit camp that you walk through and clear in about 3 minutes flat. There is absolutely zero genuine challenge in any part of Skyrim at all, the only way to make the game more engaging is to either install mods or just intentionally hamstring your character by not using any of the busted skills or perks, of which there are many since this IS Skyrim we're talking about.
@Dawn Razor This feels like an extreme over correction where you're trying to be contrarian. Skyrim has a lot of problems. It hasn't aged well. It's writing is fairly weak. But there's quite a lot to enjoy about the game -- hence why so many people have and still do enjoy it.
I know the immature thing is to equate negativity, contrarianism, and cynicism with intelligence and insightfulness. But you sound really ignorant when you say folks shouldn't be able to find anything great in it.
Skyrim's award winning writing: Where you can parade around as an Officer of the Imperial Legion, join the Dark Brotherhood, kill the Emperor still as an Imperial Officer, not be recognised by the Penatus Oculatus or whatever it is despite single handedly ending Skyrim's civil war, and then after becoming the leader of the Dark Brotherhood and what should be one of the most famous Imperial Officers to ever live, go to Riften and have Maven Black Briar threaten you with the Dark brotherhood. YOUR Dark Brotherhood.
that always annoyed me.
anyone important: who are you?
me: my resume is currently: dragonborn, archsage/master of the college of winterhold, leader of the theives den, listener of the dark brotherhood, champion of the companions and Thane of basically everyfckingwhere.
anyone important: well dont cause me any trouble or i'll have your head.
me: .... *murders everyone in that city*
like for real, they should have had it so after becoming leader of a closely tied faction of a character, they freak out. without the theives guild or dark brotherhood black briar has zero power really, other than being super rich. she should seem composed but alot more careful with speaking with you after becoming leader of either of them, and outright scared of you if you have both. it is very dumb.
@@godsplayingfield Even generic bandits in Oblivion could respect your accomplishments (Being the Gray Fox/Divine Crusader/Champion of Cyrodiil only) and sometimes wouldn’t attack you and greet you with unique lines.
To be fair: Maven wouldnt know, that your the leader of the dark brotherhood.
Don't forget pledge your soul to multiple gods whilst having being the dragon born also...
Tbh it's because in the lore the person who actually is the protagonist in the other quests isn't the dragonborn, the only cannon things that the dragonborn did were probably the main quest and the dragonborn dlc
"Free unpaid labor shouldn't be required to unfuck a AAA game with millions of dollars behind it."
That's it. That's the perfect description of why Bethesda titles always wrankled my ass. They rely on post-launch beta teams of developers to fix things for them.
Still some of the best games ever made
@@umayle07 no, this game is trash without mods
@@1758 sure bud
@@umayle07 you can't just say "nuh-uh" to an hour of arguments if you don't want everone reading this to think that your existence is owed to a molotov cocktail in a planned parenthood branch
@@CErra310 nuh uh. Look I said it again. I guess your wrong terrorist.
And the ouroboros of suck continues with Starfield. They learned nothing.
its insane how the problems are duplicated 1:1 from both games.
And if the pattern holds, it will have 5-10 dlcs, out of which 9 will be trash/filler/sims/other bs nobody asked for and 1 will actually have decent story, leagues above vanilla, because they will outsource the writing to an actually semi-competent writer (think Far Harbor, Dragonborn, Shivering Isles, Point Lookout)
Todd did not learn and just kept lying
@@Rigel_6I hope one of them will be a knock-off m35 mako. It's not a great game, or a good game, for me starfield like reading lotr for the x-time when in hospital, a comfort game, Fallout and Skyrim rolled into one, the kind of game you play when Star Citizen is broken again ..... Do I have a terrible taste in games?
Skyrim: 😍
Skyrim but in space: 🤬
I'd be happy to forgive the flaws, except this game might be the most often released game in the modern era. PC, 3 generations of console, VR, and in a few years, inevitably mobile, countless special editions, DLC, and premium mods. The game has been beaten to a bloody pulp. If they want to keep cashing in on it, then it is naturally going to be a target for deep review and criticism by contemporary standards. Make a new damn game already.
Not to mention the VR port is a sorry excuse. Swords feel like maces. There's little to no enjoyment to be had there.
The only thing that skyrim VR had that no other game has IMO is peaceful strolls during the night, that was amazing... but not worth 60€
@@migueeeelet Mods for VR makes it the best VR out there doe.
Don't forget Skyrim for Alexa.
GTA O isn't too far behind.
@@Lost_Dawn rockstar has Bethesda beat they stopped supporting rdr2 their newest game to keep pumping out content for gta v
My ONLY critique is that you attribute Todd Howard to Bethesda's problem when the devil is most assuredly Pete Hines. A high ranking Zenimax man and also a writer for Bethesda. Frequently he ignores criticism of the games writing by saying that fans think too much and that it should be accessible to everyone, including women (Women cant enjoy deep writing or gameplay? Now THERE'S a problematic statement)
I directly attribute the fall of Bethesda's quality to Hines. And the devil's greatest trick was convincing the world it was Todd instead. Todd's facial expressions in presentations seem.. hesitant. Like he doesn't want to say what he's about to say.
I knew about some of the stuff going on at the top like K.I.S.S. (hence why I clarified that I only used Todd as shorthand for upper Zenimax as a whole), but I NEVER heard that line from Hines. Good Lord.
@@GunmetalStug Well it has since been deleted and likely scrubbed, but the comment was made in 2017. Several people like to claim screenshots of it are fake, likely playing to their defense, but I recall posting the tweet in my Discord server and us lighting it up.
And honestly, even if it were fake, there's so much other shit from Hines and Zenimax that the rest of the shit sundae is more than enough. The casual sexism just happens to be a cherry on top.
And also Emil.
33:20 you forget to take off the chef’s hat too? i replayed the game a few weeks ago and left it on without realizing for many hours because i was at a point where i never looked at my inventory because i had everything i wanted and never had to equip anything else and used the favorites menu to switch weapons & spells
Daddy Todd was in charge of the loml, Morrowind. I could never blame him
One slight thing you messed up: The lines in Skyrim weren't recorded Alphabetically, that was Oblivion. The Voice Acting is so stiff in Skyrim because they didn't hire too many VAs, so a number of actors were recycled for MANY characters. I imagine its so stiff due to fatigue more than anything.
Actually, they had a lot of VAs, it's just that many of them have like just one role, like Charles Martinet. Yes, THAT Charles Martinet. Not gonna say which role though
And actually they recorded TYPES of voices, not characters. For example, Lydia's dialogue is called "female_even_tone" and that's all.
It is as if Bastila's and Mission Vao's dialogues was called "female _jedi_tone" and "female _teenager_tone".l respectively. It's ridiculous
@pmdmakesmecri2 He voices the one good character in the game, Party Snax.
@@pmdmakesmecri2everyone knows he voices paarthurnax
"Now to be fair, I can only concretely establish that the alphabetic line readings were done for Oblivion, but you've played Skyrim. Did you notice the difference?"
Literally 5 seconds later, keyboard warrior.
Sad thing is that Skyrim is miles ahead of Starfield as an RPG, yet Morrowind is miles ahead of Skyrim. BGS regresses further with every new game. 😑
i've always been convinced that they peaked with morrowind...
@@MrGnuh what about new vegas
@@user-lk2xp9xu3q made by different people
@@MrGnuh oh yeah obisidian
when i read this comment i was like "tf Battlestate games has to do with this comment", only then to realise you were taking about Bethesda lol
In Neverwinter Nights the guards kind of ignored you, until you became the knight captain. Then they saluted you and their behaviour towards you changed.
In Skyrim my character became on officer in the imperial army and the guards told him no to lollygag.
Its little things like that, that take me out of the world.
and every 10'th guard took an arrow in the knee.....yep, i am that guy lolz
That’s the stupidest criticism. You can join the dark brotherhood and some guards will say “psst, I know who you are. Hail sithis” quietly. Cut the shit. People like just look for things to dislike about a game you had already decided you didn’t like.
@@zzodysseuszz That's the stupidest defence
@@policjantzyoutube4372 They chose a bad example, but they have a point. The dialogue *is* reactive - if you become thane of a hold, that then enters their greetings list, like "I hope you're finding the city in proper order, thane" and "I trust the day's found you well, thane". What the game *doesn't* do is remove certain generic greetings, which, agreed, can take you out of the moment. The Guard Dialogue Overhaul mod adjusts the rates as your fame grows, becoming more respectful as you progress, which is what OP is looking for, I think.
@@rioplats "They" lol. Yeah, that's a dude, buddy.
I've always been annoyed at Skyrims lack of actual role playing. They've got a bunch of really cool races that you can play as, but it makes no real difference in how the world itself treats you. Same thing with joining the different groups and factions, except for who you side with in the Civil War. I want stuff like cities not letting you in right away if you play as a Khajitt, or the Companions refusing to let you join if you are part of the thieves guild.
I know they had stuff like that in Daggerfall. It's too bad because I don't think that Bethesda is willing to put in that kind of work ever again. It seems like all they care about is how to simplify everything and how to charge money for user made mods.
Also in Morrowind! If you tried to join the mages guild and your magical skills weren't high enough, they simply said "no".
while In skyrim you can become the head of the mages guild and STILL not being able to cast any spells (besides dragonshout and the spells you started off with).
@@Xarfax321 you can beat it without even casting a single spell even the starting one.
@@h13n12 tbf you do need to use glitches for that
Well, the real test will be Starfield. If they deliver on the backgrounds and traits and how they interact with the RPG and dialogue systems, then I can see the next TES game getting the same treatment.
If not... Then they probably won't :/
@@huuphuup1526 no you actually don't need to use any glitch to do it
I personally love Skyrim, it's "comfort food" for me, so to speak - but I still find it baffling that the many bugs and exploits never got fixed in any of the many, *many* re-release versions.
Yeah and at the same time the Creation Club exists.
I for one am happy my follower could always be my pack mule and carry _everything_
It's not even the case that bugs weren't fixed in newer rereleases, they actually had to repatch many of the same bugs that they had already fixed from Legendary Edition in later Special Edition updates.
They relied so much on modders, they couldn't fix their own game for fear of breaking all the mods and angering the community.
@@quali-vd3ud Lets not pretend like all bethesda games arent riddled with bugs. And today, game breaking bugs are rare.
"To Todd, it was more important to have stuff rather than let the stuff be any good or fun to find. Quantity over quality."
And now we have Starfield. "Over a thousand planets to explore." Translation: Over a thousand barren wastelands with copy-paste assets and unengaging, unimportant, meaningless "points of interest."
Did they learn nothing from early No Man's Sky?
Starfield was so bad I forgot it Existed
@@americankid7782 Unfortunate you had to remember
Ahh another hour long video on why the game I keep playing sucks, and I'm going to watch all of it and proceed to spend the next 72 hours perfectly crafting an intricate and well balanced modded Skyrim experience only to stop playing an hour into my playthrough.
ah i knew others did that too
That is how you play it correctly.
@@da_roachdogjr Yessir!!!
I just play Skyrim unmodded.
Granted, I tried modded for hours and hours, but ended up wanting a vanilla playthrough that's not too much and not too barren, just right.
Taking a bath? Master Sword? Mario Level? Better faces? Sanic?
Fun for a bit, but eventually I came to the conclusion of experiencing Skyrim on its own.
spent a whole week of modding only to play for 15 mins and get bored
Something really disappointing about Skyrim is how little alive it feels.
You mentioned how little the civil fucking war that is waging affects every day people.
The game lets you free a terrorist leader from the dungeons of Markath and people in the city comment on it, but absolutely nothing changes.
Apart from one specific group all random groups of fornsworn still attack the player on sight, even after freeing their King from prison.
The people in Markath bitch and whine about the roads not being save for travel anymore, but apparently Markath has no shortages resulting from this.
Nothing happens. The Jarl doesn't care.
The world is static and dumb and boring.
In the game Gothic 1 during an event in the story the mine that was supplying the old camp with magical ore which they needed to trade for food and other goods with the outside world collapsed.
So the leader of the camp went crazy, murdered all of the mages in his camp and moved his warriors to raid the other mine to reestablish control over resources.
SHIT. HAPPENED. And it had consequences.
If you choose to help Madanach escape from the Markath Dungeon the Jarl should have his guards attack you on sight.
Fornsworn should not attack you after rescuing their King from the prison and there should be more quests that allow you to retake Markath for the Bretons.
The Jarl should take his forces and try to kill Madanach or at least put him back in prison.
There should be world events where you travel around the area around Markath and trade convoys are attacked and looted by fornsworn.
The city should be cut off from outside trade, unable to trade their silver for food they should be starving.
Honestly the biggest problem with that quest was that you didn't even have a choice. You just got a note passed by a stranger, stumbled into a shrine of Talos, did some inquiries, and before you could see it you were thrown into prison for life. Your only way out was to help that terrorist. You should have had a choice to not help him or betray him once you are out, which should be harder but cause less consequences in the long run.
Skyrim is a world where dragons are attacking and there is a civil war but it feels like nobody in the game really cares. You got the two rival clans in Whiterun who are feuding because of the civil war, but most NPCs don’t mention it at all. The dragons is even worse. You never see dragons attack any of the major settlements. 90% of the time they show up when I’m at the College of Winterhold. And outside of the main quest I can think of a single quest that involves dragons.
@@megamax898 "You never see dragons attack any of the major settlements" unless you install the open cities mod. Dragons not attacking inside major cities is an effect of how cities are implemented, and dragon fights in cities would suck as is because the dragon can easily leave the city while you can't.
@@megamax898 While it doesn't make sense that Dragons don't attack cities outside of some rare quest related instances as Pallando pointed out Dragon fights inside cities would suck even more than they do already.
Multiple times I've been wandering the wilderness of Skyrim, a Dragon showed up, I yawned, pulled out my 400 damage crossbow just for the stupid Dragon to fly away.
But yeah I totally agree that people don't react to frequent Dragon attacks lol.
Also, people in Skyrim barely have any livestock how do they sustain themselves?
Because well, livestock seems like the most sensible thing for a dragon to go for. Easier to hunt and more nutritious than game.
@@pallandoromestamo8861 I actually didn't mind that part tbh. You are a nosy stranger digging up stuff the silver blood family didn't want to be dug up. So they paid off some guards and had you thrown into jail.
That part I have the least issues with.
Skyrim fan boys/girls rarely admit that this was the first game in history to turn dragon fights into just another tedious chore.
the only redeeming quality of the dragon encounters is that they allow unlocking shouts which can be used in creative ways against humanoid enemies for comedic effect.
You are still hating on a video game which was released 12 years ago and watching videos about it. This shows you how relevant Skyrim still is to you, you won't admit it but you are one of those fanboys.
@@dovahkiinskywalker3607 believe it or not, but everyone wasnt born at the same time. some of us never even heard of this game until now... even having played other bethesda games at that
@@dovahkiinskywalker3607and you’re still glazing
@@dovahkiinskywalker3607 Your name invalidates all opinions on this topic. Definition of bias.
It's literally slop. This is just way too good a description of it. Like when people describe their "achievement" in this game, sounds like just ticking boxes, instead of a meaningful or challenging or game-altering thing. "Yeah I've been a guild master of this something something guild".
Sometimes I feel immersive sims like original Deus Ex or the modern Prey have more of the tangible role-playing feel, like there's a sense of control in how to approach things, in different ways, with branching paths on both narrative and gameplay aspects.
Skyrim is simply one of the games of all time. The writing was written, the visuals were designed, and the characters were speaking. Truly one of the games ever made
Yeah, at first, I didn't agree. But after playing it again, I also see that Skyrim was truly a game.
Truly one of the Elder Scrolls, yeah.
The real Skyrim was the friends we failed to make along the way. 😙
I loved it back then, but play it now and you realise how shitty it was.
@@Iamgaming-zk9vw definitely
The only reason the game is still relevant is the fandom and the mods they make, other than that, the game itself doesn't have much staying power
"Skyrim is the Imagine Dragons of videogames" is the most accurate description I've ever heard.
When you first play it you are blown away by the grandness and seeming complexity (ie listening Radioactive for the first time or playing Skyrim as a 14 year old), but as time goes on you slowly realize that is just a clunky, surface level one-trick-pony where everything is just the same bland experience repeated ad nauseam .
For me Bethesda games always was "experience of first impressions". The further you from first impression, the more you unimpressed.
@@celluloidprojectile Daggerfall and Morrowind are the only good RPGs they have made, at least in my personal opinion.
@Vladimir Novitski I think it lies in the fact that their songs sometimes sound too similar to each other
But I like them anyway
@Vladimir Novitski its like 3 really good ingredients in a good dish. It tastes great the first time. Then you come back and its the same ingredients but in a different order. Ad infinitum.
Thats their music. Kinda makes you mad that it was so good, and yet thats all they can do with it
@@chaoswraith I don't even like ID and that's the case for most musical outfits
Well seeing how Starfield turned out I don't have high hopes for ES VI. Starfield literally feels like skyrim with a Space skin.
Did you fail to pay attention to Fo4z Fo76 and Skyrim? They are not good
@@JoshuaKevinPerry Thats the thing they aren't good but you only really notice that after you've put in a significant amount of time on them hoping they get better or that at least one quest will change things up and it almost never happens. I won't be buying ES VI unless it's at a steep discount and even then I might hesitate.
@@JoshuaKevinPerryskyrim is good, a bad rpg maybe but an excellent opem world game to the point open world after 2012 was hyped and modeled on skyrim
@@JoshuaKevinPerry 76 is trash as is ESO. I expected them both to be, but gave them a shot for a bit. Was surprised that they were even worse than I thought they'd be. Came back later on to give 'em a second shot. 76 was mildly better and ESO was much worse. Fallout 4, Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind, Fallout 3, Obsidians New Vegas contribution. These are games I can play for eternity. Any game with a toolkit that easy to use will never get boring for me.
"Starfield literally feels like skyrim with a Space skin."
I mean... It is
Loved skyrim when it first came out. Then i discovered fallout 3. Loved fallout 3. Skyrim seemed shallow. Then i discovered Oblivion. I loved Oblivion. Skyrim and Fallout 3 seemed lesser. Then i found New Vegas and it was fantastic. Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim paled in comparison. After New Vegas i started playing games like Dragons Dogma, Mass Effect, and now Baldurs Gate 3. Everytime i go back to Skyrim it just feels more hallow and hallow.
*hollow
@@hythunza1811🤓☝️
go back and play the original fallouts and baldurs gates
Huh, as a madman that played WAAAAAAY too much dragons dogma on the switch and sold my soul to get a series X JUST to be able to play the second one it's weird seeing it mentioned here. Especially knowing how many people have been complaining about non problems in the second one. DD2 has issues like every game but just like DD1 I am not here for the main quest or because I like escorting npcs across the map for most side quests. I am here because the combat feels unique and fun so even if it's lacking in other areas the main thing I'm here for feels so good that the game is overall good to me. Can't wait to get a BBI sized dlc for DD2 to get jumped by MORE endgame versions of enemies I'm already familiar with, figure out what makes them different, and beat my head against the wall to beat a unique boss that I have no business fighting at this level with this gear just like I did with the BBI imprisoned Gore Cyclops and fucking Death. DD AND DD2: my beloved
I actually kinda like hording in Skyrim, you see the dragon born has the soul of a dragon and dragons like their hoards of wealth.
but actual ingame dragons don't do any hoarding. at best they protect a wall with a new shout, or a small chest, but usually they don't have even that
@@oldcat1790 but that is stuipid that they don't and inaccurate to any other deption to them so the dragon born is more dragon then the actual dragon
@@namethefifth7315 not to mention they don't even have 4 legs, just 2 and a pair of wings; making them wyverns, not dragons
I think a lot of people are like that thus being why the Legacy of the Dragonborn mod is so great. It makes for a super simple way to show off your vast hoarding and even get some side cash for showing it off. The little additions and small story helps too
@@bofa722 Wyverns are dragons.
You're not the only one. I hate level scaling. One of the things I like about RPGs, especially those with skill/attribute points is the feeling of getting stronger.
Nothing destroys my immersion more than returning to a starting area, after beating the final boss of a game to find that the simple boars either have become as strong as the final boss or have magically been replaced by dragons.
EXACTLY!! I shouldn’t have to stab a “boar” ten times to make it just die 😂😂
Level scaling isn't inherently awful, but if everything scaled, it's just a pointless experience.
@@LezbionestHere It is inherently awful. In a game where stats dictate effectiveness, not skill, means there is no challenge. The only challenge always end up being to try and not fall asleep while watching your character and the enemy slap each other. The only other "skill" is to cheese the enemy, by being in an inaccessible area. These games are about one stat sheet fighting another stat sheet. Making one of the sheets equal to the other doesn't make a challenge. It only serves to make the time you spent making you character stronger worthless. Meaning you might as well not even have bothered, because you are equally as effective at level 1 as max level.
@@LezbionestHerethe bane of hack n slash rpg design is giving the thing a big number.
Fight not difficult enough? Big hp pool. Fight not deadly enough? Big attack value. Fight doesn't last too long? Big hp pool.
It all defaults to big thing good little thing bad. Actual toddler level thinking. 👌
why did you assume you were the only one out here grinding? Everyone else has to stop leveling-up simply because you exist? Not everything is about immersing you in your own daydream of yourself which is why I don't care if you don't like it (because we're different people you idiot)
Skyrim, also known as "Baby's first RPG."
There was nothing more entertaining than finding a mod that no only turned off the main quest but also allowed me to be a traveling merchant in a cart making my loop around Skyrim and selling wares at far more economical prices than those skooma loving cats.
Do you remember the mod?
@@johnnystalker3567 it was two, though I know the alternate start mod was Skyrim Standard edition only. Skyrim Unbound was the name of the mod. The wagon was Travelers covered wagon
Sweet, I use the Gypsey Eyes Caravan mod to haul loot.
I always end up parking it outside a nordic ruin before clearing the location.
Good news Skyrim Unbound was ported over to SE.
If you don't talk to Jarl Balgruuf there will be no dragons after Helgen.
I've actually replayed Skyrim a couple of times since 11.11.11, and I find this video mostly right. Skyrim could've been better, and a large mod base is not an excuse for vanilla to suck.
everyone has replayed it many times
@@dodoice exactly, its so repayable. The amount of freedom is insane.
@saul korzenecki yes and here Bethesda riding the modding community literally to the point where there creation club is straight up mods. And even worse is that when they make their own thing like their pathetic excuse for survival looks worse than a dude modding in his spare time. Nope, Bethesda is lazy as hell
@saul korzenecki skyrim could have been a fun experience if the gameplay was anything that resembles decency. Its so bad
@@user-xy9lv6kk2j Yeah, but with mods lol. Replaying vanilla isn't really fun cause the way they did it made basically every playthrough the same.
While my favorite playthrough of Skyrim was a sword and board run (you have to go enchanting regardless to increase your melee damage but the bashing, time slow, and extra resistance from blocking actually made the gameplay have a kind of rhythm), I really miss the rng blocking of morrowind. It felt so good to see your character block an attack, knowing your skill was increasing and not just that you hit the button to block.
To be honest I played a LOT pf skyrim, and honestly? It's pretty cool on the surface, but when you try to go deeper you realize that there is no deeper parts, it's like the the Salt Factory video said, ultimately a shallow experience. And fuck i had to install mods so the map would be usefull
The “cure all addictions” seat is genuinely one of the most insulting things I’ve seen from Bethesda
Can you expand upon this? I'd genuinely like to hear more about this topic. Cause caits quest where she got cured to me was very anticlimactic.
@@afajefla Since you never got a reply, let me take a stab at it:
Basically, the reason Cait's quest upset me *initially* is because it is, as you said, anticlimactic. Just another linear Bethesda Quest with no twists, turns, or surprises. Cait tells you to go a place to find a thing. You go to the place and find the thing. It works exactly as described. That's just boring plotting, but the actual writing is much, much worse than that once you start thinking about it. Because addictions are real, serious problems. The Opioid Crisis was in full swing during the game's development (and still is), and it has claimed THOUSANDS of lives.
Although I've never struggled with addiction myself, I know many who have - and every single person who has overcome it has said it was one of the hardest, most difficult things they've ever done, and moreover, it NEVER ENDS. A small part of you just craves the thing forever, and for all your work and sacrifice, it never completely disappears. Ever. For Cait's quest, to push a button and instantly, *PERMANENTLY* solve her crippling addiction issues is fucking gross. It's antithetical to how real addiction works, it trivializes the suffering of addicts, and (indirectly, through incompetence) implies that the only path to overcoming an addiction is magical future technology.
I didn't want to get into it in the video (it's about Skyrim, after all), but Cait's quest is just awful, insulting, and thoughtless writing.
@@GunmetalStug i don't know that it's the job of video games to comment on topical societal issues. let's please keep in mind this is a game that gives you stat bonuses for using alcohol and skooma, it's not meant to be an accurate portrayal of contemporary societal problems. it's not a commentary on addiction, it couldn't really be in a world full of miracles, time breaks, and the persistent implication that every single character is in fact an immortal spirit being that's only temporarily trapped in the context of "mundis" and the materiel world.
@@entropicflux8849except games and art in general constantly address societal issues. It’s a cop out.
There is a literal drug trade, skooma addicts, alcoholics, child abuse, murder, political persecution, racism, etc. The idea that these concepts shouldn’t exist outside of being window dressing is insulting.
@@entropicflux8849It all comes back to shit writing, which is the crux of the issue.
"You're not being sold an experience but rather the expectation of one" this is exactly my conclusion about what made me so intrigued with the game in the beginning and why it lost its shine so quickly. Once the player sees through this facade, playing the game becomes pointless. Skyrim could've been a great game, but it can't base itself only on the promise of being deep, it must build its depth.
I mean...there isn't a facade though so playing the game doesn't become pointless. It was a great game.
I describe it and Oblivion as theme parks rather than believable worlds. Like, aw how cute, these NPCs are trying really hard to have their own personality! And I love the sets that they've built!
And then I go on to play something of way more substance.
tell that to the thousands of people still playing it a decade later …
@@jaydenc367 maybe if you're 12 and this is your first "RPG" game... Nobody who played Morrowind can unironically claim that Skyrim had any level of depth whatsoever. Game literally boiled down to walking around and killing shit. There were no alternative activities... A fucking Gothic gamez made by incompetent German developer had put more thought into game loops and alternative open world activities than modern Bethesda ever dreamt of conceiving over a decade later...
@@saboosh1013 millions of flies cannot be wrong, let's star eating shit! Just because a bunch of normies play Call of Duty it doesn't make it a good game, merely a well advertised one.
I hated it, and nobody can talk about it without speaking of the 1,000 mods they have with it, only proving that the base game sucks. Adding girly animations and realistic water doesn't magickly make the game fun. Oblivion while not perfect was better, because it had the good writing, quests and guilds, so there is motivation to do the objectives.
M&B Warband is the better mod platform game.
Lmaooo you're such a bitter person 😂😂 I bet you feel so intelectual hating on Skyrim, you're one of those annoying people who hate on Skyrim but praise Oblivion and Morrowind all the time just because Skyrim is more mainstream and popular 🤪
Bland opinion. It was such a good game. You’ll have “girly” contrarians I guess
@@umayle07 It can't be a bland opinion when practically everyone that plays it gives thanks to the mod community, it's practically what makes a Bethesda game. Now for Starfield however, there's no saving it, it's finished lol
@@Particle_Ghost it really is a bland opinion. It was a good game. It’s a meme now to say it was bad. A sheep opinion.
When it comes to the writing too, I always thought it was so stupid that most if not all of the things that seem like they would have the most consequences are deliberately left open so...I don't even know. "Good job you killed the emperor! But did you reeeeally kill the emperor? Congratulations! You killed Aulduin and prevented the apocalypse. What's that? He disappeared and you didn't absorb his soul? I don't know, did you reeeeeally kill Aulduin? Guess it is his destiny to devour the world so maybe it'll happen long after we're gone." 🤷♂️
Was the emperors death unclear? I don't remember that
The emperor’s death wasn’t open at all. In fact as bland as the writing was there wasn’t a lot of open ideas in Skyrim. Stuff like that was more apparent in morrowind
lore reasons
@@pbague something me and a friend of mine have thought up is that after he devours the entire world he starts devouring himself, since his hunger is insatiable and there's nothing else left. then comes absolute nothingness, and the world creation starts anew with primary forces coming to life from this nothingness. the story of anu and padomay, the aedra and daedra, etc.
@@misterninja7580 that's really well thought out thought, so essentially he does what the Dragonborn did in the game
You're right about level scaling. It's terrible. Why should my enemies get stronger because I leveled up? It's so weird. Part of the point of leveling up is to go back to areas that used to be challenging and destroy them. Can't do that with level scaling.
enemies should get stronger however not because you leveled but because you move into areas where they are stronger, like base game fnv (the dlc introduced level scaling) you could meet stronger enemies right at the start, you were gonna struggle but you could, or you could go the easier route and work your way up the strength of enemy encounters and when you go back? well, they're gonna be lower leveled
Yeah also I always felt too weak somehow and i don't want to run around fighting random enemies for hours just to be strong enough for the main quest. But it might actually be me being a bad gamer XD (I am really not good)
@@goranpersson7726acually i dont agree. They shouldnt be stronger outside the starting area, because there is no starting area and this is a major decision the devs made with the consequence that you can instandly go anywhere you want to go (and get anything you need for your build). It is not beeter nor worse to have a scailing world than to have a static and i think it fits well with the kind of game skyrim is
@@unnameduser5647 I gave an example where they used that exact thing i described, Fallout new vegas and it worked wonderfully, you could get to new vegas very fast and early but you'd have to deal with cazadors (something hard to do for a low level and poorly equipped character) or you could go through the area with deathclaws (more of the same) or follow the path and get introduced to everything and better equipment,levels etc. and there is a starting area for skyrim it's the area you start in, aka whiterun (although technically you're at the edge of falkreath)
Elden ring fixes this games issue: have the enemies/bosses be mostly non-specific to locations,have those locations have unique levels-of-difficulty, plus NG+ helps too...
One thing I really want these gamescto go back to is primary stats that cant be changed so easily. Im sick of perk trees where you get to just do anything and usually EVERYTHING by max level because perks have ni limitations. Disco elysium and BG3 (by extension dnd) did this well. It adds so much more to the identity of your little goober when they have a consolidwted block of primary stats to tell you at a glance who they are and what they might excel at. It also opens the door for more mechanically exciting companions.
The removal of attributes is appalling to me lol. That makes it so in general every player starts with 100 magic/hp/stamina, and the only diferentials come from race. instead of you actually having to specialize by choosing more agility, endurance or inteligence for example, then go building your character from there. Like i see the appeal for having a "you can try everything in the same character" game but i think it can be used better in other types of games
Skyrim just isn't an RPG. What's the point of getting into a role, if the rest of the game completely ignores it?
It's just a collection of linear disconnected short stories, which require nothing except "press the button".
i believe skyrim is truly the game ever. i mean, the writing was written, script was scripted and lines were said. skyrim is the of all time.
If Skyrim is the of all time then what is the second of all time ?
I'm wondering when people will stop using this lame comment format lol
@@Gandhi_Physique when you get some bitches
*so never nigga*
one of the games ever made
@@Gandhi_Physique this is totally one of the comment formats ever
"The imagine dragons of video games" is so hilariously correct at describing bethesda, and especially skyrim
What’s so bad about imagine dragons?
@@TheRealTact because for nerds and social outcasts, with no redeeming personality or no social life whastover, are under the delusion that hating popular things gives them a personality.
@@ben_dover33 yeah you’re probably right
@@TheRealTact because all their music feels soulless and empty, at first you see depth in them but as time goes on and you see more and more you realize how shallow it is. Not awful, not amazing, just shallow
Thats my take anyway, of course you can disagree
I did a roleplay playthrough as a scholar that drove himself mad finding all of the dragon priest masks because of a story he read about at the college. Was very disappointed that only a few of them are worth using. Maybe it was myself that fell into madness.
you definitely did.
You're a bit harsh but mostly right. It's a very watered-down rpg but it isn't a total loss. To me it's biggest problem isn't the game itself but that it paved the way for subsequent games to be even more watered down, it let bethesda think that watering the game down was what made it good so if they do it some more it will be even better. Skyrim is almost the right level of watered down, enough so anyone can play it and I can't blame bethesda for doing that.
The lore is good, I do like the books. Decent enemy variety, lots of locations and ultimately I like it because it is a lot of fun.
Just sad that starfield has hit an incredible low, its probably their worst game now.
Whenever i play Skyrim it feels like they are still developing the game and just recently finished designing the map. A lot of interesting elements in the map are just wasted for what feel like placeholder quests without any relation to the player it’s just there to give a response to you wondering what may have lead to that one house burning down or why in the world you voluntarily should enter generic mine or tomb no.2000. They serve no story telling purpose neither do they offer a reward for doing them. Yeah i really want -200 Gold maybe i can afford that dagger literally everybody carries in this game then
Gold's really only useful when you're playing as a mage with a mod like Apocalypse. You'll actually buy spell tomes from shops now because spells are so much harder to find compared to generic weapons dropped by virtually all enemies. It's even better if you start with Skyrim Unbound because it doesn't allow you to start with 3 destruction spells and 1 restoration anymore.
They only made those dungeons to make us find the shout words that people probably ain't going to bother to use, except a few. Boasting for having 200 dungeons and you only find the same type of enemy, all of over again anyway. The fact that Todd Howard said "We build the game from scratch", really not helping either. It seems like the devs want to impress us with the dragons, and that's it.
@@JWalters388 The dungeons are there because the game barely has any "noticeable" content. So many quests - not counting radiant quests - were just fetch quests or deliver item quest. This game had more of those quests than New Vegas, and in NV you play as a Courier.
U literally summed up ALL my problems with this game! Lmao played it for 2 weeks NON STOP when it first came out and never touched it since lol
Entering caves is what made me abandon skyrim, it was like a downspiral of hype, in the beggining I was really hyped but going through a cave every effin quest made it really dull to continue playing skyrim, and then when I tell people why I don't like skyrim it usually goes like "skyrim is really cool in the beggining but going through caves everytime killed it for me" "yeah bro but you know skyrim is an old game you gotta get used to that" "yeah but I'm talking about map des-" "Bro I know the game might not have next generation graphics but that doesn't mean the game is trash, you're clearly exaggerating"
The thing that made me swear the game off for good was The Forsworn Conspiracy questline which can be rendered uncompletable if you don't follow the plotted line every step of the way. Anyone who's played the game will know that in order to advance and complete the questline, at a very specific point you have to let yourself get arrested by a group of guards and be sent to prison; if you fight back, the quest will become static. There's no alternate way into the prison and the game will provide you with no hints or clues to even let you know that your unwillingness caused the quest to stall -- you HAVE to get arrested! I've always known Bethesda to be a laughably incompetent game developer, but it takes a special kind of incompetence to design a game where quests can become uncompletable -- not failable but blatly impossible to progress and finish -- if you deviate ever-so-slightly off the beaten path. Again, they couldn't even be bothered to implement fail states in case you actually do something to render quests FUBAR, which is game design 101 for most developers.
For comparison: Fallout New Vegas came out 1 year before Skyrim and in that game you can virtually kill every faction leader and critical NPC in the game and STILL be able to complete the story via the Yes Man route, which was implemented on the assumption that maybe you just don't feel like supporting any faction. In Skyrim you HAVE to pick a side in the civil war, even though you have no reason to support anyone, and often times the game is very picky about which non-critical NPC is killable, as though Bethesda feared you'd lock yourself out of content if you killed a quest-giver -- despite the fact that THAT is exactly the point: you killed a quest-giver and now you can't do the quest anymore. Bloody Bethesda...
Lmao until this video and the comments i never fully understood how bad gamedesign and writing of Skyrim is! The quality of the game is so trashy as if it's made by a small group of inexpirienced developers.
@@dyadyabafomyot1668 And the issue is that Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion are much better than Skyrim. It's either the people who worked on those games didn't work on Skyrim (very likely) or something happened at Bethesda.
The worst part is that escaping the Markarth guards was probably the most fun I've had in the game. I used the design of Markarth's streets to outmaneuver the guards and the moment I got out of the gate, I realised that I couldn't pull any of the tricks I just used because I had to cross an open field and would be filled with arrows. I stole a horse so I could move faster than they could adjust their aim and turned it loose the moment I made it into Falkreath, where the law of the Reach couldn't touch me.
Too bad I had to go back into Markarth after the guard hostility reset and let myself get captured to finish the quest.
Fallout New Vegas did it *right* where you had so many ways of stumbling into locations via different quest lines that intersect so you can say…
*spoilers
Kill the Brotherhood of Steel before meeting Veronica which renders “I Could Make You Care” unavailable but can still discover Vault 22 thanks to other quests requiring you to go there.
Skyrim tries to do something similar but they put areas required for quests behind a locked door you can’t access until you start a quest related to that area which hurts exploration.
Morrowind does this better. You kill an essential NPC to the game’s story and you lock yourself out of being able to complete it. Thing is, you are allowed to do that of your own free will if you want to. If you want to kill every single NPC in the game and leave morrowind doomed, you can do that, and you can still continue to play the game despite this. Essential NPCs aren’t just invincible, you can kill them, and you’re punished accordingly for doing so because your actions have consequences. You’re not expected to see everything the game has to offer in a single playthrough, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that approach to gameplay and immersion
Besides stealth archer, there is also the conjuration 100 build, where you just loot bodies while 2 dremora + follower kill everything for you
i remember the thing that turned me off bethesda forever was in the fallout 4 quest about the big boat full of robots. in that quest there are scavengers on one side, and robots who are in the middle of the city and open fire on anyone who comes near.
if you side with the robots you do a bunch of fetch quests and then they fly two blocks away into another building. if you side with the flesh and blood humans and wipe out the malfunctioning battle droids who murder everyone who comes near(except you because veterans benefits) the scavengers turn on you because apparently they're assholes.
it felt like a slap in the face. the devs were angry with me for ignoring their funky silly baby so they tried to murder me via scavengers with no personality. that quest could have been perfectly decent with the scavengers having their own point of view. maybe timmy scav jr walked down the wrong road and the robots killed him and that's why one of the scavengers is trying to destroy the robots. maybe there's an important medical storehouse under the boat that's still full of valuable supplies. maybe we could find a way to get in their via alternate underground routes or something.
bethesda's answer to these considerations: fuck you. pipe-gun.
May we also address the special items that "vary" upon character level when found? Why is that? You have to be the highest level possible, so the magic item you found is at it's BEST option. Why can't the magic items just be great, or as they are, without adjusting to your level? I gotta make sure I level to 90 before I pick something up, or it will be at it's lowest variant...
oblivion did it even worse doe.
It prevents you from being op in the beginning, I understand that. But being magical and all they could just let it level up with your character, it would make sense. There are mods to do that, like with everything that sucks in skyrim. Never played the game unmodded.
@@achdetoni5008 If someone's able to brave a high level dungeon and find a great weapon they deserve it. If loot is the same regardless of difficulty there's little reason to do the harder ones. If loot and enemies are the same everywhere because they scale with you there's little reason to do anything at all. Getting ahead doesn't mean shit, being behind doesn't mean shit, where you are doesn't mean shit, it's just a marathon of meh
@@WlatPziupp Nothing what you said is in any way related to what I wrote. Congratulations, you played yourself.
@@achdetoni5008 "It prevents you from being op in the beginning"
I saw someone call this game a gateway drug to real RPGs and it was hilarious. Granted I like skyrim still but that's mainly because of the insane mods guys with a mind for real meaty rpg aspects like enaision or however you spell that. After ordinator on pc, trying to play in console feels like I pulled the meat off the bare bones and I'm just trying to survive on the marrow. One thing I'll combat you on, we definitely remember a lot of these characters lol. Not always for a good reason but I remember a lot of them
Yeah unmodded skyrim feels like a bad game in comparison
Skyrim was what I thought a "good" RPG was when I was literally in middle school without the slightest concept of anything that actually made a game "good." Skyrim is literally a paint by numbers RPG and it's undeserved commercial success can very likely be blamed as to why Bethesda RPGs continue to be "wide as an ocean, shallow as a puddle."
I despise Skyrim. Hated it when it came out to ABSURD acclaim and hype and hated it over the next few years as I kept returning to it to see what I was missing. I later ended up getting The Witcher 3 which, while still flawed, was such a focused, interesting game that it showed me that I didn't actually hate open-world games. The starting area alone in Witcher 3 was more interesting to me than the first 20 or so hours of Skyrim. I actually wanted to do quests to see the characters and story unfold instead of killing my 24th Draugr Overlord for his sword that would sell for 200 gold in a game where money didn't even matter. I don't think I did a single quest in Skyrim where I even remotely cared about the characters or the "choices" I made because the game doesn't actually care about its own stories or characters.
I wholeheartedly agree with everything you've said in this video. Skyrim is a game that constantly entices you with the promise of a good game that just never materializes and by the time you're clearing the 65th bandit camp you ask yourself why you're even playing this. The only other Elder Scroll game I played was Oblivion (briefly) and frankly that one sucked as well so I have no excitement or interest for Elder Scrolls VI because the formula's never going to be significantly changed after the truckloads of cash Skyrim made.
I will never understand why fighting million hp bandits is fun
1:07:36 I always use Yakuza as a example of a small map not being a bad thing if you can make the map feel real and lived in.
The best exploration game I've ever played was Darksouls. The feeling I got pushing into new areas, discovering new locations and finding the paths between locations was extremely rewarding due to how dangerous it felt to explore. Because I'm not great at the combat, getting to a new area was a trial and the idea of being sent back to the last bonefire was real, so every time I discovered someplace new, it meant something to me. Personally exploration is not about volume of content or non-linearity. It's a well executed risk/reward system.
Not everyone is a masochist like you , exploration isn’t about that
@@CesarJoel94 Agreed, but I see ops point. Exploration must be rewarding in some way, if you explore Skyrim's dungeons thoroughly, your reward is getting overencumbered with generic stuff, rarely you come across something unique, be it an enemy, item, puzzle, whatever, and you never come across something that changes the way you play the game, so why bother.
If you like dark souls exploration, especially ds1, try hollow knight as I found it scratched the same itch
For me it was RDR2
@@CesarJoel94 Sometimes exploration is about that, that's what makes it exciting. That's why exploring in games like Subnautica is engaging, fun and special.
When a big german Let's player first started his Skyrtim LP in (I think) 2020, he had a mod installed that hid the compass. The whole commentsection was angry, but for me that somehow changed my view of the game, it made it again about what YOU want to do next and not what the story wants. So I booted up Skyrim with this mod cranked the difficulty to Legendary and started playing. My Character grew to be a Paladin as anything else would be too squishy, it was a great couple of months doing that playthrough. I really hope TES 6 will be more like this.
I have 900 hours in Skyrim across various version, which was the first Action RPG I ever played, and you nailed it. I used to be super hooked on Skyrim, but after playing better games in the genre like The Witcher 3, Fallout New Vegas, and Elden Ring (especially Elden Ring), it made me realize how Bethesda's game design since Fallout 3 is all spectacle, lacking depth and polish. Skyrim is just my favorite game that sucks.
I will also say, Skyrim VR with mods is a unique and beautiful experience that i hope inspires developers to make an Action RPG for VR that can surpass it.
Skyrim is one of those games that I absolutely love it in almost every way but the story revolving around the Protagonist. I often try to convince people the whole Dragonborn aspect of the game feels like it hijacked the game from the more important aspects like the Thalmor, and the Skyrim Civil War, which felt like the real MEAT and POTOATOES of the game. Basically the game is so much more fun when you're "NOT" the Dragonborn, and there are no "DRAGONS" flying around.
I have a similar issue with say the Minutemen in Fallout 4 as well. They feel like they were shoe horned into the game, and actually get in the way of the game's real meat/potatoes, the Institute, Railroad and BOS.
I enjoyed the dragons quite a bit
@@VashStarwind Oh they're pretty cool. But they're spammed so heavily in the game that they become an annoyance rather than something entertaining. I swear you run into Dragons more often than Trolls and Bears. Which takes away the unique aspect of fighting a dragon, and they only made it worse with the DLCs post release.
@@Alte.Kameraden Yeah I agree, there are too many at times lol
The whole minuteman thing was shoehorned in because they needed their own "yesman" faction because new vegas was a better written game than anything they have ever released since maybe morrowind. Bethesda has no idea what fallout is or what makes a fallout game so they have just copied themes and references from the original games/new vegas because it was never their ip, they never wrote the game, they have no concept of what the world should look like, and therefor they have no connection to it.
The railroad and minutemen were added to give the illusion of deep choice in the game. They designed the whole game around brotherhood vs Institute. The minutemen were added also for a reason to shoehorn their settlement building system. The Nuka-World dlc offered a better option for that too.
Kingdom Come did so much well that I’d love to see in TES6, I loved things like wearing nice clothes made you more persuasive when talking to nobility, and wearing heavy armour and bloodstained gear made you more intimidating. The combat system was definitely a bit janky when facing more than one enemy, but a lot of time has passed and I reckon the devs at Bethesda have the skill to improve and completely overhaul a system like that into something that works in a fantasy setting.
its gonna be more of the same and you fucking know it lol
@@slippy2315 lol i was thinking the same thing unfortunately
Kingdom come's combat is EXTREMELY janky, and rng based.
For TES 6 I hope we get something like Chivalry 2. I think that would be the best choice for melee combat.
I’d love kingdom come deliverance if it wasn’t so fucking convoluted
Kingdom come also doea great at replicating that oblivion NPC experience.
I thought I was crazy for never liking Skyrim.
i would argue that fallout 3's world actually had a decent amount of stories within the world. the trick was that they weren't being told to you by people. if you didn't dig down into a computer log noone told you about or pay attention to some world detail you missed the deeper story.
also 1:06:41 that is an example of rail roading.
in any open world rpg some of the story should be in the world itself, not just in the people of the world. this is something i feel new vegas failed at. it's world had no stories to tell only the people.
i like that you showed kingdom come deliverance a few time.
especially when talking about exploration, i remember the first time i got lost in the game, it was also night so i was kinda just walking blind until i stumbled on a random inn i didn't know was there, it was a kind of relief i don't normally get from adventure games.
Kingdom come deliverance had a much more realistic and alive world.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is an amazong game! I can't wait for a second game. I hope they take all the time they need and release a complete, triple A game that puts all competitors to shame and makes Warhorse studios one of the most renowned video game developers out there!
Elder Scrolls games are about being a poor lowlife doing infinite Bitch Work in a fantasy Imperial Gig Economy until the infighting Upper Classes causes a metaphysical disaster.
As a game, Skyrim isn't about its' peoples.
Skyrim sucks because it's writing ignores the setting of Elder Scrolls while constantly reminding the player that they are an unstoppable Dragonborn that does everything but achieves nothing. It's the worse parts of both Empowerment & Disempowerment Fantasy.
Skyrim would have been better if the player was tasked with collecting oral history stories from across the country, during a time when Skyrim is struggling to define itself as a nation & how it should treat folks, rather than its' fucking awful empty Civil War or World Eater plots.
This is a really insightful take that I only briefly touched upon. While I would love a game with such a plot, I really struggle to imagine Bethesda as it exists today writing a main quest like that for the AAA open world market. The lore of the Elder Scrolls series is a deep and rich vein for stories, but they seem loathe to interact with it besides using it as a sandbox for generic power fantasies.
@@GunmetalStug
You made it perfectly clear & we agree; I was just lamenting the writing. Thank you for the compliment, video, & links!
I'm still poking through all the awesome links! :S
They manage to make written books full of lore, but the quest we ever get, is fetch this, and kill that. Our skill lines and role play approach doesn't seems to matter in the world of Skyrim.
@@JWalters388
Agreed.
The video description has a link to a post written by Shamus Young on the skyrim Thieves’ Guild question line.
It perfectly details how the writing in Skyrim is just confused nonsense that makes zero sense, especially if you think about it at all.
I say the same thing as you, Mr Shamus, & Mr Slug but using literary terms; Skyrim is the worse parts of both Empowerment & Disempowerment Fantasy. We are constantly reminded how we are the unstoppable Dragonborn that does everything but achieves nothing, with all events having nonsensical logic like a bad dream.
Our role is "the Dragonborn", which we are forced to play, & events are forced onto us with us having no meaningful input other than when it doesn't make any sense.
Modded Morrowind is better than ever. I played Skyrim for 10 minutes and was bored. They lost the passion a long time ago. Best thing about Morrowind was there was always another way to break the game. Shame they went the way they have.
Something I do like from open world games is the never-ending feeling. I don't want run out of content soon. I do appreciate that I can dive into skyrim and have more content even after s hundred hours or more
That's like your opinion man
Level scaling is a huge reason why I hate a lot of stat based rpgs
Sometimes they can be fun but leveling every bozo to my tier makes it useless
Just remove the stats entirely and replace it with invisible walls at that point
Most stat based RPGs don't do that though... that is the exception to the rule.
The level scaling thing is recent, probably caused by Bethesda hitting a grand slam with Skyrim financially and everyone copying them. Skyrim really was one of the worst things to happen to open world gaming.
This game's level-up system is more of a Stat-tree than Skill-tree, more non-effective minor percentage increases than meaningful naunced skills: little to no build variety at all.
@@Lofirainbowsmorrowind did the stats way better. You go from being weak as fuck, progressively learn how to break shit, and then become a god. How could anyone not love being able to fly across vvardenfell after learning how to make crazy spells?
Romantic relationships that had no romance.
Adopting kids that felt like house pets.
Comrades that you just learned to like before they died.
Houses that were dark and bland to stow useless gear.
Yup, Skyrim had it all. ^^;
I see the issues but then comparing to Elden Ring, Elden Ring has:
-No romantic relationships
-No having kids
-Comrades rarely I guess? Or ghosts?
-No houses, not even any towns
@@126theman The two are seperate entity's and shouldn't be compared, but yes both are successful. In truth, the only reason I'm not lauding over Skyrim like I did Morrowind is the fact that they offered these small changes but couldn't do so as well as Mass Effect did romance, the way various others addressed lineage, and a few damn candles wouldn't hurt to liven up a home lol.
I'm the mf'n dragonborn, I can fart a dragon out of the air, but do you think I can find a couch with padding for my all powerful ass? Nope.
XD
@@126theman but elden ring didn't try to implement any of those things, so that's not a good argument.
@@michaelleader633 Your criticisms are valid, except that I haven’t seen anything really do it better.
@@balthasargerard7246 I only disagree if we’re comparing the two as role playing games. Comparing them in general I think you’re right, there’s no reason to fault Elden Ring for what it didn’t attempt.
However when comparing them as RPG’s I think it’s important to consider the totality of the role playing elements they offer.
Reading these comments it seems like y’all have played thru the game about 800 times and you’re burnt out of it. Now you’re playing the game with a microscope looking for any flaws. Do this with literally any game and it will be garbage.
What's the game at 28:37?
45:33 WHAT QUEST IS THAT?
When it comes to magic system, I highly suggest checking Dragons Dogma. More powerful spells require cast time, which leaves you vulnerable, but holly hell. Creating a hurricane or 6 huge pillars of ice stabbing into a cyclops always felt impactful for me.
Also deeper physical combat i loved climbing enemies like cyclopes and stabbing eyes and cutting limbs off
They're masterworks all, you can't go wrong.
I tried that game but went in with very wrong expectations and understanding of what it was.
might be time to revisit it since I loved the magic in dragon age origins and that sounds similarly fun to use
@@wesleywyndam-pryce5305hey, it's got a sequel coming, and it's definitely worth a playthrough
Their kind hates ice and fire both!
Skyrim was excruciatingly dumbed down for newer players. A big reason why I also am not too big on it is the fact that they removed a lot of cool weapons and armor customization. Morrowind was amazing with armor customizations and the amount of weapons at your disposal was huge. Morrowind had a great immersion in story and your actions definitely had consequences. When Skywind releases, I think it'll be a good replacement for Skyrim if done correctly.
Toph is the Skyrim of Avatar characters.
Lmao Morrowind fans are some of the most toxic people in the world 😂 all you do everyday is talk trash about Skyrim, you have nothing else going on in your life?
@@yaqubebased1961 Now I can't stop thinking about this.... 💀💀💀
morrowind fans are fat
@@daniellatth2937 when skyrim is maybe the most influential rpg of all time it makes sense to talk about it and criticize it
@1:00:00 - fuck yes! Dark Messiah was an EXCELLENT game with a GREAT implementation of first-person melee-focused combat.
I really felt that bit about there being no real consequences. Being able to join pretty much every faction in the game doesn't really make sense, for example, and I was always bothered by this. Being a companion, arch-mage and guild master of the dark brotherhood sounds so ridiculous.
I don't understand the point either. Why design your game such that the player can be and do everything in the same character.. this is an rpg??? It would be much more impactful that you have to specialize your CHARACTER for different factions or content.
@@petrus9067 and rpg games usually have solid replay value because of differing outcomes over quests and multi-faceted solutions, seems easy to have each faction work for a different playthrough...
I’ll never understand this critique.
I loved that I can join every faction as my character. If you don’t want to, then don’t. But don’t take that possibility away from the rest of us who enjoy it.
@@sjones8832 hopw they take pointers from BG3
@@sjones8832The critique exists because it makes the game shallow and kills verisimilitude. If there are no consequences or notable effects on the world for the player's choices their choices ultimately don't mean much. The fact that you can be the leader of two very public institutions as well as walk out in broad daylight as a nightingale or dark brotherhood member and no one bats an eye in any of these factions or even has anything meaningful to say about it is exactly what people who make this critique are talking about.
Wouldn't some of the companions have a problem with their leader also being something as dishonorable as a thief or dark brotherhood assassin? Someone at the college would definitely know something about Sithis and its influence. Shouldn't someone in the imperials or stormcloaks have an issue with someone like that in their ranks?
Basically, the fact that these things lack any real impact in the game makes Skyrim feel more like a box of action figures than a breathing rpg. But then again, most children's media that sell action figures actually do have characters speak up and consequences happen when characters of factions with opposing values interact.
I got my first computer 2 months ago when me and my newly married to husband and his dad built it for me.
My first game ever is Skyrim, but since you say its not that good what would you recommend to be an actually good rpg on the level of skyrim? (It blew my mind how huge skyrim is)
If you're looking to stick with a first person open world I would recommend Fallout New Vegas for the proper RPG elements.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Fallout: New Vegas and Kingdom Come: Deliverance are great as the others have pointed out. As I mentioned in the video, I would also try Enderal, which is a full-game sized mod for Skyrim you can find on Steam. I would also recommend Witcher 2 and 3 (2 is not an open world, but 3 is and it benefits massively from playing 2 first). Once you've got some more experience under your belt, I recommend Morrowind and then Baldur's Gate 3 to get started on CRPGs. After that, if you don't mind more action-oriented experiences, definitely give the Dark Souls series a try.
Also, welcome to the hobby! I hope you didn't take my negativity too seriously and still had fun with Skyrim - this video comes from the perspective of someone who's been playing video games their entire life, and is intimately familiar with the genre... hence my frustrations. I can recognize it still has a lot going for it.
Good luck exploring!
@@GunmetalStug oh don't worry I e noticed the issues you've brought up in your video, on the world building side its very flimsy but on an individual quest basis i think it's great for the most part.
Antediluvian is such a good way to describe Thief
With combat, I think it would be improved dramatically if there was a feature that well-timed blocks become parries and give an opening for a counter attack. Then you have the basis for a more timing based combat system that would feel better to play. I don't think it would be that difficult to implement and would also serve well to keep the combat simple.
There are mods for that, but you’re right, it should’ve been a thing from the beginning. Mods can fix a lot of the issues, and while it being (relatively) easy to mod, it’s definitely arguable that there shouldn’t *need* to be so many mods fixing the game’s issues.
Nah, they're unable to sync animations of npc models, parrying is simply too hard
@@Lofirainbows bro, i use the parry mod, its easy
But... this is already a feature baked into the base game?? Part of why I enjoy melee combat in Skyrim so much is because it has a very simple and easy to learn rock-paper-scissors combat system. Shield interrupts normal attacks. Power attacks interrupt shield blocking. And shield bashing with the right timing interrupts power attacks. There is even a shield talent which slows time while you're blocking during an enemy's power attack to help you out if your reaction time is poor or you're bad at reading power attacks.
yes the combat would indeed be better if it was anything else than an extremely dull MMORPG style dps check
No, level scaling is OBJECTIVELY bad. It cancels out the progression system, it literally cancels it out.
No it doesn't, games like borderland are a perfect example of level scaling working.
@@NomTheDom Yep always thought borderlands was hot garbage, mainly because of how bullet spongey everything was, including the player. What's the point of giving the player a 10% bonus to damage if you're just going to adjust the enemies HP by +10% as well? Borderlands is a perfect example of it working as intended though I don't disagree there, it's just that the intended effect is dog shit.
Not talking out of my anus here, have been an indy dev for a decade and level scaling is universally condemned among the community of professionals who work with it, or around it.
All that said it is possible to implement to a certain degree without ruining the progression curve, by clamping enemy level caps within a small range and having spawns contain a mixture of enemies at slightly different levels within that range, say +/- 1 levels for every 5 base, giving you ranges of 3-6, 8-12, 12-18, so on and so forth.
Skyrim (vanilla, the unplayable version) was the same, dreary combat swinging wet noodles at bandits who swing wet noodles at you for 15 minutes, or whichever enemy they were all functionally identical, just with some animation and particle effect swaps.
Urgh. Bethesda.. now I need to shower.
Agree. I steer clear from those kinds of game. I am not a number maniac who love seeing numbers growing while having absolutely no fucking meaning to the experience.
@@therealdoomsage man if the next ES game has combat as bad as skyrim's im not even gonna touch it. Sad cus the world / lore is actually kinda cool but the blandness of it kills the experience. There aren't gonna be 50 mods on launch day to fix the annoying and lazily made shit no one wants to deal with in vanilla either
@@bofa722 Yeah man same
25:41
I felt the exact same in Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring btw. At that scale I wonder if you can do it differently
something i really enjoy in Skyrim is when you're completely hidden in the shadows of an ancient mine or temple and you loose an arrow at the guard 30 metres below you and they suddenly side step the arrow without stealth being broken even once. they still don't know i'm there, they just happened to get a twinge in their leg or something right at that moment
I can’t believe I once put hundreds of hours into this game. When I look back at it now it’s just so shallow. Playing an rpg never made me feel this empty, and no amount of mods, levels gained and enemies killed fixed that. And yet I still put hundreds of hours into it for some reason.
They put you on that dopamine treadmill and kept you going. It happened to me, it happened to all of us. Modern game publishers don't hire actual psychologists for nothing, they do it to exploit the psychological reasons that we keep playing games.
@@Nightweaver1 "Dopamine treadmill" is such a precise way to describe how Skyrim tricks you into thinking it's worth your time.
It why I only played it once.
@@GunmetalStug yeah but only for a certain time. if you reach the magical ingame playtime there is no game anymore, only a crash simulator.
Thank god it isn't just me
It's one of those games that's more fun thinking about playing than it is actually playing it. Until you give in to the urges and reinstall it, mod it, then get bored of it after 10 hours. I notice Bethesda games start strong out the gate and they have it almost perfected. The rest after not so much.
It's so you can't refund it after 2 hours.
Get the right mods, and I can play for hundreds of hours. I just recently restarted my skyrim a week ago and haven't stopped playing. With the right mods this game is insane.
@@rickrogan2355 It's still fundamentally the same game. Now Enderal is good, I just put like 60 hours into that recently. Total conversion mod though.
@@rickrogan2355 Right but without those mods the game would be mediocre at best. I'm sick of bethesda getting a pass from everyone when each game they make is worse than the last because "mods."
@@abstr4cted496 this is a horrible assumption to make.
56:50 you actually did trick me, ive never done Caits companion quest XD
It's been ages since I last played Skyrim, but there was one part that always boiled my piss. Near the end of the Thieves Guild questline you get the Skeleton Key, a key that can open any doors (really it's just an unbreakable lockpick because being able to actually open any doors would break the game). But then you progress a little further in the questline and you're supposed to return the skeleton key to some Daedric god's shrine... No. I'm a thief. The skeleton key is the greatest tool a thief could ever wish for. And why would I return something? I'm a thief! I never finished that quest, so maybe you get to keep the key for some reason, but I feel my criticism still stands. Why would a thief ever even try to return the greatest thing a thief could ever steal?
Nah you lose the key and in return get a shitty ability that you can use once per day
When I think about Elderscrolls I never really circle back to Skyrim in my mind it always go back to the older titles such as Morrowind and Oblivion. I think personally I think they should go back to how they made Morrowind but with a more modern combat. It's so alien when it comes to the art, the amount of good text based dialogue is great and still keep this very insane alien feeling it feels like a fever dream. Lost hours upon hours in Morrowind unlike Skyrim.
I don't see Skyrim as "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim." I see it as just "Skyrim."
It’s a matter of taste, I’m a disgusting Nordaboo and absolutely adore the vibe of Skyrim.
I think they ough to go back to Daggerfall, the pinacle of ES
@@thatrandomcrit5823 Not gonna lie being able to climb everything was pretty cool and there was so much to see and explore but tried playing it again fairly recently and its age is showing not really playable anymore.
@@vx8431 If the original is not holding up, have you tried the modding scene? Daggerfall Unity is the way to go
You're not kidding about 6:52. I didn't have panic attacks until I did a full playthrough of Skyrim, almost a decade ago. All that delving through ancient tombs to find more and more crap for no reason, and the mind-numbing writing of almost every single quest in the game. This game is so sterile it makes the frivolity of life shockingly apparent. It's a cold slap in the face.
Omg I feel the same way about some games. Some games are so shitty it actually reminds you of how much life sucks rather than distracting you from that fact. Lol The frivolity of life and the apathy of those in charge is something you can't even escape in video games anymore. Lol Even videogames are a reminder that the people who run the show are apathetic, selfish, uninspired assholes who will say anything for a dollar.
This is one of the most insane takes I have ever heard. Having panic attacks and a life-changing experience due to a simple video game played by millions of people of all ages. This comment section is an utter circus.
@@-JimmyRustle- lol there are no rules about anxiety. Sometimes when someone dies in a video game it reminds me that Im gonna die too. I wouldnt say I have panic attacks over it, mostly just dread lol
@@-JimmyRustle- any media can be life-changing. horrible games rarer, but art in general has a tendency to change people and their view of life, especially great art. second, you dont know them, so don't be a dick lmao.
Grinding for useless things and overall meaninglessness? Sounds like real life
I never want to explore extra areas in Skyrim because I’m worried they will be locked behind a quest or story. It really really hampered my enjoyment.
Another thing is that when I did do that, I couldn’t chain locations back to back because I’d be carrying too much loot, which is the only incentive for going into these dungeons for a majority of them since less than a third have any form of storytelling. So exploration would end up being walking down a road, find a location, go through it, fast travel back home, sell all the loot and increase out of combat skills, then fast travel to the place I cleared out and go forward. It was so dreadful because none of the out of combat systems meshed well together and there was no efficient way to manage loot.
The only thing about botw is that once you realise there is no content out there other than shrines thhe illusion of exploration breaks and its absolute lazy dog sht.
34:50 Remember how in Morrowind they managed to connect the Fighter's Guild, Thieves' Guild, Morag Tong, House Hlaalu, and the last third of the main quest in various ways? Or how if you were progressing through the main quest you were deemed a heretic and denied access to the Temple faction, or if you complete it the Ordinators (most anyways) in the Ministry of Truth wouldn't kill you on sight? Where was all that in future titles?
Thieves Guild and DB have some level of connection via Mallory and Astrid's unknown relationship
@@insomniacbritgaming1632 Yes but I mean in terms of both gameplay and an over-arcing narrative.
With Morrowind it was the Camorra Tong, and House Dres' attempts to take over Morrowind through their own schemes.
Questlines tended to intersect with each other be it story or the gameplay (i.e. kill targets or factions seeking to sabotage the other).
@@madamwinnifer4666 yeah I agree there, they could've done so much more with the Civil War story line... like the Risk of actually losing the battle would've been good
@@insomniacbritgaming1632 Oh the Civil War would have been the perfect opportunity!
@@madamwinnifer4666 the quests were also one directional with no chance of actual failure
It feels so lifeless. Nothing you do really has any long lasting impact on the overall world.
no ur wrong you can get some of the yarles to swap chairs
@@Fuck_Animelol
@@Fuck_Anime ermmm don't forget whiterun guards changing colors -____-
Wait, weren't the books written for daggerfall?
I know I'm a little late but, any chance you could give a short list of your favorite/good RPG's that rank higher than Skyrim, and one or two that rank below? I'm not very deep into this genre yet, the only one I've really touched is Outward, but I have enjoyed it immensely so far!
I forgot to add that, I did in fact watch the video and noted down Kingdom come Deliverance, Witcher 3 and Elden Ring already : )
Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines.
Mouthful of a title, I know, and it's one of those games that needs an unofficial patch, but it's widely considered a king of roleplaying videogames. Fantastic writing, voice acting, and story, held back by admittedly garbage combat and a rushed later half.
38:54 Surprised to hear Shamus Young mentioned here. Always loved hearing his opinion on video games and regularly visited his site. Enjoyed reading his take on the whole Thieves Guild questline and how moronic it is. Gone too soon. RIP Shamus Young.
Shamus Young's Thieves' Guild series is partially the reason I made this video. He actually gave a shout-out to my Mass Effect video on his Die Cast (as I asked him for permission to reference his Retrospective), which was exceedingly nice of him. A kind, brilliant dude, and gone way too soon.
I didn't know he passed away. I used to read his articles on the escapist back in the day. RIP.
One easy example of how the story could be changed to be more immersive is the dark brotherhood. You have to get rid of the emperor in it. What if after doing that it effects the war efforts? Make there be references to how much the imperial side now wants revenge. Or maybe some of the imperial armies become scattered more. Maybe you can't join the imperial faction now because they know your face.
You could do it for a lot of other quests. Make things matter even if it means you'd have to scale back the world.
It's funny problems in writing of KCD are stuff like relying on outdated wiews of history And in Skyrim it's sounds like first draft
If only they remastered morrowind they could re release that and id be more than happy to pay for that again
I just replayed Yakuza 0. The two maps are tiny but they are packed with things to do. Every mini game, sub storyand activity in it is well designed and crafted to be fun. Also, the main story is one of the best in games. It really puts everything made by Ubisoft these past ten years to shame.
Yakuza 0 is a goat tier RPG, easily the best Yakuza game imo.
@@kevinh9551 but it's not really an RPG is it? I love Yakuza 0 don't get me wrong but I wouldn't call it an RPG it's an open world beat em up
@@literallyvergil1686 Than Yakuza 7 just barges in.
@@souakadpadkid6685 yeah that one is a literal rpg LMAO
@@kevinh9551 lost judgment is better
Elden Ring's a great game, but "exploded the standards" for the industry is an exaggeration. It somewhat exceeded already existing standards for action rpgs, and because it's the first game to do so in years it's greatly over-praised.
This is fair! Even though I loved Elden Ring, it still has some flaws and I can see how a lot of people didn't enjoy it as much as I did (or didn't like it at all). Joseph Anderson's Elden Ring video is really good for enumerating its flaws while also acknowledging everything it does well.
word. ER is standard-bursting as for animations, artistic direction and general "spectacle" stuff. Gameplay is exciting but nothing revolutionary. As for lore and world building, it's just another regression as we see a lot these years, and I totally understand why professionals are pissed off. Because, as Gunmetal Stug puts it, it just confirms how much you don't need to implement actual ideas in creating a successful fantasy AAA game. This just breaks the profession, or at least what remains of passion in the profession.
@@GunmetalStug and Elden Ring isn't really an RPG... it has no free roam as such... the whole story is linear
@@insomniacbritgaming1632 dumb take. elden ring is obviously both an rpg and has an open world. by your dumb standards final fantasy 7 isnt an rpg
Hear, hear - the best parts of the game to me were, ironically, when I was in closed linear spaces that resembled the trilogy, because it's much easier for them to craft their own little dungeons and glue them together, as opposed to this big, massive open world where I spend most of my time riding a horse on empty areas. I even remember criticizing the mass of reused assets to a friend once and he rebutted with something around "but it's an open-world game, they can't make an unique asset for every location on the map"... I mean, then just don't make a map this big if the player is going to see the exact same landmark shack in 3 different locations within an hour? I'm still laughing at the cemetery asset, though, which had the bundle of graves being a single asset and poorly attached to the terrain, where parts of the tombs would be off the ground; that, and the fact that on both "cemeteries" I found, the exact same tombs were open in the exact same way. The open-world part of the game is so jarringly amateurish that I can't treat the game as more than From experimenting with the formula to see if it sticks (it seems to, unfortunately) or if they should go back to linear design. At least I hope they learn the valuable lesson of "less is more" that they were already applying for their last 5 games.
Ive never been a Stealth Archer I just never picked up that "habit" Im a speed sword i use my blade to dance away cutting enemies down so fast and sprint away turn and run to leap back in with my blade, so i rely on more stamina and good light armor but most the time i dodge arrows and almost never get hit at all
I tried playing this RPing in mind, my imagination can only take me so far when it every npc is essentially the same voice actor with the same voice line.
Have you tried oblivion? That's even worse on that front lol
@@MrAskmannen To be fair it came out five years before Skyrim and 16 years ago and it also didn't get like 10 re-releases, it only got one which is the GoTY one which isn't even a re-release just a bundle of the game + DLC, it also had a smaller budget. But at least it beats Skyrim in almost everything else.
@@MrAskmannen But Obvlivion's NPCs are so funny and the 6 voice actors for 20 characters makes it even funnier.
@@91bpatrick for sure, Oblivion is one of the funniest games ever released
Amazing to see that Skyrim has reached such prominence that it's warranting 'in retrospective, it wasn't that good' videos.
It shouldn't take a retrospective. If you played any other Elder Scrolls game, you had all the perspective you needed to understand what was lost and how it should have been.
Every quest in Morrowind is engaging: You talk to an NPC who gives you some vague clues as to where to go and what to do. You must walk x distance down x road until you pass through x and come to x, where you'll have to find the landmark x and travel in x direction for x distance, where you may find x in which, after you solve the puzzle of x, you might find x who will be able to give you your next set of clues and directions.
Every Quest in Skyrim is the same thing: Follow the arrow and continue to follow the arrow until you finish with that arrow. Then pick another arrow to follow.
What makes this much worse, is the fact that in Morrowind, you can ignore all quests, and solve the dungeons and find the treasures a lot of the time, completely on your own. While in Skyrim, you didn't activate the arrow? Then you just completely wasted your time. Go follow an arrow buddy.
@@realityvanguard2052 korrowwind isn’t engaging. It’s a highly unoptimised mess with a slog for gameplay. Stop fanboying a game and then ranting about how bad a game is that you only subjectively dislike
@@realityvanguard2052 oh shut the fuck up dude. Literally nothing you said held any substance. You just vomited vapid vacuous bullshit the entire time. Skyrim quests are all the same bc they had map markers? You mean like 95% of all video games in existence have. Do you seriously think that passes, in any way, as a valid argument? News flash! It doesn’t.
No, Skyrim does not lock quests out so long as you have not activated them. There is literally only one location in the entire game locked through a quest and that is the jagged crown. You can complete shit ahead of time and then tell the mission given that you have already done it. Like killing the master vampire and finishing laid to rest early. You can also not search for the hidden facts for the mission, before or after activating it, and telling the Jarl Idgrod ravencrone that Hroggar was a nutcase who killed his family OR completely ignore the master vampire and just tell the jarl that Alva was the only vampire and she was controlling Hroggar.
You are mindlessly disregarding any depth Skyrim had and any quality it’s mission possessed just so you can disingenuously degrade the game as bad and dumb bc morrowind somehow is infinitely more superior bc it wastes the players time arbitrarily for HOURS all at the cost of “engagement” in game with so many soft locking problems and optimisation issues that immersion is fundamentally impossible without mods and external optimisation improvements. Face it tiger, you just WANT to dislike Skyrim.
Edit: no, I was wrong. There’s TWO quests that are locked. The other is a hidden and obscure island wizard hunt that only exists for some lore and a one time secret map. You’re gonna find some way to make this a problem and the game is bad bc of it. Some way.
@@zzodysseuszz It's certainly engaging; you need to really engage with the game to even play it. But of course, Dagerfall was way more interesting (and even slightly less janky, though it's still a Bethesda game :P ).
Skyrim has some game in it that is enjoyable. There's some interesting stuff to see. But it's not very open world, and following the curve of the earlier games, it's even less sandboxy. Which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, but the non-sandboxy stuff is kind of really bad. It's extremely shallow, with very poor writing and no character. There isn't much that Skyrim does better than Oblivion, and Oblivion was already the "look at the shiny" game in the series. RPG was already kind-of dead by the time of Skyrim, so there wasn't much competition - but then you get, say, Divinity: Original Sin and what's left of Skyrim? It just doesn't compare.
@@zzodysseuszz did you really just give your subjective opinion on a game and then attack a guy for doing the same? The lack of self-awareness. Anyway I haven't played Morrowind so I can't give my opinion on it yet.
Cant forget the crafting system how repetitive and tedious it is
One of the things that I think is lacking from Skyrim (and Oblivion) is meaningful impact to exploration from levelling up. One thing that I loved about Morrowind was that as you got stronger you gained access to being able to run faster improving your experience when exploring the map, being able to jump higher and access previously inaccessible areas or take shortcuts, and also levitation spells which you could increase the duration and speed of which as far as I'm aware was killed (in the lore) due to the engine performance limitations when they decided to focus on graphical fidelity for Oblivion.
Sure, the latter two especially make map design harder, but it would also open up more OPTIONS for map design. Also, being forced to make more interesting maps is something that would only be beneficial to the game.
For me Skyrim is very casual and console oriented. On hardest difficulty game is easy, everything is open for you, you are overpowered from the start. You go and slain dragons without even trying to become powerful in this world. No reputation, no trying, it's like a walking looter simulator.
But it's still a bad game even if you lower your standards.
morrowind worked just fine on console though??
My beef with the anniversary edition is that it keeps forcing me to download EVERYTHING from the creation club each time I reinstall the game.
Sure, free downloads are nice, but most of them are either useless or game-breaking.
the point about leveling is so true. apart from missing out on some quests, you can just stay at level 1, and sometimes you'll actually be stronger that way (werewolf)