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!
@@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.
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.
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
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€
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
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.
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
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.
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.
@@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.
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).
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 :/
My honeymoon phase with Skyrim was shattered when I killed the f*cking emperor and there was no effect on the world other than a few lines of guard dialogue. Another honorable mention is the fact that you’re forced to join the thieves guild as part of the main quest, despite playing as a lawful good warrior with zero inclination to threaten or rob innocent citizens.
I dont think you're forced to join the thieves guild, iirc you can just walk past the ragged flagon and go to esbern without triggering any dialogue with brynjolf, though the game wants you to talk to him, which is a different issue.
I had what I call Skyrim zombiosis. I didn’t care if elements were shit because it was fun mindlessly killing the same enemies over and over in cool armour. I was one of those Chinese kids scrolling an iPad in their sleep. It wasn’t until I played actual RPG games that I realised just how shallow Skyrim really was. Even for the time it came out it was outdated. Hard to believe I put so many hours into that game, I can never go back to it.
@@boglurker2043 Problem is most of those "actual RPG games" are shallow too. They'll come with a strong narrative and lackluster gameplay, or an empty world, or a half-baked open world. Witcher 3 is often heralded as a masterpiece, but something about it feels wrong to me. The graphics are superb, the story is great, and the world just feels dull.
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
"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.
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
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.
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.
Morrrowind is 22 years old, I'm sure 98% of the people that worked on that game either don't work in the industry any more or moved on, the notion that Bethesda still has these people on staff is ludicrous.
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)
@@valeriansamborski5844 I mean, I'm guilty myself of putting god knows how many hours into Skyrim and FO4, despite disliking the main storylines from the get go. Guess I'ts just a brain-off wander into unknown game, and maybe my tastes changed over time, or due to market saturation. To put it into a metaphor - eating a burger or a hotdog from time to time is perfectly fine - it tastes good enough and (used to be) cheap enough, but if you base your diet exclusively on it, well that ain't healthy
"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 .
@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
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.
"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."
Bethesda is truly incapable of developing a game with a good, non linear story and engaging, non repetitive gameplay. At least Skyrim had a high fantasy setting which masked these flaws. When you apply the exact same principles in a dystopian/sci fi setting (like Fallout and Starfield) it becomes immediately noticeable because the visuals and gameplay cannot engage you long enough. You really CAN'T have an RPG in space or a post apocalyptic wasteland engage the player without an interesting, well-written story.
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.
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.
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
@@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
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.
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
Oblivion and Fallout 3 were my first steps into those worlds. New Vegas was also incredible, dunno if it's nostalgia. But I truly believe they were better games than what came after. Skyrim and 4 just, felt hollow, like one of iD's tech demo games lol
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.
@@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)
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.
@@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
"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.
@@Jdudec367 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.
This sentence kinda opened my eyes. Whenever I start a new playthrough, it's merely my expectations and my personal roleplay idea that keep me going. I allmost allways stop at like level 20, because there isn't anything left to do at that point. I'm usually powerful enough and I usually replayed anything that I wanted to see. All there still is are NPC's that babble the same bullshit from the first levels. Nothing ever changes, NPC's don't recognize me as an archmage, legendary nord warrior or Dark Brotherhood serial killer. I'm just a floating head with weapons that no one else even uses in the game. Great. I'm such a huge Elder Scrolls fanatic and I guess it's just hard to accept that the magic can go so easily.
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
@@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.
"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.
@@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
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.
I mean, Immersive Sim is a close relative of RPG. Arx Fatalis, for example, is both IS and RPG. Dark Messiah is an Immersive Sim with RPG elements. Genres are very close even on paper, thematically - in both of them you play a role of the hero which partakes in some sort of adventure and you have obstacles to overcome, while gradually improving both your character and your own skill in the game. The only difference is that RPGs are generally more story-driven (Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Gothic) and Immersive Sims are more gameplay-focused (aforementioned Dark Messiah, Thief or System Shock). It doesn't mean that you can't have both (Dishonored, which I personally consider to be Immersive Sim, has a solid story, accomopanying good gameplay) but that, for me, just proves a point of them being really close genras
I did not expect to randomly appear in this video. I’m one of the blurry bodies in the background of the Preston Garvey meme video. It was filmed after a Fallout cosplay shoot and I was loitering in the background in my Raider cosplay. Rip Erik/Preston. He was a great guy.
@@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.
@@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
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." 🤷♂️
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
@@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.
@@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.
@@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.
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
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 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.
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.
This. The bigger problem with Skyrim is how it diluted most modern RPGs into being sloppy action games that wear the mask of an RPG because many AAA studios saw how Bethesda got away with it.
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.
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.
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"
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
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.
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...
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.
@@Last_Resort991 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
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 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!
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.
@@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.
In Elden Ring i found a knight with a shield and he killed me 7 times. I came back latter with a better sword and did more damage. I died one more time but then realized i started to remember his moves. I realized with my new strength and battle iq, i wouldnt even need the upgraded weapon but it would help me defeat him faster. Now im so high damage and skill level wise that he blends in with any other basic enemy. Now imagine if i killed the shield guy first try just because we both hit each other with pool noodles until one of us died. Then i come back to the same respawned enemy, 200 hours later. And we do the same thing again except i beat him in 9 hits and not 12, because of level scaling.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
@@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.
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.
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.
There's a DLC sized Mod coming out called Skyrim The Extended Edition, it literally rewrites and adds new things to the main story and adds more character writing to the characters in the main story.
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
@@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.
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.
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.
The weirdest thing about Skyrim for me is how people hate on Fallout 4 for how it feels,but seem to allow Skyrim which imo feels worse than Fallout 4 to get away freely with poor choices. That and the fact Skyrim never fully fixed the bugs itself in the 10+ years after release so game and quest breaking bugs are still in it that nowadays would get you a never trust badge from the masses...But,it's okay cause it's Skyrim or a Bethesda game and they'll have modders to fix the issues...
My feelings about fallout 4 are influenced my personal betrayal tbh and im not afraid to admit that. But to be fair, i also never really cared about skyrim in a meaningful way like fo4 cuz i got bored of it rather than frustrated
@@daniellatth2937do you even know what that means? Literally nothing about his comment was bitter. You're actually the bitter one here because you're just being negative for no reason
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.
@@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.
@@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.
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.
@@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 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.
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.
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 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."
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.
I think the main problem with Skyrim is that it's just been around too long. I don't think I started seeing Skyrim hate until it was many years in and TES6 was long due to come out. Keep something around long enough and it's inevitable people will begin to dissect every single flaw and begin to hate it.
Yeah ik what you mean- even though they did strip back features from previous ES entries we’ve legit had 10 years to mull over skyrim and pick it apart over and over. But honestly was pretty decent for a game that came out in 2011 not a good ES game per say compared to what came before but still a decent experience for a game in 2011.
tons of people hated Skyrim immediately. oblivion was substantially more interesting and Morrowind was better in almost every way (except graphics and combat, but Skyrim combat sucks anyway so whatever)
@misssteak1290 Nah, not technically. None of its mechanics are impressive, they're simply put together in this (then unique) original format of Bethesdas action rpgs; it's no-longer unique, so the lack of quality of their individual mechanics now shows up. Heck, even if the format was still unique... the many titles it simplifies the mechanics of still do them better anyway
The biggest problem I personally have with RPGs is that Skyrim is the only one that really scratches an itch that I get. The Witcher 3 is one of the best RPGs ever made and has an amazing story, but I really want to make my own character and have my own story. It's the same for Kingdom come Deliverance, I'm a huge medieval nerd so I loved the game and I'm excited for the sequel, but at the end of the day you're still Henry of Skalits, and even though there's a lot of ways to complete the missions, you're pretty much forced to play as the knight in shining armor. Elden ring is the probably the closest to the RPG I want, and I've heard nothing but good things about it, but I'm not a huge fan of Dark Souls combat, and the lack of a clear story kills it for me. I guess I'm really looking for that D&D game, that has a good story, and let's you play the way you want to play. Baldurs gate 3 is the closest I've seen a game get to that, and I'm really enjoying playing it rn, but it's a top down game and I want that 1st/3rd person gameplay. Just imagine how cool a game with BG3 details and immersion, paired with Mordhau or Chivalry 2's gameplay, mixed with some magic and fantasy thrown in. It would be a super ambitious game, but man I would play the absolute hell out of it
I couldn't agree more. I want to play a game where I can create my own character, invest in them, make impactful decisions using non voiced dialogue, and has 3rd person mode with great combat. I really don't see the point in going through the story, creating your character, equipping loot but most of the time you never see it. Thats why I was jealous of the witcher. The witcher is great, it has everything and geralt is cool, but I want a game like that with your own character. They kind of tried with cyberpunk but its signifigantly worse for the reasons mentioned above. I also won't play outer wilds because first person only. It seems to be an unpopular game type, still... I have reccomendations for you. 1-Earlier elder scrolls games 2-Fallout new vegas 3-Dragon's Dogma 4-Dragon Age series(older ones are better rpgs, newer ones the rpg elements don't seem to be as great but the combat is more modernized) 5-Mass effect 6-I also want to try remnant from the ashes and its sequel 7-Way of the Samurai series But sadly they don't make games for us. I would love if they made a yakuza style game where you had your own character instead of the main ones.
Skyrim literally hides under the ''I want my own story'' argument, to mask its lifeless, blank player character as an immersive rpg You don't have a character in Skyrim, sure on the surface, it lets your imagination to fill in the gaps. But because you don't have a personality that is imprinted in the game, they're just making an inauthentic, lifeless interaction with other characters in game.
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?
@@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
@@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
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
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?
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".
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.
How can bethesda bootlickers defend anything this company does? Their writer literally has the motto "keep it simple stupid". I dont get how ppl dont immediately reject a game with that lack of passion amd talent
With Gothic 1, Piranha Bytes proved that they could squeeze an entire game into the sice of a house 😅 With tons and tons of amazing secrets and hidden gems and hours and hours of excitement 🤗
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.
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.
[Massive rant about Bethesda:] First off, I’ll start off strong by saying - Skyrim never truly stuck with me. I’m also a RPG nerd, which is why I love RDR2, and even cyberpunk 2077. Those are my absolute favorite games. My opinion on Skyrim: - I played around 20 hours before dropping it, not because of the graphics, animations or ui. But because of lack of story, repetitiveness and overhyped, blatant lies. I know I’ll be targeted for “not playing enough” or “I need to explore enough to be immersed” etc, but I’ve just never liked Bethesda. I’m here to explain why: - I tried games like Fallout 4, Elder Scrolls and SKYRIM..and in my opinion, didn’t even try to catch me and think “woah, this world is amazing. I wanna explore and play more!” It’s most often a forced story followed by a copy paste formula of “Help me/us save this, do this quest, you’re now a hero or legend”. - After finishing these games, nothing else is available to do. Unlike other companies I love, (CDPR), Bethesda is making money over something that’s just..meh. And it’s sad. - Just look at their newest game Starfield, it’s a pattern I’ve noticed Bethesda doing every single time, making a entirely different game feel just the same. And everyone is noticing it, making fan’s incredibly dissatisfied and disappointed, leading to people not even getting excited to see what’s next. Gaming have become this..lifeless, money grabbing alternative to companies like Bethesda. - It’s not actually about: Loving and having fun creating a game, enjoying a game for hours, getting immersed in every single aspect of the world, just enjoying the view, and do simple, everyday things. It’s becoming more about: - Getting the game developed as quickly as possible, hating what you develop and get no support whatsoever, overworking on a game thats tested awfully, releasing it half baked and just hope it brings in money. There’s no balance in work environment, so of course the game will preform terribly. - Fans will become furious because they got lied to, thinking they were gonna get their dream game, and just hopelessly watches the monstrosity in front of them..as you pay 20$ for just the game itself. You play it, and process everything..a few minutes or hours in, and you just notice: “ITS NOT EVEN FINISHED.” Or the game is finished, but is left out. Leaving hundreds of bugs behind, for the modders to sweep up after them. - Sadly, this is the state of most games nowadays. Especially when it comes to Bethesda and Tom’s ridiculous decisions, followed by nothing but lies. // From a loving RPG player like myself..just do better Bethesda. I can’t let the rpg genre die out like this. - And Tom Howard need to educate himself more on management, making game development more efficient and fun. (Having that it mind leads to: More game developers creating NEW games from scratch, actually like what they’re working on, new ui formulas, Unforgettable stories, unique gameplay elements, a comfortable and very immersive environment, and most of all.. simple, quality of life details.) THATS what’s important to both the company itself, and the fans supporting this..mess called Bethesda. - Never forget about what made rpg’s fun, and most of all, enjoyable and very immersive.
Elder Scrolls extended lore is some of the coolest shit ever, and yet they pick and choose the most boring stuff in existence to actually include in game...
UPDATE after watching this vid: I agree 100% on everything said. I will present my opinion before watching this retrospective: Dialogues don't matter. There is actually barely any personality to your character. Decisions don't have much weight. Guilds are laughable. Skyrim civil war is a joke. Dungeons are lame. It's a good walkin simulator but a terrible RPG. I have never finished it as I was triggered by how the world just ignores my decisions. Like what the hell? I have joined the Assassin's Guild, killed the Emperor and then joined the Imperium to fight for. There was not a single mention of THE GODDAMN EMPEROR dying.... And the entire war was fought by like 20 dudes top. Laughable even by 2010.
Agree no personality anywhere and has the same issue as fallout 4 no choices, it's quest reward is good, faliure bad, save every ten seconds and if you turn up at a guild your in charge (which means nothing) instantly
Something worth noting about your final sentence, Skyrim is now old enough people explain away flaws due to the game’s age. I’ve unironically seen people say it was revolutionary for it’s time and we can’t hold it up to modern expectations. Like we couldn’t and didn’t do better back in 2010.
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.
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
Vanilla skyrim is l a m e, it's now basically DIY game where you need to painstakingly construct your own experience with mods. It does real wonders, IF you do it right. WIth this said, I have just disabled 150+ mods to find out what makes my GUI disappear and in the end realized that it was "hud opacity" setting in default ass menu.
I somewhat disagree with the mods. You can fix many things, but the bad quests and Boring characters will stay. The horrible combat you can only change so much. And if you have 800 mods installed and say, now Skyrim is great, is it even skyrim anymore? That's a ship if Theseus situation. You have a ship, ship starts to get old and you have to replace the parts until nothing original is left and everything is replaced. Is it still the ship of Theseus? Is Skyrim still Skyrim after 800 mods?
@@OTVALSKY I highly recommend the full conversion mod Enderal. It offers a completely new story with fascinating characters, meaningful choices, and diverse side quests. Real classes and even hybrid classes. It's available for free from their site. It's incredible that such a huge and complete conversion is free. For every fan of complex RPGs and even hardcore CRPGs, I dare say that Enderal does not live up to that kind of complexity, and neither does it need to. When I was younger, I always got bored by Skyrim rather fast (70 hours was my longest playtrough) but gave it some tries to see what everyone is talking about. For everyone that likes Skyrim Idea but feels it lacks massively, Enderal is the answer. It's what Skyrim wishes to be, a deep and interesting RPG.
@@OTVALSKY And of course the landscape is different too. You may recognize some assets, buts that's the nature of the thing. It's an own world and in my opinion, very much improved. Like no comparison.
I wish the dragon stuff was either not in the game at all or used much much more sparingly. The thalmor stuff has the potential to be infinitely more interesting, or at the very least way less player character-aggrandizing. Not to mention how much it really takes me out of it when the dragons are touted as the ancient wise overlords that once ruled all other races, only for them to fight me every with the same level of strategy of any other NPC in the game. It's so often too. Like, almost every other time I walk through the woods, one appears for no reason and attacks, only to then get distracted by a wolf halfway through the fight and break off to kill it instead of me. Edit: I'm glad you touched on that. It's a shame we got this shoehorned main story when the pieces for a good one were there.
Man really went from making anime abridged series to a comprehensive take down of one of the largest gaming feanchises ever just for the fuck of it. Love that
For me, Skyrim's biggest problem (this goes for all ES games really) is mechanically you have seen pretty much everything the game has to offer in the first hour. All the weapons feel the same. The spells have only a handful of options with assorted flavors. The perks are pretty bland and while some of them can be cool and unique they realistically will rarely find use. Even the enemies boil down to being very similar. Doesn't matter if it's a dragon breathing fire on me or a random bandit casting flare, it's the same mechanically. All of this could be forgiven if the rest of the game was better but it sadly just isn't. The main story is "ok" but all of the guild quests feel underwhelming and a step back compared to Oblivion. The side quests are in a similar spot and I can't say the "radiant" quests inspire me to go exploring either. Gear progression is as vanilla as it comes with very few actually unique items and 90% of them being staves. The constant reused lines of dialog and voice acting instantly dissolves whatever immersion you have. Skyrim feels like they put a ton of effort into the first 3-5 hours of gameplay and then said "fuck this too much work" and padded out the rest of the game. There's just no soul and it really just is the most watered down action game masquerading as an RPG.
I'd argue the mechanical depth is there for Morrowind and Daggerfall, even if it's just how batshit broken they can be at times. Your criticisms of Skyrim are spot on, however. It feels like they made the "Helgen > Riverwood > Bleak Falls Barrow > West Tower" experience as a proof-of-concept, then decided doing anything like that again would be too much effort... and even THAT felt really shallow and rail-roady.
I saw someone once describe Skyrim as "lazy gaming for lazy gamers." And I couldnt agree more. I tried to get into it several times and just couldnt stay motivated after levelling my character to 37
Yep. To me it all boils down to gamemechanics, in particular gamemechanics that fill the niche of roleplaying which is centered around allowing the agency of a player (and his/her character) creating and experiencing their own path, open up or close down pathways whether they be areas, enemies, npc's, quests, resources, fortune, difficulties, etc,... In essence create their own story via ways of character building and progression and interactivity with the world which is checked against your character "skills". Skyrim has none of that. A mage can't do mage things that a barbarian can't, a thief can't steal fortune that a alchemist can't, a barbarian can't craft gear that a mage can't. This lack of meaningful character building and choices extends to everything. You can't side with Alduin, you can't become a Greybeard, you can't devote your life to the Brotherhood, you can't become an imperial spy to destroy the thiefs guild,... nothing in this game matters, The "biggest choice" is whether to side with Stormcloaks or the Empire, and it just changes some of the enemies you fight from blue to red or vice versa, it's completely inconsequencial, it doesn't make certain parts of the game hard or easy. Do you want to be accepted in an orc stronghold, just go collect some random loot from a random dungeon, or be an orc, that's about the deepest roleplaying the game has to offer.
YES! Dude finally someone worded it in a way I simply couldn’t without delving into various aspects of WHY there’s no RP potential. This games overhyped.
Yeah but saying it's HUGE is definitely not true, it's huge by most standards, but compared to everything else in the game, the dungeons and caves aren't even important. The caves are also decently unique, they just have the same looking environment so it kinda feels the same after a while, the dungeons definitely are repetitive tho.
My biggest complaint is that you can basically do anything, and nobody really reacts. You can be a dark brotherhood speaker, archmage of the college, leader of the companions, a jarl of every district, a high ranking government official, theives guild leader, master vampire, and dragonborn all in one playthrough. It really breaks the immersion for me.
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.
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.
I've said this before in other Skyrim critiques, Bethesda never really evolved past dungeon crawlers, they just slapped an open world map onto their dungeon crawlers with some really fantastic art and environment direction. They're pretty good at environmental storytelling but pretty bad at quest and story writing. Their decisions for how you should *feel* in their world is really great, but their ability to deliver on that feeling is minimal at best. You crawl the same dungeons, fighting the same enemies and all just to get the same meaningless loot. Fallout is the same way. I'm glad we are seeing a shift away from open maps. I prefer a slightly more linear/zone focused story telling for most RPGs, personally.
Recently been playing cyberpunk 2.0 and after experiencing some story character's animations, well written personalities i immediately tought about how shallow npcs are in bethesda's games like skyrim, fallout 4 etc
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.
The thing about characters is very true. I tried to think of a story without characters, and what immediately came to mind was “There will come soft rains” - but then I remembered that it doesn’t lack characters. One could argue that the house is a character, but what really drives the story home is the part with the dog. Before that it was gloomy, but the dog made it depressing. It’s amazing that they managed to take memorable characters like Sheogorath and make them utterly forgettable. I don’t really remember Sheogorath’s quest in Skyrim. I think there was a tea party and a dream sequence, which sounds cool, but I cannot remember the plot at all. Meanwhile I remember Big Head and his search for the Fork of Horripilation really well. The Shivering Isles overall was really memorable, so it’s jarring that we went from that to… well Skyrim. Also the reason Oblivion’s voice acting was all over the place is because the actors were given the script with the lines sorted alphabetically. As in, they weren’t really handed a script, rather just a list of lines.
Great video! A small suggestion I would make for future vids is to amplify your audio more. I had to play the video at max volume and then got ear blasted by any ad that played.
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.
Personal take, as a indie developer who's been doing this for 5 years, currently making a living off my games, and has worked for some big studios briefly, the thing that I personally believe makes skyrim so great isn't that it does ANYTHING particularly better than any other game, it's the fact that they were one of the first games to do it all at once. Everything is super surface level, and there isn't a lot of nuance and intricacies in the game design, but surprisingly that adds even more value to the game, as it makes the game accessible to a MUCH wider audience. It's astonishing how many people who haven't played many games, have Skyrim as their favorite game of all time. And it makes sense if you think about the simplicity of the game, and how accessible it is for such a wide audience. All of your points are valid after watching the video, but I think this game weather they intended for it or not, was made for the average gamer, or even the people who are on the fence about games, to get them to play games. I personally agree with a lot of your takes, and I would love more nuance and fleshed out ideas in the next installment, but truth be told, those things existing isolates the game from a very big demographic of people, and I don't expect Bethesda, especially after getting acquired by Microsoft, to change their design choices in such a risky way. 10/10 video though, and I agree with everything you said.
It's legitimately insulting that Bethesda leaned more into braindead "rpgs" when they already made a really good rpg, morrowind. I know morrowind was difficult to sell to the mainstream, but if they kept going with it can you imagine how good the latest games would be?
"can you imagine how good the latest games would be?" The problem is, that they couldn't. Honestly, I don't think it's just professional laziness... I don't think whatever talent was left at Bethesda had the chops to craft any more, or better, stories. It's the only explanation for how they've behaved since then... Now they're releasing games without any NPC's at all... Because they're nakedly trying to figure out if the current generation of pay pigs, actually, have ANY standards to speak of. Bethesda employee #1, aka incompetent sack of shriveled dicks: "Well, these idiots keep buying the same game over and over again..." Bethesda employee #2, aka recently-failed, wall street broker: "The sales have taken a 2.3% dip, and China is Daddy." #1: "WAIT. What if we just make a "new" game, but we literally don't put any work into it - and just market it like a KISS concert??? #2: "How would we pretend to make a new game? And we don't have a lot of background in merchandise, I'm not sure th-" #1: "Our games have had steadily less content for the past 20 years... We'll just mod FO4 to look like a slightly different environment, without NPC's or anything that players would look for. And merchandise is easy - our customers are so goddamn stupid they'll even believe that the entire planet had a canvas shortage, when we blatantly stiff them on the collector's edition. Because we're OBVIOUSLY too goddamn cheap to give them a canvas bag. OBVIOUSLY." #2: "You may have something there... We've never seen any self-respect shown on the face of any of our fans. And goddamnit, they're not going to start now!" Seriously, though... Try to imagine how that convo went, with a competent well-meaning writer in the room. #1: "we keep making money y do anything" #2: "MOAR" Obviously-fictional Bethesda employee #3, who is well-meaning and a competent writer: "Do you guys know what this new game needs??? _Literally no characters._ The backstory is just the thing that gets in the way from pressing the PUNCH BUTTON!" #1: "woah there, turbo - we don't want to go promising functioning melee mechanics"
@@Odeon1970 it's the most surface level games on earth, everything in Skyrim had to be approved by some corpo businessman to appeal to the largest possible demographic, you know what? You can have these games, no problem, but it is a problem when you take an established, great, complex RPG franchise and water it down to something as braidead as Skyrim, it's still fun, but only as a game you play when you are tired and want to turn your brain off.
@@Odeon1970 It is a problem, if you have taste - and appreciate an actual RPG. "half of your attacks not working" That's every Bethesda game, pay attention. Go look at the posts for any quest in any Bethesda game... The bug list on each of those, is about as long as the bug list for actual games. You speak about Morrowind from a position of ignorance and malice, in order to justify your complete lack of standards - as every RPG element of your RPG has become demonstrably worse, for decades. Grow. Up.
@@Odeon1970 Dude, the bugs was in reference to attacks missing... omg. Here's a hint: Bugs, mechanics functioning improperly, can come in many forms. Like in Skyrim, when you have to literally edit audio files on your drive - in order for the door to unlock in the catacombs under Riften, in order to get that old Blades guy... Because the format, of the installed files, was wrong. BTW - I never had to edit audio files on my drive, in order to progress the main storyline in Morrowind... (although there may have been something with a DLC, I don't actually remember) "snobby about taste or whatever" Dude, it's not my fault (or a matter of opinion/debate) - that Bethesda games have been getting, exclusively, dumber. Every RPG element gets less, smaller - while the "world" itself gets more empty. We want that lore depth, and world-building that there was 20 years ago - with the mechanics that you're *_pretending_* that we loathe, from today. I don't care if you like cookie clicker. I DO care, that you need to talk shit about anybody that doesn't care for the canon being dumbed down to goddamn YOLO. You're the reason that 76 had no NPC's. Or standards of any kind. Congratulations.
to be honest, i enjoyed skyrim far more than kingdom come deliverence, the witcher 3 or elden ring. i think the main reason was that the world of skyrim felt more immersive because you could go anywhere, talk to anyone, pick up anything... it was really interactive. the other games feel like there is an invisible wall between you and the game.
Well, everything is subjective, it really depends on the individual to enjoy or dislike things, in my case i love the Monster Hunter franchise for it's combat system and progression system, it feels fun, engaging and with soul, but those same reasons are the point in why a lot of people hates it.
Kingdom come felt like an unfinished game for me, and witcher 3 is just a linear quest after quest after quest with the story revolving around geralt as well, I treat witcher 3 as a linear lore game, all in all, items are dumb and boring in all of these games, combat is dull as well, no challenge whatsoever apart from enemies being damage sponges and one shot you, some of us know that those are just artificial difficulty
I've never played Skyrim (somehow, I'm one of the few people who just never got around to playing it), but I found this video really intriguing because I've recently been playing No Man's Sky - and virtually every point raised here exactly mirrors the thoughts I've been having about why that game feels so empty to me. For instance, the way that the biggest flaw is that it is a game where you can **go anywhere and do anything**. In other words, that it's a game where no matter where the player goes, they will always see the same stuff, and nothing can ever be designed otherwise. The isotropic expanse of content sludge. And now I'm wondering what was *Skyrim's* excuse, since all of its content actually was manually designed by humans.
people bought it and still defend it. so they never had to make any excuses and were given the green light to continue making vapid mediocre garbage and then they assaulted us with fallout 4.
At least NMS is getting free updates and bug fixes.. literally can't say the same for Skyrim here. Which would be EASIER to fix I'd imagine with it being an objectively smaller game.
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
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
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
@@dovahkiinskywalker3607 Your name invalidates all opinions on this topic. Definition of bias.
Even _if_ Skyrim is 127.9% relevant to us and we're actually Skyrim fanboys, does that nullify the point? Let me thi- _no, it doesn't._
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
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
My honeymoon phase with Skyrim was shattered when I killed the f*cking emperor and there was no effect on the world other than a few lines of guard dialogue.
Another honorable mention is the fact that you’re forced to join the thieves guild as part of the main quest, despite playing as a lawful good warrior with zero inclination to threaten or rob innocent citizens.
I dont think you're forced to join the thieves guild, iirc you can just walk past the ragged flagon and go to esbern without triggering any dialogue with brynjolf, though the game wants you to talk to him, which is a different issue.
I had what I call Skyrim zombiosis. I didn’t care if elements were shit because it was fun mindlessly killing the same enemies over and over in cool armour. I was one of those Chinese kids scrolling an iPad in their sleep.
It wasn’t until I played actual RPG games that I realised just how shallow Skyrim really was. Even for the time it came out it was outdated. Hard to believe I put so many hours into that game, I can never go back to it.
Just killing the emperor shouldn't have that much impact on a world in reality, this isn't caesar's legion that reigns by 1 individual
@@boglurker2043 Problem is most of those "actual RPG games" are shallow too. They'll come with a strong narrative and lackluster gameplay, or an empty world, or a half-baked open world. Witcher 3 is often heralded as a masterpiece, but something about it feels wrong to me. The graphics are superb, the story is great, and the world just feels dull.
1: You can wipe out the dark brotherhood
2: Wipe out the thieves guild too!
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.
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.
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
Morrrowind is 22 years old, I'm sure 98% of the people that worked on that game either don't work in the industry any more or moved on, the notion that Bethesda still has these people on staff is ludicrous.
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
Skyrim: 😍
Skyrim but in space: 🤬
@@valeriansamborski5844 I mean, I'm guilty myself of putting god knows how many hours into Skyrim and FO4, despite disliking the main storylines from the get go. Guess I'ts just a brain-off wander into unknown game, and maybe my tastes changed over time, or due to market saturation. To put it into a metaphor - eating a burger or a hotdog from time to time is perfectly fine - it tastes good enough and (used to be) cheap enough, but if you base your diet exclusively on it, well that ain't healthy
"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
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.
"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
@@zehkiel8018 They learnt that it sold lots, based on hype.
Bethesda is truly incapable of developing a game with a good, non linear story and engaging, non repetitive gameplay. At least Skyrim had a high fantasy setting which masked these flaws. When you apply the exact same principles in a dystopian/sci fi setting (like Fallout and Starfield) it becomes immediately noticeable because the visuals and gameplay cannot engage you long enough. You really CAN'T have an RPG in space or a post apocalyptic wasteland engage the player without an interesting, well-written story.
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.
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
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
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
Oblivion and Fallout 3 were my first steps into those worlds. New Vegas was also incredible, dunno if it's nostalgia. But I truly believe they were better games than what came after. Skyrim and 4 just, felt hollow, like one of iD's tech demo games lol
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)
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.
"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.
tell that to the thousands of people still playing it a decade later …
@@Jdudec367 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.
This sentence kinda opened my eyes. Whenever I start a new playthrough, it's merely my expectations and my personal roleplay idea that keep me going. I allmost allways stop at like level 20, because there isn't anything left to do at that point. I'm usually powerful enough and I usually replayed anything that I wanted to see. All there still is are NPC's that babble the same bullshit from the first levels. Nothing ever changes, NPC's don't recognize me as an archmage, legendary nord warrior or Dark Brotherhood serial killer. I'm just a floating head with weapons that no one else even uses in the game. Great.
I'm such a huge Elder Scrolls fanatic and I guess it's just hard to accept that the magic can go so easily.
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.
"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.
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.
I mean, Immersive Sim is a close relative of RPG. Arx Fatalis, for example, is both IS and RPG. Dark Messiah is an Immersive Sim with RPG elements. Genres are very close even on paper, thematically - in both of them you play a role of the hero which partakes in some sort of adventure and you have obstacles to overcome, while gradually improving both your character and your own skill in the game. The only difference is that RPGs are generally more story-driven (Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Gothic) and Immersive Sims are more gameplay-focused (aforementioned Dark Messiah, Thief or System Shock). It doesn't mean that you can't have both (Dishonored, which I personally consider to be Immersive Sim, has a solid story, accomopanying good gameplay) but that, for me, just proves a point of them being really close genras
I did not expect to randomly appear in this video. I’m one of the blurry bodies in the background of the Preston Garvey meme video. It was filmed after a Fallout cosplay shoot and I was loitering in the background in my Raider cosplay. Rip Erik/Preston. He was a great guy.
"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
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
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
Part of the problem with the characters is that all the colors are muted and most of the races look identical. So, it's hard to tell them apart.
You can tell the difference if you're racist
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
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 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.
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.
Getting mad about the combat in a mostly first person game, then saying the 3rd person RPGs did combat better is hella based.
This. The bigger problem with Skyrim is how it diluted most modern RPGs into being sloppy action games that wear the mask of an RPG because many AAA studios saw how Bethesda got away with it.
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
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"
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
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.
you have to... and then ppl cry when they min-max the single player game that is boring.
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.
@@Last_Resort991 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.
@@Last_Resort991 "It prevents you from being op in the beginning"
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!
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
In Elden Ring i found a knight with a shield and he killed me 7 times.
I came back latter with a better sword and did more damage. I died one more time but then realized i started to remember his moves. I realized with my new strength and battle iq, i wouldnt even need the upgraded weapon but it would help me defeat him faster. Now im so high damage and skill level wise that he blends in with any other basic enemy.
Now imagine if i killed the shield guy first try just because we both hit each other with pool noodles until one of us died. Then i come back to the same respawned enemy, 200 hours later. And we do the same thing again except i beat him in 9 hits and not 12, because of level scaling.
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.
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
1:07:36 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.
I'm just so glad baldurs gate 3 came out alongside starfield, I think bethesda needed to be humbled.
Humbled? Judging from how they reacted to negative reviews on Steam, I think they are still high on their own farts to this day.
They were already humbled when The Witcher 3 came out and didn't cha ge their course
Yeah, such an immersive game where every character wants to have sex with you regardless of age, sex, or species. FFS.
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.
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.
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.
@@Niptonian9551 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
There's a DLC sized Mod coming out called Skyrim The Extended Edition, it literally rewrites and adds new things to the main story and adds more character writing to the characters in the main story.
Honestly, we needed a mod like this over fancy visuals and souls like combat animations years ago.
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.
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.
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.
The weirdest thing about Skyrim for me is how people hate on Fallout 4 for how it feels,but seem to allow Skyrim which imo feels worse than Fallout 4 to get away freely with poor choices.
That and the fact Skyrim never fully fixed the bugs itself in the 10+ years after release so game and quest breaking bugs are still in it that nowadays would get you a never trust badge from the masses...But,it's okay cause it's Skyrim or a Bethesda game and they'll have modders to fix the issues...
And because you're a bitter person
My feelings about fallout 4 are influenced my personal betrayal tbh and im not afraid to admit that. But to be fair, i also never really cared about skyrim in a meaningful way like fo4 cuz i got bored of it rather than frustrated
@@daniellatth2937do you even know what that means? Literally nothing about his comment was bitter. You're actually the bitter one here because you're just being negative for no reason
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.
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 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
"Vast as an ocean, deep as a puddle"
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.
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??
I think the main problem with Skyrim is that it's just been around too long. I don't think I started seeing Skyrim hate until it was many years in and TES6 was long due to come out. Keep something around long enough and it's inevitable people will begin to dissect every single flaw and begin to hate it.
Yeah ik what you mean- even though they did strip back features from previous ES entries we’ve legit had 10 years to mull over skyrim and pick it apart over and over. But honestly was pretty decent for a game that came out in 2011 not a good ES game per say compared to what came before but still a decent experience for a game in 2011.
the game was "right for its time". in 2011, of course skyrim was considered mindblowing. if the game was released in 2022, it would've flopped so hard
tons of people hated Skyrim immediately. oblivion was substantially more interesting and Morrowind was better in almost every way (except graphics and combat, but Skyrim combat sucks anyway so whatever)
That isn't necessarily true. A real masterpiece stands the test of time and ages like fine wine. Skyrim has not done this.
@misssteak1290 Nah, not technically. None of its mechanics are impressive, they're simply put together in this (then unique) original format of Bethesdas action rpgs; it's no-longer unique, so the lack of quality of their individual mechanics now shows up. Heck, even if the format was still unique... the many titles it simplifies the mechanics of still do them better anyway
The biggest problem I personally have with RPGs is that Skyrim is the only one that really scratches an itch that I get. The Witcher 3 is one of the best RPGs ever made and has an amazing story, but I really want to make my own character and have my own story. It's the same for Kingdom come Deliverance, I'm a huge medieval nerd so I loved the game and I'm excited for the sequel, but at the end of the day you're still Henry of Skalits, and even though there's a lot of ways to complete the missions, you're pretty much forced to play as the knight in shining armor. Elden ring is the probably the closest to the RPG I want, and I've heard nothing but good things about it, but I'm not a huge fan of Dark Souls combat, and the lack of a clear story kills it for me.
I guess I'm really looking for that D&D game, that has a good story, and let's you play the way you want to play. Baldurs gate 3 is the closest I've seen a game get to that, and I'm really enjoying playing it rn, but it's a top down game and I want that 1st/3rd person gameplay.
Just imagine how cool a game with BG3 details and immersion, paired with Mordhau or Chivalry 2's gameplay, mixed with some magic and fantasy thrown in. It would be a super ambitious game, but man I would play the absolute hell out of it
I couldn't agree more. I want to play a game where I can create my own character, invest in them, make impactful decisions using non voiced dialogue, and has 3rd person mode with great combat. I really don't see the point in going through the story, creating your character, equipping loot but most of the time you never see it.
Thats why I was jealous of the witcher. The witcher is great, it has everything and geralt is cool, but I want a game like that with your own character. They kind of tried with cyberpunk but its signifigantly worse for the reasons mentioned above. I also won't play outer wilds because first person only. It seems to be an unpopular game type, still...
I have reccomendations for you.
1-Earlier elder scrolls games
2-Fallout new vegas
3-Dragon's Dogma
4-Dragon Age series(older ones are better rpgs, newer ones the rpg elements don't seem to be as great but the combat is more modernized)
5-Mass effect
6-I also want to try remnant from the ashes and its sequel
7-Way of the Samurai series
But sadly they don't make games for us. I would love if they made a yakuza style game where you had your own character instead of the main ones.
Skyrim literally hides under the ''I want my own story'' argument, to mask its lifeless, blank player character as an immersive rpg
You don't have a character in Skyrim, sure on the surface, it lets your imagination to fill in the gaps.
But because you don't have a personality that is imprinted in the game, they're just making an inauthentic, lifeless interaction with other characters in game.
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
Skyrim, also known as "Baby's first RPG."
Nice, baby’s first sarcastic comment
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
56:50 you actually did trick me, ive never done Caits companion quest XD
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?
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".
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.
How can bethesda bootlickers defend anything this company does? Their writer literally has the motto "keep it simple stupid". I dont get how ppl dont immediately reject a game with that lack of passion amd talent
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 -____-
With Gothic 1, Piranha Bytes proved that they could squeeze an entire game into the sice of a house 😅 With tons and tons of amazing secrets and hidden gems and hours and hours of excitement 🤗
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
[Massive rant about Bethesda:]
First off, I’ll start off strong by saying - Skyrim never truly stuck with me. I’m also a RPG nerd, which is why I love RDR2, and even cyberpunk 2077. Those are my absolute favorite games.
My opinion on Skyrim:
- I played around 20 hours before dropping it, not because of the graphics, animations or ui. But because of lack of story, repetitiveness and overhyped, blatant lies.
I know I’ll be targeted for “not playing enough” or “I need to explore enough to be immersed” etc, but I’ve just never liked Bethesda.
I’m here to explain why:
- I tried games like Fallout 4, Elder Scrolls and SKYRIM..and in my opinion, didn’t even try to catch me and think “woah, this world is amazing. I wanna explore and play more!”
It’s most often a forced story followed by a copy paste formula of “Help me/us save this, do this quest, you’re now a hero or legend”.
- After finishing these games, nothing else is available to do. Unlike other companies I love, (CDPR), Bethesda is making money over something that’s just..meh.
And it’s sad.
- Just look at their newest game Starfield, it’s a pattern I’ve noticed Bethesda doing every single time, making a entirely different game feel just the same.
And everyone is noticing it, making fan’s incredibly dissatisfied and disappointed, leading to people not even getting excited to see what’s next.
Gaming have become this..lifeless, money grabbing alternative to companies like Bethesda.
- It’s not actually about: Loving and having fun creating a game, enjoying a game for hours, getting immersed in every single aspect of the world, just enjoying the view, and do simple, everyday things.
It’s becoming more about:
- Getting the game developed as quickly as possible, hating what you develop and get no support whatsoever, overworking on a game thats tested awfully, releasing it half baked and just hope it brings in money.
There’s no balance in work environment, so of course the game will preform terribly.
- Fans will become furious because they got lied to, thinking they were gonna get their dream game, and just hopelessly watches the monstrosity in front of them..as you pay 20$ for just the game itself.
You play it, and process everything..a few minutes or hours in, and you just notice: “ITS NOT EVEN FINISHED.”
Or the game is finished, but is left out. Leaving hundreds of bugs behind, for the modders to sweep up after them.
- Sadly, this is the state of most games nowadays. Especially when it comes to Bethesda and Tom’s ridiculous decisions, followed by nothing but lies.
// From a loving RPG player like myself..just do better Bethesda. I can’t let the rpg genre die out like this.
- And Tom Howard need to educate himself more on management, making game development more efficient and fun.
(Having that it mind leads to:
More game developers creating NEW games from scratch,
actually like what they’re working on,
new ui formulas,
Unforgettable stories,
unique gameplay elements,
a comfortable and very immersive environment,
and most of all..
simple, quality of life details.)
THATS what’s important to both the company itself, and the fans supporting this..mess called Bethesda.
- Never forget about what made rpg’s fun, and most of all, enjoyable and very immersive.
All the best lore this universe has to offer is contained outside the game in between time jumps.
Elder Scrolls extended lore is some of the coolest shit ever, and yet they pick and choose the most boring stuff in existence to actually include in game...
UPDATE after watching this vid:
I agree 100% on everything said.
I will present my opinion before watching this retrospective:
Dialogues don't matter. There is actually barely any personality to your character.
Decisions don't have much weight.
Guilds are laughable.
Skyrim civil war is a joke.
Dungeons are lame.
It's a good walkin simulator but a terrible RPG.
I have never finished it as I was triggered by how the world just ignores my decisions.
Like what the hell? I have joined the Assassin's Guild, killed the Emperor and then joined the Imperium to fight for. There was not a single mention of THE GODDAMN EMPEROR dying.... And the entire war was fought by like 20 dudes top. Laughable even by 2010.
ua-cam.com/video/4qBNRbWahzk/v-deo.html guards make a snark remark about how poor of a job you, the Emperor's guards, are at doing your job
Agree no personality anywhere and has the same issue as fallout 4 no choices, it's quest reward is good, faliure bad, save every ten seconds and if you turn up at a guild your in charge (which means nothing) instantly
The civil war mentions the passing of the emperor if you killed him
Something worth noting about your final sentence, Skyrim is now old enough people explain away flaws due to the game’s age. I’ve unironically seen people say it was revolutionary for it’s time and we can’t hold it up to modern expectations. Like we couldn’t and didn’t do better back in 2010.
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!
Vanilla skyrim is l a m e, it's now basically DIY game where you need to painstakingly construct your own experience with mods. It does real wonders, IF you do it right.
WIth this said, I have just disabled 150+ mods to find out what makes my GUI disappear and in the end realized that it was "hud opacity" setting in default ass menu.
I somewhat disagree with the mods. You can fix many things, but the bad quests and Boring characters will stay.
The horrible combat you can only change so much.
And if you have 800 mods installed and say, now Skyrim is great, is it even skyrim anymore?
That's a ship if Theseus situation.
You have a ship, ship starts to get old and you have to replace the parts until nothing original is left and everything is replaced. Is it still the ship of Theseus? Is Skyrim still Skyrim after 800 mods?
@@DieEineMieze Yep, I agree. Nothing's gonna change core characters and stories. Boring quest with ENB
eshade
tx\fancy models is still boring.
@@OTVALSKY I highly recommend the full conversion mod Enderal.
It offers a completely new story with fascinating characters, meaningful choices, and diverse side quests. Real classes and even hybrid classes.
It's available for free from their site. It's incredible that such a huge and complete conversion is free.
For every fan of complex RPGs and even hardcore CRPGs, I dare say that Enderal does not live up to that kind of complexity, and neither does it need to.
When I was younger, I always got bored by Skyrim rather fast (70 hours was my longest playtrough) but gave it some tries to see what everyone is talking about.
For everyone that likes Skyrim Idea but feels it lacks massively, Enderal is the answer.
It's what Skyrim wishes to be, a deep and interesting RPG.
@@OTVALSKY And of course the landscape is different too. You may recognize some assets, buts that's the nature of the thing. It's an own world and in my opinion, very much improved. Like no comparison.
I wish the dragon stuff was either not in the game at all or used much much more sparingly.
The thalmor stuff has the potential to be infinitely more interesting, or at the very least way less player character-aggrandizing.
Not to mention how much it really takes me out of it when the dragons are touted as the ancient wise overlords that once ruled all other races, only for them to fight me every with the same level of strategy of any other NPC in the game.
It's so often too. Like, almost every other time I walk through the woods, one appears for no reason and attacks, only to then get distracted by a wolf halfway through the fight and break off to kill it instead of me.
Edit: I'm glad you touched on that. It's a shame we got this shoehorned main story when the pieces for a good one were there.
Man really went from making anime abridged series to a comprehensive take down of one of the largest gaming feanchises ever just for the fuck of it. Love that
For me, Skyrim's biggest problem (this goes for all ES games really) is mechanically you have seen pretty much everything the game has to offer in the first hour. All the weapons feel the same. The spells have only a handful of options with assorted flavors. The perks are pretty bland and while some of them can be cool and unique they realistically will rarely find use. Even the enemies boil down to being very similar. Doesn't matter if it's a dragon breathing fire on me or a random bandit casting flare, it's the same mechanically.
All of this could be forgiven if the rest of the game was better but it sadly just isn't. The main story is "ok" but all of the guild quests feel underwhelming and a step back compared to Oblivion. The side quests are in a similar spot and I can't say the "radiant" quests inspire me to go exploring either. Gear progression is as vanilla as it comes with very few actually unique items and 90% of them being staves. The constant reused lines of dialog and voice acting instantly dissolves whatever immersion you have.
Skyrim feels like they put a ton of effort into the first 3-5 hours of gameplay and then said "fuck this too much work" and padded out the rest of the game. There's just no soul and it really just is the most watered down action game masquerading as an RPG.
I'd argue the mechanical depth is there for Morrowind and Daggerfall, even if it's just how batshit broken they can be at times. Your criticisms of Skyrim are spot on, however. It feels like they made the "Helgen > Riverwood > Bleak Falls Barrow > West Tower" experience as a proof-of-concept, then decided doing anything like that again would be too much effort... and even THAT felt really shallow and rail-roady.
Lmaooio did you even play the game? You obbiously have a terrible taste in games 😂
Antediluvian is such a good way to describe Thief
I saw someone once describe Skyrim as "lazy gaming for lazy gamers."
And I couldnt agree more. I tried to get into it several times and just couldnt stay motivated after levelling my character to 37
Yep. To me it all boils down to gamemechanics, in particular gamemechanics that fill the niche of roleplaying which is centered around allowing the agency of a player (and his/her character) creating and experiencing their own path, open up or close down pathways whether they be areas, enemies, npc's, quests, resources, fortune, difficulties, etc,... In essence create their own story via ways of character building and progression and interactivity with the world which is checked against your character "skills". Skyrim has none of that. A mage can't do mage things that a barbarian can't, a thief can't steal fortune that a alchemist can't, a barbarian can't craft gear that a mage can't. This lack of meaningful character building and choices extends to everything. You can't side with Alduin, you can't become a Greybeard, you can't devote your life to the Brotherhood, you can't become an imperial spy to destroy the thiefs guild,... nothing in this game matters, The "biggest choice" is whether to side with Stormcloaks or the Empire, and it just changes some of the enemies you fight from blue to red or vice versa, it's completely inconsequencial, it doesn't make certain parts of the game hard or easy. Do you want to be accepted in an orc stronghold, just go collect some random loot from a random dungeon, or be an orc, that's about the deepest roleplaying the game has to offer.
Very well said.
YES! Dude finally someone worded it in a way I simply couldn’t without delving into various aspects of WHY there’s no RP potential. This games overhyped.
What precisely is supposed to prevent a barbarian from learning magic in the Elder Scrolls universe?
@@dandre3K Not much besides a lack of intelligence and experience with magic.
@@dandre3K bruh, a lot.
I hear Eldin Rings had a HUGE amount of copy pasted dungeon/loot caves in it...
it does and its a common critiscism
Yeah but saying it's HUGE is definitely not true, it's huge by most standards, but compared to everything else in the game, the dungeons and caves aren't even important. The caves are also decently unique, they just have the same looking environment so it kinda feels the same after a while, the dungeons definitely are repetitive tho.
My biggest complaint is that you can basically do anything, and nobody really reacts. You can be a dark brotherhood speaker, archmage of the college, leader of the companions, a jarl of every district, a high ranking government official, theives guild leader, master vampire, and dragonborn all in one playthrough. It really breaks the immersion for me.
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.
Playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance on Hardcore was the greatest adventure I've ever had in a video game. So fucking good.
I've said this before in other Skyrim critiques, Bethesda never really evolved past dungeon crawlers, they just slapped an open world map onto their dungeon crawlers with some really fantastic art and environment direction. They're pretty good at environmental storytelling but pretty bad at quest and story writing. Their decisions for how you should *feel* in their world is really great, but their ability to deliver on that feeling is minimal at best. You crawl the same dungeons, fighting the same enemies and all just to get the same meaningless loot. Fallout is the same way. I'm glad we are seeing a shift away from open maps. I prefer a slightly more linear/zone focused story telling for most RPGs, personally.
i wouldn't call small eastereggs good environmental storytelling
Recently been playing cyberpunk 2.0 and after experiencing some story character's animations, well written personalities i immediately tought about how shallow npcs are in bethesda's games like skyrim, fallout 4 etc
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.
The thing about characters is very true. I tried to think of a story without characters, and what immediately came to mind was “There will come soft rains” - but then I remembered that it doesn’t lack characters. One could argue that the house is a character, but what really drives the story home is the part with the dog. Before that it was gloomy, but the dog made it depressing.
It’s amazing that they managed to take memorable characters like Sheogorath and make them utterly forgettable.
I don’t really remember Sheogorath’s quest in Skyrim. I think there was a tea party and a dream sequence, which sounds cool, but I cannot remember the plot at all.
Meanwhile I remember Big Head and his search for the Fork of Horripilation really well. The Shivering Isles overall was really memorable, so it’s jarring that we went from that to… well Skyrim.
Also the reason Oblivion’s voice acting was all over the place is because the actors were given the script with the lines sorted alphabetically. As in, they weren’t really handed a script, rather just a list of lines.
Great video! A small suggestion I would make for future vids is to amplify your audio more. I had to play the video at max volume and then got ear blasted by any ad that played.
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
Personal take, as a indie developer who's been doing this for 5 years, currently making a living off my games, and has worked for some big studios briefly, the thing that I personally believe makes skyrim so great isn't that it does ANYTHING particularly better than any other game, it's the fact that they were one of the first games to do it all at once. Everything is super surface level, and there isn't a lot of nuance and intricacies in the game design, but surprisingly that adds even more value to the game, as it makes the game accessible to a MUCH wider audience. It's astonishing how many people who haven't played many games, have Skyrim as their favorite game of all time. And it makes sense if you think about the simplicity of the game, and how accessible it is for such a wide audience. All of your points are valid after watching the video, but I think this game weather they intended for it or not, was made for the average gamer, or even the people who are on the fence about games, to get them to play games. I personally agree with a lot of your takes, and I would love more nuance and fleshed out ideas in the next installment, but truth be told, those things existing isolates the game from a very big demographic of people, and I don't expect Bethesda, especially after getting acquired by Microsoft, to change their design choices in such a risky way. 10/10 video though, and I agree with everything you said.
It's legitimately insulting that Bethesda leaned more into braindead "rpgs" when they already made a really good rpg, morrowind. I know morrowind was difficult to sell to the mainstream, but if they kept going with it can you imagine how good the latest games would be?
"can you imagine how good the latest games would be?"
The problem is, that they couldn't.
Honestly, I don't think it's just professional laziness...
I don't think whatever talent was left at Bethesda had the chops to craft any more, or better, stories.
It's the only explanation for how they've behaved since then...
Now they're releasing games without any NPC's at all...
Because they're nakedly trying to figure out if the current generation of pay pigs, actually, have ANY standards to speak of.
Bethesda employee #1, aka incompetent sack of shriveled dicks: "Well, these idiots keep buying the same game over and over again..."
Bethesda employee #2, aka recently-failed, wall street broker: "The sales have taken a 2.3% dip, and China is Daddy."
#1: "WAIT. What if we just make a "new" game, but we literally don't put any work into it - and just market it like a KISS concert???
#2: "How would we pretend to make a new game? And we don't have a lot of background in merchandise, I'm not sure th-"
#1: "Our games have had steadily less content for the past 20 years... We'll just mod FO4 to look like a slightly different environment, without NPC's or anything that players would look for. And merchandise is easy - our customers are so goddamn stupid they'll even believe that the entire planet had a canvas shortage, when we blatantly stiff them on the collector's edition. Because we're OBVIOUSLY too goddamn cheap to give them a canvas bag. OBVIOUSLY."
#2: "You may have something there... We've never seen any self-respect shown on the face of any of our fans. And goddamnit, they're not going to start now!"
Seriously, though...
Try to imagine how that convo went, with a competent well-meaning writer in the room.
#1: "we keep making money y do anything"
#2: "MOAR"
Obviously-fictional Bethesda employee #3, who is well-meaning and a competent writer: "Do you guys know what this new game needs??? _Literally no characters._ The backstory is just the thing that gets in the way from pressing the PUNCH BUTTON!"
#1: "woah there, turbo - we don't want to go promising functioning melee mechanics"
@@Odeon1970 it's the most surface level games on earth, everything in Skyrim had to be approved by some corpo businessman to appeal to the largest possible demographic, you know what? You can have these games, no problem, but it is a problem when you take an established, great, complex RPG franchise and water it down to something as braidead as Skyrim, it's still fun, but only as a game you play when you are tired and want to turn your brain off.
@@Odeon1970 It is a problem, if you have taste - and appreciate an actual RPG.
"half of your attacks not working"
That's every Bethesda game, pay attention.
Go look at the posts for any quest in any Bethesda game...
The bug list on each of those, is about as long as the bug list for actual games.
You speak about Morrowind from a position of ignorance and malice, in order to justify your complete lack of standards - as every RPG element of your RPG has become demonstrably worse, for decades.
Grow. Up.
@@Odeon1970 Dude, the bugs was in reference to attacks missing... omg.
Here's a hint:
Bugs, mechanics functioning improperly, can come in many forms.
Like in Skyrim, when you have to literally edit audio files on your drive - in order for the door to unlock in the catacombs under Riften, in order to get that old Blades guy... Because the format, of the installed files, was wrong.
BTW - I never had to edit audio files on my drive, in order to progress the main storyline in Morrowind... (although there may have been something with a DLC, I don't actually remember)
"snobby about taste or whatever"
Dude, it's not my fault (or a matter of opinion/debate) - that Bethesda games have been getting, exclusively, dumber.
Every RPG element gets less, smaller - while the "world" itself gets more empty.
We want that lore depth, and world-building that there was 20 years ago - with the mechanics that you're *_pretending_* that we loathe, from today.
I don't care if you like cookie clicker.
I DO care, that you need to talk shit about anybody that doesn't care for the canon being dumbed down to goddamn YOLO.
You're the reason that 76 had no NPC's.
Or standards of any kind.
Congratulations.
@@Odeon1970 I'm not sure that demonstrating your illiteracy was the mic drop that you were going for...
to be honest, i enjoyed skyrim far more than kingdom come deliverence, the witcher 3 or elden ring. i think the main reason was that the world of skyrim felt more immersive because you could go anywhere, talk to anyone, pick up anything... it was really interactive. the other games feel like there is an invisible wall between you and the game.
so basically you just grew up🥲
@@nicklenut999 yeah i thought that might be it
Well, everything is subjective, it really depends on the individual to enjoy or dislike things, in my case i love the Monster Hunter franchise for it's combat system and progression system, it feels fun, engaging and with soul, but those same reasons are the point in why a lot of people hates it.
Kingdom come felt like an unfinished game for me, and witcher 3 is just a linear quest after quest after quest with the story revolving around geralt as well, I treat witcher 3 as a linear lore game, all in all, items are dumb and boring in all of these games, combat is dull as well, no challenge whatsoever apart from enemies being damage sponges and one shot you, some of us know that those are just artificial difficulty
I've never played Skyrim (somehow, I'm one of the few people who just never got around to playing it), but I found this video really intriguing because I've recently been playing No Man's Sky - and virtually every point raised here exactly mirrors the thoughts I've been having about why that game feels so empty to me. For instance, the way that the biggest flaw is that it is a game where you can **go anywhere and do anything**. In other words, that it's a game where no matter where the player goes, they will always see the same stuff, and nothing can ever be designed otherwise. The isotropic expanse of content sludge.
And now I'm wondering what was *Skyrim's* excuse, since all of its content actually was manually designed by humans.
I mean you said it yourself, you've never played Skyrim. I'm sure you'd notice a difference in the degree of substance to the content between games.
people bought it and still defend it. so they never had to make any excuses and were given the green light to continue making vapid mediocre garbage and then they assaulted us with fallout 4.
@@ronnieradontwo skyrim came out in 2011 all the other games this man comparing it too had a decade to learn the mistakes skyrim made that not fair 😂😂
At least NMS is getting free updates and bug fixes.. literally can't say the same for Skyrim here. Which would be EASIER to fix I'd imagine with it being an objectively smaller game.