Except that would likely mean you'd have to burn solitude to the ground, or take an extra 10 minutes to head off to Dragon Bridge or another such town. No thanks. Great idea, but if you want to keep in the attack by Alduin, it's probably a better idea to keep it in a town that's not as interesting as Solitude or Dragon Bridge
Sometimes the best works start with a crushing defeat of a big, prosperous and potentially interesting town, actually. Burning solitude down to the ground could have changed the story significantly AND set a ground work for a place in which the story changes. Maybe the jarl survives with some of her royal guards/court along some survivors and we were then given an opportunity to see a lighter side of the Legion instead of the imperialistic puppets we got while also dealing with storm cloaks and seeing an ugly side to them. Maybe they could be facing sabotage of the thalmor to, forcing us to accept that the real enemy isn't the Imperial Legion or Rebel Stormcloaks, but the racist, nazi-like elves? There are actually possabilities with destroying a major town in a game rather than something mundane. It'd change the story to make it clear to everyone dragons were a major problem, and the writing would also have to be careful about the main character being dragon born. You don't want to mary sue a character, afterall. But again, there isn't anything wrong with destroying a major city in a game. Check out Oblivion or Mass Effect 1. Oblivion had Kvach destroyed at the beginning of the game, just the same we get to see a peaceful, symbolic Eden Prime destroyed and both had interesting plots for it. Skyrim just chose a boring town to avoid consequence, in a way, but it was more it wanted to create a feeling of "Oh Crap!" with a smaller section of the game world.
2019:watching a video about skyrims bad opening me in the next moment:"Hey, you. You're finally awake. You were trying to cross the border, right? Walked right into that Imperial ambush, same as us, and that thief over there."
skyrims intro is not that interesting, but incredebly memorable. outside of those few minutes when youre starting a new game, where youre annoyed af, im pretty sure most ppl think:"yeah, skyrim baby!" i cant think of a better way for the game to start.
@@firefox30570 my #1 complaint is the boring ass road they take you through.. i mean, given the tutorial area, i can see “super big” to “super lame” being a little jarring, but there’s like 3 roads into helgen. Why’d they pick by far the worst one?
One of my favorite mods is one that replaces the opening with one of a few scenarios, most of which dump you in the middle of nowhere with almost no equipment.
A RPG where you start as a nameless person in the middle of nowhere with almos nothing. Sounds like almost every RPG from around 2000. It's really the most lazy ass way of opening, right next to "You are the Choosen One, sent to save as from this unsstoppable threat. You are Dragonborn. *roll in orchestra theme*". Bethesda really sucks at narrative storytelling, animation or cutscenes but are pretty good when it comes to environmental storytelling.
there is a mod that makes you exactly that: not the dragonborn. You can't use/learn shouts and you don't absorb dragon souls I don't know if (and how) that mod changes the story since I don't use it but maybe for you it's worth a try
This is why dnd is fun. You can and will die if you get dumb and over extend past your limits and the reason youre a hero and not the townsfolk is that youre dumb enough to start killing the ankle biter monsters like goblins and kololds which in turn helps you get stronger and learn new tricks to survive more potent threats
I can't agree , what the point in fantasy RPG to not be the choosen one? In this case even lotr sucks because of this reason and I can't find one good fantasy book , movie or game which fit that. For a classic medival simulation yes it can be ok but in a fantasy game ? Being a normal person would just be boring as fuck or would lead to inincoherent moments.
the first ten minutes of skyrim, in the vacuum that i experienced it in, aka, the first time i played, with no prior knowledge of the game. the entire opening cut-scene for me hyped me so far up i felt i could take on the world. it did its job of getting me into the story. after the first time though, it was dull.
Von Neely atleast it was interesting, no intro dialogue or prologue, its just you watching a seemingly ordinary research/experimentation facility, then you did your job, and suddenly aliens and swat units are invading, it really gives you the feel, especially the fact that you can explore the entire facility beforehand
Bartoc I know right and the best part is my choice for being surprised set me in a little campsite all by myself right outside the cave entrance so I got to witness Alduin flying overhead after destroying Helgen so I immediately had good cause to go explore what happened. I love that because it just seems so natural and not forced.
A game shouldn't need mods in order not to be tedious, especially if you simply want to create another character. The very existence of that mod is a testimony to the terrible intro scene Skyrim suffers from.
New Vegas actually did this really well too. Not to many characters. All are main characters. Brilliant vista. Jargon tells you a lot about the world. Boom dead. That was an awesome intro.
Fallout New Vegas' intro was great because it introduced so many things in such little time. From the time you transition from the Lucky 38 to the streets of Vegas, the cutscene enraptures you. As it pans out to the Ranger, you feel chills of excitement, and then as you follow the bullet, those goosebumps intensify. Almost instantly, you want to get that armor and that weapon. As we pan out even further, we see a bull banner. Then, these men in football gear looking like legionaries run by, presumably doing something. Finally, we come to a stop high above all of that. We see a man in a checkered suit, a bound and unconscious person, and several others in strange attire. A man is digging a grave, your grave. Suddenly, a voice-over begins, pulling you into a trance as you listen. You learn your captor's name is Benny, and his associates are Great Khans. He shows you some kind of chip, and then pulls his gun. The music slowly swells as this man says, "Truth is, the game was rigged from the start." A shot rings out, and the screen goes black after bright flash. The player then understands that they were just shot in the head, and that their mission is to get revenge on this bastard. Later, when you fulfill all these goals, it actually feels satisfying. When you kill Benny with his own gun, it feels satisfying. When you get that beautiful NCR Ranger armor and antimaterial rifle, it feels satisfying. New Vegas' intro is what so many games aspire to live up to, but just can't. New Vegas was a Once in a Blue Moon kind of game.
Despite this, I still find Skyrim's opening one of the most memorable I've played. Probably because it was my first AAA game. But that music at the start, with the drums and trumpet the moment the title fades in, it gets me excited.
8:33 "by then we are 20 minutes into the game." Me: yeah........only 20 minutes......not 3 hours leveling sneak off the bear or anything like that.....
Why would you need to use the bear? A few power attacks while sneaking against your NPC ally at the start will get you up to almost 100 in sneak in less than an hour, along with whatever other skills you're boosting.
I absolutely hate the Skyrim intro, but for another reason. It takes like 25 to 30 minutes. When I want to create another character I´m like: oh god no And after that, I still have to go to that damn starting village . I wish they made the intro take around 5 minutes and after that you could choose where to go instead of having just one quest that sends you to the starting village.
+Jozef T. You also don't HAVE to go to Riverwood if you don't want to. You could just go get lost in the wilderness and stumble across some random bandits or something. Skyrim gives you the freedom to choose what you want to do... You just have to put up with a lenghty intro and tutorial dungeon first. I see that as a pretty fair trade off. But yes, the intro is quite contrived and could have been done a lot better. At least there's mods that help to fix this and let you start differently.
If you are at the home screen press perispomenom, (wave below escape), and type "cac riverwood" bamn you start immediately with enter. Edit: not sure is it's cac, but you can look it up
The reason I enjoyed the beginning of Skyrim so much is that it began worldbuilding right there. I became immediately invested. It also draws a stark contrast to what is about to happen. It's the calm before the storm. Quiet, serene, and foreboding. I felt unsure of what was about to occur. I was anxious to see where the cart took me. I truly felt like a prisoner on the way to my execution. I think it was well done, but I can see why some people may not enjoy it. I'm reminded of the beginning of the first Half-Life. There was so much tedium and mundanity we were forced to endure before the action kicked in. This allowed for a more jarring contrast. That is, at least in my opinion, what Skyrim did here.
August Break I just don't think skyrim does it as well, and for an execution, particularly the execution of someone as important as ulfric, everyone seems almost bored. Also the music feels wrong
I actually loved the opening of skyrim a lot. I lot and I played both game and I would say skyrim effected much more then call of duty. With music and environment. It's not builded to impress me it's a part of living place and I was a prisoner there who is trying to understand what's going on. I see no problem there. Well in other hand I know not everyone like me. People tend to skip cutscenes which I feel is the biggest sins of rpg playing. But given option to skip at at least 2nd character creation would work.
This was my first Elder Scrolls game ever and I loved the intro. Why? Because I didn't feel like some awesome badass, I felt like a normal person caught up in a bunch of stuff I don't understand and just trying to survive. I found myself just reacting to the world and doing my own thing. I described this game to my friends as a "simulation" because it felt like I was really part of the world. I know there are other ways to start the game with mods now, like being a farmer or huntsman or whatnot but this intro was, IMHO, perfect for the type of game and feel they were going for: start as a no one, become a some one... in your own way.
+Patrick Turc Well said, never thought of it that way. Still, starting as a no-one doesn't have to be an uninspired and dull experience. They could've gone with the naive stranger caught up in a strange and wondrous world right off the bat, without making you wait 20 mins.
+Allan Kant They did that, it's called Daggerfall. You start right in a dungeon and told to find your way out. Or Morrowind where you're given a quick intro to the world and access to a couple quests; where you go from there is your own choice. Or Oblivion where you start out in a random cell being heckled by another prisoner and thrust into a conspiracy against the king within a 10 minute or so tutorial/intro. ES games always have you start as an unknown prisoner, it's their "A long time ago, in a galaxy far away." You can play as the naive stranger through the questions you ask, to the point that asking obvious questions get you amazed remarks as the people can't understand why you don't know current events. Skyrim was marketed to a more general crowd, more so than any ES game before it. The reason why the intro was so long is probably because the general crowd needs the hand holding.
+Patrick Turc Did you ever truly feel special as THE dragonborn though? I mean, you can be the biggest badass in the country, but people rarely treat you differently. Royal children even keep disrespecting you.
+TinyZu I always felt special as the dragonborn when I was dealing with people who recognized me as such like the Graybeards and the Blades, etc. It's a low tech world and news doesn't travel fast, even when it does it doesn't come with videos or pictures. So how is someone I've never met suppose to know I'm the DragonBorn unless he/she's met me before, knows my name, or sees me shout? Also, just because I shout, doesn't mean I'm the DragonBorn (see Ulfric Stormcloak). Respect is earned through deeds, be it slaying a dragon, becoming aThane (also deeds) or beating the opposition into submission. Then people who should know (like guards) treat me with respect (as a Thane, as the DragonBorn, etc). What can I say, it's more of an experience or "simulation" than a "game"...lol.
For the person who makes many characters but hates going through 15 minutes of already known exposition like me: save the game right before the character customization menu. IT REALLY HELPS.
TheGhost325 God yeah, I remember playing the first one. I'd just been watching Band of Brothers and that level were you have to charge across the field to the train station under artillery fire really reminded me of it. Think it was COD 1 anyway.
+TheGhost325 World at war man. That was a hell of a game. Every time I stumble my way onto a buddies consel to play a new C.O.D. game... Guys. The fuck happened?
wow your looking at a different game, instead of looking at the forgoing game, elder scrolls 4 Oblivion or Elder scrolls 3 morrowind. in boith you start as a prisoner. shows how much you know about the series... nothing!
silentlamb21 what im on about, is that they are comparing it to call of duty instead of comparing it to how the series normally start. if they had taken a look at the other elder scrolls games start, they would have seen that the protagonist (you) *always* starts as a prisoner.
+Bjørn Friedrichsen You are severely missing the point. Morrowind was a 5 minute intro. "leave boat, create character, explore" Oblivion and skyrim had painfully long, unskippable tutorial-like intro's.
+Bjørn Friedrichsen In Daggerfall you start as a free man/woman that was shipwrecked on their way to Daggerfall, but it's pretty similar to the other openings.
I liked the intro of Skyrim. It gave me that feeling of rags to riches. The feeling of anticipation. It didn't have to sell me anything, because I, and probably everyone else on this planet, already knew, that Skyrim is frickin' epic. Skyrim was about progression, and in that regards the intro was perfect. Call of Duty was about nonstop-hypermasculine-lock'n'load-action - and the intro demonstrated that pretty well. I enjoyed both immensely.
+Rory Connolly yeah, not to mention that the game doesn't blatantly tell you what those words mean, giving you (if skyrim is your first game) a great curiosity about the game, thing that dark souls completely fails to do with it's much more horrible intro... and they praise dark souls as if it's perfect in game designing.
+Slowpoke Skyrim was my first game and no. Just like it was said in the video, it goes from one ear and right out of the other. Lots of things are said in the prayer so quickly that you can't even sort out what's a town name or the name of a god. As for Dark Souls? Right after character creation, you're shown an ugly jerky-skin version of your character which makes you wonder "What the f*ck happened to me?". Some guy throws a dead body at you, you loot it for keys and walk out a cell. Did he want to help you? Why didn't he just throw the keys? Also, as you walk through the first hall, you can look to your right to see a giant demon. I don't know about you, but that game already had me hooked at that point.
Dark souls actually did the exact opposite for me, after staying like half an hour at trying to make my character look decent then I discover that the whole game i'm gonna see shit? no thanks. also, the dark souls intro that tries to give lore? useless dumb crap that has little to nothing with the game. In skyrim there is a civil war and there are dragons, and you can see it in the intro. In dark souls they talk about fire, disparity and a lot of characters that have little to nothing with the actual game. Basically dark souls tricks you thinking into having a great story while all it has is trying to survive to ring 2 bells. the best intro is one that represents the freaking game to me.
+Slowpoke The intro your talking about is just the two-minute cinematic that's there to set the foundation for understanding the kind of world you're stepping into as well as the mystery surrounding souls. The other twenty minutes of the intro consists of establishing everything else through gameplay. You learn of what's been going on in your absence and your importance involving it. Then, you quickly figure out the difficulty, the death penalties, everything you really need to know so that when you actually get to the meat of the game there's nothing holding you back from victory but your own limitations. I don't see much of anything wrong with it. Also, your description of the story consisting of little more than ringing 2 bells tells me you don't actually know much of the story at all.
Or you could do this: Load up the game Start the tutorial Get bored Screw the tutorial I'm gonna play the real game Get mad at not knowing the controls Angrily play the tutorial complaining the entire time
Personally I recommend: -Download mods. -Craft the best possible Skyrim experience yourself. -Get sidetracked and suddenly there are flying trains everywhere trying to kill you.
Ahh CoD4. The game that skyrocketed Call Of Duty's massive popularity and imo probably the best game in the series. Seriously the campaign mode in that was amazing. I know everyone talks about the multiplayer but 4 had the best story of all of them. And let's not forget the best CoD mission ever. "All Ghillied Up"
+Oden667 IMO Cod4 has the best story and MW2 has the most fun multiplayer. But seriosuly after MW2 (argubly black ops 1) it all went downhill.. Fucking futuristic bullcrap. From cod we want modern or old wars, not halo!
+TechniLog (DafaqVidz) Pfft, it all went to hell when it got popular. Fucking modern bullcrap. CoD is about WW2, not all this other bullshit! See? I can make up meaningless opinions too. Also, the stuff in AW and BLOPS3 is stuff the army is actually working on today, so... yeah. I think you're wrong even based on your own logic. The exosuits in AW were a bit over the top though. The ones in BLOPS3 are much more realistic.
It would probably have been best if the intro to this was the way it is, but the player was executed. Then, the player is asked to make a character, who is totally unrelated, but much later in the game, the death of the first player character becomes really important to the story somehow.
φ First-order logic That is quite a great idea for a intro, and Skyrim would benefit much more from it. then again... is a Bethesda Game, Mods to skip the intro are already made and perfected to such a level that people just remember the intro because it was so annoying...
It's sad, really. I would love being a video game writer to be honest. There just aren't good stories out there unless you dig in the visual novel section or go read a book...
φ First-order logic I dunno if I agree with that. There are a lot of non-VN games games out there with good writing and narratives. Have you seriously not played a game with a good story before?
Oh. Well I don't know exactly what you've been playing, but that minority of well written games is a part of a much, much larger group that's out there. Been playing games a long time, and not once have I tasted a shortage of well-written games to jump into. 's why I have pretty strong feelings about gaming being a very capable storytelling medium, about as capable as any other one.
I think the roughest part of the Skyrim intro scene was the lack of exploration with the fighting mechanics, namely Magic for me. By the time I had walked out of Helgen into true Skyrim, my play style had already developed around a sword, which doesn't suit the high elf i had made AT ALL. I have tried working with magic, but it feels unnatural to me. I actually considered resetting my game and designing a new character better suited to the style I had developed. I think there was an opportunity lost in the first 20 minutes, especially to someone new to the Elder Scrolls universe, where fighting style was first developed. Some introduction to the use of magic in the beginning may have significantly altered how I experience Skyrim. Just my thought on the matter. I might add the "Alternate Opening" mod and start a new character and see where that leads me. EDIT/UPDATE: I made a new character, and uploaded the random start up mod along with the dynamic skills mods. I'm really enjoying it!
I didn't find out about that until MUCH later in the game. If the tutorial scene had offered a moment where using magic was needed so you would have to go to the spell list and equip a spell to use, I think the concept could have been introduced better.
I come back here every couple of years to remind myself how hilarious it is that he said "Dalmoore" after claiming to have played the game for countless hours
I can still remember the feeling I got from watching the start of the game: *from the wagon ride to escaping the cave* "Well it's kinda okay *seeing the player whip out a bow and just go off freely into the wild* "Okay I need to get this game"
You spend a lot of time talking about the first two minutes mechanically, but there is a solid reason that has nothing to do with the core mechanics of the game. The core mechanics of Skyrim are not technically all that fun, but we perceive them to be because they don't need to be explained to you very much, and they fit comfortably in with the rest of the game. There is no complicated combat, just press buttons to kill things. Exploration is not fantastic, but it is nice and it does not need to be explained. You want to go to Whiterun? Just go to Whiterun. So what is left for us? The appeal of Elder Scrolls is immersion. You're supposed to feel like you've been whisked away to some Tolkienesque land full of magic and wonders. People in their own land need not explain things that are commonplace and easy to learn about. Everyone knows who Akatosh is, so you're expected to know too. Skyrim was my first Elder Scrolls game and I understood what was going on, even at age 13. The intro is a slow burn, just like the rest of the game, and after those ten minutes, you come out of a cave, both metaphorically and literally, and you're greeted by the fantastic mountainscapes and everything. Seeing things going on in the background in this situation just wouldn't make sense in terms of immersion.
The first time I ever played Skyrim, I didn't know what to expect. Don't hate me for this but I'd never heard of it and my parents just got it for me for Christmas because they thought it looked like something I would like. And I have to say, that opening nailed it for me. The gradual reveal of the world, the slow, steady build up of tension which results in the dragon arrival and then the epic struggle of feeling trapped but ever so free as you're running from the fire that rains from the sky. Idk, I thought it was brilliant
ericph9 He can't even pronounce Khajiit properly in other videos and they refer to themselves in the third person. I don't think anyone at EC has ever played an elder scrolls title.
Sorry, you're flat out wrong. I think the muted low key beginning of Skyrim is ENTIRELY intentional. It IS to put the later freedom and opening beautiful vistas in contrast. Instead of flashy landscape and cheap spectacle, the intro begins with characters talking about themselves. You meet your temporary companions, the nostalgic Stormcloak talking about a girl he fancied, the pesimistic and unlucky thief and the silent Jarl. You get spectacle LATER, with the dragon attack, because you build up to it. Having a scale of intensity of events is good, you can build up from something, you have reference for the epicness that comes later. Overloading the player with intense and WOW moments from the start is certainly an approach, but I'd not say it's necessarily great, or better than what Skyrim did.
And if a may add, You feel isolated in the opening because you're supposed to, You're a prisoner! Then you escape your execution and with the help of the NPCs you met in the opening sequence (who i must add were there purposely to give you an idea of who you're going to side with when your first decision of the game comes up within 5 minutes) you will slowly go from a prisoner without even the use of your hands to being unshackled, led through the burning village, armed to fight for yourself and then led through the cave where you settle in to your new role as a protagonist who's goal is your own survival and a need to take care of yourself... Then you step out of that cave and you're immediately struck with that incredible feeling of freedom (just as you would if you had actually gone through those events), You see the vast mountains off into the distance and you now realize you're on you're own, FREE to do as you please in this giant world for the first time.
Shaun Davies and may i add CoD might have a good opening but it creates a feeling that will disappear as you play because the game isn't everything that the intro showed you.
I love how Skyrim starts, especially the first time. I love how they had the player focus on the characters around them. I love how they continued The Elder Scrolls theme(at least since Morrowind, not sure about before then) of having the player start as a prisoner. I love how the lore aspects weren't tossed aside just to generate mass appeal, and how when I made new characters later I was able to keep up with the "jargon" because I'd gotten familiar with the game. Also, I may just not be socially adept or something, but I strongly disagree about the prayer and running seeming wrong. This video convinced me more so than before watching that Skyrim had an amazing opening. Skyrim wasn't as action packed in early few minutes of the opening or as unexpected in actually having you die, like the other game you mentioned, but it wasn't supposed to be.
Skyrim's intro was meant to give you two sides of two forces fighting. So its giving you a chance to hear each side of their story from their foot soldiers, notice how Ulfric's mouth is gagged. (more so to keep him from shouting) but it also puts another element into the gameplay and your decision on what side you are going to feel like choosing. The same people that are going to kill the leader of the resistance that is fighting against it, is right there with you on his way to be executed just right along with you, so naturally you would want to help him, to help yourself. Why would you turn around and try to help the same people that just tried to kill you? The main plot of the game is choosing which side you want to fight for, red, or blue. I chose Stormcloaks because they are fighting for what they precive to be right because a foreign force has told them that their ways are wrong, and their ways are right. The basic conflict between humans, trying to force their beliefs onto others even if its not their place to do so. So that is what Skyrim's intro is trying to get across.
Slightlybored First time I didnt know theres an imperial option. You know, they're trying to execute you, then you join the "resistance", help them a bit, so why would you join imperial after that?
I didn't know he was an imperial, I just followed the only guy I could find quickly and later sided with the stormcloaks (because every time I went to solitude everyone attacked me due to a misunderstanding about a pile of guards in the town square)
Modern Warfare also uses the transition from one character to another since it's roots, where the player is in control of different characters throughout the entire game, which makes the intro scene even more spectacular when it reaches the end, following a cohesive system that fits perfectly within the series. I remember when I first played this game my jaw dropped because it was so very well crafted.
I'm looking to start making video games, and my friends and I have talked about doing it for years. I've made it a group mandate that all members of our team will study your videos thoroughly, both Extra Credits and Daniel Floyd channels. You're doing amazing, quality work and, at least in our case, you're helping indie developers a HELL of a lot by teaching us the kinds of things to avoid when making a game. (Skinner boxes for example) Keep up the good work, guys, and thank you so much for doing what you do!
I love the introduction! Yea it's a hassle to get started but it just shows me the beauty of the game to me. It's probably one of most memorable starts to the game and I refuse to hate it because of the joy it brought me. Just my opinion though :)
+Peter Dworzanski Its sad, that people dont have time to feel the environment, the people around you talking about their fate, sitting and waiting for your fate... Today every game needs to start RIGHT away... When I have played Persona 4, till you actually have been able to play it correctly it took 5-7 hours, and HELL I enjoyed that =D At least there are some people thinking the same =)
I love the Skyrim intro! One of the best ones I know. It's kind of boring to do it over and over again when you start new characters, but I really love it, I feel that on the contrary it does everything right: 1) introducing the main antagonist, 2) introducing the main side-story of the rebellion 3) making you excited about what's going to happen and 4) giving you real epic action which, although very easy, let's YOU decide what's going to happen from the very start 5) also it takes you through the tutorial of how the game works in a completely natural way, instead of the forced ways many other games do it
I have to disagree. While I know this channel is more dedicated towards showing how a developing game brings gamers into a more subtle idealistic of the overall product in quality and quantity. I just really need to point this out. Skyrim's story takes place during the Civil War where the Storm Cloaks and Imperials are fighting against one another in a hellish combat when dragons push their way into the middle of the war. I feel like judging the game's intro by itself is not really a fair stance. Granted CoD:MW1's intro was very impressive for an FPS. Let's keep in mind that Skyrim and CoD are two seperate genres. Where Skyrim is a roleplaying, and adventure game, CoD is a shooter, and multiplayer game. With this being said, the game is more direct in the shooter genre because it needs to be more fast paced to keep the player moving and more directed in the way of the action. Where as with Skyrim being a RPG, the game is more based on the 'What's the Lore?' sorta situation. Where throughout the intro, while slow, is meant to incorporate you into the idea of this war as you see the Stormcloaks sent to their death with almost little reason, or maybe the reason (if you side with the Imperials) that the imperials are bringing good upon Skyrim. Like I said, both games I find have amazing intros, but it's like comparing Apples to Oranges. One is meant for a slower style of gameplay where you can take your time, while the other is meant for quicker, much faster gameplay. Therefore, taking your time in Skyrim is a must have in order for the full immersion of an adventurer, while in a shooter you need to be quick for the full immersion of a military solider.
I completely agree with you. This video was made by someone who loves overly dramatic action-filled shooters. I'm not saying Skyrim had a great intro, but it did the job. Not every gamer likes the CoD approach to things.
ps0705 I am by far _no_ fan of CoD. But even I can admit when I see it, that that intro was better than Skyrim's. Skyrim's intro makes me NOT want to replay it. Not every intro _needs_ to be fast-paced, but this was one that did. I mean, they made a dragon burning down a village _boring_. Maybe not on your first playthrough, but on the fourth? It should have been skipable.
***** Yes, you're restricted in certain ways, but it's only as to not mess the story up. RPG stands for Role Playing Game, and every time I pick up Skyrim I can play any role just fine. The only thing the game tells you is you were caught crossing the border of Skyrim during a time of war, implying you're not from Skyrim. Or you had been out of the country for a period of time. I can come up with dozens of viable, fun backstories and characters off the top of my head with that in mind.
shunkwugga I do, and a lot of my friends do. Granted, we're all into role playing games of other types to begin with, like D&D. But I can't imagine playing Skyrim without RPing; it would get boring *fast*. Every time I play Skyrim, I 1) make sure my character eats something substantial at least once a day, 2) make sure my character sleeps each night, and 3) I often won't loot the armor off of dead bodies because realistically, it wouldn't be fitted for my character. So yes, a lot of people _DO_ role play in Skyrim.
TalonSky I'm into D&D as well, but I still have to say that Skyrim, for all of its visual glory, was just too shallow of an experience with me. I do have a tendency to harp on about Morrowind and how much I love it so I won't do that here, but I just felt limited in this game. When Skyrim ended I didn't really care, I wasn't left wanting more, and that, to me, is as big of an indictment of a role playing game as I can think of. When Deus Ex ended, I was sad. I wanted more. When Morrowind ended (the story), I was sad, I wanted more. When Shadowrun Returns (the first campaign) ended, I was sad, and I wanted MOAR!!! I could go on and on, but in my opinion Skyrim was just not a sufficiently interesting place. I'm a lore hound, and I found myself for the first time not caring about the lore in an Elder Scrolls game. Where I feel that Bethesda really went wrong with Skyrim, was that they were trying to go for a really broad audience. When you cast a really wide net, a lot of fish will inevitably slip through said net. I was one of those fish. I was a player with a certain expectation of depth from an Elder Scrolls game who was thoroughly disappointed with the lackluster product I was presented with. I tried. I really did. The intro didn't kill the game for me, the GAME killed the game for me. It went from feeling VERY D&D to feeling just kinda D&D. This game, for me, is the Elder Scrolls equivalent of the edition 4.0 ruleset for D&D. They tried to simplify the game and put more of a focus on core mechanics, but in doing so, lost all of the depth that older players enjoyed out of the game.
Patience is a virtue, dude. Don't look at it from such a cynical commercial perspective, Skyrim is meant to be immersive, it's meant for players who aren't impatient and know to sit through a dialogue. And about all the names and concepts being thrown, again it's MEANT to invoke immersion and realism.
This isn't a channel about being cynical, its about a lot of the core aspects of game development and learning from mistakes made. And here let me throw you an explain of how "immersed" you can be with the amount of concepts and names being thrown at you. So there is this dragon name Auldin, and a prophecy from The Elder Scrolls- "What are the Elders Scrolls?' Shut up! And he will enslave all of humanity if the Dragon born doesn't stop him- "What is a Dragon Born?" -Didn't I tell you to shut up this is MY story! Anyway you should decide between which faction of army do you want to side with. The imperials- "..."- Don't you even dare player! I will insta-kill you if don't stop harassing me! or the storm cloaks.
xxjermxx70 ... Okay, look here. Usually, I don't go about calling other people idiots, but in your case I feel like making an exception - I am going to restrain myself, though, because I'm not looking to start any sort of internet "fight" here. Instead I'm going to gently explain to you why you are wrong. While I now agree that my original comment ignored the intent of the channel and continued on its merry way to explain why you're not supposed to directly compare Skyrim with a game like Call of Duty - durrrrr? - I still feel the need to shed some light on the fact that you attempted to describe Skyrim's lore through a two-person-based dialogue that clearly COMPLETELY disregards the way you learn about core game items (like the elder scrolls) and are answered questions like "What is the dragonborn?" and "What is a Stormcloak/Imperial?" Basically, what I'm trying to inform you here, is that your point is just.. moot. I'm not going to assume that you haven't bothered to play Skyrim, but it certainly makes me feel this way, but then again, you might be the type of person to judge games and many other things by the cover - which I, of course, have no idea whether or not that is the case. I don't want to end this reply on a negative "BURR-YOU-SUCK"-note, so I'm going to admit that you really do seem to have knowledge about this channel's intent, so you definitely win in that prospect, and for ignoring this in my comment, I am sorry. KTHXBAI
DasNeueFeuer But that is the point, the way the plot is set in a way to where you can't be new to the series or the game. They throw in the true lore five hours after the game's intro. You don't have anything but references to things that the player needs to know. I have played Skyrim for hours. The whole idea of having the two way conversation was to show how closed off the plot is in the intro and how the game refuses to give us knowledge of the lore.
xxjermxx70 I can totally get behind your point, but from my standpoint, I actually like the way you are thrown into the lore. I've been introduced to Elder Scrolls lore through Skyrim, and to me it's not that badly done. They may have marketed to Elder Scrolls fans rather than new players, but to me that's totally fine. In this prospects, I think we share different views on the matter.
xxjermxx70 A lot of the stuff mentioned in the intro wasn't present in the previous games. If you didn't know what something was, you would eventually find out by *exploring*, which is the game's main aspect, as explained in this video. The intro sequence serves as a tutorial of sorts, so that _new_ players could get used to the mechanics and controls. Honestly, it does what it's meant to do well.
Honestly I was okay with the opening my first time through. Skyrim was my first Elder Scrolls game, and so in many respects all the jargon I later learned to understand just made me feel that much more the outsider, which my character seemed to be set up as. Nobody knew who I was, which was later reconfirmed throughout the opening sequence. Sure, it's not quite as intriguing as other game openings I've seen (Oblivion anyone? Dayum but Patrick Stewart makes everything awesome.) but it worked for me at least. Nice breakdown though. It's nice to see a thorough explanation of opinion mixed with facts.
+dalnator honestly the entire point he was making there was weird to me I mean most of these things were not hard to understand. All the names of the divines he said were divines and that is pretty self explanatory what it would be and general Tullius can't be much else than a general right? They explained briefly who Ulfric was and the other things to me just made the world feel large and expansive. only the words like "nord" "hammerfell" "imperial" and maybe "sovnegard" would make sense to veteran players so it's not like it was much easier for them. And the other things were not hard to understand and they weren't that important anyway he said Elod it was clear that that was a person but it doesn't matter if you forgot him because he was not important at all so it just makes the world feel alive to me. And the way they talked about hammerfell you would no it was a province or at least a location but again it wasn't even important.
+Plattfisken holy shit that comment turned out longer than I expected, I actually had more to say but it wouldn't let me. Anyway I doubt anyone will read a wall of text like that anyhow.
+Plattfisken Stuff like "... General Tullius the military governor," "...Ulfric Stormcloak, the true High King," do make it fairly understandable. I think they do a good job of introducing you to the major plots from the start. Also, it gets you wondering who are these Stormcloaks, Empire etc., questions which you can ask Ralof or Hadvar later. This said, I do agree the start of the game is a bit poor.
I don't know. I really enjoyed the intro, and I honestly wish more games made their intros like Skyrim. Rather than shoving the different "strong points" of the game down your throat, you will eventually discover them yourself. That way the intro doesn't feel cheesy and unrealistic.
You lose many potential players if you don't get them hooked in the first minutes of the game. That's their first impression of the game - if they find it boring they may quit mid-tutorial and never come back
Marco I honestly value a better game experience over amount of players. I want my game to be a unique fine high quality dish and not a Big Mac anyone can chew down without any doubts.
Harald Kanin well then skip the intro and start the game from the get-go. Did the intro presented on Skyrim introduce any value to the game? Any quality? 5 minutes stuck in a carriage panning the camera left and right, looking at 3 guys faces while they talk a bunch of nonsense gibberish. Even no intro is better than that.
Marco It wasn't gibberish. The player is supposed to be someone crossing the border from somewhere else, and the people in the cart are talking about something the player /character was unfamiliar with. Did it make me go "ugh this is shit" when I first played it? No, it made me (likely how the designer wanted) go "This is weird. What is going on? Who are these people?" Rather than just shoving everything deep down your throat making the product absolutely sterile from personality (Fallout 4 intro) Skyrim introduces you rather slowly. When the player is actually free, he or she has been wanting to explore for a while so when the player exits the cave and see Skyrim, he or she will most likely set off exploring right away.
Harald Kanin well I think it's up to personal preference then, I was pretty frustrated at some parts of the intro and tutorial. Mainly the carriage, and the first Alduin 'battle' and 'chase' scenes which felt pretty forced and totally not what I was used to since I was a long time TES fan. I think that stuff was crammed in there just give this 'action movie' feel which doesn't really match the mood of the game IMO. Then the dungeon part of the tutorial was alright I guess. I still liked the Oblivion dungeon a bit better, it felt more mysterious and I liked being able to explore at my own pace whereas Skyrim felt a bit rushed with all the Alduin shit going on and walls busting and soldiers all around which pressure the player to go a bit faster unless he gives absolutely 0 fucks (and then you lose all the immersion). And when you finally get out of the tutorial and you're ready to explore, there's a bit more handholding with the soldier telling you where to go and stuff like that. Of course, you can just ignore him if you want to.
I know this. I've played the game before on both 360 and PC. I'm talking about for multiple characters. I've seen players with 2000+ game time hours and y"all cant wait 15 mins? Priorities man. Life's gonna be hard for you.
I was weary about the length of the introduction at first too, but when I first saw it on the 360, I was amazed by the detail. The anticipation _should_ make you excited to get into it even more. After the first few hours, you forget about it anyway. That's where my save point shortcut comes in for later characters. Dragon Age Inquisition kind of had a similar beginning, didn't know what the plot was until halfway through, but it turned out to be a great game regardless, and now waiting *patiently* for the DLC in September.
You're missing the point of the video, which is to show that Skyrim's intro is basically shit at introducing the player to the game and to its world. The game is still great, as said at the start of the video, but the focus here is on the introduction.
@@JmdMagic if you couldn't make it 15 minutes to get to player creation to create a save point in a game this large I have some bad news for you... you weren't going to make it anyway.
First of all i enjoyed this episode and i am not a Skyrim fanboy. However i really liked the opening to Skyrim for exactly these "flaws" it has and i think it works for new players as well as Elder Scrolls veterans. I really like how the landscape is desolate, grey and unimpressive because it makes you feel like you are at the ass of the world. Lost. You want to get out of there. It would be more comfortable to have all the characters who speak to you sitting right next to eachother but you are a prisoner and being imprisoned just is not comfortable, so i like that choice aswell. I could go on with this but instead i'd like to point out that you also don't criticise an "unfolding game" because it doesn't show you what the game will be all about later right at the beginning. -My conclusion is that i as a normal consumer really liked it and this opening was intended for normal consumers, not for other designers who spot "theoretical flaws" right away because they are trained to do so. Still, it is not perfect but you could also say that there is no such thing as perfect. I really love your videos, i just wanted to share my opinion on this matter.
+Lord of Banana There's nothing wrong with start of Skyrim, the big draw about Skyrim is that you can change and improve who you are. Skyrim starts with you powerless and a nobody, escaping the dragon and making your way to the near by village is a great way to give the play the confidence to go explore the wide open world and more importantly grow as a character.
+tk9780 No, in Dragon Age Origins you can change and improve who you are, because you always have 5 or 6 choices of what to say in any given dialogue. In Skyrim you can change what you look like and how effective you are at swinging lumps of steel around.
+Lord of Banana Agreed. Part of it is just Skyrim's art style as well. It's very low fantasy compared to most series out on the market. I mean how many games have their characters walking around in greasy hair and dirty faces?
+GamerGuy03 I think he messed up the names on purpose to demonstrate how a new player wouldn't care about all the exposition getting dumped on them in the span of a few minutes.
L. Wolf I disliked it the very first time. I was like "Why is this so frigging long?" Oblivion's was better. As in, being the same with similar faults, but shorter, so it was less painful.
Future elder scroll games should base their beginning off what race you pick. If you pick a Nord, you start off in your youth learning to fight with your father. If you play as an Argonian, you're learning to hunt with your mother. And so on and so forth
Austin Beattie sorry this is just a tad bit late but all of the elder scrolls games have you start as a prisoner so you can make your own backstory and overall your character
The strangest thing about Skyrim's opening is that Bethesda nailed the openings of Oblivion and Morrowind. Morrowind's opening was tense and drew you in to the idea of being part of some intricate, complex plot and Oblivion pretty much shoved those epic, sweeping landscapes right in your face. Their intros were different, but I felt that they were both really good, way better than Skyrim's.
A bit late but I wanted to add a small addition. Out of the three, I think Morrowind gets to me most because of how simple it is. It's kind of like Fallout New Vegas's opening for me. Is it flashy? Not really. But it always gives me more of a sense of replayability. It was generally vague enough to let you play a wide variety of characters with very limited restrictions on your character (Morrowind- Outsider, NV- Courier). My problem with Skyrim's opening is that it makes me not want to play a new character. It's just so long of a sequence that I don't feel is worth a playthrough past one time, maybe two. Granted, I have this same problem with F3's even though I actually sincerely like F3's beginning.
I like the intro, it reminds of Halo. You start out fighting it out in a cramped spaceship, the pillar of autumn. Then you crash land on Halo and you step out of the escape pod and see the massive Exspansion that is Halo. Very similar to stepping out of the cave.
The time you spend on the Pillar of Autumn from start until you leave the bridge is my favorite first ten minutes of anything ever. It sells the Halo franchise by itself. Declaring Skyrim's intro comparable to it despite all the flaws pointed out in this video is lighting the white-hot fires of my nerd rage. Now I want an episode on how good that opening is. I can provide paragraphs of material about it for you guys, just say the word lol
Skyrim was a great game for exploration and adventure. But honestly the quests...seriously?...seems like they are written by a 4 year old. And the dragon mechanics? Dragons are the most underwhelming part of the entire game...all it takes is a tree or a sloping hill to beat a dragon...
***** dude...all you need is a big tree or rock and alot of arrows and the might of the dragon is nullified. Harder difficulties just makes it take longer times to kill the flying meatbag
BrutusAlbion Fuck if you know how to stam manage you don't even need the rocks and trees, its just super easy dragon slaying every time. The only time dragons ever killed me is when I got pulled from 10 feet back with animation mind powers to get 1-shotted with a bite I was nowhere near, because CINEMATICS, EXPLOSIONS, EXCITEMENT!
But the opening shows you the execution of the stormcloaks and then a dragon attack. Setting up two main plot points. A civil war is going on and the stormcloaks are having a hard time with it and the dragons are returning.
2:36 It's not lifted from any CoD, it's lifted from Oblivion, Morrowind, Daggerfall, etc. You've always been a prisoner in any ESO game. Even ESO:TU. It's an Elder Scrolls thing about a prisoner rising up and becoming the hero.
+Jesse Jarvis He isn't referring to the character being a prisoner being lifted from Call of Duty. He's referring to the act of forcing the player into a restricted situation, where the only thing you can do is move the camera around. And while yes, other Elder Scrolls games have you play as a prisoner, they didn't force you to sit through 10 minutes of dialogue before you could even move.
+Jesse Jarvis Each of those games had you jumping into moving around and fighting within those five minutes (character creation notwithstanding, obviously). Skyrim binds you from movement save for looking around for far longer than any other Elder Scrolls to date. Oblivion, arguably, has the best intro, because it immediately opens the character creation once the title card passes, and after that you're free to jump around your cell and punch the shackles hanging from the ceiling. Once the Emperor and the Blades arrive, you can defy their orders to move away from the cell door until they open it and execute you for not moving. The game immediately displays to you the kind of freedom you'll have from there-on-out, while Skyrim says, "guess what? You can't move for 5 minutes, and once you can, your hands are bound for another 2-3". That's not a good Elder Scrolls introduction.
+Frankthegb To be fair, neither was Morrowind's intro. Sure, you're a prisoner, but for the most part, you're just a foreigner coming in from overseas, filing all your paperwork like a normal person... The tutorial consists of windows you read, and you end up doing literally nothing to put most of it into practice until you've already forgotten most of what's been said.
netatsake And while that is for the most part true, the biggest thing here, is that you aren't forced to sit there for 5-10 minutes without being able to move while exposition is thrown up in your face the entire time. With Morrowind, it was "Whats your name? Great! Heres how you move and interact with things! (WASD & Space) Whats your race? Good, head into the next building to pick your class. Heres how to pick up stuff and open your menus! Good luck!" While Morrowind was a lot of reading in general, sure, the tutorial itself was actually pretty quick and concise with little in the way of unneccisary information. At the least, the entire thing took less than 5 minutes to get everything it wanted to get across to you, while also giving you a direction to start walking.
Couragearmour64 The problem with that, though, is that they didn't really teach you shit about the game in the process... As soon as you come out of that door, having no idea where you're going, no quest markers, and not even a map to show you your way, you're left to figure everything out for yourself. I, personally, gave up trying to learn the game well before I even got to Balmora... There was far too much information that I just didn't have in the beginning, so I just ended up spending the entirety of my time screwing with the console.
A side note: From my experience, the only games I've played that have done wonderful ways to customize your character in the middle of the narrative, without breaking the flow of it, was in Fallout 4; where the way to customize your character's facial features and basic stuff like that was in a mirror, where you could assume your character was grooming. Would that be a good example of introducing your base character customization within a narrative?
Banarok Lionrage Alas, that's with every game. Halo 4 had a good base story idea, but lacked in gameplay, and execution in some story elements, Destiny has a wonderful lore and decent gameplay, (now) however it likes implementing its story into the actual game, which only improved in The Taken King. Sonic Unleashed started the sub-genre that represented Sonic's high-speed and "gotta go fast" feel, but had terrible long night stages that involved him turning into a Werehog. Most of these games are cut down and hated due to what they did wrong and, if ever, barely gets noticed for its pros. Everyone loves to see the cons. Which is why making stuff for the general public is hard. BUT HEY! Its still 2016! And I don't think our standards will get lower ever again!!! (I hope.)
+Leonardo Fernandes This may be what you're looking for! "Starting Off Right - How the First Five Minutes Draw Players In" ua-cam.com/video/EFU4tjMndi4/v-deo.html
+Dhark Pulse I don't know, that was a bit of a stretch. The city guards say all sorts of memorable things, and we have no idea how you play the game. Lets not assume the experience of somebody because your joke wasn't easily understood by everybody.
+Dhark Pulse your execution was off. You can't say that just because the butt of the joke is well known, that anybody should be able to understand what you said.
You know what's coming when you start Skyrim. Even when it was your first time you knew roughly what you were in for because you'd already played Oblivion & you'd seen the Skyrim trailer. Keeping you bound & on a cart for a few minutes, & then making you run a very enclosed & linear dungeon for a few more was done very deliberately. It's the moment you burst out into the sunlight at the end of that dungeon & see Bleak Falls Barrow on the mountain side in the distance that you get your "wow" moment. & besides, we all realised pretty early on that you can save the game just before Hadvar asks "Who, are you?"
I have an idea on how to fix the start of skyrim in my opinion. Keep the carriage ride, but your character will have a dream being a dragon flying over skyrim while Parth's VA gives you key bits of lore as narration. And when you come to an then immediately prompted to create your character after the dream sequence. You will be still in the cart after this, and this time will be used to tell a little of the Civil war. Upon reaching helgen you over hear a coversation between the imperials and Thalmar. That would used to give you a slight idea of who is in control. The dragon you were in your dream, that would be Alduin making his way towards Helgen. That is also a way to establish a sort of connection of fate between you and Alduin.
I couldn't get into Skyrim at first and I hadn't realized it, but THIS is exactly why. I hadn't played a TES game before, didn't know any lore, or what to do or who Ulfred Stormcloak was... I gave it a shot a couple of times but no dice, really. LUCKILY I watched a few awesome let's play vids that explained the world and game mechanics, and I've put several 100 hours in the game since, in fact I really love Skyrim. I forgot all about the lame beginning, though haha. Great insight in this video. Subbed.
I don't think skyrims and cods openings should be compared at face value. CoD is supposed to hype up the player, to keep him on his toes, to prepare you for the action focused game that is to come. Skyrim on the other hand is in my opinion more focused on keeping you calm, making you find your own path to explore. And for someone that usually goes for the optimal path over the fun path, this is a nice change of pace, forcing you to step down and relax before you set out on your journey.
And a question, do you guys have any idea how an Elder Scrolls game works? "The character creation screen pops up telling us that we won't be executed". Why would they execute you in the first ten minutes?
By High Klingon Alfredo Strumclick, I hope you meet the fate of the horse thief from Rooriksteed and get sent to Sivungord, under the order of General Toolius. Also alternative start mod console peasants.
Skyrim's opening is by far one of the most boring intros I've ever had the pleasure of sitting through multiple times. And yes, I have played every Valve game with a plot.
*Ulfric Stormcloak *Sovngarde *Rorikstead *General Tullius *Thalmor *Helgen *Vilod The game has subtitles for the whole thing. Ulfric is mentioned repeatedly throughout the game, with several items literally spelling it out for you. Yes, literally. The items are books with his name in them and his own equipment, which you are able to take. You can also join him, meaning you will learn how to spell his name quickly. The faction was named after him by the Imperials, who were using the name as two simultaneous insults: A group of puppets blindly following Ulfric, and people who cry loud enough to drown out thunderstorms when they don't get exactly what they want. Unfortunately, the people actually WERE willing figurative puppets of Ulfric, and Ulfric actually IS louder than a thunderstorm when he's angry, and literally murdered the high king, who was thinking about joining him, by screaming. Sovngarde is mentioned in every single ES game released so far, including spinoffs and the online game where Talos wasn't even born yet and there actually ARE only 8 divines (3 if you're an elf, 11 plus daedric princes if you are a Khajiit). All of them have it in the lore and spoken by an NPC. Skyrim actually puts you there at one point, and it is labelled on the map. There is an entire main quest segment that takes place there, and the name shows up in bold font when you go there the first time. There is no excuse. Rorikstead is a village on the map. It was expanded from its initial state as a homestead belonging to a guy named Rorik. They even had one of the deceased real-life ES developers live there as a tribute. He even has a quest where you convince his father to let him be an adventurer like you, and there ISN'T a joke involving arrows or knees the entire quest. Tullius is the leader of an army you can join, with an entire quest line. How did that get misspelled? The Thalmor are mentioned every single time you go to a place that isn't aligned with the Imperials. The dead ones have a letter ordering your execution if you do anything not aligned with them. You can talk to some that won't kill you on sight, and they don't have Irish accents like the Nords (The Thalmor, a faction of the Altmer, a race also known as High Elves, have Colonial English accents, which is actually different from the Dark Elves, or Dunmer, who have Boston and Cockney accents), so the "th" is clearly pronounced. Helgen is on the map, and can be discovered as a bandit hideout, giving bold letters. Vilod is an NPC, and couldn't have an "e" as the first letter due to the way Nords pronounce "e" (bell, get, Jello). He is also in the subtitles when a Stormcloak speeds up his own execution. His line is "Justice!" although this is hard to find without looking. The house you jump into is actually his inn, and you can find that mead Ralof mentioned.
This really pissed me off coming from supposed long term fans of the franchise. Most of them arent even spelling mistakes just pure mispronunciations that if you have played the game for even a few hours you would pick up on.
That's my answer to pretty much everything. Do it like The Last Of Us. God I loved that game. It made me cry, like, 3 or 4 times, but I loved it. The feels were so intense in that game, partly because of how well they set the scene with that opening.
+Chris It became interactive a tad too late for my taste and it only worked because TLoU's cutscenes were on the level of a well-written and Hollywood blockbuster with really good actors. If either one of the characters had been less interesting or believable its intro would have been atrocious.
Skyrim's opening breaks my interest in it. Like, I _want_ to make new characters, do different things....restart my Nord since I accidentally overwrote the save data :( But that opening sequence....why couldn't it have been skipable for future playthroughs? There is literally _nothing_ important in it once you understand the basics of the game.
I wish they set it up like in Oblivion or Fallout, where after the tutorial level before the open world you could change everything to do with your character. You could save just before this and return to it whenever you wanted to make a new character.
A Donut with Sprinklez Actually, EVERY SINGLE ELDER SCROLLS GAME was made by a different team. I'm not kidding. Literally all of the ones (unless you count dagger-fall and arena, but I don't know there). Sure all Bethesda, but an entirely different group of people made each game (except for a few key people such as the sound director). Certain things working and being unnoticed for working isn't too far-fetched when you realize that.
I think it's pointing out what it is you 'hear' in the first few minutes. unless you know the exact spelling thalmor/dalmor tullius/tullious isn't really going to matter.
Honestly, the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild had the best intro... aka no intro. It literally goes, "here's a tablet and clothes, now go do whatever.".. I understand that there's still the tutorial area (the great plateau) to go through, but it's presented in a way that it doesn't feel as such.
Got to say my only complaint with the intro was that I couldn't skip it. I have an alternate starts mod and the original is still my favorite. I didn't find anything too over the top with out reason. The original opening is a solid way to introduce a player to what is happening in the tattered remains of an empire that is falling apart. It also speaks to that exploring theme. When you start you get explore your surroundings and as you go the world slowly opens up to you. COD is a ridgid pipe of a story in comparison.
Fallout 3 in turn has a mod for skipping the introduction of Vault 101, which shows that many players don't seem to like that tutorial in the slightest.
I see a few parallels with the Fallout 4 intro, but once again the moment you step outside the vault into the endless possibilities of the unknown, is glorious. Then the rest of the game kind of lets you down from there.
Well... I found the beginning to pull me in more than any other game. Even more than COD:MW's. In COD it was so sterotypical for a military game... Skyrim's wasn't... it had so many questions, why am I here? Why am I hostage? Than it releases you to the wild to answer those questions...
And then make those answers up yourself. You were picked up for being there when they caught Ulfric. They tell you that in the cinematic. There are no other answers to be found other than to make up your own reasons why your character was there. There's the "what's up with the dragon" question but is a slow, boring cart ride with bad voice acting the best way to set-up that mystery? I doubt it.
8:19 You totally forgot the first part of the chaos-and-everything-burns-down-mission where the player changes sides in war organically and probably without even knowing
Seven years after this was posted, and I've just bought Skyrim recently. I didn't grow up on games because of strictly religious parents, but I've heard about games like this for a long time and was so excited to try it out. I was happy to sit through the somewhat scattered opening. This video totally resonates with me though. It wasn't until I watched some video after getting halfway through the Mage's College questline that I realized one of the prisoners on the cart was Ulfric Stormcloak, even lol. But I also totally agree that the true excitement and wonder hit me when I left the tutorial and was on my own free in Skyrim for the first time. The scenery, apparent freedom, and music altogether was an amazing feeling. I love the game, but it is a little bit of a shame that emotion wasn't captured in the opening moments :)
lauren maughan I've read many books, some for my own enjoyment and some for school assignments, and I've even had the pleasure to start my own novel as a hobby. And yeah. Non-action novels not-for-youth are 90% crippled with the "here goes 3 chapters where nothing happens but the caracters get exposition". Personally, I like fast expositions or even _in media res._
I have to say, I really disagree with a lot of the arguments you're making here. (Oh no, I wrote a long comment that nobody's going to read again...) First, Skyrim's intro has a lot of work to do in ways that Call of Duty doesn't, and I honestly don't think it's fair to compare them the way you did. CoD:MW is a different kind of game, and more importantly, it's based on concepts that were already deeply embedded in the minds of its audience. It introduces the setting, but doesn't have to explain that setting. "It's a Middle Eastern country in the midst of violent political upheaval." There you go. MW doesn't have to give any real context to what's happening -- there are no elements of that introduction that wouldn't be immediately recognizable to any modern audience. The player's cultural awareness does their exposition for them; MW works because it takes perfect advantage of that fact. Skyrim, on the other hand, is a fantasy world, and it's a fairly intricate one. It has a lot of concepts to introduce. When you play an Elder Scrolls game, you're entering a world that you have no context for unless you've played them before. And that's key to the appeal of TES games. You don't just explore mountains and cities and ruins, you're exploring lore. Gods and politics, assassins and magic and history. Tamriel is a place like no other, and the intro should reflect that. Second, it's gotta do that tutorial, man. Oblivion and Skyrim have very similar tutorial/character creation methods, and there's a reason for that. Sure, they could do the "noob sandbox" MMOs do, but there's a fine line to walk there -- too open, and it gets much harder to ensure the player is being exposed to the basics of gameplay. If it's open but not open _enough_ they'd run the risk of being potentially frustrating early on, or even causing people to think the scope of the game world isn't as spectacular as it seemed in the trailers. And of course, that's diverting dev resources that could be going toward the game proper. Rather than screw around with that, Bethesda goes with fairly straightforward linear tutorials. Third, and related, they're a way for the player to try out different gameplay styles before the game starts For Real. Oblivion did this, too. You can sneak, you can do magic, and of course, you can just hit things very hard. Try them out, see what you like and what you don't. The player can then get a feel for different tactics and which ones they prefer before being released into the world and put them to use. Fourth, and most important: Your character isn't the prisoner. You are. The player is being taken out of this ordinary world into one of magic and empires and prophecy and gods that manifest before your very eyes. And more importantly, you're not just some random bystander in that world. You're not going to languish in a dungeon or get executed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In TES games, you stand toe-to-toe with dragons and emperors and revolutionaries, deities and those who imagine themselves divine. The intro is what takes you from your current limited circumstances and catapults you into your new role as something more.
The point I was making wasn't about whether the intro is good or bad, just that comparing it to CoD is inadvisable. I didn't find it boring, but that's totally subjective.
I didnt find the intro awful either, but there's alot of valid points that they covered that should have been better explored. As for your points: 1st - they dont introduce any of this. One line was enough for the ''OMG you're the leader of the stormcloaks rebelling agaisnt the empire''. That would be enough, and more exposition of all this plot and the TES world should made in other ways other than just a guy talking. It is fair to compare COD intro to this one, because they could have done exactly the same: Eg - while youre on the carriage there's stormcloaks prisioners on foot, some mages healing wounded soldiers along the road to introduce you to the magic in the world, thalmor escorts abusing nord villagers in a ''hey is that a talos amulet peasant''... You see where am I going with this? More focus on the enviroment and less on one guy saying everything at once. Oh and we could actually try to overhear Elenwen and Tullius conversation, they are actually there in Helgen but so far away and so part of the scenery, and you are so distracted with the dude praying, that I didnt even noticed it until like my 3rd playthrough. Also, I understand it needs to be a remote place because Alduin will destroy it, but im not sure Helgen would be the best location, it could be somewhere more ''grandiose'', like a peak valley in the Reach or whatever. you're 2nd and 3rd points I agree with, but 4th - It is obvious that you are the main character, but still man, the character creation just before hitting the chopping block is too much. Why not do all the sequence of running away from alduin, since it's just run and jump in 1st person, and do this after you reach Helgen's keep? changes nothing except the immersion. I personally dont hate the intro at all but it's mediocre at best and the reasons they covered in this video are perfectly fine to me. Minus the tutorial one, I dont think a sandbox kind of thing would work at all in TES
With regard to your cart ride suggestions: I see what you're going for there, but that would be hard as hell for Bethesda to pull off properly. For one thing, the Creation Engine is a fickle beast -- it doesn't seem to handle those kinds of scripted sequences very well to begin with. God only knows how long it took them to get the existing cart scene working reliably. For another, that's a lot of information having to be delivered in a way that wouldn't seem too forced. Again, I'm not saying it's perfect, just that it's not fair to compare it so directly to CoD. Western audiences see the events in the Modern Warfare intro and don't ask questions. It fits our existing cultural schema that the area is just prone to violent upheaval, and they don't like the US, and that's just how things are. They won't demand too much more information. Someone new to TES, on the other hand, will have no pre-existing knowledge whatsoever of who any of these factions are. Two of them are new even to fans of the series. It'd be ludicrously easy to overwhelm a newcomer with too much worldbuilding at a time, while still, simultaneously, not conveying the depth of the lore. They could definitely have done it better, but I understand not wanting to do it all at once. Delaying character creation is not a bad idea at all, though. It really killed the pacing. :p
Crystal Soulslayer yea, this video lost my attention at the "intro ripped from modern warfare" bit. Like, No. Thats the standard elder scrolls start. This is a long time tradition that started with ARENA the first game...
The opening cart ride should have been a boat ride through the solitude arch
If you want a boat ride beginning, try Morrowind.
Holy shit! That would be amazing!!
+Dragonman0007 the boat ride doesnt show you anything though
Except that would likely mean you'd have to burn solitude to the ground, or take an extra 10 minutes to head off to Dragon Bridge or another such town. No thanks. Great idea, but if you want to keep in the attack by Alduin, it's probably a better idea to keep it in a town that's not as interesting as Solitude or Dragon Bridge
Sometimes the best works start with a crushing defeat of a big, prosperous and potentially interesting town, actually. Burning solitude down to the ground could have changed the story significantly AND set a ground work for a place in which the story changes. Maybe the jarl survives with some of her royal guards/court along some survivors and we were then given an opportunity to see a lighter side of the Legion instead of the imperialistic puppets we got while also dealing with storm cloaks and seeing an ugly side to them. Maybe they could be facing sabotage of the thalmor to, forcing us to accept that the real enemy isn't the Imperial Legion or Rebel Stormcloaks, but the racist, nazi-like elves?
There are actually possabilities with destroying a major town in a game rather than something mundane. It'd change the story to make it clear to everyone dragons were a major problem, and the writing would also have to be careful about the main character being dragon born. You don't want to mary sue a character, afterall. But again, there isn't anything wrong with destroying a major city in a game. Check out Oblivion or Mass Effect 1. Oblivion had Kvach destroyed at the beginning of the game, just the same we get to see a peaceful, symbolic Eden Prime destroyed and both had interesting plots for it. Skyrim just chose a boring town to avoid consequence, in a way, but it was more it wanted to create a feeling of "Oh Crap!" with a smaller section of the game world.
2019:watching a video about skyrims bad opening
me in the next moment:"Hey, you. You're finally awake. You were trying to cross the border, right? Walked right into that Imperial ambush, same as us, and that thief over there."
skyrims intro is not that interesting, but incredebly memorable. outside of those few minutes when youre starting a new game, where youre annoyed af, im pretty sure most ppl think:"yeah, skyrim baby!"
i cant think of a better way for the game to start.
@@firefox30570 also bcs of the memes tho
@@firefox30570 my #1 complaint is the boring ass road they take you through.. i mean, given the tutorial area, i can see “super big” to “super lame” being a little jarring, but there’s like 3 roads into helgen. Why’d they pick by far the worst one?
One of my favorite mods is one that replaces the opening with one of a few scenarios, most of which dump you in the middle of nowhere with almost no equipment.
A RPG where you start as a nameless person in the middle of nowhere with almos nothing.
Sounds like almost every RPG from around 2000.
It's really the most lazy ass way of opening, right next to "You are the Choosen One, sent to save as from this unsstoppable threat. You are Dragonborn. *roll in orchestra theme*".
Bethesda really sucks at narrative storytelling, animation or cutscenes but are pretty good when it comes to environmental storytelling.
+SirSazu And i agree with you, I wish for once you were not the savior of the universe, stronger than the makers of the all things.
there is a mod that makes you exactly that: not the dragonborn.
You can't use/learn shouts and you don't absorb dragon souls
I don't know if (and how) that mod changes the story since I don't use it but maybe for you it's worth a try
This is why dnd is fun. You can and will die if you get dumb and over extend past your limits and the reason youre a hero and not the townsfolk is that youre dumb enough to start killing the ankle biter monsters like goblins and kololds which in turn helps you get stronger and learn new tricks to survive more potent threats
I can't agree , what the point in fantasy RPG to not be the choosen one? In this case even lotr sucks because of this reason and I can't find one good fantasy book , movie or game which fit that. For a classic medival simulation yes it can be ok but in a fantasy game ? Being a normal person would just be boring as fuck or would lead to inincoherent moments.
the first ten minutes of skyrim, in the vacuum that i experienced it in, aka, the first time i played, with no prior knowledge of the game. the entire opening cut-scene for me hyped me so far up i felt i could take on the world. it did its job of getting me into the story. after the first time though, it was dull.
it was boring as hell for me. I'm always surprised with how many people it's seemed to have impressed.
Same
i feel the same way
That's how I felt
They have great alternate start mods. Really changes things up
Keep in mind that Half-Life 1 did this and it took even longer. I thought that tram ride would never end.
Von Neely atleast it was interesting, no intro dialogue or prologue, its just you watching a seemingly ordinary research/experimentation facility, then you did your job, and suddenly aliens and swat units are invading, it really gives you the feel, especially the fact that you can explore the entire facility beforehand
Stephen Rosal True.
It doesn't have characters talking to you though. And, as far as I remember, the environment is not as constantly boring as in Skyrim.
I enjoyed that tram ride a lot more than Skyrim's half-hour of utter shite
Laurence Withey: True, the tram ride was educational. It showed you things that would prove useful later.
Thats why everyone who plays the game for a second time got the mod to ignore the intro ;)
Bartoc I know right and the best part is my choice for being surprised set me in a little campsite all by myself right outside the cave entrance so I got to witness Alduin flying overhead after destroying Helgen so I immediately had good cause to go explore what happened. I love that because it just seems so natural and not forced.
The game's already a chore so d rather take part on the intro anyway.
I'm not blaming the game, just the way rpgs are done.
A game shouldn't need mods in order not to be tedious, especially if you simply want to create another character. The very existence of that mod is a testimony to the terrible intro scene Skyrim suffers from.
@Bartoc
Count me out of the "everyone" term then.
well actually the intro is so scripted that when you have 100+ mods you must have a mod to bypass the intro or the game wont start
New Vegas actually did this really well too. Not to many characters. All are main characters. Brilliant vista. Jargon tells you a lot about the world. Boom dead. That was an awesome intro.
+Stiggandr1 3 did it better I'd say, since its introduction served as the tutorial as well.
+Stiggandr1 Old-school Raynor respect. ♥
Most people dislike Fallout 3's intro/tutorial vault :/
Fallout New Vegas' intro was great because it introduced so many things in such little time. From the time you transition from the Lucky 38 to the streets of Vegas, the cutscene enraptures you. As it pans out to the Ranger, you feel chills of excitement, and then as you follow the bullet, those goosebumps intensify. Almost instantly, you want to get that armor and that weapon.
As we pan out even further, we see a bull banner. Then, these men in football gear looking like legionaries run by, presumably doing something. Finally, we come to a stop high above all of that. We see a man in a checkered suit, a bound and unconscious person, and several others in strange attire. A man is digging a grave, your grave. Suddenly, a voice-over begins, pulling you into a trance as you listen.
You learn your captor's name is Benny, and his associates are Great Khans. He shows you some kind of chip, and then pulls his gun. The music slowly swells as this man says, "Truth is, the game was rigged from the start." A shot rings out, and the screen goes black after bright flash. The player then understands that they were just shot in the head, and that their mission is to get revenge on this bastard.
Later, when you fulfill all these goals, it actually feels satisfying. When you kill Benny with his own gun, it feels satisfying. When you get that beautiful NCR Ranger armor and antimaterial rifle, it feels satisfying. New Vegas' intro is what so many games aspire to live up to, but just can't. New Vegas was a Once in a Blue Moon kind of game.
And most importantly you can skip it if you want to. Also it's a proper cutscene, no fakeout non-gameplay gameplay.
Despite this, I still find Skyrim's opening one of the most memorable I've played. Probably because it was my first AAA game. But that music at the start, with the drums and trumpet the moment the title fades in, it gets me excited.
8:33 "by then we are 20 minutes into the game."
Me: yeah........only 20 minutes......not 3 hours leveling sneak off the bear or anything like that.....
Hahaha! FYI: if you enchant 3 items with the sneak+ enchantment, you become pretty much invisible all the time.
and another 3 hours spent on character creation making a detailed face that'll never be seen again because of the helmet
Why would you need to use the bear? A few power attacks while sneaking against your NPC ally at the start will get you up to almost 100 in sneak in less than an hour, along with whatever other skills you're boosting.
I absolutely hate the Skyrim intro, but for another reason. It takes like 25 to 30 minutes. When I want to create another character I´m like: oh god no
And after that, I still have to go to that damn starting village . I wish they made the intro take around 5 minutes and after that you could choose where to go instead of having just one quest that sends you to the starting village.
+Jozef T.
"Random alternate start"
"Alternate start - live another life"
"Skyrim unbound"
3 mods that let you start the game in 3 minutes
+Jozef T. You also don't HAVE to go to Riverwood if you don't want to. You could just go get lost in the wilderness and stumble across some random bandits or something. Skyrim gives you the freedom to choose what you want to do... You just have to put up with a lenghty intro and tutorial dungeon first.
I see that as a pretty fair trade off. But yes, the intro is quite contrived and could have been done a lot better. At least there's mods that help to fix this and let you start differently.
If you are at the home screen press perispomenom, (wave below escape), and type "cac riverwood" bamn you start immediately with enter.
Edit: not sure is it's cac, but you can look it up
+Jozef T. I appreciate their work, one thing: PLEASE PUT IN SKIP!
In general, the Skyrim main storyline could have had more to it. You only visit a few of the major cities, and very little else.
The reason I enjoyed the beginning of Skyrim so much is that it began worldbuilding right there. I became immediately invested. It also draws a stark contrast to what is about to happen. It's the calm before the storm. Quiet, serene, and foreboding. I felt unsure of what was about to occur. I was anxious to see where the cart took me. I truly felt like a prisoner on the way to my execution. I think it was well done, but I can see why some people may not enjoy it. I'm reminded of the beginning of the first Half-Life. There was so much tedium and mundanity we were forced to endure before the action kicked in. This allowed for a more jarring contrast. That is, at least in my opinion, what Skyrim did here.
August Break I just don't think skyrim does it as well, and for an execution, particularly the execution of someone as important as ulfric, everyone seems almost bored. Also the music feels wrong
I actually loved the opening of skyrim a lot. I lot and I played both game and I would say skyrim effected much more then call of duty. With music and environment. It's not builded to impress me it's a part of living place and I was a prisoner there who is trying to understand what's going on. I see no problem there. Well in other hand I know not everyone like me. People tend to skip cutscenes which I feel is the biggest sins of rpg playing. But given option to skip at at least 2nd character creation would work.
Agree, Morrowind and Oblivion also started you out as a prisoner of sorts
Ikr! People are just haters
@@isaacluna6556 not really
"Hey you, you're finally awake."
This was my first Elder Scrolls game ever and I loved the intro. Why? Because I didn't feel like some awesome badass, I felt like a normal person caught up in a bunch of stuff I don't understand and just trying to survive. I found myself just reacting to the world and doing my own thing. I described this game to my friends as a "simulation" because it felt like I was really part of the world. I know there are other ways to start the game with mods now, like being a farmer or huntsman or whatnot but this intro was, IMHO, perfect for the type of game and feel they were going for: start as a no one, become a some one... in your own way.
+Patrick Turc Well said, never thought of it that way. Still, starting as a no-one doesn't have to be an uninspired and dull experience. They could've gone with the naive stranger caught up in a strange and wondrous world right off the bat, without making you wait 20 mins.
+Allan Kant They did that, it's called Daggerfall. You start right in a dungeon and told to find your way out. Or Morrowind where you're given a quick intro to the world and access to a couple quests; where you go from there is your own choice. Or Oblivion where you start out in a random cell being heckled by another prisoner and thrust into a conspiracy against the king within a 10 minute or so tutorial/intro.
ES games always have you start as an unknown prisoner, it's their "A long time ago, in a galaxy far away." You can play as the naive stranger through the questions you ask, to the point that asking obvious questions get you amazed remarks as the people can't understand why you don't know current events.
Skyrim was marketed to a more general crowd, more so than any ES game before it. The reason why the intro was so long is probably because the general crowd needs the hand holding.
+Patrick Turc Did you ever truly feel special as THE dragonborn though? I mean, you can be the biggest badass in the country, but people rarely treat you differently. Royal children even keep disrespecting you.
MarekSVK32 my first RPG was arguably the Original Legend or Zelda or Final Fantasy ; depends on your definition of RPG.
+TinyZu I always felt special as the dragonborn when I was dealing with people who recognized me as such like the Graybeards and the Blades, etc. It's a low tech world and news doesn't travel fast, even when it does it doesn't come with videos or pictures. So how is someone I've never met suppose to know I'm the DragonBorn unless he/she's met me before, knows my name, or sees me shout? Also, just because I shout, doesn't mean I'm the DragonBorn (see Ulfric Stormcloak). Respect is earned through deeds, be it slaying a dragon, becoming aThane (also deeds) or beating the opposition into submission. Then people who should know (like guards) treat me with respect (as a Thane, as the DragonBorn, etc). What can I say, it's more of an experience or "simulation" than a "game"...lol.
Hate to be that nitpicking guy, but it's Ulfric Stormcloak, not Ulfred.
***** Riperoni in pepperoni.
Hate to pick all these nits but this video is actively promoted on YT so stop that or quiet down.
Just Moved In in addition it's Thalmor not Dalmore
You mean you haven't heard the tale of Ulfric "Fat Freddy" Stormcloak?
He also said Dalmor instead of thalmor
For the person who makes many characters but hates going through 15 minutes of already known exposition like me: save the game right before the character customization menu. IT REALLY HELPS.
you are a genius.
I have to agree. It'd suck to watch the opening EVERY SINGLE TIME.
better if you have the PC version. Save after you've done the whole intro, then just type a command to make a new character on the spot.
Doesn't the game already automatically save the game right before the character customization starts?
Yes, but it's the whole helgen sequence that is annoying,
Fight me, that opening is one of the most recognizable and iconic openings of gaming history!
"Hey, you. You're finally awake."
That doesn't mean it's good
Yes but because it is th worst and most boring opening ever made
@@tekken.universal2343 It's not the worst or most boring but it is bad and boring xD
mostly famous for the amount of memes you can make with a line "Hey,you. You're finally awake"
*CUTSCENES!*
_that's where Call of Duty really shines! xD_
Nobody Lurker Exactly. I remember when Cod used to be good
TheGhost325 God yeah, I remember playing the first one. I'd just been watching Band of Brothers and that level were you have to charge across the field to the train station under artillery fire really reminded me of it. Think it was COD 1 anyway.
+TheGhost325 World at war man. That was a hell of a game. Every time I stumble my way onto a buddies consel to play a new C.O.D. game...
Guys.
The fuck happened?
+Jan Škopek Well fifty thousand people used to live here.... Now it's a ghost town.
and then you start the game as every elder scrolls game starts, as a prisoner.
wow your looking at a different game, instead of looking at the forgoing game, elder scrolls 4 Oblivion or Elder scrolls 3 morrowind. in boith you start as a prisoner. shows how much you know about the series... nothing!
+Bjørn Friedrichsen what are you on about? The last three games start with you as a prisoner. so what?
silentlamb21
what im on about, is that they are comparing it to call of duty instead of comparing it to how the series normally start. if they had taken a look at the other elder scrolls games start, they would have seen that the protagonist (you) *always* starts as a prisoner.
+Bjørn Friedrichsen You are severely missing the point.
Morrowind was a 5 minute intro. "leave boat, create character, explore"
Oblivion and skyrim had painfully long, unskippable tutorial-like intro's.
+Bjørn Friedrichsen In Daggerfall you start as a free man/woman that was shipwrecked on their way to Daggerfall, but it's pretty similar to the other openings.
Note: after your first playthrough there's always a file marked "Prisoner" use that to skip the cutscene and jump into the action early on
Oblivion intro had a camera flying around showing a big chunk of the entire map. And I was still excited to explore it
Kenneth Donnelly and that Patrick Stewart narration with the stirring soundtrack swelling as the camera pans
The opening just need a *"skip button"* to the character creation.
If you haven't already look up the mod: alternate start live another life
Had a save file at the char. creation but nearly every game I started after that started to glitch. Ugh annoying
There is an auto save generated that begins at character creation. Just load that up. I use that every time I made a character.
I liked the intro of Skyrim. It gave me that feeling of rags to riches. The feeling of anticipation. It didn't have to sell me anything, because I, and probably everyone else on this planet, already knew, that Skyrim is frickin' epic. Skyrim was about progression, and in that regards the intro was perfect. Call of Duty was about nonstop-hypermasculine-lock'n'load-action - and the intro demonstrated that pretty well. I enjoyed both immensely.
5:57
Someone didn't have their subtitles on...
+Rory Connolly I do it, just so I don't mishear someone. LIKE HE did
+Rory Connolly yeah, not to mention that the game doesn't blatantly tell you what those words mean, giving you (if skyrim is your first game) a great curiosity about the game, thing that dark souls completely fails to do with it's much more horrible intro... and they praise dark souls as if it's perfect in game designing.
+Slowpoke
Skyrim was my first game and no. Just like it was said in the video, it goes from one ear and right out of the other. Lots of things are said in the prayer so quickly that you can't even sort out what's a town name or the name of a god.
As for Dark Souls? Right after character creation, you're shown an ugly jerky-skin version of your character which makes you wonder "What the f*ck happened to me?". Some guy throws a dead body at you, you loot it for keys and walk out a cell. Did he want to help you? Why didn't he just throw the keys? Also, as you walk through the first hall, you can look to your right to see a giant demon.
I don't know about you, but that game already had me hooked at that point.
Dark souls actually did the exact opposite for me, after staying like half an hour at trying to make my character look decent then I discover that the whole game i'm gonna see shit? no thanks. also, the dark souls intro that tries to give lore? useless dumb crap that has little to nothing with the game.
In skyrim there is a civil war and there are dragons, and you can see it in the intro.
In dark souls they talk about fire, disparity and a lot of characters that have little to nothing with the actual game.
Basically dark souls tricks you thinking into having a great story while all it has is trying to survive to ring 2 bells.
the best intro is one that represents the freaking game to me.
+Slowpoke The intro your talking about is just the two-minute cinematic that's there to set the foundation for understanding the kind of world you're stepping into as well as the mystery surrounding souls. The other twenty minutes of the intro consists of establishing everything else through gameplay. You learn of what's been going on in your absence and your importance involving it. Then, you quickly figure out the difficulty, the death penalties, everything you really need to know so that when you actually get to the meat of the game there's nothing holding you back from victory but your own limitations. I don't see much of anything wrong with it. Also, your description of the story consisting of little more than ringing 2 bells tells me you don't actually know much of the story at all.
How games work for me:
I play the tutorial.
I get into the real game.
I get scared of my character dying.
I never play the game again.
A Bird Lover more like:
I play the real game
I don't know what to do and how
I play the tutorial
But the tutorial is boring
I play another game
Or you could do this:
Load up the game
Start the tutorial
Get bored
Screw the tutorial I'm gonna play the real game
Get mad at not knowing the controls
Angrily play the tutorial complaining the entire time
A Bird Lover you gotta face darkness and death,play dark souls you'll understand that life has no pity.
Personally I recommend:
-Download mods.
-Craft the best possible Skyrim experience yourself.
-Get sidetracked and suddenly there are flying trains everywhere trying to kill you.
Many have the following
Skip the tutorial
Get rekt/can't advance
-What a shitty game.
Never touch the title again.
Ahh CoD4. The game that skyrocketed Call Of Duty's massive popularity and imo probably the best game in the series. Seriously the campaign mode in that was amazing. I know everyone talks about the multiplayer but 4 had the best story of all of them. And let's not forget the best CoD mission ever. "All Ghillied Up"
+Epic stuffs yeah world at war was brilliant
So far, I'm enjoying the newest BO3 one. Had a rough start, though.
+Oden667 IMO Cod4 has the best story and MW2 has the most fun multiplayer. But seriosuly after MW2 (argubly black ops 1) it all went downhill.. Fucking futuristic bullcrap. From cod we want modern or old wars, not halo!
+TechniLog (DafaqVidz) Pfft, it all went to hell when it got popular. Fucking modern bullcrap. CoD is about WW2, not all this other bullshit!
See? I can make up meaningless opinions too.
Also, the stuff in AW and BLOPS3 is stuff the army is actually working on today, so... yeah. I think you're wrong even based on your own logic. The exosuits in AW were a bit over the top though. The ones in BLOPS3 are much more realistic.
It would probably have been best if the intro to this was the way it is, but the player was executed. Then, the player is asked to make a character, who is totally unrelated, but much later in the game, the death of the first player character becomes really important to the story somehow.
φ First-order logic
That is quite a great idea for a intro, and Skyrim would benefit much more from it.
then again... is a Bethesda Game, Mods to skip the intro are already made and perfected to such a level that people just remember the intro because it was so annoying...
It's sad, really. I would love being a video game writer to be honest. There just aren't good stories out there unless you dig in the visual novel section or go read a book...
φ First-order logic I dunno if I agree with that. There are a lot of non-VN games games out there with good writing and narratives. Have you seriously not played a game with a good story before?
pf I have, but they are a depressing minority
Oh. Well I don't know exactly what you've been playing, but that minority of well written games is a part of a much, much larger group that's out there.
Been playing games a long time, and not once have I tasted a shortage of well-written games to jump into. 's why I have pretty strong feelings about gaming being a very capable storytelling medium, about as capable as any other one.
Thalmor not Dalmor.. though I think that's part of the problem.
Jagar Alagoria If this had been made in April I might have passed it off as a joke. No such luck unfortunately.
Jagar Alagoria It's also General Tullius, Ulfric Stormcloak, Sovngarde, Helgen and Vilod. So yeah, C- for effort.
SARCASM!
Yes...the voice acting is unforgivable.
like 20 guys did all the voices lol
I think the roughest part of the Skyrim intro scene was the lack of exploration with the fighting mechanics, namely Magic for me. By the time I had walked out of Helgen into true Skyrim, my play style had already developed around a sword, which doesn't suit the high elf i had made AT ALL. I have tried working with magic, but it feels unnatural to me. I actually considered resetting my game and designing a new character better suited to the style I had developed. I think there was an opportunity lost in the first 20 minutes, especially to someone new to the Elder Scrolls universe, where fighting style was first developed. Some introduction to the use of magic in the beginning may have significantly altered how I experience Skyrim. Just my thought on the matter. I might add the "Alternate Opening" mod and start a new character and see where that leads me.
EDIT/UPDATE: I made a new character, and uploaded the random start up mod along with the dynamic skills mods. I'm really enjoying it!
That's not true. Right of the bat you can equip flames, healing, fury, and... Something else. Plus as high elf you already have magics at level 20
I didn't find out about that until MUCH later in the game. If the tutorial scene had offered a moment where using magic was needed so you would have to go to the spell list and equip a spell to use, I think the concept could have been introduced better.
VenetianTemper you want a nord to tell you how to use magic?
eh, good point. this entire opening requires some serious improvement. the RAS mod has been a great bonus.
OH NO YOU CN'T LEARN MAGIC IN THE FIRST 5 MINUTES...NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I come back here every couple of years to remind myself how hilarious it is that he said "Dalmoore" after claiming to have played the game for countless hours
I can still remember the feeling I got from watching the start of the game:
*from the wagon ride to escaping the cave* "Well it's kinda okay
*seeing the player whip out a bow and just go off freely into the wild* "Okay I need to get this game"
You spend a lot of time talking about the first two minutes mechanically, but there is a solid reason that has nothing to do with the core mechanics of the game. The core mechanics of Skyrim are not technically all that fun, but we perceive them to be because they don't need to be explained to you very much, and they fit comfortably in with the rest of the game. There is no complicated combat, just press buttons to kill things. Exploration is not fantastic, but it is nice and it does not need to be explained. You want to go to Whiterun? Just go to Whiterun. So what is left for us? The appeal of Elder Scrolls is immersion. You're supposed to feel like you've been whisked away to some Tolkienesque land full of magic and wonders. People in their own land need not explain things that are commonplace and easy to learn about. Everyone knows who Akatosh is, so you're expected to know too. Skyrim was my first Elder Scrolls game and I understood what was going on, even at age 13. The intro is a slow burn, just like the rest of the game, and after those ten minutes, you come out of a cave, both metaphorically and literally, and you're greeted by the fantastic mountainscapes and everything. Seeing things going on in the background in this situation just wouldn't make sense in terms of immersion.
The first time I ever played Skyrim, I didn't know what to expect. Don't hate me for this but I'd never heard of it and my parents just got it for me for Christmas because they thought it looked like something I would like. And I have to say, that opening nailed it for me. The gradual reveal of the world, the slow, steady build up of tension which results in the dragon arrival and then the epic struggle of feeling trapped but ever so free as you're running from the fire that rains from the sky. Idk, I thought it was brilliant
6:13
"Savvengard" --> "Sovngarde"
"Ulfred Stormcloak" --> "Ulfric Stormcloak"
"Rorickstead" --> "Rorikstead"
"General Tuleous" --> "General Tullius"
"Dalmoore" --> "Thalmor"
"Helgan" --> "Helgen"
ericph9 Elod --> Vilod
It's the person that apparently made mead with juniper berries, which I found a very touching detail.
shinjinobrave Mede->mead
Dagda Mor Woopsie, that's the word for it in my language, it has been corrected.
ericph9 He can't even pronounce Khajiit properly in other videos and they refer to themselves in the third person. I don't think anyone at EC has ever played an elder scrolls title.
ericph9 Methinks you fanboys missed the point.
Sorry, you're flat out wrong. I think the muted low key beginning of Skyrim is ENTIRELY intentional. It IS to put the later freedom and opening beautiful vistas in contrast. Instead of flashy landscape and cheap spectacle, the intro begins with characters talking about themselves. You meet your temporary companions, the nostalgic Stormcloak talking about a girl he fancied, the pesimistic and unlucky thief and the silent Jarl. You get spectacle LATER, with the dragon attack, because you build up to it. Having a scale of intensity of events is good, you can build up from something, you have reference for the epicness that comes later. Overloading the player with intense and WOW moments from the start is certainly an approach, but I'd not say it's necessarily great, or better than what Skyrim did.
And if a may add, You feel isolated in the opening because you're supposed to, You're a prisoner! Then you escape your execution and with the help of the NPCs you met in the opening sequence (who i must add were there purposely to give you an idea of who you're going to side with when your first decision of the game comes up within 5 minutes) you will slowly go from a prisoner without even the use of your hands to being unshackled, led through the burning village, armed to fight for yourself and then led through the cave where you settle in to your new role as a protagonist who's goal is your own survival and a need to take care of yourself... Then you step out of that cave and you're immediately struck with that incredible feeling of freedom (just as you would if you had actually gone through those events), You see the vast mountains off into the distance and you now realize you're on you're own, FREE to do as you please in this giant world for the first time.
Shaun Davies and may i add CoD might have a good opening but it creates a feeling that will disappear as you play because the game isn't everything that the intro showed you.
I love how Skyrim starts, especially the first time.
I love how they had the player focus on the characters around them.
I love how they continued The Elder Scrolls theme(at least since Morrowind, not sure about before then) of having the player start as a prisoner.
I love how the lore aspects weren't tossed aside just to generate mass appeal, and how when I made new characters later I was able to keep up with the "jargon" because I'd gotten familiar with the game.
Also, I may just not be socially adept or something, but I strongly disagree about the prayer and running seeming wrong.
This video convinced me more so than before watching that Skyrim had an amazing opening. Skyrim wasn't as action packed in early few minutes of the opening or as unexpected in actually having you die, like the other game you mentioned, but it wasn't supposed to be.
Skyrim's intro was meant to give you two sides of two forces fighting. So its giving you a chance to hear each side of their story from their foot soldiers, notice how Ulfric's mouth is gagged. (more so to keep him from shouting) but it also puts another element into the gameplay and your decision on what side you are going to feel like choosing. The same people that are going to kill the leader of the resistance that is fighting against it, is right there with you on his way to be executed just right along with you, so naturally you would want to help him, to help yourself. Why would you turn around and try to help the same people that just tried to kill you? The main plot of the game is choosing which side you want to fight for, red, or blue. I chose Stormcloaks because they are fighting for what they precive to be right because a foreign force has told them that their ways are wrong, and their ways are right. The basic conflict between humans, trying to force their beliefs onto others even if its not their place to do so. So that is what Skyrim's intro is trying to get across.
It did fail slightly, first time through I followed the imperial because I couldn't know there was another choice.
Slightlybored First time I didnt know theres an imperial option. You know, they're trying to execute you, then you join the "resistance", help them a bit, so why would you join imperial after that?
I didn't know he was an imperial, I just followed the only guy I could find quickly and later sided with the stormcloaks (because every time I went to solitude everyone attacked me due to a misunderstanding about a pile of guards in the town square)
***** Very well said. It's all up to personal preference basically.
Natasel I like the way you think. I wouldn't mind a 3rd option like that......
The environment in Skyrim is dull because they were wanting you to feel like your future is bleak. Because you know, being led to your execution.
Modern Warfare also uses the transition from one character to another since it's roots, where the player is in control of different characters throughout the entire game, which makes the intro scene even more spectacular when it reaches the end, following a cohesive system that fits perfectly within the series. I remember when I first played this game my jaw dropped because it was so very well crafted.
I'm looking to start making video games, and my friends and I have talked about doing it for years. I've made it a group mandate that all members of our team will study your videos thoroughly, both Extra Credits and Daniel Floyd channels. You're doing amazing, quality work and, at least in our case, you're helping indie developers a HELL of a lot by teaching us the kinds of things to avoid when making a game. (Skinner boxes for example) Keep up the good work, guys, and thank you so much for doing what you do!
I love the introduction! Yea it's a hassle to get started but it just shows me the beauty of the game to me. It's probably one of most memorable starts to the game and I refuse to hate it because of the joy it brought me. Just my opinion though :)
+Peter Dworzanski Its sad, that people dont have time to feel the environment, the people around you talking about their fate, sitting and waiting for your fate...
Today every game needs to start RIGHT away... When I have played Persona 4, till you actually have been able to play it correctly it took 5-7 hours, and HELL I enjoyed that =D
At least there are some people thinking the same =)
I love the Skyrim intro! One of the best ones I know. It's kind of boring to do it over and over again when you start new characters, but I really love it, I feel that on the contrary it does everything right:
1) introducing the main antagonist,
2) introducing the main side-story of the rebellion
3) making you excited about what's going to happen
and 4) giving you real epic action which, although very easy, let's YOU decide what's going to happen from the very start
5) also it takes you through the tutorial of how the game works in a completely natural way, instead of the forced ways many other games do it
I have to disagree. While I know this channel is more dedicated towards showing how a developing game brings gamers into a more subtle idealistic of the overall product in quality and quantity. I just really need to point this out.
Skyrim's story takes place during the Civil War where the Storm Cloaks and Imperials are fighting against one another in a hellish combat when dragons push their way into the middle of the war. I feel like judging the game's intro by itself is not really a fair stance. Granted CoD:MW1's intro was very impressive for an FPS. Let's keep in mind that Skyrim and CoD are two seperate genres. Where Skyrim is a roleplaying, and adventure game, CoD is a shooter, and multiplayer game.
With this being said, the game is more direct in the shooter genre because it needs to be more fast paced to keep the player moving and more directed in the way of the action. Where as with Skyrim being a RPG, the game is more based on the 'What's the Lore?' sorta situation. Where throughout the intro, while slow, is meant to incorporate you into the idea of this war as you see the Stormcloaks sent to their death with almost little reason, or maybe the reason (if you side with the Imperials) that the imperials are bringing good upon Skyrim.
Like I said, both games I find have amazing intros, but it's like comparing Apples to Oranges. One is meant for a slower style of gameplay where you can take your time, while the other is meant for quicker, much faster gameplay. Therefore, taking your time in Skyrim is a must have in order for the full immersion of an adventurer, while in a shooter you need to be quick for the full immersion of a military solider.
I completely agree with you. This video was made by someone who loves overly dramatic action-filled shooters. I'm not saying Skyrim had a great intro, but it did the job. Not every gamer likes the CoD approach to things.
ps0705
I am by far _no_ fan of CoD. But even I can admit when I see it, that that intro was better than Skyrim's. Skyrim's intro makes me NOT want to replay it. Not every intro _needs_ to be fast-paced, but this was one that did. I mean, they made a dragon burning down a village _boring_.
Maybe not on your first playthrough, but on the fourth? It should have been skipable.
*****
Yes, you're restricted in certain ways, but it's only as to not mess the story up. RPG stands for Role Playing Game, and every time I pick up Skyrim I can play any role just fine.
The only thing the game tells you is you were caught crossing the border of Skyrim during a time of war, implying you're not from Skyrim. Or you had been out of the country for a period of time. I can come up with dozens of viable, fun backstories and characters off the top of my head with that in mind.
shunkwugga
I do, and a lot of my friends do. Granted, we're all into role playing games of other types to begin with, like D&D. But I can't imagine playing Skyrim without RPing; it would get boring *fast*.
Every time I play Skyrim, I 1) make sure my character eats something substantial at least once a day, 2) make sure my character sleeps each night, and 3) I often won't loot the armor off of dead bodies because realistically, it wouldn't be fitted for my character. So yes, a lot of people _DO_ role play in Skyrim.
TalonSky I'm into D&D as well, but I still have to say that Skyrim, for all of its visual glory, was just too shallow of an experience with me. I do have a tendency to harp on about Morrowind and how much I love it so I won't do that here, but I just felt limited in this game. When Skyrim ended I didn't really care, I wasn't left wanting more, and that, to me, is as big of an indictment of a role playing game as I can think of. When Deus Ex ended, I was sad. I wanted more. When Morrowind ended (the story), I was sad, I wanted more. When Shadowrun Returns (the first campaign) ended, I was sad, and I wanted MOAR!!! I could go on and on, but in my opinion Skyrim was just not a sufficiently interesting place. I'm a lore hound, and I found myself for the first time not caring about the lore in an Elder Scrolls game. Where I feel that Bethesda really went wrong with Skyrim, was that they were trying to go for a really broad audience. When you cast a really wide net, a lot of fish will inevitably slip through said net. I was one of those fish. I was a player with a certain expectation of depth from an Elder Scrolls game who was thoroughly disappointed with the lackluster product I was presented with. I tried. I really did. The intro didn't kill the game for me, the GAME killed the game for me. It went from feeling VERY D&D to feeling just kinda D&D. This game, for me, is the Elder Scrolls equivalent of the edition 4.0 ruleset for D&D. They tried to simplify the game and put more of a focus on core mechanics, but in doing so, lost all of the depth that older players enjoyed out of the game.
Have you played skyrim? You just dont realize how many hours youve wandered through endless trees.
Patience is a virtue, dude. Don't look at it from such a cynical commercial perspective, Skyrim is meant to be immersive, it's meant for players who aren't impatient and know to sit through a dialogue.
And about all the names and concepts being thrown, again it's MEANT to invoke immersion and realism.
This isn't a channel about being cynical, its about a lot of the core aspects of game development and learning from mistakes made. And here let me throw you an explain of how "immersed" you can be with the amount of concepts and names being thrown at you. So there is this dragon name Auldin, and a prophecy from The Elder Scrolls- "What are the Elders Scrolls?' Shut up! And he will enslave all of humanity if the Dragon born doesn't stop him- "What is a Dragon Born?" -Didn't I tell you to shut up this is MY story! Anyway you should decide between which faction of army do you want to side with. The imperials- "..."- Don't you even dare player! I will insta-kill you if don't stop harassing me! or the storm cloaks.
xxjermxx70 ... Okay, look here. Usually, I don't go about calling other people idiots, but in your case I feel like making an exception - I am going to restrain myself, though, because I'm not looking to start any sort of internet "fight" here. Instead I'm going to gently explain to you why you are wrong.
While I now agree that my original comment ignored the intent of the channel and continued on its merry way to explain why you're not supposed to directly compare Skyrim with a game like Call of Duty - durrrrr? - I still feel the need to shed some light on the fact that you attempted to describe Skyrim's lore through a two-person-based dialogue that clearly COMPLETELY disregards the way you learn about core game items (like the elder scrolls) and are answered questions like "What is the dragonborn?" and "What is a Stormcloak/Imperial?"
Basically, what I'm trying to inform you here, is that your point is just.. moot. I'm not going to assume that you haven't bothered to play Skyrim, but it certainly makes me feel this way, but then again, you might be the type of person to judge games and many other things by the cover - which I, of course, have no idea whether or not that is the case.
I don't want to end this reply on a negative "BURR-YOU-SUCK"-note, so I'm going to admit that you really do seem to have knowledge about this channel's intent, so you definitely win in that prospect, and for ignoring this in my comment, I am sorry.
KTHXBAI
DasNeueFeuer But that is the point, the way the plot is set in a way to where you can't be new to the series or the game. They throw in the true lore five hours after the game's intro. You don't have anything but references to things that the player needs to know. I have played Skyrim for hours. The whole idea of having the two way conversation was to show how closed off the plot is in the intro and how the game refuses to give us knowledge of the lore.
xxjermxx70 I can totally get behind your point, but from my standpoint, I actually like the way you are thrown into the lore. I've been introduced to Elder Scrolls lore through Skyrim, and to me it's not that badly done. They may have marketed to Elder Scrolls fans rather than new players, but to me that's totally fine.
In this prospects, I think we share different views on the matter.
xxjermxx70
A lot of the stuff mentioned in the intro wasn't present in the previous games. If you didn't know what something was, you would eventually find out by *exploring*, which is the game's main aspect, as explained in this video. The intro sequence serves as a tutorial of sorts, so that _new_ players could get used to the mechanics and controls. Honestly, it does what it's meant to do well.
I actually love this opening. I like how deceptively low-key it is, and then suddenly DRAGON!
Honestly I was okay with the opening my first time through. Skyrim was my first Elder Scrolls game, and so in many respects all the jargon I later learned to understand just made me feel that much more the outsider, which my character seemed to be set up as. Nobody knew who I was, which was later reconfirmed throughout the opening sequence.
Sure, it's not quite as intriguing as other game openings I've seen (Oblivion anyone? Dayum but Patrick Stewart makes everything awesome.) but it worked for me at least.
Nice breakdown though. It's nice to see a thorough explanation of opinion mixed with facts.
You misspelled almost all the things that were mentioned in the beginning of skyrim. Otherwise good video.
exactly what i thought and wanted to write aswell
+dalnator honestly the entire point he was making there was weird to me I mean most of these things were not hard to understand. All the names of the divines he said were divines and that is pretty self explanatory what it would be and general Tullius can't be much else than a general right? They explained briefly who Ulfric was and the other things to me just made the world feel large and expansive. only the words like "nord" "hammerfell" "imperial" and maybe "sovnegard" would make sense to veteran players so it's not like it was much easier for them. And the other things were not hard to understand and they weren't that important anyway he said Elod it was clear that that was a person but it doesn't matter if you forgot him because he was not important at all so it just makes the world feel alive to me. And the way they talked about hammerfell you would no it was a province or at least a location but again it wasn't even important.
+Plattfisken holy shit that comment turned out longer than I expected, I actually had more to say but it wouldn't let me. Anyway I doubt anyone will read a wall of text like that anyhow.
+Plattfisken Stuff like "... General Tullius the military governor," "...Ulfric Stormcloak, the true High King," do make it fairly understandable. I think they do a good job of introducing you to the major plots from the start. Also, it gets you wondering who are these Stormcloaks, Empire etc., questions which you can ask Ralof or Hadvar later. This said, I do agree the start of the game is a bit poor.
+Akașșș very true
'Ulfred'? 'Tuleous'? 'Savvengard'? 'Helgan'? 'Dalmoore'?
You're joking, right?
+Denny Chen Maybe they intentionally misspelled to show the felling that a newcomer to the series will feel like
Dalmoore omfg
+Denny Chen You can't expect him to research his shit. He's got videos to make!
+JarlDraggmond m8, ever heard of subtitles?
Alfred Stormclock: yarl of windhome vs General Tilliest: commander of the Empirical Lesion
I don't know. I really enjoyed the intro, and I honestly wish more games made their intros like Skyrim. Rather than shoving the different "strong points" of the game down your throat, you will eventually discover them yourself. That way the intro doesn't feel cheesy and unrealistic.
You lose many potential players if you don't get them hooked in the first minutes of the game. That's their first impression of the game - if they find it boring they may quit mid-tutorial and never come back
Marco I honestly value a better game experience over amount of players.
I want my game to be a unique fine high quality dish and not a Big Mac anyone can chew down without any doubts.
Harald Kanin well then skip the intro and start the game from the get-go.
Did the intro presented on Skyrim introduce any value to the game? Any quality? 5 minutes stuck in a carriage panning the camera left and right, looking at 3 guys faces while they talk a bunch of nonsense gibberish. Even no intro is better than that.
Marco It wasn't gibberish. The player is supposed to be someone crossing the border from somewhere else, and the people in the cart are talking about something the player /character was unfamiliar with.
Did it make me go "ugh this is shit" when I first played it? No, it made me (likely how the designer wanted) go "This is weird. What is going on? Who are these people?"
Rather than just shoving everything deep down your throat making the product absolutely sterile from personality (Fallout 4 intro) Skyrim introduces you rather slowly. When the player is actually free, he or she has been wanting to explore for a while so when the player exits the cave and see Skyrim, he or she will most likely set off exploring right away.
Harald Kanin well I think it's up to personal preference then, I was pretty frustrated at some parts of the intro and tutorial. Mainly the carriage, and the first Alduin 'battle' and 'chase' scenes which felt pretty forced and totally not what I was used to since I was a long time TES fan. I think that stuff was crammed in there just give this 'action movie' feel which doesn't really match the mood of the game IMO.
Then the dungeon part of the tutorial was alright I guess. I still liked the Oblivion dungeon a bit better, it felt more mysterious and I liked being able to explore at my own pace whereas Skyrim felt a bit rushed with all the Alduin shit going on and walls busting and soldiers all around which pressure the player to go a bit faster unless he gives absolutely 0 fucks (and then you lose all the immersion).
And when you finally get out of the tutorial and you're ready to explore, there's a bit more handholding with the soldier telling you where to go and stuff like that. Of course, you can just ignore him if you want to.
well this explains why I've tried to start playing skyrm 3 times and quit within the first 10 minutes.
Yup, troll.
Me waking up
My phone: youre finally awake
Loved the intro. Wouldn't have changed a thing.
"Because this is an Elder Scrolls game, we are also a prisoner"
hahahahh that cracked me up.
So true.
I am legitimately surprised that Half-Life's opening sequence was not mentioned even once in this video.
Create a save point at character creation if you don't like the long intro
I know this. I've played the game before on both 360 and PC. I'm talking about for multiple characters. I've seen players with 2000+ game time hours and y"all cant wait 15 mins? Priorities man. Life's gonna be hard for you.
I was weary about the length of the introduction at first too, but when I first saw it on the 360, I was amazed by the detail. The anticipation _should_ make you excited to get into it even more. After the first few hours, you forget about it anyway. That's where my save point shortcut comes in for later characters. Dragon Age Inquisition kind of had a similar beginning, didn't know what the plot was until halfway through, but it turned out to be a great game regardless, and now waiting *patiently* for the DLC in September.
Honestly, that is my biggest problem with the intro. They should of allowed people to skip it after the first play through.
You're missing the point of the video, which is to show that Skyrim's intro is basically shit at introducing the player to the game and to its world. The game is still great, as said at the start of the video, but the focus here is on the introduction.
@@JmdMagic if you couldn't make it 15 minutes to get to player creation to create a save point in a game this large I have some bad news for you... you weren't going to make it anyway.
First of all i enjoyed this episode and i am not a Skyrim fanboy. However i really liked the opening to Skyrim for exactly these "flaws" it has and i think it works for new players as well as Elder Scrolls veterans. I really like how the landscape is desolate, grey and unimpressive because it makes you feel like you are at the ass of the world. Lost. You want to get out of there. It would be more comfortable to have all the characters who speak to you sitting right next to eachother but you are a prisoner and being imprisoned just is not comfortable, so i like that choice aswell. I could go on with this but instead i'd like to point out that you also don't criticise an "unfolding game" because it doesn't show you what the game will be all about later right at the beginning. -My conclusion is that i as a normal consumer really liked it and this opening was intended for normal consumers, not for other designers who spot "theoretical flaws" right away because they are trained to do so. Still, it is not perfect but you could also say that there is no such thing as perfect. I really love your videos, i just wanted to share my opinion on this matter.
+Lord of Banana
There's nothing wrong with start of Skyrim, the big draw about Skyrim is that you can change and improve who you are. Skyrim starts with you powerless and a nobody, escaping the dragon and making your way to the near by village is a great way to give the play the confidence to go explore the wide open world and more importantly grow as a character.
+tk9780 No, in Dragon Age Origins you can change and improve who you are, because you always have 5 or 6 choices of what to say in any given dialogue. In Skyrim you can change what you look like and how effective you are at swinging lumps of steel around.
+Lord of Banana Agreed. Part of it is just Skyrim's art style as well. It's very low fantasy compared to most series out on the market. I mean how many games have their characters walking around in greasy hair and dirty faces?
6:07Yeah, yeah, wait, did he just say UlfRED Stormcloak?!?! UlfRed? He's not a fantasy butler!
+GamerGuy03 The one true High King Ulfric defaced!
+GamerGuy03 Dalmore? DALMORE????
+GamerGuy03 I think he messed up the names on purpose to demonstrate how a new player wouldn't care about all the exposition getting dumped on them in the span of a few minutes.
+GamerGuy03 Or the way he spells 'Sovngarde' Savvengard wth
No, he's just one hell of a butler.
Eh, I liked the opening of Skyrim.
L. Wolf
After watching it so much, of course you liked it... anyone can be brainwashed to liking something when they are forced to watch it.
Sir Tobias
Hmm, maybe.
Sir Tobias I like it the fist time and the second time and so on and so forth
L. Wolf I disliked it the very first time. I was like "Why is this so frigging long?" Oblivion's was better. As in, being the same with similar faults, but shorter, so it was less painful.
Faerindel
Yea, I can see a problem with the length.
Future elder scroll games should base their beginning off what race you pick. If you pick a Nord, you start off in your youth learning to fight with your father. If you play as an Argonian, you're learning to hunt with your mother. And so on and so forth
Austin Beattie sorry this is just a tad bit late but all of the elder scrolls games have you start as a prisoner so you can make your own backstory and overall your character
They have a mod where you get to pick your opening
The elder scroll stories are all about washing away your life previous to your imprisonment and embracing your destiny as tabula rasa.
The strangest thing about Skyrim's opening is that Bethesda nailed the openings of Oblivion and Morrowind. Morrowind's opening was tense and drew you in to the idea of being part of some intricate, complex plot and Oblivion pretty much shoved those epic, sweeping landscapes right in your face. Their intros were different, but I felt that they were both really good, way better than Skyrim's.
A bit late but I wanted to add a small addition. Out of the three, I think Morrowind gets to me most because of how simple it is. It's kind of like Fallout New Vegas's opening for me. Is it flashy? Not really. But it always gives me more of a sense of replayability. It was generally vague enough to let you play a wide variety of characters with very limited restrictions on your character (Morrowind- Outsider, NV- Courier). My problem with Skyrim's opening is that it makes me not want to play a new character. It's just so long of a sequence that I don't feel is worth a playthrough past one time, maybe two. Granted, I have this same problem with F3's even though I actually sincerely like F3's beginning.
I like the intro, it reminds of Halo. You start out fighting it out in a cramped spaceship, the pillar of autumn. Then you crash land on Halo and you step out of the escape pod and see the massive Exspansion that is Halo. Very similar to stepping out of the cave.
The time you spend on the Pillar of Autumn from start until you leave the bridge is my favorite first ten minutes of anything ever. It sells the Halo franchise by itself. Declaring Skyrim's intro comparable to it despite all the flaws pointed out in this video is lighting the white-hot fires of my nerd rage.
Now I want an episode on how good that opening is. I can provide paragraphs of material about it for you guys, just say the word lol
Skyrim was a great game for exploration and adventure.
But honestly the quests...seriously?...seems like they are written by a 4 year old.
And the dragon mechanics? Dragons are the most underwhelming part of the entire game...all it takes is a tree or a sloping hill to beat a dragon...
Waterpae That's also a bit extreme...but much closer to what it should be :/
Fucking bears owning dragons in Skyrim...
lol or just install deadly dragons mod
Waterpae play any of the Playstation 2 or psp monster hunter games.
***** dude...all you need is a big tree or rock and alot of arrows and the might of the dragon is nullified.
Harder difficulties just makes it take longer times to kill the flying meatbag
BrutusAlbion Fuck if you know how to stam manage you don't even need the rocks and trees, its just super easy dragon slaying every time. The only time dragons ever killed me is when I got pulled from 10 feet back with animation mind powers to get 1-shotted with a bite I was nowhere near, because
CINEMATICS, EXPLOSIONS, EXCITEMENT!
But the opening shows you the execution of the stormcloaks and then a dragon attack. Setting up two main plot points. A civil war is going on and the stormcloaks are having a hard time with it and the dragons are returning.
2:36 It's not lifted from any CoD, it's lifted from Oblivion, Morrowind, Daggerfall, etc. You've always been a prisoner in any ESO game. Even ESO:TU. It's an Elder Scrolls thing about a prisoner rising up and becoming the hero.
+Jesse Jarvis He isn't referring to the character being a prisoner being lifted from Call of Duty. He's referring to the act of forcing the player into a restricted situation, where the only thing you can do is move the camera around. And while yes, other Elder Scrolls games have you play as a prisoner, they didn't force you to sit through 10 minutes of dialogue before you could even move.
+Jesse Jarvis Each of those games had you jumping into moving around and fighting within those five minutes (character creation notwithstanding, obviously). Skyrim binds you from movement save for looking around for far longer than any other Elder Scrolls to date.
Oblivion, arguably, has the best intro, because it immediately opens the character creation once the title card passes, and after that you're free to jump around your cell and punch the shackles hanging from the ceiling. Once the Emperor and the Blades arrive, you can defy their orders to move away from the cell door until they open it and execute you for not moving. The game immediately displays to you the kind of freedom you'll have from there-on-out, while Skyrim says, "guess what? You can't move for 5 minutes, and once you can, your hands are bound for another 2-3". That's not a good Elder Scrolls introduction.
+Frankthegb To be fair, neither was Morrowind's intro. Sure, you're a prisoner, but for the most part, you're just a foreigner coming in from overseas, filing all your paperwork like a normal person... The tutorial consists of windows you read, and you end up doing literally nothing to put most of it into practice until you've already forgotten most of what's been said.
netatsake And while that is for the most part true, the biggest thing here, is that you aren't forced to sit there for 5-10 minutes without being able to move while exposition is thrown up in your face the entire time. With Morrowind, it was "Whats your name? Great! Heres how you move and interact with things! (WASD & Space) Whats your race? Good, head into the next building to pick your class. Heres how to pick up stuff and open your menus! Good luck!" While Morrowind was a lot of reading in general, sure, the tutorial itself was actually pretty quick and concise with little in the way of unneccisary information. At the least, the entire thing took less than 5 minutes to get everything it wanted to get across to you, while also giving you a direction to start walking.
Couragearmour64 The problem with that, though, is that they didn't really teach you shit about the game in the process... As soon as you come out of that door, having no idea where you're going, no quest markers, and not even a map to show you your way, you're left to figure everything out for yourself. I, personally, gave up trying to learn the game well before I even got to Balmora... There was far too much information that I just didn't have in the beginning, so I just ended up spending the entirety of my time screwing with the console.
I REALLY, REALLY HOPE THEY WROTE THOSE THINGS WRONG ON PURPOSE ON 5:57 (BONUS FOR THE PICTURE FROM CYRODIIL WHEN HE SAYS SKYRIM IN 5:54)
is your caps broken
A side note: From my experience, the only games I've played that have done wonderful ways to customize your character in the middle of the narrative, without breaking the flow of it, was in Fallout 4; where the way to customize your character's facial features and basic stuff like that was in a mirror, where you could assume your character was grooming. Would that be a good example of introducing your base character customization within a narrative?
to be honest fallout 4 does a lot of things right, but it's the things that it does wrong that stands out.
Banarok Lionrage
Alas, that's with every game. Halo 4 had a good base story idea, but lacked in gameplay, and execution in some story elements, Destiny has a wonderful lore and decent gameplay, (now) however it likes implementing its story into the actual game, which only improved in The Taken King.
Sonic Unleashed started the sub-genre that represented Sonic's high-speed and "gotta go fast" feel, but had terrible long night stages that involved him turning into a Werehog.
Most of these games are cut down and hated due to what they did wrong and, if ever, barely gets noticed for its pros. Everyone loves to see the cons. Which is why making stuff for the general public is hard. BUT HEY! Its still 2016! And I don't think our standards will get lower ever again!!! (I hope.)
How’s 2020 treating all of you? :)
What's the video where you talk about the importance of the first minutes?
+Leonardo Fernandes This may be what you're looking for! "Starting Off Right - How the First Five Minutes Draw Players In" ua-cam.com/video/EFU4tjMndi4/v-deo.html
Extra Credits Thank you
+Dhark Pulse Wtf are you talking about
+Dhark Pulse I don't know, that was a bit of a stretch. The city guards say all sorts of memorable things, and we have no idea how you play the game. Lets not assume the experience of somebody because your joke wasn't easily understood by everybody.
+Dhark Pulse your execution was off. You can't say that just because the butt of the joke is well known, that anybody should be able to understand what you said.
You know what's coming when you start Skyrim. Even when it was your first time you knew roughly what you were in for because you'd already played Oblivion & you'd seen the Skyrim trailer. Keeping you bound & on a cart for a few minutes, & then making you run a very enclosed & linear dungeon for a few more was done very deliberately. It's the moment you burst out into the sunlight at the end of that dungeon & see Bleak Falls Barrow on the mountain side in the distance that you get your "wow" moment.
& besides, we all realised pretty early on that you can save the game just before Hadvar asks "Who, are you?"
I have an idea on how to fix the start of skyrim in my opinion. Keep the carriage ride, but your character will have a dream being a dragon flying over skyrim while Parth's VA gives you key bits of lore as narration. And when you come to an then immediately prompted to create your character after the dream sequence. You will be still in the cart after this, and this time will be used to tell a little of the Civil war. Upon reaching helgen you over hear a coversation between the imperials and Thalmar. That would used to give you a slight idea of who is in control. The dragon you were in your dream, that would be Alduin making his way towards Helgen. That is also a way to establish a sort of connection of fate between you and Alduin.
Meh, I prefer how they actually did it. :P
I couldn't get into Skyrim at first and I hadn't realized it, but THIS is exactly why. I hadn't played a TES game before, didn't know any lore, or what to do or who Ulfred Stormcloak was... I gave it a shot a couple of times but no dice, really.
LUCKILY I watched a few awesome let's play vids that explained the world and game mechanics, and I've put several 100 hours in the game since, in fact I really love Skyrim.
I forgot all about the lame beginning, though haha. Great insight in this video. Subbed.
I don't think skyrims and cods openings should be compared at face value. CoD is supposed to hype up the player, to keep him on his toes, to prepare you for the action focused game that is to come. Skyrim on the other hand is in my opinion more focused on keeping you calm, making you find your own path to explore. And for someone that usually goes for the optimal path over the fun path, this is a nice change of pace, forcing you to step down and relax before you set out on your journey.
And a question, do you guys have any idea how an Elder Scrolls game works? "The character creation screen pops up telling us that we won't be executed". Why would they execute you in the first ten minutes?
By High Klingon Alfredo Strumclick, I hope you meet the fate of the horse thief from Rooriksteed and get sent to Sivungord, under the order of General Toolius.
Also alternative start mod console peasants.
Skyrim's opening is by far one of the most boring intros I've ever had the pleasure of sitting through multiple times. And yes, I have played every Valve game with a plot.
I like how he skips the epic dragon attack set piece that makes the intro exciting
*Ulfric Stormcloak
*Sovngarde
*Rorikstead
*General Tullius
*Thalmor
*Helgen
*Vilod
The game has subtitles for the whole thing.
Ulfric is mentioned repeatedly throughout the game, with several items literally spelling it out for you. Yes, literally. The items are books with his name in them and his own equipment, which you are able to take. You can also join him, meaning you will learn how to spell his name quickly. The faction was named after him by the Imperials, who were using the name as two simultaneous insults: A group of puppets blindly following Ulfric, and people who cry loud enough to drown out thunderstorms when they don't get exactly what they want. Unfortunately, the people actually WERE willing figurative puppets of Ulfric, and Ulfric actually IS louder than a thunderstorm when he's angry, and literally murdered the high king, who was thinking about joining him, by screaming.
Sovngarde is mentioned in every single ES game released so far, including spinoffs and the online game where Talos wasn't even born yet and there actually ARE only 8 divines (3 if you're an elf, 11 plus daedric princes if you are a Khajiit). All of them have it in the lore and spoken by an NPC. Skyrim actually puts you there at one point, and it is labelled on the map. There is an entire main quest segment that takes place there, and the name shows up in bold font when you go there the first time. There is no excuse.
Rorikstead is a village on the map. It was expanded from its initial state as a homestead belonging to a guy named Rorik. They even had one of the deceased real-life ES developers live there as a tribute. He even has a quest where you convince his father to let him be an adventurer like you, and there ISN'T a joke involving arrows or knees the entire quest.
Tullius is the leader of an army you can join, with an entire quest line. How did that get misspelled?
The Thalmor are mentioned every single time you go to a place that isn't aligned with the Imperials. The dead ones have a letter ordering your execution if you do anything not aligned with them. You can talk to some that won't kill you on sight, and they don't have Irish accents like the Nords (The Thalmor, a faction of the Altmer, a race also known as High Elves, have Colonial English accents, which is actually different from the Dark Elves, or Dunmer, who have Boston and Cockney accents), so the "th" is clearly pronounced.
Helgen is on the map, and can be discovered as a bandit hideout, giving bold letters.
Vilod is an NPC, and couldn't have an "e" as the first letter due to the way Nords pronounce "e" (bell, get, Jello). He is also in the subtitles when a Stormcloak speeds up his own execution. His line is "Justice!" although this is hard to find without looking. The house you jump into is actually his inn, and you can find that mead Ralof mentioned.
+Alex Leonardi thatsthejoke.jpg
*General Tullius
*Helgen
*Sovnegarde
*Ulfric Stormcloak
*Rorikstead
Geez, how many mistakes can you make in spelling TES-lore stuff?
As well as "Dalmoore" instead of Thalmor. At least I assume that's what "Dalmoore" is supposed to be
Funny that you should misspell “Sovngarde” while trying to correct their own mistakes x)
This really pissed me off coming from supposed long term fans of the franchise. Most of them arent even spelling mistakes just pure mispronunciations that if you have played the game for even a few hours you would pick up on.
6:11 so many typos it's tullius : Rorikstead : thalmor : helgen : vilod : Sovngarde : ulfric
im really glad these videos all have subtitles, it really helps because i have problems with processing audio sometimes!
Bottom line is: If you wanna do an oppening, do it like The Last of Us.
Lol no
That's my answer to pretty much everything. Do it like The Last Of Us. God I loved that game. It made me cry, like, 3 or 4 times, but I loved it. The feels were so intense in that game, partly because of how well they set the scene with that opening.
+Chris
Never tried doing an oppening.
+Chris It became interactive a tad too late for my taste and it only worked because TLoU's cutscenes were on the level of a well-written and Hollywood blockbuster with really good actors. If either one of the characters had been less interesting or believable its intro would have been atrocious.
aR0ttenBANANA96 why not?
Skyrim's opening breaks my interest in it. Like, I _want_ to make new characters, do different things....restart my Nord since I accidentally overwrote the save data :( But that opening sequence....why couldn't it have been skipable for future playthroughs? There is literally _nothing_ important in it once you understand the basics of the game.
I wish they set it up like in Oblivion or Fallout, where after the tutorial level before the open world you could change everything to do with your character. You could save just before this and return to it whenever you wanted to make a new character.
Herp Mcderpington It is surprising they did not do this, especially since they are both made by Bethesda.
All you had to do was make a save game right at the character creation point. Voila! Skipped intro. I have done it. Not a big deal.
Random Citizen
I was including the whole escape from Helgen in my comment. The 'tutorial' portion, as it was put earlier.
A Donut with Sprinklez Actually, EVERY SINGLE ELDER SCROLLS GAME was made by a different team. I'm not kidding. Literally all of the ones (unless you count dagger-fall and arena, but I don't know there). Sure all Bethesda, but an entirely different group of people made each game (except for a few key people such as the sound director). Certain things working and being unnoticed for working isn't too far-fetched when you realize that.
Sovngarde*
Ulfric*
Tullius*
Thalmor*
I hope those were deliberate, or you should probably find a new person to proofread these.
I think it's pointing out what it is you 'hear' in the first few minutes. unless you know the exact spelling thalmor/dalmor tullius/tullious isn't really going to matter.
Nexsusthepro
That's fair. Good point.
There's a reason there are mods out there that allow you to skip the intro or just substitute a new one instead.
Honestly, the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild had the best intro... aka no intro. It literally goes, "here's a tablet and clothes, now go do whatever."..
I understand that there's still the tutorial area (the great plateau) to go through, but it's presented in a way that it doesn't feel as such.
Got to say my only complaint with the intro was that I couldn't skip it. I have an alternate starts mod and the original is still my favorite. I didn't find anything too over the top with out reason. The original opening is a solid way to introduce a player to what is happening in the tattered remains of an empire that is falling apart. It also speaks to that exploring theme. When you start you get explore your surroundings and as you go the world slowly opens up to you. COD is a ridgid pipe of a story in comparison.
Fallout 3 in turn has a mod for skipping the introduction of Vault 101, which shows that many players don't seem to like that tutorial in the slightest.
7:49 *Deltarune would like to know your location.*
I see a few parallels with the Fallout 4 intro, but once again the moment you step outside the vault into the endless possibilities of the unknown, is glorious. Then the rest of the game kind of lets you down from there.
2016 thinking back on skyrim. Now i must play skyrim!
Well... I found the beginning to pull me in more than any other game. Even more than COD:MW's. In COD it was so sterotypical for a military game... Skyrim's wasn't... it had so many questions, why am I here? Why am I hostage? Than it releases you to the wild to answer those questions...
And then make those answers up yourself. You were picked up for being there when they caught Ulfric. They tell you that in the cinematic. There are no other answers to be found other than to make up your own reasons why your character was there.
There's the "what's up with the dragon" question but is a slow, boring cart ride with bad voice acting the best way to set-up that mystery? I doubt it.
8:19 You totally forgot the first part of the chaos-and-everything-burns-down-mission where the player changes sides in war organically and probably without even knowing
1:11
Getting overweight by collecting everything from every
dead person then walking for a few hours just to gain 100 gold.
I picked up Skyrim, got 15 minutes in, and put it down. I have yet to pick it back up. I know it's a great game, but the start didn't hook me enough.
same here
same here
same here
I encourage you to give it another chance, it's amazing
You need to mod it
Seven years after this was posted, and I've just bought Skyrim recently. I didn't grow up on games because of strictly religious parents, but I've heard about games like this for a long time and was so excited to try it out. I was happy to sit through the somewhat scattered opening. This video totally resonates with me though. It wasn't until I watched some video after getting halfway through the Mage's College questline that I realized one of the prisoners on the cart was Ulfric Stormcloak, even lol. But I also totally agree that the true excitement and wonder hit me when I left the tutorial and was on my own free in Skyrim for the first time. The scenery, apparent freedom, and music altogether was an amazing feeling. I love the game, but it is a little bit of a shame that emotion wasn't captured in the opening moments :)
2:25 I was thinking Telltale's TWD. I know, Lee's not being taken to execution, but close enough
Nice video mate
Helgen*
Sovngarde*
Rorikstead*
Tullius*
Thalmor*
Pardon my pedantry good sir but I have this unhealthy obsession with proper spelling and grammar :)
Robert Lacatena you forgot Ulfric, haha
da Wolfy Oh NO! I'M A FAILURE AT BEING PEDANTIC!!!
Also can we figure what "Elod" is? I still can't tell.
Mediocrities I believe it is supposed to be grelod, one of the citizens of Helgen
But...didn't he mispell them purposely to emphasize the fact it's too many words? That's what I got from it at least.
I agree!
Now go tell that to every fucking book they made us read at school.
GregTom2 MADE you read, honestly if you go back and read them again its a completely different expirience
lauren maughan I've read many books, some for my own enjoyment and some for school assignments, and I've even had the pleasure to start my own novel as a hobby.
And yeah. Non-action novels not-for-youth are 90% crippled with the "here goes 3 chapters where nothing happens but the caracters get exposition".
Personally, I like fast expositions or even _in media res._
GregTom2 I meant reread the ones you were forced to, when you know you chose it out of your own free will its way more enjoyable
I have to say, I really disagree with a lot of the arguments you're making here. (Oh no, I wrote a long comment that nobody's going to read again...)
First, Skyrim's intro has a lot of work to do in ways that Call of Duty doesn't, and I honestly don't think it's fair to compare them the way you did. CoD:MW is a different kind of game, and more importantly, it's based on concepts that were already deeply embedded in the minds of its audience. It introduces the setting, but doesn't have to explain that setting. "It's a Middle Eastern country in the midst of violent political upheaval." There you go. MW doesn't have to give any real context to what's happening -- there are no elements of that introduction that wouldn't be immediately recognizable to any modern audience. The player's cultural awareness does their exposition for them; MW works because it takes perfect advantage of that fact.
Skyrim, on the other hand, is a fantasy world, and it's a fairly intricate one. It has a lot of concepts to introduce. When you play an Elder Scrolls game, you're entering a world that you have no context for unless you've played them before. And that's key to the appeal of TES games. You don't just explore mountains and cities and ruins, you're exploring lore. Gods and politics, assassins and magic and history. Tamriel is a place like no other, and the intro should reflect that.
Second, it's gotta do that tutorial, man. Oblivion and Skyrim have very similar tutorial/character creation methods, and there's a reason for that. Sure, they could do the "noob sandbox" MMOs do, but there's a fine line to walk there -- too open, and it gets much harder to ensure the player is being exposed to the basics of gameplay. If it's open but not open _enough_ they'd run the risk of being potentially frustrating early on, or even causing people to think the scope of the game world isn't as spectacular as it seemed in the trailers. And of course, that's diverting dev resources that could be going toward the game proper. Rather than screw around with that, Bethesda goes with fairly straightforward linear tutorials.
Third, and related, they're a way for the player to try out different gameplay styles before the game starts For Real. Oblivion did this, too. You can sneak, you can do magic, and of course, you can just hit things very hard. Try them out, see what you like and what you don't. The player can then get a feel for different tactics and which ones they prefer before being released into the world and put them to use.
Fourth, and most important: Your character isn't the prisoner. You are. The player is being taken out of this ordinary world into one of magic and empires and prophecy and gods that manifest before your very eyes. And more importantly, you're not just some random bystander in that world. You're not going to languish in a dungeon or get executed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In TES games, you stand toe-to-toe with dragons and emperors and revolutionaries, deities and those who imagine themselves divine. The intro is what takes you from your current limited circumstances and catapults you into your new role as something more.
The point I was making wasn't about whether the intro is good or bad, just that comparing it to CoD is inadvisable. I didn't find it boring, but that's totally subjective.
You're right about how Skyrim turned out. But they didn't have to make it this way.
I didnt find the intro awful either, but there's alot of valid points that they covered that should have been better explored. As for your points:
1st - they dont introduce any of this. One line was enough for the ''OMG you're the leader of the stormcloaks rebelling agaisnt the empire''. That would be enough, and more exposition of all this plot and the TES world should made in other ways other than just a guy talking. It is fair to compare COD intro to this one, because they could have done exactly the same: Eg - while youre on the carriage there's stormcloaks prisioners on foot, some mages healing wounded soldiers along the road to introduce you to the magic in the world, thalmor escorts abusing nord villagers in a ''hey is that a talos amulet peasant''... You see where am I going with this? More focus on the enviroment and less on one guy saying everything at once. Oh and we could actually try to overhear Elenwen and Tullius conversation, they are actually there in Helgen but so far away and so part of the scenery, and you are so distracted with the dude praying, that I didnt even noticed it until like my 3rd playthrough. Also, I understand it needs to be a remote place because Alduin will destroy it, but im not sure Helgen would be the best location, it could be somewhere more ''grandiose'', like a peak valley in the Reach or whatever.
you're 2nd and 3rd points I agree with, but
4th - It is obvious that you are the main character, but still man, the character creation just before hitting the chopping block is too much. Why not do all the sequence of running away from alduin, since it's just run and jump in 1st person, and do this after you reach Helgen's keep? changes nothing except the immersion.
I personally dont hate the intro at all but it's mediocre at best and the reasons they covered in this video are perfectly fine to me. Minus the tutorial one, I dont think a sandbox kind of thing would work at all in TES
With regard to your cart ride suggestions: I see what you're going for there, but that would be hard as hell for Bethesda to pull off properly. For one thing, the Creation Engine is a fickle beast -- it doesn't seem to handle those kinds of scripted sequences very well to begin with. God only knows how long it took them to get the existing cart scene working reliably.
For another, that's a lot of information having to be delivered in a way that wouldn't seem too forced. Again, I'm not saying it's perfect, just that it's not fair to compare it so directly to CoD. Western audiences see the events in the Modern Warfare intro and don't ask questions. It fits our existing cultural schema that the area is just prone to violent upheaval, and they don't like the US, and that's just how things are. They won't demand too much more information.
Someone new to TES, on the other hand, will have no pre-existing knowledge whatsoever of who any of these factions are. Two of them are new even to fans of the series. It'd be ludicrously easy to overwhelm a newcomer with too much worldbuilding at a time, while still, simultaneously, not conveying the depth of the lore. They could definitely have done it better, but I understand not wanting to do it all at once.
Delaying character creation is not a bad idea at all, though. It really killed the pacing. :p
Crystal Soulslayer yea, this video lost my attention at the "intro ripped from modern warfare" bit. Like, No. Thats the standard elder scrolls start. This is a long time tradition that started with ARENA the first game...
"You expect me to talk?"
"No Mr. Bond, I expect you to Walk!"